is shed for you"-" which is shed for remission of sins unto many. "*_Then follow the apostles, fully commissioned and fully enlightened, agreeable to their Master's assurance, "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth."+ And with this fulness of promised light, is there any change? No: only the clearer and more complete development of the same blessed truth. Hear Peter:-"Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree:"-" For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God:"- "Ye are redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold,— but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:"-Hear John : "The blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin :". "And he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world :". "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."-Hear Paul:-"For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare

* Matt. xx. 28. John x. 15. Luke xxii. 19, 20. Matt. xxvi. 28. + John xvi. 12, 13.

to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him :"

us.

"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us:"-" Who gave himself for our sins:"- In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins:"- "Who gave himself a ransom for all:"

-"He hath made him who knew no sin to be sin for us; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."* And I need not say how full of the doctrine of atonement is the epistle in which our text lies, of which the evidence is sufficiently clear that Paul was the writer. Look at the text itself with its context:-"But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience

* 1 Pet. ii. 24. iii. 18. i. 18, 19. 1 John i. 7. ii. 2. iv. 10. Rom. v. 6-9. Gal. iii. 13. Gal i. 4. Eph. i. 7. 1 Tim. ii. 6. 2 Cor. v. 21.

"For

from dead works, to serve the living God?"Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; (for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world :) but now once, in the end of the world, hath he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment; so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many: and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation." I might go forward with a large portion of the following chapter.-And, according to the representations of scripture, the praises of heaven correspond with the faith of earth. The Lamb that was slain is the theme of its everlasting songs:- "Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us unto God by thy blood."+-Surely, with such testimonies before us, evincing such a harmony in the divine dispensations, and such a unity of principle and design between the earlier and the later portions of divine revelation,-it would be far more consistent to renounce the authority of the Bible at once, than to admit that authority, and deny that it teaches the doctrine of redemption by substitutionary sufferings or sacrificial atonement.

* Verses 11-14, and 24-28.

Rev. iv. and v.

In such an atonement, let me now remark, there are obviously presupposed certain attributes of the divine character. These are, especially, RIGHTEOUSNESS and MERCY. -With regard to the former, it must to every mind be manifest, that righteousness is the very perfection in the nature of the supreme Ruler, and the very quality in his government, that renders atonement necessary; the clearing of righteousness from every unfavourable imputation, as if sin were winked at, or its criminal desert under-rated, and allowed to pass without its punitive recompense, being the very purpose which atonement is designed to answer, in the pardon and acceptance of the guilty.—It is of first-rate consequence, however, to bear in mind, that in the idea of atonement, mercy is as necessarily presupposed as righteousness. If righteousness was what rendered atonement necessary, mercy was necessary to an atonement being provided. The doctrine has, on this point, been most perversely and pertinaciously misrepresented; as if the idea of atonement implied the existence of vindictiveness and implacability, and as if no mercy could be exercised, till this vindictiveness had been appeased. Whereas, nothing can be clearer, than that, had there not been mercy previously in the character of the divine Ruler, the idea of atonement could never have suggested itself. It is the dictate of mercy. A vindictive being could never have thought of it;

or, if the thought suggested itself, it could only have been to meet with instant and indignant repudiation. A vindictive being would have allowed stern unbending justice to take its course, to the utmost limit of the exaction of merited suffering. Mercy, in the divine mind, pleads for the sinner. But such is the harmonious unity of the divine character, the spirit of each of the attributes forming an element in all the rest,-the mercy being righteous mercy, and the righteousness merciful righteousness, that mercy itself can advance no plea but with the concurrence and to the honour of righteousness. Still, had not God "delighted in mercy," the thought of providing means for securing the honour of righteousness in order to its consistent exercise, could never have presented itself to his mind. Such a thought would have been the furthest possible from a spirit that had pleasure in vengeance. Be it remembered, then, that atonement produces no change in the divine character. The very idea is blasphemy. God is, in every respect, the same since the atonement that he was before, and was the same before that he has been since. Mercy, infinite like all his other attributes, belonged to his nature from eternity. He does not delight in mercy because the atonement has been made; but the atonement has been made, because he delighted in mercy. The atonement is the manifestation of righteousness and mercy in union. It is the sug