that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, even exclusive of his assumed humanity, is equal in all attributes with the Father, and equally presumptuous to say that, exclusive of humanity, he is inferior and subordinate to the Father; for mystery is not excluded from our subject by the present light of truth. The apostle says, "We see but in part, and prophesy but in part." If revelation is but in part, so also philosophical discoveries are but in part. The progressional improvement of telescopes has enabled the philosopher to advance further and further into immensity, but equal mystery remains respecting infinity, and the infinite presence of God. The scripture history carries us back far into past time, and the prophecies enable us to reach forward into future time; but who will think that eternity past, or eternity future, is not unfathomable mystery? while both infinity and eternity must be, and God must be infinite and eternal.

But some objector may be of opinion that there is something not merely hidden, or mysterious, but contradictory, respecting the identity of the person of our Lord. That there may be some incongruence with our common conception of identity of persons, as consisting in consciousness and memory, I admit; and also that we have no experience in our species, either of the division of a person, or of the reunion of persons, yet will assert the conception involves no contradiction. I will call the readers attention to worms of the earth. When a youth, I two or three times accompanied a young friend to fishing, of which, as an amusement, he was fond. We procured from the earth a small reserve of worms for baits, and he cut them in pieces adapted to the purpose. When we wished to put on a new bait, I remarked with conscious disappointment more than once, that the pieces of worms were missing. Rather struck with what seemed mysterious, I learnt from my associate that the pieces of worms rejoined each other

This led my

while we were waiting for a bite. curiosity to survey their actual operations; when I perceived that each piece in motion, the severed ends sometimes met, when they, with a voluntary operation, united by a reciprocally, extending a kind of skin over the joining. Frequently a middle part or parts of the joined worm had been destroyed on the hook. Mystery presents itself respecting the identity of their personality. The whole worm seemed a person-its parts detached seemed persons -and when rejoined, these persons seemed again united in one person; probably the consciousness, affection, and volition one. This illustration, however distant, may, at least, serve to moderate the hostile objections of peurile philosophers on the sublime subject we are contemplating.

1st Remark. If the apostle accounted the person of Christ a mysterious object of conception, and if to this day the mystery is as far from solution as éver-if the apostle did, and we must sit down with acknowledgement of an inexplicable difficulty: how modest should we be in forming hypothesis on the subject: and how culpable must some theologians have been who have exalted their hypothesis into an article of faith-armed it with terrible anathemas-and pronounced by their own authority, without the word of God: " Except a man believe this creed faithfully he cannot be saved; and except every one do keep this faith of this creed whole and undefiled without doubt he shall everlastingly perish!"

2nd Remark. Perhaps some are ready to say, Although we grant the Scriptures exhibit a mystery in the person of our mediator, does not the idea bring with it a difficulty respecting the object of worship and of prayer? In reply, some difficulty is admitted, but the same Holy Scriptures fully provide for our surmounting it. When the Son of God was on earth, he was worshipped by the magie in infancy,

was worshipped by a cured leper, by a cured demoniac, and by the woman of Canaan;—was worshipped by a man cured of blindness, by a ship's company, and by a dying thief on the cross;-and when risen from the dead was worshipped by his disciples, and the same disciples worshipped their ascending Lord, when they witnessed his ascension. But, notwithstanding, these instances it does not appear we have any commandment to worship our ascended Lord in his mediatorial person, but to worship God, and only God; in doing which, so far as Christ is God, we virtually worship him, and any further would be idolatry. It behoved Christ to suffer as the expedient of his concurrence with the Divine preference, and of his making atonement for human sin.—It behoved Christ to rise from the dead, thus to evidence the completion of his atonement, and to commence his kingly office, when all power (dominion) in heaven and earth was conferred on him in his mediatorial person;-he came forth from the Father into the world, and he has left the world and is gone unto the Father, and in his mediatorial person become a sharer of his throne: yet, we have no scriptural enjoinment on us to worship him as a detached object from the ONE GOD.-As to prayer, Although after our Lord's ascension some converts called on his name,-Stephen, beholding him standing at the right hand of God, prayed saying, “Lord Jesus receive my spirit," and Saul, at his conversion, hearing our Lord's voice, prayed of him information concerning present duty; yet, we are more specially directed by our Lord himself, and the example of the apostles, to address our prayers to the Father in the name of the Son. "If ye shall ask any thing in my name," saith our Lord, "I will do it." In that day (that is after his ascension)" ye shall ask me nothing, verily, verily, I say unto you Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.

SECTION II.

Of the Atonement; or, Reconciliation.

ATONEMENT is the grand medium of Reconciliation, reconciliation of Divine justice with Divine mercy, the interesting expedient of Divine wisdom. Proof of the fact, and investigation of its nature, are the subjects before us, under gracious assistance. We learn from the report of missionaries that serious people of all lately discovered places acknowledge a conviction of the need of some sacrifice. History of past nations proves the same. The principle seems as universal as consciousness of right and wrong, and as moral sense and moral affection, in respect of communion with God, or reconciliation after conscious guilt; so that it seems instinctive, or else, an immediate conviction following the knowledge of a God and of moral good and evil.

It needeth but little humble acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures to perceive they inculcate that reconciliation between justice and mercy, and consequent restoration of a human sinner to communion with his God is by the expediency of the death of Christ; or that this is the grand expedient of the justification of a human sinner as appropriated by faith. The derivation of a principle of life from the death of the Saviour, and the remission of sin by shedding of his innocent blood, are doctrines, I think, essential to the gospel; and symbolically and analogically agreeable to the mediums of man's natural life; for we live by the death of vegetables, and of innocent animals, who lay down their lives for our sustenance, not for any fault of their own, the destructive and

noxious being unfit for the table. The propitiatory death of our mediator was set forth also symbolically by the Jewish passover, when lambs were slain, their blood sprinkled, their flesh eaten, and their first born in consequence escaped death from the destroying angel; for the apostle by metaphor calls Christ our passover sacrificed for us." (1 Cor. v. 7.) But the vicarious levitical sacrifice under the mosaic dispensation more strikingly exhibited the sacrifice of our Lord; it consisted in the solemn infliction of death on an animal generally by effusion of its blood, and the presenting of its suffering unto God as a symbolical mean of compensation for the insult and injury offered by sin to his majesty and government, accompanied with supplication for its pardon, and the exercise of faith in its being an institution of Divine appointment. Sacrifices were intended to speak a symbolical language, which is evident from the selection, presentation, and immolating of the unoffending animal, the regard paid to its blood, its consumption by fire, and the confession and supplication of the worshipper; for these must have forcibly impressed the ideas of sin and guilt, the desert of punishment, the interposition of the innocent, and the pardon of the transgressor. But I think we are warranted to conceive the mosaic sacrifices not to have terminated in a mere symbol, but, as respects conscience, to have been an actual liberation of the penitent from guilt and exposure to punishment, notwithstanding, the party might not look further than to the divine institution of this mean of forgiveness (which was probably the case with the bulk of the worshippers under that shadowy dispensation) and the truth that the actual harmonizing of mercy with justice is by the atonement of our Lord.

A chief part of the office of a priest, according to the arrangement of God by his servant Moses, was to offer up sacrifices. Christ is evidently exhibited as a priest in the following Scriptures. Heb. vii. 15, 21.