Nor can it regenerate our sinful nature. Repentance therefore does not come up to the idea of dying unto sin. All Scripture and experience show that man in his own strength cannot die unto sin. According to St. Paul, the Law was given for this very purpose, to convince man that he could not of his own power die unto sin. What then? If it must be done, and man could not do it, if done at all, it must be done for us. And it seems to have been the purpose of all those sin-offerings under the Law to impress on man this two-fold truth. First: That there could be no propitiation without a dying unto sin. This found expression in the blood-shedding. Without shedding of blood there was, under the Law, no remission. And, secondly, that the dying unto sin must be vicarious, man being himself unequal to it. This was seen in the blood-shedding being by way of symbol, on an altar. But did those sacrifices really avail to expiate sin? Clearly not. The Epistle to the Hebrews (x. 4) forbids the thought. They only pointed onward to One who should die unto sin on man's behalf, and so make a real expiation. And who was equal to this? Very beautifully does St. Athanasius lead up to this: it must be an act of Divine power, for none but God can undo what is done, and yet it must be accomplished in man's person, for it is man who has need to die unto sin. Who then was equal to it-equal to this effort of grace for the recovery of man? Who but He who in the beginning had created all things out of nothing, the Word of God. He only could sum up all mankind in His own person, die unto sin for all, and so satisfy the eternal law of His own and His Father's holiness. That Christ, the Sinless One, did thus die unto sin, is the express teaching of Scripture. "In that He died, He died unto sin once" (Rom. vi. 10). He was made "sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. v. 21). “What the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned [doomed to death] sin in the flesh" (Rom. viii. 3). What is the meaning of these scriptures? That Christ was punished by His Father for mankind's sin? Not for one moment! But, the infinitely deeper truth, that Christ gathered up in His own Person all mankind, laden as they were with sin, and with the consciousness of sin, upon His heart, consummated that dying unto sin which they were in themselves powerless to effect. In this sense Christ's death may be rightly termed vicarious, meaning by the word, not that He died as a substitute, but rather as a sponsor for all. That this is St. Paul's own interpretation of his words (that in Christ's death mankind—he does not say were saved from dying, but—died) will be plain to any one who reads carefully Rom. vi. 1-11. The pervading thought of those eleven verses is, that we all died with and in Christ, died unto sin, were baptized into His death, were buried with Him, planted together with Him in the likeness of His death: our old man crucified with Him that the body of sin might be destroyed. These phrases, and especially the last, seem to give us the very key to the doctrine of the efficacy of Christ's death that we are seeking : our old man, our fallen nature, was crucified with Christ. For if so, then that law of holiness, that what is sinful must die, was fulfilled and satisfied; and so God was enabled, without lowering the standard of holiness, to forgive the sinner. God forgives sinners, because in Christ they die unto sin. In themselves they are powerless to do it -in Christ they do it. But when we say that in Christ they do it, we mean two things: we mean that mankind as a whole did it completely, and that individuals do it more or less. In Christ the whole race died unto sin as completely: and that individuals do it more or less. In Christ the whole race died unto sin as completely as in Adam the whole race had died unto God completely. But what is true of the whole race completely is not completely true of each of the individuals who make in either case. that race up For neither in Adam did every individual man die utterly to God, nor in Christ does every individual die utterly to sin. It depends on the will of the individual (concurring with God's grace) how far he appropriates what Christ has done. Thus this dying unto sin is at once an act of Divine power accomplished once for all, sufficing for the whole race, and at the same time an act in which the individual man's free-will must by God's grace concur, else it will not be for him availing. This seems to be precisely what St. Clement of Rome meant to express in those words which Bishop Bull desired to have inscribed in letters of gold. "Let us look to the blood of Christ and consider how dear unto God is that blood which was for the whole world the grace of repentance." The death which propitiates, is Christ's; the repentance which appropriates a share in that death, is man's. We may sum up all that has now been said about the Scriptural meaning of Christ's propitiation (iλaoμós) very briefly. When Holy Scripture says that Christ died for us (vèρ μν ànétave) it means that in Christ's death unto sin, all mankind quoad sufficientiam, and all who are in Christ quoad efficientiam, died unto sin; and so the law of holiness was satisfied. Three points may seem to need further elucidation before we dismiss the subject of propitiation. 1. The Rationalist says, "You speak of an act of A being accepted as an act of B; this is to my mind a fiction." The Calvinist accepts this way of putting it, but insists that it is not a fiction. The concession is a fatal error; he will never refute the objection while he admits the assumption on which it rests. The true reply is, that both the Rationalist and the Calvinist seem to forget of whom they are speaking; it is not the case of a man dying for other men, but it is the Man, the representative Man, the Divine Head of the race, He in whose image man was originally created. Ever since that first creation, between mankind and the Christ of God there has been a vital connection full of mystery. When the mystery of the Redeemer's person is borne in mind, it almost ceases to be a mystery that His death should affect the whole race. Every act of Christ must vibrate through humanity. If in a plant an injury to the root is felt in every branch; if in an army it is not the captain only who conquers, or is conquered, but every soldier with him; if in all organic societies, when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if in the great family of mankind the fall of one entailed the fall of all; then is it a strange thing that St. Paul thus judged, that if Christ died for all, then all died in Him? The efficacy of Christ's death can never be understood unless it be thus viewed as a Divine act of spiritual power, in which every member of the race must in some way,—may to his infinite blessing, participate. 2. This leads to our second corollary. How could the expiation of Christ's death be retrospective as well as prospective? This difficulty, like the last, vanishes when we remember the mystery of the Redeemer's Person. The acts of the Son of God belong, not to time only, but to eternity also: the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. The holy men of old were conscious of One whose Being was in the bosom of God, capable of entering into closest fellowship with their sufferings. In the faith that He would be one day revealed, they lived and died. Abraham rejoiced to see His day, and he saw it, and was glad. Nay, man's mystical union with Christ may, for aught we know, be effectual even where there is no consciousness of it. Our Lord's own words seem to imply it: "Lord, when saw we Thee? . . . Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." With a truer instinct Tertullian speaks of an anima naturaliter Christiana. We know that the repentance of the Ninevites was accepted ; may we not say that it was accepted for Christ's sake? 3. And a third corollary is needed, already in part anticipated. If Christ died unto sin once for all, and perfectly; and if all who are in Him died unto sin in His death, then why are there the motions of sin yet living within us? Alas! bitter experience teaches us that the believer's death unto sin is neither perfect nor once for all accomplished. How and why is this? For the simple reason that the believer's faith in Christ and self-dedication to Christ are neither perfect nor once for all accomplished. Therefore all we can say, is this, that as Christ died unto sin once for all and perfectly, so the believer dies more or less unto sin in Him, and has to "work out his own salvation with fear and trembling." But while we confess this, we may add with deepest thankfulness that Christ's work was nevertheless perfect, and that God accepted Christ as mankind's sponsor and surety, and on this security, thus safeguarding the law of holiness, forgave us completely. The believer's justification is therefore complete, though his sanctification must be gradual. Thus Christ's death in all ways fulfilled the scriptural idea of a Propitiation. EXTRACT FROM "RUDIMENTS OF THEOLOGY." (To be continued.) The Preacher's Emblematory Helps. ANCIENT MYTHS: THEIR MORAL MEANINGS. Books of Reference: Max Müller's "Lectures on Comparative Mythology." Hardy's" Manual of Buddhism." Pritchard's Analysis of Egyptian Mythology." Coxe's "Mythology of the Aryan Nations." Coxe's "Tales of Ancient Greece.' Gladstone's "Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age." Farrar's "Critical History of Free Thought." Keary's "Heroes of Asgard." Canon Kingsley's "Sermons." Ruskin's " Queen of the Air." Sir T. Malory's "Morte d'Arthur." "Bacon's Essays." 'Murray's Manual of Mythology." "Shall we sneer and laugh at all these dreams as mere follies of the heathen? If we do so, we shall not show the spirit of God or the mind of Christ, nor shall we show our knowledge of the Bible."-Canon Kingsley. No. XVI. Proteus: or Change. PROTEUS was a Greek divinity, even though we accept Mr. Gladstone's classification, and reckon him among the mythological personages of the outer or Phoenician sphere. He was at least as much a Greek as an Egyptian conception. For he was the son of Okeanos and Tethys, and a nephew of the Titans. He was a loyal subject of Poseidon (Neptune), and became his herdsman. He tended faithfully his master's sea calves, leading them to graze along the shores and on the islands of the Mediterranean. His home was in a vast cave bard by, or, as some say, under the sea. An aged man, he was easily imagined to be possessed of prophetic power and the secrets of witchcratf. But it was with difficulty he could be persuaded to utter his predictions about the future, or to disclose his mysterious knowledge. For when he had counted his flock of seals he would fall into a profound sleep, either in his cavern-home, or under burning |