and the evils consequent upon sin to which they were subject? How did it imply His having all men's sins laid upon Him,-His bearing them as an atoning sacrifice, His being an accepted sacrifice,-His obtaining everlasting redemption?

It will simplify our task in considering Christ's doing of the will of God, if we remember the relation of the second commandment to the first, as being "like it;" that is to say, that the spirit of sonship in which consists the perfect fulfilment of the first commandment, is one with the spirit of brotherhood which is the fulfilment of the second. Loving the Father with all His heart and mind and soul and strength, the Saviour loved His brethren as Himself. He, the perfect elder brother, unlike the elder brother in the parable, sympathised in all the yearnings of the Father's heart over His prodigal brethren; and the love which in the Father desired to be able to say of each of them, My son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found; in Him equally desired to be able to say, My brother was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. President Edwards, in tracing out the fitness and suitableness of the mediation of our Lord, dwells upon His interest in the glory of God with whom He was to intercede, and because of which He could propose nothing derogatory to it; and His love to those for whom He was to intercede, because of which He felt so identified with them that what touched them touched Him. There is something which surely commends itself to us in this recognition of love as that which identifies the Saviour with those to whom He is a Saviour, and this, as Edwards traces it out, both in His own consciousness and in the Father's thoughts of Him as the Mediator. May we not go further and say, that as love was thus a fitness for the office, so it necessitated the undertaking of the office, moving to the exercise of this high function, as well as qualifying for it? And seeing love to all men as that law of love under which Christ was, must we not both wonder and regret, that his deeply interesting thoughts

in this region did not lead Edwards to see, that by the very law of the spirit of the life that was in Christ Jesus He must needs come under the burden of the sins of all men become the Saviour of all men, and, loving them as He loved Himself, seek for them that they should partake in His own life in the Father's favour,-that eternal life which He had with the Father before the world was?

When God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to accomplish our redemption, the Apostle says He sent Him as "a sacrifice for sin." (Romans viii. 3, margin.) To send Him in the likeness of sinful flesh was to make Him a sacrifice for sin, for it was to lay the burden of our sins upon Him. Thus related to us, while by love identified with us, the Son of God necessarily came under all our burdens, and especially our great burden-sin. And this not merely as President Edwards represents our sins as being laid upon Christ, in that a vivid sense of their evil oppressed His Holy Spirit, nor even in that through love to us (as he speaks with reference to the elect) the realisation of the misery to which we were exposed would give Him pain; but that living the life of love in humanity He must needs care for all humanity, for all partaking in humanity even as for Himself: so being affected by the evil of the life of self, and enmity in humanity according to His own consciousness of the life of love, and at once condemning that life of self, desiring its destruction, and feeling Himself by love devoted to the work of delivering man from it, at whatever cost to Himself. Thus moved by love, and in the strength of love, must we conceive of the Saviour as taking upon Him all our burden, undertaking our cause to do and suffer all that was implied in obtaining for us redemption. The love that came into humanity had manifested its own nature even in coming into humanity-its self-sacrificing nature; though this we can less understand or measure. Being in humanity, it acts according to its own nature, and must needs bear our burden and work and suffer for our salvation, and this in ways which we who are human

may understand, and shall understand in the measure in which the life of love becomes our life.

The active outgoing of the self-sacrificing love in which the Son of God wrought out our redemption presents these two aspects, first, His dealing with men on the part of God; and, secondly, His dealing with God on behalf of men. These together constitute the atonement equally in its retrospective and prospective bearing. Therefore it will be necessary to contemplate them not only severally, but also, first in reference to our condition as sinners under the condemnation of a broken law, and then in reference to the purpose of God to bestow on us the adoption of sons. The unity of the life that was in Christ as love to God and love to men,—the unity of the ends contemplated in His sacrifice of Himself, viz. the glory of God and the salvation of men,—the unity also of the intermediate results, in that the same work which was an adequate ground on which to rest our being taken from under the law, making that consistent with the honour of the law and the character of the law-giver, was also the adequate preparation for our receiving the adoption of sons; this pervading unity, which is "the simplicity that is in Christ," will not be veiled by this orderly consideration of the different aspects of the works of Christ, while it will prepare us for the closer consideration of the details of the sacred history, at once shedding light on these details and being confirmed by them.

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CHAPTER VI.

RETROSPECTIVE ASPECT OF THE ATONEMENT.

THE atonement considered in its retrospective aspects is

I. Christ's dealing with men on the part of God. It was in our Lord the natural outcoming of the life of love of love to the Father and of love to us-to shew us the Father, to vindicate the Father's name, to witness for the excellence of that will of God against which we were rebelling, to witness for the trustworthiness of that Father's heart in which we were refusing to put confidence, to witness for the unchanging character of that love in which there was hope for us, though we had destroyed ourselves.

This witness-bearing for God, ("I have given Him for a witness to the people,") was accomplished in the personal perfection that was in Christ, His manifested perfection in humanity, that is to say, the perfection of His own following of the Father as a dear child, and the perfection of His brotherly love in His walk with men. His love and His trust towards His Father, His love and His longsuffering towards His brethren-the latter being presented to our faith in its oneness with the formerwere together what He contemplated when He said, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."

This witness-bearing for the Father was a part of the self-sacrifice of Christ. The severity of the pressure of our sins upon the Spirit of Christ was necessarily greatly increased through that living contact with the enmity of the carnal mind to God into which Christ was brought, in being to men a living epistle of the grace of God.

His honouring of the Father caused men to dishonour Him,-His manifestation of brotherly love was repaid with hatred,—His perfect walk in the sight of men failed to commend either His Father or Himself,-His professed trust in the Father was cast up to Him, not being believed, and the bitter complaint was wrung from Him -“reproach hath broken my heart."

Not that His task in doing the Father's will, “not hiding His righteousness within His heart," but "declaring His faithfulness and His salvation," was altogether cheerless: on the contrary, the Man of sorrows could speak to the chosen companions of His path, those who knew Him most nearly, of a peace which they had witnessed in Him-nay, of a joy, a peace and a joy as to which He could expect that they would receive as the intimation of a precious legacy the being told that these He would leave with them, could even expect that the prospect of having these abiding with them would reconcile them to that tribulation which was to come to them through their relation to Him. That which He had presented to their faith would not have been a true and successful witnessing for the Father, had this not been so;—it would have been less than that of the Psalmist, "O taste and see that God is good." Whatever sorrow may have been seen as borne by the Son of God in confessing His Father's name in our sinful world-and this could not have been but in sorrow-yet must a joy deeper than the sorrow have been present, as belonging to that oneness with the Father which that living confession implied; and to have hidden that joy would have been to have marred that confession,-leaving imperfect that condemnation of sin which is by the manifestation of the life that is in God's favour, and the shining forth of which in Christ is the light of life to man. Therefore the peace, the joy of which our Lord speaks as what the disciples had witnessed in Him, and what would be recalled to them when He used the expressions, "My peace," "My joy," were a most important element in His declaration of the Father's name.

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