love of God is the cause or source of the atonement. But this does not answer the question as to the reason or necessity. What is the reason why the love of God should take such a way of realizing its end and fulfilling its purpose? Why, we are compelled to ask, the sacrifice of the Son of God, why the blood of the Lord of glory? “For what necessity and for what reason,” asked Anselm of Canterbury, “did God, since he is omnipotent, take upon himself the humiliation and weakness of human nature in