fell upon him? This Jenkyn denies; this, it appears to us, the Bible affirms. The Bible places him in the sinner's stead, with the weight of a world's guilt resting upon him, and enduring the curse of the law in man's behalf. Jenkyn says, "The substitution of Christ was two-fold, a substitution of his person instead of the offender's, and a substitution of his sufferings instead of their punishment. This substitution of sufferings excludes the idea of a literal infliction upon the substitute of the identical penalty due to the offender." It does, indeed, and amounts in fact to no substitution at all. For according to this theory Christ never stands in the sinner's place to bear the curse of the law for him,-to drink the cup of trembling which his sins had filled to receive into his own heart the sword of divine justice that was ready to drink the blood of the sinner.

But the Bible says nothing of this substitution of sufferings, but only of the sufferer. "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." There is an evident discrepancy between the language of the Bible, and that of our author. The Bible says, "he bare our sins in his own body on the tree." Jenkyn says, "No, he only suffered a commuted sentence, that bore no proportion to the desert of sin." The Bible says, "He delivered us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us." Jenkyn denies that he ever endured the curse due to human guilt. We are obliged to take the side of divine revelation, and believe that "he was made. sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." And, as we are treated as if righteous, on account of his atoning merits, so he was treated as if a sinner, on account of our iniquities. The imputation of our sins to Christ and of his atoning merits to us are every where in the Bible represented as reciprocal. And if we, by the imputation of his righteousness to us, are brought into the same relation to divine justice as he himself sustains, then he, by the imputation of our sins, is brought into the same relation to divine justice that we sustained. He is brought where the sword of divine vengeance overtakes him and drinks his

heart's blood; and he suffers the death that was the penalty of sin. To make his expiatory death anything short of this, it seems to us must involve principles that will prove fatal to the whole evangelical theory. It lowers the work of expiation, and with it the loathsomeness of sin in God's estimation, and subverts the very pillars of the Christian faith.

This view alone can account for those appalling mental agonies which caused the Son of God to start back in dismay, and pray that if it were possible the cup might pass from him. This alone accounts for those hidings of his Father's face which extorted from him the despairing cry, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" What though we may be unable to fathom all the deep mystery that it involves? Shall we, therefore, on account of supposed difficulties which after all may exist only in our imperfect views and conceptions, set aside from their obvious import a whole class of the most important passages of Scripture? It is hardly modest, to say the least.

But if Christ did actually endure the penalty due to the sinner, it seems hardly conceivable that humanity alone could sustain the mighty load. True, we have no scales by which to weigh the demerit of sin, or the value of the mere human sufferings of a being thus related to divinity. We must leave both to be weighed in the scales of infinite justice. But the disparity is so obvious that we find it difficult to believe that Jesus paid the full ransom price of human guilt in expiatory sufferings, and yet that his human nature alone participated in those sufferings. But here we are met by the prevalent theory of the divine impassibility. We are told that all those passages of Scripture that speak of God as the subject of any emotion are mere anthropopatheia-figurative expressions, which refer to the aspect of the divine dispensations and their effects upon the offender, and never to the properties, affections and dispositions of the divine nature; that no such emotions ever existed in the divine mind. here we must be permitted to inquire; whether this lifeless abstraction, this cold, passionless embodiment of a few attributes, is the God of the Bible? Is not this impassible Deity, the God of the Stoical Philosophy, rather than of the Christian Scriptures? The Bible represents God not as a lifeless abstraction, a mere ideal conception, or an

But

inert essence, employing certain conceivable attributes, but as a living God, a fountain of living energies and living emotions. This theory takes away the living God of the Bible, and substitutes in his stead the lifeless ideal one of a heathen philosophy. It strips Jehovah of all his living attributes, and the Christian Scriptures of all their living import. What does the Bible as a revelation of God to man become, when you have converted all those passages that reveal the heart of Deity, into figures of speech, that convey no real meaning? What better than the cold speculations of Plato or Confucius? It takes away what is distinctive in the gospel of Christ. When we have wandered over the dark mazes of heathen mythology and the spirit finds no rest-no God that concerns himself with the affairs of men, or can feel for their wants and woes, we turn instinctively to the cross of Christ and say, Surely here we have found the heart of Deity. It beats warm with compassion for us! It sympathises in our sorrows. It commends its love to us "in that, while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.' But the impassible theor steps in and repulses us even here. It tells us that it is the man alone that was sacrificed and that suffered for us:-that in all that transaction, the Deity remained unmoved, encased in his own impassibility. Where, we ask then, are we to find a heart that beats in sympathy with the Universe, if we are thus driven back, even from the foot of Calvary? But it is objected, that "it implies an imperfection in the divine nature, to suppose it capable of suffering." Were it exposed to accident or involuntary suffering, it would. But does it, to be capable of taking it voluntarily upon itself, and that for ends infinitely worthy and desirable? What views have we of the perfection of the divine nature? Should we call it the perfection of human nature, to exist in a state of pure intellection, incapable of exercising any emotion? However pure and bright that intellectual existence might be, we should regard it little less than a moral monster, deficient in the most essential attributes of humanity. And why insist, as essential to the perfection of the divine nature, upon what would be regarded as the greatest deficiency in human nature? But if Deity is susceptible of any emotion, why not of voluntary suffering, prompted by infinite compassion for his suffering creatures? Still it is

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urged, that a susceptibility of suffering is inconsistent with his infinite beatitude. But are we sure that we have ascertained with certainty in what his infinite beatitude consists? Are the elements of perfect blessedness so clearly defined, that we can pronounce with assurance that a susceptibility of voluntary suffering is inconsistent with it? Are we sure that there can be no perfect bliss but in the dreamy insensibility of the fabled gods of India? Is the Budhist then right, in seeking annihilation as the only supreme good? Is not the highest human bliss always connected with the liveliest sensibilities, and the greatest susceptibility of suffering? And may not the infinite beatitude of God depend upon his infinite susceptibility of emotion?

Still, the question as to the actual participation of divinity in the expiatory sufferings of the cross must depend for its solution upon another, viz. What are we to understand by the person of Christ? Was the human nature of Christ capable of any such suffering as the prevalent theory supposes? What was the nature of the union between the human and divine in his person? Was it such as to leave to each still a separate consciousness--a separate power of action and suffering? or did they become really one, with but one distinct consciousness? In other words, was he one person, Deity incarnate:-or two, a God and a man, dwelling in one tabernacle, yet feeling and acting separately? If the former be the fact, it is impossible to separate the two natures in the article of suffering. It was the Christ, the God-man in his united natures, that suffered! It could neither be the one nature nor the other separately, without dissolving the union and destroying the personal identity. This we believe is the correct view of the subject. The other hypothesis seems to us so foreign to all the representations of Scripture, that it is difficult to reconcile them. What intimation is there, that the two natures ever here existed or acted separately and that he performed this act, as a man, that, as a God?-that as a man he wept, prayed, and suffered for sin? as a God, he raised the dead and stilled the tempest, while on earth, and is now adored in heaven as the "Lamb that was slain?" In many passages the transition must be so sudden, so unnatural, and so unwarranted by anything in the connection that it seems to us wholly inadmissible. Take

for instance, one striking passage-Christ Jesus, "who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." If we ask who it was that took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, all answer, the eternal Son, who thought it not robbery to be equal with God! If it is asked, who "became obedient unto death ?”—must we answer, Not he, but the human son of the virgin, with whom he tabernacled while on earth?

Again, what was the work for which Deity became incarnate? Was it to reveal truth? Was it to set an example to his followers? Or was it to work miracles? All these might have been accomplished without the incarnation. Was not the work of atonement, that especially for which God was manifested in the flesh? Jesus says, as he draws near to the scene of his sufferings," Father, save me from this hour, but for this cause came I unto this hour." And the whole tenor of Scripture represents the cross as the point where all the purposes of God in the incarnation, centre. He came to take away sin "by the sacrifice of himself." But to what purpose was the union of human and divine in his person, if at the very point where Deity was needed to sustain the mighty load of a world's guilt, it retired and left the humanity alone in its weakness to grapple single-handed with the Prince of darkness, and bear alone the intolerable burden? Why was Deity made incarnate for the purpose of making expiation for sin, if Deity could not participate in the work of expiation? In the absence of any such intimation of Scripture, is it not assuming much to affirm, that a separation took place at the cross, and that in the sufferings of Calvary humanity alone was involved? The humiliation of becoming incarnate-"made in the likeness of sinful flesh," and being exposed to the scorn and derision of men, was no inconsiderable ingredient in the cup of suffering, which Christ was called to drink. And from this, Divinity certainly was not exempt! The various sufferings of this life, hunger, thirst, fatigue, etc., were not incompatible with the constitution of that complex being; the whole