ing the camel, whose measure of iniquity, it seems, was nearly full, each man thrust him through with a lance, devoting him, diis manibus et diris, by a kind of prayer, and with a thousand curses upon his head. After which every man retired, fully satisfied as to the wrongs he had received from the camel! The reader will easily observe in this some traces of the Azazel, or scape-goat of the Jews, which was turned out into the wilderness loaded with the sins of the peo. ple. Lev. 16: 21."

If this was a ceremony of kindred nature to that of the scape-goat offering, (as Robinson and Bruce both seem to suppose,) it is another evidence that the common opinion that Christ is the scape-goat, is altogether inadmissible. How horrible the thought that men-and much more that God-should deal with Christ, as those foolish barbarians dealt with the poor camel! And yet we can make nothing else of the orthodox atonement. Such treatment however, applied to the devil, would be in accordance with truth and justice.The sins of all men, when traced to their source, are actually the works of the devil' which Christ was manifested to destroy.

These considerations utterly preclude the idea that Christ is the antitype of the scape-goat, and point us directly to that other victim who was destroyed forever when Christ died. The whole ceremony was obviously designed to shadow forth what-as we have seen the New Testament plainly teaches, that in the atonement, at the same time that Christ offered himself an acceptable sacrifice to God, the devil, as the father and representative of all sin, was devoted to eternal destruction.

This view enables us to understand how the sins of the world are disposed of. Instead of being imputed by a sort of legal fiction to Christ, to whom they do not belong, they are fairly laid upon the head of the devil to whom they do belong. The old serpent that deceiveth the whole world' is legiti mately made the scape-goat of the whole world. A king, in dealing with a revolted province, may properly make a distinction between the guilt of the common people, and that of the leading instigators of the rebellion. When

he has captured the ringleader and made a public example of him, he may safely forgive the rest- not imputing their trespasses unto them,' but to their seducer. It is necessary that the people should become sensible of the evil of the rebellion, and that they should confess and renounce it, imputing their delusion to its true author, and consenting to his execution. So the priest was required to put his hands on the head of the scape-goat, and confess the sins of the people over him. And so repentance and confession, with an approval of the destruction of Satan as the instigator of the sins of the world, is necessary, in order that men may avail themselves of the atonement. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them'-because Christ by his death destroyed the cause of their trespasses, and opened the way for men by repentance and faith to separate themselves from that cause, and join themselves to a nucleus of righteousness.

With these views, we can see how God can be just and the justifier of him that believeth;'-how the law, which immutably joins death to sin, can be faithfully carried into execution, and yet man be saved. The penalty of

all sin is actually inflicted on the devil, who is actually the author of it. Here is no evasion-no substitution of an innocent person for the offender. The law has its course. Man is saved, not because God abrogates the law or evades it by a fiction, but because he rightfully imputes the sins of which men are the instruments, to the devil, as their real author.

But we must bear in mind that the sins which can thus be transferred to the scape-goat, are human, not diabolical sins. They are the sins of the seduced-not of the seducer. It is Christ's office to have compassion on those that are ignorant and out of the way,' (Heb. 5: 2,) not on wilful transgressors. His prayer on the cross was-Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' Luke 23: 34. Paul was forgiven because he persecuted the church ignorantly, in unbelief.' 1 Tim. 1: 13. 'If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin.' Heb. 10: 26. If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death. I do not say that he shall pray for it. All unrighteousness is sin. And there is a sin not unto death.' 1 John 5: 16, 17. The broad difference, as we have intimated before, between sins that are properly diabolical, and those that are properly human, lies in the fact that the latter are not original in the transgressor, but are occasioned by external influences working on ignorance; while the former are the legitimate products of the transgressor's own disposition, and are committed in defiance of opposing knowledge. Diabolical sins, by their very nature are not transferable. They who commit them are intrinsically incorporated with the devil, and instead of being saved by the atonement, are destroyed, with the devil.

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If any cite as objections to our theory in regard to the object of Christ's death, such passages as these: Christ bare our sins in his own body on the tree,'' gave himself for us,' died for us,' &c., we reply-He certainly did not die in the same sense as we should have died, had there been no atonement-that is eternally. He died for us in this sense, viz: he was baptized into the spirit of sin and death, and suffered temporarily the curse which rested on that spirit, that he might overcome and destroy it, and that he might lay hold on and redeem those that were under it. If he had not died, we must have been destroyed with the devil. His death, therefore, was a substitute for ours. But it was not as ours would have been, a punishment. Gen. Putnam's sufferings in his descent into the cavern to kill the wolf, may be viewed as a forcible, though a homely, illustration of the nature and object of Christ's sufferings. That notable passage in the 53d chapter of Isaiah, where Christ's vicarious sufferings are fully described, is quoted in Matthew 8: 17 in a way which plainly shows that the evangelist understood it in a spiritual and not in a legal sense. 'When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.' Here it is evident that Christ suffered in the stead of those whom he healed. He entered into a spiritual partnership with them,

by which he gave them his health and took their sickness. But this suffering certainly was not penal. It was necessary, not because the law required it, but because, without it, he could not enter into the sufferers and cast the devil out. By this hint of the evangelist we may discern the true nature and object of all the vicarious sufferings of Christ.

The sum of what we have said on the negative part of the atonement, is this: Jesus Christ, by his death, entered into the vitals of the devil, and overcame him. He thus destroyed the central cause of sin. The effect of this act on them that believe, is to release them from the power of sin; and on them that believe not, to consign them with the devil to destruction.

The positive part of the atonement, i. e. the at-one-ment, or reconciliation and spiritual union of God and man, effected by the sacrifice of Christ, will be brought to view in several succeeding articles.

§ 19. THE CROSS OF CHRIST.

'THE flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other.' When the flesh prevails over the spirit, as in the experience described in Rom. 7: 7-25, the spirit is in the bonds of death. When the spirit prevails over the flesh, as in the experience described in Rom. 8, the flesh is crucified. The two powers are at deadly enmity with each other, and whichever is strongest kills the other.

In Christ the spirit prevailed over the flesh, from the beginning. His life in this world was a series of conflicts between the spirit and the flesh, (or, in another point of view, between God and the devil,) in which the spirit constantly overcame the flesh. As the struggle proceeded, his spirit waxed stronger and stronger. In this way he was educated, so to speak, for his office, and became perfect as a champion of the tempted. Though he were a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him.'

His last conflict in the garden and on the cross, was more severe and more decisive than any which preceded it; but it was not different in kind from the struggles in which he had been engaged from his birth. The powers of good and evil-the spirit with God for its supporter on the one side, and the flesh with the devil for its supporter on the other-which had been warring within him from the beginning, at last came to a desperate issue. The last great act of obedience which God required of his spirit, and which the flesh, instigated by Satan, struggled furiously to frustrate, was submission to death. The spirit conquered. Hell could not turn the Son of God aside from his appointed pathway. Lo I come to do thy will, O God,' was the word of his spirit, as he laid himself upon the altar.

In that final sacrifice the flesh was destroyed, and the devil, whose all was

staked on the trial, lost his kingdom. Christ was perfected; and thenceforth could bring to bear on the devil, in all the conflicts of his followers, a spirit on which temptation had done its worst, and which was thus triumphantly proved immutable in righteousness.

With this view of Christ's work, we perceive that his literal death on the cross was not the whole of his crucifixion, but its consummation. The true 'cross of Christ' was the subjugation of his flesh by his spirit, and that was a process which extended through his whole life, though its mest notable act and its termination took place on Calvary. His spirit was mortifying his flesh in obedience to the will of God, and he was therefore on the cross' spiritually, as really when he was tempted in the wilderness, and when he was laboring in Judea, as when he hung between heaven and earth. Indeed he used language referring to death by crucifixion, to express the subjugation of the flesh, long before he was actually crucified. See Luke 9: 23, 14: 27.

We have said that his literal death was the consummation of his entire crucifixion; but it was something more. It presented to the senses a most appropriate symbol-a physical miniature—of the whole. The parallelism between the exhibition on Calvary, and the life-long act of Christ's crucifixion, may be stated thus: As the wooden cross on which Le sufered was to his body, so was his spiritual nature to his carnal nature, during his whole life in the flesh. The prominent idea of a literal crucifixion, is that of a fiim, strong, upright substance holding with unyielding rigor a living body, in hopeless impotence and mortal agony, till death closes the scene. This is a true figure of the antagonism between Christ's spirit and flesh. His spiritual nature, firmly rooted in God, stood up in the strength and rigor of everlasting righteousness, and held his carnal nature, impotent and dying, till it was dead. His spirit was the cross on which his flesh hung, not merely six hours, but more than thirty years. In the scene on Calvary, the self-sacrifice which had been acted within him from the first, came out before the eyes of men, and exhibited itself in a visible and awfully impressive symbol. The apos tles, instead of attempting to force into the minds of their readers by metaphysical discourses, the mysteries of the interior work, pointed to the symbol. Their theme was-Christ crucified-the cross of Christ. But whcever conceives of nothing but a physical or legal transaction as embodied in these words, sces only the surface of the great spiritual idea which lies beneath them. Abundant evidence may be found in the writings of the apostles that they saw in the cross of Christ' the conflict and victory which we have described, and that it was in their minds the seed of spiritual victory for all believers. As the servants of the Holy Ghost, whose office it is to lead minds from external signs to interior truth, they used the visible crucifixion as the entering-point of the vast idea which it shadowed forth.

Probably the most prominent thought in many minds, in relation to the death of Christ, is that it was a cruel deed perpetrated by wicked men. At the hazard of startling those whose conceptions are thus limited, we aver, that in the truest sense Christ crucified himself, and that the act was a glorious manifestation of God's righteousness. The Romans, the Jews, and the devil, were indeed the guilty instruments of the sacrifice; but the power

which ordained and directed it, was the will of the Father and the Son. Christ said expressly, No man taketh my life from me; I lay it down of myself.' He steadfastly set his face to go up to Jerusalem, with the avowed expectation and purpose of dying on the cross. Twelve legions of angels were at his command; but he declined a rescue.

The substantial deed which was done under the forms of the crucifixionscene, was the act of the sufferer; and that act was the destruction of the will of his flesh by the will of his spirit. His spiritual nature was not the crucified, but the crucifier. He was put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit;' and it was the quickening of his spirit that made him strong enough to lay and hold his flesh on the altar of death. That same quickening had made him conqueror in all the battles of his previous life. the holy power of the divine nature-the righteousness of God. While the wooden cross held his body, his spiritual will held his carnal will in the agonies of death; and the unconquerable strength of the righteousness of God was manifested to the uttermost.

It was

That same quickening power which carried him triumphantly through the death-battle, went with him into the grave, and so charged his spirit with ascending life that Hades could not hold him. By its strength, he returned from the dead, took possession of that same body which had been the vantageground of the devil, changed it into a spiritual body, and 'ascended far above all heavens.'

We are apt to separate the resurrection of Christ from his death, and to think of the one as the reverse of the other. But in thinking thus, we are looking at his body, rather than at his spirit, in which the essence of the whole transaction lay. In truth the resurrection-power was the high priest of the sacrifice on Calvary, as well as the conqueror of Hades. Through the eternal Spirit he offered himself without spot unto God,' and through the eternal Spirit he arose from the grave to the highest heaven. His resurrection was but the continuation and complete victory of that same holy energy which nailed his flesh to the cross, and which had trodden the wine-press of self-sacrifice in all his previous life. The two elements concerned in his victory over the devil, were life in the spirit, and death in the flesh. To the external senses the resurrection is the most fitting representative of the life; and the crucifixion, of the death. But both elements were present in the crucifixion; and life, though less visible than its antagonist, was actually the principal power.

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Hence Paul, though the point at which he constantly aimed, was to plant the energy of the resurrection in believers, as the seed of God's righteous. ness, gathered up his whole gospel into one ilea-the cross of Christ.' 'I determined,' says he, to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified.' 1 Cor. 2: 2. It is clear that his conception of Christ crucified' was not merely or principally that of a sufferer, but of a conqueror. His eye was on the mighty energy of righteousness that crucified the flesh, more than on the flesh which was crucified. Accordingly he says-The preaching of the cross. . . unto us which are saved is the power of God. We preach Christ crucified, the power of God and the wisdom