fact that salvation is effected by the blood or death of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is offered to and accepted of by God, as a perfect satisfaction, a proper equivalent for the sins of such as are made partakers of redemption. They are not their own, but BOUGHT Can any thing more distinctly express the idea of substitutionary satisfaction, which is just the idea of atonement ?

WITH A PRICE.

16

There are two texts in the writings of Paul, strikingly analogous, which set forth the doctrine of atonement in the strongest possible manner. The one is: He hath made him to be sin (apagríav) for us, who knew no sin.' 15 The other:-'Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse (xarága) for us.' In the one, Christ is said to be made sin; in the other, to be made a curse. The former text is often explained to mean only that he was made a sin-offering; and the latter that he was subjected to the cursed death of the cross. Even in this view, the passages are strong proofs of our doctrine. But we are inclined to take them literally as they stand, and to view them as meaning that sin and guilt were actually laid upon Christ, or imputed to him; he was, in law reckoning, regarded as if he had sinned, treated as if he had been accursed. This, as before remarked, was necessary to the penal character of his sufferings; and without it they could have been regarded only in the light of afflictions or calamities, which may, and often

do, befall those who are innocent. But if Christ was made sin and a curse, it must have been in the room of others; he had no sin of his own; 'he knew no sin;' in himself, he ever 'continued in all things written in the book of the law to do them.' Here then again, have we the doctrine of Christ's substitution in the place of others, affirmed in the most forcible manner.

18

In

The passages in which Christ is said to have been made a sacrifice are not to be overlooked. In some of these the death of Christ is spoken of, in the plainest terms, as being a sacrifice :-'Christ hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice (voíav) to God.'" 'Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice (voías) of himself.' 'This man, after he had offered one sacrifice (voíav) for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God."" many more passages than we can quote, is the death of Christ spoken of in the same sacrificial terms, which are elsewhere applied to the offerings of the law. We have already exposed the untenableness of the theory which would account for this, on the principle of its being merely in figurative allusion to the rites of the Mosaic dispensation; and assigned our reasons for believing that the only real sacrifice, properly speaking, which was ever presented, was the sacrifice of Christ. It will not do to take refuge from the proof for atonement, deduced from the

17 Eph. v. 2.

18 Heb. ix. 26.

19 Heb. x. 12.

circumstance of which we are now speaking, by referring to the cases in which the moral and religious services of God's people are represented as sacrifices, or things devoted to God, as if the work of Christ was a sacrifice in no other or higher sense than this.20 For let it be remarked, that under the law there were other than atoning sacrifices, sacrifices that were eucharistical not expiatory, thank-offerings as well as sin-offerings, in which sense the services of the people of God may receive the same designation. But there were also burnt-offerings, sacrifices for sin, of a distinctly penal, expiatory, substitutionary character; and when what Christ did is spoken of as a sacrifice, it is in language of the same kind that we find used with regard to these. The services of believers are never spoken of as sacrifices for sin, sacrifices offered to put away sin; yet such is uniformly the style in which the death of Christ is alluded to in the new testament. The inference, to every candid mind, must therefore be, that Christ's death is a sacrifice, in no figurative or inferior sense, but as a penal, substitutionary, expiatory satisfaction for the sins of those whom he came to redeem, that is to say, an atoning sacrifice."

We come now to speak of the language of substitution, which is plainly and directly employed, by the writers of the new testament, in relation to the sufferings and death of Christ. We allude to the frequent use of the preposition FOR, as in the follow

20 Rom. xii. 1. Heb. xiii. 15. 1 Pet. ii, 5.

21 Smith on Sac., p. 286.

ing passages:-'The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom FOR (avri) many.-In due time Christ died FOR (Tg) the ungodly. He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up FOR (Tg) us all.Christ our passover is sacrificed FOR (Tg) us.He hath made him to be sin FOR (VTÈg) us, who knew no sin.-Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse FOR (Tg) us.

22

Christ also hath loved us and given himself FOR (veg) us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.-Our Lord Jesus Christ, who died FOR (VTÈg) us.-Who gave himself a ransom FOR (Tg) all.-Who gave himself FOR (kg) us.-Christ also suffered FOR (Tg) us. He laid down his life FOR (Tg) us.'*— The prepositions employed in these texts naturally denote the idea of substitution. The Greek language has no terms by which such an idea can be more significantly expressed; and it is not to be questioned that both sacred and profane writers use them in this acceptation. The first of them,-άvtì,literally involves the idea of apposition, of one thing set over against another; whence naturally spring those of commutation, recompense, and substitution. Xenophon, speaking of Artaxerxes being made a subject instead of a king, expresses it thus:-s douLov άvTì Baoiλews-Our Lord says, 'Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?'”—άvri ixlúos

22 Matt. xx. 28. Rom. v. 6; viii. 32. 1 Cor. v. 7. 2 Cor. v. 21. Gal. iii. 13. Eph. v. 2. 1 Thess. v. 10. 1 Tim. ii. 6. Tit. ii. 14. 1 Pet. ii. 21. 1 John iii, 16. 23 Luke xi. 11.

ὄφιν ἐπιδώσει αὐτῷ; In these cases the idea of substitution is sufficiently apparent. Nor is it less so surely when Christ is said to give his life a ransom for many—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν; to give himself a ransom for all—ἀντίλυτρον ὑπὲρ πάντων.—The other preposition, règ, which most commonly occurs, literally signifies over, and thus denotes the idea of covering, protection, substitution that which is placed over another to save that other by receiving what must otherwise have wrought his destruction. The phrase ὑπὲρ τούτου ἀποθανεῖν occurs in Xenophon, in the sense of to die in the stead of one. The same is the sense in which the word occurs in John xv. 13, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends, τὴν ψυχὴν αὑτοῦ ¿TÈg Tãv píλWV αvrou. Such being the case, we are naturally led to conclude that the same is the import of the preposition in the numerous passages quoted above with reference to the death of Christ, namely, that he died in our stead, that his death was substituted for ours.

It forms no valid objection to this conclusion that the same phraseology occurs in circumstances which do not admit of precisely the same terms being employed in explanation. The same preposition, or one of similar import, is used with reference to sin, as is employed in the above texts with reference to the sinner. Thus it is said, speaking of Christ:— 'Who was delivered FOR (d) our offences.-Christ died FOR (Tg) our sins.-Who gave himself FOR (g) our sins. Christ also hath once suffered for