sentiments of supreme devotion and attachment, to which he is entitled as the Saviour of the world, combine to strengthen our veneration for the law; nor can we pretend to any portion of the mind of Christ, but just in proportion to our practical regard to the law of God, as holy, just, and good. The more intimately our affections are united to Christ, the more, to speak in Scripture language, he dwells in our hearts by faith, the more will the beauty of holiness attract the heart, and the deformity of sin be the object of our aversion. As the love of Christ is the master-principle in the Christian system, so its operation must invariably coincide with the claims of divine authority; because it is the love of a personage who was distinguished from all others by a constant compliance with its dictates, and a most ardent devotion to its honour. Think not that I am come to subvert the law or the prophets: I am come not to subvert, but to ratify. For, verily I say unto you, heaven and earth shall sooner perish than one iota or one tittle of the law shall perish without attaining its end.* In such terms as these did our Saviour assert the intrinsic excellence and unalterable perpetuity of the law of God; by which he has instructed us in the true nature of his sacrifice, which was designed, not merely to appease wrath, but to satisfy justice; not merely to relieve misery, but to expiate guilt. It is of the utmost importance that it should be indelibly engraved on our minds, that Christ died, not merely to rescue us from the ruin which we had incurred, but from the punishment which we had merited; since our gratitude for the provisions of mercy will be exactly proportioned to the conviction we feel of the perfect equity of that sentence from which it exempts us. In this view we are unspeakably indebted to our great Deliverer for so zealously asserting the honours of that law which cost him so dear.

The penitent believer is now under no temptation to indulge depreciating thoughts of the immutable excellence and obligation of that rule of duty which he has so frequently and awfully violated.

Seventhly. That the voluntary substitution of an innocent person in the stead of the guilty, may be capable of answering the ends of justice, nothing seems more necessary than that the substitute should be of equal consideration, at least, to the party in whose behalf he interposes. The interests sacrificed by the suffering party should not be of less cost and value than those which are secured by such a procedure.

But the aggregate value of those interests must be supposed to be in some proportion to the rank and dignity of the party to which they belong. As a sacrifice to justice, the life of a peasant must, on this principle, be deemed a most inadequate substitute for that of a personage of the highest order. We should consider the requisitions of justice eluded, rather than satisfied, by such a commutation. It is on this ground that St. Paul declares it to be impossible for the blood of bulls and of goats to take away sins; the intrinsic meanness of the brute creation being such, that a victim taken from thence could be of

*Matt. v. 18. Dr. Campbell's version.

no consideration in the eyes of offended justice. They were qualified to exhibit, as he reminds us, a remembrance of sin every year, but are utterly unequal to the expiation of its guilt.

In this view, the redemption of the human race seemed to be hopeless; and their escape from merited destruction, on any principles connected with law and justice, absolutely impossible. For where could an adequate substitute be found? Where, among the descendants of Adam, partakers of flesh and blood, could one be selected of such pre-eminent dignity and worth, that his oblation of himself should be deemed a fit and proper equivalent to the whole race of man? to say nothing of the impossibility of finding there a spotless victim (and no other could be accepted). Who is there that ever possessed that prodigious superiority in all the qualities which aggrandize their possessor to every other member of the human family, which shall entitle him to be the representative, either in action or in suffering, of the whole human race? In order to be capable of becoming a victim, he must be invested with a frail and mortal nature; but the possession of such a nature reduces him to that equality with his brethren, that joint participation of meanness and infirmity, which totally disqualifies him for becoming a substitute. Here a dilemma presents itself from which there seems no possibility of escape. If man is left to encounter the judicial effects of his sentence, his ruin is sealed and certain. If he is to be redeemed by a substitute, that substitute must possess contradictory attributes, a combination of qualities not to be found within the compass of human nature. He must be frail and mortal, or he cannot die a sacrifice; he must possess ineffable dignity, or he cannot merit as a substitute.

Such were the apparently insurmountable difficulties which obstructed the salvation of man by any methods worthy of the divine character; such the darkness and perplexity which involved his prospects, that it is more than probable the highest created intelligence would not have been equal to the solution of the question, How shall man be just with God?

The mystery hid from ages and generations, the mystery of Christ crucified dispels the obscurity, and presents in the person of the Redeemer all the qualifications which human conception can imbody as contributing to the perfect character of a substitute. By his participation of flesh and blood he becomes susceptible of suffering, and possesses within himself the materials of a sacrifice. By its personal union with the eternal word, the sufferings sustained in a nature thus assumed acquired an infinite value, so as to be justly deemed more than equivalent to the penalty originally denounced.

His assumption of the human nature made his oblation of himself possible; his possession of the divine rendered it efficient; and thus weakness and power, the imperfections incident to a frail and mortal creature, and the exemption from these, the attributes of time and those of eternity, the elements of being the most opposite, and deduced from opposite worlds, equally combined to give efficacy to his character as the Redeemer, and validity to his sacrifice. They constitute a person

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who has no counterpart in heaven or on earth, who may be most justly denominated "Wonderful;" composed of parts and features of which (however they may subsist elsewhere in a state of separation,) the combination and union nothing short of infinite wisdom could have conceived, or infinite power effected. The mysterious constitution of the person of Christ, the stupendous link which unites God and man, and heaven and earth; that mystic ladder, on which the angels of God ascended and descended, whose foot is on a level with the dust, and whose summit penetrates the inmost recesses of an unapproachable splendour, will be, we have reason to believe, through eternity, the object of profound contemplation and adoring wonder.

In ascribing the sufficiency and efficacy of the atonement made by our Saviour to the pre-eminent dignity of his person as the Son of God, we are justified by the direct testimony of Scripture, which is wont to unite these together in such juxtaposition as plainly implies their intimate and inseparable relation to each other.

We have already seen that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews founds the insufficiency of the victims under the law to take away sin on their inherent meanness, with which he contrasts the validity of the atonement made by Christ: a mode of reasoning, the force of which entirely depends on his superior dignity and worth. After asserting that the blood of bulls and of goats could not take away sin, he adds, Then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. Above, when he said, Sacrifice, and offering, and burnt-offerings for sin thou wouldst not, neither hadst pleasure therein which are offered by the law; then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first that he may establish the second. Adverting to the acknowledged fact that the blood of bulls and of goats availed to the purifying of the flesh, in other words, to the removal of ceremonial pollutions, he adds, How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your consciences from dead works to serve the living and true God?

All must acknowledge that the purification of the conscience from dead works, that is, the pardon of sin and peace with God, is an infinitely greater benefit than the removal of legal disabilities under the ceremonial law; but the apostle teaches us to expect from the sacrifice of Christ this incomparably greater benefit with a much firmer assurance than that with which the pious Jew anticipated the less. The blood of Jesus Christ his Son, St. John assures us, cleanseth us from all sin. If St. Peter has occasion to enforce the obligation of shunning the pollutions of the world, the argument he makes use of for that purpose is derived from the value of that blood which was shed for their redemption, in comparison to which all the treasures of earth are consigned to contempt. Forasmuch as ye know, is his language, ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

As the whole provision of a Saviour originated in the gracious purpose of God, it is with the utmost propriety that he is denominated his gift; the transcendent greatness of which is frequently brought forward as a demonstration of the ineffable extent of his love. God so loved the world as to give his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him might not perish, but have everlasting life. In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the

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pitiation for our sins. But since he was given to be a propitiatory sacrifice, the same intrinsic dignity and excellence which heightened the value of the gift must have contributed in an equal degree to ensure the validity and sufficiency of the sacrifice.

Though many have presumed to call in question and even to deny the divinity of our Saviour, I am not aware that there are any who embrace that fundamental doctrine who hesitate for a moment respecting the intrinsic validity of his sacrifice, or who entertain a doubt of the sufficiency of such a provision to satisfy the claims of justice and vindicate the honours of a broken law. There is something so stupendous in the voluntary humiliation and death of Him who claims to be the onlybegotten of the Father, the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, that to convince us of the fact the most powerful and unequivocal testimony is indispensably necessary; but to be convinced of the validity and sufficiency of such a sin-offering for all the purposes for which an offering can be made, to perceive it to be the most ample vindication of the moral attributes of God, in consistence with the pardon of sin and the salvation of sinners, no effort is necessary whatever such a persuasion insinuates itself with the greatest ease, and takes the firmest possession of the mind. He that spared not his own Son, but freely gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

It is observable that the ineffable grace of God in the communication of spiritual blessings is not more celebrated by the inspired penmen than the stupendous method in which they are imparted. That eternal life should be bestowed on sinful men is the subject of their devout admiration; but that it should be bestowed at such a cost is still more so. They appear to conceive it impossible for such an apparatus to terminate in a less glorious result.

A cold and skeptical philosophy may, I am aware, suggest specious cavils against the doctrines of revelation on this subject; cavils which derive all their force, not from the superior wisdom of their authors, but solely from the inadequacy of human reason to the full comprehension of heavenly mysteries. But still there is a simple grandeur in the fact, that God has set forth his Son to be a propitiation, sufficient to silence the impotent clamours of sophistry, and to carry to all serious and humble men a firm conviction that the law is exalted, and the justice of God illustriously vindicated and asserted by such an expedient. To minds of that description, the immaculate purity of the divine character, its abhorrence of sin, and its inflexible adherence to

moral order will present themselves in the cross in a more impressive light than in any other object.

Eighthly. However much we might be convinced of the competence of vicarious suffering to accomplish the ends of justice, and whatever the benefits we may derive from it, a benevolent mind could never be reconciled to the sight of virtue of the highest order finally oppressed and consumed by its own energies; and the more intense the admiration excited the more eager would be the desire of some compensatory arrangement, some expedient by which an ample retribution might be assigned to such heroic sacrifices. If the suffering of the substitute involved his destruction, what satisfaction could a generous and feeling mind derive from impunity procured at such a cost? When David, in an agony of thirst, longed for the waters of Bethlehem, which some of his servants immediately procured for him with the extreme hazard of their lives, the monarch refused to taste it, exclaiming, It is the price of blood! but poured it out before the Lord. The felicity which flows from the irreparable misery of another, and more especially of one whose disinterested benevolence alone exposed him to it, will be faintly relished by him who is not immersed in selfishness. If there be any portions of history whose perusal affords more pure and exquisite delight than others, they are those which present the spectacle of a conflicting and self-devoted virtue, after innumerable toils and dangers undergone in the cause, enjoying a dignified repose in the bosom of the country which its example has ennobled and its valour saved. Such a spectacle gratifies the best propensities, satisfies the highest demands of our moral and social nature. It affords a delightful glimpse of the future and perfect economy of retributive justice.

In the plan of human redemption this requisition is fully satisfied. While we accompany the Saviour through the successive stages of his mortal sojourning, marked by a corresponding succession of trials, each of which was more severe than the former, till the scene darkened, and the clouds of wrath from Heaven and from earth pregnant with materials which none but a divine hand could have collected, discharged themselves on him in a deluge of agony and of blood under which he expired; we perceive at once the sufficiency, I had almost said the redundancy, of the atonement.

But surely deliverance even from the wrath to come would afford an imperfect enjoyment if it were imbittered with the recollection that we were indebted for it to the irreparable destruction of our compassionate Redeemer. The consolation arising from reconciliation with God is subject to no such deduction. While we rejoice in the cross of Christ as the source of pardon, our satisfaction is heightened by beholding it succeeded by the crown; by seeing him that was for a little while made lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, seated at the right-hand of God, thence expecting till his enemies are made his footstool.

Thus, whether we contemplate the economy of redemption as a divine expedient for reconciling the moral attributes of Deity with man's salvation, or, in its final result to the Saviour himself, it is