guish of famishing, dying souls, the agonies of wounded spirits, and the more sorrowful condition of the millions who were abandoned to evil, who knew not what they did; and whom there was no eye to pity, and no arm to save!

With a pure holy yearning he gives himself for them; his healing hand to cure their bodies, his patient labors to instruct their minds, his reputation, life, all to ransom their souls. And pure love is self-renouncing. It gives all it can. The curse of a righteous law is upon the race-he is willing to be accursed: to suffer in the place of the guilty, shame, mocking, Scourging, crucifying at their own hands, to effect their ransom. In pure sympathy, and for the end of justice, he bears the sins and woes of the world on his oppressed, bruised spirit. With his perfect humanity, his holy character, his deep sympathy with suffering, and his deeper abhorrence of sin, the sorrows of no other man could be like his sorrow.

But with this "son of man," the divine nature was linked. He was also "the son of God." Whether this union of the divine with the human deepened his human sufferings, it is not for us to say. But this question we ask-If the human sympathy and suffering, the human love and self-sacrifice of Christ, have not the solemn undertone of a divine manifestation; if they are not the awful expression on the human side of Christ, of what was infinitely deeper in the mind of God, what is the significance of the Incarnation? What is the solemn mystery that hangs around the cross? supreme value of the suffering, if the human, in Christ, joined with the divine, did not also express the divine? How do we see" GOD manifest in the flesh," in this sublimest manifestation of Christ, if we cannot, in beholding the sympathy and the sorrow and the self-sacrifice of Jesus, look through the finite and the human, and see, also, the Infinite and the Divine?

What is the

Finally, may not the expression of divine suffering for men be the essential virtue or efficacy of the atonement for them? If our view is correct, it is not impossible for God to suffer. Christ came to manifest God in the flesh, and especially in the most significant part of his life, where this mission culminated,

at its close. And now as his suffering was an essential element in the atonement, and the atonement was an essential part, and the culminating work, of his mission, may not the efficacy of his suffering as atoning for the sins of the world be grounded in its representative character; or, in real, divine suffering symbolized, or rather manifested, on the cross.

It becomes us here, especially, to speak with caution and with reverence. But while the cross has upon it a veil of mystery which no man can lift, still, certain things concerning the atonement are revealed. No man can forgive sins. No man can, in the gospel sense, atone for them. Such power must be exercised in harmony with the governing authority. It must be, in effect, the governing power itself, establishing its own conditions of pardon, and administering its own forms of equity and of supreme law.

Regarding the atonement as a governmental measure, that is, a measure which so declares the evil and the desert of sin, as to preserve inviolate the sacredness of the law, while the sovereign power freely justifies and draws to itself the penitent transgressor-whatever the measure is, it must be some expression, by God himself, and of course the expression of a reality. It is the Most High who expresses the sacredness of the law and the desert of the sinner, when he inflicts the penalty upon the transgressor. And an atonement which shall take the place of the penalty, it would seem, must be some expression by the sov ereign power, through suffering in some other form, manifested to the guilty world, and so related to the government and to the guilty, as to be equivalent to the penalty for the ends of general justice; equivalent, in other words, as an efficacious declaration, governmental and judical, concerning the desert of the sinner and the sacredness of the law, while free forgiveness is made possible. The king who made a law demanding of the transgressor the loss of both his eyes showed the heart both of the father and the king, when, to save his guilty son, and to save, also, the law, he spared one eye of his son, and plucked out one of his own. This expression, by his own suffering, of self-sacrifice, for the sake of his son and for the sake of the law, too, made his law more sacred, and planted his throne even

more firmly in the hearts of his subjects. It was not the literal penalty, and yet it had legal efficacy, in sustaining the law as righteous; and moral force, as inspiring the respect and confidence of the subjects and their dread of transgression. It was a partial atonement, in an individual case. Now, wherein consists its efficacy, legal and moral? It was in the manifested love of the sovereign, both for his son and his law; the love proved by self-sacrifice, and that of so impressive a character that no of fender could take encouragement from the pardon, to transgress, and the guilty son and all the subjects would be drawn more strongly in respect and confidence to the sovereign. Suppose another son of the king, perfectly innocent, instead of the king himself, had made the sacrifice, voluntarily, for the same end. It would have been a beautiful exhibition of fraternal and filial love. But would it have been efficacious as a governmental expression? Though accepted by the king and made efficacious as a ground of remitting the penalty, would not the subjects of the king have been drawn to the affectionate, selfsacrificing brother, rather than to the king who accepted the substitution? Its moral efficacy, in strengthening the sovereign in the hearts of his subjects, would depend upon the degree to which the self-sacrificing act of the son became the king's act; or the extent to which it really expressed the heart of the king. The substitute must be so identified with the sovereign that the offender and the subjects shall feel that the love shown by the substitute is also really the king's; otherwise the sovereign power is weakened. For love responds to love, and the admiration and love of the subjects will go to the one who really showed the most magnanimous and self-sacrificing love for the offender and for the law. If there be two distinct parties, and the king has shown mainly a rigorous demand for technical justice, and the brother has exhibited the self-sacrificing love for the offender as well as for the law, the subjects will be likely to fear the king, and love the brother. There is a chasm between the two parties, and from the laws of our moral nature, no moral mechanics exist which can bridge over the chasm so as to transfer the love, really due to the substitute, to the sovereign, any farther than the act inspiring the

love is the sovereign's act. To draw the responding love and confidence of the subjects, the sovereign must be manifested through the Mediator, in the atoning work; otherwise, the innocent son suffers as a kind of hostage, representing only the one who escaped, and draws the gratitude to himself.

And here remember, that in a purely moral government, and especially in the gospel system, the great end of the atonement is, not only to remove the curse of the law but to enthrone the law itself in the heart and to draw back transgressors to the obedience of love. And what is the divine method? "We love Him because he first loved us." Who loved us? ? One says, "The man Jesus." Another says, "The complex being, Jesus Christ, both God and man ;" but adding, "The divine nature was not represented in the suffering of Christ for us." But the very proof of this love is in the self-sacrifice, the suffering willingly incurred for the sinner's sake, by Christ. He, as lifted up for the sinner, draws men to him. Now if the heart of the sovereign is not manifested in the very sufferings, which, in the Mediator, are the subjectmatter of the atonement; if the great act, which proves love and inspires it, is not virtually the act of God, how can the atoning love draw us to Him, since that which especially inspires our love is no manifestation of Him?

Again, does it seem reasonable that the sufferings of Christ should have an expiatory virtue, as a divine atonement, if they were only on the human side-if they did not reach inward to the divine nature and really symbolize or express divine feeling? Did their efficacy come from the tie, the mysterious lig ament that joins his human to his divine nature; and not rather from the fact that the human is both joined to and expressive of the divine? Was there not sorrow in the heart of God for the sins of the world, as truly as there was in "the man of sorrows?" He certainly had love for his law, and for sinners, before the incarnation," For God so loved the world that he gave his Son," etc. In the very giving of his Son was already the spirit of self-sacrifice. The spirit prompting the deed was before the deed, and that disrobing himself of royalty to come down and link himself to humanity and our sufferings, to take

the form of a servant, to carry our sorrows, to make any sacrifice but that of the interests of the moral kingdom, on which all holiness and happiness depend, is but the carrying out of the original self-sacrificing love which prompted the whole work of redemption. It was only manifesting and giving ef fect to what already existed in the heart of God. Sin, if pardoned, must have expiation in suffering. "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." And willingly he turned his own humiliation and suffering on account of sin to the legal benefit of sinners themselves, and became for them "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world."

Yes, in Gethsemane and on the Cross, God was in Christ manifested, in self-humiliation and sorrow, bearing visibly on his own heart the sins and burdens of the world, pierced and bleeding in his own spirit, even as the nails pierced the body of Christ, and yet in behalf of the tormentors devoting his manifest pangs and sorrow to the account of their justification. Not only before the closing scenes of the atoning work, but while they were transpiring, Christ could say to the doubting: "I am in the Father, and the Father in me."

According to this view, God suffered in the depths of his own holy nature in view of the sins of men, before the Incarnation. But however deep the sorrow, or strong the spirit of justice and of self-sacrificing love, while they were buried and hidden in the bosom of the Father, they could be no ground. of forgiveness and justification; for they were not manifested; they were then no expression of the evil of sin, or of the justice of the law, or of the love of God to the world. They could answer no practical end for guarding the law, or drawing the sinner to the throne of the sovereign, until they were embodied and expressed in an outward administrative form; until they became "the Word"-God manifested. For to pardon the transgressor, without at the same time revealing the holiness and righteousness of the lawgiver, would loosen all the bonds of moral government. But when these interior, divine realities were revealed in Christ Jesus as Mediator; when, before the world, he bore on his heart the sins and woes of men, and gave himself a sacrifice to save them from