If there be one truth connected with the Gospel that is pre-eminently important, and of which we ought to be tenacious, it is the Satisfaction of Christ. Take away this fundamental article of the Christian faith, and we are left without solace and without hope. To what can the sinner look as a ground of forgiveness, who is conscious of the depravity of his nature and the evil of his conduct? In the retrospect of life, there are perhaps few actions on which he can reflect without the anguish of remorse: or should his conduct have been less vitious than others, he will nevertheless feel that his heart is not less corrupt, and that, for the comparatively moral rectitude cognizable by man, he is not indebted to innate purity, but to that goodness which has restrained him from the commission of crimes which have overwhelmed thousands with disgrace. To a sinner awakened from a state of nature to behold the precipice on which he stands, there will appear but a step between him and everlasting ruin. How God can be just, and yet the justifier of the ungodly, is, to him, an inquiry of infinite importance. He sees that the law which he has violated, is holy, and just, and good; that its claims to his regard are founded in benevolence as well as in righteousness-that it prohibits nothing but what is hurtful to his best interests, nor enjoins any thing but what is adapted to facilitate his happiness: and when he further considers its spirituality and extent-the sanction by which it is guarded, and that the truth and faithfulness of God stand pledged to inflict the penalty annexed to transgression, he cannot but feel the terrors of dismay. That awful denunciation, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them,' will sound a perpetual alarm; nor will he find rest, or ease, till by faith he look to Him who hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. When the sinner has a scriptural view of this consolatory fact, he beholds how God can be just, and the justifier of him that believeth. He sees that, in the spotless life and expiatory death of Immanuel, the precepts and penalty of the divine law have their full accomplishment-that, as a perishing sinner, he is not directed to look into himself for moral qualifications that will entitle him to mercy, but to him who said, Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and besides me there is none else a just God and a Saviour. He is convinced that by the deeds of the law no flesh can be justified in God's sight; but that the righteousness of God, without the law is manifested-even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe-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-that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay; but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.' Whatever is not built on this foundation, says a sensible writer, already quoted, 'may satisfy the conscience and comport with the religion of that man, who never saw his guilt in the mirror of God's law; but every hope not founded on the Redeemer's righteousness will prove infinitely presumptuous and dangerous, and nothing give peace to the conscience, but what secures the honour of the broken law, and provides an adequate satisfaction for the inflexible justice of Heaven; and nothing can do either, but the atoning blood of Jesus Christ applied by faith in that gospel testimony which declares, that he who shed it, thought it no robbery to be equal with God, and presented himself on the cross a sinatoning victim to Almighty God. However, therefore, we may admit the dictates of candour respecting some point of doubtful disputation,' and embrace in christian love the differing parties respectively; we can never give up the doctrine of the atonement, without yielding up to our adversaries, at the same time, the very essence of truth, the glory of the gospel, and the only foundation of our hopes and prospects |