became an infant of days!-That he whose arm upholds the universe, was wrapped in swaddling bands! This was humiliation indeed. While this is recollected, never let a poor disciple of Jesus either blush or complain. Thus low did the Redeemer stoop, to lift up sinners out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, into which their sins had plunged them. How can we proceed, without stopping, for a moment, to admire "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though he was rich, yet for our sakes, became poor, that we through his poverty might be made rich;" that we by faith might claim a relation to him as our kinsman Redeemer, and say, "unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given-he is our Immanuel, GoD WITH US!"

Our Redeemer, it appears, after this, was subject to his parents according to the flesh, during the whole period of his minority. He was bred to a laborious occupation. He was called the carpenter, and the carpenter's son. Let honest industry never be ashamed of its toils, for it is employed only as the Redeemer of the world has set the example.

But the answer states that another part of our Lord's humiliation was, that "he was made under the law." The law, here principally referred to, was certainly the moral law. Christ indeed yielded obedience to all the divine institutions, ceremonial and political, as well as moral; because the former of these, while they lasted, had the same author as the latter, and were therefore equally obligatory; and he declared to his forerunner that it became him to fulfil all righteousness. But the ceremonial and political institutions of the Jews were temporary; the moral law, on the contrary, is of eternal and unceasing obligation. It was to this that he was made subject, as our surety. This was the law given to Adam at his creation; and was that on which

the covenant of works was founded, when he dwelt in paradise. By the breach of this law, as a covenant, all mankind were brought under the curse. When therefore it is said by the apostle (Gal. iv. 4, 5,) " God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law," we must not only understand the moral law to be chiefly spoken of, but spoken of specially as a covenant of works. We have just seen that the object of Christ's coming was to redeem them that were under the law;— that is, to answer its demands in their place. He did answer its demands in their place, considered as a covenant of works; and thus the second Adam repaired the ruins of the first. The law has no longer any claims upon his believing people in the form of a covenant. But he never fulfilled it for them as a rule of life, in any other way than as giving them a perfect example of obedience to it. If he had, then Christians would be under no obligation to render a personal obedience to the moral law. This indeed the gross Antinomians have, in terms, affirmed. But it is only a monstrous and impious inference of their own, made in direct contradiction of the words of Christ himself-"I came not," said he, "to destroy the law, but to fulfil it." That it was the moral law of which our Saviour here spoke is evident; because he did actually destroy or put an end to the ceremonial and political laws of the Jews; so far as they were separable, as in most cases they were, from the principles of the moral law.

It is justly represented as a striking part of Christ's humiliation, that he was made under the law; because it was a most amazing condescension, that the great Lord and lawgiver of heaven and earth, should become subject to the law which he had enacted for humble and inferior creatures;-espe

cially when he did it to fulfil that law in the place of those very creatures, after they had transgressed it and incurred its penalty. If you will meditate seriously on this fact, you will find it calculated to fill you with astonishment. It may also show you the miserable state of sinners who have not, by faith, committed their souls to Christ; because, of course, they have to answer to God, in their own persons, for their whole debt to the law, both of obedience and of punishment. And, in contrast with this, it shows the unspeakable happiness of true believers in Christ, whose whole debt is cancelled, by his being made under the law, in their room and behalf.

Another item of our Lord's humiliation, mentioned in the answer before us, is his "undergoing the miseries of this life." When our blessed Redeemer assumed our nature, he took no exemption from any of its sinless infirmities, but a large share of them all. It is recorded of him that he was weary, that he hungered, that he wept, that he sighed, that he was sorrow ful; but never that he smiled, and but once that he rejoiced. He was, as characteristick of him, "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." It was prophesied of him, that his "visage should be marred more than any man's." Probably this took place, in a considerable degree, even before his agony. When the Jews said to him, "thou art not yet fifty years old," the expression seems to denote clearly that they took him to be farther advanced in years than he was; for he was then but little more than thirty-And it has been well remarked, that the cares and griefs which he bore, probably gave him the appearance of an age which he had not reached. In short, he endured, as already said, hunger, and thirst, and weariness, and sorrow, and grief; he also submitted to poverty and want, and had not where

to lay his head; he submitted to the contradiction, reproach and persecution of an ungrateful and wicked world; and he even humbled himself so far as to endure the assaults and temptations of the devil-He did this, that he might extract the sting from all the afflictions of his people, and know, even by experience, how to sympathize with them. "We have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin."

But the sufferings we have hitherto mentioned, though not small in themselves, were the least of the miseries which our Redeemer endured, in his humiliation, while he lived on earth-The answer we consider states, that he also underwent "the wrath of God." By this we are to understand that he endured the awful expression of God's holy and righteous displeasure against sin. His human nature, as we have heretofore seen, could not have sustained this, but for its union with the divine, which upheld it.

But, my children, when you hear of Christ undergoing the wrath of God, you are by no means to suppose that there was ever a moment of time, in which Christ ceased to be the object of his Father's infinite love. Never was he more the object of that love and complacency, than in the midst of those bitter sufferings which arose from the wrath of God due to our sins. Those sins which he was bearing were the object of the Father's infinite hatred; but the glorious person bearing them, was then, as at all other times, his well beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased. That God should thus please to bruise his Son and put him to grief, and that the Saviour should cheerfully consent to sustain it, is just that view of the infinite love and compassion of God and Christ to mankind sinners, which astonishes,

and overwhelms, and melts the soul of a believer, whenever he gets a glimpse of it,-for more than this, he cannot have at present-It is emphatically "a love which passeth knowledge.'

The wrath of God endured by our blessed Lord when he was acting as a surety for his people, chiefly appeared in his agony in the garden, when he said "My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death; and when he sweat, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground;" and again on the cross, when he cried with a loud voice, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me." Ah, my dear youth! "if these things were done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry ?"-If Christ suffered thus when he bore the sins of others, how will sinners themselves suffer, when the wrath of God shall be let loose upon them, for their own deserts? How earnest should you be to escape this, by immediately flying to the Saviour, that your sins may be forgiven for his sake-that they may all be blotted out in his precious atoning blood.

(To be continued.)

ON THE ATONEMENT. No. XI.

On the Law.

My dear Friend,-I must draw my epistles to a close; the importance of the subject discussed, has induced me to spend so much time in the investigation. They are now in a course of publication; and if the great Head of the church shall condescend to honour them as a means for rectifying the error of any reader, or for establishing the minds of the wavering in the doctrine that has hitherto prevailed in the Presbyterian church, I shall deem myself well rewarded

for the time and labour bestowed on them.

It only remains to contrast the two theories in relation to the нONOUR they reflect on the DIVINE law, and on our BLESSED REDEEMER.

Both schools concur in pronouncing on the Law of God the highest encomiums; believing it to be a transcript of his moral perfections, and worthy of the profoundest obedience of every rational creature. They agree in the sentiment, that the penalty which guards the sanctity of the law, involves a degree of misery far greater than is felt by any human being on this side the grave, and that it will run parallel with the eternal existence of the damned; and they strenuously maintain, that the infliction of this fearful penalty on every impenitent and unbelieving sinner, is a righteous procedure on the part of the Supreme Ruler of the universe. But they differ widely in their views of the bearing of the Mediator's work on the law.

You know, sir, that, in the contrast I am drawing, I do not refer to our brethren, who, while they believe in a general atonement, hold to its true nature as involving a real satisfaction to divine justice, and a real infliction of the threatened penalty on the sinner's glorious and spotless substitute. In my second letter it was shown, that between them and the advocates of a definite atonement, the difference is merely verbal, and that they have no ground for controversy with each other. This I wish to be kept in mind.

The new school believe the perfect obedience which Christ yielded to the precepts of the divine law to have been necessary to his work as Saviour, and that the least defect in it would have defeated his benevolent design of saving sinners. But this belief is grounded, not on the necessity of the saved having a finished righteousness as the basis of their justification, but

on the necessity of perfect holiness in the person of the Redeemer. Accordingly they deny that Christ, as the legal representative of his people, obeyed all the precepts of the law For them, that his righteousness, when received by faith, might be imputed to them, and render them righteous before God. They speak indeed of the sufferings of Christ as being a substitute for our sufferings; but at the same time deny that HE was our substitute, standing in our law place, bearing our sins and enduring the penalty due to them. The sufferings of the Saviour were a consequence of sin; but they were not an infliction of the curse of the law; because, say they, the law had no demands on him. The result is, that, according to the new theory, sinners are saved without a righteousness, and without a satisfaction for sin: and the death of Christ is made a mere expedient for SETTING ASIDE both the preceptive and the penal demands of the law upon them. Neither the one nor the other has been complied with by them, or for them, by a surety. In opposition to the righteous demands of a holy law, they appear in heaven in the presence of the great Lawgiver, who has pledged his truth that sin shall not go unpunished, and proclaimed it as part of his name or nature, that he will by no means clear the guilty. Such views are deemed by the old school to be highly unscriptural, and really dangerous in their tendency, and in fact subversive of the TRUE NATURE of the atonement. They are unable to see how the law could be magnified and made honourable, by a transaction and scene of suffering which it did not require, and which in fact were intended to prevent the fulfilment of its just and good demands.

Very different are their views of the relation which the obedience and death of Immanuel bore to the law of God. In them they behold

a complete fulfilment of all its demands on sinners, both preceptive and penal. Taught by an inspired apostle that "God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law," (Gal. iv. 4, 5,) they believe that the law had demands on Christ; and that by his holy life and bitter death he fulfilled them all, as the substitute and legal representative of every true believer. Assured too by the same apostle that "God imputeth RIGHTEOUSNESS without works;" (Rom. iv. 6.) "Even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe:" (Rom. iii. 21, 22,) they hold that the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ even unto death, constitutes that righteousness by which sinners are justified; and that it is imputed for this purpose to every one who believes in Jesus. Thus sinners are saved in a way perfectly consistent with the hohour of the divine law; none of its demands remain sacrificed; all are fully satisfied, not indeed by fallen man, but by his immaculate Redeemer; sin is pardoned, and yet punished. The saved appear in heaven before God in a complete righteousness; not a personal one, not through their "own righteousness, which is of the law;" but in that perfectly finished and glorious righteousness, in which the great apostle desired to be found, even "that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." Phil. iii. 9.

Such a transaction is glorious to the law. By the obedience of Immanuel unto death, its precepts and its penalty have been declared to be just and reasonable and good. More honour has been done to the one than would have been rendered, if all mankind had persevered in sinless obedience; and higher honour put on the other, than if it had been inflicted on our whole

race.

Let it not be objected, that the character of a substitute and representative is unknown to the law. Not so. The principle of representation was connected with it in its first operation on man; for, in the first covenant, Adam was constituted the federal head and representative of all his natural posterity and if the world was ruined under such a dispensation without any reflection on the justice or goodness of the Almighty Creator, how can it be deemed inconsistent with these attributes of his nature, to establish a new and similar dispensation, for its recovery to holiness and happiness? That there is a striking analogy between the way in which we were ruined and the way in which we are recovered, is plainly taught in holy scripture. Having run a parallel between Christ and Adam, whom he styles "the FIGURE of him that was to come," and the corresponding effects of the offence of the latter, and of the righteousness of the former, the apostle adds, " For as by ONE MAN's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of ONE shall many be made righteous." Rom. v. 14-19. And, in 1 Cor. xv. 22, he asserts the same analogy; "for as IN Adam all die, SO IN Christ shall all be made alive" meaning, not as the Universalists teach, that all men will be ultimately saved by Christ, but that all who are in Christ, united to him by faith, and represented by him in his mediatorial work, shall be raised from the dead to the enjoyment of an immortal life of happiness and glory; just as all united to Adam by natural generation, and by the relation established by the original covenant or constitution made with him as their representative, have become subject to death in all its terrible forms.

From this comparison, it is easy to see which of the two theories reflects the highest honour on the divine law. The one maintains its

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

We have recently, in the department of Religious Intelligence, stated both the importance of this institution and its lamentable want of funds. In our last number, we published the acknowledgment, by the corresponding secretary, of one liberal donation. It is our earnest wish that this may be only the precursor of many more of the same character. The Presbyterians in the central, western, and southern parts of our country, are, we believe, not aware how much they are outdone in patronizing this charity, by their brethren in the east and north. The disparity is great, and we wish it may be considered whether it is not reproachful. We know not how the zeal of those who have been remiss in this important concern, is more likely to be awakened, than by the following extracts from an eloquent discourse delivered by the Rev. William Engles, of Philadelphia, in May last, at the instance of the Board of Education; and which has been put into our hands in manuscript. We wish our space would permit us to publish the whole sermon; but we can take no more than two extracts; the first exhibiting the extensive demand for more labourers in the gospel vineyard, and the second, the duty