the honourable exercise of mercy in the sinner's pardon and acceptance.—If it be asked, why may not mercy go directly to its object?—why may it not follow out its dictates at once?-why may it not confer forgiveness at its pleasure, irrespectively of any such encumbrance as has thus, under different designations, been referred to ?—in one word, why may it not pardon without atonement ?—our reply to such questions is twofold. In the first place, they are presumptuous. There is a question which ought ever to take precedence of them,the question of fact. What has God actually seen meet to do, and revealed his having done? If He whose wisdom is infinite has, in point of fact, adopted the plan of atonement, who will have the self-sufficient hardihood to tell him he might have done otherwise? Who will presume to affirm that he has been expending his wisdom in a useless device, and executing a scheme of stupendous magnificence, which might all have been spared? Who will thus venture to test divine wisdom by his own? Must not this inevitably be to " "charge God foolishly?" Our first inquiry ought to be, What has God done? And we should rest assured that what he has done was what alone he could do; inasmuch as it must have appeared in his eyes the best to be done; and with a Being whose knowledge and wisdom are infinite, best and only are the same thing. He cannot, from a moral necessity, do any thing else than what is best.-And then,

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secondly, although we have not "the eyes of God," to take in, with all-comprehensive glance, the entire bearings of any of his plans, yet, in the present case, he has not left us without such glimpses of the principles on which his plan has been framed, as enable us, in some measure, to discern and vindicate its excellence. The very definitions which have been given of atonement show this. principle on which they are all founded is a manifestly reasonable one; namely, that in every step of his procedure, the divine Ruler should provide for the glory of his character and government; so that what is in apparent harmony with one of his perfections, may not be in manifest discordance with another, and that the authority of his law, and the dignity of his government, may not be sunk and weakened in the minds of his intelligent creatures. It is, I confess, matter of surprise to me, that any good and sound-thinking man should be found treating this view of the atonement with lightness and scorn. The following sentences are from the pen of one who holds the doctrine of a limited atonement.

In as far as they relate to that subject, I make no comment upon them at present. I quote them now for one purpose only :-"The prevalent notion at present is, not that by his incarnation, sufferings, and death, Christ made atonement for those whose sins he bare in his own body on the tree, thus cancelling their guilt, and opening a channel through which mercy and love

flow to them in perfect consistency with justice; but that the manifestation of the Son of God was designed as a public display, in order to maintain the honour of the divine government. What a view does this give of Him, before whom the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust in the balance! Was God manifest in the flesh? Did the Creator of the world, in our nature, suffer and die, merely to produce an impression upon the minds of rebels, and to prevent his government from sinking into contempt? No: it was that he might be JUST, and the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus; that he might be faithful and just in forgiving the sins of those whose great Head and Surety, according to his covenant engagements, endured the penalty which they had incurred, and yielded to the law which they had broken the obedience which it demanded.' -The manner in which the two schemes, of limited and universal atonement, affect, respectively, the majesty of the Godhead, here so solemnly appealed to, we shall have occasion hereafter to notice. What I now request you to observe, is, the lightness with which this writer treats the idea of what he designates a "public display." Is it, then, of no importance, provided God be just, whether, in the eyes of his intelligent creation, he

* Man's responsibility, the nature and extent of the atonement, and the work of the Holy Spirit, &c. By J. A. Haldane. Pages 110,

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appear just? Is it enough that Jehovah be "glorious in holiness," whether the glory of his holiness be or be not manifest to the subjects of his moral administration? Is this a matter of which He himself, in his word, ever speaks in terms which indicate his not thinking it worth his minding? If it has been worth his while to institute and exercise a moral government at all, it must be worth his while, not only always to act (for how can he do otherwise?) in consistency with its eternal principles, but to make that consistency, in every step, apparent to the rational universe. Of what avail, indeed, can a moral government be,—what reverence can be felt for its dignity, what submission can be yielded to its authority, what complacency can be experienced in its supreme Conductor,unless provision be made for this? Creatures, it is true, who have alienated themselves from their allegiance, and are "enemies in their minds and by wicked works," may be blind, morally blind, to the glory of such a display. But in that case, their own is the blame: the manifestation has been made; and that is enough, for the vindication of the Governor, and the condemnation of the subject. We shall see, moreover, on a future part of our discussion, that the "declaration," or manifestation, of the divine righteousness in the forgiveness and acceptance of transgressors from the beginning, was, according to inspired testimony, the very purpose of the atonement.-I may re

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mark here, besides, that it is a most unfair and unscriptural representation of the "public display" in question, to identify it with "making an impression on the minds of rebels." Even this it is far from right to treat contemptuously; but to consider the "display" as reaching no further than this, is inconsistent alike with scripture and with reason. How far, in the universe, it may extend, it is not, of course, for us to say: but this we know, that "unto the principalities and powers in the heavenly places is made known, through the Church, the manifold wisdom of God;”—that the angelic hosts" ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands," celebrate the glories of "the Lamb that was slain," and, through the slain Lamb, of "Him that sitteth upon the throne!"

The very terms which I have thus quoted lead me to our next point of inquiry,—which indeed, in the phraseology used, has been in part, and unavoidably, anticipated :-WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT, WHICH, ACCORDING TO THE CHRISTIAN SCHEME, HAS ACTUALLY BEEN MADE?-And in answer to this inquiry, the whole bible bears us out in affirming it to have been atonement by sacrifice, -in other words, by substitution and vicarious suffering. Of this the Bible is full. To the mind that can contrive, to its own satisfaction, to strip the Bible of the doctrine of atonement by vicarious