ered into the meaning of the great
revelation. 'He {166} recapitulated in Himself the long unfolding of
mankind.'[1] Hence in the very fact of the word becoming flesh
atonement is involved. In Christ God is revealed in the reality of His
love and the persistence of His search for man, while man is disclosed
in the greatness of his vision and vocation.

2. _The Death of Christ_.--Although already implied in the life, the
atonement culminates in the death of Christ. Even by being made in the
likeness of men Jesus did not escape from, but willingly took up, the
burdens of humanity and bore them as the Son of Man. But His passion
upon the cross, as the supreme instance of suffering borne for others,
at once illuminated and completed all that He suffered and achieved as
man's representative. It is this aspect of Christ's redemptive work
upon which St. Paul delights to dwell. And though naturally not so
prominent in our Lord's own teaching, yet even there the significance
of the Redeemer's death is foreshadowed, and in more than one passage
explicitly stated.[2] Here we are in the region of dogmatics, and we
are not called upon to formulate a doctrine of the atonement. All that
we have to do with is the ethical fact that between man and the new
life there lies the actuality of sin, the real source of man's failure
to achieve righteousness, and the stumbling-block which must be removed
before reconciliation with God the Father can be effected. The act, at
once divine and human, which alone meets the case is represented in
Scripture as the Sacrifice of Christ. In reference to the efficacy of
the sacrifice upon the cross Bishop Butler says: 'How and in what
particular way it had this efficacy, there are not wanting persons who
have endeavoured to explain; but I do not find that the Scripture has
explained it.'[3] Though, indeed, the fact is independent of any
theory, the truth for which the cross stands must be brought by us into
some kind of intelligible relation with our view of the world,
otherwise it is a piece of magic lying outside of our experience, and
{167} having no ethical value for life. At the same time no doctrine
has suffered more from shallow theorisings, and particularly by the
employment of mechanical, legal, and commercial analogies, than the
doctrine of the atonement. The very essence of the religious life is
incompatible with the idea of an external transference of goodness from
one being to a