ment in the guilty never does repair the wrong. When a criminal is exposed to bodily suffering or to worldly loss, he renders no moral compensation for the injury he has committed. His punishment is the best reparation which his circumstances will allow; but it cannot destroy the injury, or remove the stain. When, therefore, man had paid the penalty of temporal death for his transgression, he did not come back again into the condition from which he had fallen, but was still subject to the final consequences of death, whatever they might be, and his soul was incapable of redeeming itself from them. This points out to us the extreme difficulty of his case, and shows how important it was, that some other agent than himself should undertake the work of his deliverance. It never was in God's contemplation to remit the penalty of temporal death. That was to be borne under all circumstances as perpetuating a remembrance of the fall, of God's indignation against sin, and of the gulph of ruin from which, through the mercy of Christ, he was subsequently to be rescued. Death presents to every mind a frightful and appalling spectacle, and is well calculated to check and overawe the presumptuous folly of man. But death, as it originally stood, without a ray of hope beyond the grave, is infinitely more terrible; for that leaves the soul in a state of despair as to all future blessing.-Now, it was from this death, this hopeless, remediless state of misery and ruin, that man wanted to be rescued; and this rescue was accomplished by the sacrifice of Christ.

It is perfectly clear, that, if natural death, the dissolution of the body, could not effect this object, man had no means of his own of becoming reconciled to God. His life comprehended all that he could offer. It was the most valuable of his endowments. But God exacted this without any remission of his sentence. It required, therefore, something which man could not furnish to pacify the wrath of Heaven, and procure a remission of that fatal punishment, which was comprehended and contained in the judgment of natural death.-Let us see, then, in the next place, in what sense the death of Christ was suitable to his case.

II. Our blessed Lord was a man born out of the ordinary course of human nature, and entirely free both from original and contracted guilt. He not only did not come under the sin of Adam, (because he was not a descendant of his,) but he was, in his moral life and conversation, free from every approach to sin, being holy, harmless, undefiled. As a perfectly innocent man, pure both in body and in mind, he could address God on the same footing as the first created man before his fall. He had, therefore, access to God, as of his own moral worth, being fitted for being. In this condition he God, and offered to become the victim of man's apostacy. To make justice and mercy meet together, punishment to the full extent of the trespass must be inflicted. When justice was satisfied mercy would

converse with a holy presented himself to

prevail, and man could be brought, on the merits of the sufferer, not only to expect pardon and oblivion for all past transgressions, but a restoration to the blessings of futurity which had been completely forfeited. In this we see the distinction between the two attributes. Justice demands the punishment, and that being paid, mercy gives again the privileges which were lost. Christ, therefore, undertook to bear in his own person, the guilt and punishment of sin, as man's proxy, and in man's stead; and so to remove away all the future effects and consequences of sin. His suffering, therefore, was a substitution of the innocent for the guilty; and its object was a plenary satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. It is difficult for the human mind to conceive to itself, or comprise within any limits, the sins and wickedness of a whole world. But nothing is more easy than to see the impossibility of any one man, or number of men, making a proper and sufficient atonement for it. This atonement, however, Christ undertook to offer, and when he died upon the cross, he fully accomplished it. The only objection that has been raised to the doctrine of atonement, is that it supposes God to be governed by passions and interests like our own, and leaves him angry and unappeased, without a full equivalent for the mischief done. But I do not see how perfect justice can be satisfied without an equivalent; for that would not be justice, but mercy, which remitted any part of a deserved punishment. That the sufferings of one man should

be accepted in the place of another, is consonant to what obtains in many transactions of the world, as in the case of hostages, bondmen, and prisoners of war, and is therefore agreeable to the condition in which we live, and to our notions of what is right, and even some departments of nature exhibit specimens of this inverted order of things. But with respect to the atonement made by Christ, it is sufficient, if God, refusing to reinstate man in his original circumstances without some satisfaction being made, and leaving him, in consequence, subject to all the effects of his sinful disobedience, was pleased to accept the mediation and offering of his Son Jesus, and for his sake, and on no other account, to receive him again into favour, and give him the promise of a future and everlasting life. And that this was done, we shall see very clearly if we refer to what the Scriptures declare on the subject of the efficacy of the death of Christ.

St. Paul asserts in clear, forcible, and explicit terms, that all mankind died in Christ, were all buried with Christ, and all rose again with Christ. These bespeak a virtue and efficacy in his sufferings beyond any thing which a mere ordinary death could possibly accomplish. The language is plainly that of substitution, and however figurative, has a significant character attached to it. If we died in Christ, it could only be in the way of proxy, and a proxy is a complete representative of the original. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?"

"Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead." That Christ's death was an atonement and satisfaction to God for man is evident from this, that the power of death was destroyed by it. This is spoken of spiritual death which he is declared to have "abolished." Now death reigned from Adam to Christ in all his terror, having dominion over the souls and bodies of men; but after our blessed Lord's resurrection, when he became the first-fruits of them that slept, it ceased to have this dominion; so that the cause for which man was sentenced to die, was completely removed away. The whole tenour of the Scripture Writings goes to prove, that Christ abrogated the penalty of death due to sin, and set at liberty the souls of men, who, through fear of death, were all their life-time subject to bondage. This is something much more than teaching us how to live, so that we may, each for himself, procure an interest in the mercy of God. It is very much more than dying as an example of patient acquiescence in the divine will. It is altering the state of man altogether, and putting him into a new condition and circumstance of life, Henceforward he became both qualified and enabled to serve God acceptably, as well by the remission of past offences, which gave him a fresh title to the favour of God, as by the new light in which he stood to God, and the aid he received in it towards the fulfilment of his duty. The circumstances are very strongly pointed