2. _The Death of Christ_.--Although already implied in the life, the atonement culminates in the death of Christ. Even by being made in the likeness of men Jesus did not escape from, but willingly took up, the burdens of humanity and bore them as the Son of Man. But His passion upon the cross, as the supreme instance of suffering borne for others, at once illuminated and completed all that He suffered and achieved as man's representative. It is this aspect of Christ's redemptive work upon which St. Paul delights to dwell. And though naturally not so prominent in our Lord's own teaching, yet even there the significance of the Redeemer's death is foreshadowed, and in more than one passage explicitly stated.[2] Here we are in the region of dogmatics, and we are not called upon to formulate a doctrine of the atonement. All that we have to do with is the ethical fact that between man and the new life there lies the actuality of sin, the real source of man's failure to achieve righteousness, and the stumbling-block which must be removed before reconciliation with God the Father can be effected. The act, at once divine and human, which alone meets the case is represented in Scripture as the Sacrifice of Christ. In reference to the efficacy of the sacrifice upon the cross Bishop Butler says: 'How and in what particular way it had this efficacy, there are not wanting persons who have endeavoured to explain; but I do not find that the Scripture has explained it.'[3] Though, indeed, the fact is independent of any theory, the truth for which the cross stands must be brought by us into some kind of intelligible relation with our view of the world, otherwise it is a piece of magic lying outside of our experience, and {167} having no ethical value for life. At the same time no doctrine has suffered more from shallow theorisings, and particularly by the employment of mechanical, legal, and commercial analogies, than the doctrine of the atonement. The very essence of the religious life is incompatible with the idea of an external transference of goodness from one being to another. Man can be reconciled to God only by an absolute surrender of himself to God. To assimilate this spiritual act to a commercial or legal transaction is to destroy the very idea of the moral life. No explanation, however, can be considered satisfactory which does not safeguard two ideas of a deeply ethical nature--the voluntariness and the vicariousness of Christ's sacrifice. We must be careful to do justice, on the one hand, to the eternal relations in which Christ stands to God; and on the other, to the intimate association with man into which Jesus has entered. It is the task of theology to bring together the various passages of Scripture, and exhibit their systematic connection and relative value for a doctrine of soteriology. For Ethics the one significant fact to be recognised is that in a human life was fulfilled perfect obedience, even as far as