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an experiment to be tried for a time, and then abandoned. It is made for all coming time.

"Our souls and bodies we resign,

With joy we render thee

Our all, no longer ours, but thine
To all eternity."

A consecration thus made, embracing all the promises of God, including all our powers, acts, and possessions of body, mind, and estate, without any reserve, either in objects, time, or place, which contemplates its fulfillment in the divine, and not in human strength, is substantially that practical act of faith in God which cannot fail to meet with his approbation, and which he will accompany with the witness of his Spirit. "Faithful is he that calleth you, who, also, will do it." And now, dear reader, why tarriest thou? "Arise, shine, for thy light is come." Enter this moment into the promised inheritance. If the blessing is obtained by simple faith, why delay? Let every motive be brought to bear this moment on thy heart. "Behold now is the day of salvation." Only believe, and the blessing is thine.

"Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees,

And looks to that alone;

Laughs at impossibilities,

And cries, It shall be done.

'Tis done; thou dost this moment save
With full salvation bliss;

Redemption through thy blood I have,

And spotless love and peace."

Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.

SERMON VIII.

BY REV. WILLIAM H. RAPER.

CHRIST'S DEATH VICARIOUS.

"When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin," Isaiah liii, 10. "Or whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same Scripture, and preached unto him Jesus." Yes, my brethren, this whole chapter belongs to Jesus, and none else. He it was who bore "our griefs, and carried our sorrows "-who was "wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities." Yes, and “we hid as it were our faces from him"-we "despised and rejected him." And yet, notwithstanding all this, he consented to be made an offering for sin. The holy-the innocent Jesus, whose nature was deathless, because it had ever been sinless, was by no law of God under obligation to die for himself; otherwise, he could not have died meritoriously for others. Being free from all natural and penal obligation to die on his own account, he was at full liberty to assume the obligation for others. His death was an act of obedience: "He became obedient unto death." It was not to human law that he forfeited his life; for his judge said, "I find no fault in him;" "I am innocent of the blood of this just person." And he who betrayed him said, "I have betrayed innocent blood." The law of his physical nature had no demands on his life. He, himself, said, "No man taketh my life from me-I lay it down of myself." As much as to say, "My life is immortal; yet I, of my own self, consent to render it vulnerable." His death, so far as man was an agent in it, was a downright murder. That which he suffered at the hands of his enemies, was no part of his meritorious sufferings. The Jews were officious intermeddlers in inflicting his death. There

was another cause at work, though unseen to man, that would have effected it. The invisible cup, in the hand of the Lord, contained the dreadful cause. The cup of woeof trembling-of sorrows untold-of death in its most direful form, prepared by justice for a guilty world, and which his Father gave to him in the garden of Gethsemane, and in receiving which he exclaimed, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;" but "if this cup may not pass, except I drink it, thy will be done." In that cup was summed up that awful debt of suffering and death, contracted by our sinful race, and which we could not have paid and survived. But Christ having become our surety, in view of our insolvency, paid the debt for us, and now offers us the indemnity. O, thou immortal spirit of man! accept the indemnity and live-reject it and die!

My object in reading this text, is to show,

I. THAT THE DEATH OF CHRIST WAS SACRIFICIAL.
II. THAT IT WAS OFFERED TO GOD.

III. THAT IT WAS OFFERED IN OUR STEAD; and, that the vicarious principle is found in the religious sacrifices of all the nations of antiquity; which will go far to prove that it was an essential element of the primitive religion of man; and, consequently, an essential doctrine of Christianity, inasmuch as Christianity is primitive religion restored.

And, first, that the death of Christ was sacrificial, we only need consult the following texts of Scripture: "But now, once, in the end of the world, hath he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." He officiated at the altar as priest; himself was the sacrifice offered. The work was all his own. The merit his; and to him be all the glory. Again: "But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God." Once more: "For even Christ our Pass

over is sacrificed for us." From the above passages of

Scripture, it is evident that Christ's death was not only sacrificial, but that the sacrifice was a sin-offering, and made in behalf of man. The latter text is antitypical of the Israelitish passover, which was instituted on the day preceding that awful night, when the angel of death, by the command of God, went forth throughout all the land of Egypt, and destroyed the first-born of all the families of Egypt; and, but for the blood of the paschal lamb, the sinful Hebrews would have shared the same fate; for when the angel found on the door-posts the blood of the sacrifice, he "passed over," and the plague was not upon them, to destroy them. So Christ, who, "by his own blood, obtained eternal redemption for us," is our passover; and the man whose soul is not sprinkled, and sanctified by this blood, must be "punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;" whilst he that is sealed with this token of blood, shall be spared, "as a man spareth his own son that serveth him."

Our second proposition is, that the death of Christ was a sacrifice offered to God. The offering was made to God; not as a martyr who offers his life to bear witness to the truth; for, in that case, the testimony is offered to those to whom the truth is first tendered, and who are to be convinced that it is truth: in which case, his sacrifice should have been offered to man. But, as we shall see, it was offered to God. “Who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God;” “And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God." From these, as well as from many other passages of the sacred writings, it is clear, that Christ's death was a sacrifice made and exhibited to God for his acceptance. We lay it down as an incontrovertible truth, that no religious sacrifice, whatever be the form of religion, whether ancient or modern, Jewish or heathen, was offered to any one but the Deity. It is true,

that the heathen offered sacrifices to their heroes; but not until they were deified. They, likewise, "offered sacrifices to devils;" but these were infernal gods. Deity, and Deity alone was to be propitiated by their sacrifices. In all cases whatsoever, they were presented to God, or the gods against whom they had offended-whose assistance they wished to obtain, or whose supremacy they intended to acknowledge.

Now, in these respects, the sacrifices of the heathen agreed with those of the Jews. Although Moses, the Jewish lawgiver, regulated the Jewish sacrifices, appointing the kinds of animals, and directing the mode of offering them, yet Moses did not originate the institution; for we find it practiced in the earliest ages. "Cain brought of the fruit of the ground, an offering to the Lord," by which he acknowledged the supremacy of Jehovah. But "Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock," by which he acknowledged himself a sinner, and by which he supplicated pardon. We find Noah, likewise, erecting an altar unto God, immediately after he came out of the ark. Now, all these offerings, the blood of which was supposed to speak in behalf of the offender, were presented to the Deity. The blood of Abel's offering spake to God in his behalf; but the blood of Jesus "speaketh better things than that of Abel."

This leads us, thirdly, to remark, that these sacrifices were all, in every case where blood was shed, offered IN THE STEAD OF THE OFFENDER, and that by them he was released from the obligation to atone for his own guilt, by dying himself. The sacrifice was the price paid for the offender's ransom. This constitutes their vicarious

character.

The practice of offering religious sacrifices to Deity, was a universal practice among all the nations of antiquity. This fact cannot be doubted by the student of history.

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