pure benignity of God the Father, in consideration of the sinner's own repentance, and without regard to the virtue of any atonement, he will find it difficult to assign a reason why the grant of the pardon upon these terms should follow rather than precede the death of Christ. He will find it difficult to explain, upon what principle our justification should be an intermediate event between the death of Christ and his resurrection, rather than between his nativity and his baptism; or upon what principle indeed it should be connected with any particular circumstance in the life of Christ, more than with any imaginable circumstance in the life of any other man, - of Pontius Pilate for instance, or Gamaliel. The text, therefore, is one remarkable passage out of a great number which exhibits such a view of the scheme of redemption which is incapable of any rational exposition, if the notion of Christ's death as an actual atonement for the sins of men be rejected.

This doctrine of an atonement, by which the repenting sinner may recover, as it were, his lost character of innocence, and by which the involuntary deficiencies are supplied of his renewed obedience, is so full of comfort to the godly, so soothing to the natural fears of the awakened sinner's conscience, that it may be deemed a dreadful indication of the great obduracy of men, that a discovery of a scheme of mercy, which might have been expected to have been the great recommendation of the Gospel to a world lost and dead in trespasses and sins, the means of procuring it an easy and favourable reception, should itself have been made the ground of cavil and objection. And it is a still worse symptom of the hardened hearts of men, if, among those who profess themselves disciples

of a crucified Saviour, any may be found who allow no real efficacy to that "blood of sprinkling which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel." Let us rather charitably hope, that this misbelief and contradiction have arisen from some misapprehension of the Scripture doctrine, and that the real doctrine of our Lord's atonement has all the while had no opponents. Those who speak of the wrath of God as appeased by Christ's sufferings, speak, it must be confessed, a figurative language. The Scriptures speak figuratively when they ascribe wrath to God. The Divine nature is insusceptible of the perturbations of passion; and when it is said that God is angry, it is a figure which conveys this useful warning to mankind, that God will be determined by his wisdom, and by his providential care of his creation, to deal with the wicked as a prince in anger deals with rebellious subjects. It is an extension of the figure when it is said, that God's wrath is by any means appeased. It is a figure, therefore, if it be said that God's wrath is appeased by the sufferings of Christ. It is not to be supposed that the sins of men excite in God any appetite of vengeance, which could not be diverted from its purpose of punishment till it had found its gratification in the sufferings of a righteous person. This, indeed, were a view of our redemption founded on a false and unworthy notion of the Divine character. But nothing hinders but that the sufferings of Christ, which could only in a figurative sense be an appeasement or satisfaction of God's wrath, might be, in the most literal meaning of the words, a satisfaction to his justice. It is easy to understand that the interests of God's government, the peace and order of the great kingdom over which he rules the whole world of moral agents, might re

quire that his disapprobation of sin should be solemnly declared and testified in his manner of forgiving it: it is easy to understand, that the exaction of vicarious sufferings on the part of him who undertook to be the intercessor for a rebellious race amounted to such a declaration. These sufferings, by which the end of punishment might be answered, being once sustained, it is easy to perceive, that the same principle of wisdom, the same providential care of his creation, which must have determined the Deity to inflict punishment, had no atonement been made, would now determine him to spare. Thus, to speak figuratively, his anger was appeased, but his justice was literally satisfied and the sins of men no longer calling for punishment when the ends of punishment were secured, were literally expiated. The person sustaining the sufferings in consideration of which the guilt of others may, consistently with the principles of good policy, be remitted, was, in the literal sense of the word, so literally as no other victim ever was, a sacrifice, and his blood shed for the remission of sin was literally the matter of the expiation.

It now only remains that I point out to you, as distinctly as the time will permit, the important lessons to be drawn from this view of the scheme of man's redemption.

It

First, then, we learn from it that sin must be something far more hateful in its nature, something of a deeper malignity, than is generally understood. could be no inconsiderable evil that could require such a remedy as the humiliation of the second Person in the Godhead. It is not to be supposed, that any light cause would move the merciful Father of the universe to expose even an innocent man to unmerited suffer

ings. What must be the enormity of that guilt, which God's mercy could not pardon till the only-begotten Son of God had undergone its punishment? How great must be the load of crime, which could find no adequate atonement till the Son of God descended from the bosom of the Father, clothed himself with flesh, and being found in fashion as a man, submitted to a life of hardship and contempt, to a death of ignominy and pain?

Again, we learn that the good or ill conduct of man is a thing of far more importance and concern in the moral system than is generally imagined. Man's deviation from his duty was a disorder, it seems, in the moral system of the universe, for which nothing less than Divine wisdom could devise a remedy,—the remedy devised nothing less than Divine love and power could apply. Man's disobedience was in the moral world what it would be in the natural, if a planet were to wander from its orbit, or the constellations to start from their appointed seats. It was an evil for which the regular constitution of the world had no cure, which nothing but the immediate interposition of Providence could repair.

We learn still further, that as the malignity of sin is so great, and the importance of man's conduct so considerable, the danger of a life of wilful sin must be much more formidable than imagination is apt to paint it. The weight of punishment naturally due to sin must bear some just proportion to its intrinsic malignity, and to the extent of the mischiefs which arise from it. Its punishment must also bear some just proportion to the price which has been paid for our redemption. Terrible must have been the punishment which was bought off at so great a price as the blood

of the Son of God; and terrible must be the punishment which still awaits us, if "we count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing," and forfeit the benefit of that atonement.

Another lesson to be drawn from the doctrine of our redemption is, that man, notwithstanding his present degeneracy, notwithstanding the misery and weakness of his present condition, the depravity of his passions, and the imbecility of his reason, hath nevertheless a capacity of high improvement in intellect and moral worth. For it cannot reasonably be supposed, that so much should be done for the deliverance of a creature from the consequence of its own guilt, of whom it was not understood that it had the capacity of being rendered, by the discipline applied in some future stage at least of its existence, in some degree worthy of its Maker's care and love. The scheme of man's redemption originated, we are told, from God's love of man. In man, in his fallen state, there is nothing which the Divine love could make its object. But the Divine intellect contemplates every part of its creation in the whole extent of its existence; and that future worth of man, to which he shall be raised by the Divine mercy, is such as moved the Divine love to the work of his redemption. For, to say that God had loved a creature which should be unfit to be loved in the whole of its existence, were to magnify the mercy of God at the expence of his wisdom.

But, since all improvement of the intellectual nature must, in some degree, be owing to its own exertions to the purpose of self-improvement, the prospect of the great attainments which the grace of God puts within our reach, ought to excite us to the