The Meaning and Message of the Cross

While gifted minds in various periods have profoundly studied the subject (redemption), and have written upon it immortal treatises, yet even the best of these at some points are ever in need of restatement. The controversies which have raged concerning the subject have generally left some clouds of obscurity peculiar to all controversy. Language from its inherent weakness as implying too much or too little is so capable of being misunderstood, that any statement made in a given generation requires a somewhat altered phrasing for the generation following. Then the very conceptions of Scripture being often paradoxical or symbolic, carry in them meanings which lie below the surface. The most vital implications of Scripture never clearly appear except to an insight born of deep, spiritual experience; and this element is ever a variable one. To real insight the mysteries of the Divine Word increasingly become open secrets.