Ess. XI.] Scripture Doctrine of Atonement.

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and of the destruction from which they are extricated. When, therefore, we hail the Lord Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world and the Redeemer of mankind, we hail him, not only as one from whom we derive the most valuable information and instruction, but as one who actually delivers us from the burthen of guilt, from the power of sin, from the tyranny of Satan, and from the bitter pains of eternal death."

Such is the general view which the sacred writers present to us, in general terms, of the purpose of the mission of the Son of God-to SAVE LOST MANKIND.

And now, in order to a fuller understanding of our subject, we may consider the two leading branches of it in succession, and may proceed to examine, in their due order, those scriptural evidences which prove that Jesus Christ came into the world, that he might bestow upon us indemnity, on the one hand, and cure, on the other that he came, in the first place, to make an atonement for our sins, and, in the second place, to procure for us that celestial influence, by which alone we can be regenerated, sanctified, and prepared for heaven.

PART. I.

ON THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.

God, who is rich in mercy, looks down with the compassion of a Father on sinful, wandering, and lost mankind ;—and this is the language in which he graciously addresses them: Repent, return, and live"Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and unto our God, for he will abundantly pardon:" Isa. lv, 7.

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Inefficacy of Repentance alone

[Ess. XI. While, however, the pardon of God is thus graciously bestowed on the transgressor who turns away from his iniquities, and does that which is lawful and right, and while such a change of disposition and conduct is plainly to be regarded as an indispensable condition, without which sinful man can entertain no just hope of salvation; we are not to imagine that repentance and amendment are, in themselves, available to procure us forgiveness, to prevent the fatal consequences of our sins, and to purchase our eternal peace. Such a notion is opposed to the dictates even of natural religion; it is inconsistent with the known course of the providence of God, and it is completely overturned by the declarations of Scripture, and by the revealed principles of the Gospel of Christ.

Natural religion, amidst all her obscurities, may be said to assume the doctrine, that God, who is a Being of absolute purity and justice, is the moral Governor of the world; and that, as such, he will, sooner or later, render unto every man according to his deeds. Now, when we regard the Supreme Being in this point of view, it is impossible for us not to perceive the unreasonableness of the supposition, that a person who has long been accustomed to a life of sin, and who afterwards repents and amends, can, without any satisfaction for past transgressions, be regarded by him in the same light as if he were a perfectly virtuous person who had never offended him. Present obedience does no more than fulfil present obligation; and, in the sight of a perfectly righteous God, there must always be an essential inequality between the partial and the complete fulfilment of the divine law. The difference which subsists between the two supposed cases may be safely brought to the test of the conscience, which when rightly illuminated, and not perverted, is a sure, internal, representative of the mind

to procure Pardon.

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Ess. XI.] of God. Were there a man existing, who had never in the smallest particular, broken the divine law, his conscience would be at perfect rest; "for if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God." But the conscience of the converted sinner has pronounced against him the verdict of guilty; and so far is his change of disposition and conduct from cancelling the record, that the deeper and more effective his penitence, the darker and more indelible are the characters in which that record is written; the more virtuous he becomes, the more he abhors himself for his vice; and the more he is brought to feel his need of some powerful dispensation of mercy, by which independently of any works of his own, his iniquities may be blotted out from the book of God's remembrance.

These plain dictates of reason and conscience derive no slight confirmation from analogy; for, in the course of nature and providence, as it is at present subjected to our observation, the moral government of God is already partially displayed. The spendthrift, the debauchee, and the criminal, may severally repent and amend. Nevertheless, in the ruined fortunes of the first, in the withered constitution of the second, and in the civil punishment of the third, we often perceive the strong practical indication that, under the moral government of our Creator, repentance and amendment are not, in themselves, sufficient to avert the effects of transgression. The effects of which I speak do indeed very usually arise in what is called a natural order; but that natural order is the mere result of the divine will; and in the same order may, very probably, arise also the eternal consequences of sin.

But the truths which are thus taught us, even independently of the aid of revelation, are rendered indis

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The Sacrifice of Christ

[Ess. XI. putable by the light of Scripture. In the sacred Volume, it is plainly recognized, that God is a Being of perfect holiness and justice—that he is "of purer eyes than to behold evil"—that he will by no means acquit the guilty for their own sakes-that, had we perfectly fulfilled his law, we should still be unprofitable servants, without any surplusage of merit—that, not having fulfilled it, but having broken it again and again, we are, by nature, the children of wrath, and are justly liable to the sentence of death pronounced and recorded against us: see Deut. xxxii, 4; Hab. i, 13; Nah. i, 3; Luke xvii, 10; Gal. iii, 10; Eph. ii, 3, &c. And, while the sacred writers plainly declare that forgiveness and salvation are ours, on the condition of repentance and amendment-with equal clearness, and with yet greater frequency, do they promulgate the doctrine, that the free mercies of our God towards us flow only through one appointed channel, and are bestowed upon us, not because we repent; not because we amend; not because we have deserved, or ever can deserve those mercies; but because the Son of God, in pursuance of the counsels of the Father, and in his own voluntary love to man, offered himself up on the cross as an atonement or propitiatory sacrifice, for the sins of the whole world. "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood; to declare his righteousness, for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus :" Rom. iii, 23-26.

It is in express reference to his propitiatory sacrifice, that Jesus Christ is declared, by one of his apostles,

Ess. XI.]

Foreordained;

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to have been "foreordained before the foundation of the world," 1 Pet. i, 19, 20; and when another apostle describes our Lord, as the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, Rev. xiii, 8; he obviously alludes to the same original appointment of divine mercy. Before the creation of man, his fall was foreknown, and his recovery, through a Mediator, was preordained of God. In the eternal counsels of divine wisdom and love, it was predestinated, as we clearly learn from these passages of Scripture, that the blood of the Lamb-and that alone-was to cleanse from sin. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that the promise of a Redeemer should have immediately succeeded the fall of our first parents, see Gen, iii, 15; and that this promise should appear to have been accompanied or followed by the institution of an external rite, well adapted to the measure of illumination thus bestowed upon mankind, and calculated to point out, in a palpable and significant manner, the death merited by sin, on the one hand, and the atonement appointed to avert that death, on the other.

That the sacrifice of animals, as a ceremony of worship, was a practice which originated in the institution of the Supreme Being himself, is rendered extremely probable, in the first place, by the nearly universal prevalence of that practice, in all ages, throughout the known world. The uniform sense of mankind, that, in order to deprecate divine wrath, sin must be not only repented of, but expiated, may indeed be traced to the light of reason, and to the operation of conscience; but that, in order to this expiation, the harmless animal was to be slaughtered, and his blood poured over the altar of the offended deity, that this was to be the mode in which the wrath of the gods was to be deprecated, and the punishment of the transgressor averted,-appears to