penalty of sin! The ablution and the sacrifice, the ceremony and the fast, the pilgrimage and the penance, may attest the belief of the transgressor that some expiation is necessary for the transgression; but redemption is not to be bought at so vile a price. The observances of superstition are worthless in their nature, and, therefore, unprofitable in their effects; and are but the frail expedients which fear adopts with feeble and ambiguous hope, or the fallacious resources to which the sinner applies in his distress, because he knows of no better means to appease the terrors of conscience. How can such things procure life to a world that is dead? If they contain nothing in their own nature worthy of divine acceptance, how shall they be of efficacy "to take away sin,” and to restore the peace of the guilty, by restoring them to God? If they be too poor to ransom the individual transgressor, how shall they redeem all past, present, and future generations, and reconcile mercy to unnumbered criminals with justice to their unnumbered crimes? Whereas, in the atonement by Christ, whatever of mystery it may involve, a perfect satisfaction is offered to the insulted majesty of God. The ransom is as precious, as the sins to be ransomed are unbounded and offensive. Man is consequently saved. The apparently conflicting attributes of God are reconciled; and a new order of grace, and mercy, and pardon, is finally and effectually established upon everlasting foundations.

But let it not be supposed that the sinner who has been thus redeemed, may persevere with impunity in sin. The penalty which he had incurred is paid. The way which had been closed against him is opened. The heaven, which he had forfeited by his

ject the offer, and perish; or to accept it, and live. The Gospel, instead of affording hope for the encouragement of his transgression, affords it only for the encouragement of his obedience. The amnesty by which he is to be saved, is an amnesty of covenant, and the covenant includes, on his part, righteousness, holiness, and faith. The sinner, therefore, unless he forsake his sins, must await their punishment. From him, if incorrigible and obstinate in his course of guilt, has departed the grace of that redeeming mercy, which descends in health, and comfort, and trust, on the children of obedience. He has rejected the offer of divine goodness. What remains but the verdict of divine justice?

We need scarcely inquire how far, to the pure and holy, the redemption of the Gospel is, peace and hope. If they behold the justice of God in the satisfaction which has been made for sin, they behold also the mercy by which the satisfaction has been accomplished. If they look with awe to the cross of Christ, they may look also with humble and confiding trust. They are admonished, indeed, of the danger of guilt, but they are instructed in the promises which confirm their obedience. The reverence and love kindled in their hearts by the blessings which they have received, contribute to restore within them the likeness of God, and proportionally to confirm and augment their happiness. In all circumstances they may recollect with gratitude by whose blood they were bought; and in prosperity they may heighten and hallow their enjoyments, in adversity soothe and tranquillize their afflictions, in temptation renew and confirm their strength, in death fortify and cheer their spirit, by those inspiring anticipations which the atonement of Christ has autho

rized them to indulge, and which affords them a foretaste on earth of the happiness of heaven.

The redemption of the Gospel, then, we may now, perhaps, be permitted to conclude, is not wholly a mystery, incomprehensible to the affections and the understandings of men. As it refers to God, it harmonizes his justice with his mercy, and affords an intelligible and beautiful comment on the most awful, alike, and the most gracious of his attributes. With respect to Christ, it afforded him occasion to exemplify and confirm his precepts by a life of trial, and a death of ignominy and sorrow. In its reference to mankind, it supplies the saving efficacy which was to be found neither in the imperfection of their repentance, nor in the vanity of their oblations. If,' in its cause and consequences, it be not wholly revealed to the ignorance of human, or perhaps, to the wisdom of angelic, beings, it discloses to us the remedy of transgression; the graciousness of the new covenant; the love which has redeemed, and justified, and accepted, the sinner; the full and perfect accomplishment of the types and figures of preceding ages; and the satisfaction which, accepted by the equity of God, has ransomed the sins of the whole world. In this sublime manifestation, an appeal is made, not merely to the reason, but to the senses, of man. We are addressed by facts, by visible objects, by the procession to Calvary, by the wonders of the cross. All that is awful is united for our edification with all that is beneficent and good. The heart of the sinner is warned of the danger of sin, and the necessity of reformation; a new solemnity is lent to pardon, a new force to precept, a new strength to motive, a new and more binding efficacy

plying the deficiency of all other religions, are afforded for hope, to confirm the righteous; for fear, to restrain the guilty; for confidence, to support the afflicted; for faith, to enlighten and strengthen the ignorant and weak; and for that holy and sublime conviction, which, illuminating and evangelizing the spirit and the heart, recognises, in God, the parent, and, in Christ, the friend and the redeemer, not of a party or of a sect, of Christian or of Jew, but of the human race throughout all generations, from the birth to the end of time. Such is the atonement of the Gospel, in its nature, its object, and its effects. Sacrifices, penances, pilgrimages, and lustrations, the hopeless expiations of guilt, have passed away. Types and shadows are no more. The promises of early days are realized. And the trust of man, so long resting on the vain satisfaction of his own oblations, is directed to an offering which human wisdom was equally inadequate to suggest or to provide, and which is coextensive, in its efficacy, with the disorders to be remedied, and the sins to be redeemed.

CHAPTER XII.

THE FOUNDERS AND TEACHERS OF RELIGION.

SECT. I.

The founders and teachers of the religion of Greece-Bards and priests-Their doctrines confirmed by subsequent legislators—The mode of teaching inadequate-Precept unaided by example-Religion unsanctioned by due authority-Both equally unsustained by the character and conduct of their authors.

T

HE early bards of Greece were its religious legislators. They copied, methodized, or embellished, the mythology of Egypt and of the East, and interwove with the materials which they borrowed, allegorical fables, and poetic tales, of their own creation. Each, in his turn, added something to the diversified but splendid tissue. The phenomena of nature were converted into gods. The hero, or robber, who wandered abroad for occasions of war and spoil, was to increase, in due time, the number of divinities; and Olympus was to be converted into a mighty temple for the reception of a crowd of alien deities, naturalized by the tolerating spirit, and classified by the fertile fancy, of the poet who imported them.

Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod, were among the priestly bards who conveyed the polytheism thus framed and decorated to the Greeks. In accomplishing this work, they, sometimes, demonstrated a felicity of fancy, and even a taste and wisdom, which