Occurrence.

nals of the theocracy, suspensions and remissions of threatened punishments are facts of very frequent Indeed the whole of this divine polity was a system of suspensions, founded upon the substitution of sacrifices, as public expedients and honourable grounds for the non-infliction of threatenings and penalties. Since God in this peculiar polity has clearly shown that he can on honourable grounds suspend a threatened judgment, without being deemed unjust, he has exhibited to us the exercise of a principle, which is capable of indefinite application to the whole sway of his moral government, and which has actually left well-defined and indelible traces of its operation in the administration of divine providence.

Even if the arguments from analogy failed us in proving the justice of suspending a threatening, there is one fact, that in the history of sinners is boldly prominent, and is presenting itself at every turn: it is the fact that the original penalty threatened to our first parents has been actually suspended. Had it been literally executed, there would have been no human race now existing. The penalty threatened. to Adam was, "in the day thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die." Adam did eat of the forbidden tree; he was spared, he did not die, his penalty was suspended, his punishment was remitted. Was such a suspension just? On what principle can it be justified? It was suspended on the principle of public justice, which made honourable provisions, that the

I

spirit of the divine constitution should be preserved without adhering to the letter of it.

SECTION IV.

The Death of Christ an honourable ground for
remitting Punishment.

I. The atonement of Christ is a distinct and public recognition of the truth and justice of the sinner's liableness to the punishment threatened in the law.

The apostle Paul, in Col. ii. 14, represents the influence of the death of Christ as paying a debt or cancelling a bond. The chirograph, or bond, means the power of the law to condemn a sinner, that is, our obligation and liableness to suffer the penalty threatened by the law for sins. The sinner owes to the public government the suffering of the punishment. It is this due, this obligation, this liableness, that is represented by the chirograph.

The first part of an honourable payment of a debt, whether commercial or civil is, freely owning the justice of the claim, and the reality of the obligation. The whole of the undertaking of Christ proceeds upon this recognition, that what the law requires is holy, just, and good. By blotting out the handwriting and cancelling the bond, he did not mean to imply that its claims were false, or that its demands were unjust. On the contrary, he nailed the chirograph to the cross, as having been a true and valid indictment.

The death of Christ, or the atonement by his death, supposes the charge against the sinner to be true, and his liableness to the punishment to be just and right. He came to seek and to save that which is "lost,"-to call, not the righteous, but "sinners," "children of wrath," "condemned already." If the atonement did not regard sinners as antecedently bound over by sin to suffer the penalty of the law, Christ would not have died to redeem them from under the condemnation of the law. This public testimony to the dueness of the punishment, honours the divine government in maintaining and enforcing its claims on the sinner, and marks sin as an inexcuseable wrong, and of unextenuated guilt.

II. The provision of an atonement shows the great concern of the moral Governor for the ends of justice to be secured in his administrations.

God is rich in mercy, plenteous in redemption, and ready to forgive; nevertheless he is concerned for the honour of his justice. He loves right, and he hates wrong. He loves order in his government, and is concerned to prevent disorder. His hatred of disorder and wrong, is commensurate with his love of himself, and with his concern for the public good of the universe. In defending his own rights, the whole of his public character and revealed glory is concerned. He needs no motive to feel compassion and mercy towards sinners, but a safe medium is necessary for the honourable expression of that mercy towards them.

Sin is a public injury to God and to the universe. It is not in the nature of mercy, nor does it become its character, to forgive such a public wrong without an expression of its abhorrence of the crime. Such a mercy would be weak indulgence, a fond and a blind passion. Every one sees that a family governed on such a principle would soon become the pest of a commonwealth. And so would a company of servants or an army of soldiers. Even family discipline requires that when you forgive a child, there ought always to be some expression of displeasure at the offence.

The most powerful expression of mercy's abhorrence of sin, and of its concern for the ends of public justice, has been given in the substitution of the Son of God. A father, for instance, will not be afraid of relaxing the bonds of good discipline in forgiving a child, when a mother in tears and anguish is the expression of an abhorrence of the child's offence. God has consulted the ends of public justice in the exercise of his mercy, and has set forth the death of his Son as the honourable ground on which he is just in justifying him that believes. God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, as a clear demonstration of his great concern for his justice, and as a public expression at what a dear rate he forgives the sin which his righteous soul abominates.

Such a provision for securing the ends of justice, honours the divine government. It shows that the

reins of just authority are not at all relaxed. All the subjects will feel that the moral Governor thinks highly of justice. No friend of the Mediator can slight the law and the government, and no one who slights and disregards the law will ever be deemed a friend of the Mediator.

III. In the atonement the suffering of death by Jesus Christ was substituted, by the blessed God, instead of the suffering of the punishment that was due to the sinner.

Jesus Christ suffered for us, the just for the unjust. He was made a curse for us-and a sinoffering for us. When it is said that Christ suffered for us, it is not meant that he suffered the sufferings due to us in law, but that his sufferings were endured as substituted instead of our sufferings. An atonement goes on the supposition that the identical sufferings threatened against man are suspended, and other sufferings substituted instead of them.

This exchange, or commutation of sufferings, in the expedient for redemption was intimated in the first promise made to Adam. Man by transgression had become liable to the literal sufferings threatened in the penalty of the law. From these sufferings he was to be delivered by the Seed of the woman. This deliverance was to be effected, not by power, but by a price of substituted sufferings, designated the "bruising of the heel," a very different kind of suffering from that which was threatened to Adam.

This view of the vicarious and substitutionary