man will deny. One man in a city, by his neglect of all sanatory regulations about his premises-by lack of drains, by accumulation of filth, may occasion à pestilence, from which all his innocent neighbors may suffer-suffer more than he, from their having been accustomed to a purer atmosphere. The innocent man suffers, not by his own fault, but vicariously, at least so far as this, that he realizes the effects of another's transgression of a physical law. Nature is full of this. We cannot stop to justify the reasonableness of the law. The fact is all we want. Perhaps it is to bind men more together in a comprehensive, organic unity, and make each man feel that he is his brother's keeper. It is certainly one reason why God has seen fit that we should be redeemed from sin by the vicarious sufferings of Christ, that he might thus gather together in one the children of God who are scattered abroad; He, the Son of Man, thus as the head of our race, binding the holy together in one great brotherhood-and within the one fold and unity of his Church.

We say, then, that the earth is full of vicarious suffering for sin. It is not a new exception, but a wide-spread law, and further, each sin seems to produce more of vicarious than of personal suffering. The robber steals, and "a thief is ashamed when he is taken." He suffers in the perpetual uneasiness of his own heart, as well as in the penalty of his crime when taken. But do not the innocent suffer also? We speak not of the mere loss of goods, but of the universal suspicion produced, so that men act as if all their fellow men were rogues, until they find them honest. What else mean those bolts and bars on every house, police and prisons, and courts of justice on all sides? Why the weapons of defence men carry? Why this perpetual

watchfulness and distrust-so that one-half of the labor of man is to protect the results of the other half. All this is society bleeding and suffering vicariously for the frauds and thefts of a very few individuals. The liar or the hypocrite may suffer some penalty for his falsehood, in not being believed even when he speaks the truth. But all men of truth and holiness have to bear their share of the results of his

crime, and are stung and wounded daily in their truthful and sensitive minds, at the distrust with which every thing said is scrutinized. The innocent suffer, and are pierced with pangs and horrors at the view of sin, which the guilty should, but cannot feel, because their hearts are hardened by sin. The more pure and holy any mind is, the greater is the shock inflicted by the presence of sin. Lot in Sodom vexed his righteous soul, from day to day, for iniquities not his own, while the guilty herd reveled on in wickedness, without compunction.

Whole nations and communities suffer through long ages for the sins of individuals. It is not primarily the laws, not the form of government, not the soil or the climate that makes a State truly prosperous, but the spirit, the character of the people, and this is formed by the few leading minds. Where these are industrious and virtuous, thither population and capital will flock. But where education is neglected, and vice is common, universal suspicion and insecurity will thin out the population, industry will slacken, and society decrease and degenerate. The best men suffer most for the iniquity of the people among whom they dwell.

Nor is it merely in this general way that the innocent suffer through the guilty. The lovely child becomes the victim, in a thousand ways, of the evil of its parents. Adam's sin is not the only one that is vicariously visited on his posterity. Every sin is. There is not an error committed, but may in some way, by example or by precept, work itself into an instinct, and affect the most distant future generations, and help to form national character. It is thus God "visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of those who hate him," and thus that he "shows mercy unto thousands of generations of those who love him and keep his commandments."* How then shall it be said that the suffering of the innocent for the sin of the guilty is contrary to the analogy of God's justice and government?

*This is the sense of the original of this passage, as Prof. Stuart has remarked.

rect one.

We shall be told, however, that this, after all, if vicarious in any sense, certainly affords no analogy of expiatory and atoning suffering, inasmuch as it diminishes nothing from the consequences falling on the guilty, but is only, so to speak, a general penalty of evil, over and above the diWe remark then, further, that these sufferings are, in their measure, both expiatory and atoning in the strictest manner, inasmuch as they are, in many cases, "the means of contributing to the relief of the guilty.' It is not merely that others share the miseries incurred by the guilty, but that sharing, they bear off a part of the wretchedness, and help to recover the sinful from their fallen condition, just as where the many points of lightning conductors rise upwards to the surcharged thunder-clouds, each bearing off its share of the electric fluid, the shock is made less sensible and tremendous for any one. If this is true, then do we show a very striking analogy for the doctrine of an atonement through the vicarious sufferings of Christ. And yet how obvious is this tendency. The father suffers and the mother pines on account of the dissipation of a disobedient son Or the wife is anxious, and she weeps, while she prays for the recovery of an intemperate husband. Here are the innocent suffering for the guilty. But at length the father's counsels and the mother's tears prevail, and the prodigal son returns, a penitent. The wife's prayers are heard, and the dissipated husband is recovered. Here is recovery through vicarious suffering. The wife, though not morally one with the husband in his sin, was truly one with him in heart, feeling the degradation of the crime he should but could not feel, as if it had been her own, and by suffering the wretchedness and misery of his guilt, saved him. By thus bearing his burden through her love, she at length sees him raised, as it were, to her moral level, recovered, and hating sin as she used to hate it alone. He is saved from the hopelessness of his

*See Butler's Analogy, part ii. chap. 5, where the subject is admirably exhibited.

condition, through the means of her receiving his degradation into her bosom as her own.

These things are not rare, and romantic, and fanciful exceptions; they are rules-general principles-the great laws of the recovery of the fallen. Few are brought back in any other way. Sin is self-perpetuating; it destroys the sense of the individual to its own enormity, or else destroys all hope of recovery. It certainly affords no new motive to repentance, where old ones have proved insufficient. Nearly all persons, therefore, who are recovered from any serious error, are recovered through the sufferings, entreaties and sympathies of their friends who have not fallen, or who have been recovered. Those who sympathize most and feel most for the fallen, and enter, as it were, into their condition, can do most to reclaim them. Is it not so with the drunkard?

And yet men tell us that it is contrary to all that is natural, that the friend who sticketh closer than a brother" that friend whose sufferings on our behalf alone what tongue shall tell-that friend who assumed our nature, and was in all points tempted like as we are, tempted that he might be touched with the feeling for our infirmities—yes, they tell us that it is contrary to all analogy that his sufferings should effect our restoration and atonement, our reconciliation and recovery to the favor and image of God. Believe it not. It is Christ crucified for our sins, "to the Jews a stumbling block, and the Greeks foolishness," that is to those who are saved, "the wisdom and the power of God."

But to return from this digression. It is, we say, it ever has been, it ever will be, so far as the fallen are recovered in this world, by vicarious sufferings and vicarious efforts that their restoration must be accomplished. This is the great law of all reforms, and of the recovery of all the sinful, so far as human instrumentality is concerned. "Two are better than one, for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up."

We grant indeed most fully, that all the analogies of hu

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man sympathy and human suffering fall infinitely short of those we wish to illustrate, both in extent and effects. only wish here to show the parallel of nature and of grace -that the redemption of the fallen in some way through vicarious suffering, so far from being at war with justice, is in accordance with the whole course of the divine dealings. Indeed, this may be traced still further. One great distinguishing feature about the vicarious sufferings of Christ —that in fact which at once and for ever reconciles the proceeding with justice-is their voluntariness. He gave his life a ransom for many. "I have power," said he, "to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again. No man taketh it from me. I lay it down of myself."

The greatest of all moral force, the most powerful means of the recovery of any is voluntary vicarious suffering. One man who is willing to do, and dare, and die for the good of others, to bear their miseries, will produce the most astonishing results. Being voluntary and for the good of others, these will have a moral force that will carry the world before it. The sixty or seventy signers of the Declaration of Independence were few and weak individually, but when they put their hands to the paper that pledged their lives, their fortunes and their honor to the cause, it exerted a moral force that has produced all that we now behold in this happy land.

If a man wants to relieve the suffering, to raise the degraded and miserable, the most effectual way to do it is by a voluntary putting of himself in their position, suffering in his own person their wretchedness. If a patriot would raise his country from under the sway of a tyrant, he has to throw himself vicariously for the whole nation in front of the battle, to bear their risks in his own person, and fight as if success depended upon him alone. And a few such may secure liberty to millions for generations. It was by himself visiting the prisons and the dungeons of Europe, that a Howard has saved the lives of thousands, and delivered from untold miseries vast multitudes of poor prisoners to distant generations. And it was through the bloody martyrdoms and sufferings of the first Christians,