of spiritual attainment, no nearer Heaven this year than they were the last. Let us seek to grow by means of it, in self-abasement, in trust, in energy of resolve. Let there be an effort, in our every reception of it, to forget the things which are behind, and to reach forth unto those things which are before. And surely, though gradually and silently, we shall grow; and shall be able to say of ourselves, our consciences also bearing witness to the truth of the assertion,-"Of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace."

SERMON V.

The Atonement.

I.

"Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood."-ROM. iii. 24, 25.

HE controversies of this day are by no means confined to the external forms of worship, or the Ordinances of the Gospel. They enter into the deepest relations of God with man, and raise here also, in the very fundamentals of religion, their subtle, perplexing, and obscuring questions. You will be thankful, then, for some guidance of your thoughts on the subject of the Atonement, the great transaction of Christ on our behalf, on which all our hopes rest. May God guide us into all truth, and grant

us by His Holy Spirit to have a right judgment in this matter, for His dear Son's sake!

The text, short as it is, offers two subjects, which, though allied, must be kept carefully distinct in our minds,-the Atonement itself, called here most significantly, “a propitiation ;" and the mental process by which the Atonement is applied to the wants of individual sinners, "Faith." 'Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith." Both are parts of one great idea, which is "Man's reconciliation with God." This reconciliation cannot be without, on the one hand, the Propitiation of Christ's Blood, and, on the other, the faith of the sinner who is to be reconciled. And thus the two subjects are, as I said, very closely allied. But at the same time I think it well, at the outset, to call attention to the distinction between them. The one is what God has done towards reconciliation. The other is what man must do. The first may be, and most probably will be, beset with mystery. It may be, and probably will be, incapable of a complete and satisfactory logical explanation. We may

illustrate it by analogies drawn from subjects

with which we are familiar, and which are within the compass of our experience, but probably we shall never entirely simplify or remove its difficulties. And this because, as the Prophet assures us, God's thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways God's ways. A Divine transaction affecting the relations between God and His guilty creatures, must be, one would be prepared to expect, beyond the reach of man's limited understanding. Not so, however, what we must do, to obtain the benefit of this Divine transaction. Here a mistake might be fatal; and consequently the known goodness of God leads us to anticipate that He would make this part of the subject as plain as the sun at noon. The necessity of the Atonement, the exact nature of it, the consistency of its vicariousness (which is one of its most striking features) with our poor narrow notions of justice, all these points the Holy Scripture never attempts to explain, because, no doubt, in our present condition of existence, they are incapable of a perfect explanation. But as to our own part in the work of reconciliation, nothing can be clearer or more explicit than the Holy Scripture. Faith, faith, faith,-faith

working by love-faith led up to by repentance, and evidenced by holiness-"this is the way," say the Scriptural writers, "walk ye in it." And lest any doubt should rest upon the meaning of the word "faith," its nature and effects are copiously illustrated by examples. One long chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews is devoted to no other subject than the operations of faith in the saints of the Old Testament. And the Gospels are full of accounts of sufferers or penitents, who came to Our Lord in faith, and found their account in doing so.

Is not this worthy of God-worthy alike of His goodness and His majesty,-to make what we have to do so abundantly clear to us, while the grand things, which He has wrought on our behalf, are veiled in the sublime shroud of mystery, and can only be dimly seen by mortal eye?

We have said already enough to indicate that no theory of the Atonement is traced out for us in Holy Scripture. And it is truly surprising, until our attention is called to it, how slightly and vaguely the doctrine of the Atonement is alluded to in the great Catholic Confessions of Faith. In the Apostles'