ored its tragic reality, or took it for less than it is. In
this case He would again be doing Himself injustice; there would be no
demonstration that He was true to Himself as the author and guardian of
the moral constitution under which men live; as Anselm put it, He would
have ceased to be God. The apostle combines the two sides. In Christ
set forth a propitiation in His blood--in other words, in the Atonement
in which the sinless Son of God enters into the bitter realisation of
all that sin means for man, yet loves man under and through it all with
an everlasting love--there is an [Greek] _endeixis_ of God's
righteousness, a demonstration of His self-consistency, in virtue of
which we can see how He is at the same time just Himself and the
justifier of him who believes on Jesus, a God who is irreconcilable to
sin, yet devises means that His banished be not expelled from Him. We
may say reverently that this was the only way in which God could
forgive. He cannot deny Himself, means at the same time He cannot deny
His grace to the sinful, and He cannot deny the moral order in which
alone He can live in fellowship with men; and we see the inviolableness
of both asserted in the death of Jesus. Nothing else in the world
demonstrates how real is God's love to the sinful, and how real the sin
of the world is to God. And the love which comes to us through such an
expression, bearing sin in all its reality, yet loving us through and
beyond it, is the only love which at once forgives and regenerates the
soul.

It becomes credible also that there is a _human necessity_ for the
Atonement: in other words, that apart from it the conditions of being
forgiven could no more be fulfilled by man than forgiveness could be
bestowed by God.

There are different tendencies in the modern mind with regard to this
point. On the one hand, there are those who frankly admit the truth
here asserted. Yes, they say, the Atonement is necessary for us. If
we are to be saved from our sins, if our hearts are to be touched and
won by the love of God, if we are to be emancipated from distrust and
reconciled to the Father whose love we have injured, there must be a
demonstration of that love so wonderful and overpowering that all
pride, alienation and fear shall be overcome by it; and this is what we
have in the death of Christ. It is a demonstration of love powerful
enough to evoke penitence and faith in man, and it is through penitence
and f