stand those who give the second answer to the great question, and
calmly assure us that forgiveness may be taken for granted. They
emphasise what the others overlooked--the personal character of the
relations of God and man. God is a loving Father; man is His weak and
unhappy child; and of course God forgives. As Heine put it, _c'est mon
metier_, it is what He is for. But the conscience which is really
burdened by sin does not easily find satisfaction in this cheap pardon.
There is something in conscience which will not allow it to believe
that God can simply condone sin: to take forgiveness for granted, when
you realise what you are doing, seems to a live conscience impious and
profane. In reality, the tendency to take forgiveness for granted is
the tendency of those who, while they properly emphasise the personal
character of the relations of God and man, overlook their universal
character--that is, exclude from them that element of law without which
personal relations cease to be ethical. But a forgiveness which
ignores this stands in no relation to the needs of the soul or the
character of God.

What the Christian religion holds to be the truth about forgiveness--a
truth embodied in the Atonement--is something quite distinct from both
the propositions which have just been considered. The New Testament
does not teach, with the naturalistic or the legal mind, that
forgiveness is impossible; neither does it teach, with the sentimental
or lawless mind, that it may be taken for granted. It teaches that
forgiveness is mediated to sinners through Christ, and specifically
through His death: in other words, that it is possible for God to
forgive, but possible for God only through a supreme revelation of His
love, made at infinite cost, and doing justice to the uttermost to
those inviolable relations in which alone, as I have already said, man
can participate in eternal life, the life of God Himself--doing justice
to them as relations in which there is an inexorable divine reaction
against sin, finally expressing itself in death. It is possible on
these terms, and it becomes actual as sinful men open their hearts in
penitence and faith to this marvellous revelation, and abandon their
sinful life unreservedly to the love of God in Christ who died for them.

From this point of view it seems to me possible to present in a
convincing and persuasive light some of the truths involved in the
Atonement to which the modern m