ATONEMENT 119 



Why is it that good people will persist in speaking 

 of the sacrifice of Christ as though it had nothing what- 

 ever to do with anything that went before^ or with 

 anything that followed after. The sacrifice of Christ 

 was no isolated event in the world's history. It was the 

 supreme and perfect type of all true sacrifice. Thus 

 when the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews said, 

 '' Without shedding of blood there is no remission/' 

 he stated, perhaps without fully understanding what he 

 said, an historical fact which we all know enough to 

 verify. For across every page of history that is worthy 

 to be read there is written in letters of blood the word 

 ** sacrifice,'' The sacrifice of the strong for the weak ; 

 of the pure and noble for the vile and degraded ; of the 

 fittest to survive for the least fit. Every real advance 

 that mankind has made has been made at the price of 

 blood. Every good gift that man has won for his 

 fellow-men has been won at the cost of blood. It has 

 never been given to man to soar on eagle's pinions. It 

 has ever been with torn hands and bleeding feet that the 

 human race has climbed upwards to heights of moral 

 excellence and spiritual vision ; and, of a truth, without 

 shedding of blood, there has been no remission. It 

 was true long before Christ shed His precious blood on 

 Calvary ; it was true long before the blood of bulls and 

 goats was shed on Hebrew altars. It is still true to-day ; 

 and if we imagine that Christ hung on the cross merely 

 to save us pain, we have missed the whole meaning of 

 the Cross of Christ, He hung there, not to save us pain, 

 but to make us willing to take up the cross and follow 

 Him., 



We are surrounded on every side by degradation too 

 deep to fathom, by suffering too terrible for words. 

 And the sufferers are holding out their hands to us, 

 imploring our aid. Children there are, ill-clad and ill- 

 fed, growing up in an atmosphere of vice, whose little 



