He brought them to

conscious guilt from His presence. conviction and confession of their sin; He gave them the promise of the Saviour; and then taught them to show forth their faith in the promised Saviour, and to plead His atonement in the rite of sacrifice; in answer to their faith and pleading, He gave them pardon for their sin; and then clothed their guilty shame in the skins of the slain lambs— a symbol of clothing their souls in the garment of the righteousness of Christ. In all this we recognise clearly à new covenant, which God of His mercy makes with fallen man, which we have called the Covenant of Redemption. God, from all eternity, knew the plan by which He would meet the foreseen lapse of man; the Son had already, from all eternity, consented to become incarnate and to die for man's recovery. In the counsel and foreknowledge of God, the sacrifice was already offered :-"The Lamb (was) slain before the foundation of the world" (Rev. xiii. 8); and God already anticipated it, and gave man the blessings which Christ should purchase with His blood. On one side of the covenant we see pardon, renewal of grace, replacement in a state of probation, with the promise of eternal life; and, on the other, renewed trust in God, faith in the promised Saviour, and obedience to God's will. And in place of the two sacramental trees of the Covenant of Paradise, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, we see the rite of sacrifice, the expression of man's faith and the channel of God's grace, ordained as the sacrament of the Covenant of Redemption.

F

CHAPTER XV.

THE NEED OF A SAVIOUR.

A THOUGHT which probably crosses the minds of very many is, Why did not God interpose to prevent our first parents from a fall which involved such terrible consequences? Or why, when they had once fallen, did not He at once forgive them and restore them to holiness and happiness again without the need of the death of Christ? Questions easily asked, which require careful answering.

Why did not God prevent our first parents from falling? Because, as we have seen, God had given to them the gift of free will, and God would not contradict Himself by coercing that freedom of will under any circumstances whatever. God had placed man on probation to see whether he would be faithful and obedient. Probation necessarily implies the absence of constraint. God would not, could not, give freedom of will, and yet constrain the free action of that will.

There is a practical deduction from this truth of the most vital consequence to us all. If God would ever interpose to coerce the will, He would surely have done it then, when Eve, by the sinful exercise of her will, was about to bring such unutterable misery upon a whole race. If God did not then interfere, we may be perfectly certain that He will not now interfere to coerce any of us from willing what is sinful and acting upon our will, whatever unutterable and eternal misery to ourselves may be the certain result. will not now, any more than then, constrain any human

God

will. Christ has reconciled us to God, and we are again placed on our probation, as Adam and Eve were in paradise. He has procured for us anew the grace of the Holy Spirit, to enable us to refuse the evil and choose the good; but it is true now for each one of us that God will not coerce our will; we must, each for himself, conform our will to God's will. Not merely submit our will as to a stronger will; but, recognising that God's will for us is that which is wisest, holiest, best, we must voluntarily, cheerfully, lovingly, make God's will our will, conform ours to His.

But when Adam and Eve had fallen, why could not God at once pardon them, and restore them to their former estate ?

Here are two questions. First, why could not God pardon them? Because God must, by the necessity of His Divine perfectness, be perfectly, infinitely just. Take our human notions of justice. Thank God! we can point to our English judges in illustration of it. A judge sitting on his bench will not pervert justice out of fear or favour. He will no more let the guilty escape than he will let the innocent suffer; one is as contrary to justice as the other. Considerations of mercy may come in afterwards. But if anything should happen to shake our confidence that our judges would administer justice with incorruptible, inflexible integrity, we should feel that a terrible blow had been struck at the very basis of society. All right relations between man and man have justice as one of their chief foundation stones, and one of their strongest bonds. So if God, the King and Judge of all, could cease to be perfectly, infinitely just, the corner stone of the universe would be shattered, the bond which binds together all reasonable beings, who people all the worlds, would be snapt asunder, and men and angels be let loose to sin without restraint. God must be consistent; if He overlook one

breach of law he must overlook all. If God be inconsistent the universe has nothing firm to stand on, and is a moral ruin.

Why could He not at once restore them to their former estate?

Man had rebelled by his own free will, and only by an act of his own free will-though God should reopen the gates of paradise to him, and breathe anew into him the Holy Spirit, still only by an act of his own will-replacing his withdrawn trust and faith in God, voluntarily conforming his own will again to God's will, could man be restored to his first estate.

God in His infinite wisdom and mercy proceeded to -effect this pardon and restoration. How? How could God be just, and yet the justifier of the sinner? How could the lost Divine spark be restored to human nature to enable man once more to have faith in God and conform to His will?

This was what the Incarnation and Sacrifice of God the Son effected. He became man, yet without sin, He rendered a perfect obedience to the law of God, and then He offered Himself as a satisfaction for sin. The infinite dignity of Him who thus obeyed and died made His obedience and death a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sin of the whole world.

Zaleucus, king of the Locrians, finding that lust was undermining the virtue of the State, published a law that any one of his subjects found guilty of adultery should be punished by the loss of his eyes. His own son was the first convicted under the law. What was to be done? To let the prince go free would be to leave all others to sin with impunity; to inflict the penalty on him was a dreadful alternative. The king resolved that he would lose one of his own eyes and his son one of his. The king's justice was preserved, and the law was vindicated.

So God gave His only begotten Son, and the Son gave Himself an innocent victim for the race with which He had united Himself; and so "mercy and truth met together; righteousness and peace kissed each other" (Ps. lxxxv. 10). God was able to be "just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Rom. iii. 26).

It is an altogether false view which some take of this great transaction, that a merciful Jesus interposed between the sinner and the wrath of an angry God, and wrung from Him, by His humiliation and sufferings and death, the pardon which He was unwilling to give. The Father concurred with the Son in this great act of humility and love. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to die for it." This is the truth taught long ago, by the most affecting type of the sacrifice of Abraham. While they journeyed towards the distant mountain, in obedience to the Divine command; and when Isaac said, "My father, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" and when at length Abraham explained to him the dread command, and Isaac meekly submitted to be bound and laid upon the wood; and when at length the moment arrived that Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son, whose heart was most wrung by the awful event? The Scripture says "God tempted (i.e., tried) Abraham." And herein God, in His condescension, represents His co-operation in the death and passion. of the Son.

And God the Holy Ghost concurred in this great act of humility and mercy, in ways which we shall have hereafter to dwell upon.