the death of Jesus effected in the
unseen so as to make it possible for God to forgive us? Nothing
whatever, and nothing was ever needed. God is not a fiend but a
Father, the source and sustenance of our being and the goal of all our
aspirations. Why should we require to be saved from Him?

+Divine satisfaction in Atonement.+--But in what sense is the death of
Jesus a satisfaction to the Father? In no sense at all, except that
the sacrifice of Jesus is the highest expression of the innermost of
God that has ever been made. If it affords an artist satisfaction to
express himself in a beautiful picture, or a great thinker to express
his noble thought in a book, surely the highest satisfaction that God
can know must be his self-expression in the self-sacrifice of his
children. At its best, the intensest joy that can be known is the joy
of giving one's self for the good of the whole. In everything grand
and good in human thought and achievement God is doing just this. It
is the satisfaction he receives from the Atonement and the only one.

CHAPTER XI

THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE

+Atonement and New Testament language.+--It will have been observed
that in my examination of the subject of the Atonement I have said
almost nothing about the New Testament evidence for the doctrine.
This, I admit, is an entire departure from the method usually followed
by those who write upon it, and may be thought by some to vitiate my
whole argument. But the omission is of set purpose, for I am convinced
that New Testament language about the Atonement, especially the
language of St. Paul, has been, and still is, the prolific source of
most of the mischievous misinterpretations of it which exist in the
religious mind. To an extent this is the same with the Old Testament,
but to a far less degree, for the language of the Old Testament is only
liable to misapprehension when interpreted by the New. In a previous
chapter I have endeavoured to show the imperishable truths which
underlie Old Testament symbolism in regard to the Atonement, and I
trust I have shown that these truths are as fresh and indispensable
to-day, and play as great a part in human affairs as they ever did.
But before I proceed to say anything about the New Testament symbolism,
which has been largely derived from the Old, let us consider the
question of the authority of scripture as a whole.

+Tendency to bow to external authority.+--There is always a tendency