just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus"-the words imply a fitness or necessity that God should maintain the law which he had enacted: they assure us, that he actually and designedly adhered to the claim of justice; and that, in the offering of Christ, that claim was effectually discharged.

We do not follow in the track of those divines, who, not satisfied with the reality and sufficiency of the atonement of Christ, apply themselves to the investigation of its details: pronouncing, for example, on the extent of human guilt, in order to establish the necessity of so immense a sacrifice; propounding in what manner the sufferings and death of Christ could have constituted an equivalent for the redemption of the world; and aiming, in various ways, to make out an equal account between God and his creatures. We should be loath to encumber an inscrutable subject with inconclusive reasoning; and, more particularly, to obscure and disfigure the simplicity of the gospel by any hypothesis of our own invention. The imagination, we suspect, is far more active than the rational faculty in these dark and interminable labyrinths of speculation. The simple fact of Christ's propitiation in our behalf, would seem the amount

of our certain knowledge of this mysterious transaction. In attempting elucidations of it, we are breaking silence where the apostles held their peace; we are hazarding assertions where superior beings are reduced to form conjectures; for "into these things the angels desire to look ;”—as though we could discern the track of the Almighty's footsteps, in paths where higher orders of intelligences cannot "find him out." Principles may be involved in this stupendous matter, as remote from our comprehension as is the being or nature itself of the Divinity-the mode of his subsistence. With regard, however, to the reality of Christ's vicarious agency in our behalf, and the efficiency of his sacrifice to procure the absolution of the penitent,-all that is needful to be known and believed,—the language of the sacred writers is surely most distinct and unequivocal. They expressly and repeatedly refer the fact of our being accounted righteous, to an efficacy in the death of Christ to justify the guilty; and teach us that it is strictly because he has fulfilled the law, by expiating the guilt of disobedience, that we can approach the Creator with confidence; associate the hope of pardon with the feeling of contrition; derive encouragement to the obser

vance of his precepts; and anticipate the benefit of our faith and holiness, even in the shape of honour and reward.*

We must not tarry on this extensive field of subject, but it may be proper to notice that view of the death of Christ which is most commonly taken by those who dispute its atoning virtue. They regard it principally as an attestation to the reality of his pretensions. But, strictly speaking, the consent of Christ to suffer death could not substantiate his pretensions: his resurrection might and did. His death, however, could attest only the sincerity of his purpose, not the veracity of his sayings. A voluntary submission to the last extremity, as a witness to the truth, exempts a man from the suspicion of imposture, but not from the imputation of enthusiasm. The single event,

* "The doctrine of the gospel," Bishop Butler observes, "appears to be not only that Christ taught the efficacy of repentance, but that he made it of the efficacy that it is by what he did and suffered for us: that he obtained for us the benefit of having our repentance accepted to eternal life: not only that he revealed to sinners that they were in a capacity of salvation, and how they might obtain it; but that he put us into a capacity of salvation, by what he did and suffered for us: put us into a capacity of escaping future punishment, and obtaining future happiness." Analogy, Part II. chap. 5.

however, of the death of Christ, independently of his resurrection, forms a leading and pervading topic in the writings of his Apostles a fact which were not a little extraordinary, if the principal effect and purpose of his dying had been to demonstrate the rectitude of his intentions. For could the glory of martyrdom have shed a peculiar and distinguishing lustre on the memory of Jesus? Could it have magnified the name of one who had uttered his words-wrought his deeds-lived his life? Was it the capital fact in the history of such a personage?-of one who had so far transcended the men who had preceded him as inspired instructors, or who by their miracles had illustrated the power of God?-of one who, by leaving us an infallible rule of conduct, an unblemished example of rectitude, and a certain assurance of immortality, had improved indefinitely the character and prospects of the human race; and thus had been exalted above all who had ever lived, and placed alone in the records of the world? Would the disciples of such a Master-if we may suppose them to have been living in a later age-have judged it essential to his fame, that the taper which burned near the tombs of martyrs should glimmer in the precincts of his sepulchre ?

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But farther-it has been alleged, and we think with reason, that this view of the death of Christ would but ill account for his profound dejection, his "exceeding sorrow," at the period when his labours and sufferings were drawing to a close. Our nature, we presume, is capable of what may be called, without exaggeration, a contempt of suffering, and an alacrity to die, -a comparative deadness to external impressions, at periods when the mind is absorbed in its own peculiar objects, and its energies drawn out in high resolves, and fervent aspirations. There is a state of the mind in which the instruments of pain and death seem to have as little power to penetrate its feelings, as to come into contact with its essence : a state which may arise, it is true, from a variety of causes, but which is especially supported by an undoubting consciousness of rectitude, a scorn of man's judgment, a disesteem of the world-thoughts of God and futurity. Now, however some may depreciate the person and office of our Saviour, there is assuredly but one conviction of the spotlessness of his character, and his sublime abstraction from the interests of the present state. He was peculiarly the minister of the world. that is to come; and stood without an equal