and yet justify believers in thee, be pleased to accept our thanks for thy wondrous grace, and to pardon the errors and imperfections of this attempt to set forth in human language the nature of thy sacrificial work.

CHAPTER II.

THE ATONEMENT AS RELATED TO MAN.

I. ITS MORAL INFLUENCE.

T has been shown already that the Atonement was pre-requisite, in the order of nature, to the bestowal of renewing and forgiving grace. The gift of the Holy Spirit, by whose special action the prophets and apostles were qualified for their work, and by whose customary action the hearts of men are renewed and sanctified, was consequent in reason, if not in time, upon the death of Christ. And the same is probably true of every blessing enjoyed by men in the present life. It is by virtue of his vicarious death that we are "prisoners of hope," looking upon our salvation as possible.

But the Atonement has another and more direct relation to men, of which we are now to speak. As an exhibition of the divine character, it tends to beget sorrow for sin and trust in Christ. As a revelation of the heart of God, it moves with persuasive and subduing power upon the hearts of men. As a practical demonstration of Jehovah's

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love, paying homage to his righteousness, and yet reaching out its hand to recover the lost, it makes the strongest imaginable appeal to our religious nature. And this is the "moral influence" of the Atonement, its manward efficacy, recognized by all who think the suffering of Christ of any value, and no less heartily by those who admit its Godward efficacy than by those who deny it. For plainly a love which meets the claims of divine justice, as well as the needs of sinful humanity, cannot be less sacred and powerful, as a motive, than a love which has nothing to do with the former while accomplishing the latter. If there was need of the Atonement in order that God might be just and yet justify believers in Christ, this circumstance does not diminish, but rather increases, the power of Christ's death as a motive to repentance and faith. For instance, no one will venture to pronounce the great passage in John, "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,"1 to be a whit less effective in leading men to the exercise of faith, than it would have been if it had represented Christ as given by the Father for the purpose of leading men to believe, instead of representing him as being given for the purpose of securing eternal life to those who believe. Nay, we cannot help feeling

1 John iii. 16.

that the latter is a far more solemn and impressive truth than the former, giving to men a much deeper view of the awful nature of sin and the boundless love of God, and exciting in them a much stronger desire to escape from evil and find peace in Christ. For whatever emphasizes the holiness and justice of God, his sense of what is due to the sinner as a fit penalty for his sins, emphasizes at the same time his love in providing a way of escape from that penalty. The greater the obstacle to be removed, the greater must be the power which removes it. The more sacred and inviolable the law of God, including its penalty, the more affecting must be the mercy of God which leads him to save the transgressor. And, if we are not mistaken, an impartial history of the Christian religion would show, beyond question, that the doctrine of a vicarious Atonement, ratifying the claims of justice, has been more effectual than any other view of the Saviour's death in convincing men of sin and leading them to him, in impressing upon their hearts both the righteousness and the love of God. And just this twofold effect is what the moral power of the Atonement ought, assuredly, to work; for this is the state of heart which the Word of God requires the sinner to have. Nay, it is a state of heart which human reason, with all its darkness, affirms that every sinner ought to have; for it is

simply a proper response of the moral feelings to the deepest realities, to the moral nature of God and the moral state of man.

And we need not look beyond the New Testament for evidence of the power of the Atonement to move the religious nature of man. For the contrast between the effect of preaching before and after the death of Christ goes far to establish this fact. When, from his exaltation at the right hand of power, Christ sent the Holy Spirit at the Pentecost upon his disciples, they began for the first time to preach the gospel with marked success ; and this success, though due in part to a wonderful outpouring of the Spirit, was certainly due in a great measure to the saving truth which was now preached with unprecedented clearness. Christ was lifted up before men, and never had the law of God appeared to them so holy, or sin so culpable, as in the light streaming from his cross. Their hearts were pierced with a sense of guilt, and they cried aloud for mercy. The words of Bernard in his Bampton Lectures are exactly in point: "Men have sometimes expressed their wonder at this difference in the effect of the Lord's own preaching and of that of his disciples; and they have been fain to ascribe it to the outpouring of the Spirit, which wrought a sudden change in the hearts of the hearers. But we have no encour