made to depend, not on the triumph of our vices, the success of our interests, and the gratification of our passions, but on a devoted resignation of them and ourselves to the will of God, a holy tranquillity about things temporal, an anxious solicitude for things eternal, a satisfied belief that all things here "shall work together for our good," and a fixed expectation of happiness to be found there only, where" our treasure is," and "our hearts should be also:"—there we behold Christ laying down a system of truth, and a rule of life, alike plain to the understandings, and adapted for the practice of all mankind-calling to himself, out of a world of woe, those who "are weary and heavy laden"-exhorting them, with divine truth, and more than parental affection, that they spend no longer their money for that which is not meat, and their labour for that which satisfieth not that they dream no more of that happiness which was never found here,

and seek that which shall assuredly be found by all who seek it "in spirit and in truth" hereafter-in a belief in what God hath revealed as its true source, and a confidence that he is able to realize and render it pure and perennial. May we, my brethren, so "learn Christ!" May we be taught, "not in words which man teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth," that, if we would seek peace, we must seek it at the foot of the crossin the study of those truths that Jesus taught, and the imitation of that example which he left; and there, in the sacrifice of all earthly cares, and the submission of all earthly feelings, we shall find that " peace which passeth all understanding," and of which the effect is quietness and assurance for ever." Now to God, &c.

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331

ON THE ATONEMENT.

MICAH, vi. 6, 7.

Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

THESE words, as the context informs us, are part of the question addressed by the unbelieving King of Moab to the prophet Balaam; and they present a vivid picture of the solicitude of the "natural mind" of man, when employed, as it sometimes will be, on the awful subject of its everlasting concerns.

Man, conscious (under every dispensation of religion, and every state of life; conscious even under the darkness of heathenism) that he is a sinner, must be conscious also that "his sins have separated between God and him”—that

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he is in a state of hostility with a Being whose purity must be offended by his transgressions, and whose power may punish them with awful severity. Thus, the first rites of all religions but one are rites of propitiation—and the first feeling of every mind towards the Deity is, that between God and us there is a great gulf fixed," which must be overpast or closed up before we can appear in his presence with hope or with confidence. This feeling is no local superstition, no mere result of a false religion and a morbid and distorted state of mind-it is the universal feeling of mankind wherever the Gospel of Christ is unknown, and is attested by the genius of every religion, the history of every nation, and the experience of every individual, since the birth of Adam :-men, feeling themselves sinners, justly conceive it necessary, that, in order to obey God acceptably, they must first be reconciled to him, and obtain indemnity for past offences, before

they have encouragement for future services, or security for future reward. For proof, look round the world—and the world copiously supplies the proof—we see man every where (when occupied in his religious concerns) considering it his most solemn care and most important duty to "make his peace with God."

The religion of the ancient world rested exclusively on this foundation; and when, in proof of it, we read of those wise and enlightened people, the ancients, sacrificing human victims, offering up their captives taken in war, immolating their very children, tearing their own flesh, and pouring out their own blood; nay, devoting their own lives as a propitiatory offering to their infernal gods, we meet a proof of the dreadful sincerity with which they entered into the spirit of their religion.

But it may be said such was the religion of the superstitious vulgar, and theirs is always a religion of terror and