resented as so plain and so easy, even to the meanest understandings?"

Such were the last thoughts of a pious and learned man, after more than twenty years of examination of the Scriptures. They are full of instruction to us, and well calculated to confirm us in our present belief. If such a man as Dr. Watts was forced out of Trinitarianism by prayerful and conscientious study of the Bible, we, as Unitarians, have reason to thank God and take courage.

THE ATONEMENT.

FOR IF, WHEN WE WERE ENEMIES, WE WERE RECONCILED TO GOD BY THE DEATH OF HIS SON, MUCH MORE, BEING RECONCILED, WE SHALL BE SAVED BY HIS LIFE; AND NOT ONLY SO, BUT WE ALSO JOY IN GOD THROUGH OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, BY WHOM WE HAVE NOW RECEIVED THE ATONEMENT.-Romans v. 10, 11.

The two words were

THE word which is translated reconcile in the tenth verse, is translated atone in the eleventh. Of course, therefore, the meaning is the same. used by the translators as exactly synonymous, and the word Atonement was printed in the first editions of the English Bible, At-one-ment. It is used in the same manner by other writers in the time of James I., so that its meaning is well established, and as this is the only passage in the New Testament where it occurs, we are authorized to say that the doctrine of Atonement and the doctrine of • Reconciliation are the same thing. If we so regard it, this is the great doctrine of religion. of religion itself. Other truths may be important, but they are so only as they are subsidiary to this. In a practical point of view, they concern us only as they teach us how to be reconciled to God, and help us in becoming so. Or, in other words, all religious truth is important in propor

It is the substance

tion as i shows to sinners the way of salvation, and helps them to walk therein until salvation is attained.

The necessity of reconciliation rests upon the fact that we are sinners. "God made man upright, and he has sought out many inventions." "For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not." How this came to pass is not here the material question. The fact is undeniable, and from it comes the necessity of the Gospel redemption. If there is any man who has committed no sin, for him the mission of Christ has no personal interest. "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,” but where there has been no rebellion, there can be no reconciliation. "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick"; and therefore Christ said, that “he came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." It is because we feel ourselves to be sinners, that we come to Christ. We have lost our way and desire to find it. We have rebelled against God and desire to make peace with him. We are alienated from him and desire to be again brought near. Our sins rise up in judgment against us, and we desire that the record of them should be blotted out. Through sin we are at enmity with God, and as his creatures, dependent on his power, as his children, whose only hope of happiness comes from the Father's love, our chief concern, I may say our only concern, is to find the means of reconciliation with him; to obtain assurance of pardon and acceptance with God, of whose love we have made ourselves so unworthy.

This is our inquiry to-night. Not an abstract subject of metaphysical research, but the great practical question of religion. How shall the burdened conscience throw off its load? Where shall the despairing heart, self-accused, find hope? Where shall the weary and heavy laden find

rest? Is it not a question which concerns us all? May God in his mercy guide us to a right answer! And that we may be so guided, let us consider it, not as a disputed subject in theology, but as a practical subject in vital religion.

How

We

How shall the sinner be reconciled with God? How shall he be justified, or restored to God's favor? shall he obtain forgiveness and remission of sins? look for an answer,- First, to the laws of God's government; to that which we call Nature, interpreted by our unenlightened reason. An answer comes, but it is not an answer of peace. It is not forgiveness, but "Pay me that thou owest." "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door." It is the voice of stern, unpitying exaction. "Ev. erywhere in Nature we read Law, inexorable, unrelenting LAW. She governs by laws, which indeed are always adapted to the good of the whole, to the advancement and perfection of the race, but beneath them the individual continually is crushed. Nature never pardons. Her wheels thunder along their iron track, nor turn out to spare any helpless mortal who has fallen beneath them. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Helplessness is no exemption. There is no appeal to any court of error, but prompt execution follows judgment. The innocent child, who ignorantly touches fire, is not the less burned. The man who, in the night, ignorantly walks over a precipice, is not the less destroyed. In nature, therefore, we find no word of pardon for those who have broken the law, whatever may be their excuse or sorrow."* If the laws of God's moral government are equally stern and unbending, there is no

* Doctrine of Forgiveness, by James F. Clarke.

hope for man; his sins will surely find him out, and sooner or later will work his destruction.

If we look to our own moral nature, the same answer comes, equally stern, equally unpitying. Perhaps I may say even more so. The wound upon the physical frame will be healed by the curative power of nature herself; and although a scar is left, the injury may be forgotten. But the wounds of conscience are not healed; sin once committed can never be forgotten. Or if for a time it be put out of mind by the hurried pursuits of life, it will still rise up again, like the ghost of a murdered friend, to spoil our best enjoyment and to rebuke us in our proudest imaginings. Conscience speaks no word of pardon; it gives no assurance that God's favor will be restored to those by whom it has been once forfeited. Its rebuke is equally stern for a sin committed years ago as for those of yesterday. The intervening years may have been spent in the sorrow of repentance, or in works of obedience, but conscience remains unappeased. Perhaps the more nearly we come to a righteous life, the more deeply we feel the stings of remorse, for the iniquity of bygone days.

Such is the natural working of a tender conscience. It cannot find comfort for itself; it cannot blot out the record of its own sins. It looks upward, but it clothes the Almighty in attributes of vengeance; its own fears read anger in his face; its own sense of ill-deserving anticipates the sentence of condemnation. It drives the sinner to cruel penances, to self-torture and scourging, vainly striving to expiate the sins of the soul by the sufferings of the body; and yet, after years of such penance, the poor sufferer, at each renewed remembrance of his sin, will strike the bleeding scourge more deeply into the flesh and cast himself to the ground in renewed and hopeless agony. History