The terrible anathema

Referring to Paul's solemn, sobering words in Galatians 1:6-10, George Smeaton wrote:

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. But the doom is justified by the nature of Christ's death, and by the great fact of the atonement.

The Apostles' Doctrine of the Atonement, p. 19