Page:A Defence of Revealed Religion.pdf/17

Rh commonly received doctrine is that since God demands a perfect obedience to His law, and men are imperfect owing to the fall, consequently the best efforts of man are altogether unavailing to procure the divine favour. Such a theory we cannot entertain. The Lord is revealed to us as a "just God;" and no just Being would demand from man an obedience which He knows cannot be given. We do not mean to say that man can of himself fulfil [sic] the divine requirement, but we believe that he can do so by the divine help. The Lord can only ask us to do our best. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him; for He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust." It is a libel on the character of God to say that because one man sinned He laid all future ages under the curse of His wrath, or to assert that He ever asked man to do anything unless He had previously bestowed upon him the power. We live under the curse of Adam, and the love of God impelled Him to give the world an antidote.

This antidote was the work of Redemption—the Atonement. Not that God demanded the sacrifice of innocent blood to appease His anger—not that He refused to be reconciled to man unless His justice was satisfied by the death of an all-sufficient substitute. God regarded more the misery of man than His own satisfaction—He thought more of man's persistent sinfulness than of His own broken laws. He would have been well satisfied with man's return to Him, and would