70 The Fundamentals of the atonement, it is incapable of wielding any profound moral influence. The man who dies to rescue one whom he loves from death is remembered with tears of reverence and gratitude; the man who puts himself to death to show that he loves is remembered with horror. b. Not Scriptural. Still further, the chief failure of those who advance this view is in the sphere of exegesis. The Bible is so full of a substitutionary atonement that the reader comes upon it every where. The texts which teach it are not rare and isolated ex pressions; they assemble in multitudes; they rush in troops; they occupy every hill and every valley. They occasion the greatest embarrassment to those who deny that the relation of God to the world is determined by the cross, and various methods are employed by various writers to reduce their num ber and their force. They are most abundant in the epistles of the Apostle Paul, and some depreciate his authority as a teacher of Christianity. The doctrine is implied in the words which our Lord uttered at the last supper, and some attack these as not genuine. Christ is repeatedly declared to be a propitiation. “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, by His blood” (Rom. 3 :25). “He is the propi tiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2). “God sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10). “Wherefore it behooved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 3:17). Many special pleas are entered against the plain meaning of these declarations. It does not seem difficult to understand them. A propitiation must be an influence which renders someone propitious, and the person rendered propitious by it must be the person who was offended. Yet some do not hesitate to affirm that these texts regard man as the only being propitiated by the cross. Special tortures are
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