It opens a way for the exercise of Divine mercy, encourages sinners to rely on the mercy of God, and awakens in saints pious emotions It affects the divine dispensations toward our world Not inconsistent with God's love to his people - Supposed in the perfection of Christ's priesthood The necessities of God's people require it ib. ib: SECTION I. NATURE OF ATONEMENT. How can man be justified with God? This is the most important, by far, of all the questions that can ever awaken human inquiry. From the universal consciousness of guilt, it may be presumed, that every individual of our race, has, at one time or another, been forced to utter a similar interrogation. The very language in which it is expressed conveys the idea of difficulty; and one can scarce conceive of its being used without being accompa nied, in the countenance of the inquirer, with at least a look of deep anxiety, if not an air of utter despondency. It is a question, too, on which the mind of man, unassisted by revelation, finds itself utterly undone. The light of reason, the lamp of philosophy, the torch of science, have been unable to shed a single ray of hope on this momentous subject; and, left to these, we should have been doomed to the blackness of darkness for ever. Not that there have been no attempts to answer, without the aid of inspiration, the all-momentous question; but the answers have ever been such as were calculated to bewilder and deceive, rather than to quiet the apprehensions of an awakened conscience, or to impart true peace of soul. The utmost that school-men, or philosophers, or natural religionists, have been able to effect in this department, has tended only to apply palliatives to the wounded heart, or to administer stupifying opiates to the patient. Forgers of lies, physicians of no value' were they all, leaving their patients, so soon as the temporary effect of their worthless expedients went off, as ready as ever to exclaim, in mental agony, Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? |