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childishly erroneous; that Law has not her seat in "the bosom of God;" and that the voice of Law is not "the harmony of the world ?"

Besides, could a charge of this kind be more out of place at one time than at another, it must be most out of place when the very scheme under consideration is one which reconciles justice with mercy, the honour of the Lawgiver with the pardon of the culprit.

IV. Our antagonists appeal, in the second place, to the Scriptures; but, if we mistake not, they misinterpret the oracle of the temple no less than that of the human breast. The close of the last division has brought us up to this, in which we have to turn the scriptural argument point blank against the foe.

In most of their disquisitions a consciousness of weakness betrays itself. Very seldom is their understanding of the Scriptures given in distinct and palpable propositions; very seldom is it urged that the sense of a passage can only be what they affirm. They are "instant with loud voices" in rejecting the popular belief; but their voices, usually, sink into low whispers when anything positive has to be substituted for it. It is suggested, it is hinted, it is implied, that certain words might bear another meaning, and that there is no absolute necessity for reading them in the ordinary light. "It is well to remember," says Mr. Davies, "that 'for' may mean in 'behalf of' as well as instead of.'" Why may not justification by faith have meant the peace of the mind? writes Dr. Williams. We shall not imitate this style. In contrast to it, we make a distinct proposition, and it is, that the Atonement is the great subject of the Scriptures from first to last.

In the hands of the repudiators, as far as we can see, the Scriptures have no great subject; the keystone is removed, and the arch is allowed to fall into dislocated fragments. With us, to change the figure, revelation is one heaven-enacted drama, of which the minor events are in subordinate connection with the greater; and every lesson and every sentiment is in harmony with every other, because they all depend upon the great central fact.

The Scriptures naturally divide themselves into Old and New Testaments, or into the part which preceded, and the part which followed, the death of JESUS CHRIST.

Before the death of JESUS CHRIST, the Atonement was forthshadowed by that marvellous system of sacrificial worship, which, it is most important to remember, never had anything like it in the world. Undeniable it is, and so we have already shown, that nations as well as individuals have proved the idea of some vicarious endurance to be by no means repugnant to their reason or their instinct. Yet no man ever invented a typification of it like the Mosaic ritual. The "perfection of beauty," and the "beauties of holiness," are by the Hebrew psalmist claimed for the worship.

as well as for the God of Israel. The claim was just. The wisest and mightiest empires had no such ceremonial; nay, the wisest and the mightiest were frequently the worst in this respect. It was not merely that the Hebrew service surpassed theirs œconomically; or that the provisions made in it for order, health, humanity, and purity, united with the utmost majesty and delight, derivable from dress, music, and perfume, were of unrivalled excellence, but the moral spirit of the whole was yet more transcendant. In truth, the mysteries of Egypt, Phoenicia, and their cognates, could hardly be said to have any soul at all. They offered many sacrifices; they spilt the blood even of their children; but by these sacrifices they sought only fugitive and worldly ends; by the forms of animals they typified the attributes of gods; but by these signs, instead of making divine things comprehensible, they made bestial things divine. Cruelty and lust darkened some Pagan institutions more than others; want of purpose nullified them all. different the aspect of the Hebrew liturgy!

How

Though so multifarious in its enactments, it was united in a system the most regular, and spoke a language the most definite. With regard to its system, its offerings were no doubt both expiatory and eucharistic; but the former, from Abel and Cain downwards, were evermore prior and superior to the latter, and in the Mosaic code were connected with acts and objects of the most diverse kinds. When the morning opened and the evening closed the day; when the three great seasons brought round their historical recollections and their annual fruitage; when a child was born and when a dead man was buried; when a leper was cleansed and a Nazarite's vow concluded; when the high priest was inaugurated, and the tabernacle completed; when private sins were remembered, and when, in the great day of atonement, the high priest solemnly interceded for the whole nation, again and again took place that bloodshedding, which testified, that, in all he used, enjoyed, and did, man, to be acceptable, must have some propitiation.

The Hebrew system in this view was one of perpetual confession; and therefore, as St. Paul calls it, a ministration of condemnation and of death.

But this system had another utterance: it spoke not only of man's forfeiture, but of a divinely appointed substitution. And how? In various ways, each of which by easy gradations would lead every inquirer, who under a gracious influence was made conscious of his guilt and danger, to a recognition of the glorious truth.

This inquirer would, no doubt, to a certain extent, anticipate the Epistle to the Hebrews; he would feel, that the blood of bulls and goats could not take away the sins of an immortal creature ; he would see, that their very repetition implied inadequacy. So too, as on the one side God spoke in the utmost disparagement * *See Ps. 1. 9; li. 16; Is. i. 11; lxvi. 1, 2, 3; Jer. vi. 20;. vii. 21, 22; Micah vi. 7. Vol. 59.-No. 275.

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of sacrifices offered without faith and obedience, and upon the other said so much of that blood, which was to be sprinkledalmost everywhere, but on the threshold where it could be trodden on, it would naturally occur that these sacrifices were nothing in themselves, but most important in something which they signified.

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A further increase of light might be afforded by the very terms, translated into atone and " atonement." To atone, we allow, in Shakespeare means to make at one. "I did atone my countryman and you." But not so its original; that original, both in sense and form, survives in our term cover; and if these imperfect sacrifices had the power of covering his person and his sins beneath the eye of God, a thoughtful man must have seen in them and through them an efficacy, which was not of them.

But yet more, the various indications of the Divine Atonement converging from the Hebrew types, would be understood not indirectly only, but directly also. The Psalmist and the Prophets employed such expressions respecting Him who was to come, the great hope of Israel,* that the connection between the Messiah' and the sacrifice must have been established, and a clear light reflected by each upon the other. Nor this alone; but if our Lord, with respect to His parables, gave private interpretations, which, except in one or two instances, are not recorded, we may conclude that the prophets were both able and willing to communicate to the spiritual Israel an outline of the truth, which the New Testament would afterwards fill up. Of Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah,† their knowledge of the Saviour is expressly intimated, and what was true of them must likewise have been true of all their gracious co-religionists.

Much might be added here, especially (to use a painter's phrase) of that revival of tints and forms, which, in their poetry and fragmentary history, seems purposely maintained by the sacred writers. So peculiar is the manner in which the personal narratives of Joseph, Moses, and David, and the national ones of the deliverances from Egypt and Babylon are introduced and alluded to, that they repeatedly produce sweet concords with the great theme of inspiration, which is the Atonement. As by the flowers chosen in modern Italy to welcome its returning freedom, the same national colours are presented to the eye, though with an endless diversity of shapes, thus the temporal subjects of the Hebrews have frequently an agreement with the eternal subject of redemption, which is no less beautiful than evidently designed.

* See Ps. cx. 4; Ps. lxxxix. 50; (indirectly this shows that the bosom of the true David shields God's honour and the church's welfare); Isaiah liii. passim; Dan. ix. 26; Zech. iii. 9; Zech. xiii. 1,7. Dr. Williams, indeed, after Bunsen, applies Isa. liii. primarily to Jeremiah;

then to Israel to be acknowledged "in some sense still a Messiah!" But see Magee, No. 42; and remember the Ethiopian Eunuch and Lord Rochester.

+ See John viii. 56; John xii. 41; Acts ii. 31; Heb. viii. 5; xi. 26; 1 Pet. i. 11.

This argument, however, may be appropriated and diverted by our opponents: let us then turn to the New Testament.

On opening the Gospels, we find a portrait, in the drawing of which not the slightest art appears, and which is yet so perfect. and so original, that the highest art, learning only from what it sees, never could have drawn it. It is the portrait of JESUS CHRIST; of Jesus Christ teaching, Jesus Christ living, and Jesus Christ suffering. In teaching, Jesus Christ cleared and vindicated the moral law; in living, He so exemplified His teaching, that even the world acknowledges a Christian or Christ-like life to be the very best; but in suffering, He achieved the great end of His mission: He died instead of man, whose nature He had assumed.

The repudiators, indeed, suggest other ends (to be presently considered); but the gospels assuredly point to this, and this alone. They relate, that when His herald John the Baptist first beheld Him, he exclaimed, linking the Old Testament and the New, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world" (not of the Jews only); they relate, that when Moses (for the law), and Elijah (for the prophets), were transfigured by His transfiguration, they spake of His decease, which He should" ACCOMPLISH at Jerusalem;" they relate, that Jesus especially, when the time drew near, repeatedly pressed this subject on his disciples' unwilling ears; they relate, that when He was dying, He cried, "It is finished!" and that at the word the veil of the temple, representing all its shadowy ritual, was torn asunder; they relate, that after His resurrection He caused the hearts of His hearers to burn within them by His divine exposition of the same blessed theme. Besides this, when they mentioned our Lord's saying, "If ye seek me, let these go their way," and how Caiaphas had given counsel to the Jews, "that it was expedient that one man should die for the people;" and when they describe the zeal with which Jesus went up to be crucified; and when, in sooth, they devote so large a space of their records to His sufferings and death, they, in our judgment, show how present to their minds was the idea of an atonement, and how dominant it was. We grant, that with a little ingenuity every one of these points may be differently understood: a crown may be used for a footstool, and a robe for a napkin; but if, on attaining a certain elevation you see a number of rivers flowing into one ocean, you feel but small interest in the suggestion of their being possibly all lost in desert sands, or evaporated from inland lakes.

With the law and gospels, apostolic preaching and apostolic writing, according to their record in the Acts and the Epistles, exactly coincide. It is not, indeed, in the Acts, any more than in the epistles, that we should expect to find repeated and similar declarations of the one great fact. The results of the Atonement were multiform and manifold; and as the apostles are immediately concerned with them, so they speak or write of it. Thus, after

the resurrection, they naturally depict the glory which the Messiah purchased by His sufferings, and explain how unlike that glory was to any in this lower sphere, for it consisted in His being an eternal Saviour, and granting to His Israel "repentance and forgiveness of sins." In their missives to the churches they advert to the Atonement in several different ways, because they have in view several different objects. The wisdom of God; the love of God; the heinousness of sin; the consummation of the types; the example of self-devotion; the fulfilment of the prophecies; the groundwork of pure motives,-these are some of the topics which give occasion for allusions, bright as the star-flowers of heaven, and various as the flower-stars of earth. Of these allusions we can select but a very few: "Christ died for the ungodly;" "Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust;" "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of .99 66 many;" "who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree;" "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin;" "in whom we have redemption through His blood;" "who loved me and gave Himself for me;" ""Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners;" "who hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood." In studying such sentences as these, together and apart, the impression made, on us at least, is distinct and deep: it is the apostles here speak of a single and unprecedented act, complete in its efficiency, and exclusive in the person of its accomplisher, an act which, foreshown by many types, and predicted by many prophecies, combines and terminates in the Cross, the vast dome of revelation. And well is it that it does so; man feels his corruption, and suspects his guilt, but of his redemption knows nothing without a Bible.

Time would be wasted here did we dwell long on the strange allegation, which some repudiators have wished to base upon the circumstances of the apostle's ever speaking of our being reconciled to God, and never of God's being reconciled to us.* The reason of this diction is too obvious for an argument. The Atonement, which God has Himself provided, is in his judgment "very good." In this sense then He is reconciled. All which now remains to be done, is for us, the other party, to accept of this Atonement. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die;" but the soul that believeth, it shall live. God, therefore, and His ministers appeal to us, and implore us to become through Christ no less cordially reconciled to God than He to us.

V. Having refused to acknowledge the Atonement as the end of our Lord's death and passion, our opponents have been compelled to substitute other ends. We will now notice some from amongst

*Perhaps Heb. ii. 17, which agrees with Dan. ix. 24, refers to God, not to us. But in every other passage the appeal is made to us. Alford, in an ex

cellent note, cites an explanation of this fact from Dielitzsch, the latter clause of which is more subtle than the case requires.

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