The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-01-16

sent process perpetually operative m the essential nature of God.
 I believe that this is the truest and highest conception that our mind can form of the holy mystery Of Christs cross and passion" We can best re- gard His atoning death as the trans aetional revelation" of laws of life and being which are supreme and eternal in God. Wherever sin is. God is atoping for 1t by bearing it on His own compass sionate heart in the fathomless mystery of divine sympathy. l believe that through all the ages, since sin darkened and cursed human life, Christ bore the cross of sacrifice in His heart, and that 1 when at length He carried the symbol of suffering love to the brow of Calvary and hung in agony upon it, He was but | experiencing in His human life the pain and shame with which sin had always pierced His spirit. If by an unWarrant- | ed application of the maxim that God cannot suffer" we are to deny that the divine love can be grieved and wounded by human sin, and that it takes upon itself by sympathy the woes and bur dens of it's object, we must certainly conclude that human love furnishes no analogy to the love of God and that this love is absolutely different in kind from any love that the human heart has ever felt.
 We may we'll confess that we cannot penetrate the mystery of atonement which opens vistas into the infinite and eternal which reach far beyond our sight But 1t is vain for the mind to | take refuge In the inconceivable. God must remain to us mystery but He must not be a mystery which darkens and confuses us--a mystery which par aIyzes thought and baf11es all interpre- l tation by the human heart. Let us 1 think of God in accordance with what we feel to be highest and holest in man; let us, believing that man is made | in Gods image, seek to interpret God and his revelation in Christ in the light | of what seems "likest God" in the hu- man heart. Our efforts will be inade- quate, but they are the best that we can make. If love in man and in God are not fundamentally the same, then God is not merely a mystery, but an anigma | mocking human thought. My whole | nature rejects such a conception. The
 
 know something through it's own best feelings and through it's sense of kin ships to Him.
 The idea of atonement which seems to be suggested by our conception of the Larger Christ" will be no novelty to those who are familiar with theology Traces of this idea will be found here and there in theological thought and a modern divine of great profundity and learning, pr. Roswell D. Hitchcock has strikingly presented it in a pub lished sermon entitled "Eternal Atone ment." He says in the sufferings of Christ, which eliminated in His death, "eternal reality became temporal fact. This view is based on the general prin- ciple that "all divine realities are eter- nal" Dr. Hitchcock says that God feels rebellion and sin and has always felt it, and that His agony over sin is eternal" This agony of God over hu- man sin" he continues, Ifs the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. God Himself, atones to Himself atones; and so atonement is both eternal and divine" Why may we not, let me add, best conceive of the intercession of Christ and of the spirit representing to us an expect of this perpetually active atoning love of God?
 I can here do scarcely more than suggest mode of viewing this subject which the worldwide significance of Christ seems to require. I have only time briefly to mention in closing a third inference from the idea which defined at the outset.
 It unifies all forms of goodness among men by tracing them to a common source If without Christ nothing was made that has been made, is it not al- together probable that He is everywhere active in His world? Why should we not magnify His spirited significance by making Him the source of all good in men, since He is the true light which lighteth every man? Religion has talk en many forms in the world but wher- ever there is a true spirit of worship | and service, there we may affirm the presence of Christ even though it be | unrecognlzed If Christianity is, by it's very nature. the universal religion, l then must all real religion be-so far as it goes-C -Christian-and all goodness | all love, kindness and helpfulness- must be Christian, whether called so | or not, since lnG CuTlSlldH feuSlOn IS | the life of God. All goodness must be | essentially one. If this world was made, as Paul said, through Christ and | for Christ, and if Christ is, and always | has been, in the world, as John implies | then let us speak no more of mere nat uraP' goodness and "unaided" reason | but rather recognize our Lord in the | true dignity and glory of His world | wide significance and activity and be- | lieve without hesitation that wherever | men in sincere penitence and reverence l stretch out their hands to heaven, He | sees the germs of that faith" as &C., | ceptanee which is the condition of en- | trance to the kingdom of His grace
 May we not therefore, without pre- sumption make our own the hope of | Tennyson which he voiced in the open | ing lines of "In Memoriam":
 "Strong Son of God, immortal love- Whom we, that have not seen Thy face, By faith, and faith alone embrace Believing where we cannot prove; Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou modest man: he knows not why.