he clashing of the New Haven school and the
Princeton school which caused such a commotion in the Presbyterian
Church of sixty years ago. They are antiquated. They are too little.
They seem mechanical, artificial, trivial. We can say of the
governmental theory what Dr. Hodge said, "It degrades the work of
Christ to the level of a governmental contrivance." If I should
attempt to preach to you the governmental theory as it was preached by
theologians fifty years ago, you would not be interested in it There
is nothing in you that would respond to it. You would simply say, "I
do not like doctrinal preaching." Or if I should go back and take up
the penal substitution theory in all its nakedness and hideousness,
and attempt to give it to you as the correct interpretation of the
gospel, you would rise up in open rebellion and say, "We will not
listen to such preaching." If I should go back and take up the
Anselmic theory and attempt to show how an infinite debt must be paid
by infinite suffering, you would say: "Stop, you are converting God
into a Shylock, who is demanding His pound of flesh. We prefer to
think of Him as our heavenly Father." If I should go further back and
take up the old ransom theory of Origen and Gregory, I suspect
that some of you would want to laugh. You could not accept an
interpretation which represents God as playing a trick upon Satan in
order to get humanity out of his grasp. No, those theories have all
been outgrown. We have come out into larger and grander times. We have
higher conceptions of the Almighty than the ancients ever had. We see
far deeper into the Christian revelation than Martin Luther or John
Calvin ever saw. These old interpretations are simply husks, and men
and women will not listen to the preaching of them. If, now and then,
a belated preacher attempts to preach them, the people say, "If that
is doctrinal preaching, please give us something practical."

And so the Church is to-day slowly working out a new interpretation of
the great fact that Christ died for our sins. The interpretation has
not yet been completed, and will not be for many years. I should like
this morning simply to outline in a general way some of the more
prominent features of the new interpretation. The Holy Ghost is at
work. He is taking the things of Christ and showing them unto us. The
interpretation of the reconciliation of the future will be superior in
every point to any of the interpretations of the pas