template that overwhelming scene without feeling that it places him under a solemn obligation to renounce every iniquity.

5. We are thus led to contemplate another feature of the doctrine of the atonement. While the death of Jesus has this important relation to the principles and procedures of the Divine administration, it is also designed to exert a powerful moral influence on the human heart, turning it away from its selfishness and love of sin, subduing it to penitence, and when Christ has been embraced, and the new life of the Spirit has been imparted, constraining it to cultivate universal holiness, and especially to imitate the Saviour's self-sacrificing love. Several of the passages which have been adduced illustrate this view; and our conception of the doctrine of the atonement would be manifestly incomplete if it did not comprehend it. It was a part of the Divine counsel, that the very method of our forgiveness should be the means of impressing on us the vileness of a sinful course, and of engaging us to strive after perfect purity and goodness. And such is the influence which the scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary are calculated to exert on the thoughtful mind.

This moral influence of the death of Jesus has been dwelt upon by some as forming the one essential element in the doctrine of the atonement. But while it is an important feature of that doctrine, it would be a serious error so to fix attention upon it as to pass over or cast into the shade the expiatory character of the Saviour's death. We have seen that the declarations of our Lord and His Apostles clearly imply His substitution for our sinful race, and that His death was a propitiatory sacrifice offered unto God for us. The moral theory of the atonement, as opposed to the doctrine of expiation, is open to two grave objections. It leaves out of view the unique character of the death of Jesus. If that death is only the most sublime instance of self-sacrifice, then, though it would stand pre-eminent, it would not stand alone. But it does stand alone,-a fact which we recognise as often as we gather round His table, and partake of the appointed emblems of His body and blood. The

other objection is, that it leaves out of view the important relation of the death of Jesus to the principles and procedures of the Divine government. That death, as we have seen, is the objective ground on which God remits the sins of all who make Christ their own by a self-renouncing faith; and it forms a declaration to the whole Universe of the essential righteousness of the Divine administration, and the hatred to sin by which it is characterised, even when the returning penitent is welcomed to the Divine favour, and invested with all the privileges of righteousness.

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This last consideration is fatal to some other theories of the atonement, as that our Lord simply came into collision with the world's evil, and bore the penalty of that daring.' These theories we need not discuss at length. The Scriptural evidence of the propitiatory character of the Redeemer's death is ample and conclusive. And this only will account for the deep and overwhelming anguish which came upon Him in Gethsemane, and as He hung upon the cross. While many of His faithful servants have passed through the fires of martyrdom with holy triumph, sustained by His abounding grace, and the bright hope of an eternal union with Him, His spirit bent beneath an unutterable weight of sorrow, and His exclamation on the cross, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani,' revealed the depth of His inward anguish. Nothing can explain this but the truth that 'He bare our sins in His body on the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MEDIATOR IN HIS STATE OF EXALTATION.

THE humiliation of the Lord Jesus Christ, which reached its

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the cross, was followed, according to the Divine counsel, by His exaltation, as the Mediator, to the highest glory and the amplest dominion. It was not possible,' as the Apostle Peter affirmed on the day of Pentecost, 'that He should be holden of death.' All the suffering which was to come upon Him as the Representative and Substitute of our guilty race had been actually endured; the way had been opened for the justification of all who should receive Him, in perfect accordance with the principles of the Divine administration; and the scheme of human redemption required that the sufficiency and the Divine acceptance of the atonement should be proclaimed by His release from death, and that He should be enthroned as the Mediator, and sway a sceptre of unfailing righteousness and grace.

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The transition from our Lord's state of humiliation to His state of exaltation was His resurrection from the dead. When He came forth from the tomb, He was no longer the Man of sorrows.' The burden which had rested upon His spirit, all through His earthly course, and the full weight of which pressed upon Him in Gethsemane and on Calvary, was now removed. The cup of trembling and anguish had been drunk. He was no more to undergo humiliation or to endure pain. His sacred body, too, was now in a state of incipient, but not yet perfect, glorification. He partook of food repeatedly with His Apostles, to assure them of the reality of His resurrection, and He called upon them to touch Him that they might be con

vinced that it was He Himself, who had died on Calvary, that addressed them: but many incidents recorded by the sacred historians show that His body was not now subject to the ordinary conditions of humanity. The forty days which He spent on earth were marked by repeated manifestations of Himself to His Apostles, and by important conversations with them on the things concerning the kingdom of God'; but they were not like 'the days of His flesh,' which preceded the suffering of the cross. And when these days had expired, He was 'taken up' into heaven, and ‘a cloud received Him out of their sight.'

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In His exalted state our Lord sustains the three offices to which we have adverted as combined in His sacred Person. He is the Prophet of His Church, in the sense which we have already explained. He is a Priest upon His throne. With His own completed sacrifice He has gone for us into the heavenly sanctuary, and ever lives to present that sacrifice, and on the ground of it to make intercession for our race, and especially for those who come unto God through Him. And He dispenses blessing; His priesthood is distinguished by the power of an indissoluble and unfailing life; and in every age He is able to save His people to the uttermost.' The exercise of His priesthood, too, is marked by circumstances which evince His dignity and authority. The high priest of Israel could only go for a few moments, on one day of the year, into the holy of holies; and he stood to sprinkle the blood of the appointed victims on the mercy-seat and before it. For him to have sat down in that most sacred spot would have been an act of awful presumption; and to have sat down at the right hand of the mercy-seat, over which the shekinah appeared, would have been unutterable profanity. But the Lord Jesus abides in the true holy of holies. He is enthroned there. He has 'sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens'; and thus is the abiding and changeless efficacy of His sacrifice impressively declared.

For the Lord Jesus reigns in heaven as the Sovereign of the mediatorial economy. 'All authority,' He Himself declared,

when He gave His final commission to His Apostles, hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth.'

The sovereignty of our Lord has an important relation to His Church. Its laws and institutions rest on His authority. It is His prerogative to call and qualify men to serve Him in the Christian ministry. The discipline, too, which should be maintained in the Church, in order to conserve its purity and promote its efficiency, must be simply the application to individual cases of the principles which He has laid down. No power entrusted to any human minister can be used to gratify personal feeling without a violation of fidelity to Him.

The sovereignty of our Lord is exercised also over the world. The affairs of nations are under His control. His administration, indeed, leaves ample scope for the free will of man, and sometimes permits events to occur which to us are mysterious and perplexing; but He subordinates all things to the ultimate triumph of His cause. He rules in the midst of His enemies,' often baffling their designs, and making the events which seemed most adverse to the interests of His kingdom subservient to its welfare. To Him, also, we may look up as exercising a providential care over all men, and especially over those who give themselves to Him in humble faith and sincere devotion.

And the lordship of the Redeemer extends to the whole Uni

verse.

His own words, which we have already cited, imply this. The declarations of His Apostles on this subject are comprehensive and emphatic. St. Paul affirms that the Father hath 'made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and hath put all things in subjection under His feet' (Ephes. i. 20, 22). And St. Peter teaches us that Jesus Christ is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him' (1 Peter iii. 22).

In contemplating the sovereignty with which our glorified Lord is invested, it is important to remember that it is medi