Add to these yet one more. Dr Smalley, a divine whose reputation for orthodoxy is very high among our brethren, says, "Not all the curses of the law, nor even the execution of those curses in the unquenchable flames of hell, gave, or can ever give, equal evidence of the righteousness or wrath of God, as the amazing scenes exhibited in Gethsemane, and on Calvary." Sermon entitled, None but Believers, &c.

We can imagine all this to be descriptive of what is called "vindictive justice," but not how it is appropriate to represent an act of pure mercy, divine compassion. Indeed, is it not plain, that so far as mercy was concerned in the punishment inflicted on Jesus for sins not his own, that mercy was in the victim's heart, and only there? He commiserated, but Heaven revenged. The Father's wrath was quenched when it was poured upon his Son,— quenched in innocent blood. Do these considerations aid us in conceiving what infinite love imports?

It is replied to all this, that to us the punishment inflicted on Jesus was the means of forgiveness, and therefore we may see in that the divine compassion for ourselves. Just as we should feel the kindness of a creditor who consented to let us go free, when he had found one generous enough to pay the whole debt we owed. Or rather, as we should understand the mercy of a king who should capriciously seize an innocent subject, to be executed as a condition to the release of all the criminals in his realm. These criminals, no doubt, have cause to rejoice in their own escape, but can they help glancing a pitying eye at the substitute, or ever be so deceived as to think his unmerited doom any sign of the lenient temper of their prince? Mercy is mercy no longer, when it

exacts all that the strictest and most inexorable severity could require. The person punished may be one or many, the just or the unjust, but the disposition in the exactor is all the same.

It is pungently remarked by an orthodox writer on this subject, that deserved forgiveness is no forgiveness. Now we suppose that if the element of Merit enter, in fact, into the method of pardon, and that merit be passed to the benefit of the subjects of forgiveness, the question whence it proceeds and how it was raised, cannot alter the character of the transaction so far as the mercy of the lawgiver is concerned. His good-will to the released criminal was procured by that merit; the one balances the other; the merit is the ground of pardon. We are at a loss to perceive how such a pardon can be regarded as flowing from pure compassion. Mercy to merit, is only another name for retributive justice. It is not unknown to any one, that the common doctrine on this subject ascribes human forgiveness to the Saviour's meritorious death, in such a sense as to give that an efficacy with God, which perfect obedience in ourselves would have had, if such virtue were possible. That is, he merited God's favor for us, when we were ourselves unprofitable sinners. If this be salvation by free grace, what must be salvation by strict law? All the claims of law upon mankind, both of punishment and of obedience, were by Christ completely satisfied. What more remains, but for us to enjoy the good things legally our due, in case he was indeed our substitute? For this we have orthodox warrant. President Edwards remarks as follows. "The justice of God, that required man's damnation, and seemed inconsistent with his salvation, now does as much re26*

VOL. I.-NO. VI.

quire the salvation of those that believe in Christ, as ever it required their damnation; salvation is an absolute debt to the believer from God, so that he may in justice demand and challenge it, not upon the account of what he himself has done, but upon the account of what his surety has done for him. For Christ has satisfied justice fully for his sin; so that it is but a thing that may be challenged, that God should now release the believer from punishment. The believer may demand eternal life, because it has been merited by Christ." First set of Posthumous Sermons.

We need not lead our readers through the mazes of imputed sin and imputed righteousness, transferred guilt and transferred merit, notions which imply that all which exposes men to punishment was attached to the Saviour as his, when he died for our sins; and on the other hand, that all which was meritorious in him was made ours by a like dispensation. It is seen in the very terms themselves, that there could not be any call for gratuitous mercy in a transaction so entrenched in legal forms.

Our remarks are limited for the present to the single topic of Divine Mercy as it is affected by the theories respecting the mode of forgiveness, which are prevalent. It seems to us that this quality is quite removed from any expedient which lays punishment and merit at the foundation of pardon. But the Holy Scriptures do most assuredly ascribe the remission of sins to the tender mercies of our God! And in the nature of things it must be so. Were there no lenity with God, no pity for a frame so weak attacked by temptations so powerful, nor compassion for penitence when it does its best to repair the injuries which it laments to have committed, what hope

for us could be found? God commendeth his love to us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Be the influence then, of our Saviour's death, what it may, we are sure it was not anger, but affection, which it manifested. This none will in terms deny, while many will yet say, that Christ was punished in our stead. We add then, that it is no less clearly stated by the sacred writers, that Jesus was not forsaken by his Father nor subjected to his anger, when he was suffered to be crucified. Our Lord himself declares, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life. Behold, the hour cometh, yea is now come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me." In allusion to his approaching sufferings he exclaims, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him." In the garden, where his agony was so great, we are assured that aid was imparted by God from heaven, to support him. With holy confidence he had prayed to his Father just before, and had said, "Now come I to thee! Father, glorify thy Son!" We can discover no cause for the belief of some, that God at this very moment was preparing to inflict tortures inconceivable and unmerited, upon the mind of Jesus. As everything indicates in our Saviour an undiminished piety, to say no more, so all shews, that God, to whom with his dying breath he committed his spirit, had not left him to his enemies without comfort, far less was aggravating by his own secret agency, the pains he endured. How can any man believe, after perusing the evangelical history, that Jesus died beneath the invisible but irresistible strokes of divine anger on his soul?

The doctrine of atonement, as it is commonly maintained, obliges us to pitch upon the last scenes of Jesus' life as those in which God inflicted on Jesus the penalties of his law, even such as countervail the eternal woes of hell. And yet in no part of his history do we find stronger evidences of a sublime confidence in his Father's love. Was our Lord deceived in supposing that he was still beloved, when, it is pretended, he was deserted and made subject to the divine wrath? If that was a penal suffering which Jesus endured in Gethsemane, how happened it to be alleviated by the Judge and Lawgiver who was then inflicting it? We are constrained to believe that whatever was the occasion of our Saviour's sorrow, it was not mingled with any sense of divine anger, so often as we read those touching words addressed to Peter, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" It is not thus that the apprehension of the insupportable displeasure of his Father would have been expressed; nor, in the awful moment of its visitation, should we have heard, "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done!"

[To be continued.]

MORAL INABILITY.

CAN man do his duty? Make this inquiry in the places of trade and commercial resort, in the market, in the court of justice, wherever men exact service from each other, or have occasion to enforce moral obligation, and you are likely to be answered with a smile that will