He will no longer be afraid of trusting the human spirit to recognise and respond to truth from whatsoever source it may come, for he will know that that spirit is one with the universal Spirit of all Truth, and needs not to look beyond itself for anything stronger or more divine. He will know that the Spirit of Truth in himself is the Spirit of Truth in all men, and that therefore in the end all men must know, and be, and do the Truth. +The New Testament and the Atonement.+--Now let us apply this principle to the New Testament writings about the redeeming work of Jesus. The same principle, of course, would apply to anything that the New Testament has to say about the gospel of Jesus, but perhaps the failure to recognise it has done more mischief in connection with the doctrine of Atonement than in anything else. At present Paul's opinion on this great subject is by many people supposed to be decisive: Paul says this, and Paul says that, and when Paul has spoken, there is no more to be said. But why should it be so? Paul's opinion is simply Paul's opinion, and not necessarily a complete and adequate statement of truth. It is entitled to be considered weighty because it is the utterance of a great man, and a great seer of truth, as well as being the earliest writing on the subject which we possess. Any man of the moral and intellectual eminence of Paul is entitled to reverence when he speaks, whether his views are in the Bible or not. It is one of the ironies of history that the words of this Paul who strove so hard against literalism and legalism in his day have since come to be regarded as a sort of fixed and final authority for Christian thought. He would be the first to denounce it. To him the Spirit of Christ operating within the individual soul was the true guide in matters of faith. He even made a point of the fact that in thinking out the truth about Jesus and His gospel he had "conferred not with flesh and blood." +Inconsistency of New Testament writers with one another.+--Again, it is somehow taken for granted that Paul and all the other New Testament writers agree together in their theology of the Atonement. That is quite a mistake, and the curious thing is that people should have been so slow in finding it out. It may be instructive to some to give a brief survey of the main points in Paul's theory of the Atonement, and compare them with some of the others.