Chapter 11

THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE

+Atonement and New Testament language.+--It will have been observed that in my examination of the subject of the Atonement I have said almost nothing about the New Testament evidence for the doctrine. This, I admit, is an entire departure from the method usually followed by those who write upon it, and may be thought by some to vitiate my whole argument. But the omission is of set purpose, for I am convinced that New Testament language about the Atonement, especially the language of St. Paul, has been, and still is, the prolific source of most of the mischievous misinterpretations of it which exist in the religious mind. To an extent this is the same with the Old Testament, but to a far less degree, for the language of the Old Testament is only liable to misapprehension when interpreted by the New. In a previous