owever humble, to help the mind in which we all live and move
to reach a sympathetic comprehension of the central truth in the
Christian religion. The purpose of the writer is evangelic, whatever
may be said of his method; it is to commend the Atonement to the human
mind, as that mind has been determined by the influences and
experiences of modern times, and to win the mind for the truth of the
Atonement.

With the exception of a few paragraphs, these pages were delivered as
lectures to a summer school of Theology which met in Aberdeen, in June
of this year. The school was organised by a committee of the
Association of Former Students of the United Free Church College,
Glasgow; and the writer, as a member and former President of the
Association, desires to take the liberty of inscribing his work to his
fellow-students.

GLASGOW, _September_ 1903.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY DEFINITION OF THE SUBJECT

CHAPTER II

SIN AND THE DIVINE REACTION AGAINST IT

CHAPTER III

CHRIST AND MAN IN THE ATONEMENT

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY DEFINITION OF THE SUBJECT

It will be admitted by most Christians that if the Atonement, quite
apart from precise definitions of it, is anything to the mind, it is
everything. It is the most profound of all truths, and the most
recreative. It determines more than anything else our conceptions of
God, of man, of history, and even of nature; it determines them, for we
must bring them all in some way into accord with it. It is the
inspiration of all thought, the impulse and the law of all action, the
key, in the last resort, to all suffering. Whether we call it a fact
or a truth, a power or a doctrine, it is that in which the
_differentia_ of Christianity, its peculiar and exclusive character, is
specifically shown; it is the focus of revelation, the point at which
we see deepest into the truth of God, and come most completely under
its power. For those who recognise it at all it is Christianity in
brief; it concentrates in itself, as in a germ of infinite potency, all
that the wisdom, power and love of God mean in relation to sinful men.

Accordingly, when we speak of the Atonement and the modern mind, we are
really speaking of the modern mind and the Christian religion. The
relation between these two magnitudes may vary. The modern mind is no
more than a modification of the human mind as it exists in all ages,
and the relation of the modern mind to the