anticipate him, and to become the assailant. | Accordingly, on the 25th of April, 1781, he chose the hour of noon to make the attempt, when it was least expected. By this rapid manœuvre, he reached Hobkirk Hill before Green had any suspicion of the movement. The American not only fancied himself secure by his superiority of force, but by the local advantage he possessed in having a large swamp, which protected him on the only assailable side of the hill. Lord Rawdon approached with a narrow line of front; and the enemy's piquets being driven in, the alarm immediately spread through the American camp. Green perceived the danger of his situation, and with the utmost promptitude decided upon the means most likely to repel the assailants. Finding that the British advanced in a narrow front, he commenced a heavy fire of grape-shot from his batteries, and, under their protection, charged down the hill. Lord Rawdon was equally on the alert, and instantly extended the whole of his line, by which evolution he completely disconcerted the plan of the enemy, and gained a decisive victory. This success enabled him to concentrate his army, and being joined by some reinforcements, he drove the republicans to a considerable distance; but soon after, the capture of Lord Cornwallis at York Town, and the declining state of the royal cause, rendered it necessary to remove the troops to Charleston. While here, an American prisoner, named Haynes, voluntarily took the oaths of allegiance, and was set at liberty. In violation of this solemn obligation, he secretly obtained a colonel's commission in the rebel service, and then began to practise the arts of corruption on the British soldiers. His treachery was discovered, and he suffered the punishment which, by the law of nations, he had incurred. Lord Rawdon, though neither on the court-martial, nor concerned in the prosecution, was violently attacked in and out of parliament for this act of justice. The Duke of Richmond made a specific charge against his lordship in his absence, and, what was worse, on anonymous authority. When Lord Rawdon arrived in England, in 1782, he called the duke to account for this unwarrantable attack; but a meeting on the ground was happily prevented by the submission of his grace, and his consenting to make an apology in the upper house, which he did in a manner more creditable to the offended party than to himself.

Lord Rawdon's conduct in America was so brilliant, that the king not only made him, immediately after his return, one of his aides-du-camp, with the rank of colonel,

but conferred upon him the English barony of Rawdon, which gave him a seat in the upper house of parliament. About this time he contracted that intimacy with the Prince of Wales which lasted through life. His intercourse with the Duke of York was somewhat later; but this friendship, like the former, never suffered any interruption.

In May, 1789, his lordship acted as second to his Royal Highness in the duel which he fought with Colonel Lenox. This, considering the station his lordship held about the person of the king, was a very hazardous undertaking; but a high, and even chivalrous sense of honour, was in him paramount to all other worldly motives.

In October of this year, Lord Rawdon, by the death of his maternal uncle, the Earl of Huntingdon, came into possession of the bulk of that nobleman's fortune. This was a very seasonable acquisition, as by his great liberality he had involved himself in considerable pecuniary difficulties. His mother at the same time succeeded to the barony of Hastings, and to the other baronies in fee possessed by her father, but the title of Huntingdon remained thirty years in abeyance. In June, 1793, his lordship succeeded to the earldom of Moira by the death of his father; and shortly after, he was raised to the rank of majorgeneral, when he was appointed to the command of an army intended to cooperate with the royalists in Brittany. Before the preparations, however, could be completed, the design was rendered abortive, by the suppression of the insurrection, and the triumph of the French republicans. In the following summer, Lord Moira performed a great military exploit, by reinforcing the Duke of York with ten thousand men, when his Royal Highness was nearly cut off by a superior force, in his retreat through Brabant to Antwerp. Having accomplished this object, and saved the British army, his lordship returned to England; where for a long time he held a military, but merely nominal, command at Southampton. In 1803, he was removed to the more efficient situation of commander-in-chief of the forces in Scotland; at which time he obtained the rank of general.

On the 12th of July, in the following year, he married Flora Muir Campbell, countess of Loudoun. The ceremony was performed by the Bishop of London, at the house of Lady Perth, in Grosvenor Square, and the Prince of Wales gave away the bride.

As his lordship had uniformly acted with the opposition, except in the single case of

When the Marquis retired from the government of India, the Company presented him with sixty thousand pounds. Notwithstanding this, he died so very poor, that the same liberal body voted forty thousand pounds more to the present Marquis, in consideration of his father's

services.

ON THE NECESSITY OF AN ATONEMENT.

BETWEEN the character of God, and the nature of his government, there is a close and striking relation. In every transaction, and in all the provisions for particular cases in that government, we recognize the manifestation of some perfection, or perfections, of his nature. Not only are his various measures referrible to his different perfections, but the very necessity for their adoption is clearly deducible from the nature of the perfections to which they are respectively to be referred. Of this remark, the gospel atonement furnishes ample illustration and proof.

The necessity of an atonement arises from the moral condition of men, and the relations subsisting between the holiness, justice, and mercy of God. If any of these attributes were absent from the divine nature, his character and government might be perfectly consistent with each other, without such an expedient.

If holiness were annihilated, justice, I apprehend, would not remain. Among men, it is true, the practice of justice may sometimes be found where holiness can have had perhaps no share in producing it. The probity and fidelity which appear in the transactions of some persons, whose dispositions in other respects are evidently depraved, may be in reality a kind of dissimulation produced by motives of worldly interest and honour, while the genuine principles of justice have no place in their hearts. But this can never be the case with God. No motives derived from objects unconnected with his own nature can ever influence him. His justice is the love of what is morally right for its own sake, originating in the rectitude, or holiness, of his nature.

Again, if justice in the divine Being were extinct, such is the relative character of

exist. If there were no justice, there could be, strictly speaking, no mercy. A deity devoid of justice would be regardless of the moral conduct of his creatures; and therefore would feel no concern, on the ground of right and wrong, at least, to give them a law for the regulation of their lives. Now, if there were no law, there could be no transgression; if no transgression, no guilt; if no guilt, no desert of punishment, and therefore no exercise of mercy. Mercy without justice, then, would lose its proper character, and degenerate into a moral indifference, which would lead to an indulgent connivance at sin, and strongly indicate a defect of holiness, without which there could be neither justice nor

mercy.

On the other hand, a deity destitute of mercy, adopting a mode of procedure corresponding with his nature, would conduct his government on the principles of inex. orable and unmitigated justice, and uniformly punish transgressors according to their guilt.

From this view of the attributes referred to, it appears, that not one of them, if existing and operating singly, would select a mode of government in which the Christian atonement would be needed. One of them would require no atonement of any description, the others would require every sinner to atone for his own crimes, by enduring the penalty deserved. But if we form our views on this subject from the representations of scripture, if we consider the divine perfections as existing and operating in union and harmony, we shall perceive that the atonement of Christ is as necessary in the case which actually exists, as it would be needless in the cases supposed.

Were we to examine all the conceivable systems of divine administration in which the atonement might be consistently dispensed with, we should find, I presume, that every one of them would imply the extinction, or at least the dormancy, of some of the divine perfections. Perhaps the whole of those conceivable systems are, as to their effect, resolvable into some of the following. Either, 1st, to take no cognizance of human actions at all; or, 2ndly, which is nearly the same, to pardon indiscriminately all offenders, on the ground of prerogative; or, 3dly, to subject every criminal to inevitable punishment; or, 4thly, arbitrarily to punish some, and forgive others, without regard to the degrees of their criminality; or, 5thly, to punish the most flagitious, and pardon the rest;

or, 6thly, to pardon transgressors only in case of repentance and reformation.

As to the first of these instances, I apprehend, not the boldest denier of the atonement will be disposed to give it to a place in his creed.

As the second scheme is, in tendency, the same as the first, it is liable to similar objections. Both of them exclude the justice of the divine Being from all share in his dispensations; and neither of them is calculated either to bring glory to God, or to prevent wickedness, anarchy, and wretchedness among men. What stronger inducement to crime could be offered to men, than the assurance that no penalty could be incurred.

To punish the whole offending race, without affording them any opportunity of escape, according to the third instance, would as effectually exclude the mercy of God from his government as the two former would his justice and holiness. A measure like this would give a most repulsive and appalling display of the divine character. And as the subjects of such a governor could have no inducements to love him, their obedience, if they tendered any, would be extorted from fear, instead of flowing spontaneously from the nobler principle of love.

Nor will the fourth instance, though exhibiting, in its general aspect, a mixture of justice and mercy, be exempted, when impartially considered, from a charge as severe as those preferred against the preceding systems. For though, in the arbitrary and irrespective punishment of some, and forgiveness of others, justice and mercy would both be brought into exercise, in reference to mankind as a whole race, yet their exercise would never be combined in any single act, nor in reference to any single individual. The treatment of one part of mankind would be all justice, and of the other part all mercy. To the honour of the divine rectitude, it is said in scripture, that God is no respecter of persons. This impartiality forms certainly an important branch of his justice; and hence the hypothesis which supposes this principle thus excluded from the conduct of the deity, supposes that at least a partial violation of justice is exhibited in the whole of his government. Besides, what ends worthy of his wisdom could be answered by such a method. It would have no tendency whatever either to promote virtue, or prevent vice. The fate of the sufferers depending not upon their own actions, but upon the mere will of their Maker, their lives could not be exemplary;

and it would be to them a question of no importance, whether in future they were righteous or wicked.

In the next instance, it is true, we perceive something like an approximation to just and rational government. To hold up as monuments of justice the deeply criminal, would in some degree be calculated to awe the wicked. And to spare the less guilty, would bear some resemblance to that exercise of regal prerogative by which a human governor averts the penal stroke from those whose crimes have been attended by extenuating circumstances. But still this system is far from possessing the perfection to be expected from infinite wisdom. It is here implied, that there is in human crimes, on account of their number or enormity, a difference of demerit. Some are supposed to be venial, others unpardonable.

Now this distinction must be defined according to some established rule; and this rule must either be published to mankind, or be kept a secret in the mind of the Deity. If it were published to mankind, they would have no restraint whatever from the commission of what might be called minor sins. They would know, that to a certain extent they might sin with impunity; and, till the measure of their iniquity were full, they would feel no apprehension of danger. But their presumption of safety would induce them to indulge in habits which would give an increasing acceleration to their progress in vice, till, by a kind of necessity of their own imposing, they would, in ten thousand instances, be carried beyond the bounds of safety before they were aware.

If, on the other hand, this rule were kept a secret in the mind of the Deity, mankind would consequently judge of their state according to the most probable rule which themselves could devise. Accustomed to estimate every thing comparatively, men would compare themselves with others. In proportion, therefore, as public morals degenerated, the standard of character would be altered in favour of vice; and no man would think himself wicked, so long as he conceived that others more wicked could be found. That universal selfish prejudice too, which ever exerts its influence to soften a person's verdict upon his own character, would whisper peace under all circum

stances.

We come now to consider the last of the cases supposed, which is certainly more plausible than any of the rest; and, as it is the only one, perhaps, for which any sensible and well-informed person will contend, it demands a more serious consideration.

In this instance, we must confess, there is, in several respects, an accordance with, what we believe to be, truth. That repentance is necessary, and that none but the penitent can be pardoned, are doctrines perfectly scriptural, and fully calculated to suppress every false hope of salvation in those who are not heartily renouncing sin. But though this is, perhaps, the best system which human wisdom could devise, it is not, we conceive, the best that is possible; since it is not the system which appears to be revealed in the gospel. Between the system last supposed, and the system of the gospel, let us, however, institute an impartial comparison, and then it will at once be seen on which side the excellence lies, and whether of the two appears most worthy of the ever blessed God.

While the former system shews mercy, it does not sufficiently support the dignity, the awfulness, and the claims of justice. Repentance is the only condition required, on the part of any being, in order to the sinner's forgiveness. It must therefore be considered as being either an equivalent to full obedience, or an atonement for crime; if not, the claims of justice, as to the time spent in wickedness, are totally set aside. If, in opposition to this assumption, it should be said, that the Divine Being acts simply in reference to the general welfare of his creatures, and that, therefore, if that object be accomplished, it is mere trifling to talk about the claims of this or that perfection; we reply, the requirement of repentance only, as the condition of pardon, is not calculated to answer the end proposed. Never will the mind be influenced to moral propriety, on which happiness is allowed to depend, unless it be deeply impressed with the importance of obedience, and the evil of transgression. But in this system there is nothing to produce such an impression. What real importance can there be in obedience, if a total defalcation in the discharge of duty for a long series of years, can be passed by without notice, if the defaulter only repent? Or what can there be odious in the nature, or very dreadful in the consequences of sin, if all the evil can be averted by repentance? Besides, how can even the Divine veracity be raised above suspicion, if God, in the very act of justifying the ungodly, be not unequivocally declared to be just? Might not the sinner reason with himself thus? Surely the principles of justice in general must be, in the estimation of God, as important and indispensable as the principles of truth, which form but a part of justice. If then justice has been so far relaxed that pardon is

offered to the penitent without the adoption of any method in which the demands of justice are sufficiently recognized and asserted, may it not also be so far relaxed, that ultimately even the impenitent may, either entirely or in part, escape the punishment denounced against them? The moral influence of a system from which such inferences are deducible must be too feeble to promote the obedience, the order, and happiness of mankind.

From all these defects, the system embracing the atonement is free. While mercy is exercised to the sinner, in this system, justice is preserved inviolate, as far as its moral influence in the divine government is concerned. The importance of obedience, and the heinousness of sin, are exhibited in the most striking and influential manner. The violation of God's law is never forgiven without a full recognition, both on the part of God and men, of the indispensable requirements of justice. In addition to repentance towards God, the gospel requires faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. This is an act emphatically expressive of the great obligations of man, the deep demerit of his sin, and the terrible degree of misery he has justly incurred. The humble penitent comes to the throne of grace, and, with his eyes streaming with tears of godly sorrow for his past conduct, he pours forth his confessions and supplications to God. He beholds the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world, and O how the sight affects his heart. He sees the well-beloved Son of God, by his Father's gracious appointment, and his own voluntary choice, made a sacrifice for sinners, and his mind fills with self-abhorrence for his sin, with awe at the justice, and astonishment at the love, of the Supreme Being. The sorrows of the Saviour through life, his agony in the garden, and his tortures and death upon Calvary, when connected with the immaculate purity and illustrious dignity of the sufferer, assume an infinite and awful significancy. He views them as being not only the meritorious cause of the sinner's salvation, but also as a representation in specimen of the dreadful misery which, but for the Saviour's interposition, would inevitably have proved his fate. He, therefore, while pleading for mercy, lays his hand of faith upon this vicarious sufferer, and confesses that his sins have deserved a punishment as great as that sustained by his substitute, with all the augmentation derived from the infinite dignity and worthiness of his person. While contemplating the peculiar death of Christ, discoveries the most interesting, and calcu