To set one over against the other as two parties to a
contract, is to found a theory upon those very defects. The Miltonic
representation of the Father and the Son is Arian; the popular view is,
more often than not, a belief either in two gods, or in a logical
contradiction.

To sum up, the view of the Atonement with which we have been occupying
ourselves, is opposed to the fundamental moral instincts, and to the
Christian consciousness, both as it finds expression in the New
Testament, and as it reveals itself in the best minds of to-day. And
this type of theory, although without some of its coarser features, is by
no means extinct. There is all the more need then, in spite of all that
has been so well done in this direction, to exhibit the Atonement as the
supreme vindication of those instincts which are the witness of the
Divine in man. There is laid on all who would preach or teach
Christianity to-day to show that Calvinism, and all that is touched with
the taint of Calvinism, is not the doctrine of the Atonement which is
taught in the Bible or held by the Church. But, as nothing can be built
on negations, there is an even greater and more imperative need to
exhibit the truth of the Atonement in its beauty and majesty and
transcendent moral power.

2. The second of our two reasons for the choice of the Cross of Christ
as our subject, is the failure on the part of those who believe in it,
trust in it, and even build their lives upon it, to realise the true
vastness of its meaning. We are too apt to regard the Cross as one of
the doctrines of our religion, or as supplying a motive to penitence, or
to Christian conduct. Our view, when we are most in earnest, is
one-sided, limited, parochial. We must rise, if we would really
understand the Cross, to the height of this conception: that it contains
in itself the answer to the problem of human existence, and of our
individual lives. The secret of the universe, of our part of it at
least, that tiny corner which is occupied by the human race, was revealed
in that supreme disclosure of the Divine Mind which was made on Calvary.
It was a disclosure necessarily given under the forms of time and space,
else it could not have been given to us at all. But it transcends all
forms and limitations, and belongs to the spiritual and timeless order,
which is also the Real. But it is a disclosure which requires the
thought and study, not of one generation only, but of all.