p462 [Dr. Wolston] MY DEAR BROTHER, - I regret much the article in question. …

There never was a time when the true real, atoning sufferings, the reality of His bearing our sins, making propitiation, drinking the cup, being made a curse for us, and all that wrath lying upon us involved, was more necessary to insist on than now. It is loosened in England and is upsetting the work in Sweden. I should take care to give no handle, by any word I used, to cavillers, but should insist on maintaining the blessed Lord's drinking that dreadful cup when forsaken of God. Indeed it is for this I have been attacked, as distinguishing that as something more than the act of dying - though that were true, too, and till He had taken its sting out by drinking the cup, involved it all. In the plain sense of simple Christians convinced of sin, they know that He took on Him what lay on them; and Psalm 88 authorises the word wrath itself.

Scripture is wiser even in its expressions than we are; but to hold fast the real truth of atoning sufferings and bearing sins is vital. But I do not think they meant to weaken this. Only there remains the question how far a deep conviction of sin has made the need felt, for that is often at the bottom of these things.

September 16th.

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