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marred than any man's, and his form more than the sons of men? in a world of sorrows, signalized as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief? And when, beside the sufferings incident to humanity by the necessity of its condition, he was subject to all manner of abuse from the malignity of men, was there no voice from heaven for his vindication, and no legion of angels for his rescue? And when in immediate prospect of the last dreadful scene he prayed that if it were possible the cup might pass from him, was it not possible? And when forsaken of human sympathy, and given up to the will of his enemies to be mocked and crucified, was he also forsaken of God? and even when God was challenged by his crucifiers to deliver him, if he would have him, would he not deliver him? Must the dread sentence proceed with unbending severity until he who was the Prince of life bowed his head in death? And was all this ordained of God, as holy men, divinely inspired, had foretold, “ to make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in ever- . lasting righteousness?" or as Paul says, "to declare the righteousness of God for the remission of sins, that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus." Then I say, and this is what I mean when I say that Christ died to make atonement for sin-the sins of the world-he died that we might live, not merely to bring us to repentance, but to make repentance availing for our forgiveness; or in the language of Butler, “ put us into a capacity of escaping future punishment, and obtaining future happiness." I would not say that Christ suffered the wrath of God. He was, and he could not but know that he was, God's well-beloved Son, but he was one of us, "all whose days are passed away in his wrath." I would not say that he suffered the penalty of the divine law,-this comprehends the eternal as well as temporal consequences of sin,-but he did suffer, and that in great measure, those temporal sufferings, which, coming on us, are penal. They were not punishment as appointed to him,-punishment is evil inflicted on the guilty, but they were appointed to him, and most freely borne as the divinely constituted substitute for the punishment due to us, to answer its end, and remove the necessity of its infliction on our return to God by him. They were not such, either in kind or degree, as those must endure whose end is to be punished; but they were great and dreadful, beyond all other experi ence in the present life. The sufferings of the cross were dreadful, and to those were added mental sufferings, more so. I cannot enter into the mystery of his agony in the garden, or of his complaint on the cross. I can imagine him to have suffered as none but one who loved as he did could suffer; under his sense of the ingratitude and malignity of men, I can imagine him under his own burden to have had an overwhelming sense of ours. I see him troubled in spirit at the grave of Lazarus. I see him weep. I hear him groan. It was in sympathy with

the griefs, and in view of the death, the corruption, and the grave, which sin bad caused in the world; and, when in the garden he had in prospect, and on the cross the experience, of his own sufferings for sin, I imagine his sympathy with a world of sinners sinking under the wrath of God into everlasting woe, to have been moved to its utmost depths. I know, too, that there is such a thing as the hiding of God's face; and that to those who love him, it gives pain which they alone can understand and feel: I can suppose this, in the experience of Jesus, to have occasioned a horror of darkness which "the only begotten of the Father" alone could experience. Still I regard the subject as involved in mystery, knowing only that his sufferings were inconceivably great. It is not, however, to the greatness of his sufferings, so much as the greatness of the sufferer, that the Scriptures ascribe the efficacy of his death as a propitiatory sacrifice. "How much more," says Paul, "shall the blood of Christ who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot unto God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" It was saying much to speak of our great High Priest as " offering himself unto God." It was saying more to speak of him as offering" himself unto God without spot." But when he proceeds to declare who he was that offered himself; when he proceeds to say that he was not a man only, but also the eternal God; that his offering of himself was through, or by, "the eternal Spirit," well might he make the appeal: and we tremble and rejoice to hear it, "How much more?" If the dignity of the sufferer and his relation to God, could be of any account at all, in the adequateness of his sufferings as a substitute for the punishment of a rebel world, what limit can there be to the efficacy of his death for this end, who was not only one of the world, but also the world's Creator and Lord?

That this is the doctrine of the cross, as it was preached by Paul, appears

1. From the importance which he attaches to the cross. Preaching the cross was in his view preaching the gospel. The cross was his constant, and, in a sense, his only theme,-the beginning and end, the sum and substance of his teachings; all deriving from this their distinctive character. The same importance is attributed to the cross in the other Scriptures. This was the great object of the Jewish ritual. As the apostle remarks, all things are by the law purged with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no remission; and the end of these expiations he declares to have been the foreshadowing of the great sacrifice in the death of Christ. This was the object to which the spirit of inspiration turned the gazing eyes of the ancient prophets. The scene which excited their most eager inquiries as the Spirit opened to them the curtain of futurity, was "the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow."

This was the theme on which Moses and Elias, the giver of the law and the chief of the prophets, appearing in glory with our Saviour on the Mount of Transfiguration, held converse with him. They "spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." This, in its relation to his subsequent reign, is also the object of the angels' intent regard. "Which things the angels desire to look into." And this is the subject of the everlasting song of the redeemed, "Worthy," they cry, "is the Lamb that was slain." Now, regarding the cross as the symbol of the atonement, we see a manifest reason for all this. We see in it an importance answerable to the surpassing interest which the worshippers of God in heaven and on earth have felt in it. On this peculiarly hang the hopes of a dying world. This is the central point of the Christian system, its peculiarity and its glory-that which distinguishes it from all else that is called religion-all else that is called Christianity. Take away the expiatory character of the cross, and you attach, importance it may be, but no peculiar importance to it; you attribute to it nothing distinctive; you make the preaching of Christ crucified in no other sense than as you make the preaching of Christ our teacher, or Christ our example, the preaching of the gospel.

2. That this is the doctrine of the cross, as it was preached by Paul, appears from its being foolishness to them that perish. There is nothing foolish-nothing incredible or strange-in the doctrine of a martyr's death. Such a death well accords with the history of human depravity; and, when suffered with fortitude and meekness, is honorable. Were the doctrine of the cross only the doctrine that Jesus died as a martyr or a reformer, it would be regarded by all men with admiration. Rousseau himself, so regarding it, said, "If Socrates died asa philosopher, Jesus Christ died as a God." But the doctrine of the atonement involves considerations which the unbelieving world do not appreciate. It contemplates mankind as sinners, as transgressors of the law of God; and condemns to eternal death. It supposes the law which condemns them to be just and good, the penalty no less just and good than the precept; and God, the infinitely just and benevolent Judge of all, bent on the execution of the one, to maintain the authority of the other, except as the end might be otherwise attained. It declares that end to be attained by the cross in the pardon of the penitent; and calls on men accordingly to return to God by it, acknowledging their iniquity, submitting themselves to his law, and casting themselves on his mercy in Christ for the justification of life. Now it is easy to see that to those who are convinced of sin, this doctrine is the wisdom of God. They see an occasion for the stupendous provision, and an answerableness in the provision to the occasion, glorious alike to his justice and his mercy. But mankind in their natural blindness, do not see the doctrine in this light. The position from which they view it, is

not that of sinners self-condemned; and, therefore, "to them that perish, it is foolishness."

3. That this is the doctrine of the cross as preached by Paul, appears from his more explicit account of it in other passages. To only a few of these can I now refer you. Paul preached that Christ died for our sins. " "Scarcely for a righteous man will one die,--peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. Here you will remark the supposition is that of a man's dying not only in behalf, but instead of another; as David, in his grief for Absalom, said, "Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son !" Such, therefore, is the meaning, when, in carrying out the contrast, Paul says, "But God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, in due time Christ died for us." The vicarious principle is asserted here. But Paul preached not only that Christ died for us, but that he died for our sins. "I delivered unto you, first of all," he says to the Corinthians, "that which I also received,-how that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures." A person dies for his own sins, when he suffers death in punishment of them. Christ died for our sins, as he died to save us from that punishment. Our sins made it necessary that either he or we ourselves should die. He suffered the death of the cross for them that we might not suffer death eternal. Paul preached also more expressly that Christ died in order that we might be forgiven. "In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgivenees of sins." "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare the righteousness of God for the remission of sins." Forgiveness of sins, is remission of the punishment of them. As Christ died for the forgiveness, or remission of sins, he died to save us from the punishment which we have incurred by them. And, yet more significantly of this, he preached that Christ died a sin-offering-died a sacrifice to God for our sins. "Now once, in the end of the world, bath be appeared to put away sin, by the sacrifice of himself." "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." It is not necessary to understand this in the most literal sense. There is no doubt a great difference between an altar and the cross, and the office of the high priest in the temple and that of the Roman soldiers on Calvary; but, in effect, Christ was at once our high priest, our altar, and our sacrifice. His death was not only violent, but it was voluntary; he offered himself: and how Paul and the Hebrews to whom he wrote understood this, there can be no doubt. The allusion to the expiatory offerings of the temple points us to the expiatory nature and design of the offering of Christ. I will add, only, that, according to the preaching of Paul, Christ died to reconcile us to God. "All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself, by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, re

conciling the world unto himself." This means not so directly that God is bringing the world into submission to his government, as that He is administering his government placably to the world; for this is the explanation subjoined, "not imputing their trespasses to them,"-not setting these in the account as an obstacle to their peace with him,-proclaiming a general amnesty to the world on the condition of its submission to him. This relation of God to the world, the apostle asserts, is in, or by Christ, and not only so, but it is by his death as a propitiatory sacrifice, it being immediately added as the ground of the wonderful procedure,-" For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." A mutual peace, a reciprocal love between God and a rebellious world, no doubt is the reconciliation intended; but the basis of it is, the pacification of God towards the world by the blood of the cross; not, indeed, as implying any original implacableness of his nature, but only an obstacle to the exercise of forgiving mercy, resulting from the necessity of some decisive testimony of his abhorrence of sin, which necessity by the sacrifice of Christ is removed. Such being the doctrine of the cross, I proceed to show-

II. How this doctrine to them that are saved is the power of God.

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"Saved," in this connection, means, primarily, renewed in holiness. The comparison is between the doctrine of the cross and the wisdom of this world in their effects on character. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? What have they done to turn men from sin? "Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" Hath he not exposed it as vain and futile? "For after that the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe." This is meeting the adversaries of the gospel on their own ground. They insist that the doctrine of the cross relaxes moral obligation, that the pretense of turning men from sin by the proclamation of a free pardon is absurd,-that the supposition of God's making his beloved Son a substitute for the guilty in the suffering of death, for purposes of moral government, is foolishness. No, says the apostle, facts prove the contrary. Go where you will,-over the Jewish world or the pagan,--in the path of the preaching of the cross, and you will find it to those who yield themselves to its appropriate influence, the power of God. In its effects on character you will see incontestible evidence that this foolishness of God is wiser than men, and this weakness of God is stronger than men.

Yet the apostle could not have meant to say, that the doctrine of the cross is effectual to this end without the Holy Spirit, or, which is the same thing in a modern form, that this doctrine, being given by the Holy Spirit, is itself the only divine power

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