wilt. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my father, if this cup may not pass away from me except I drick it, thy will be done." Mark XIV. 36. "And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt" Luke XXII. 42 and 44. "Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thie, be done. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood, falling down to the ground."

Now let the Editor find out a set of verses or even a single passage which may evince that Jesus so far from feeling aversion to death delighted in it, as he has attempted to prove; and let him take upon himself to reconcile such gross contradictions between those two sets of passages (if there are any such) or reject one set of them.

The third conclusion of the Editor from the above Psalm and the compared passage of Hebrews is that "they furnish a complete answer to the declaration (page 62) that it would be a piece of gross in:quity to afflict one innocent being who had all the human

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feelings, and who had never transgressed the will of God, with the death of the cross for the crimes committed by others, and (page 63 ) that the iniquity of one's being sentenced to death as an atonement for the fault committed by another, is such that every just man would shudder at the idea of ones being put to death for a crime committed by another, even if the innocent man should willingly offer his life in behalf of that other." The Editor then maintains that the texts quoted(Psalm and Hebrews) refute the above positions, stating that "this iniquity, if it be such, the father willed, since he prepared the son a body in which to suffer this palpable injustice." In this I perfectly coincide with the Editor, that the death of the innocent Jesus took place, like that of many preceding prophets, by the unsearchable will of God, who hath ordained that all the sons of men shall die, some by a violent and painful death, others by an easy and natural extinction; nor do I require the evidence of the text quoted, ("Thou hast prepared me a body,") to convince me of the fact declared by Jesus in his agony in the garden, that his sufferings in particular were, like those of mankind in general, conformable to the will of God. But I cannot find any thing in these words that warrants an inference so contrary to our ideas of justice as

that the pain thus suffered by Jesus was inflicted on him, though innocent, by God, as an atonement to himself for with-holding merited punishment from the truly guilty. And this is the real point in discussion. The Editor will admit that the ways of God in bestowing happiness on some and leaving others in our eyes more worthy of divine favor to wretchedness and misery are inscrutable; yet on the bare fact that the innocent Jesus was ordained to die on the cross he pretends to rest the conclusion, as the only possible one, that this death he suf fered to satisfy the justice of his Maker. Was it for this that John the Baptist was beheaded? Was it for this that Zechariah was slain? Was it as an atonement for the sins of the rest of mankind that Jerusalem was suffered to "stone the Prophets and kill those who were sent to her?" The Editor will not admit that it was; yet the proposed inference from the bare fact would be as legitimate in these cases as in that of Jesus. The plain and obvious conclusion to be drawn from the text is that God prepared for Christ a body that he might communicate a perfect code of divine law to mankind, and that he loved him for the devotion with which he fulfilled his divine commission, regardless of the comfort or safe

ty of that body and his readiness to lay it down when it suited the purpose of the Maker.

The Revd. Editor expresses his indignation at the mode of reasoning adopted by me in the passages above quoted; saying, "Should not a creature, a worm of the dust who cannot fully comprehend the mysteries of his own being, pause before he arraign his Maker of gross injustice, and charge him with having founded all religion on an act of palpable iniquity?" (page 529)

There appears here a most strange mistake on the part of the Editor. It is he who seems to me to be labouring to prove the absurdity that God, the Almighty and all-merciful, is capable of a palpable iniquity-determined to have punishment, though he leave quite unpunished; inflicting the marks of his wrath on the innocent for the purpose of sparing those who justly deserve the weight of its terrors. If he mean to object to the rashness of apply. ing the limited capacity of the human understanding to judge the unsearchable things of the wisdom of God, and therefore denies my right, as a worm of the dust, to deduce any thing from human ideas inimical to his view of the divine will, I can only say that I have

for my example that of a fellow-worm in his own argument to shew the necessity that the Almighty labored under to have his justice satisfied. For I find this very Editor in his endeavour to prove the doctrine of the atonement arguing (page 506.) thus "He who has kept the law has not broken it, and he who has broken it cannot have kept it: that the same man therefore should incur its penalty for violating it, and also deserve its reward for keeping it, is an outrage on common sense.” "This will clearly appear, if we refer to human laws imperfect as they are." Apply this to the divine law." "For him therefore to be rewarded as one who had kept the divine law would be directly contrary to righteousness." "Human judges enquire not repentance of the robber or murderer but respecting his guilt."

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From these passages does it not appear as if the Editor were of opinion that it is quite right and proper to apply human reason as a standard by which to judge what must be the will of God when he thinks it supports his views of the ways of Providence; but that on the contrary it is blasphemous and rebellious against the divine majesty to deduce from human reason conclusions from the scriptures contrary to his interpretations of them? The Edi

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