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The Fundamentals ed against sin, and is satisfied when sin is made to cease.” “I f grace brings an end of sinning, the end sought by law has been attained. It can not be, therefore, that in the sight of God there is any need of satisfying law before grace can save sin ners.” These words are like the voice of “a very lovely song” ; but many a pardoned soul uttered a more troubled strain. A man may cease to sin without reversing the injury he has wrought. In the course of his business, let us suppose, he has defrauded widows and orphans, and they are now dead. Or, in his social life, he has led the young into unbelief and vice, and they now laugh at his efforts to undo the mischief, or have gone into eternity unsaved. In a sense his sinning has come to an end, yet its baneful effects are in full career. His conscience tells him he is responsible not only for the commis sion of his sins, but for the ruin wrought by his sins. In other words, he is responsible for the entire train of evils which he has put into operation. The depths of his responsibility are far too profound for such light plummets to sound. These are some of the reasons which lead the Christian world as a whole to reject “the moral-influence theory” o f the atonement as inadequate. CHRIST TH E SIN-BEARER I shall not attempt to set forth any substitutionary theory o f the atonement. It is not absolutely necessary that we have a theory. It may be enough for us to hold the doctrine without a theory. The writers of the New Testament did this. The earliest fathers of the Church did it. The world has been pro foundly influenced by the preaching of the doctrine before the leaders of the Church began to construct a theory. What was done in the first century may be done in the twentieth. We may proclaim Christ as the Sin-bearer and win multitudes to Him without a theory. Men will welcome the fact, as the famishing welcome water, without asking about its chemical composition.
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