tion of all mankind, or whether we must still shut our minds into the dark and contracted theory of a limited atonement, judge ye. The fact that all do not embrace it, is no proof that it is not sufficient for all. The efficacy of a medicine is not to be measured by the number of patients cured by it; nor the extent of a king's prerogative to pardon, by the number of criminals actually reprieved.

I have thus exhibited what I conceive to be the most important elements of the Christian atonement, as a gracious, propitiatory, necessary, vicarious, moral, sufficient, and unlimited provision, for the salvation of

men.

May I have your attention a moment longer, to advert to the importance of sound scriptural views on this subject.

Unless men regard the atonement as a purely gracious gift of the Godhead, and entirely divest their minds of every thing like a feeling of revenge in the Father venting itself on the sinner's substitute, the doctrine will in their eyes cast such a cloud over the divine character as to induce them to reject it. This has been the most fruitful cause of its rejection, to so melancholy an extent, in this region. Still men must see this atonement to be propitiatory, not as disposing but as procuring the divine propitiousness, lest they profanely approach God in their sins out of Christ, and so be consumed with the breath of his just indignation.

Again, unless men see this atonement to be necessary for their salvation, it is so much more gratifying to pride and self-dependence to be saved without it,

and trust

that men will be tempted to shun the cross, in the unbought mercy of God. This is the religion of pride, and prepares not the heart for the song of redeeming love.

Again, if men fail to apprehend the vicariousness of the atonement, and regard it as a mere reconcilement of sinners to God by the holy example, teaching, and martyr-death of Jesus, they will feel that they are to be saved by him in no other essential sense than by Paul and Peter and all other martyrs for the truth ;— along with the offence of the cross, will the power and glory of it depart, leaving the burdened soul, instead of resting by faith on him who bore the penalty of its sins in his body on the tree, to fall back upon its own miserable resources, to grope forever in darkness and legal bondage.

It is also of the highest importance that men should see this atonement to be strictly a moral equivalent. For if they adopt the commercial, the imputative, or any similar view, they are, by consistency, plunged into the vortex of Universalism or Antinomianism, on the one side, or cramped into the ungracious triangle of the limitarian theory, on the other. The latter is undoubtedly the safest, because the only orthodox alternative, in this dilemma, but the dilemma itself should be avoided, and the foot of man be set, where God has put it, in a large place.

Equally important is it, that this atonement be seen to be sufficient. Otherwise, the man most deeply convicted of sin, who most of all needs encouragement to come to Christ for salvation, will be the first to des

pair. The convicted sinner, in the exact degree of his conviction, will either resort to penances to make up for the supposed deficiency in the atonement, or conclude that sinners of less guilt may be saved, but not he. Unhappy man!-Let the door of his heart be entered; let the charming voice of Jesus be heard there, saying in those thrilling tones of grace, Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be whiter than snow. Then it is that the light of the cross beams gladness on the soul;—not in stinted measure, like "the pale and wan sunshine of a winter's day," but in the full noontide flood of a summer's glories, carrying warmth and life through all the icy chambers of the heart.

And finally, this atonement can never exert its full power, until it is seen to have been made for the whole world. To view it as a limited provision, tends to prevent the sinner from coming to Christ, with the apprehension that the atonement may not have been made for him; and after he has come to Christ, and found acceptance, it tends to restrict his prayers and his efforts for the salvation of all men. Every sinner on the face of the earth ought to know, that an atonement has been made for him, and will forever stand charged to his account in heaven; and every Christian ought to know, that an atonement has also been made, by the same agonies and death of Jesus, for every other sinner, that he may, with a whole soul, give his sympathies and prayers and efforts, to reclaim a bloodbought world to God.

In conclusion, I remark, that to these unembarrassed, scriptural, elevated views of the atonement, with its

redeeming power over the human character, all things are tending. The church will come up out of the wilderness, leaning on her beloved. Long and gloomy has been her march. Impeded by errors, sins, and distractions within, and by a scoffing world without, how often has she been cast down and almost destroyed in the way, by the deserved judgments of her God. Still hath God loved her, for Jesus' sake. He remembers Gethsemane, he remembers Calvary. spectacle from which the sun hid his face at noonday, will never be forgotten in heaven-never cease from the heart of God, and by the price he puts upon the death of his own Son, will he make his cause glorious in all the earth.

The

Amid the upturnings and changes of time, the rise and fall of philosophers, the alternations of superstition and infidelity, and the trials and afflictions of the church, THERE STANDS THE CROSS-the same glorious monument of God's everlasting mercy, looking serenely down on the troubled scene, and ever beaming with the same ineffable lustre. There it will stand, till all shall see it, and feel its glorious power;-till the rainbow of love, spanning the heavens around it, shall light up hope in every human bosom, and a ransomed world joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom it has received the atonement.

CHAPTER VII.

PROOF OF THE ATONEMENT.

In the preceding chapter I have endeavored to explain the nature of the Christian atonement. I now propose to exhibit the proof of it. It is said that the doctrine of a satisfaction made to the divine government for our sins by the blood of Christ, appears only, if at all, in a few isolated passages of the New Testament, which are susceptible of some other meaning; whereas, so important a doctrine, if true, would be the burden of the entire Bible. Here then we join issue. I propose to prove, as summarily as possible, that this doctrine is taught throughout the Bible, and is indeed the burden of that book. It will be seen to be the universal sentiment of the Scriptures, that not a soul ever was or ever will be saved from our world, but by the atoning blood of Christ. All the effects of the death of Christ on the divine government, as our substitute, and all the reasons why it was necessary, we know not. These are among the profound things the angels desire to look into. Becoming modesty requires us rather to rest at present in the revealed fact, rejoic