Atonement is one phase--it
may be a specially interesting or a specially well-defined phase--of
the perennial relation of the mind of man to the truth of God. There
is always an affinity between the two, for God made man in His own
image, and the mind can only rest in truth; but there is always at the
same time an antipathy, for man is somehow estranged from God, and
resents Divine intrusion into his life. This is the situation at all
times, and therefore in modern times; we only need to remark that when
the Atonement is in question, the situation, so to speak, becomes
acute. All the elements in it define themselves more sharply. If
there is sympathy between the mind and the truth, it is a profound
sympathy, which will carry the mind far; if there are lines of
approach, through which the truth can find access to the mind, they are
lines laid deep in the nature of things and of men, and the access
which the truth finds by them is one from which it will not easily be
dislodged. On the other hand, if it is antagonism which is roused in
the mind by the Atonement, it is an antagonism which feels that
everything is at stake. The Atonement is a reality of such a sort that
it can make no compromise. The man who fights it knows that he is
fighting for his life, and puts all his strength into the battle. To
surrender is literally to give up himself, to cease to be the man he
is, and to become another man. For the modern mind, therefore, as for
the ancient, the attraction and the repulsion of Christianity are
concentrated at the same point; the cross of Christ is man's only
glory, or it is his final stumbling-block.

What I wish to do in these papers is so to present the facts as to
mediate, if possible, between the mind of our time and the
Atonement--so to exhibit the specific truth of Christianity as to bring
out its affinity for what is deepest in the nature of man and in human
experience--so to appreciate the modern mind itself, and the influences
which have given it its constitution and temper, as to discredit what
is false in it, and enlist on the side of the Atonement that which is
profound and true. And if any one is disposed to marvel at the
ambition or the conceit of such a programme, I would ask him to
consider if it is not the programme prescribed to every Christian, or
at least to every Christian minister, who would do the work of an
evangelist. To commend the eternal truth of God, as it is finally
reveale