o have his spiritual side developed, that in him which
is akin to God, so that he shall naturally live out the divine love.
Education, then, is all on man's side, you will see. God does not need
to be changed: we need to know him, to love him, to come into conscious
relationship with him. This is what we need, so far as our relation to
God is concerned.

Now for the more important side; for it is infinitely the more
important practically. Let me speak a little while of the work of
atonement between man and man. If we trace the history of humanity, we
find that men were scattered in groups all over the world, isolated,
separated from each other, ignorant of each other, misunderstanding
each other, hating each other, fighting each other; and the work of
some other world than this. It seems to me that we can very easily
account for it when we recognize that man has been gradually coming up
from the lower orders of life, and that he still has in him the snake
and the hyena, the wolf, the tiger, the bear, all the wild, fierce
passions of the animal world only partly sloughed off, not yet
outgrown; when you remember how ignorant he is, how he does not
understand yet the meaning of these divine laws and the divine life,
glimpses of which now and then attract his attention and lure him on;
when you remember that selfishness, misguided by ignorance, can believe
that one man can get something for his behoof and happiness and good at
the expense of the welfare of somebody else, and harm come only to the
person that is defrauded. Right in here, if I had time to treat it in
still further detail, it seems to me we have a simple and adequate
explanation of all the evil that has ever blasted, blighted, and
darkened the history of man.

Now, man being this kind of a creature, having an animal origin as well
as a divine one, gradually climbing up out of this lower life and
looking towards God as his ideal, what is it that he needs? Is there
any need of atonement? All need of atonement! What does atonement mean?
The word itself carries its clearest explanation. In its root it means
"atonement," healing the division, whatever its nature or kind,
bringing man into one-ness with God and men into one- ness with each
other.

Now let me suggest to you a little as to the things that keep man and
God apart, keep men away from each other; and they will suggest the
atonement that is needed to heal all these divisions, and bring about
that ideal