I have always considered the atonement to be characteristic of the gospel, as a system of religion. Strip it of that doctrine, and you reduce it to a scheme of morality, excellent indeed, and such as the world never before saw; but to man in the present state of his faculties, absolutely impracticable.
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 75.
