These quotations seem sufficient to prove that the Christians of the present day are worthy followers of the elder believers. The theologians first quoted are indeed coarser in their expressions, and are less afraid of speaking out exactly what they believe, but there is no real difference of creed between the awful doctrine of Flavel and the polished dogma of Canon Liddon. The older and the modern Christians alike believe in the bitter wrath of God against "the whole human race." Both alike regard the Atonement as so much pain tendered by Jesus to the Almighty Father in payment of a debt of pain owed to God by humanity. They alike represent God as only to be pacified by the sight of suffering. Man has insulted and injured God, and God must be revenged by inflicting suffering on the sinner in return. The "hatred and contempt" God launched at Jesus were due to the fact that Jesus was the sinner's substitute, and are therefore the feelings which animate the Divine heart towards the sinner himself. God hates and despises the world. He would have "consumed it in a moment" in the fire of his burning wrath, had not Jesus, "his chosen, stood before him in the gap to turn away his wrathful indignation." Now, how far is all this consistent with justice? Is the wrath of God against humanity justified by the circumstances of the case, so that we may be obliged to own that some sacrifice was due from sinful man to his Creator, to propitiate a justly incensed and holy God? I trow not. On this first count, the Atonement is a fearful injustice. For God has allowed men to be brought into the world with sinful inclinations, and to be surrounded with many temptations and much evil. He has made man imperfect, and the child is born into the world with an imperfect nature. It is radically unjust, then, that God should curse the work of His hands for being what He made them, and condemn them to endless misery for failing to do the impossible. Allowing that Christians are right in believing that Adam was sinless when he came from his Maker's hands, these remarks apply to every other living soul since born into the world; the Genesis myth will not extricate Christians from the difficulty. Christians are quite right and are justified by facts when they say that man is born into the world frail, imperfect, prone to sin and error; but who, we ask them, made men so? Does not their own Bible tell them that the "potter hath power over the clay," and, further, that "we are the clay and thou art the potter?" To curse men for being men, _i.e._, imperfect moral beings, is the height of cruelty and injustice; to condemn the morally weak to hell for sin, _i.e._, for failing in moral strength, is about as fair as sentencing a sick man to death because he cannot stand upright. Christians try and avoid the force of this by saying that men should rely on God's grace to uphold them, but they fail to see that this _very want of reliance_ is part of man's natural weakness.