upon us through the intervention of others. To what a number of middle agents-each performing his own office in the economy of Providence-are we all indebted for our food, our raiment, our habitations, our social pleasures, our mental cultivation, our intellectual habits!

But to consider the subject in the more restricted scriptural view of our being saved from the punishment of sin, through the intervention of a Mediator-who does not know that such a mediation consists with the visible order of God's government, or in other words, agrees with experience?

Although the ruined spendthrift, the decrepid sensualist, and the condemned criminal may be destitute of all power to assist themselves, yet if their excesses have not gone beyond a certain point, a brother, a physician, an intercessor, will often succeed in delivering them from the effects of their transgressions.

The world abounds with poverty, misery, and sorrow, and these are often the natural consequences of our own misconduct. It also contains many remedies for them, which for the most part, are applied to their purpose through the agency of others; and which are so many examples not merely of goodness, but of mercy, in the known government of God. Now the punishments of a future state, may equally follow sin, in the way of natural consequence; and the prevention of them, through the mediation of Christ, is an infi

nitely higher, and yet a precisely analogous, example of the same divine mercy. Who then shall pretend that such a doctrine is strange or unnatural?

But the innocent Jesus, it is objected, is represented as suffering in behalf of guilty sinners, and even in their stead. Such undoubtedly is the doctrine of Scripture, and to object to it, as if we were able to penetrate the counsels of an inscrutable Being, is a great absurdity. But how doubly absurd does such an objection become, when we look into the world around us, and perceive on every side innumerable instances of the innocent suffering for the guilty!

For example-A son, although carefully educated, yields to his evil propensities, and pursues a course of dissipation. For a long time he may himself escape without punishment, but his parents mourn on his behalf, and mourn in his stead. Every act of vice or folly which he is known to commit, inflicts a fresh wound on the hearts of those who are guiltless of his offences; and the more they regard the law of righteousness, the more deeply they suffer. Or, on the other hand, a parent neglects his business, and falls into intemperance; and what in consequence is the lot of his innocent offspring? They are deprived of a good education, reduced to poverty, and exposed to innumerable sorrows. In a temporal point of view, the sins of the father are visited on his children

Almost all the crimes which men commit and even their minor faults are the occasion, in various degrees, of misery or uneasiness to those who are no sharers in their guilt. More particularly, when we interfere on behalf of others, in order to prevent or remedy the afflictions in which they are involved by their own vice or folly, we seldom succeed in our object, except at the cost of much labour and anxiety, and often of loss and injury, to ourselves. In all such cases the pains which we endure are, strictly speaking, vicarious.

It is clear then that the suffering of the innocent for the guilty is permitted under the government of God; and there can be no doubt that it is often ordained for the most beneficial purposes. Nor will any one who has a just sense of his own ignorance, and of the secrecy of the divine counsels, object to this providential appointment, even though the suffering in question be directly opposed (as is often the case) to the will of him who bears it.

What

But the apparent difficulty is considerably lessened, when the pains which men endure for the sake of others are voluntary. sceptical mind is offended by the labours and difficulties which men so often undergo to serve a brother or a friend; or by the self devotion of the sisters of charity to the painful duties of the hospital; or by the perils which a Howard braves in visiting infected prisons; or by the banishment and privations which a

Schwartz or a Brainerd endures, in order to preach the gospel to the heathen?

Now when the Lord Jesus, during his sojourn on earth, submitted himself to a life of hardship and poverty--when he carried the sorrows and bare the sicknesses of the people-his sufferings on behalf of man, were purely voluntary-the effect of native and free benevolence. And the Scriptures declare, that the same principle applies to his whole course of humiliation and suffering. Not only was it in obedience to the Father's will, but in perfect union of design with the Father, and in his own voluntary redeeming love, that he descended from the height of his glory, "took upon him the form of a servant," and "humbled himself unto deatheven the death of the cross." "Christ loved the church and gave himself for it."5 "Through the eternal spirit" he "offered himself without spot to God;" and he condescended to illustrate this act of mercy by an allusion to human friendship. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend."7

66

Thus then it is evident that the Scripture doctrine of mediation, both in its more general bearing, and in the peculiar view of the propitiatory sufferings of Christ, although far above the scope of human invention, is consistent with reason and agrees with experience.

5 Eph. v, 25.

6 Heb. ix, 14.

In order, however, that we may apprehend with greater precision the reasonableness of this doctrine, it is necessary for us to advert more particularly to two of its features.

1. Were a mediator required to act on behalf of some miserable criminal in order to rescue him from impending punishment, it would be a vast advantage if one could be found, who had a full understanding of the criminal's case and abundant opportunity of sympathising with his sufferings, and yet was a person of commanding influencewhose natural situation would enable him to deal on equal terms with the offended party, say, with the supreme governor of the country. Should it be possible to obtain such a mediator, he would be selected by every person of reflection, in preference to any other who had either less knowledge of the criminal's sufferings, or less authority in dealing with the sovereign. How matchless. then is the wisdom and mercy of that dispensation, under which we are provided with a Mediator, who in his human character (though sinless) "was in all points tempted like as we are," and is, therefore, touched with a feeling of our infirmities;"8 and yet, being one with the Father in the Godhead, is one

with him in dignity and power. "Father," said Jesus, "I WILL that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am."9 We are worms of the earth-finite, weak, degraded, and exposed to suffering; God is S Heb. iv, 15.

9 John xvii, 24.