^€^^^ -^^ ---^^^ 
 
 GOD'S REVELATION AND MAN'S MORAL SENSE 
 
 CONSIDERED IN REFERENCE TO THE 
 
 SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS. 
 
 A SERMON, 
 
 PREACHED BEFOKE 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFOIID, 
 
 FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT, MARCH 9, 1856. 
 
 REV. FREDERICK MEYRICK, M.A., 
 
 FELLOW OF TKINITT COLLEGE, AND OKE OF TUE SELECT PHEACHEE8 BEFORE 
 THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE VICE-CHANCELLOR. 
 
 OXFOKD, 
 
 AND 377, STRAND, LONDON: 
 
 JOHN HENKT and JAI^IES PAEKER. 
 
 M DCCC LTI.
 
 A SEEMON, 
 
 Heb. ix. 11, 12. 
 
 " But Christ being come an High Priest of good things to come, 
 by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with 
 bands, that is to say, not of this building ; neither by the 
 blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered 
 in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemp- 
 tion for us." 
 
 Each book of the New Testament implies the 
 whole of the Christian scheme ; yet each teaches 
 its own lesson. One is the doctrine throughout ; 
 yet, as that unity of doctrine contains within itself 
 variety, so each portion of Holy Writ more empha- 
 tically lays down and enforces one particular por- 
 tion of the truth. Thus the Epistles to the Gala- 
 tians and to the Ephesians, to take no other exam- 
 ple, entirely coincident as they are in their teach- 
 ing, yet dwell more specially each on different 
 points of the faith ; and so the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, from which my text is taken, will be 
 found to contain a special lesson of its own. That 
 lesson is the connexion between the dispensations 
 of the Old and New Testaments, and more espe- 
 
 A 2
 
 cially the position held by our Lord Jesus Christ 
 in relation to the figures and types of the Jewish 
 covenant. Thus it is pointed out that He was 
 the great Prophet and Lawgiver typified by Moses, 
 the great High Priest typified by Melchisedec and 
 Aaron, the great Captain of Salvation typified by 
 Joshua ; but most of all He is depicted to us as the 
 great antitype, who was dimly foreshadowed by the 
 Mosaic sacrifices, the one great predestined Victim 
 to be offered by Himself, the true High Priest, the 
 Sin-offering for the world, the Expiation for all 
 mankind. 
 
 Thus Bishop Butler writes: — "The doctrine of 
 the Epistle plainly is, that the legal sacrifices were 
 allusions to the great and final atonement to be 
 made by the blood of Christ, and not that this was 
 an allusion to those\" 
 
 Indeed, the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is 
 the key, and the only key, by which we can under- 
 stand the meaning of the system of Jewish sacri- 
 fices, and the prevalent practice of propitiatory 
 rites among the heathen. Without this key all 
 is perplexity and confusion ; with it, all is clear 
 and comprehensible. Everywhere, throughout the 
 world, we meet with the belief that two things are 
 necessary for man, by which to approach his 
 Maker : the one is Prayer, and the other Pro- 
 pitiation ; and the means by which this propitia- 
 tion is to be effected is as universally held to be 
 
 * Anal., part ii. c. 5. 
 
 O
 
 Sacrifice. Thus much is an acknowledged fact,— 
 acknowledged by all whose dogmatic bias is not 
 so strong as to prevent them from accepting the 
 plainest evidence of history. How are we to ac- 
 count for the fact ? Among the Jews, we know 
 that propitiatory sacrifices were established directly 
 by Divine appointment ; and further, we know, if 
 we believe the words of Holy Writ, that such sa- 
 crifices were only efficacious, so far as they were 
 efficacious, because they were the signs and types 
 of the Sacrifice of the Cross. The origin of sa- 
 crifices in the heathen world is more uncertain. 
 The more common opinion is, that they too were 
 of Divine original appointment, and that they were 
 propagated throughout the world together with the 
 growth of mankind, as commanded at first by 
 God. Thus Jones of Nayland writes : — " It was 
 never thought, from the days of Cain and Abel, 
 that there could be such a thing as piety to God 
 without sacrifice. And the same holds good to 
 this day. He that does not offer to God some 
 sacrifice is not pious, but impious ; his prayers 
 are an abomination. But how could such a per- 
 suasion enter into the heart of man, otherwise 
 than by revelation from God ? No man could 
 think that the shedding of innocent blood would 
 take away sin, unless he had been originally told 
 so on unexceptionable authority ; so that the very 
 existence of such a thing in the world is sufficient 
 to prove that it came from revelation ; and divines
 
 think, with good reason, that it came in with the 
 first promise in Paradise : — * The seed of the woman 
 shall bruise the serpent's head''.'" And Bishop 
 Butler : — " Sacrifices of expiation were commanded 
 of the Jews, and obtained amongst most other 
 nations from tradition, whose original, probably, 
 was revelation ^" 
 
 If, then, the sacrifices of the heathen were ap- 
 pointed originally by God, we know at once their 
 purpose. They were intended, like the Jewish 
 sacrifices, symbolically to represent the efficacious 
 Sacrifice of the Cross ; but let us suppose, as 
 others have thought, that we have not sufficient 
 grounds for believing in the Divine original ap- 
 pointment of heathen sacrifices ; still their exist- 
 ence would imply a universal sense of the need of 
 expiation by sacrifice ; a craving of the great heart 
 of mankind, which would indeed speak the voice of 
 God, for the maxim is a sound one, o ir aa l Sokei, 
 TOUT eluai (pajxev. And thus they would in 
 truth support the doctrine of the Cross in a some- 
 what diflTerent way, indeed, yet as strongly as 
 though they had, like the Jewish rites, been insti- 
 tuted directly to shew forth His death until He 
 earned 
 
 ^ Religious Worship of the Heathens, vol. vi. p. 196. 1826. 
 
 = Anal. ii. 5. 
 
 <i Professor Jowett, (Cons men tary, vol. ii. p. 478,) holds that 
 the Jewish and the heathen sacrifices must stand or fall toge- 
 ther ; both of them, or neither of them, must, in his opinion,
 
 Now let us suppose a man unacquainted with 
 the Christian scheme of salvation, as contemplating 
 this universal fact of expiatory sacrifice. Surely he 
 would be much perplexed by it. He would mark 
 " the smoke of the offerings going up," and " the 
 carcases of dead animals strewing the courts of 
 the temples. It would be a sight scarcely tolerable" 
 to him^ He would say that there was no relation, 
 so far as he could see, between " the death of 
 a sheep and the pardon of sin^" He would count 
 the idea of propitiation strange, and the notion 
 of efficacy in the vicarious suffering of a creature 
 
 have owed their origin to Divine appointment, and have had a 
 typical meaning. It is not at all necessary to hold this " con- 
 nexion between the heathen and Jewish custom of sacrifices ;" 
 but is not any one who does hold it, and who likewise professes 
 a belief in the Old and New Testaments as a Divine revelation, 
 bound to regard both as of Divine appointment ? But Mr. Jowett 
 does not so regard them : on the contrary, he ties the heathen 
 and Jewish sacrifices together, for the purpose, as it would seem, 
 of overthrowing the authority of the latter by the fact of the 
 former. The Jewish sacrifices, he argues, cannot be held to 
 have any other origin, or meaning, than the heathen sacrifices. 
 The heathen sacrifices he then explains to have been performed 
 with the following intent: — 1. That the gods might feast 
 as men. 2. Something magical, and to us unintelligible. 
 3. To express vague awe. 4. To abolish ceremonial pollution. 
 Is it not beyond measure strange to see the idea of providing 
 food to the Lord God of Hosts, the Lord Jehovah, thus attributed 
 to the Jewish sacrifices by means of the middle term of heathen 
 sacrifices, as would seem to follow from Mr. Jowett's argu- 
 ment ? That the thing really signified by heathen sacrifices 
 was " propitiatory atonement," is shewn by Abp. Magee in 
 answer to Dr. Priestley, vol. i. pp. 83 and 166. 
 * Jowett, vol. ii. p. 477. ^ Jones of Nayland, vol. iii. p. 227.
 
 absurd. Then let him be tauarht the doctrine of 
 
 O' 
 
 the Fall of ]\[an. Let him learn that once God 
 and man walked together in the garden of the 
 world as friends ; but that man had, in the abuse 
 of his free-will, chosen evil instead of good ; that 
 thenceforth his nature was corrupted by sin ; that 
 he had severed himself from his Maker ; that God's 
 face was turned away from him, and that however 
 merciful his heavenly Father was, still that all that 
 sinful man could deserve, and therefore receive, 
 from Him who was the God of Justice, was punish- 
 ment; and that there was no power left in man 
 to draw himself out of this unhappy state. Let 
 him be taught this, and let him feel in himself 
 the working of original sin, and then he would 
 acknowledge that there was indeed need for pro- 
 pitiation ; that prayer was not in itself sufficient ; 
 and he would search here and there for means 
 of drawing nigh to God. 
 
 But still he would be perplexed. Why should this 
 propitiation be in the form of a sacrifice ? How, he 
 would ask, can the blood of bulls and goats cleanse 
 away my sin, and make me capable of acceptance 
 in God's sight? True, I understand and feel that 
 some expiation is required ; but why should not an 
 offering of the fruits of the ground, or any act of 
 self-denial on my part, be as efficacious as the 
 blood-shedding of an animal ? 
 
 At this point declare to him the wondrous fact, 
 that the Son of God condescended to come down
 
 9 
 
 from heaven and to die upon the Cross ; open 
 to hnn the doctrine of the One Great Sacrifice ; 
 tell him, in the words of Scripture, that Christ is 
 " the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of 
 the worlds ;" that " God set Him forth to be a pro- 
 pitiation through faith in His blood'';" that "we 
 are reconciled to God by the death of His Son' ;" 
 that "He redeemed us from the curse of the Law, 
 being made a curse for usJ ;" that " God was in 
 Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imput- 
 ing their trespasses unto them"" ;" that Christ " re- 
 conciled both Jews and Gentiles unto God in one 
 body by the Cross ^ ;" " that He is the propitiation 
 for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins 
 of the whole world "" ;" that it was not really " the 
 blood of bulls and of goats" which "took away 
 sin," but " the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ 
 once for all";" that "Christ was once offered 
 to bear the sins of many"." Would there not be 
 a flood of light thrown back upon his difficulties ; 
 would he not confess that this did indeed make 
 clear what was before perplexing to him ; that he 
 had now been supplied with an explanation which 
 
 K John i. 29. 
 
 ^ Rom. iii. 25. — Professor Jowett translates ^ili nla-Teos eV 
 
 Tw avTov aifxaTi, "through faith, by Mis blood;" remarking, as 
 
 his reason, that no such expression as faith in the blood, or even 
 
 in the death of Christ, occurs in Scriptm*e. — Vol. ii. p. 121. 
 
 ' Rom. V. 10. J 1 Ret. i. 19. "^2 Cor. v. 19. 
 
 ' Eph. ii. 16. '" 1 John ii. 2. 
 
 n Heb. X. 10. ° Ileb. ix. 28.
 
 10 
 
 would, and which would alone, account for the 
 phenomena which he had been studying? 
 
 It is a sore thing, which good men feel very 
 deeply, that it is necessary from time to time to 
 recur to, and to argue for, such a prime truth as 
 the Expiatory Sacrifice of Christ, — the foundation- 
 stone, without which the edifice of Christianity 
 must fall headlong to the ground. St. Paul bids us 
 not linger in such "principles of the doctrine of 
 Christ," as "repentance from dead works and faith 
 toward God, the doctrine of baptisms and of laying 
 on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead and of 
 eternal judgment ;" which he calls " laying the foun- 
 dations again," instead of "going on unto perfec- 
 tion^." How much less, then, in that which is the 
 foundation of these foundations, without which each 
 one of them would be unintelligible and meaning- 
 less. Yet such necessity is sometimes laid upon us, 
 and it is not without its advantages. Assured as we 
 are of the soundness of our foundation-stones, we 
 cannot fear from time to time to handle them, and 
 try them, and exhibit their strength ; giieving only 
 that they should serve to any as stumbling-stones 
 and rocks of offence. In some such way as this 
 God frequently brings good out of evil. It was the 
 assaults of the Deists which called into existence 
 the invincible corps of Christian apologists, — the 
 Butlers, Berkeleys, Leslies, Paleys, and other writers, 
 who proved incontestably the reasonableness of ac- 
 
 P Heb. vi. 1.
 
 11 
 
 cepting Christianity, though itself above reason. It 
 was the assaults of Priestley and the Socinian school 
 which brought out Archbishop Magee's unanswera- 
 ble work on the Atonement and Sacrifice of Christ. 
 And so we may each of us learn to realize our Lord 
 Jesus Christ more truly and ^dvidly as our loving 
 Saviour, when we have been led, by whatever cir- 
 cumstances, to the nearer contemplation of Him as 
 the Great Sin-ofFering, who hath borne our griefs 
 and carried our sorrows, who was wounded for our 
 transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities ; on 
 whom the chastisement of our peace was laid, and 
 by whose stripes we are healed. 
 
 It is especially the Cross — that is, the doctrine of 
 the Sacrifice — which has ever been foolishness to the 
 perplexed intellect of the world. Men will accept 
 Christ in part of His character as Mediator. They 
 will listen readily while they hear of Him as the 
 reveal er of God's will, as publishing afresh the law 
 of nature, as enforcing pure morality by precept and 
 example. They will accept Him, too, as the King, 
 as well as the Prophet. Nay, they are not unwilling 
 to acknowledge Him in part of His Priestly cha- 
 racter likewise. He may be the great Intercessor — 
 but when the Law, the Prophets, the Evangelists, 
 and the Apostles, with unfaltering voice and con- 
 sentient testimony, represent Him as oflbring Him- 
 self a Propitiatory Sacrifice, and so making Atone- 
 ment for the sins of the world,— this is foolishness 
 to the world ; it babbles about its reason or its moral
 
 12 
 
 sense, and explains away the doctrine (as anything 
 and everything else might be explained away) as a 
 mode of Jewish thought or expression. 
 
 I would desire this afternoon, though well con- 
 scious of the awfulness of the subject, and the 
 danger of handling it unworthily, to examine the 
 plea put forward in the name of the Moral Sense. 
 It is said that the doctrine of the Sacrifice is con- 
 tradictory to the attributes of God ; for that, first, 
 it is not in accordance with His Infinite Mercy to 
 require a propitiation in place of granting a free and 
 immediate pardon ; and, secondly, that it is not in 
 accordance with His Infinite Justice to lay upon one 
 the punishment of another's guilt. The first diffi- 
 culty is summed up in the word sacrifice ; the 
 second in the w^ord vicarious. These are, I believe, 
 the real difficulties felt; and I would say, that the 
 reason why I have selected them is not so much 
 because they have been urged by any particular 
 objector, as because they are the greatest difficulties 
 that beset this portion of the truth ; and on that 
 account, when our attention has been called to the 
 subject, the most worthy of consideration. 
 
 I. In a cultured age, there are naturally found 
 two classes of minds. Of one. Bishop Butler would 
 serve as the type, who bowed his giant intellect be- 
 fore the Word of God, because piety told him that 
 it was the religious, and philosophy that it was the 
 reasonable, course to pursue. The other is not able 
 so to humble itself, and deals with Revelation as its
 
 13 
 
 superior, harmonizer and interpreter. The one ac- 
 cepts God's account of Himself, however much en- 
 veloped in mystery ; the other creates its God accord- 
 ing to its own conceptions, and rejects any acts or 
 qualities attributed to Him by revelation, which 
 militate against such conceptions, as " involving 
 contradiction to the Divine attributes'^." Is the 
 latter, I will not say the religious, but the reason- 
 able, course to pursue ? 
 
 1. In considering this subject, the first point to 
 notice is this, — that God's nature must of necessity 
 be to us incomprehensible. There are certain limit- 
 ations to our faculties, within which alone, by a law 
 of our minds, we are able to form positive concep- 
 tions. Whatever transcends those limits is to us 
 incomprehensible. Not to dwell on other points, 
 there are two conditions under which alone we have 
 perceived, and we can therefore, correctly speaking, 
 only conceive or realize the nature of a Being who 
 exists under the same conditions. These conditions 
 are Time and Space. But God exists under neither 
 of these conditions. The attributes, therefore, of 
 Eternity and Omnipresence, which yet none would 
 deny belong to Him, prevent the possibility of our 
 comprehending His nature, and conceiving Him as 
 He is^ 
 
 2. Next we must observe that there are ideas or 
 
 <i Jowett, vol, ii. p. 482. 
 
 •• See the Rev. H. L. Hansel's profound and valuable work, 
 " Prolegomena Logica;" and also his pamphlet on " Eternity."
 
 14 
 
 principles in our own minds which are apparently 
 contradictory one to the other ; but yet we are un- 
 able to reject either of them, because we find them 
 as facts in ourselves. Thus the idea of the necessity 
 of an external cause for the production of actions, (on 
 which the Necessitarian founds his system,) and the 
 idea of the self-originating power of the will, (on 
 which is based the system of Free-will,) seem to con- 
 flict with each other. Do we, therefore, conclude that 
 they are absolutely contradictory, and therefore that 
 one or other of them must be false ? We cannot do 
 this, because both of them are given to us by our 
 nature. What then ? We conclude that it is only 
 relatively to our powers of apprehension that the 
 contradiction exists; that while our minds are con- 
 stituted as they are, the combination of these two 
 ideas must be to us a mystery ; — not, in short, that 
 they are contradictory to each other, but that we 
 cannot reconcile them. So, too, the idea of God's 
 Omnipotence and Providence, on which the doc- 
 trine of Predestination rests, seems to conflict with 
 this same idea of originating power as possessed by 
 ourselves. Do we reject either? No ; we acknow- 
 ledge a mystery, and say, not that these ideas are 
 contradictory, but that we cannot reconcile them. 
 
 3. Thirdly, the conception that we have of God, 
 whether drawn from Scripture or formed by the mind, 
 is necessarily and rightly that of a nature containing 
 and made up of all perfections. He is Omnipotent, 
 Omniscient, Omnipresent, All-merciful, All-good,
 
 15 
 
 All-holy, All-just, All-pure, All-loving, All-right- 
 eous. All good qualities in their utmost perfection 
 are attributes of Ilim. But can we reconcile these 
 attributes in their infinite perfection one with an- 
 other ? Not so : we can take one of them, and 
 follow it out, as it were, into infinity ; but then it 
 must exist alone, — otherwise, after we have traced it, 
 so to speak, for a little distance, we find it impinging 
 against one of the other attributes. What are we 
 then to do ? To cry out. Here is a contradiction ? 
 No ; but to say thoughtfully, Here is to me a mys- 
 tery : I cannot reconcile these two things, but I 
 know that they are reconcileable, otherwise there 
 could be no such Being at all as God. 
 
 Thus, we may grasp the idea of Omnipotence ; we 
 may draw a picture to ourselves of things in heaven 
 and things in earth, and things under the earth, bow- 
 ing down before the Almighty One. We can present 
 Him to ourselves as ruling with sway uncontrolled, 
 and none saying Him nay ; as doing what He will, 
 when He will, and as He will. But here we are, as it 
 were, stopped. Can He do an act that is wrong? No ; 
 for All-goodness is one of His attributes, as well as 
 Omnipotence. Shall we then say that He is either not 
 Omnipotent, or not All-good? No ; we acknowledge 
 that there is, not a contradiction, but a mystery. 
 
 Or, again, we might take the old difficulty of un- 
 doing the past, — the 
 
 Morof yap avTOV kou 6eus arepiaKeTai 
 Ay€vr)ra iroLeiv aaor av y ireTrpayixeva. 
 
 ^
 
 16 
 
 Can we reconcile this impotence with the perfect 
 attribute of Omnipotence ? We may throw together 
 a certain number of words about the difference be- 
 tween Time and Eternity, and fancy that we have 
 explained it, but the difficulty remains just the same. 
 We have only explained why we cannot explain it. 
 The truth is, that we do not limit Omnipotence by 
 acknowledging the difficulty, but simply admit that 
 our minds are not capable of grasping Omnipotence 
 in its relation to a state of which we have had no 
 experience. 
 
 4. Let us now apply the same line of thought to 
 the two attributes of Infinite Justice and Infinite 
 Mercy. We are able, more or less, to represent 
 to ourselves the idea of a personification of Justice. 
 We can conceive of an All -just Being dealing with 
 every one according to his merits ; acting, as it were, 
 by line and measure, from which He does not and 
 cannot deflect ; dispensing reward to the righteous, 
 and punishment to the guilty ; firm, unimpassioned, 
 unbending ; ready, indeed, to receive the fallen to 
 His favour, but only when the uttermost farthing 
 has been paid, and the exact amount of satisfaction 
 has been rendered. 
 
 Again, we are able, more or less, to represent to 
 ourselves the idea of a personification of Mercy. 
 We can conceive of an All-merciful Being, ready, 
 willing, yearning to forgive, projecting Himself, as 
 it were, from Himself, and starting forward to help 
 the weak, to console the suffering, to lead the wan-
 
 17 
 
 dering, to bind up the broken heart, to overlook 
 the deficiencies of the unworthy, to put aside the 
 sins of the guilty, to amnesty the past, to cover all 
 under His wings, to gather all to His bosom, to 
 wipe away all tears, and bid sorrow and sighing for 
 ever flee away. 
 
 Separately, then, we may seem to be able to ap- 
 proximate towards a conception of the attributes 
 of Justice and of Mercy ; but if we try to combine 
 the two ideas, w^e are utterly baffled. How can the 
 righteous Judge cover the sins of the guilty ? How 
 can the loving Father refuse to gather His erring 
 children within His arms ? 
 
 Suppose, then, that Revelation represents God to 
 us as the All-just One. What ! exclaims the Moral 
 Sense of the natural man, will you tell me of a 
 God who cannot freely forgive the guilty? "Even 
 a man's debt maybe freely forgiven," and "we have 
 not so learned the Divine Nature, believing that 
 God, if He transcend our ideas of morality, can 
 yet never in any degree be contrary to them'." 
 Suppose, then, that Revelation represents Him to us 
 as the All-merciful One. What ! exclaims the same 
 Moral Sense, will you overthrow the foundation of 
 law and right? Will you " sully the mirror of 
 God's justice and overcloud His truth'?" "Will 
 you cast a shadow upon His holiness?" " How then 
 shall He judge the world?" "We have not so 
 learned the Divine nature." Suppose, then, that 
 
 f Jowett, vol. ii. p. 472. * Jowett, vol. ii. p. 480. 
 
 B
 
 18 
 
 Revelation represents Him to us as at once All-just 
 and All'm?reiful. This can only be done in one of 
 two ways : either by representing Him in one set 
 of texts, and in one course (if I may so speak) of 
 His acts, All-just ; and in another set of texts, and 
 another course of His acts, All-merciful ; or else, by 
 limiting the one attribute by the other. If the 
 former is done, then the Moral Sense objects against 
 the first set of texts, and the first course of acts, 
 that they do not represent Him as All-merciful ; 
 against the second, that they do not represent Him 
 All-just. If the latter, then cries the Moral Sense, 
 you do not represent Him as All-just, or All-merci- 
 ful, at all, but as something which is neither one 
 nor the other. 
 
 Thus "we see, that whatsoever revelation of Him- 
 self God vouchsafes to man, it 7?mst be open to 
 cavils brought against it in the name of man's 
 Moral Sense. If it were not so open, it would be 
 thereby proved to be false, because it would be 
 representing to us a Being whose nature our minds 
 could grasp, and whose attributes we could recon- 
 cile. I say, in the name of the Moral Sense, for it 
 is not really that divine faculty which cavils and 
 objects. The Moral Sense would be willing enough 
 to confine itself w^ithin its own limits, and when 
 taught by reason that it was dealing with the 
 Infinite, w^hich the mind of man could not com- 
 prehend, it w^ould be ready to acquiesce in the 
 existence of a mystery. It is not, I say, the
 
 19 
 
 Moral Sense, but a subtle form of the " piide 
 of human reasonV' which refuses to acknowledge 
 that the powers of the human mind, and its fa- 
 culties, are not the guage by which everything is 
 to be tried, of things in heaven, and things in earth, 
 and things under the earth. Would you span the 
 heavens v^ith your hand ? Would you count the 
 sands of the shore with your fingers ? Would you 
 hold the ocean in a water-glass ? Each one of these 
 attempts w^ould be more wise, more reasonable, and 
 more philosophical, than objecting to the revelation 
 of the Infinite, because our finite minds cannot 
 reconcile His attributes ; and therefore, that His 
 acts, of whatever nature they may be, are neces- 
 sarily open to cavil, if cavil we will, not on account 
 of the quality of the acts, but of our feebleness of 
 capacity. When, then, we hear the doctrine of the 
 Sacrifice of the Cross objected to in the name of 
 Moral Sense, as ''inconsistent with the Divine attri- 
 butes," let us recollect what the objection really 
 means. It means this, — that while confessedly in- 
 capable of reconciling the requirements of Infinite 
 Justice and Infinite Mercy ourselves ; while forced to 
 allow that any wdiatsoever revelation to man of God's 
 march of mystery must seem to conflict with one of 
 these attributes or the other, not because it does 
 conflict with either of them, but because of our own 
 weakness of comprehension, yet we declare that we 
 will reject that fundamental truth which Prophet, and 
 
 ' Jowet.t, vol. ii. p. 468. 
 
 b2
 
 20 
 
 Evangelist, and Apostle with one tongue proclaim, 
 which has been accepted by all Christians in all 
 ages as the basis of Christianity, because it does 
 seem to us to conflict with one of those attributes ; 
 the very thing which, if it were true, we had to ex- 
 pect, in consequence, not of the character of His 
 acts, but of our limited capacity. 
 
 II. Almost all that I have said in reference to the 
 supposed moral objections against the doctrine of 
 the Sacrifice of the Cross as irreconcilable with In- 
 finite Mercy, wdll apply, with little change, to the 
 supposed moral objections against the doctrine of a 
 vicarious Sacrifice as irreconcilable with Infinite Jus- 
 tice. On this point I must be very brief. The ob- 
 jectors whom Bishop Butler in his day met and re- 
 futed, declared that it represented God as indifferent 
 whether He punished the innocent or the guilty. It 
 will be enough for me at present to remind you 
 of his answer, — how he points out "the extreme 
 slightness of all such objections," by shewing " that 
 they conclude altogether as much against God's 
 whole original constitution of nature, and the wiiole 
 daily course of Divine Providence in the government 
 of the world, — that is, against the whole scheme of 
 theism, and the whole notion of religion, — as against 
 Christianity." 
 
 " So that," continues the religious philosopher, 
 " the reason of their insisting upon objections of this 
 kind against the Satisfaction of Christ, is either that
 
 21 
 
 they do not consider God's settled and uniform ap- 
 pointments as His appointments at all, or else they 
 forget that vicarious punishment is a providential 
 appointment of every day's experience : and then, 
 from their being unacquainted with the more gene- 
 ral laws of nature, or divine government over the 
 Tvorld, and not seeing how^ the sufferings of Christ 
 could contribute to the redemption of it, unless by 
 arbitrary and tyrannical will, they conclude His suf- 
 ferings could not contribute to it any other way. 
 And yet what has been often alleged in justifica- 
 tion of this doctrine, even from the apparent natural 
 tendency of this method of our redemption, — its 
 tendency to vindicate the authority of God's laws, 
 and deter His creatures from sin, — this has never yet 
 been answered, and is, I think, plainly unanswerable, 
 though I am far from thinking it an account of the 
 whole of the case. But without taking this into 
 consideration, it abundantly appears, from the ob- 
 servations above made, that this objection is, not 
 an objection against Christianity, but against the 
 whole general constitution of nature. And if it 
 were to be considered as an objection against Chris- 
 tianity, or considering it, as it is, an objection 
 against the constitution of nature, it amounts to no 
 more in conclusion than this, that a divine appoint- 
 ment cannot be necessary or expedient, because the 
 objector does not discern it to be so ; though he 
 must own that the nature of the case is such as 
 renders him incapable of judging whether it be so
 
 22 
 
 or not ; or of seeing it to be necessary, though it 
 were so"." 
 
 I have here quoted the words of the author re- 
 ferred to, because they receive a double weight by 
 the fact of their being the words of Butler — Butler, 
 whose great calm mind surveyed, and estimated, and 
 balanced all the objections which have been urged 
 against the received doctrine of the Atonement, and 
 after weighing them one by one, and all together, 
 laid them aside as being " neither philosophy nor 
 faith"," while the doctrine of the Propitiatory and 
 Vicarious Sacrifice was both. 
 
 I will but add, that the doctrine of Original Sin 
 is open to exactly the same objection as the doc- 
 trine of the Atonement, and in equal degree ; and 
 that St. Augustine, in answering the Pelagian's 
 question, — " How is it just that other men should 
 be hable to punishment for Adam's sin?" has in 
 effect answered the difficulty, " How is it just that 
 Christ should suffer for offences not His own'' ?" A 
 
 " Anal., part ii. c. 5. 
 
 ^ Jowett, vol. ii. p. 481. 
 
 y Professor Jowett rejects the received doctrine of Original 
 Sin as well as the received doctrine of the Atonement. " How 
 slender is the foundation in the New Testament for the doctrine 
 of Adam's sin being imputed to his posterity," (p. 162). " The 
 language that he (St. Paul) here uses is that of his age and 
 country," (p. 165.) "It was a confusion of a half-physical, 
 half-logical, or metaphysical, notion, arising in the minds of men 
 who had not yet learnt the lesson of our Saviour, ' That which 
 is from without defileth not a man,' " (ibid.) " Too little regard 
 has been paid to the extent to which St. Paul uses figurative
 
 2;] 
 
 mystery we acknowledge it, and as a mystery we 
 accept it, but only such a mystery as the feebleness 
 of our minds necessitates. In itself a deep, and pro- 
 found, and, to other intelligences, it may be, an 
 open and patent act, at once of Infinite Justice and 
 Infinite Mercy, to us it necessarily is mysterious. 
 
 It may be said, Is, then, our sense of natural 
 Justice no guide to our conception of the Divine 
 Justice ? Nay, it is a guide to it, but it is not the 
 measure of it. It is a finger-post which directs us 
 towards it, not the plummet which sounds its 
 depths. The course at once of piety and of rea- 
 son, is not to make our own minds, and the ideas 
 of our own minds, the standard by which to test 
 God and God's doings, but to accept Him as He 
 has revealed Himself in His nature and His acts 
 
 language, and to the mannei- of his age in interpretations of 
 the Okl Testament. The difficulty of supposing him to be alle- 
 gorizing the narrative of Genesis is slight in comparison with 
 the difficulty of supposing him to countenance a doctrine at 
 variance with our first notions of the moral nature of God," 
 (p. 167). Here we have a specimen of Mr. Jowett's method, 
 which appears to be — 1. to submit the revelation of the Infinite 
 to the test of his o\*n finite capacity ; 2. to reject whatever his 
 moral sense chooses to object to ; 3. to explain away what he 
 has rejected as something which has arisen from the misunder- 
 standing of figurative language on the part of interpreters, and 
 from the use of the modes of thought the manners and the 
 language of their age and countrj', on the part of the writers. 
 For a masterly statement of the doctrine of Original Sin, see 
 The Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, by the llev. J. B. 
 Mozley,— one of the ablest theological treatises which has been 
 M'ritten for many years.
 
 24 
 
 to us, and then we may and shall see how wonder- 
 fully the Christian scheme does meet the difficulties 
 of our moral natures, — how true indeed it is that 
 the foohshness of God is wiser than men. Let 
 us then first mark some of those texts in which 
 Scripture especially sets forth Christ as the Pro- 
 pitiatory Sacrifice for us : — "Justified freely by His 
 grace through the redemption that is in Christ 
 Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitia- 
 tion through faith in His blood, to declare His 
 righteousness for the remission of sins that are 
 past through the forbearance of God^" wTites St. 
 Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans : " Our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins," in 
 the Epistle to the Galatians^: "Christ our Pass- 
 over is sacrificed for us," in the Epistle to the 
 Corinthians^: "Christ also hath loved us, and 
 hath given Himself for us an offering and a 
 sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour," in 
 
 ' Rom. iii. 24. 
 
 » Gal. i. 4. — Professor Jo^Yett thus comments on this text : 
 *' When it is said that Christ gave Himself for our sins, or as 
 a sin-ofFering, the shadow must not be put in the place of the 
 substance, or the Jewish image substituted for the truth of the 
 Gospel. On such language it may be remarked, (1.) that it is 
 figurative ; natural and intelligible to that age, not equally so 
 to us . . . (5.) that expressions such as that which we are con- 
 sidering seldom occur in the writings of St. Paul . . . (6.) that in 
 general, the thing meant by them is that Christ took upon Him 
 human flush, that He was put to death by sinful men, and raised 
 men out of the state of sin, — in this sense taking their sins upou 
 Himself." -Vol. i. p. 211. 
 
 " 1 Cor. V. 7.
 
 25 
 
 the Epistle to the Ephesians^ The language of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews is the same through- 
 out'^. "Who His own Self bare our sins in His 
 own body on the tree," writes St. Peter *"; and 
 again: "Christ also hath once suffered for sins, 
 the just for the unjust ^" "He is the Propitia- 
 tion for our sins," writes St. John ^. "This is 
 
 c Eph. V. 2. 
 
 ^ Hcb. ii. TO, V. 9, vii. 25, ix. 11, 28, x. 4 — 10, &c.— Professor 
 Jowett apparently rejects the Epistle to the Hebrews, not only 
 as a work of St. I'aul, which he is quite justified in doing, but 
 as a part of inspired Scri];ture. I say apparently, because he has 
 not expressed himself with the clearness which it was desirable 
 that he should have used on so momentous a sixbject. In vol. ii. 
 p. 476 he writes : " It is in the Epistle to the Hebrews that this 
 reflection of the New Testament in the Old is most distinctly 
 brought before us. There, the temple, the priest, the sacrifices, 
 the altar, the persons of Jewish history are the figiu'es of Christ 
 and the Church. In the Epistles of St. Paul it is the rarity 
 rather than the frequency of such images which is striking. It 
 is the oiiposilion, and not the identification, of the Law and the 
 Gospel which is the leading thought of his mind. Rut in the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews they are fused in one ; the New Testa- 
 ment is hidden in the Old, the Old revealed in the New. And 
 from this source, and not from the Epistles of St. Paul, the lan- 
 guage of which we are speaking has passed into the theology of 
 modern times." And in p. 482 : " We can live and die, in the 
 language of St. Paul and St. John, without fear for ourselves, or 
 dishonour to the name of Christ. We need not change a word 
 that they use, or add on a single consequence to their statement 
 of the truth. There is nothing there repugnant to our moral 
 sense." We can hardly doubt that these hitter words are used 
 with an exclusive meaning, and that Pjol'essor Jowett intends by 
 them to put aside the authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 and probably of the Epistles of St. Peter. 
 
 • 1 Pet. ii. 24. f 1 Pet. iii. 18. el John ii. 2.
 
 26 
 
 My Blood of the New Testament, which is shed 
 for many for the remission of sins," says our Lord 
 Himself*. " The Lord hath laid on Him the 
 iniquity of us all," says Isaiah, in the spirit of 
 prophecy. But why should I add more ? From 
 eveiy book and every line of the Bible breathes 
 forth the same truth. It is the foundation-stone 
 of all that Christ taught, His Apostles preached, 
 and Christians believe. Once more to quote Bi- 
 shop Butler : — 
 
 " Christ offered Himself a Propitiatory Sacrifice, 
 and made atonement for the sins of the world . . . 
 And this sacrifice was, in the highest degree, and 
 with the most extensive influence, of that efficacy 
 for obtaining pardon of sin, w^hich the heathens 
 may be supposed to have thought their sacrifices 
 to have been, and which the Jewish sacrifices really 
 were in some degree, and with regard to some 
 persons '." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " The doctrine of the Gospel appears to be, not 
 only that lie taught the efficacy of repentance, but 
 rendered it of the efficacy which it is by what He 
 did and suffered for us ; that He obtained for us 
 the benefit of having our repentance accepted unto 
 eternal life ; not only that He revealed to sinners 
 that they were in a capacity of salvation, and how 
 they might obtain it ; but, moreover, that He put 
 
 ^ Matt. xxvi. 28. ' Anal. ii. 5.
 
 27 
 
 them into this capacity of salvation by what He did 
 and suffered for themJ." 
 
 And when we have thus, on the authority of 
 Revelation, accepted, and grasped, and embraced the 
 great truth, that (in the words of our Church) He 
 " truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to 
 reconcile His Father to us, and to be a Sacrifice, not 
 only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of 
 men^j" that "He came to be the Lamb without 
 spot, who, by the Sacrifice of Himself once made, 
 should take away the sins of the world ' ;" that " the 
 offering of Him once made is that perfect Redemp- 
 tion, Propitiation, and Satisfaction for all the sins of 
 the whole world, both original and actual, and there 
 is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone*";" 
 that " He suffered death upon the cross for our 
 redemption;" and "made there, by His one obla- 
 tion of Himself once offered, a full, perfect, and 
 sufficient Sacrifice, Oblation, and Satisfaction for the 
 sins of the whole world" ." When, I say, we have, 
 on the authority of Revelation, embraced this blessed 
 truth, then we may see how in fact our Moral Sense 
 does bear witness to it, how our sense of justice, 
 and our belief in His infinite love, are both satisfied, 
 so far as they can be satisfied, by this instance at 
 once of the goodness and severity of God in Christ 
 reconciling the world unto Himself. " O the depths 
 of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of 
 
 J Anal. ii. 5. ^ Art. II. ' Art. XV. 
 
 "' Art. XXXVI. " Conimuiiioii Service.
 
 28 
 
 God ! How unsearchable are His judgments, and 
 His ways past finding out ! For who hath known 
 the mind of the Lord ? or who hath been His coun- 
 sellor. For of Him, and through Him, and to Him 
 are all things"." 
 
 Christ hanging upon the cross for us ! It is 
 our only hope, our only consolation, our only 
 confidence, our only trust. " The Jews require a 
 sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom : but we 
 preach Christ crucified, unto the JeW'S a stum- 
 bling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness ; but 
 unto them W'hich are called, both Jews and Greeks, 
 Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. 
 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men ; 
 and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 
 . . . But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of 
 God is made unto us wisdom, and righteous- 
 ness, and sanctification, and redemption p." Every 
 dav during the next week the Church will bring 
 before you, for reverent and loving contemplation, 
 the form of the Man of Sorrows, despised and re- 
 jected of men, bearing our griefs, wounded for our 
 transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, and pour- 
 ing out His soul unto death for us. One after 
 another each Evangelist takes up the tale, and 
 leads us on with him from the garden to the cross. 
 Remember that we must be the better or the worse 
 for each Holy Week as it passes : better, by God's 
 
 ° Rom. xi. 33. P 1 Cor. i. 22-25, 30.
 
 29 
 
 grace, if we linger lovingly and reverently with 
 Him, and watch the awful agony of that sinless 
 soul, when He was enshrouded and enveloped in the 
 sins of men, and His Father's face was for a mo- 
 ment turned away from Him, the child of Adam, on 
 whom the Lord had laid the iniquity of us all ; worse, 
 if we look on as cold spectators, speculating and 
 criticising, instead of falling on our knees and wor- 
 shipping ; or growing callous, as though the things 
 which we saw and heard were but as the scenes and 
 words of one of our childhood's tales, which now can 
 stir the heart no more. Oh, brethren, that our hearts 
 were with Him more constantly in His Passion ; 
 that in our heart of hearts the image of Jesus cruci- 
 fied was more deeply impressed ! Surely, then, we 
 should not fret, and fume, and toss wearily to and fro, 
 as now we do ; we should not fix our affections on 
 the wretched prizes that this world has to bestow ; 
 we should not jostle one another in our course ; 
 we could not be envious and jealous, — we could not 
 be proud, revengeful, resentful ; we should recog- 
 nise each other as brethre i indeed, redeemed by 
 the same most precious blood ; we should be more 
 humble, more gentle, more considerate, — less cold, 
 and harsh, and supercilious,— more worthy to be 
 called the disciples of the Crucified, who for us en- 
 dured that agony in the garden of Gethsemane, and 
 that anguish on the hill of Calvary. 
 
 Brethren, we have much to be thankful for, but 
 there is nothing which should call forth the thank-
 
 30 
 
 fulness of our inmost souls like this act of wondrous 
 love. We have much to be thankful for, — untold 
 blessings of earth ; — He gives us, as He thinks fit, 
 the strong limbs and the springing enjoyment of 
 life, and the stout heart to bear up against mis- 
 fortune. And He opens to us the gates of know- 
 ledge, and gives us entrance into the glorious world 
 of thought and intellect ; and He gives us friends 
 whom we may love, — some that we may help on, and 
 cheer, and strengthen in their struggle with the diffi- 
 culties and perplexities which oftentimes well-nigh 
 appal the young heart, however gallant, as it buffets 
 with the breakers that burst along the edge of 
 life ; some to whom we may look up with affection 
 and respect, and take courage from the knowledge 
 that such persons live ; and some with whom we 
 may interchange our thoughts and feelings, sure of 
 a responsive sympathy. There is indeed no earthly 
 blessing so great, no boon among all those that God 
 gives to man, so precious as that of free, frank, bro- 
 therly love, when heart meets heart, and eye meets 
 eye, with no selfish reservation, undeadened by lust, 
 unhardcned by worldliness,-unperverted by sophis- 
 try. And these, and many more, are blessings which 
 God gives to us in this place with a free and open 
 hand. But what are they, what is anything on 
 earth, when compared with the gift which God gave 
 us in His Son, and the reconciliation which that 
 great Offering once for all effected ? Nay, it is on 
 account of that reconciliation that we are able to 
 
 /
 
 31 
 
 enjoy those other hlessings. Now we are as sons, 
 and may look up into tlie face of our Ahha Father, 
 and this creates a sunshine in the soul by which all 
 else is illumined. Why should we not rejoice, like 
 some high-spirited boy, (and what more touching, 
 more beautiful spectacle ?) who does not shrink from 
 his father's eye, who tells him his joys and sorrows, 
 and whose fear has been mellowed into tender re- 
 spect by its combination with love ? But what if 
 tlie chastisement of our peace had not been laid 
 upon Him ? What if the expiation and propitiation 
 had not been wrought ? What if God's face were 
 averted from us ? Then how should we venture to en- 
 joy the blessings which we now find along our path ? 
 Nay, rather would it not be our highest wisdom to 
 go mourning all the day long, or to " cast ourselves 
 down upon the earth, and put our face between our 
 knees'!?" or to cry out with Moses, " If Thou deal 
 thus with me, kill me, I pray Thee, out of hand, if I 
 have found favour in Thy sight, and let me not see my 
 wretchedness';" or with Job, " My soul is weary of 
 my life ; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. . . . 
 Thou huntest me as a fierce lion ; . . . Thou increasest 
 Thine indignation upon me. . . . Wherefore then hast 
 Thou brought me forth out of the womb ? Oh ! 
 that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen 
 me' ;" or with Elijah, " make request for ourselves, 
 that we might die and say, It is enough ; now, O 
 
 q 1 Kings xviil. 42. ■• Numb. xl. IT). » Job x. 1, 16—18.
 
 •.VI 
 
 Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than 
 my fathers' ?" 
 
 There is a deep moral in the account of the con- 
 version of Justin Martyr, as it is made familiar to 
 many of us by a living poet". We can see him, as he 
 is there pictured, wandering forth along the shore of 
 the sea, desolate, helpless, hopeless ; and the bright- 
 ness of the sky, and the laugh of the ocean, did but 
 add grief to his sorrow, for what had he to do with 
 purity, and joy, and light, — he, the sin-stained, con- 
 scious of nought within himself but discord and dis- 
 array ? There w^as no chord to answer responsively 
 to the joyousness of nature, and accordingly it only 
 oppressed him with the more intolerable weight. 
 We can see him as he threw himself down upon the 
 shore, and burst into tears, — tears such as the strong 
 man sheds in those few hours of agony w^hich fall to 
 the lot of most of us but once or twice throughout 
 our lives. What shall lighten that oppression '? He 
 had striven in the noble fervour of youth and man- 
 liness, — striven after holiness, truth, and beauty. 
 He had said that he w^ould cleanse his soul from 
 all that defiled ; that he would cast out all that 
 offended ; that he would fling around himself 
 the atmosphere of light and love, and tune each 
 jarring tone within him into harmony. And now 
 all had failed, — his palace of beauty, which he fain 
 would have raised, was dashed to the ground, the 
 
 * 1 Kings xix. 4. 
 
 " See the Storv of Justin Mrrtvr in Trencli's Poems.
 
 33 
 
 mirror of his soul was cracked and bedimmed, and 
 what should now give him comfort ? The riddle of 
 life was too hard for him to read. What union be- 
 tween God and such as he ? and what happiness to 
 an immortal soul without union with God ? From 
 the verge of despair he was led back by the gentle 
 words of wisdom of the old man who had been 
 sent to him in his hour of darkness. And which 
 of those words would it have been that would have 
 roused the weary-hearted man from his wretched- 
 ness ? Would he have been moved, if he had been 
 told that " a great moral act had been done by one 
 in our likeness," and that this was " an assurance 
 that God in Christ was reconciled to the world "" ?" 
 Would he not rather have bid his teacher, who thus 
 spoke to him, be gone, and not mock his misery 
 with unmeaning words ? But when he heard of the 
 love of the Father in sending His Son ; when he 
 was told of Him that died upon the Cross for him ; 
 when he learnt that by His Sacrifice the full satis- 
 faction for sin had been made, and the ransom 
 effected, and that his soul might be washed white 
 
 * " Not the sacrifice, nor tlie satisfaction, nor the ransom, but 
 the greatest moral act ever done in this world, — the act, too, of 
 one in our likeness, — is the assurance to us that God in Christ is 
 reconciled to the world." — Joioett, vol. ii. p. 481. 
 
 I must express my entire inability to discern how any sober- 
 minded man, with the Bible before him, or by the light of na- 
 ture, could arrive at an assurance of reconciliation by reason of 
 any " moral act" whatever, which is neither a " sacrifice," nor a 
 " satisfaction," nor a " ransom." 
 
 C
 
 34 
 
 in the blood of the Lamb, — then we can see his eye 
 lighten and his brow relax ; the good news that he 
 had yearned for was come, the pearl of great price 
 that he had vainly sought after was found. We 
 can well believe how different the face of nature 
 appeared to him as he retraced his steps ; how the 
 gladness of earth, and sky, and sea no longer 
 oppressed him as something alien. He, too, could 
 take part in their rejoicing, for he knew that he was 
 reconciled, and brought nigh, and united to God by 
 the precious blood of Christ. 
 
 There are two classes of minds that do not feel 
 the sinfulness of sin, and have no sense of its 
 burden. One of these is scarcely to be distin- 
 guished from the beasts that perish. The sow that 
 wallows in the mire knows not and recks not that 
 it is filthy ; and there are men who go on day by day 
 committing sin and living in sin, and their con- 
 sciences have become hardened and crusted over; 
 they know not and reck not of the hideous leprosy 
 which they have superinduced upon themselves. 
 The other is very different in appearance from the 
 first. Upright, moral, self-controlled, its fault lies 
 not in excess of passion, but in pei*version of intel- 
 lect. Men have been found who, being led astray 
 in the mazes of speculation, have dared to pro- 
 nounce sin to be only a lower form of good, — con- 
 founding thus the work of Satan with the work of 
 God. To these men the doctrine of the Fall, and 
 the doctrine of the Atonement, are alike foolishness :
 
 35 
 
 their system does not need them, — nay, does not 
 admit of them. Little as they themselves intend 
 it, the main result of their work must be to en- 
 courage the natural man to cease from struggling 
 with himself, and to erect an intellectual support 
 for the brutish man to justify himself in going on 
 still in brutishness. 
 
 There are likewise two states of mind in which the 
 oppression of sin's sinfulness is appreciated. One of 
 these is not a permanent state, for if continuous, it 
 must of necessity lead to madness ; but it is a state 
 which many have been conscious of passing through. 
 There is a time in the life of many a man, when 
 the sinfulness of sin makes itself felt in all its awful 
 reality, and there is present no sense of expiation to 
 say, Thou shalt not die. It is a time when the 
 mystery of existence first sinks down on us, and we 
 are perplexed and amazed ; when all about us seems 
 unreal, — when the heavens are brass, and the earth 
 iron, and men seem made for suffering y, and all we 
 
 y " The dreary sickness of tlie soul 
 That falls upon us in oui- lonely youth ; 
 The fear of all bright visions leaving us. 
 The sense of emptiness without the sense 
 Of an abiding fulness anywhere ; 
 When all the generations of mankind. 
 With all their purposes, their hopes, and fears, 
 Seem nothing truer than those wandering shapes 
 Cast by a trick of light upon a wall, 
 And nothing different from these, except 
 In their capacity for suffering." — Trench, p. 115.
 
 36 
 
 know is, that^there is a God far away, out of sight, 
 above our heads, and that sin is reigning upon the 
 earth, — sin within us, sin without us, all seems sin 
 and disharmony, — and still there is conscience stand- 
 ing by, and telling us of righteousness, and good- 
 ne^s, and truth, and holiness. 
 
 But, blessed be God, neither is this the Christian 
 frame of mind, though many a Christian has passed 
 through it, as through the valley of the shadow of 
 death. The Christian's lot is one of peace and 
 gladness ; for though sin abound, yet the expiation 
 for sin has been made, and has been accepted ; the 
 power of sin is crushed, and its dominion destroyed. 
 Be it ours, brethren, not to wallow in the filthiness 
 of sin, not to explain away its sinfulness ; nor, again, 
 to be confounded by the hoiTor of it ; but while we 
 go softly, sadly, tearfully, along our way, because 
 we are sinners, let us still cherish in our heart of 
 hearts that peace which the world gave not, and the 
 world cannot take away ; that peace which passeth 
 understanding ; that peace which arises from the 
 consciousness of reconciliation and union with our 
 Abba Father ; that peace which our dear Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ purchased with His own 
 most precious blood, when He died for us on 
 Calvary, the one accepted Sacrifice, Oblation, and 
 Satisfaction for the sins of all mankind, and of each 
 one of us.
 
 
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