or other in the end that would be made plain to Himself and all the world. It would have been the same no matter what had been the particular death that Jesus died. His murderers might have taken His life in any one of a thousand ways and the ultimate result would have been just as we see it now. They might have hanged, drowned, or burnt Him, in which case the stake or the hangman's rope would have become the symbol of the world's redemption, but, after the fashion of their time, they crucified Him; it was the worst they could do, and they wanted to do the worst. At Calvary perfect love joined issue with perfect hate, perfect goodness with perfect wickedness, and became victorious by enduring the worst and remaining pure and unchanged to the last. +The moral outcome.+--But it was not the last after all; the world had still to reckon with God. That life and death have become a moral force, a spiritual dynamic greater than any before or since, just because of the completeness of the self-offering that culminated on Calvary's cross. I must not anticipate what I have to say about the resurrection further than to remark that more came out of the tomb of Jesus than ever went into it. When all seemed lost this buried life arose in power in other lives that up till then had never fully known its divine greatness and spiritual beauty. This is the truth about the death of Jesus, and nothing needs to be added to show how great an event in the dealings of God with men it must have been. It was both simple and sublime. Theological word-spinning only serves to obscure its true significance. Show to the world the real Jesus; tell men how it came about that He had to die, and they cannot help but love Him. CHAPTER IX THE ATONEMENT +II. Semitic Ideas of Atonement+