Chapter 11
The Forgiveness of Sin

Man Is Not a Machine

In the preceding chapters I have dealt principally with the teaching of the Bible regarding the reciprocity of being between God and man --- that ultimate spiritual nature of man which affords the generic basis in allmen upon which the Spirit of God can work to produce further specific development of the individual. But if we stop short at the recognition of this merely generic similarity, we are liable to be led into an erroneous course of reasoning resulting in logical conclusions the very opposite of all that the Bible is seeking to teach us; in a word, we shall be led into an atheism far deeper than that of the mere materialist, in that it is on the spiritual plane --- the inverted development of the supreme principle of our nature.

Such a dire result comes from a one-sided view of things, a knowledge of certain truths without the knowledge of their counterbalancing truths; and the counterbalancing truth which will preserve us from so great a calamity is contained in the Bible teaching regarding the forgiveness of sin.

Once grant that there is such a thing as the