Transcribed from the 1908 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org GLORIA CRUCIS ADDRESSES DELIVERED IN LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL HOLY WEEK AND GOOD FRIDAY, 1907 BY THE REV. J. H. BEIBITZ, M.A. VICE-PRINCIPAL OF THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE, LICHFIELD LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 1908 _All rights reserved_ MATRI INTRODUCTION These addresses, delivered in Lichfield Cathedral {0} in Holy Week, 1907, are published at the request of some who heard them. It has only been possible to endeavour to reproduce them in substance. The writer desires to express his obligations to various works from which he has derived much assistance, such as, above all, Du Bose's _Gospel in the Gospels_, Askwith's _Conception of Christian Holiness_, Tennant's _Origin of Sin_, and Jevons' _Introduction to the History of Religion_. To the first and the last of these he is especially indebted in regard to the view here taken of the Atonement. It seems to him that no view of that great and central truth can possibly be true, which (i) represents it as the result of a transaction between the Father and the Son, which is ditheism pure and simple; or which (ii) regards it as intended to relieve us of the penalty of our sins, instead of having as its one motive, meaning, and purpose the "cure of sinning." So far as we can see, the results of sin, seen and unseen, in this world and beyond it, must follow naturally and necessarily from that constitution of the universe (including human nature) which is the expression of the Divine Mind. If this is true, and if that Mind is the Mind of Him Who is Love, then all punishment must be remedial, must have, for its object and intention at least, the conversion of the sinner. And, therefore, the desire to escape from punishment, if natural and instinctive, is also non-moral, for it is the desire to shirk God's remedy for sin, and doomed never to realise its hope, for it is the desire to reverse the laws of that Infinite Holiness and Love which governs the world. Yet this must be understood with one all-important reservation. For the worst punishment of sin, is sin itself, the alienation of the soul from God, with its consequent weakening of the will, dulling of the reason, and corrupting of the affections. And it was from this punishment, from this "hardest hell," which is sin, or the character spoiled and ruined by sin, that Christ died to deliver us. It follows that it is high time to dismiss all those theories of the Atonement which ultimately trace their origin to the enduring influence of Roman law. There is no remission of penalty offered to us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The offer which is there held out to us, is that which answers to our deepest need, to the inmost longings of the human soul, "the remission of our _sins_."