hed the natural order also as part of the same
whole with it. In some profound way the two are one. We distinguish in
man, legitimately enough, between the spiritual and the physical; but man
is one, and the universe in which he lives is one, and in man's relation
to God the distinction of physical and spiritual must ultimately
disappear. The sin which introduces disorder into man's relations to God
produces reactions affecting man as a whole--not reactions that, as we
sometimes say, are purely spiritual, but reactions as broad as man's
being and as the whole divinely constituted environment in which it
lives. I am well aware of the difficulty of giving expression to this
truth, and of the hopelessness of trying to give expression to it by
means of those very distinctions which it is its nature to transcend.
The distinctions are easy and obvious; what we have to learn is that they
are not final. It seems so conclusive to say, as some one has done in
criticising the idea of atonement, that spiritual transgressing brings
spiritual penalty, and physical brings physical; it seems so conclusive,
and it is in truth so completely beside the mark. We cannot divide
either man or the universe in this fashion into two parts which move on
different planes and have no vital relations; we cannot, to apply this
truth to the subject before us, limit the divine reaction against sin, or
the experiences through which, in any case whatever, sin is brought home
to man as what it is, to the purely spiritual sphere. Every sin is a sin
of the indivisible human being, and the divine reaction against it
expresses itself to conscience through the indivisible frame of that
world, at once natural and spiritual, in which man lives. We cannot
distribute evils into the two classes of physical and moral, and
subsequently investigate the relation between them: if we could, it would
be of no service here. What we have to understand is that when a man
sins he does something in which his whole being participates, and that
the reaction of God against his sin is a reaction in which he is
conscious, or might be conscious, that the whole system of things is in
arms against him.

There are those, no doubt, to whom this will seem fantastic, but it is a
truth, I am convinced, which is presupposed in the Christian doctrine of
Atonement, as the mediation of forgiveness through the suffering and
death of Christ: and it is a truth also, if I am not much mista