Moreover, the Unitarians are fully justified in saying that the New Testament nowhere asserts that the primary and immediate influence of the death of Jesus is upon the divine attributes. In every instance Christ is said to reconcile us to God, never to reconcile God to us. (See Rom. 5:10, 11; 11:15. 2 Cor. 5:18, 19, 20. Eph. 2:13, 16. Coloss. 1:20, 21. 1 Peter 3:18.) It is we “who were afar off, and have been made nigh, by the blood of Christ.” It is _we_, “who, when we were enemies, were reconciled to God by the death of his Son;” not God, who was afar off, who has been brought nigh to us; not God, who has been reconciled to us. It is “_we_, who have received the atonement.” Christ has suffered for sins, “to bring _us_ to God,” not to bring God to us. All this is plain, positive, and unequivocal. And yet, notwithstanding that the Old and New Testaments declare the forgiveness of sin to the penitent, we nevertheless find a difficulty in believing it. It seems as if God _ought_ not to forgive us our sins on so simple a condition. And it is on this very feeling that the whole Orthodox theory of the atonement rests. The explanation of this is, that man is obliged to understand God by himself. Since man was made in the image of God, he can know God only by understanding the moral and spiritual laws of his own soul. Now, in himself, he finds the constant antagonism of truth and love, justice and mercy, conscience and desire. From this essential original antagonism of truth and love spring all the moral conflicts which make cases of conscience. Whenever we see before us a divided duty, on being analyzed, it resolves itself into this conflict between truth and love. We naturally, and almost necessarily, transfer this same conflict to the mind of God. Whenever we wish to forgive an offender, but feel as if we ought not to do so, we teach ourselves to regard God as feeling the same difficulty. Conscience tells us that we are not fit to be forgiven, that it would be wrong for God to forgive us. Orthodoxy plants itself on this instinct, and elaborates its various theories, which men accept for a time as a sufficient explanation of their difficulty, and then reject when their inconsistencies appear. The deep-lying difficulty is the sense of our want of holiness, and the instinctive feeling of the eternal mutual repulsion of good and evil. Since God is good, and we are evil, how can he forgive us? If forgiveness merely meant the remitting of penalty, it might be done after sufficient expiation. If forgiveness meant laying aside of anger, we can well believe that God cannot retain wrath against his children. But forgiveness means communion, the mutual love of father and child, the being always in the presence of God. And for this, even after we have repented, and are endeavoring to do right, we do not feel ourselves qualified.