nfeigned respect. There is no flame of
indignation which burns fiercer within us than when we conceive
ourselves, or others, to be the victims of injustice. But what are we to
say of a view of the Atonement which represents God Himself as being
guilty of the most flagrant act of injustice that the mind of man has
ever conceived, the infliction of condign punishment upon a perfectly
innocent Person, and that for the offences committed by others? It is a
further wrong, and that a wrong done to the offenders themselves, that
they are, in consideration of the sufferings of the righteous One,
relieved of the merited and healthful punishment of ill-doing.

(_c_) A third defect of this theory of the Atonement is, that it is
profoundly unethical. The need of man is represented as being, above
all, escape from penalty. Whereas, at least, the conscience of the
sinner himself is bearing at all times witness to the truth that his real
necessity is escape from his sin, from the weakness and the defilement of
his moral nature, which are of the very essence of moral transgression.
We are now dealing with the matter from the moral standpoint; but we have
to support us the authority of the earliest proclamation of the work of
the Christ: "He shall save His people from their sins," not from any
pains or penalties attached to their sins. Relief from punishment is not
the Gospel of the New Testament, it is not a gospel at all.

(_d_) Finally, the idea of a transaction between the Father and the Son
is clean contrary to the fundamental Christian doctrine of the Unity of
God. Once locate justice in the Father, and love in the Son, and view
the Atonement as the result of a bargain, or transaction between the Two,
and once more we are left with a doctrine not Christian, but heathen and
polytheistic. There is unhappily little doubt, that the doctrine of the
Holy Trinity suffers, just as that of the Atonement, even more from its
defenders than from its assailants. Properly understood, that doctrine
is the vindication of the complete fulness of the personal life of the
One God. Too often it is so held, and so preached and represented, as in
this case, that monotheism is tacitly abandoned in favour of ditheism or
tritheism. It needs to be plainly said, that the transaction theory is
inconsistent with the trinitarian doctrine. The Three Persons are so
called in our Western theology owing to defects inherent in human thought
and speech.