We are going far with the Christian. Life is indeed a bond; it is materialism that divides the seekers after truth. The secret materialism of the Christian and his trust in religious machinery must bring him into conflict with those who put their trust in other kinds of machines. We who are trusting life, and are trying not to interpret it in terms of the logic of things, find ourselves side by side with those Christians faithful enough to their supreme leader and their own principles to do the same. So we may walk willingly with them and hear what they have to say in more intimate talk than there can be when the spirit of community is wanting.

In this matter of personality and its self-communicating power they have been beforehand with us, as in so many other matters. Jesus has been for them a fountain of wisdom and insight, and while they have kept close to him his wisdom and his insight have been-imparted to them. He has been in them a well-spring wanting to the negligent world. 'Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him,' the disciple hears him say, 'shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.' That is what it means to be indwelt by God, 'the fountain of living waters,' as the older prophet calls him. And we think of what we have learnt about personality and the inseparability of the spirit from its own content of knowledge and volition, of love, too, and righteousness, and joy in beauty and truth. We think of the intercommunication of man with man and of men with God and his 'Christ'—that is, the man 'whose individuality,' as a Christian philosopher says, 'is identified with God in the unity of all his thought and action with the divine knowledge and the divine purpose.' All these come to mind when we hear of a fountain of living waters becoming a well-spring for those who drink of it.

But it may be that we turn away with a sigh from such intimate talk, knowing how far we are ourselves from the union with God which the Christian depicts. And it may be, too, that there dawns upon us the thought that when this Christian speaks of 'atonement' he means, most likely, some process of God by which that union is accomplished, and the neglect or opposition of men is overcome. What difference is there, we may be inclined to ask, between divine incarnation, as the Christian sees it,—God's communication of himself, the fountain of living waters, to men—and an atonement between him and them? Is not the union of incarnation the very act and process of atonement? Is not the redemption of man effected in and through the self-expression of God in him? When he is one with God he is 'redeemed' from the neglect and opposition of sin, and of the rejection of God; and then God is manifest and expressed in him. Is this a question of words? Perhaps, rather, it is a question of emphasis on one or other side, man's side or God's.

But if, for the moment, we lay emphasis on the side of man and speak of atonement and redemption instead of speaking of incarnation and our communion and union with God, there are certainly elements of special difficulty to be encountered. The explanations of Christians are by no means as trustworthy as their insight and the knowledge they derive from their great 'Redeemer.' They explain in legalistic terms, or materialistic, or in terms of a despotic rule, a process and an act of life given and received. They are prone to ignore the prophet in favour of the Scribe or the Pharisee. And once again the prophet may justly put into the mouth of God the old reproach—'My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.' They build up their inventions and hide beneath them the sublimity of living fact; and we who ask them concerning the fact are shown the ruins of those inventions. We ask them for bread and they give us the stones they have put together. There is hardly a religious problem or question, or fact and process, more encumbered than this with that tradition which makes the word of God of none effect. No doubt there are Christians who are both able and willing to help such men and women as are likely to ask their help; the difficulty is to find such Christians. Let us see, now, how we can work out for ourselves an understanding of what is really meant by atonement between men and God, what Christians really mean when they express themselves so ill about it, what it really is that really happens.

Atonement between God and men undoubtedly implies the forgiveness of sinful men by God. They cannot possibly enter into union with him unless they are forgiven. When they sin against their fellow-men they cannot be united or re-united with them on any other condition than that their fellows forgive them. But, we must insist, it is immoral to forgive them unless they at least will to cast away their sinfulness. It is always immoral, too, not to punish, that is, not to condemn, sin and sinfulness; and therefore (since a man and his activity are one) the sinner. How then can God at once condemn (or punish) and forgive the sin, sinfulness and the sinner? Are not condemnation (or punishment) and forgiveness mutually exclusive? If we condemn or punish do we not fail to forgive? If we forgive, must we not remit punishment and cease to condemn?

Now here is a difficulty that reflexion should remove. For it comes of what happens in the lower stages of man's social relations and spiritual growth. We think of punishment as somehow the expression of vindictiveness, while forgiveness alone is the expression of love. So it is in us beginners. So it begins to cease to be, even in us, as we grow into new life and a new spirit. Let us think how we should behave to an evil-doer if we loved him to the utmost of our power of love. Should we condone his evil-doing by withholding that condemnation which is expressed in punishment, whether of look or word or deed (as circumstance demands), and extend to him an artifice of forgiveness in which the moral disunion between him and ourselves shall be concealed? Would that truly represent our faithful love for him, that love which must seek not an appearance but a reality of harmony, and for his sake tolerate no encouragement, not even the slightest possibility of deriving encouragement, for his evil doing? Obviously it would not. For his sake we should unmistakably condemn, making known to him in look or word or deed our condemnation. It would be the expression of our love and, with forgiveness, is of the nature and property of love. We should feel no shadow of vindictiveness. In our relation with him the forgiveness and the condemnation of love would be one.

We encounter here a false antithesis in a matter of spirit and life. Forgiveness and punishment in God or in the man of God can neither be antithetical nor need to be reconciled. In the life of love they are not divided. God, who is love as he is spirit and life, forgives and condemns by one consistent act of love. There is no immoral condonation in his forgiveness, no vindictiveness about his punishment. And this the Christian knows both by his own experience and by the life and lessons of his redeeming Lord. 'Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.' No true Christian would have it otherwise.

'If forgiveness means—as it properly does—the wise and patient care for the criminal's welfare, for his regeneration and recovery into the life of a good society, then there is no distinction whatever between forgiveness and punishment.' That, precisely, is what forgiveness ought to be made to mean, and punishment likewise. But again we see in a mirror darkly and are confused by our history and our own shortcomings. Therefore even Christians misjudge God, or make for themselves 'broken cisterns'—a false God who is no fountain of living waters, pouring forth a never-failing, self-consistent, self-giving love; but a judge, a king, a despot, after the pattern of the world, a God aloof administering punishment or forgiveness, both alike unworthy and misplaced. There is no difficulty at all in this question of punishment and forgiveness if we remember perfect love and its aim, as Jesus shows them.

Moreover, we must bear in mind, nothing about God who 'is spirit' is either an artifice or a machine. So his punishments, his expressed condemnations, are never artificial, never mechanical. They arise 'naturally,' as we say; and in large part we provide them, we men, ourselves. There are certain 'natural' consequences, miscalled punishments, which are entailed upon the body as, for instance, when a child puts his hand into the fire or a man disregards what we call the 'laws' of health. The due and true moral punishment of persons by persons is just as natural. The nature of persons is spiritual in the order of their uplifted life, and is one with that life. Their nature is, in fact, no other than that life and those persons. We cannot separate, though we may sometimes in word distinguish, between the man and his nature. Consequently all due and right punishment by persons (punishment by love, which is the same as forgiveness by love) is wholly natural. It is a natural consequence of sin, the reaction against sin with which good persons or a good society must encounter it. There is no arbitrary infliction of punishment, and no arbitrary forgiveness, by the good man, the good society, or the good God. Nor should there be in regard to his own sins or sinfulness by the man who newly rejects them, the newly penitent man. He, the new man, reacts according to his new nature, and in one and the same activity should condemn and forgive himself. He must be penitent but he should not be remorseful. If he does not forgive himself as well as condemn himself, it may be because he is not humble enough and penitent enough to bear with the fact that he has deserved his condemnation.

We must remind ourselves, however, that it is of spiritual nature in ourselves to choose. The activity of love is chosen and determined by the good man, with its forgiveness and its punishment. And although the perfection of God must preclude choice between alternatives, although for perfect wisdom there can never be more than one course open, yet there is no automatism, there cannot be automatism of the mechanical kind, in God who, as the Christian maintains, is love. His love is willed though not chosen. It is of the vital, intelligent, voluntary activity of a spiritual being. And so both punishment and forgiveness are willed, in God or in man; and as the man approaches full union with God so does his choice approach that inevitable wisdom for which there is no longer consciousness of choice. This is the manner of spirit and life; that which is personally real in any man, all that is in God, is not merely consented to or assented to but is always actively willed, never compulsorily or mechanically apportioned. So it is right and reasonable to say that God or the man of God punishes and forgives. It is not right to say that the punishment and forgiveness of either, though it is wholly natural, is in any kind of way automatic with the automatism of a machine, or even with that relative automatism of material things which we speak of as natural law. Without the activity of love there can be no true punishment and no true forgiveness; there is only vindictiveness or condonation.

The treatment we have given our wrong-doers in the past is not fitted to throw clear light on Christian atonement and the ways of God with man. On the contrary, it has obscured both. But we are learning. Truth, experience, and the Gesta Christi work for our learning. Or, as the Christian says, the divine spirit works for it and 'strives' with us, that is, works with us that we may work out our own salvation.

We have begun to say to the children we are training—'Come now, this is wrong; let's see how we' [we, mark you] 'can set it right.' We have discovered that unless the child works with us our punishment fails, and our forgiveness fails, of any real effect for goodness. But Christians knew this from their beginning, though many of them forget they did. In the last resort it is why Christ died.

When, carrying with us our new method, we have passed from the child to the criminal, and extend to him that 'wise and patient care' for his welfare, which is forgiveness and punishment in one, we shall be in a better position for seeing what Christian atonement really means and is—how real it is and how it depends on co-operation between the Saviour and the offender; how, always, the Saviour must win the offender first if he is to save him. Then we shall read the Gospels of the Christian with new eyes and a new understanding.

If you want to see punishment and forgiveness both in one, turn to the parable of the prodigal son. Could any punishment be more salutary or more piercing to the man whose penitence had shown him his utter unworthiness? Could forgiveness be more complete, more gracious, than that which he received? Consider how his penitence must have been deepened, and his sense of unworthiness increased, when he found himself in his father's arms, and his father's house, honoured, rejoiced over, feasted? In proportion to the depth and fulness of penitence do these two, punishment and forgiveness, given in love, become distinguishable only by the reaction to them of the penitent. He alone knows how love hurts and heals in one and the same act and moment.

Then, if you want to learn the many forms punishment may take, seek further. Look at the story of the woman taken in adultery. 'Hath no man condemned thee?' ... 'Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.' Punishment and forgiveness imparted in one profound paradox of love's judgement. What do you think was its effect on the woman who had looked into the prophet's eyes as he lifted them from the dust? 'Hath no man condemned thee?' 'No man, Lord,' she said; and they were the words humility and shame would choose.

A degree further—consider the picture of a final judgement, with the 'Son of man in his glory' and the nations gathered before him to be shown their union with him, or their disunion, in a clearness none could mistake. 'Come, ye blessed,' he says, 'inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world'—the kingdom in which all men are one with the Holiest, with the living Truth himself and Beauty 'in his glory'—come with me. For I was an hungred, thirsty, a stranger.... Naked and ye clothed me, sick, in prison, and ye came unto me.... And yet these blessed had never known what they did. It was not he, so far as they knew, that they had succoured. Not for his sake but for love's they had done it; not even, indeed, at the heart of it, for love's sake, but because they loved, because in them the well-spring of love streamed forth and they gave their very selves to those others who had only need of them. They were of love and were love's own. Love as shown to these who needed it was not distinguishable, even by their reaction to it, into punishment and forgiveness. It was but love.

Then those others—'Depart from me,' he says—and there was a vision painted of the unutterable horrors of a state of separation and loneliness and self-embittered remorse—'I was an hungred and ye gave me no meat.' They also, had not known—'Lord, when saw we thee an hungred?' If they had known they would assuredly have hastened to him with their meat, asked him to their feasts, lavished all upon him. But for what sake? For no other than their own. Love had no place in their hearts, nor had the Lord. Only self-seeking. They were their own Lords and Gods. And thenceforth they had to know it. In their impenitent, disappointed, cheated (they would say) and remorseful hearts there was no room for anything but the sense of punishment. Their inevitable reaction to the voice of love, as it reproached their lack of love, shut out both forgiveness and all possibility of the sense of it.

So we come to the extreme of distinction between the ways of the showing of love. Here is all punishment, it seems, to the sinner. But it is he who makes love so. It is very love that punishes, a consistent, unwavering love which, in the sinner's last extremity, shows itself to the utmost he can receive and in the only way he can receive. What, I ask you, would a man like this make of a love that should express itself (if in the nature of love it could thus express itself) as condoning the want of love and professing oneness in so complete an alienation? Not only does the nature of love forbid such an expression, but the nature of the self-worshipper, who cannot receive it.

There is a very marvellous knowledge of the hidden heart shown in these prophetic teachings. As we converse with the Supreme Person of the Gospels we feel him searching out our bones and marrow. To him there lies open the secret of disunion among us personal beings and the secret of the utmost furtherance, and the means towards furtherance, of the conversion of our will from self-seeking to love-finding. This utmost furtherance necessarily falls short of the compulsion love can never even contemplate or man endure. A man compelled to love is unthinkable. Words, mere empty words these are that so speak of him. He cannot be. If he could be compelled he could not be man; if the semblance of love were forced upon him it would not be love. But the atonement in which the Christian believes shows the love of God working to further love in man to an utmost God alone can reach. Punishment and forgiveness work together as that love, and the life of Jesus and the Cross on which he died are at once their final showing-forth, their clearest call to man, and the tremendous acceptance by man of all that they entail and are.

Here, indeed, is the fountain of love in its fulness. We need not wonder that the disciple, having in mind his living and triumphant Lord, hears him say to us who desire to drink of the waters of love—'Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.'

Christian atonement means restoration to the only real and full union and communion of persons, that of divine love.