ABSTRACT
HITHERTO the argument has led us forward, step by step. We have seen that the ordinary systems of ethics leave us with a demand for a reconciliation. And we have seen how precisely the reconciliation which is demanded is supplied by the New Testament presentation of the Atonement. In the New Testament we have the complete type, the ἰδἐα, as Plato would put it, of all imperfect human reconciliations, of all the means, that is to say, whereby broken human relations are restored. But we have not yet exhausted all the aspects of this typical reconciliation. We have still to deal with the wrath of God. For this we may seem hardly to have left a place. Yet it is there, as we shall see, and it is overlooked in neither the Old Testament nor the New. In most treatises on the Atonement it occupies an important place, in some the most important place. The Atonement implies propitiation. A person who is propitiated is presumed to be angry. When he is propitiated he forgives, and forgiveness, again, implies the putting away of wrath.
