his own yearning love. It is not only that he will or may bring his other sheep home to the fold he must bring them. He has laid this necessity upon himself in the well-ordered covenant, and the self-imposed necessity is sweet to his soul. "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim ?" The Good Shepherd does not know how to abandon any of his flock. The whole body of the ransomed is in Scripture expressly said to be "the fulness of him that filleth all in all." A part of his own fulness would be wanting, if he should leave any fragment behind.

Shreds from this divine necessity of doing good drop down from the Head, and beautify the life of the members; as rays from the sun glitter on the leaves of the grove or on the pebbles of the beach. These things that "must be"-these inevitable deep necessities-are the most lovely features of the free. Here is a mother with a sick infant on her knee. The infant's eyes are

open, but they see not; they roll at random--lightless, lifeless. The parched lips utter at intervals a faint, uneasy shriek. Thus has the infant lain for several days and nights. The sun has set once more upon the scene, and the city lays itself down to rest. But that mother rests not; although her head is weary, she does not lay it down. Why? Ah! she must sit there, and hold her child in the safest place, and look into those eyes that give her back now no answering look; she must sit and hold the child till she see the end. An overmastering love compels her, and will take no denial. It is a "must" of this kind, but mightier, that binds the Good Shepherd to bring the most distant and most feeble sheep home to the fold. Can a mother forget? She may; but thy Redeemer will not forget thee, O Zion! The high-priest stood in the midst of Jordan till all the people passed over.

W

HY must Jesus die? Could not God forgive our sins, and take us to heaven, without laying our iniquity on his Son? Could he not close the account of our transgressions without carrying the balance anywhere? It would appear not; for there are some things that men can do that God cannot do, and this is one of them; not because law is above God, but because God is to himself law.

The author remembers the pleasure with which in early life he read "Combe's Constitution of Man," and the profound conviction with which the reading was accompanied, that Combe's philosophy might be right, and yet Combe himself be wrong. His argument was intended to prove that there can be no lawless mercy with God; and that if man is to be saved in any case, it must be by some means by which the inexorable demands of law shall be fully met and satisfied: and he justifies God's government by showing that he has different administrations of law, each of which vindicates the inviolability of its own jurisdiction, without suspending or violating the laws of the others. The PHYSICAL laws, he says, are inviolable, and inflict their

"The Gospel of Christ and the Omnipotence of Prayer Consistent with Law." By the Rev. James Gall. James Nisbet and Co., London. --This little book, eminently relevant to the times, is the reprint of a few chapters from the author's larger work, "Primeval Man Unveiled," published anonymously, which was reviewed in this magazine, March 1871.

own penalties as inexorably as if there were no social and no moral administrations above them. They will do execution alike upon the greatest saint and the greatest sinner. The SoCIAL laws, in like manner, are inexorable, and vindicate their own authority; the man who neglects his business, or is surly to his customers, will lose his trade, even though he taught a Sabbathschool, and devoted himself to works of charity and usefulness. The MORAL laws, too, are equally inflexible, so that the immoral man must be miserable, even though he were lodged in a palace, and commanded the resources of an empire. According to Mr. Combe, a man may be prosperous in one administration and ruined in another, smiled upon in one administration and frowned upon in another, beautiful in one administration and deformed in another. What a magnificent idea! how simple is its solution of a thousand difficulties, and how boundless the region which it opens up for exploration!

We feel strongly disposed to concede to Mr. Combe the entire principle which he demands, not only in regard to the co-ordinate jurisdiction of God's different administrations, but even the absolute inviolability of law. Even in regard to the physical laws, we can now (thanks to Mr. Combe) afford to rest our defence of miracles, not on the violability of law, but on the possible action of a higher co-ordinate administration. But waiving at present the question of miracles, we

accept Mr. Combe's principle as applicable especially to the moral administration, whose laws are at least as inexorable as the physical laws, and from that we infer the absolute necessity of an atonement for the salvation of man.

All God's works are according to law; it is his method, and the more we study it, the more do we see its absolute necessity as a covenant between God and creation, without which there could be no independent action among the creatures, far less any responsibility. It is God who makes the gunpowder explode according to law in the assassin's pistol, or who makes the poison operate according to law in the body of his victim: and if he did not do so-if, in every case, he introduced his own moral perceptions and sovereign will, so as to determine whether or not he would modify or suspend the law of his own administration-the act would be the act no longer of the creature, but of God. Belief in law is an instinct of our nature, but it is stronger in some men than in others. In some it is so weak that they seek an explanation of all extraordinary phenomena in the sovereign will of the Deity; in others it is so strong as to assert its absolute inviolability, which no evidence could contradict. They are quite prepared to admit the goodness, mercy, and justice of God; but they feel that these must act, not in violation of, but according to, law. Such a mind was Hume's; and there can be little doubt that, in his celebrated argument against miracles, he drew his inspiration from a deep-seated and intuitive conviction of the inviolability of law; and that when he elaborated it into a logical shape, it must have been to his own mind the least satisfactory form into which he could put it. His convictions rested on the assurance of what is the deepest of all intuitions, which even he could not destroy, "Let God be true, and every man a liar;" but he preferred to that a halting logic, which had to go begging for its major proposition, because he had to remember that he at least professed to be an atheist.

Why then did Christ die? We answer, because God's moral government is even more sacred and unbending than his physical; and if in the physical administration we expect no lawless mercy with God, in his moral government it is still more impossible. So long as divine justice follows with inexorable punishment every violation of the moral law, and so long as that punishment is adjusted with infinite accuracy, according to the nature and amount of the transgression, God's justice is vindicated notwithstanding the existence of any amount of sin. The one being exactly the equivalent of the other, nothing remains on the hands of God to defile the spotless purity of his administration.

Supposing, then, that God were to pardon sin, allowing the demands of love to neutralize the demands of justice, how is the equilibrium to be restored? Here is the sin, where is its equivalent? The balance must be carried somewhere; and if there be no equivalent of punishment, no place where the outstanding balance

may be carried, it must inevitably remain on the hands of God.

We are apt to misunderstand the obligations of a judge, by considering the duties of those who are not judges. In the ordinary dealings of men, they never fail to make the distinction. If a man be not a judge he may forgive as much as he chooses, because he is not responsible for the administration of justice; but if he be a judge, what he has to do is to administer law; and if in any case he, as a judge, does not award the penalty which the law requires, to that amount he himself is guilty. The unavenged crime for which the criminal is set free remains in the hands of the judge quite as much as if he punished an innocent man for a crime of which he was not guilty. In so far as we are not judges, it is well for us to have mercy, because God has not delegated to us the avenging of crime. Our brother who injured us did not offend our justice, but God's, and therefore he says, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." God, and God only, is judge, and for that reason he is the more pledged to the punishment; the administration of justice being his special and official function. Passing into the hands of God, as judge, it will meet with the same infinitely accurate amount of penalty that distinguishes his physical administration. This is a duty for which man is utterly incompetent.

How, then, can man be saved? Man has sinned, and God, being judge, must not only punish the sinner, but must award the punishment with infinite exactitude, according to the infinite perfection of his justice. If man is to be saved, it must be according to law, and by means which are consistent with the most perfect justice. Such is the declaration of Scripture, and it finds an echo in the natural conscience, as that which alone would be suited to the character of God. We feel, no doubt, that mercy is more lovely than justice; but we also feel that it is not so absolutely indispensable; and unless it can be exercised in consistence with justice, its exercise would cease to be a virtue, and would partake very much of the character of a crime. Unless God can be just at the same time that he justifies the ungodly, man's salvation would be altogether impossible.

The Scripture represents the atoning death of Christ as a solution of the difficulty, and as the means by which justice is satisfied, and the sinner saved. The general principle upon which this scheme of redemption is based is perfectly intelligible, and when applied to mercantile transactions is perfectly satisfactory. But there is a difference between mercantile justice and criminal justice, which does suggest a difficulty, and raises the question whether this atonement be really a satisfaction of justice, or whether it be not opposed to that instinetive sense of right and wrong with which God has endowed our natural conscience, and which we must suppose to be in harmony with his own character. If one man owes a certain sum of money, and another man pays it for him, justice is satisfie 1, and the detor is entitled to receive a discharge in full. But crime cannot

be dealt with in this manner, for reasons which are too obvious to require an argument. It would be no satisfaction to justice if an innocent man were to be put to death in order to enable the judge to set a murderer free; and therefore the theory of mere SUBSTITUTION is not enough to explain the efficacy of the atonement, on the supposition that it is according to law.

Some theologians have attempted to meet this difficulty by saying that, although such a transaction would be a violation of justice on the part of man, it is not so on the part of God, because he is a Sovereign as well as a Judge. But this does not meet the case, because it confounds the functions of the judge with those of the sovereign. If the sovereign could do justice in saving a criminal by putting an innocent man to death, he could do justice quite as well, if not better, by pardoning the criminal without inflicting death upon a substitute.

But the Scriptures do not represent the efficacy of the atonement as a mere substitution, although in our theological systems the idea of substitution is generally placed in the foreground. In Scripture the grand idea presented is not so much substitution as union; and for every passage in which substitution is presented as the theory of salvation, there are ten which represent it under the idea of a union. In fact, without union there could be no substitution according to law.

There is a story told of a lady who was given up by her physicians; and when the fond husband asked them if there were really nothing that could by possibility save her life, they replied that she was dying for want of blood, but, if that could be supplied, it was possible that she might live. The husband in a moment bared his arm, and bade them take from his veins whatever quantity was necessary for the purpose. We are told that the communication was forn.ed, the blood was transfused from the strong body of the husband, and made to flow gently into the veins of his wife. The consequence was that she revived and lived. Here there was no miracle -no violation of the physical laws. The lady should have died but for the transfusion, and, in that case, the laws of nature would have been satisfied; but these laws were equally satisfied when the blood flowed into her body, and she revived.

In this incident we have an illustration of the mode of salvation by Christ, in which the law is satisfied, and the sinner saved. There is indeed in the atonement a substitution, because in reality the just suffers for the unjust, and the innocent Jesus becomes the substitute of the guilty sinner. But there must be more than substitution; there must also be union, for without union there could be no substitution according to law. In the case of the lady, union without substitution would have been useless, because the mere forming of the communication without the transfusion of the blood would not have been enough: the husband must be weakened that the wife might be strengthened, and the blood which was gained by the one must be lost by the other. But, on the other hand, substitution without union would have

been equally impossible, because the death of the husband would have been as contrary to law as the recovery of the wife, unless the transfusion had taken place by means of the union.

It is thus in all God's administrations: there can be no salvation without substitution, and there can be no substitution without union. A life-buoy will not sustain a shipwrecked sailor unless he be united to it; but if the union has been formed they become as one, and the life-buoy will sink exactly to the same extent that the sailor is lifted up. The life-buoy becomes the substitute of the sailor; but the substitution cannot take place according to law unless there be union. The floating of the sailor, unless he had been attached to the lifebuoy, would have been a violation of the laws of nature, and the sinking of the life-buoy, without the sailor being united to it, instead of being a satisfaction to the law, would have been a double impossibility.

The objection which has been raised to the doctrine of the atonement, as opposed to our instinctive sense of justice, is founded on a misapprehension of its nature; and the moment that we introduce the idea of union the objection ceases to have force. In so far as there is no union there can be no substitution according to law, or consistent with justice; and if the Scripture had represented the atonement as a substitution without union, it might not have been very easy to reply to the objection. But Scripture does not represent the gospel as a substitution without union: there is union; and unless it can be shown that the union is not such as to satisfy law-that is to say, unless it can be shown that it is not a real and personal, but only a theoretical and ideal union-the objection cannot be held to have any force. Now, the Scripture asserts that the union between the Saviour and the saved is not only a real and personal union, but a union so complete that it is described as being not so much a union as a unity. The unity which exists between Christ and his people is spoken of in the most absolute terms. He is the vine, they are the branches; he is the head they are the members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones ;† they are one with him, he being in them, and they in him. Such references might be multiplied to any extent, because the Scripture is full of them, both in type and doctrine.

So far from this union being merely metaphorical and fictitious, it is as real and as personal as that which subsists between the spirit and the body of the man himself. The Spirit of Christ actually enters into and dwells in the body of the man at and after his conversion, changing his character and influencing his motives, so that he becomes a temple of the Holy Ghost. "What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?" (1 Cor. vi. 19.) "Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his"

* John xv. 5. 1 Cor. vi. 15; xii. 27. Eph. v. 30. John xv. 4. 1 Cor. vi. 17.

(Rom. viii. 9). Of course this is a mystery, but it is a mystery well known to every one who has undergone the change, although it may be perfectly unintelligible to others. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. ii. 14).

If this, then, be the nature of the atonement, and if this union be real and personal, and not merely legal or metaphorical, the death of Christ must necessarily be a complete satisfaction to justice, not in theory only, but in fact. When the head was crucified, the members must be reckoned as having died; when the head rose from the dead, the members could no longer be held as prisoners; and when Christ ascended to heaven, every member of his body was entitled to regard it as his home. If the head be in heaven, the members may for a time be on earth; but they cannot remain there, far less can they ever be in hell.

Taking for granted, then, that the Scripture representation is true-and it would be foolish to make Scripture responsible for a theory which it does not assertthe death and resurrection of Christ render the salvation of his people not a possibility only, but a necessity according to law. Either the connection must be severed, or Christ's people must be admitted to heaven: if he be the head and they be the members, where he is there must they be also.

When Noah went into the ark, no miracle was needed for his salvation. He and the ark were dealt with as a unity, because it bore his weight, and he was lifted up by its buoyancy; it was subjected to the storm without, he was sheltered in its chambers within. The effect might be said to be substitution, but the cause was union. If that union had not existed-that is to say, if he had not been in the ark, and if he had floated and the ark had sunk, such a result, instead of being a satisfaction to law, would have been a double miracle. In like manner, if there were no union between Christ and his people, his death and their salvation, instead of being a satisfaction to justice, would be a double outrage.

If it be objected that there is not, and cannot be, such a real and personal union between Christ and his people as to constitute identity, and thus satisfy law, we are entitled to reply, "Vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass's colt." The former objection was competent, because God has given us a conscience, and he appeals to that conscience for a vindication of the justice of his administration. We have, therefore, every reason to expect that the justice which he administers should not be inconsistent with that instinctive sense of justice which he transcribed from his own moral nature upon ours. But when we step beyond that province, and enter on the region of facts and possibilities, presuming to determine what can and what cannot be, we have clearly gone beyond our depth, and have no ground to stand upon.

Even the first objection was a perilous one, because it

questioned the truth of what God affirmed; and although the argument itself might be correct in principle, the conclusion happened to be wrong; and if any man ventures to reject the gospel on the ground that substitution does not satisfy his ethical sensibilities, his soul will not the less be lost because he had not rightly understood the theory upon which the gospel is founded. He has no right to expect that God will work a miracle to save him from the consequences of his mistake. When he sends a gracious message of mercy to mankind. all that we have to do is to believe and obey; if we reject his overtures, we do so on our own responsibility.

But to come to this question of possibilities, we ask, How can we know what is possible and what is impossible in a matter so deep as the mystery of Christ's person, and so unknown as the constitution of our own being? There are elements introduced in connection with the union between Christ and his people which we do not and cannot understand, and whose bearings we can know only in so far as they are revealed. The person of Christ is an unsearchable deep, but there are facts regarding it which we do know, and which are sufficient to cover all the difficulties. We know that by means of his humanity it became possible for him to suffer and to die; and we also know that, because of his divinity his person was possessed of an existence which is superior to time, so that he could truly say, "Before Abraham was, I AM." It would be presumptuous for us to speculate on the influence which this eternity of being had upon the relations which he sustained to those who are saved, or attempt to explain how it is that the efficacy of the blood shed on Calvary reached backwards to Abel and all the Old Testament saints, and forward to the latest convert who shall lay his burden on the great Burden-bearer. If Christ had been a mere man, this, of course, would have been impossible; but because he is God as well as man, the argument enters a region where we cannot follow it, and faith is content to receive simply that which is revealed. There is, in some way or another, such a union between the Saviour and the saved as is sufficient to account for the sufferings of Christ on the one hand, and for the justification of the sinner on the other.

Perhaps this may suggest to those who may be trusting to the general mercy of God, that mercy to any one not united to Christ is an utter impossibility. Out of Christ there is no mercy, and can be no mercy, else Christ died in vain. There would have been no necessity whatever for an atonement in such a case, because if God could be merciful to any one out of Christ, he might have been merciful to all. Those, therefore, who are trusting to the general mercy of God, and are conscious that they are not united to Christ, must be labouring under a very dangerous mistake. There can be no lawless mercy with God, and this would be a violation of law which we have no right to expect. Both Mr. Combe and Mr. Hume tell us that it is impossible-so impossible, that it is actually incapable of proof; and even though an angel from heaven were to tell us that God forgave the sinner

without punishing his sin, we must not believe him. Our sins, in order to be forgiven, must be conveyed somewhere; the only place to which they can be conveyed is the person of Christ, and the only means of conveyance is union. If they are not so disposed of, and yet remain unpunished, they would stain the justice and the throne of God, which is impossible.

Here, too, we have an explanation of that which otherwise would be inexplicable-the line drawn between the saved and the unsaved. An eternal heaven and an eternal bell, with no intermediate state between them, are tremendous contrasts. But in a world containing such an infinite variety of moral character, shaded off by an almost infinite variety of degrees, it would be impossible to draw a well-marked line of demarcation between the righteous and the wicked. Commencing with the very best and most exemplary of the human race, we go down, by the most delicate gradations, to the very lowest and most degraded of our species. But who will undertake to say how good a man must be before he can be sure that he will be received into heaven, or how wicked a man must be before he is certain to be cast into hell? Where is it possible to draw the line? There is no conceivable point where, if the line were drawn, justice would not be outraged. The difference between the worst of those who should be saved, and the best of those who should be lost, would be so slight, and the distinction so delicate, that no human mind could appreciate it. It cannot be that the infinite justice of God, which, in his physical administration, is so perfect, and measures out its penalties to the very millionth part of a grain, can be so grossly rough and inconsiderate in the higher and nobler sphere. The supposition is so monstrous, that it would be a libel, not upon God only, but upon the most incompetent judge that ever sat upon the bench, to suppose that he could measure out justice after such a fashion.

But this is not the Bible doctrine of salvation, and therefore it cannot be responsible for the absurdity. The line which it draws between the saved and the unsaved is a reasonable and intelligible line, approved not only by every principle of philosophy, but by common sense. The line which it draws is as grand and as broad as that which separates life from death, between which there is a gulf as deep as that which separates between heaven and hell. According to the Bible, a man is saved, not because he is better than others, but because he is IN Christ, and because Christ is IN him; and a man is lost, not because he is worse than others, but because he is not IN Christ, and because Christ does not dwell IN him. Man, being a sinner, must die, not by the sentence of a judge only, but by the operation of a law; and when he dies he descends into hell, because there is no other place to which he can go, unless some one interfere to save him. Every sin that a man commits is a moral poison that further corrupts his moral nature, and ensures his death; upon the same principle that the physical laws inexorably

inflict their own penalty, without regard to moral character. Why is cancer incurable, and why does the person who is poisoned die? Simply because it is a law. And so do the moral laws ensure that "the soul that sinneth, it shall die," and all that is needed to ensure that soul's destruction is that it should be LET ALONE. Whatever men may think of the severity or the unmercifulness of this moral administration, no one can say that it is not awfully intelligible, and dreadfully consistent.

But why should it be called unmerciful? We do not speak of the physical laws so. The child of a profligate man inherits a body full of weakness and suffering. Does God work a miracle to save him? Ask Mr. Combe. He does not; and yet we do not say that God's physical administration is unmerciful, because the law inexorably inflicts its own punishment. It is true that in the higher administrations we should expect a more loving regimen than in the lower and less important; but no man can complain that, in introducing this element of mercy, there should be the same infinity of justice, and the same inviolability of law. The plan and mode of salvation revealed in the Bible may contain many unknown and mysterious elements, but this one grand feature which it presents of its having been framed in the interests of holiness, and recognizing the inviolability of law, commends it to the veneration of mankind. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." That God coULD give up his Son to suffering and shame for the sake of his ruined creatures, but cOULD NOT, by any means, pardon them by a violation of law, does not convey to us the idea of a remorseless tyrant, or an insensate God, but rather that of a Being who commands at once our highest admiration and adoring love.

According to the Bible, then, it is easy to understand why a man is lost; it is because he is not IN CHRIST, and all that is necessary to ensure his ruin is that he should be LET ALONE. Like a man who is wrecked, and floating on a plank in the wide ocean, he perishes simply because he is not rescued from his danger, and because no lifeboat comes that way to save him. No one would accuse God of injustice, in allowing the physical laws to take their course, supposing the shipwrecked mariner to be allowed to perish; but in this higher administration God did provide a lifeboat in his Son, for perishing sinners, and bade the mariners go out to every creature, and entreat them to come in. Eighteen hundred years have passed, and these unfaithful and unmerciful mariners, although they had the lifeboat in their hands, have not gone out to save the lost; and the consequence is that, whereas ALL might have had the gospel offered to them, if the mariners had done their duty, thousands have never heard the joyful sound. But what shall we say of those to whom the gospel has been preached, and the offer made, but who, because they did not believe, would not accept it, and are LET ALONE? They may, indeed, be virtuous, and moral, and benevolent; but because they