try to grasp the very
truth regarding the death of Christ. The Apostles with one voice affirm
that Christ's death was a propitiation for the sins of the world: that
He died _for_ us; that He suffered not only for His contemporaries, but
for all men; that He was the Lamb of God, the innocent Victim, whose
blood cleansed from sin. They affirm, in short, that in Christ's death
we are brought face to face, not with a symbolic sacrifice, but with
that act which really takes away sin.

If we read the narrative given us in the Gospels of the death of Christ,
and the circumstances that led to it, we see that the sacrificial idea
is not kept in the foreground. The cause of His death, as explained in
the Gospels, was His persistent claim to be the Messiah sent by God to
found a spiritual kingdom. He steadily opposed the expectations and
plans of those in authority until they became so exasperated that they
resolved to compass His death. The real and actual cause of His death
was His fidelity to the purpose for which He had been sent into the
world. He might have retired and lived a quiet life in Galilee or beyond
Palestine altogether; but He could not do so, because He could not
abandon the work of His life, which was to proclaim the truth about God
and God's kingdom. Many a man has felt equally constrained to proclaim
the truth in the face of opposition; and many a man has, like Jesus,
incurred death thereby. That which makes the death of Jesus exceptional
in this aspect of it is, that the truth He proclaimed was what may be
called _the_ truth, the essential truth for men to know--the truth that
God is the Father, and that there is life in Him for all who will come
to Him. This was the kingdom of God among men--- He proclaimed a kingdom
based only on love, on spiritual union between God and man; a kingdom
not of this world, and that came not with observation; a kingdom within
men, real, abiding, universal. It was because He proclaimed this
kingdom, exploding the cherished expectations and merely national hopes
of the Jews, that the authorities put Him to death.

So much is obvious on the very face of the narrative. No one can read
the life of Christ without perceiving this at least--that He was put to
death because He persisted in proclaiming truths essential to the
happiness and salvation of men. By submitting to death for the sake of
these truths He made it for ever clear that they are of vital
consequence. Before Pilate He