tian teaching in America brought us both to substantially the same understanding and interpretation of the Gospel message. And it is interesting to note how in spirit this expression of the father's faith tallies with that of a younger son, Howard Bliss, for four years my associate in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, and subsequently, and until his death in 1920, his father's successor in the College Presidency.1 In the interpretation of the Gospel furnished in this chapter there is nothing unique. It is only the expression of a conviction to which many of the most devout and earnest disciples of Christ and students of his teaching have been coming during the last half century.

If it is true that Jesus Christ came not to reconcile God to the world but to reconcile the world to God, not to redeem men from punishment but to redeem them from sin, what is the meaning of his sacrifice? Has it any meaning? To a consideration of that question I devote the next chapter.

1 See Epilogue at close of the volume.

CHAPTER IX

I CAME TO GIVE MY LIFE A RANSOM FOR MANY

No reader will understand this chapter unless he has first understood what I have endeavored to make clear in the preceding chapter: Salvation is not deliverance from punishment but deliverance from sin. "The wages of sin is death: but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” As the sun drives out the darkness by the gift of light, as the doctor drives out disease by the gift of health, as the teacher drives out ignorance by the gift of knowledge, so God drives out sin by the gift of his own life. We are saved not by imputation but by impartation of righteousness; not by being treated as though we were innocent when we are guilty, but by being made virtuous though we were guilty. In the language of Paul, we are "conformed to the image of God's Son that he may be the first born among many brethren."

The gift of life can never be conferred except through self-sacrifice.

The mother who bore us laid down her life in order that she might give a new life to the world. I do not suppose that any man can comprehend the strange feeling of hope and fear which struggles within the awe-struck heart of the expectant mother. She goes down to the brink of that mysterious stream which is both the river of life and the river of death, and knows not whether the ferryman will come to carry her away to the unknown land or out of the unknown land will bring a new life to her. When the new born child is laid in her arms her travail pain is not over. Just begun is that mother's experience, which is at once the greatest fear and the greatest hope, the greatest sorrow and the greatest joy of human life. Not only in those few hours of physical anguish does she suffer; her life is one long, joyful self-sacrifice — joyful because the greatest joy of life is the joy of self-sacrifice. She daily lays down her life for her child. She delights in menial services rendered to him which she has never before rendered to any one; she abandons the society in which market place she

was wont to exchange services of good will, and devotes herself to the society of the babe who takes all and gives nothing. The songs she sings to her babe are her only music; her chief literature is the stories she reads to the growing child; her most enticing games are those she plays with him; her most instructive studies are those in which she is his leader. She fears nothing so much as that he may become estranged from her and from his home and fall into vicious habits; she hopes for nothing so much as that he may grow up to be gentle and strong, just and generous, courageous and wise; and she experiences a remorse in his incipient vices far greater than any he will ever know, unless in later years the memory of her tears comes out of the past to teach him. Motherhood is one long travail because it is the supremest revelation which human experience affords of life-giving, and life-giving is always costly to the giver. This it is which makes motherhood the most revered of all offices and mother the most sacred of all words.

Next in real honor though not in popular repute is the teacher. She, too, is a life-giver; she, too, knows the travail pain of imparting life. I said

He

once to a famous educator, "I should think you would get tired of teaching the same lessons year after year; what monotony of toil is yours." replied, “That is because you are not a teacher, Mr. Abbott. An editor is interested in new themes; a teacher is interested in new pupils." The teacher's problem is as old as the ages and yet new with every morning and differs with every pupil. It is easy to lead a horse to water, but hard to make him drink. If only these boys and girls were eager to learn, what a delight it would be to teach them. But they are not eager to learn. And how to awaken intellectual ambition, concentration of effort, steadiness of purpose, is the teacher's problem. The chief intellectual quality she needs is clearness of expression. The chief moral quality she needs is inspired patience. And the much coveted title of Ph.D. does not certify to either. If she have the teacher's ambition, how often as she confronts stolid and indifferent faces must she cry out, Their ears are dull of hearing and their eyes have they closed lest at any time they should hear with their ears and see with their eyes and should understand with their hearts. How often as she