Let it be asked, by what means are we brought to Jove God? Answer, "We love him because he first loved us." God's love to us is antecedent to our love to him, which refutes the notion of God's receiving the atonement; but the idea, that the manifestation of God's love to us, causes us to love him, and brings us to a renewal of love, is perfectly consonant to the necessity of atonement, it shows us what atonement is, and the power which the Mediator must have and exercise, in order to reconcile all things to God.

The method, by which we are brought to love any object, whatever, is, by seeing, or thinking we see, some beauty in the object; and our love is always in proportion to the apparent good qualities of the object

seen.

While our minds are darkened, by the veil on the heart, in reading of Moses, so that the beauties of the ministration of life are hidden from our eyes, and its excellent glories are out of our sight, it is impossible that we should love Christ, or his word. Yet, during this darkness, we must love something; therefore, as sin and the vanities of elementary life present the greatest beauty to our eyes, of any objects which we behold, our affections are placed on those corruptible things.

Now we call up the question again, has Jesus power to cause us to love holiness, and to hate sin? Answer, yes, if he has power to reveal the divine beauties of the word, to remove the letter and its administration which are death, to take the veil from the heart, and to cause us to see himself altogether lovely.

When a sinner views God as an enemy, and grumbles concerning his being hard and austere, when he feels an aversion to him, and wishes to avoid his pres

ence, it is certain the Son hath not revealed the Father to that soul. The ideas thus entertained of God are altogether wrong, and the mind that entertains. them has no just conceptions of the Almighty. But blessed be the expressed image of the Invisible; he hath power to reveal the true character of the Father, to remove the veil from the heart, and to let the sun-beams of divine light gently into the understanding; then God appears altogether lovely, and the chiefest among ten thousand, while the soul in ecstacy embraces the brightness of his glory, crying, "My Lord, and my God." But the idea of the letter is so fixed in the minds of christian people, in general, that the veil of the law is as fully on their hearts, as it was on the Pharisees of old, which caused them to be blind to their Messiah when he came.

Christians have for a long time, believed, that the temporal death of Christ made an atonement for sin, and that the literal blood of the man who was crucified, has efficacy to cleanse from guilt; but surely this is carnality, and carnal mindedness, if we have any knowledge of the apostle's meaning, where he says, "To be carnally minded, is death." The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. The apostles were made able ministers of the new testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit. Christ saith, "except ye eat my flesh, and drink my blood ye have no life in you." • Must we understand this in a literal sense? If we do, how shall we understand what he further says of this matter? "The flesh profiteth nothing: the words which I speak, they are spirit and they are life.

The apostacy of the Jews happened, in consequence of the lips of the priests not preserving knowledge; they fell from the spirit of the law, were lost in the

wilderness of the letter, and therefore were blinded. This was a figure of the more dreadful apostacy of christians, as were various other circumstances recorded in the old testament. The christian apostacy hap.pened, in the same way; and the church has been led into the wilderness of the letter, by an hireling priesthood, who knew nothing of the spirit of the law; who have preached, in the name of the Lord, the letter, which killeth, in room of the spirit, which giveth life.

We are sensible there are thousands, who profess christianity, who are blind enough to object and say, "Then the gospel has nothing to do, in the salvation of mankind." But suffer us to say, the gospel is nothing but the spirit of the law, which is the word, or logos, spoken in the law, brought forth from the shadows of the first dispensation. To believe in any other atonement, than the putting off the old man, with his deeds, and the putting on of the new man, which after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness, is carnal mindedness, and is death.

There is nothing in heaven above, nor in the earth beneath, that can do away sin, but love; and we have reason to be thankful, that love is stronger than death, that many waters cannot quench it, nor the floods drown it; that it hath power to remove the moral maladies of mankind, and to make us free from the law of sin and death, to reconcile us to God, and to wash us pure in the blood, or life, of the everlasting covenant. O love, thou great Physician of souls, what a work hast thou undertaken! All souls are thy patients; prosperous be thy labors, thou bruiser of the head of carnal mind.

In this view of the subject, we may see how the di

vine grace of reconciliation may be communicated to those who have never been privileged with the volum of divine revelation, and who have never heard the name of a Mediator proclaimed as the only way of life and salvation. We have no doubt but thousands, whose education has taught them to look on the christian religion as an imposture, may possess a good degree of this love, which is the spirit of life in Christ Jesus; and though none can feel or experience this divine animation, only through the medium of the second Adam, we do not conceive that its agency is confined particularly to names, sects, denominations, people or kingdoms.

The word, which is nigh us, even in our hearts and mouths, is every where, operating, in some degree, in all hearts. The emnity, which God put between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, is every where felt, and the two are struggling in every breast. When the creature-like nature, or the carnal mind, which is enmity against God leads the whole man captive, it is then that the soul is in a state of unreconciliation and death; but when the heavenly man which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness, binds the strong man armed, and whispers heavenly invitations to the soul, revealing himself in the understanding, the soul immediately ceases to con, fer with flesh and blood, beholds with inexpressible admiration the heavenly beauties of the new nature, is moulded into its likeness, and experimentally become, a child of God; the way to the tree of life is openedand the soul enters by the anchor of hope within the veil, where the cherubims are disarmed of the flaming sword, and stand looking down on the mercy seat, where God communes with his people. Thus, by the

spirit of the word, the soul is brought to a sweet communion with God, it feels its eternal sonship, and rejoices therein, with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

Perhaps the christian reader will here pause, and say, I can witness, that what the author writes is true; but then, he does not tell of a regular law work; without which, we can never be brought to taste those delicacies in the gospel provisions. To this observation, we reply, we believe there are as egregious errors crept into the christian church, in this particular, as in any thing relative to the christian religion; and we further believe, that, among those, who have really tasted, that the Lord is gracious, there are such differences, on the above point, that, in many instances, they amount to a disfellowship, and tend greatly to destroy the blessed work begun in the heart. But those errors undoubtedly originate in some theories which are produced by the wisdom of the carnal mind, which is so opposed to the wisdom from above, that it is always endeavoring to introduce something that may serve to raise animosities, and to sow discord among brethren.

Some, who, by the force of a false education, have been led to believe, that God is an enemy to the sinner, have supposed they were every day exposed to the just vengeance of the Almighty, and have fancied that they could clearly see the justice of God, in their eternal banishment from heaven and happiness; and they have been so wrecked, on this wheel of torture, as to be deprived of sleep and every kind of repose, for a tedious time, some longer and some shorter. Awful dreams, fraught with the most terrifying imaginations, have corroded the mind; and sometimes, a burning lake of fire and brimstone has been painted so clearly,