to be said. Every theory of the Atonement
in the end must come to grief, which is based upon the assumption that
Christ is separate from the race which He came to redeem, or the Church,
which is the part of humanity in actual process of redemption. Professor
Inge, in his work on _Mysticism and Personal Idealism_, has justly
denounced the miserable theory which regards human personalities as so
many impervious atoms, as self-contained and isolated units. This
popular view is theologically disastrous when the Atonement is
interpreted in the light, or rather the darkness of it.

As the Son of man He is the Head of the human race, "the last Adam" in
the language of St. Paul. No mere sovereignty over mankind is denoted by
that title. He is that living, personal Thought of God which each man,
as man, embodies and, with more or less distortion, represents. He Who
became Incarnate is, as He ever was, the Light which lighteneth every man
coming into the world.

It was because of this, His vital and organic connexion with the race,
and with every member of it, that He could become Incarnate, and that His
sufferings and triumph could have more than a pictorial, or
representative, or vicarious efficacy. His work of redemption was
rendered possible by His relation, as the Word, to the whole universe,
and to mankind.

It was because of this, that He could become "the Head of the Body, the
Church." Former ages interpreted the Atonement in the terms of Roman
law. It is the mission of our age to learn to interpret it in terms of
biology. We are only just beginning, by the aid of modern thought, to
discover the true, profound meaning of the biological language of the New
Testament. "As the body is one, and has many members, so also is the
Christ." Not, let us mark, the Head only, but the Body. The Church is
"the fulness of Him Who at all points, in all men, is being fulfilled."
The words tell us of an organic growth. "I am the vine, ye are the
branches." Can any terms express organic connexion more clearly than
these?

It is our Head, to Whom we are bound by vital ties, in the mysterious
unity of a common life, Who has repudiated sin by dying to it. By
personal surrender to Christ we make His Mind our own; but we are enabled
to do so, because, in so doing, we are attaining to our own true mind, we
are entering into the possession of our own true selves, we are "winning
our souls," realising the Christ-nature within u