the Spirit of Him Who
triumphed on the Cross. It only remains for us, by the deliberate act of
our whole personal being, our will, our reason, our affections, to
appropriate and make our own the deathless conquest won in and for our
humanity on the Cross.

II
THE HISTORICAL AND SPIRITUAL CAUSES OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST

"Him, being by the determined will and foreknowledge of God given up,
through the hand of lawless men, ye affixed to a cross and slew."--ACTS
II. 23.

St. Paul places this in the very forefront of that gospel which, as it
had been delivered to him, so he in his turn had delivered to the
Corinthians, that "Christ died for our sins." Neglecting all, deeper
interpretations of this, it is at least clear that in the apostle's mind
there was the closest and most intimate connexion between the death of
Christ and the fact of human sin.

Now it is important to remember that that connexion was, in the first
place, an historical one.

Christianity is a religion founded upon facts. In this is seen at once a
sharp distinction between our religion and that which claims the
allegiance of so many millions of our race--the religion, or better,
perhaps, the philosophy of the Buddha. Certainly there is such a thing
as a Christian philosophy. For we cannot handle facts without at the
same time seeking for some rational explanation of them. The plain man
becomes a philosopher against his will. In its origin our Christian
theology is no artificial, manufactured product. It is rather an
inevitable, natural growth. Neither the minds of the earliest Christian
thinkers, nor our own minds, are just sheets of blank paper on which
facts may impress themselves. Scientists, some of them at least, while
repudiating philosophy put forth metaphysical theories of the universe.
Theology is simply the necessary result of human minds turned to the
consideration of the Christian facts. But it makes all the difference
which end you start from, the facts or the theory: whether your method is
a posteriori or a priori; inductive or deductive; scientific or
obscurantist. And Christianity follows the scientific method of starting
with the facts. In this lies the justification of its claim to be a
religion at once universal and life-giving. It is universal because
facts are the common property of all, although the interpretation placed
on those facts by individuals may be more or less adequate. It is life-
giving,