connexion with them to whom his righteousness was to be transferred. This was shadowed forth, in the law of a redeemer of a lost estate. The person who was to redeem must be related: hence a redeemer and a relation were expressed by one term, and the nearest relation was to redeem. This was not merely a law suited to that state of society, but was intended to foreshew the congruity of the substitution of Christ. Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself took part of the same. Thus he became like unto his brethren. He took not on him the nature of angels, but took on him the seed of Abraham, the seed he came to redeem. As he came to sinful men, he took on him the likeness of sinful flesh. He was made like unto us in all points, yet without sin. The brazen serpent lifted up for the cure of the Israelites, was of the same form as the serpents by which they were wounded. By one man came sin and death, by one man came redemption. For if by one man's offence death reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Much more is adduced to the same effect by St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, all tending to establish the truth, that as the first Adam was the cause of corruption, shame, and misery, so the second Adam is the source of holiness, life, and bliss.

Hence, then, the incarnation of our Lord was necessary. He was obliged to pass from one world to another, to take upon him a nature originally

foreign from him. I came forth from the Father, saith he, and am come into the world; and justly will the love that prompted him to do so be the everlasting theme of all holy and happy beings. It is probable that if nothing else had rendered unsuitable the substitution of angels for men, this would have been sufficient, that on account of the essential difference between their nature and that of man, there would have been an incongruity in substituting their acts for ours. But Jesus Christ, by his incarnation, being of one flesh and of one spirit with us, was fitted to sustain the character of redeemer. He thus became indeed our kinsman, one in the same circumstances, under the same law, liable to the same temptations, subject to the same passions, encompassed about with our infirmities, but sinless; and thus suited every way to become a substitute for our guilty race.

[We again return to the original copy.]

Thus much is certain, that as the wisdom of God saw it requisite that the redemption of guilty man should be effected by a sacrifice proportioned to the exigence of the case, the assumption of human nature followed as a natural consequence. The ancient sacrifices appointed by Moses, possessed not (it was impossible they should) any intrinsic validity; they exhibited not the expiation, but the remembrance, of sin every year. This is the express declaration of the writer of the Epistle to

the Hebrews. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible for the blood of bulls and of goats to take away sins. Wherefore when he cometh into the world he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God. By his assumption of human nature he stood (notwithstanding that original superiority which removed him at an infinite distance) to the race of man in the relation of a brother; for the flesh which he condescended to take of the blessed virgin, of whom he was miraculously conceived, connected him with our common progenitor. For both he that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one, derived from one parent; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren; saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren; in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.

Fifthly. If the substitution of the innocent in the room of the guilty is at all permitted, it seems requisite that no advantage should be taken of a momentary enthusiasm, a sudden impulse of heroic feeling, which might prompt a generous mind to make a sacrifice, of which, on cool deliberation, he repented.

A proper space should be allowed for reviewing the resolution, for surveying it in all its conse

quences, and forming a settled and immovable purpose. The self-devotion implied in such a transaction will acquire additional dignity in proportion as it appears the result, not of hurried and impetuous feeling, but of fixed determination and extended foresight; a resolution on which time has had no other effect than to fortify and confirm it.

How often is the pang of intense commiseration found to suggest the idea of sacrifices, which the calmer and more permanent dictates of self-interest consign to oblivion, and scatter to the wind! Perhaps there are few who have not been the subject of momentary feeling, the steady predominance of which would have made them heroes and martyrs, who yet shortly subside into their native selfishness, and before the season for action arrives, the genial current which warmed them for a moment is chilled and frozen.

In the case we are now contemplating, the admission of an innocent person to suffer instead of the guilty, nothing could reconcile the mind to such a procedure but such a settled purpose on the part of the substitute, as precludes the possibility of a vacillation or change. But this condition is found in the highest perfection on the part of the blessed Redeemer. His oblation of himself was not the execution of a sudden purpose, the fruit of a momentary movement of pity; it was the result of deliberate counsel, the accomplishment of an ancient purpose, formed in the remotest

recesses of a past eternity. He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, was I brought forth while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, when he set a compass upon the face of the deep: when he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment; when he fixed the foundations of the earth: rejoicing in the habitable parts of his earth; his delights were with the sons of men.

It is appointed indeed for all men once to die. With us it is an event inseparably attached to an abode on earth. But with the Redeemer it was not so properly an incident of his earthly existence as its principal end and design. He assumed life for the purpose of laying it down; and all the purposes, great as they were, which were accomplished by his life, were in entire subordination to those which he contemplated as the certain consequences of his death. In the course of his sojourn here, he never permitted himself to lose sight of it for a moment. The final scene, with all its terrors, was familiar to his imagination, and endeared to his heart; from no indifference to suffering, real or affected, but from the prospect of the joy that was set before him. I have a baptism to be baptized with, he exclaimed, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished! Instead of wishing to efface the remembrance of it by turning his attention to other objects, there was nothing