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other construction. "Had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." The dogma against which we are contending, if admitted as true, would make this passage read thus :-Had they known it they would not have crucified the human nature of him who in his divine nature, a nature which in no form partook of the sufferings referred to, is the Lord of glory. Can any one who would not be wise above what is written, draw such a meaning from such a passage? Is not the obvious meaning of the sacred writer, this: that the "Lord of glory" Himself, that is, as these words must mean, Christ in his divine, as well as human nature, actually endured the pains of crucifixion?

"Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."

The words "author and finisher of our faith," must, as all admit, refer especially to the divine nature of Christ. How perfectly must the passage be perverted from its obvious meaning, to make it imply any thing else, than that it was the same nature in which He appears as "the author and finisher of our faith," that He endured the cross. "As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep." The phrase, "even so know I the Father," as all admit, must refer to the divine nature of Christ. What if, as the sentiment under consideration requires, we construct this passage thus; As the Father knoweth me, even so, in my divine nature, know I the Father, and in my human nature, "I lay down my life for the sheep," a transaction in which my divine nature partakes in no sense, not implying not only total absence from all suffering of every kind, but the uninterrupted fruition of infinite felicity. What a monstrous distortion of the obvious meaning of the passage, have we in that case. How totally have its glorious beauty and impressive force disappeared. Let us go through "that dearest of books that excels every other," and thus construct all its melting declarations pertaining to the sufferings of our Savior, and their glory has departed. You have taken away our Lord from our hearts, and laid him no where. We have then another Bible, and in very many essential particulars, "another gospel." Let the reader attentively consider the following passages, taken from among many others of similar character that might be adduced, and then ask himself, what aspect of the sufferings of Christ do they obviously present to our contemplation? Do they present to our hearts a mere

creature, or the incarnate God enduring the agony of death for our redemption?

"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things."

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved."

For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich." "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

"Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, and against him that is my tellow, saith the Lord of hosts; smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones."

If the sword of Jehovah, in the sufferings of Christ for our redemption, fell only upon the human nature of our Savior, in what sense did it awake against God's "fellow," that is, his equal?

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."

"Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."

Who can read these two passages together, without recieving from them, the deep impression that He who is, in the first, presented to our contemplation as the "Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God and Everlasting Father," is the same person, who, in the second, is unveiled to our hearts, as wounded for our redemption?

From whence then did the opinion for ages so prevalent in the church, that in the work of Atonement, Christ suffered in his humanity exclusively, take its rise? A conviction pertaining to this subject not only not sustained by direct testimony - from the Bible, but in manifest opposition to its plainest teachings, must, we should suppose, have some where, a very firm and imposing basis on which to rest. What is this foundation of many generations! We answer, it is an assumption in respect to what is possible and impossible to the divine na

ture; an assumption that God is absolutely impassible, that is, He cannot by any possibility actual or conceivable, from any cause out of himself, or from any choice or act of his own, come, for a single moment, from a state of infinite blessedness to one of suffering. This is assumed, not as a truth revealed by the light of inspiration, (for all acknowledge that the Bible is perfectly silent on the subject,) but as an intuition of reason in respect to the divine nature. God, if Himself should choose and for reasons of infinite weight, cannot for a single instant be the subject of suffering, in any form or degree whatever. The sufferings of Christ therefore must have been endured exclusively in his human nature. His deity in no sense or degree could for a single instant have participated in them. Now we may very properly ask for the authority of such a wide-sweeping assumption. God, it is admitted, has never revealed the fact that such is the truth in respect to Himself. Has the human mind, unaided as it must have been, and unguided by the light of inspiration, attained to such an understanding of the divine nature, that it is authorized to make any such assumption in respect to it? "Such knowledge," we confess, "is too wonderful for us; it is high, we cannot attain unto it." Till we have "found out the Almighty unto perfection," we dare make no such affirmations or assumptions in respect to what is possible or impossible with God; especially so, when such assumptions are in manifest contradiction to what God has positively taught us in respect to Himself. When inspiration affirms that the "Mighty God," having become flesh and dwelt among us, was "wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities," have we obtained, or can we, unaided by inspiration, obtain such an insight into the mysteries of the divine nature, as to set aside such affirmations, as not meaning what they directly assert? One thing we are quite assured of. It is much better for our hearts, to say the least, to sit down to the study of the blessed word, with the assumption that no "man knoweth the things of God, but the Spirit of God," and there with childlike simplicity, enquire what that Spirit has revealed in respect to what is "possible with God." If that Spirit should affirm that the "Mighty God" can suffer, and has suffered for our redemption, of one thing we shall feel the most undoubted assurance.Our hearts, our inner being, our entire fallen nature, too imperiously needs that truth as an omnipresent reality, ever to doubt it. If He should teach us otherwise, if He should af firm the absolute impossibility of the divine nature's suffering,

then our souls will sink down under the gloomy consciousness that the rock within us can never be melted and dissolved.

One good of infinite moment, in addition to that of bringing back to the heart of the church, the great doctrine of the Atonement, will, we have no doubt, result from reading the work before us. It will induce far greater caution and modesty than now commonly exists, in determining what the Scriptures must mean, and determining this fact from pre-formed assumptions in respect to what must be true or false, possible or impossible with Deity. We would by no means be understood as affirming that there are no truths which the mind does and must recognize as necessary intuitions pertaining to God. The thing upon which we would insist is, greater caution than is commonly manifested in determining what such truths are, and their proper influence as lights in the interpretation of the divine word. How many of the most precious truths of the Bible have been almost totally neutralized in their influence upon the human mind, by human assumptions, unauthorized alike by reason and revelation both.

We believe also, that the general reading of this work will do much to prepare the way for a new era in the progress of the church, which we have long desired to see. We refer to this-the study of the character of God through the mysteries of the incarnation, as the church has hitherto not been accustomed to do. "The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him," that is, led Him out or revealed Him as He is, to, the human mind. But how hath the Son revealed the Father? We answer, the Father is revealed in the acts of the Son. The compassion manifested towards the widow of Nain, is a real manifestation of the present feelings of the whole Deity towards every individual bowed down under the weight of affliction. In the melting scene at the grave of Lazarus, we behold the divine sensibility as it now exists towards all the sons and daughters of fallen humanity; we behold there, we say, the divine sensibility brought in contact with a fountain of tears. As long as we hold that Deity though incarnate cannot suffer for us, we can never feel that He can weep for us. The acts of Christ therefore are not to us real revelations, as they were designed to be, of the heart of God. When the heart of the Father is thus read in the acts of the Son; when to the faith of the church, the Father thus dwells in the Son, and is thus manifested to us, then will the whole Deity come to the believer and abide with him forever.

ARTICLE XLV.

The Divine Perspective.

BY REV. JAMES A. THOME,

Prof. of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in Oberlin Collegiate Institute.

The one unmakes

NEXT to the man who denies the being of a God, is the man who has erroneous conceptions of God. him, the other mismakes him. The one says he is not-the other says he is what he is not. The one refuses him homage because he is a nonentity-the other withholds it because he is ungodlike. While the one is "without God in the world," the other "changes the glory of the incorruptible God into an image like to corruptible man."

"A God all mercy, is a God unjust." A God unjust, is perhaps as bad as no God. A God of a selfish or malignant character, would be worse than no God, if aught could be worse than an infinite evil. A God, the element of whose being, when clearly known, would inspire virtuous intelligences with slavish fear, or spontaneous disgust, would be an awful curse in the moral universe. It is obvious furthermorethough it becomes us to speak with cautious reverence here -that a being such as has just been supposed, might be formed out of the elements and attributes of the true God, without a single addition or subtraction, simply by a mal-arrangement of them; though it must be admitted that a mal-arrangement, if it really caused no addition or subtraction, would at least involve such a disparagement of some attributes, by degrading them from their proper rank, that they would scarcely remain the same. Changed in force, they would be changed in form, though they might retain their present nomenclature.

What the knowledge of such a God actually existing would be, the conception of such a God is, in kind at least. We mean that the legitimate bearings of the idea which one forms of God, do not materially differ from those of actual

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