Atonement Saveth.

THE truth expressed by these words is the great key-stone of our hopes for time, and for eternity. Atonement brings to all those who are under it (not salvability merely but) SALVATION. All who are of the family of faith are under it. What then do we mean by Atonement ?

ATONEMENT or APPEASEMENT is a priestly work of the Lord Jesus directed towards God, whereby by one oblation finished on the Cross, He has satisfied for ever* the claims of the Divine Government, and procured for all His believing people, not only pardon, but acceptance, and rewardableness according to the value of His own meritorious obedience, which has been presented to God, and accepted by God for them.

The claims of God's holy government in relation. to man were made known at Sinai. Thence He promulgated His Law-a Law whose claims cannot be remitted or lowered, because they are founded on His own essential and unchanging holiness. The great mandatory commandment of the Lord is, Thou shalt love God perfectly, and manifest that * ELS TO SInvekes—in perpetuity.

B

love in thought, and in action, perfectly and always.

The great prohibitory commandment is, "Thou Ishalt not desire," (OUK Eπiovμnσeis, See Rom. vii. 7)—that is, thou shalt not desire anything evil— anything that is forbidden by God.

The Law pronounced blessing and eternal life on any who should keep it; but it pronounced curse and eternal judgment on all who should violate it even once, if only in thought. "Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the Law to do them." (Gal. iii. 10.) From Mount Gerizim was pronounced the blessing: from Mount Ebal the curse.

The Law cannot remit or lower its claims; for its claims are founded on the essential and unchanging holiness of God. And the Law, having been promulgated, must be fulfilled. "Verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law till all be fulfilled."

I. The absence of all wilful transgression.

II. The absence of sins of ignorance.

III. Perfectness in the inner man.

IV. Perfectness in developed character.

V. Unreserved and unremitting devotedness to God.

But we naturally have none of these things. In

stead of being without wilful transgressions, and without sins of ignorance, in both we abound.

Instead of perfectness in the inner man, unfathomable depths of corruption are there.

Instead of perfectness of character, the things that ought to be absent are present, and the things that ought to be present are absent.

Instead of being unreservedly devoted to God, we are unreservedly devoted to ourselves.

Such is our condition. And all this moral leprosy has come upon us as a consequence of the Fall. It is the result of Adam's first sin, for with him we had, by God's appointment, a legal oneness. He sinned, and his transgression brought upon him, and upon us, "judgment unto condemnation "

-one of the first and chief results of that judgment being, the presence and dominance in us of Indwelling Sin, whereby all power of doing good is supplanted by the abiding presence of energetic evil. Who can tell the thrill of anguish and horror unutterable that must come on the soul when, in eternity, it too late discerns the truth of these things?

We are thus shut up into utter hopelessness. We find ourselves heirs of wrath, strong for evil, powerless for good. "The Law worketh wrath." "If there could have been a law which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the Law, but the Scripture hath concluded all under sin." The Law can stir up the work