filling of the law, being the spiritual might by which our captivity is seen to be led captive.

This deliverance wrought out for all humanity,—the peace accomplished on the cross,-is. in respect of its being first spiritual, and then, as a consequence, legal, in striking accordance with the order that is observed in our individual participation in it. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into con demnation, but is passed from death unto life.” John v. 24.

But to this order men do not easily conform. There is a state of mind in which it will be asked, "If the relation of the atonement to our participation in the life of Christ be thus direct and immediate,—if it be such as necessitates our giving a moral, a spiritual meaning as distinguished from a mere legal meaning, to the expressions, 'peace with God' 'reconciliation with God,' 'propitiation for sin,' -if the immediate and only natural reflection in seeing the pardon of our sins as the gospel reveals it, be, that we are free to draw near to God, to join in the services of the true sanctuary, and in the spirit of sonship to have communion with our heavenly Father, if Christ's suffering for us, the just for the unjust, thus simply suggest the purpose of bringing us to God,—then is the gospel to us sinners the good news which it claims to be? The wrath of God has been revealed against all unrighteousness of men; we are sinners under condemnation,- -our first need is pardon, as a discharge from the sentence upon us. Granting that our true well-being is to be ultimately found in peace and reconciliation in the spiritual sense of the words, have we not at first need of peace and reconciliation in a legal sense? Our fears of wrath may not be holy feelings, or what pertain to the divine life in man; but are they not natural, allowable, nay, right feelings in us sinners? And if they are, are they not to be taken account of and must not this be done in the first place?"

I have said above that what of severity is in the moral governor of the universe has its root in the heart of the Father of spirits. We cannot therefore believe in an

atonement that satisfies the heart of the Father-we cannot believe in blood shed for the remission of our sins, which has power to purge our spirits for that worship which is sonship, and yet be uncertain whether partaking in the fruit of such an atonement, and joining in this worship, we are still exposed to the righteous wrath of God. If an atonement be adequate morally and spiritually, it will of necessity be legally adequate. If it be sufficient in relation to our receiving the adoption of sons, it must be sufficient for our redemption as under the law. To think otherwise would be to subordinate the gospel to the law, and the love of the Father of spirits to His offspring to that moral government which has its origin in that love. We are not under the law, but under grace. Let us receive this gracious constitution of things in the light of the love that has ordained it. Let us understand that He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Let us conform to this purpose of God, let us receive the righteousness of God in Christ, and be the righteousness of God in Him, let us be reconciled to God and we shall find all questions as to our exposure to the wrath of God to have been fully taken into account in that divine counsel which we have welcomed, for we shall understand the experience of the Apostle,-" Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world." Surely Philip was right when he said, "Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us." Surely we do not know to what we are listening when we are listening to the testimony of God concerning His Son, viz., that "God has given to us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son," if we can answer, "But if we receive this life to be our life, will that be enough for us; shall we not need something besides to save us from the wrath to come?" Oh, my brother, "there is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear." If you are "reconciled to God by the death of His Son," how shall you not be "saved from wrath through Him?" It is, indeed, unbelievable—no man can believe that receiving Christ

as our life, we can feel that His blood does indeed cleanse from all sin, in relation to that worship of God which is in spirit and in truth; but that we cannot feel secure as engaged in this worship, unless that blood of Christ, under the power of which our spirits have come by faith, speak to our consciences of penal sufferings endured for us and so assure us that the law has no claim against us. But the difficulty felt is not that of persons seeing the subject from this point of view. One once said to me, when urging on him the evidence for the universality of the atonement, in opposition to his own faith of an atonement for an election only,-" Were I to believe that Christ died for all, it would destroy the peace which I have in the faith of the atonement, for this is my peace,-He suffered, therefore I shall not suffer." This was the same idea which we have seen urged on Arminians by Dr. Owen, in that dilemma which appears unanswerable, on the assumption that the atonement was the enduring of penal suffering by Christ as our substitute. Yet, however inconsistently, and though not in the strong form,-"He suffered, therefore I shall not suffer,”—many feel as if they were less obnoxious to suffering, because of the penal suffering which they assume to have been endured by Christ, even when their faith in the universality of the atonement necessarily qualifies their comfort from this source. I do not now recur to the inconsistency which Dr. Owen has so well exposed, but will deal directly with the state of mind which desires, if it does not quite venture to cherish, the peace of saying, "He suffered, therefore I shall not suffer."

This state of mind only exists through not seeing our relation to God as a moral governor, in its true surbordination to our relation to Him as the Father of our spirits. I have asked, "Can the moral governor remain unsatisfied if the Father of spirits is satisfied?" The converse of this question is, "Can the moral governor be satisfied while the Father of spirits is not?" To suppose that peace can ever be justifiable on the ground, "He suffered, therefore I shall not suffer," is to answer this question in the affirmative,-it is to suppose that when Christ suffered,

the just for the unjust, the direct end was that the unjust should not suffer. Now we cannot doubt the pain which the exposure of the unjust to suffering was to God, or the desire of His heart to save them from suffering; but we must not forget that the original reason for connecting sin and misery still continued, that that connexion was not arbitrary, that the wrath of God revealed against all unrighteousness of men was not a feeling that has passed, or could pass away: no revelation of the unchanging God could. Therefore when the just suffered for the unjust, it was with the direct purpose of bringing the unjust to God, that is bringing the unjust to the obedience of the just, leaving the connexion between suffering and injustice, or sin, undissolved, the righteousness of that connexion being unchanged.

Here we are met by another necessity, corresponding to that already dwelt on as declared in the words, "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." But how could it be otherwise? If departure from the Father be the ultimate root evil, which it was righteousnessthe righteousness of love—to visit with wrath, how should deliverance from wrath be experienced otherwise than in returning to the Father, or mercy to those who had departed take any other form than opening for them the way of return?

I have said that the atonement reconciles us to the spiritual necessities, the laws of the kingdom of God which it reveals. We should in our darkness be willing to lose the Father in the moral governor if we could think of the moral governor in a way that would permit to us the feeling of security under His government; and all the demand that we should make on the fatherliness of the Father of our spirits would be for such mercy as would qualify His moral government and modify it in accommodation to what we feel ourselves to be. But in the light of the atonement which reveals the Father to us in the Son we bless God that not our wishes in our darkness, but God's own fatherliness and our capacity of sonship have determined the nature of the grace extended to us.

Nor would we now desire to see one terror that is connected with sin separated from it, or one token of the divine displeasure against it withdrawn. For Christ's sufferings have revealed to us the nature, and the depth, and the righteousness of God's wrath against sin,-what our sins are to His heart, and what that mind in relation to sin is to which it is His sole desire in the matter to bring us, and which mind is His gift to us in Christ, in whom it is revealed. Therefore, the pardon of sin in any other sense than the revealing, and the opening to us of the path of life, is now to us as undesirable as, in relation to the moral government of the Father of spirits, it is inconceivable.

To some whose serious thoughts are occupied with the punishment of sin as an object of terror, rather than with the sin itself on which it is God's mark, this tone may seem high, and, it may be, even presumptuous, and in relation to themselves, unfeeling; more like the selfcongratulation of the pharisee, than the humility of the publican, and sounding like self-righteousness, however it may be but that "giving of thanks at the remembrance of God's holiness" of which the psalmist speaks. Others again, entirely occupied with their own newly-discovered and dimly apprehended exposure to divine wrath, will not venture to judge those on whom they look as more in the light of God than themselves, or to doubt that their professed sympathy in the mind of God towards sin, may be genuine, and consistent with humility, but they are still disposed to say, "Shew us something more suited to our present position, some ground of safety to rest upon -to trust to at once; and then teach us to worship, and direct us to the provision for doing so in spirit and in truth; for doubtless such worship belongs to Christianity,"

As to the first of these states of mind, the misconstruction of confounding the righteousness of faith with selfrighteousness is not strange to those who are the subjects of it; nor, as to the second, is the temptation to seek a ground of peace in relation to God's law,-thinking only