This is the real difficulty. Christ did not die to pay a debt to God, or to appease his wrath, but “to bring us to God,” and to put the Spirit into our heart by which we can say, “Abba, Father!” The atonement is made to the divine justice—but not to distributive justice, which rewards and punishes, but to divine justice in its highest form, as holiness. And this consists in making us fit to appear before God, notwithstanding our sinfulness, because we have received a principle of holiness which will ultimately cast out all our sin. When we have faith in Christ, we have Christ formed within us, the hope of glory. God, looking on us, sees us not as we are now, but as we shall be when we are changed into that same image from glory to greater glory. This suggests the theory which may replace the rest, and reconcile all those who believe in Christ as the Saviour and Redeemer of men. Christ saves us by pouring into us his own life, which is love. When Christian love is formed within us, it has killed the roots of sin in the soul, and fitted us to be forgiven, and to enter the presence of God. In conclusion, we may say that Orthodoxy is right in maintaining that Jesus has by his sufferings and death brought forgiveness to mankind—not by propitiating God or appeasing his anger, not by paying our debt or removing a difficulty in the divine mind, but by helping us to see that the love of God is able to lift us out of our sin, and present us spotless in the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. The way in which his death produces this result is the sympathy with human sinfulness and sorrow, which finds in it its highest expression. Those whom men cannot forgive, and who cannot forgive themselves, see that God, speaking through the sufferings of Jesus, is able to forgive them. So the love of God brings them to repentance, and those who were afar off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. CHAPTER XI. CALLING, ELECTION, AND REPROBATION. § 1. Orthodox Doctrine. The Assembly’s Catechism, with its usual frankness, states this doctrine thus:—(chap. 3). I. “God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever cometh to pass, yet so that neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. II. “Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions. III. “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.