interpreters theism is identified with belief in artificial theories of the quomodo of atonement, or, as such writers are fond of calling it, “the plan of salvation,” — theories which in some way or other rest on the merely legal conception of ethics, involving the quid pro quo of a substitutive responsibility.
Into the place of the all-pervading providence and all-transforming grace that makes eternally for righteousness, are set hypothetical schemes of expiation by sacrifice, of appeasal by the suffering of the innocent, of ransom by blood, of federal covenant and imputation, of salvation by faith alone. Theories of the divine nature and administration which omit these details, or refuse to take them literally, are stamped as deism or as pantheism, even though the omission or refusal be dictated by a perception that the rejected schemes are incompatible with the fundamental principles of morals, and therefore with any divine revelation and government at all. Thus, by mere confusion of thought, or by inability to rise above conceptions couched in terms of space and
