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THE

EVANGELICAL MAGAZINE,

AND

MISSIONARY CHRONICLE.

FOR JULY, 1838.

THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST

THE PECULIAR GLORY OF REDEMPTION.
No. III.

HAVING traced the doctrine of atonement as it is associated with symbolical representations, with promises and predictions, with historical records, with sentiments of piety, with civil polity, and with ecclesiastical institutions, as they are all displayed in the holy Scriptures, it remains for us to pursue its connexion with other objects, which equally tend to impress it with a character of infinite greatness, and to exhibit it as the peculiar glory of redemption. There is not a doctrine of Christianity which does not derive from the atonement a portion of its mysterious grandeur; and with some of the greatest magnitude it is almost identified. It necessarily supposes an incarnation of Deity; for the union of the Divine and human natures in the person of the great Redeemer is essential to its efficacy. For in no conceivable and rational sense can the doctrine of the atonement be entertained without laying its foundation in that of the incarnation; nor was it till heresy had reached its extreme point that men professing and calling themselves Christians, were found contending for the mere humanity of Christ, that they might denounce the atonement as the grand corruption of Christianity. The ablest champions of our most holy faith have felt and fearlessly proclaimed their conviction that the Divinity and the atonement of the

VOL. XVI.

Son of God stand or fall together. If you remove Divinity from the perso of the Saviour, it is impossible for him to atone for sin; and if you expunge the atonement from the Christian system, the Divinity of its Author would be a mere assumption, justified neither by expediency nor necessity. This Bishop Horsley, in his own forcible and original manner, fearlessly avows as his deliberate judgment:-"It may seem that I ought to say the two doctrines of the incarnation and the atonement; but if I so said, though I should not say any thing untrue, I should speak improperly; for the incarnation of our Lord, and the atonement made by him, are not two separate doctrines, they are one; the doctrine of atonement being included in that of the incarnation."

"The doctrine of the incarnation," he goes on to observe, "in its whole amount is this: that one of the three Persons of the Godhead was united to man, i. e., to a human body and a human soul, in the person of Jesus, in order to expiate the guilt of the whole human race, original and actual, by the merit, death, and sufferings of the man so united to the Godhead. This atonement was the end of the incarnation, and the two articles reciprocate; for an incarnation is implied and presupposed in the Scripture doctrine of atonement as a necessary means

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to the end. For if satisfaction was to be made to Divine justice for the sins of men, by vicarious obedience and by vicarious sufferings, (and in no other way it could be consistent with Divine wisdom,) as might attach the pardoned offender to God's service upon a principle of love and gratitude, it was essential to this plan that God himself should take a principal part in all that his justice required to be done and suffered to make room for his mercy; and the Divine nature being incapable of suffering, it was necessary to the scheme of pardon that the Godhead should condescend to unite to itself the nature capable."

The argument which establishes this principle of moral government will form a conspicuous part in our next communication, and we shall therefore dwell upon the subject no further here; but proceed to develop the incarnation as exhibited in the principal scene of the atonement, when in the unparalleled sufferings and death of the appointed and accepted Victim it broke forth in solemn and mysterious grandeur. How wonderful that death should reveal Divinity! -that the greatest extremes in the universe should not only meet in the same person, but unite in the same transaction!

If God had not been in the midst of the conflict which decided our fate, a cry, such as wind never brought from the fierce-peopled forest when night had locked up the black wilderness-beyond all din of battle-more than the echo of falling thrones would have been the cry of human nature in that bewildering hour. On Calvary, what preternatural horrors proclaimed the presence and the anguish of Him in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily! The sin of the world now to be taken away crushes the humanity at the very moment the Divine nature is putting forth all the energy of omnipotence! While in conscious majesty the one exclaims, "It is finished," in token of victory, the human sufferer bows his illustrious head and gives up the ghost. heavens heard the mysterious sounds with adoring awe, and clothed themselves with sackcloth in the presence of God "thus manifest in the flesh."

The

The proud and sinful intellect of man (proud because sinful) affects to treat with disdain this great mystery, which being ineffable, is deemed on that account incredible. Yet is it reverenced and adored by the devout and humble

inquirer, who, believing the Scriptures to be divine, wishes only to know the doctrines they contain, that he may give them a cordial welcome to his heart. To him it appears by no means strange that he should find in them "unusual truths which no other source could supply; truths in which his peace and felicity are deeply interested," and as to the mystery of the incarnation, he discovers in it nothing impossible, nothing inconsistent with what is known or may be conceived of the Divine and human natures. He feels assured that the existence of the Supreme Being is essentially different from every other, and that the mode of his existence may be equally without analogy or resemblance; and he sees no reason why that Being whose energies of wisdom, power, and goodness, unfolded themselves in the work of creation, beginning with a rude chaotic mass, and proceeding to innumerable forms of order and beauty, glorious in themselves, and useful in their results; he sees no reason why this first and incomprehensible Being, in some wonderfully mysterious manner-a manner not less mysterious than the creation itself-might not unite himself to human nature as a basis for a new order of things in reference to the moral world.

The reader will perceive that we have assumed a perfect distinction between the Divine and human natures in the person of the incarnate Redeemer, and that we conceive this perfect distinction to be essential to the efficacy of his atonement. On this point of great moment we have peculiar pleasure in directing his attention to the caution quoted by Dr. Smith, from one of the earlier numbers of the "Eclectic Review," and supposed to be the production of the late venerable Dr. Edward Williams:

"Whatever was the mode of that mysterious combination of the Divine with an inferior nature, we are required religiously, to beware of all approach towards such an idea as that of a modification of the supreme nature, and to preserve the solemn idea of a Being absolute, unalterable, and necessarily always in entire possession and exercise of all that constitutes its supremacy and perfection."

Note A in the Supplementary Notes to chap. xii. p. 136, vol. i. of Dr. Pye Smith's "Testimony to the Messiah." The reasoning eloquence of the whole quotation has scarcely a parallel in our language.

It would be easy to trace the intimate connexion subsisting between the atonement and the other distinguishing doctrines of Christianity. It lends its glory to them all; and without it, the entire scheme of redemption would be disjointed, incongruous in all its parts, and unworthy as a whole of either credence or confidence. But we hasten to contemplate it as the meritorious cause, and the principal moral instrument of those wondrous transformations which have been effected by the diffusion of the Gospel, and which involve at every step of their progress, human destiny and the Divine glory.

Whatever of true piety and acceptable virtue has existed in the world since the apostacy of Adam, must be ascribed to the influence of this propitiatory sacrifice. For, as holiness, comprehending in itself all piety and virtue, is the production of the Holy Spirit, so that Holy Spirit can vouchsafe his blessed influence to change our polluted hearts, only through the efficacious and prevalent atonement of the Saviour. The sacrifice of the cross was thus honoured when the first promise imparted life and salvation to the progenitors of our race immediately after their fall. It was the purifying and refreshing element which cleansed the antediluvian church, and whose healing waters broke from the fissures of the smitten rock, and followed Moses and the Israelites during their sojourn in the wilderness. It was pleaded by prophets and by priests during the whole Jewish economy, and was the life-giving fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. There never has been any other way of access, either to God or from God, nor will any other present itself till all the "bloodbought throng,"-the innumerable multitudes from the beginning to the end of time-are "saved to sin no more." It is likewise to the moral instrumentality of this fundamental truth, and the great doctrines necessarily connected with it, that a peculiar people, zealous of good works, have been gathered out of a fallen world to be the visible church of the living God. Faith, in every age, has been the germinating principle of holiness-the spring of all the purity and moral worth which distinguishes the regenerated hearts of the redeemed; and faith has invariably had regard to sacrifice-to the sacrifice typified by the in

stitutes of the old dispensation, and proclaimed in explicit terms by the apostles and evangelists of the new. Degeneracy of religion has always followed misapprehension of this truth, and a departure from its recognition in the public preaching and ordinances of the church. When this bright orb is obscured, darkness covers the moral world -a darkness so palpable that it may be felt. The light of heaven settles upon Calvary if it be extinguished there, then human hope and salvation vanish with it, and nothing remains amidst the gloomy horror but a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation.

The true ministers of Christianity have been characterised by their exclusive attachment to the whole system, as giving unrivalled pre-eminence to the doctrine of propitiation. They all imbibe his spirit, and follow his example, who exclaimed, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things."

Dr. Chalmers, after the labours of his early ministry had been exhausted, without his perceiving any beneficial influence produced by them on the habits and morals of his people, gives an affecting description of the happy results when he changed his views from a merely ethical to a truly evangelical exhibition of the Gospel. Addressing his poor parishioners at Kilmany, when the new method had wrought such strange effects, he says, "You have at least taught me that to preach Christ is the only effective way of preaching morality in all its branches; and out of your humble cottages have I gathered a lesson, which I pray God I may be enabled to carry, with all its simplicity, into a wider theatre, and to bring with all the power of its subduing efficacy upon the vices of a more crowded population."

The Dissenters of the present day are thus described in a recent number of a Review, not remarkable for its advocacy of religion or any of its principles: we feel that the description is just, and hope and pray that the time will never come when it shall cease to be their distinguishing characteristic. "The Dissenter,' "observes the reviewer, "addresses the masses; his torch lights the footsteps of the people: he carries along with him into poor men's cottages the doctrine of the atonement of Jesus Christ

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