The Atonement 77 fense of the proposition, that God has always justified men by grace through faith, and that there has never been any other way of salvation. The entire administration of God in human history is set forth, in the light of “the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world,” as one of i n f i n i t e kindness and leniency, notwithstanding those severities which have expressed His abhorrence of sin. But if the self-sacrifice of Christ has made a difference in the practical attitude of God toward the world, it has also made a difference in His feeling toward the world. God is one. He is not at war with Himself. He is not a hypocrite. He has not one course of action and a different course o f feeling. I f He has dealt patiently and graciously with our sinning race it is because He has felt patient and gracious, and the work of His Son, by means of which His administration has been ren dered patient and gracious, has rendered His feeling patient and gracious. It is to this different administration and to its basis in a different feeling that the Scriptures refer when they present Christ to us as “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world.”
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