out on the cross on Good Friday: but it does not seem to me that
they have succeeded. I never read yet any explanation which I could
fully understand; which fully satisfied my conscience, or my reason
either; or which seemed to me fully to agree with and explain all the
texts of Scripture bearing on this great subject.

But is it possible to explain the matter? Is it not too deep for
mortal man? Is it not one of the deep things of God, and of God
alone, before which we must worship and believe? As for explaining
or understanding it, must not that be impossible, from its very
nature?

For, consider the first root and beginning of the whole question.
Put it in the simplest shape, to which all Christians will agree.
The Father sent the Son to die for the world. Most true: but who
can explain those words? We are stopped at the very first step by an
abyss. Who can tell us what is meant by the Father sending the Son?
What is the relation, the connexion, between the Father and the Son?
If we do not know that, we can know nothing about the matter, about
the very root and ground thereof. And we do know little or nothing.
The Bible only gives us scattered hints here and there. It is one of
the things of which we may say, with St. Paul, that we know in part,
and see through a glass darkly. How, then, dare we talk as if we
knew all, as if we saw clearly? The atonement is a blessed and awful
mystery hidden in God: ordained by and between God the Father and
God the Son. And who can search out that? Who hath known the mind
of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor? Did we sit by, and
were we taken into his counsels, when he made the world? Not we.
Neither were we when he redeemed the world. He did it. Let that be
enough for us. And he did it in love. Let that be enough for us.