nant of grace," love's devotion to the perfect, can fail as a substitute for sin's result only in the case of the sinner who ultimately ignores it, tramples upon it as though it were "an unholy thing."

Thus the agonizing devotement to the perfect which maintains the original unity of action and ideal, in all the evolution of conditions to a personal universe, reconciles the amplest development of benevolence with the imperative behests of holiness, and bounds the vast sea of evil with a "ministry of reconciliation." The evolution of love discloses :

1. An absolute authority, the sacred imperative of the perfect, based on the perfect nature of God.

2. The propitiation of that authority, by devotement to the perfect in all love's action which conditions finite being.

3. The agony of love, in its consciousness of infinite offense, by reason of its submission to the free and full demonstration of evil, and of infinite solicitude for the sinning.

4. Sacrifice, in undergoing this submission and agony undeserved.

5. Vicariousness, in that its agony displaces disaster which would justly result to sinners by their own action.

Thus, stripped of fictitious statements, symbolic forms, and modes of revealment, love's devotement to the perfect, agonizing because conditioned by evil, is an atonement for the existence of evil, in that it maintains the holy as the changeless and universal law of intentions, and is a ransom for sinners, in that it affords conditions upon which they find recovery, and the imperfect develop perfection, by observing this law. It is the atoning fact.

CHAPTER V

THE REVELATION OF THE ATONING FACT

The great problem is to restore to the human mind something of the ideal.-Victor Hugo.

THE revelation of atonement is our next movement in outlining the evolution of love. An exhaustive view of this revelation would constitute a complete Christology. But it is sufficient to the present purpose to briefly indicate two things, namely:

1. The occasion for a revelation of atonement.

2. The fact of such revelation in Jesus Christ.

The occasion, or need, for a revealment of atoning fact must be regarded as being a state of human conditions which demands a supernatural intervention by divine love, in order to make good to man those conditions which did originally and naturally afford the basis of human faith and love. The main facts naturally constituting those conditions to faith and love are these: being, dependence, self-love, reason, conscience, and selfdetermining power, or will. We have seen in a former chapter that men may debase their natural conditions by abuses. This may be done to an extent that will obscure, perhaps obliterate, the facts upon which human faith can arise. Abuses willfully and wickedly practiced by one person may corrupt the conditions of a family or neighborhood. The sins of a generation become the debasing tendencies of succeeding generations who, though less guilty, may become more gross, materialistic, and brutal. Rejection of the ideal and devotion to the actual self is a brutelike life; and the tendency of it is to render man

unsusceptible to spiritual motives. It increases his desire for material good and pleasure, and impairs his faith in spiritual interests. Spiritual development depends upon faith in the unseen, the ideal perfections; and, hence, is impracticable when the implied facts in which faith confides are obscured by that abuse of perceived facts which makes them objects of covetousness and brutality. Thus, eventually, the authority, the need, and the means of an ideal life become obscured from those who, under better conditions, would sincerely follow and appropriate them. Persons and communities who by reason of superior position and power can elevate or depress their fellow men place in jeopardy, by selfish abuses, the ultimate welfare of these fellow beings. Keeping the "key of knowledge," they refuse to enter and prevent those who would. Thus it is possible to debase the conditions of finite life until they are not only abnormal, but wholly preternatural. In this situation what course must the evolution of divine love be thought to take? Love, must, as a matter of justice, do one of two things, either permit these debased conditions which human wickedness and weakness have established, to work the immediate destruction of mankind, or, in mercy, reassert and maintain the conditions to human perfection by supernatural intervention. The former would be to surrender the object of the universe; the latter would be to uphold it by a farther evolution of love. It is not, indeed, a question of what love can do, but what love as an objective determination must and will do. When human perversity misappropriates the benevolence of love by making it the opportunity for selfishness, and prosperous selfishness encourages the conviction that the creation is favorable, or at least indifferent, to it, or when resulting adversity begets despair, what

himself by creating them, as it is not requisite to the perfection of independent being, but is chosen in perfect freedom. (2) Having chosen to create, he imposes upon himself the obligation to be just, only. He is under no obligation to secure to created beings a larger degree of good than that which will compensate them for such inconvenience or ill as may be naturally incident to their type of being. (3) But having chosen, from motives of love, to create and condition a world which, in order to achieve the greatest possible good to his creatures, imposes upon him the agony of atonement, that choice is a choice of agony. Choosing agony as the path to the limitless good of others, others whose existence contributes nothing to his own perfection, is the unspeakable sacrifice of love.

The evolution of love in the personal universe is but a process of positing conditions. Upon these conditions dependent persons rise into being and determine their destiny. Love, in its evolution, constantly holds out the conditions to greatest good to all, and persistently widens and deepens them that it may afford conditions to the ultimate perfection of the most lowly and vile. Persistently does it support the purest and most aspiring with conditions to yet higher attainment. In all this, love places the determination of its evolution in the hands of the creatures whom it conditions. If they so determine the evolution will be rapid and upward; if they determine otherwise it will be slow and degrading, taking wide, tortuous, and agonizing detour to afford conditions by which to possess a promised land which might have been reached by a short and direct route. To voluntarily place the determinations for which one is ultimately responsible in the hands of others is the very essence of sacrifice.

love's evolution, which posits gracious conditions for their holiness and good, is subjected to the wrong and abuse to which it is perverted by a race of sinners; and this must be until the self-correction and self-defeat of sin constrain them to acknowledge its perfect excellence. When love's objective action submits to be conditioned by every error and sin of each member of a world of sinners, and its grand aim is, without right or reason, deferred, baffled, and antagonized by their freedom, which love sacredly respects and upholds, its entire evolution is an unspeakable sacrifice. When each error is a check, and each sin a grief, to love's devotement to the perfection and highest good of all, the determination of that perfection and good is sustained in agony; and that agony is an agony of sacrifice.

That all this is involved in the original project of a universe does not change the sacrificial character of love's evolution, but enhances the benevolent motive by so much as this sacrifice was known to be inevitable to carry out that motive. Through this cycle of sin, shame, insult, and perversion love proves a ready and able interaction with the recalcitrant sinner, nation, world-to forgive, cleanse, and reform whenever either or all so determine. Its flame burns only to warm, cheer, and mature them; though they, by their free but false adjustment to it, make it a torture. Yet love endures this vast sacrifice in order that when they relent it may be able to recover and save them. Is love benevolent, its beneficence is made the instrument of malice by sinners. Is love gracious, that graciousness is made the occasion for vast schemes of injustice. Is love holy, that holiness is made the pretext for oppression. Is love true, that truth is clipped and carved into lies. Is love beautiful, that beauty is