Of the published works of Mr. Ballou, none have evinced more mental clearness and vigor than his volume on "Atonement," issued in 1805.[37] Its plainness and adaptedness to the common reader, its sharp logic, and above all its apt and convincing appeals to the Scriptures, render it a timely helper everywhere and always, in the discussion of the theologies which have assumed the Christian name, and which are now being so closely scrutinized. Every reader and student of theology understands something of the old theory of Atonement so long dominant in the Christian Church, so exceedingly perplexing to honest and independent inquirers, so hard to be vindicated by its ablest advocates, and so surely sowing the seeds of scepticism and infidelity in many minds. Volume after volume has appeared in defence and attempted illustration of it. Sin an infinite evil, being a violation of infinite law, and therefore the law requiring an infinite sacrifice, short of which no atonement could be made; the transgression of Adam bringing the whole human race into the same situation of sin and misery, and subjecting them all to the infinite penalty of an infinite law, which they had violated in their parent before they individually existed. In view of this penalty, which was endless suffering, God himself, to placate his own wrath against the delinquents, assumed a body of flesh and blood, and suffered the penalty of the law by death,--not that God himself actually died, but the human body in which he came,--this is deemed the infinite sacrifice by which it is possible for a part of mankind to be saved. "Divines of the greatest ability," writes Mr. Ballou, "and of the first rank among the _literati_, have drained the last faculty of invention in plodding through the dark region of metaphysics to bring up a Samuel to explain the solecism of _satisfying an infinite dissatisfaction_." Now let us note how the author of "Atonement" quietly sets forth this absurdity. It is all comprehended in a single page of the volume:-- "We will state it as it is often stated by those who believe it, which is by the likeness of debt and credit. The sinner owed a debt to Divine Justice, which he was unable to discharge; the Divine Being cannot, consistently with his honor, dispense with the pay, but says, 'I must have what is my just due;' but as the debtor has not ability to pay the smallest fraction, Divine Wisdom lays a deep, concerted, mysterious plan for the debt to be discharged. And how was it? Why, for God to pay it himself!