we might go free-but the possibility of this he could not understand. And so he went on, the opportunities for religious service in his profession putting his conscience under a heavier and heavier load of obligation, but his speculative doubts growing thicker and thicker, until it sometimes seemed to him as if all the lights of heaven had gone out. One day he met an evangelical minister in whom he had confidence, and with the first word the trouble of his soul was made known. "I have had the greatest trial of my life this morning." "How so?" replied his friend. "Why, I have just been to the bedside of a poor woman who has but a few hours to live, and as I was standing there it suddenly flashed upon my mind that her soul was in worse case than her body—she seemed the very image of conscious guilt and despair. And, do you know? it seemed to me at that moment that, if I believed as you do in Christ, it would have been a great privilege to kneel down by her bedside and to commend the poor woman to his mercy." "Oh, my friend!" said the minister, "God has put that into your heart. Follow that impulse. We will not stop to settle the question who and what Christ is. You know that somewhere in the universe Christ lives-his life did not go out in darkness like an extinguished taper. And he is true-he said that he would hear men's prayers, whenever they called upon him. And he is more able now, than he was when he heard the poor blind beggar's cry. Go back to that bedside, and God go with you!" And the resolve was taken. The physician went once more into that sick room, and there for the first time in all his life he knelt in prayer to Jesus. He prayed Christ to teach that poor woman's soul the way to God. But as he prayed, Christ taught his soul the way to God. The one act of recognizing and obeying Christ was the door through which Christ himself entered into his heart, and in the consciousness that Christ had forgiven his sins and saved his soul he could doubt no longer about Christ's divinity, but he fell at Christ's feet like Thomas, crying "My Lord and my God!"

Oh, friend to whom I speak! I pray you to recognize Christ now! This particular message from God will never come to you -- the preacher you may never see--again.

"We twain have met like ships upon the sea

Who hold an hour's converse - so short, so sweet;

One little hour, and then away they speed,

On lonely paths, through mist and cloud and foam,
To meet no more."

Ah! I mistake, we shall meet, not many months and years from now,shall meet before the throne of that once crucified, now crowned and sceptred Savior, once known only in his character as Son of man, then known chiefly in his character as Son of God. Be thankful that it is yet one of the days of the Son of man. Listen to me, while I urge you to recognize him now as Son of God. Now you may think that you do not need him; but then you will see that you have no other need. Now, death and eternity may seem far away; but then, they will be the overmastering facts of your experience. When I was a mere child I remember riding from the city of my residence toward the great lake that skirts our State upon the north. I remember the first distant momentary glimpse of its far line of blue, and the feeling of mystery and awe which that glimpse inspired within

me.

From the summit of the last hill-top as we pressed onward, I remember the yet more solemn feeling with which I looked upon the great waters that stretched away before me, now so deep and cold, so fathomless and illimitable. But when we came down to the water's edge and I was led out into the rolling waves, there seemed to be nothing but the sea-the solid shore had vanished. I was overwhelmed and lost, but for my father's voice lifted up to encourage, and my father's hand stretched out to hold me up. So as we go in the journey of life, as youth grows into manhood and manhood into age, death and eternity assume larger and larger significance. The first distant glimpse of them may overawe the soul, but the final stepping down into the flood is a unique experience - it cannot be anticipated. But to him who has recognized Christ as Son of man and Son of God, death has no terrors; for Christ himself has said: "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee." Death may be mighty, but Christ is the Conqueror of death, and his pierced right hand can help us through the flood and open to us the gates of Paradise upon the other side. And therefore, in life, in death, on earth, in heaven, this Christ, Son of God and Son of man, is the only hope of me, a sinner; and to you, my fellow-sinner, bound with me to his judgment seat, I commend this Christ as the one and only Savior, and pray you in his stead that you accept him and be saved. "What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?" God grant that every one of us may reply: "He is the Son of man and Son of God, my Redeemer and my King!

"Happy, if with my latest breath

I may but gasp his name;
Preach him to all, and cry in death:
Behold, behold the Lamb!'"

XVI.

THE NECESSITY OF THE ATONEMENT.*

In these words of our Lord, which I read from the Revised Version, we find plainly asserted the necessity of his atonement. They are still better translated in the Bible Union Version which reads: "Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things?" Why was it needful that Christ should suffer? In order that prophecy might be fulfilled? Yes,but why were Christ's sufferings matters of prophecy? It must be because they were included in the purpose of God- the purpose of God to redeem the world. Why could not the world be redeemed without the sufferings of Christ? There are two answers to be given to this question. First, because there is an ethical principle in God's nature which demands that sin shall be punished. The holiness of God requires satisfaction for sin, and Christ's penal sufferings furnish that satisfaction. Secondly, because Christ stands in such a relation to humanity that what God's holiness demands, Christ is under obligation to pay, longs to pay, inevitably does pay, and pays so fully, in virtue of his twofold nature, that every claim of justice is satisfied and the sinner who accepts what he has done in his behalf is saved.

With regard to the first of these aspects of the atonement - its necessity as regards God- so much is said in Scripture that little room is left for doubt or ambiguity. In his sacrifice, Christ offers himself through the eternal Spirit without spot to God. He is set forth in his blood as a propitiatory sacrifice, so that God may be just and yet justify him that believes. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission, but the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin, for he is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world. These passages declare that the righteousness of God demands an atonement if sinners are to be saved.

its neces

It is to the second and more difficult aspect of the atonement sity as regards Christ himself that I wish to direct special attention. Many who can see how God can justly demand satisfaction, cannot see how Christ can justly make it. The suffering of the innocent in place of the guilty seems to them manifestly unjust. They recognize no obligation on the part of Christ to suffer. I am persuaded that light can be thrown upon this particular point in the great doctrine. We shall understand the necessity of Christ's sufferings, when we consider what Christ was, and what were his relations to the race.

What were the results to Christ of his union with humanity? I shall mention three. The first was obligation to suffer for men; since, being one

* A sermon upon the text, Luke 24: 26-" Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things?"

with the race, he had a share in the responsibility of the race to the law and the justice of God. -a responsibility not destroyed by his purification in the womb of the Virgin. There is an organic unity of the race. All that there is of humanity has descended from one common stock. In our first parents that humanity fell from holiness and incurred the great displeasure of God, and each member of the race since that time has been born into the state into which our first parents fell. The universal prevalence of perverse affections, and the universal reign of death, are evidences that the whole race is under the curse. What were the two main consequences of sin to Adam? They were first, depravity, and secondly, guilt. First the corruption of his own nature; and secondly, obligation to endure the penal wrath of God. What are the two consequences to us of Adam's sin? Precisely the same: first, depravity; secondly, guilt. We are born depraved, or with natures continually tending to sin; we are born guilty, or under God's displeasure and justly bound to suffer. And so because of this race-unity and raceresponsibility we bear a thousand ills not due to our individual and conscious transgressions, and even infants, who have never in their own persons violated a single command of God, do notwithstanding suffer and die.

Now if Christ had been born into the world like other men, he too would have had both these burdens to bear,- first, the burden of depravity, and secondly, the burden of guilt. But with regard to the first, he was not born into the world like other men. In the womb of the Virgin, the human nature which he took was purged of its depravity even at the instant of his taking it, so that it could be said to Mary: "That holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God," and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews could speak of Christ as "holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners." With regard to the second consequence of sin, however, Christ was born into the world like other men. The purging away of

all depravity did not take away guilt, in the sense of just exposure to the penalties of violated law. Although Christ's nature was purified, his obligation to suffer yet remained. All the sorrows of his earthly life, and all the pains of death which he endured, were evidences that justice still held him to answer for the common sin of the race.

The justice of Christ's sufferings has been illustrated by the obligation of the silent partner of a business firm to pay debts which he did not personally contract; or by the obligation of the husband to pay the debts of his wife; or by the obligation of a purchasing country to assume the debts of the province which it purchases. There have been men who have spent the strength of a life-time in clearing off the indebtedness of an insolvent father long since deceased. They recognized an organic unity of the family which made their father's liabilities their own. So Christ recognized the organic unity of the race, and saw that, having become one of the sinning race, he had involved himself in all its liabilities, even to the suffering of death, the great penalty of sin. He might have declined to join himself to humanity, and then he need not have suffered. He might have sundered his connection with the race, and then he need not have suffered. But once born of the Virgin, and possessed of the human nature that was under the curse, he was bound to suffer. The whole mass and weight of God's displeasure against the race fell on him, when once he became a member of the race.

It was this that Jesus chiefly shrank from when he prayed that the cup might pass from him. And when at last God's face was hidden from the sufferer, and he cried in agony :-"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" there would have been no sting in death if it had not been the wages of sin, justly paid to him who not only stood in the sinner's place, but who was made sin for us in the sense of being guilty of the original sin of the race, while yet he was utterly free from inherited depravity or personal transgression.

It has been common enough for theologians to recognize an imputed guilt, as furnishing an explanation of Christ's sufferings. The poet says:

"My soul looks back to see

The burdens thou didst bear

When hanging on the accursed tree,

And hopes her guilt was there."

But this imputation of others' guilt is very difficult to reason, even when helped out by John Miller's hypothesis of Christ's federal relation to the race. The doctrine of the atonement needs something more than this to make it comprehensible. It needs such an actual union of Christ with humanity and such a derivation of the substance of his being by natural generation from Adam as will make him, not simply the constructive heir, but the natural heir, of the guilt of the race. Edward Irving saw this, and he declared therefore that Christ took human nature as it was in Adam, not before the fall, but after the fall. But he ignored the qualification that, in his taking it, that human nature was completely purified by the Holy Spirit, and so he taught that Christ's humanity was depraved. The true doctrine is that the humanity of Christ was not a new creation, but was derived from Adam through Mary his mother. Christ, then, so far as his humanity was concerned, was in Adam just as we were, and, as Adam's descendant, he was responsible for Adam's sin like every other member of the race; the chief difference being that, while we inherit from Adam both guilt and depravity, he whom the Holy Spirit purified, inherited not the depravity but only the guilt.

The first effect upon Christ of his union with humanity, then, was that it put him under obligation to suffer for the sins of men. But there was a second effect it was the longing to suffer which perfect love to God must feel, in view of the demands upon the race of that holiness of God which he loved more than he loved the race itself; which perfect love to man must feel, in view of the fact that bearing the penalty of man's sin was the only way to save him. I have spoken of Christ's shrinking from suffering and death because it was the penalty of sin. But this is perfectly consistent with an intense longing to pay that penalty, as it was the demand of infinite righteousness. That righteousness he loved, more than he loved the whole universe besides. That righteousness he saw to be the only worthy object of adoration for the universe-the only security for the peace of the universe. He understood the requisitions of righteousness, as only one who was perfectly pure could understand them. And when that righteousness presented its demands to him as a member of the condemned and guilty race, there was that in him which moved him to respond: "Let that righteousness be exalted, though I die!"