divine holiness. He is manifested, indeed, to be the Holy One, of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, who cannot look upon sin; for such is the immaculate purity of his nature that moral guilt must not be cancelled by a sovereign act of will, nor moral pollution wiped away by a mere effort of power, but sin signally stamped with the brand of Jehovah's deepest abhorrence by the substitutionary sufferings of his own Son. By God's sparing not his own Son but delivering him up for us all, we are more impressively taught the inviolability of divine justice than we could be by laying open the caverns of endless despair, and disclosing to view the horrid and appaling scenes of suffering and woe which they present. In the cross of heaven's spotless Victim we read most plainly that God will by no means clear the guilty. The wrath of God is here revealed as it is nowhere else, against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. The immovable determination of the divine nature, to visit every deviation from rectitude with its merited and appropriate award of judgment, is unanswerably demonstrated. Nor can any thing be conceived, better fitted to fill with terror such as perseveringly outrage the authority of the divine law, for, if the sword of justice was made to awake against the Shepherd, and smite the man who is Jehovah's fellow, who, continuing in a course of sin and unbelief, can expect to escape the vengeance of eternal fire! If such things were done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?

But it is the gracious character of God that is principally exhibited in the atonement of Christ.

Compassion, mercy, love, grace, beam with refulgent splendour from the cross, and from the cross only. Wisdom and power, holiness and justice, though here transcendently magnified, are elsewhere displayed to a certain extent: but the atoning sacrifice of Christ is what alone gives any intimation, even the slightest, of forgiving mercy and redeeming love. If left to creation and providence, our anticipations might well be of a different character, seeing the pains and privations, and sorrows, and death, which everywhere prevail, would seem to announce God's fixed determination to avenge the quarrel of his covenant. But, in the face of the suffering Saviour, we read distinct intimations of mercy and love. Gethsemane and Calvary thus disclose what the fairest scenes in nature can never exhibit. The human face divine,' even when marred with grief, and lacerated with thorns, and foul with weeping, and pale with death, reflects more of the divine glory than the sun when shining in his strength. The hour of midnight gloom and darkness and desertion which came upon the holy soul of the Redeemer, was, so to speak, the noon-tide of God's eternal love, the meridian splendour of mercy to perishing men, the reign and triumph of superabounding grace,"God commendeth his love toward us in that, when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.' 'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and gave his Son to be a propitiation for our sins.' 'Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."

II. It vindicates the honour, and establishes the

principles of the Divine moral Government in general, and of the moral Law in particular.

The homage to his excellence which the Lord of the universe demands of all his rational creatures, of whatever class, together with a duly apportioned expression of his approbation or disapprobation, according as their conduct meets, or falls short of, his demands, constitutes what we understand by the Divine moral government in general. The moral Law, again, is that special moral constitution given to the human race in particular, comprehending the divine requirements obligatory on man. The one is just a branch of the other, and, as far as their claims, sanctions, and obligations are concerned, they may be regarded as identical.

The original claims of God's moral government and law are high,-entire affection, and perpetual and devoted obedience. These claims are founded on the undoubted supremacy, intrinsic excellence, and inherent proprietorship of God. No testimony to their equity could be more unequivocal than that which the death of Christ supplies. Had they not been at first perfectly equitable, had they been essentially unjust, or even in the slightest degree over rigorous, their tone would certainly have been relaxed, rather than that the Son of God should be subjected to suffer the accursed death of the cross. His being so subjected thus proclaims in the most determinate accents that the law is holy, just, and good.

The sanctions of the Divine moral government are necessary, as well as its claims.

Without

these, neither could the displeasure of the Supreme moral Governor at the breach of his law be adequately expressed, nor could the subjects of this law ever be deterred from sin. While it is obvi ous, that to effect these ends they require to be awful, it is equally plain, that the moral Governor himself is alone entitled to determine what shall be thought adequate. This he did by giving forth the appalling declarations, In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die '-'cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.' But the doctrine of atonement, which supposes this curse of the law to be borne by the Son of God himself, surely strikingly demonstrates, that these sanctions, however awful, were nothing more than just, nothing more than necessary; that they were dictated by no little feeling of revenge, founded on no pitiful calculation of expediency, and were utterly incapable of being departed from inany one instance.

Thus, the permanent obligation of the requirements and sanctions of the supreme moral government was satisfactorily and for ever established. It appears that these obligations are not to be violated with impunity, nor altered, nor abated in the slightest degree. No abrogation, or abridgment, or modification of them can take place out of respect to man's disinclination, or to what is called human frailty. Though palpably irrational, the heart of man has been wicked enough to conceive this monstrous supposition; and, but for the direct confutation it receives from the vicarious sufferings of the Redeemer, there is reason to fear that

the base and pernicious principle would have been extensively adopted. But for these sufferings, on the supposition that man had been saved, it must have gone forth to the moral universe, that the law, though requiring perfect obedience, would be satisfied with less, and though denouncing condemnation on every guilty violator, would permit the perpetrator to escape with impunity. And the consequence of this announcement must have been, to give such a view of the Lawgiver and his law, as could not fail to encourage moral subjects, of every order, to revolt, and embark in the most hardened and extensive rebellion. The atonement, on the other hand, proclaims the stability of the law, and the unflinching rectitude of the Lawgiver. It assures us that the one is not to be insulted, nor the other to be trifled with; that either God must be obeyed, or the consequences of disobedience must be borne; that the throne of the divine moral government is strictly inviolable, and that his rectoral powers are not to be let down to the most presumptuous mortal on earth, or to the most ambitious archfiend in hell. The law is magnified and made honourable. Christ appears to be the end of the law for righteousness. He came not to destroy the law but to fulfil it. And God hath set forth a propitiation through faith in bis blood, to declare his righteousness.

III. It affords a demonstration of the exceeding evil of sin.

That sin could not be pardoned without a satisfaction, and that no satisfaction could suffice but the death of God's own well-beloved Son, are