be convinced that it is not a lucky coincidence, nor an adjustment contrived by the precarious and temporizing wisdom of this world, but that it is stamped with the uncounterfeited seal of the universal Ruler, and carries on it the traces of that same mighty will, which has connected the sun with his planetary train, and fixed the great relations in nature, appointing to each atom its bound that it cannot pass. Yet it must be remembered that this adaptation is only an evidence for the truth of the gospel, but that it does not constitute the gospel. The gospel consists in the proclamation of mercy through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This is the only true source of sanctity and peace and hope, and if, instead of drinking from this fountain, we busy ourselves in tracing the course of the streams that flow from it, and in admiring the beauty and fertility of the country through which they run, we may indeed have a tasteful and sentimental relish for the organization of Christianity, but it will not be in us a well of water springing up into everlasting life. Before we admit the truth of a doctrine like the atonement, it is proper to contemplate it in all its consequences; but after we have admit

ted it, we ought to give the first place in our thoughts to the doctrine itself, because our minds are usefully operated on, not by the thought of the consequences, but by the contemplation of the doctrine. When an act of kindness has been done to us, our gratitude is excited by contemplating the kindness itself, not by investigating that law in our nature by which gratitude naturally is produced by kindness. It is of great importance to remember this. We do not and cannot become Christians by thinking of the Christian character, nor even by thinking of the adaptation of the Christian doctrines to produce that character, but by having our hearts impressed and imbued by the doctrines themselves. The doctrines are constituent parts of God's character and government, and they are revealed to us that we may be renewed in the spirit of our minds by the knowledge of them.

The doctrine of the atonement is the great subject of revelation. God is represented as delighting in it, as being glorified by it, and as being most fully manifested by it. All the other doctrines radiate from this as their centre. In subservience to it, the distinction in the unity

of the Godhead has been revealed. It is described as the everlasting theme of praise and song amongst the blessed who surround the throne of God. It is represented in language suitable to our capacities, as calling forth all the energies of omnipotence. And indeed when we come to consider what this great work was, we shall not wonder that even the inspired heralds of salvation faultered in the utterance of it. The human race had fallen off from their allegiance, they had turned away from God, their hearts chose what God abhorred, and despised what God honoured: They were the enemies of God, they had broken his law, which their own consciences acknowledged to be holy, just, and gracious, and had thus most righteously incurred the penalty denounced against sin. Man had thus ruined himself, and the faithfulness of God seemed bound to make this ruin irretrievable.

The design of the atonement was to make mercy towards this offcast race consistent with the honour and the holiness of the Divine government. To accomplish this gracious purpose, the Eternal Word, who was God, took on himself the nature of man,

and as the elder brother and representative and champion of the guilty family, he solemnly acknowledged the justice of the sentence pronounced against sin, and submitted himself to its full weight of wo, in the stead of his adopted kindred. God's justice found rest here; his law was magnified and made honourable. The human nature of the Saviour gave him a brother's right and interest in the human race, whilst his divine nature made his sacrifice available, and invested the law, under which he had bowed himself, with a glory beyond what could have accrued to it from the penal extinction of a universe. The two books of the Bible in which this subject is most minutely and methodically argued, viz. the epistles to the Romans and the Hebrews, commence with asserting most emphatically both the perfect divinity and the perfect humanity of Jesus Christ. On this basis the reasoning is founded which demonstrates the universal sufficiency and the suitableness of the death of Christ as an atonement for the sins of men, or as a vindication of the justice of the Divine government in dispensing mercy to the guilty. What a wonderful and awful and enliven

ing subject of contemplation this is! God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him might not perish, but have everlasting life. And the same God, that he might declare his abhorrence of sin in the very form and substance of his plan of mercy, sent forth this Son to make a propitiation through his blood. This is the God with whom we have to do. This is his character, the Just God and yet the Saviour. There is an augustness and a tenderness about this act, a depth and heighth and breadth and length of moral worth and sanctity, which defies equally the full grasp of thought and of language; but we can understand something of it, and therefore has it been revealed to us. But does it not mark in most fearful contrast, the difference which exists between the mind of God and the mind of man? Whilst man is making a mock at sin, God descends from the throne of glory, and takes on him the frailty of a creature, and dies as a creature the representative of sinners, before his holy nature can pronounce sin forgiven. It was to remove this difference that these glad-tidings have been preached; and he that believes this history of