+The Johannine theory.+--There is a certain similarity between the view of Atonement set forth in the epistle to the Hebrews and that contained in the Johannine writings. It is easy to understand why this is so when we recognise that both are dominated by Alexandrian modes of thinking. These Johannine writings--the fourth gospel, the three epistles ascribed to St. John, and the book of Revelation--are all that have come down to us of what was at one time, no doubt, a considerable literature. How much the apostle John had to do with it cannot be determined with any certainty, but it is clear enough that these writings are not all from one hand, and that they are much later than the work of St. Paul. The all-important conception in the Johannine writings is that salvation is secured by the union of the individual soul with the eternal Christ, or Logos, or Divine Man of pre-Christian thought and experience. Here again we have a perfectly true and necessary idea, an idea implied in all spiritual experience worthy of the name; but as the root factor in a presentation of the doctrine of Atonement, it differs widely from Paul's way of putting things. When the Johannine writers speak of the blood of Christ, they mean the outpoured, forthgiven life of the eternal Son of God, the ideal humanity, perfectly and centrally expressed in Jesus of Nazareth. There is not from beginning to end a hint or a suggestion in these writings that a sinless being was tortured in order to appease the wrath of God against guilty ones, or that the penalty of sin in a world to come will be remitted to a penitent sinner in consideration of his faith in such an arrangement. +Underlying unity.+--This is by no means an exhaustive examination of New Testament teaching on the subject of Atonement, but it should be sufficient to show two things: first, that the theories of the New Testament writers concerning the redeeming works of Christ are not, taken literally, mutually consistent; secondly, the truth implied in all the theories is precisely that truth of Atonement which we have already seen to be implied in all religion. The great thing which impressed the primitive Christian consciousness in regard to the life and death of Jesus was that this life and death were the most complete and consistent self-offering of the individual to the whole that had ever been made. In this self-offering was the one perfect manifestation of the eternal Christ, the humanity which reveals the innermost of God, the humanity which is love. To partake of the benefits of that Atonement we have to unite ourselves to it; that is, to employ the mystical language of St. Paul, we have to die to self with Christ and rise with Him into the experience of larger, fuller life, the life eternal.