all instead of giving all, is known by a very different name from that of love. All the life of God is a flow of this divine, self-giving charity. Creation itself is sacrifice — the self-impartation of the divine Being. Redemption, too, is sacrifice, else it could not be love; for which reason we will not surrender one iota of the truth that the death of Christ was the sacrifice of God -the manifestation once in time of that which is the eternal law of His life. If man, therefore, is to rise into the life of God, he must be absorbed into the spirit of that sacrifice-he must die with Christ, if he would enter into his proper life. For sin is the withdrawing into self and egotism, out of the vivifying life of God, which alone is our true life. The moment the man sins, he dies. Know we not how awfully true that sentence is, "Sin revived, and I died?" The vivid life of sin is the death of the man. Have we never felt that our true existence has absolutely in that moment disappeared, and that we are not? I say, therefore, that real human life is a perpetual completion and repetition of the sacrifice of Christ — "all are dead;" the explanation of which follows, "to live not to themselves, but to Him who died for them, and rose again." This is the truth which lies at the bottom of the Romish doctrine of the mass. Rome asserts that in the mass a true and proper sacrifice is offered up for the sins of all that the offering of Christ is for ever repeated. To this Protestantism has objected vehemently, that there is but one offering once offered an objection in itself entirely true; yet the Romish doctrine contains a truth which it is of importance to disengage from the gross and material form with which it has been overlaid. Let us hear St. Paul, "I fill up that which is behindhand of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His body's sake, which is the Church." Was there, then, something behindhand of Christ's sufferings remaining uncompleted, of which the sufferings of Paul could be in any sense the comple ment? He says there was. Could the sufferings of Paul for the Church, in any form of correct expression, be said to eke out the sufferings that were complete? In one sense it is true to say, that there is one offering once offered for all. But it is equally true to say, that that one offering is valueless, except so far as it is completed and repeated in the life and self-offering of all. This is the Christian's sacrifice. Not mechanically completed in the miserable materialism of the mass, but spiritually in the life of all in whom the Crucified lives. The sacrifice of Christ is done over again in every life which is lived, not to self, but to God. This is Let one concluding observation be made - self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-surrender! Hard doctrines, and impossible! Whereupon, in silent hours, we sceptically ask, Is this possible? is it natural? Let preacher and moralist say what they will, I am not here to sacrifice myself for others. God sent me here for happiness, not misery. Now introduce one sentence of this text of which we have as yet said nothing, and the dark doctrine becomes illuminated-"the love of Christ constraineth us." Self-denial, for the sake of self-denial, does no good; self-sacrifice for its own sake is no religious act at all. If you give up a meal for the sake of showing power over self, or for the sake of self-discipline, it is the most miserable of all delusions. You are not more religious in doing this than before. mere self-culture, and self-culture being occupied for ever about self, leaves you only in that circle of self from which religion is to free you; but to give up a meal that one you love may have it, is properly a religious act —no hard and dismal duty, because made easy by affection. To bear pain for the sake of bearing it, has in it no moral quality at all, but to bear it rather than surrender truth, or in order to save another, is positive enjoyment, as well as ennobling to the soul. Did you ever receive even a blow meant for another in order to shield that other? Do you not know that there was actual pleasure in the keen pain far beyond the most rapturous thrill of nerve which could be gained from pleasure in the midst of painlessness? Is not the mystic yearning of love expressed in words most purely thus, Let me suffer for him? This element of love is that which makes this doctrine an intelligible and blessed truth. So sacrifice alone, bare and unrelieved, is ghastly, unnatural, and dead; but self-sacrifice, illuminated by love, is warmth and life; it is the death of Christ, the life of God, the blessedness, and only proper life of man. LECTURE XLV. DECEMBER 12, 1852. 2 CORINTHIANS, v. 18-21. "And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; - To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." THE last verses on which we spoke declared the Christian aspect of human nature, and the law of regenerated Humanity. The aspect of Humanity in Christ is a new creation: in Him human nature is re-created (v. 17). Consequently, every one is to be looked at now, not merely as a man, but as a brother in Christ. No man is to be known now any more after the flesh. A more striking instance of this is not to be found than the way in which Philemon was desired by St. Paul to consider Onesimus his slave. The "middle wall of partition" has been broken down for ever between Jew and Gentile, between class and class. The law of Humanity in Christ is, that "they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them," (v. 15). Such is the Christian law of sacrifice: to present our bodies and souls to Christ as a living offering. It is no longer the law of nature which rules our life, no longer self-preservation, self-indulgence; but it is self-surrender towards God and towards man. We come now to another subject, and the connection between it and the former is contained in the eighteenth verse. All this, says St. Paul, arises out of the reconciliation effected between God and man by Christ. First, then, we will speak of Christ's work -- the reconciliation of God to man. Secondly, the work of the Christian ministry reconciliation of man to God. - the I. God hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ." Now reconciliation is identical with atonement. In Romans, v. 11, the word "atonement " occurs, but on referring to the margin you will find that it is the same word which is here translated "reconciliation." Here, therefore, you might read: "Who hath atoned us to Himself by Jesus Christ." We cannot repeat this too often. The "atonement" of the Bible. is the reconciliation between God and man. Now atonement or reconciliation consists of two things-1. The reconciliation of God to the world. 2. The reconciliation of the world to God. 1. We say that God needed a reconciliation. On the other hand, the Unitarian view is, that God requires nothing to reconcile Him to us, that he is reconciled already, that the only thing requisite is to reconcile man to God. It also declares that there is no wrath in God toward sinners, for punishment does not manifest indignation. Nothing can be more false, unphilosophical, and unscriptural. First of all, take one passage, which is decisive: "But now after that ye know God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?" St. Paul is there describing the Christian state, and he declares that the being recog nized of God is more characteristic of the Gospel state than recognizing God. "Know God:" here is man reconciled to God. "Are known of Him:" here is God reconciled to man. St. Paul holds it a more adequate representation of the Gospel to say, Ye are known of God, that is, God is reconciled to you than to say, Ye know God, that is, ye are reconciled to God. So much for those persons who recognize the authority of Scrip |