dressed to his understanding, and committed to the charge of his unbiassed will;-a law, in which he learns the great and ennobling end of his being; the accomplishment of which is thus intrusted to his own free co-operation with God. If such a trust be betrayed by disobedience, the transgressor must, thereby, of necessity, come under his Creator's frown, and experience his curse. His crime has in it, not only the elements of all moral evil, as it alienates his Creator's property, repudiates the likeness of his glorious holiness, and contemns his condescension and favour; but it is also an assault upon the sovereignty of the Lawgiver, as set forth in the law. Hence, not only may the transgressor expect to be left to the evils which naturally grow out of the sin which he has embraced; but, to realize the power of his offended Sovereign, arrayed against him, in the infliction of a punishment adequate to his crime. Further, the form in which the evil thus incurred shall be inflicted, must be determined, in many respects, by the nature of the victim. It will assume one aspect in the case of fallen angels; another, in many of its features, in fallen men; and still another when the Prince of Life becomes the sufferer.

a penalty.

The infliction thus imposed upon the transgressor constitutes the penalty of the law. By this phrase, is designated that evil, 22. Nature of which is defined in the statute, and inflicted by the officers of the law, for the vindication of its sovereignty against transgressors. Three things are, therefore, involved in the word, penalty, and exhaustive of its meaning. Its design is, to vindicate the sovereignty;-its matter, is defined in the law;-and its infliction on the transgressor, is made by the officers of the law, in accordance with its mandate.

An entirely different view, on this subject, is taken by the New Haven school of divines. Says Mr. Barnes, "The penalty of the law is what is threatened or inflicted by the lawgiver, as an expression of his sense of the value of the law, and of the evil of violating it. The penalty may be measured or determined (a) by an actual statement, on his part, of what he will inflict, or, what the violation of the law deserves; or (b) by what actually comes upon the offender, under his administration, as

the consequence of violating the law. In other words, we may learn what is the penalty of the law, from revelation, or from observation of the actual course of events, or from both combined. The actual threatening may or may not cover the whole ground; and what the penalty is, may be learned partly from the statement, and partly from observation. As a matter of fact, we ascertain, in a great measure, what the penalty of violating the divine law is, from observation. Thus, we learn what is the penalty of intemperance, partly from the previous statement of what will be the consequences, and partly from an actual observation of the evils which come upon the drunkard. To know what the real penalty is, we must look at all those consequences on the body and the soul; on the property and the peace of the drunkard, on his family and his reputation; on the effects in delirium tremens; in his wretched death, in his dishonoured memory, and in the woes endured forever. All these, and not a part of them, are designed to express the Lawgiver's sense of the value of the law, and the evil of its violation. To endure, therefore, the penalty of the law in the case of intemperance is to bear all the evils which it actually brings on the offender in this world and in the world to come. If a substitute, therefore, should endure the literal penalty of the law, all must be endured which would actually come upon the offender himself."*

This whole view is both superficial and unsound; involving erroneous conceptions in respect to the nature of the evil of sin, as well as concerning the office of the penalty. It is in perfect keeping with that whole system, according to which, sin consists in the outward violation of statute law. Were this true, there would be no room to allow any evils resulting from sin, except such as the law inflicts. It would seem as though a moment's reflection upon the case cited by our author, must have led to a discovery of the fallacy of the whole theory. Why is drunkenness a crime, condemned and punished by the law of God? The only reason that can be given is, that the natural effects result

* Barnes on the Atonement, p. 233.

ing from intemperance are such as are incompatible with the duties which the inebriate owes, to himself, his family and God. It is because the free use of alcohol is injurious to the body and mind, and involves many evils, as its natural consequences, that God has forbidden it, and sealed the prohibition with a penal curse. The argument of Mr. Barnes confounds this penalty, which God inflicts, with those evils which are caused immediately by the habit itself, and to protect men from which, was the very design of the law and its penalty. As we have already seen, there are two evils in sin, which are not to be confounded together. First, it is contrary to the perfect nature of God. And, as God's perfection is the cause of his own blessedness; and his likeness is an immediate honour and cause of happiness, to those who imitate his excellence, so is sin, in and of itself, an evil and dishonour, and the cause of multiplied evils, in him who indulges it. Thus, love is the immediate cause of happiness, to its possessor, and to those with whom he is brought in contact; whilst hatred and malevolence, of themselves, banish joy from the bosom where they dwell, and mar the enjoyments of all around. Not only so, but God, as Creator, has vindicated his own excellency, by so ordering it, in his creation, that the imitation of his perfections is, in many ways, the immediate cause of increasing good and happiness to the creatures; whilst indulgence in sin induces effects of an opposite character.

The second evil of sin has respect to the sovereignty of God. Because of its essential evil, its incongruity to his own most holy nature, God has seen good, as sovereign, to prohibit sin. And, having vindicated his essential excellence, by the natural relations, which, as we have just seen, he has established between holiness and happiness, sin and misery, he asserts and vindicates his sovereignty, by annexing the penalty of the law, which his sovereign hand judicially enforces against those who transgress the precept; as well as the rewards, which we shall hereafter see to have been pledged to obedience.

Thus, have the holiness and the sovereignty of God, each, their own appropriate relation to sin, and vindication, against the sinner and in behalf of the holy. And, as a broad line of

demarcation is traceable, between the essential evil of sin,which is moral unlikeness to God,—and its formal aspect,—which is, violation of the law,—so, there is a line, equally broad, between those provisions, which are developed through the operation of the natural laws of cause and effect, under the ordering of the God of providence, and those judicial provisions, which arise out of the law, and are dispensed by the immediate hand of the eternal King. The former class attests the infinite excellence of God, the holy; the other proclaims the righteous and eternal sovereignty of the Lawgiver and Judge. The one arises out of the very nature of holiness, as good, and, of sin, as evil; and can have no other immediate cause. The other proceeds from the immediate hand of God, in the assertion of his authority and exercise of his power. As relating to sin, the one is the evil proper to sin in itself, and consequent upon it as a natural cause; the other is the penalty, defined in the law and inflicted by God. These distinctions, thus so broadly marked and important, are, by Mr. Barnes, entirely overlooked and ignored, in the vain attempt to escape from the scriptural doctrine respecting the penalty of the law, as inflicted on the Son of God, our vicarious Surety at the bar of divine justice.

The phrase, “penalty of sin," is sometimes used in a general sense, to express all the evils, of whatever kind, which follow sin, whether consequential or punitive,—whether vindicatory of the holiness, or of the sovereignty, of God. But the phrase, "penalty of the law," is never properly used to designate any evil which the law does not prescribe, which the judge does not find written in the statute-book, and which the officers of the law do not inflict by virtue of its mandate;—any thing, in short, which is not expressly designed and effectual to vindicate the authority of the law, as law; and of God, as sovereign and lawgiver. That authority can be vindicated against the disobedient, in but one conceivable way; that is, by the infliction of an evil, proportioned to the transgression; and which, being prescribed in the law, is thus unequivocally attested to flow from its curse. The unimpaired sovereignty of the law is thus signalized; inasmuch as he, by whose disobedience it has been dis

honoured, is the involuntary evidence of its supremacy; by virtue of the exercise upon him, subjugated though hostile, of its absolute power; and his experience of the terrors and fearfulness of that intolerable and inevitable curse, the forewarnings of which he has contemned.

Death, was the name used to designate the penalty, at the first giving of the law to our first parents. "In the day that 23. Death not thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die."-Gen. ii. a metaphor. 17. Such was the language in which it was stated to them in the garden. The same word is habitually used in the Scriptures as expressive of the judicial infliction incurred by sin. The proper and primary meaning of the word, as addressed to Adam, and descriptive of the penalty of the law, was,—not specifically bodily decease, spiritual ruin, nor the torments of hell, but-in one word-the wrath and curse of God. This is the definition, implied in all the statements of the Westminster standards. They always distinguish between the curse itself, and the sorrows, temporal and eternal, which flow from it; and carefully mark their consequential relation to each other. Thus, in the Confession of Faith, ch. vi. § 6:-"Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, doth, in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God, and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries, spiritual, temporal and eternal.” Shorter Catechism, Qu. 84:-"Every sin deserveth God's wrath and curse, both in this life and that which is to come." Qu. 19:"All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever." See also Larger Catechism, questions 27-29, 152, &c.

That the word, death, is not used in the law as a metaphor, but as signifying, in a literal sense, the curse of God, is, we think, demonstrable. The metaphor is a figure of speech, in which the thing named only bears a relation of analogy, real or fancied, to that which is meant. Thus, when we speak of a man of towering or giant intellect, although we appeal to stand