seen as belonging indeed to Him, since in their
primary, their fullest and deepest meaning they form part of the
activities of the Logos, but as being only secondarily reflected in the
Christ, and therefore also in every Christ-Soul that treads the way of
the Cross. Thus studied they will be seen to be profoundly true, while
in their exoteric form they often bewilder the intelligence and jar the
emotions.

Among these stands prominently forward the doctrine of the Atonement;
not only has it been a point of bitter attack from those outside the
pale of Christianity, but it has wrung many sensitive consciences within
that pale. Some of the most deeply Christian thinkers of the last half
of the nineteenth century have been tortured with doubts as to the
teaching of the churches on this matter, and have striven to see, and to
present it, in a way that softens or explains away the cruder notions
based on an unintelligent reading of a few profoundly mystical texts.
Nowhere, perhaps, more than in connection with these should the warning
of S. Peter be borne in mind: "Our beloved brother Paul also, according
to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you--as also in all his
epistles--speaking in them of these things; in which are some things
hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest,
as they do also the other scriptures, unto own destruction."[213] For
the texts that tell of the identity of the Christ with His brother-men
have been wrested into a legal substitution of Himself for them, and
have thus been used as an escape from the results of sin, instead of as
an inspiration to righteousness.

The general teaching in the Early Church on the doctrine of the
Atonement was that Christ, as the Representative of Humanity, faced and
conquered Satan, the representative of the Dark Powers, who held
humanity in bondage, wrested his captive from him, and set him free.
Slowly, as Christian teachers lost touch with spiritual truths, and they
reflected their own increasing intolerance and harshness on the pure and
loving Father of the teachings of the Christ, they represented Him as
angry with man, and the Christ was made to save man from the wrath of
God instead of from the bondage of evil. Then legal phrases intruded,
still further materialising the once spiritual idea, and the "scheme of
redemption" was forensically outlined. "The seal was set on the
'redemption scheme' by Anselm in his great work, _Cur