In later years, both in Germany and else where, the theology outside of the Catholic Church, while apparently concordant with the opinion of the necessity of man's co-operation, harks back, consciously or unconsciously, to the belief of Luther and his immediate disciples that Christ atoned fully, and so fully that the sinner need only by some interior act appropriate to himself the work already done by the Saviour. Where there is any insistence that man must of himself do something positive, in so much is that insistence at variance with the thought that in the beginning of the Reformation was spread broadcast among the adherents of the New Religion. Might there not be drawn a distinction between atonement and salvation? The atonement would mean that Christ had done all that was necessary to reconcile man with God, but there could be no salvation un less man turned to God through the path of the atonement and by individual repentance and satisfaction so comported himself as to bring by voluntary acts his life into entire harmony with the will of his Creator. No solution of the evidently complicated nature of the atone ment will compel conviction which does not answer adequately the following questions: What is the relation of the atonement to an offended God? What was His acceptance of the sacrifice? How far did that sacrifice in itself go toward bringing God and man to gether? Was it alone enough to liberate man so absolutely that after the death of the victim no more was expected on his part? How were the outraged excellences of the Godhead — His justice, His mercy, His love — compensated for the injury done them by sin? Did that injury really affect the divine nature? It may be ad vanced here that in every theory which pos sesses any serious claim to assent the Su breme Being remained unimpaired in the beauty of His perfection, and it was due to the in finite justice of God to demand a congruous if not a condign reparation. What part does Satan play in the plan of redemption? Has a solution been presented? Is it and will it al ways be an impenetrable mystery? It is a mat ter so significant for Christians that they have the right to expect from some form of Chris tianity a clear exposition based on Scripture and authoritative teaching. For Christians it means salvation, regarding which certainty is security and doubt a calamity.
Thus much for Christianity, which empha sizes the necessity of an atonement. All Chris tians admit Christ as the fountain head of all reconciliation of man with God. But the world is far from being entirely or even largely Christian. In the world to-day there are about 1,500,000,000 human souls, of which number only a little over 400,000,000 have received the religion of Christ. Half of these, it is com puted, are Catholics, the remainder are Prot estants or Catholics of some kind or other, but divided from the See of Rome. The rest of the race is either Jewish or Mohammedan or belongs to some Oriental form of worship or is out and out heathen. Will Christianity as sume the responsibility of stating that beyond its pale the atonement does not reach and that therefore for the pagan there is hope neither here nor hereafter? Some mention has already been made of the Jews and their manner of atonement. Their views have crystallized into the shape which their orthodox members adopt to-day and which they base upon certain books of the Old Testament, upon their Talmud and their Targum. It differs in no way materially from the teachings of Moses and the Law and the Prophets. They lived in the past as they are living now in the hope of a great Deliverer to whom every act of worship bore and bears reference. In some way or other these typical ceremonies, it is said, influenced Jehovah to make them the promise: °I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins I will remember no more" (Hebrews viii, 12). The space of this
article is inadequate to include even the most summary account of the atonement idea as it was understood by the nations outside of the chosen people. Research has made it ad missible that everywhere there have been re ligious beliefs, opinions and practices pointing to the acknowledgment of a Supreme Being and judgment to come and a reward or punishment in a life beyond this. With this arc apparently connected sacrifices which no matter how ac companied by fanaticism and superstition are an attestation of a homage paid to a deity, a homage of praise, or petition, or thanksgiving or of supplication for pardon—a homage which was inspired by an underlying sentiment of the need of appeasing some offended divin ity. Yet it is not easy to trace this need in those religions which are so widespread in the Levant and farthest East and proclaim as fundamental Fatalism, Metempsychosis and Pantheism. The investigation of the subject of atonement as advanced by the followers of Christ, by those followers who profess that Jesus was the Son of God, that is, was Divine, among other questions inevitably suggests the question of the possibility of salvation for all individuals of the race whose creed negatives Christianity altogether. Some reply, adequate or otherwise, may be found in the dogma that °Christ died for all men,* whence the inference is deducible that even those who never heard of the Redeemer, or the atonement, cannot but be affected by that death. How? is a large thesis. That the problem has been approached by hon est and able thinkers is plain to the readers of history. In the Christian world there is no small number who deny the primal fall and hence see nothing urgent in the discussion of the atonement. The Messiah has not yet reached this earth say the Jews, Christ was not God, say the Arians, there is no God, say the Atheists, if there be He is unknowable, say the Agnostics. For all these the atonement has very slight, if any, significance. Teachers of note advance the theory, basing it on Scrip ture, that the first tradition of a redeemer to come and who was to atone was carried by the earlier peoples as they grew and scattered and populated the earth. The Jewish idea brought by the Israelites in their wanderings and cap tivities, and assimilated by the tribes and na tions among whom they dwelt, was in the lapse of time weakened or metamorphosed, or adapted to pagan beliefs and so corrupted. °The only theory which accounts for all these facts," says Rawlinson, °is that of a primeval revelation variously corrupted through the manifold and multiform deterioration of human nature, in different races and places.° Bibliography.— Various commentaries on the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles of Saint Paul; (Canones Concil. Trident); Luther's 'de Servo Arbitrio' ; Catechisms,' etc.; Augsburg Confession; Melancthon's Theologici' ; Mohler's (Symbolism' ; Oxenham's (The Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement' ; Jowett, B., on Atonement and Satis Coleridge, to Reflection' ; Bishop Forbes, (Thirty-pine Articles) Consult also Clarke, (Outline of Christian Theology' (New York 1897) ; Burton, J. M. P., and Smith, G. B., (Biblical Ideas of the Atonement' (Chi cago 1909) • Dale, (The Atonement' (London 1885); Sabatier Auguste, (The Doctrine of the Atonement and its Historical Evolution) (New York 1904); Stevens, (The Christian Doctrine of Salvation> (ib. 1905); Tymms, Chris tian Idea of the Atonement' (ib. 1904); The Atonement in Modern Religious Thought' (ib. 1901).