Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. THE ATONEMENT. The doctrine of Atonement was later in its historical development than the doctrine of Incarnation. Not until council after council had adopted exact articles concerning the Person of Christ was there any considerable discussion concerning the Work of Christ. The fact of atonement through the death of the Redeemer was accepted from the first with penitence and trust, but scarcely any attempt was made to discover the reasons which made it necessary and right that Christ should be offered for the sins of the world. Even in the eleventh century the theory was somewhat prevalent that Christ's death was a ransom paid to the devil. Why the development of this doctrine should have begun so late we need not now take time to inquire. It suggests the fact that there has never at any time been such agreement concerning the philosophy of atonement as has been secured concerning the person of our Lord. The church even now waits for a doctrinal statement which shall be comprehensive, satisfactory, and, at the same time, free from ethical objections and from inconsistencies. It is the object of the present papersimply to indicate the lines along which intelligent Christian thought is moving, and to recognize some of the conclusions which are gaining acceptance in respect to the revelation of God's love in the sacrifice of Christ. It will be left to the reader to note for himself the modification, or even disappearance, of crude theories through which, at one time or another, atonement has been regarded. The starting-point from which inquiry has usually set forth has been the sin of man. Man sinned, and the race became corrupted. Therefore, Jesus was born, suffered, and died, in order that man might be saved from sin. But this view is too narrow. It puts part of the t...