On Galatians 1:3-9 …

“Were the atonement not the principal matter of the gospel, and the highest exhibition of the united wisdom, love and faithfulness of God, — in a word, the greatest act of God in the universe, — that terrible anathema on its subverters would seem to us something inexplicable, if not intolerable. …

[The Apostles’] symbol was the cross; their boast was the cross: they could not live without it; they could not die without it … In preaching such a doctrine they exposed themselves to the loss of reputation, to hardships and peril, to persecution and death. But they held their way, undeterred and undaunted.”

– George Smeaton, The Apostles’ Doctrine of the Atonement (1870; reprint, Banner of Truth, 1991) pp. 19, 16, 20.