ments with which we are acquainted are but imperfect imitations, and which are, indeed, founded on a very partial application of the laws which a perfect moral government implies, similar easy good-natured lenity would be attended with less ruinous effects ? If we have none, then, since we cannot think that God's government will or can cease to be moral; or that He ever will physically constrain His creatures to be happy or holy,—indeed the very notion involves a contradiction in terms, would not the proposed course of universally pardoning guilt on profession of penitence prove, in all probability, most calamitous? Let us then suppose (no difficult thing) that God foresaw this;- that such a procedure would be of pernicious consequences, not to this world only, but, for aught we know, to many; that it would diminish His authority, relax the ties of allegiance, invite His subjects to revolt, make them think disloyalty a trivial matter? If so, and I defy you to prove that it may not be so, then would there not be benignity as well as justice, mercy as well as equity, in refusing the exercise of a weak compassion which would destroy more than it would save? Let us suppose further, that knowing all this, God knew also that His yearning compassion for lost and guilty man might be safely gratified by such an expedient as the Atonement; that so far from weakening the bonds of allegiance, such an acceptance of a voluntary propitiation would strengthen them; that it would flash on all worlds an indelible conviction no less of His justice than of His mercy ;-of His justice that He could not pardon without so tremendous a sacrifice, of His mercy that He would not, to gratify it, refrain even from this ;-that it would crush for ever that subtle sophism so naturally springing in the heart of man, and which gives to temptation its chief power-that God is too merciful to punish; I say, if all this be so, and I fancy you will find it difficult to prove that it may not be so, does not the Atonement assume a new aspect? Is it any longer chargeable with absurdity or caprice? May it not be justly pronounced a device worthy of divine wisdom and benignity? Is it not calculated to secure that which is its proposed end?- at once to make justice doubly vene

rable and mercy doubly dear?-justice more venerable that it could not be lightly assuaged; mercy more dear that it would be gratified, though at such a cost?

Thus (so far from your representation being just) our theory is, that God was intensely desirous, as well as Christ, of man's salvation; and that the mode of achieving it, though we cannot, à priori, speculate on it, was the result of a great moral necessity, which Love was resolved to confront since it could not evade it And hence it is that so many millions, won and vanquished by this spectacle, have declared (and this is the only just influence of the doctrine) that it is the "Atonement" which has chiefly furnished them, as with hope and peace, so with the strongest motives to revere Justice, to obey Law, to " go and sin no more." If you say that the presumed moral necessity for some such method of salvation, which should provide a safe amnesty for guilt by securing the law from dishonour, is a mere speculation, I grant that, apart from Scripture, it is so; but I also contend that if we consider what a moral government is, and must ever involve, it is as probable, and as truly philosophical, as the counter-speculation you would substitute for it.

And, after all, must not you too imagine some unknown, inscrutable, moral necessity for so astounding a fact as the death of Christ; for the most cruel and agonising death of the only human being who, as you believe not less than I, was perfectly innocent, and deserved not to suffer at all? And here, having vindicated my view, as intrinsically not less probable and philosophical than your own, I proceed to show that it is abundantly more so, and to retort upon you, with interest, the charges of "caprice" and absurdity. We, at all events, assign an adequate cause of Christ's death; you assign none at all, or none that does not increase the difficulty. Yes, my friend, pardon me for saying it, but that very argument on which you lay so much stress, namely, that the Atonement is needless in itself, and presents a 66 savage view of the government of God, may, as I conceive, be retorted, on your theory of the death of Christ, with tenfold cogency.

But I must reserve the expression of my sentiments for another

Yes, I repeat, that on your theory the death of Christ is an utterly incomprehensible enigma; we cannot assign, we cannot imagine, any reason for a sacrifice at once so costly, yet so gratuitous. In Christ we have the only example (yourself being witness) of perfect and faultless innocence which has ever been exhibited to the world, and we see Him, through life, involved in the deepest shades of sorrow, and subjected to a death of terrible and mysterious agonies! perfect holiness, perfect obedience to God, perfect love to man, requited with more scorn and oppressed with more suffering than even the foulest guilt in this world ever was subjected to! And all for-what? For nothing, absolutely nothing that is intelligible! You tell me that He suffered as an EXAMPLE to us. As an example? An example of what? Was it as an example of this-that the more men obey and love God, the darker may be the divine frown, and the greater the liability to suffer under the incomprehensible mysteries of the divine administration? So that if we were to become absolutely perfect as Christ was, that moment we might reach the climax of misery! That as He who was alone "without spot" was condemned to the worst doom, so, for aught we can infer from such an example, innocence and happiness may be in inverse proportion! If you say He suffered to show us with what sweetness and patience we ought to suffer, -you forget that not only would less than such bitterness as His teach that lesson,

but that His suffering so much more than we do, with no guilt, His own or ours, to cause it, unteaches the lesson; it unhinges our trust in the divine equity altogether. You forget, it seems to me, that there is a double aspect of these sufferings. How do they affect our apprehensions of God? Can we reconcile it with that benignity and equity for which you are so jealous, to visit perfect innocence with more sorrow than guilt, merely to show the guilty how they ought to learn to bear a just punishment? I assure you that, on such a theory of the divine administration, the death of Christ is to me the darkest blot on the divine government, — the most melancholy and perplexing phenomenon of the universe, the most gratuitous apparent departure from rectitude and equity with which the spectacle of the divine conduct presents us !

And this I feel with double energy and intensity when I recall the agony of that prayer with which the Redeemer prayed that, "if it were possible," the final horrors might be spared Him "the bitter cup pass away from Him."

And that this prayer did not refer to the transient cloud of Gethsemane, but to the prospective horrors of Calvary, is, I think, evident from the expressive figure used by our Lord at His apprehension, and which is recorded by the evangelist who does not record the prayer in Gethsemane. "The cup," says He, “which my Father hath given me to drink, shall I not drink it?" expression, which is not only, as Paley says, an instance of undesigned harmony in the narratives of different evangelists, but, as I think, also shows, by the character of the metaphor, what was the meaning of the prayer in the garden.

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Thrice, then, He offered that prayer; and thrice in vain. Yet, on your theory, where was the necessity? Why was it "impossible" that the cup should pass from Him? Impossible? Nothing would seem more easy; nay, nothing more impossible than that, having deserved no sorrow at all, His prayer should be uttered in vain? Is this the way in which you would give us a more attractive view than the doctrine of the Atonement affords, of the love of God? Is it by showing us the only being, in human

form, who never deserved to feel His justice, striving in vain to propitiate His mercy?

We, at least, assign an adequate cause of all this mystery; we suppose that it was to rescue a lost world that God "willed” that "the cup should not pass from Him ;" and that Christ, who thus prayed, also "willed" to drink it rather than decline it, at such a cost as the frustration of His divine compassion and the surrender of a world to perdition. But you, what reason can you assign? Is it a more conciliating view of the divine justice and love that they thus afflicted innocence for nothing? or nothing that is intelligible? and in spite of its own heartrending cries that if any other expedient remained within the reach of Omnipotence itself, Omnipotence taxed to the uttermost of its resources, that “ "cup might pass away?"

So deeply do I feel the dark shadow which this view throws over the divine administration, that even if the positive texts for the reality of the "Atonement" were less numerous and decisive than I conceive they are, this mysterious spectacle of Perfect Innocence treated by Divine Justice more severely than guilt, for no imaginable necessity, would go far to convince me of the truth of the doctrine; but when I further compare all the inferences from the transaction itself with the testimony of Scripture,when I see how naturally the doctrine harmonises with the entire strain of Revelation, with ancient rite and sacrifice, — with dogmatic statement and casual allusion, with imagery, type, and symbol, with direct assertion and oblique reference,-I am beyond all doubt that the doctrine of the Atonement is a genuine doctrine of Christianity.

Such, my friend, is my view of the Atonement; not less philosophical, I contend, even viewed à priori, than any other which human reason can devise; more naturally sustained by the prevailing language of Scripture; and necessary, if we would not render the death of Christ (so far from being a relief) a terrible aggravation of all the difficulties of the divine administration, — an inscrutable mystery, far harder than the doctrine of the Atonement itself! Argue against this doctrine, if you like, and I will