second, that its death was accepted as the death of the sinner; and finally, that the justice of God was satisfied, and God propitiated, by this substituted sacrifice. Yet not one of these points is correct. The sacrifice of the animal did not consist in its death, but in its dedication and presentation to the Lord upon the altar. There is nothing to indicate that the death of the animal was intended to represent the punishment of death as due to the offender. And there is no ground for the supposition that God accepted the sinner through the vicarious blood of his sacrifice. The sacrifice no doubt in a general sense represented him who offered it; and if the death of the animal symbolized anything in regard to him, it represented the death of the old man, the laying down of the life proper to man as an unregenerate creature, a life of which our Lord speaks in the gospel : "Whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it." Divine justice no doubt requires this at the hand of the sinner, and every one must perform this act of self-denial before he can be accepted, as the animal was not a sacrifice till after it was slain. But this is not to be regarded in the light of a punishment which God demands for His own satisfaction. The difference in these two ideas regarding the death of the sacrifice and of the sinner is great and important. The death which the animal suffered, and which Divine justice is supposed to have demanded, was the eternal death or everlasting punishment of the sinner, that death which in the Scriptures is called damnation. That which we believe was represented by the death of the animal is the laying down of the life of evil, the surrender of our self will and wisdom. Which of these is most consistent with reason and justice? Which is most consistent with the moral attributes of God and with the moral nature of man? What satisfaction to the justice of God could be the damnation of the whole human race? and if the Divine justice required this for the satisfaction of its broken laws, what real satisfaction could it have derived from the mere infliction of punishment on One who was entirely innocent of any transgression? What could such a sacrifice do either to repair the evil that was past or prevent that which was future? But the truth is, it does not profess to deal with the evil, but only with the punishment. The death of Christ is believed to have been accepted as the price of all sin, past and future. And those who have faith in Jesus Christ as their Substitute receive forgiveness of sin for His sufferings, and are counted holy for His righteousness. An idea more extraordinary or more extravagant never entered into the human mind.

Yet it is not difficult to see how it has arisen. It is the reflex of man's own perverted moral character, arising from the tendency of man to make God altogether such an one as himself. The degeneracy of human nature has become so great that men are naturally inclined to punish vindictively-to demand satisfaction for any evil which others commit against them. Had not this inclination and demand of fallen human nature come to be sanctioned as proper and just among men, never would they have been ascribed to God. And only in proportion as they cease to influence and guide men, will they cease to be ascribed to the All-Merciful and Wise Father of the human race. The view of Redemption which includes this singular theory is less broadly maintained than in former times, and is less plainly followed out to all its conclusions and consequences. Yet it cannot be expected to be abandoned at once by those who adhere to the present systems of religion; for those systems are founded upon it, and must fall to the ground without it. Salvation by faith alone rests upon the atonement as commonly understood. And with a radical change in the sentiments of Christians on that important subject there must be an entire change in the conditions of salvation.

We shall proceed, then, to consider the subject of Redemption, with the view of showing its harmony with the moral attributes of God and with the moral nature of man.

God Himself took human nature upon Him to accomplish the work of human Redemption. He came to redeem men from the bondage of Satan and from the slavery of sin. Satan and sin were the enemies from whom men required deliverance. Satan and sin were naturally and necessarily connected. Sin had given birth to hell, and hell by sin had acquired dominion over mankind. Men had therefore become subject to the powers of darkness. Redemption consisted in subduing the powers of darkness, and delivering mankind from their bondage, so as to restore them to spiritual liberty. Man has spiritual liberty by being in the midst between heaven and hell, and thus between good and evil. When the power of hell predominates over the power of heaven, this spiritual liberty is infringed; and if it were destroyed salvation would be impossible, for men would no longer have the power of turning from evil to good. When the equilibrium was lost and man was in danger of perishing in eternal death, God the Creator came into the world as the Redeemer; and overcoming the enemies of mankind, restored them again to a state of spiritual liberty, and provided them with the means of attaining life everlasting. This

was a work of Divine justice as well as of Divine power. For justice holds the balance even, or restores the equilibrium when it has been lost; and the justice of God in its universal sense consists in maintaining the balance of the two universal finite powers of good and evil, which are heaven and hell, and preserving to the human race the uncontrolled power of choosing between them.

Redemption was a work of love and mercy as well as of justice and power. "God so loved the world, that He gave His Only-Begotten Son." In delivering mankind from the bondage of their enemies His love was conspicuous. For "greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends;" but in this the love of God was manifested, that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. His death was the result of His combats with the enemies of Himself and His people. This was the bruising of His heel. But when He rose from the dead, He bruised the head of the serpent; for He then completed the conquest of him who had the power of death, and delivered them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

But besides the conquest of Satan there was another work completed in the Lord's resurrection. The Lord came to save His people from their sins as well as to redeem them from their enemies. To save them from their sins is to purify them from the evil purposes and evil principles in which sin originates; and this is to make them new creatures. How were they to be made new through the Lord's works in the flesh? This is an inquiry of the utmost importance. The true answer to it shows how perfectly consistent Redemption was with the moral attributes of God and with the moral nature of man. The very nature of the Lord's work must afford a satisfactory reason of its efficacy in removing sin. No satisfactory reason is afforded by the opinion that the Lord's work in the flesh was a work of expiation by His suffering the punishment of sin. That might, in a certain sense, account for the formal pardon of sin, but not for the removal of sin. There is, however, another part of the Lord's work which, were it rightly applied, would throw some light on this subject. The Lord fulfilled the whole law, and it is believed that His obedience is imputed to those who believe in Him as their Substitute. The whole system is one of substitution,-substituted punishment, substituted obedience. Christ stands in the place of sinners. God imputes their sins to Him, and His righteousness to them. It is a purely artificial system; and no satisfactory reason can be given why the same results could not

have been produced without the Lord's coming into the world at all. Had God been willing to forgive sinners and receive them into His favour without the demand for satisfaction, would there have been any necessity for the Lord to have lived and died as a Man upon earth? But on what ground, scriptural or rational, can it be imagined that God was either unwilling or unable to forgive and to receive sinners? Do not the Scriptures teem with invitations to sinful men, with offers of pardon, with promises of acceptance? And what are the conditions? Repentance and amendment of life. Is there anything in the Word which should lead sinners to suppose that they must expiate all their sins by suffering, or finding another to suffer, the whole punishment that is due to them? The call of the Lord by the prophets is, "Turn ye from your wickedness and live; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" "Repent and be forgiven."

For what end, then, did the Lord come into the world and assume our nature? He assumed our nature that He might reconcile that nature to Himself, and through that reconciled nature reconcile men to Him as their God and Saviour. In our nature the Lord wrought out that great work of atonement or reconciliation which man required; and atonement or reconciliation is now offered to men by the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath reconciled all things to Himself in His glorified human nature. And be it remembered, there is no form of expression in Scripture which can sanction the opinion that the Lord's work was intended to effect, or that it effected, the reconciliation of God to man, but only of man to God. "All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." "Now then," continues the Apostle, "we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God" (2 Cor. v. 18-20).

Such is the great work which our blessed Lord assumed our nature to effect. In commemorating His birth into this world of ours, we can see how beneficent the purpose, how reasonable the plan of His great work that was before Him. It is a work purely Divine, by which we are assured that it is a work of pure love and wisdom. The Babe who was born in Bethlehem was potentially the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, of whose government and peace there shall be no end. That which He was then potentially, He is now actually. Seated upon the throne of heaven, He

is the object of angelic worship; and the true Church on earth unites with the Church in heaven, in worshipping Him as that One who has all power in heaven and on earth, and has the keys of hell and of death; and who is mighty to save. EDITOR.

ON THE SUPERSTITIONS CONNECTED WITH SCIENCE. We use the word Superstition in this article as meaning a state of mind in which one believes that an object has certain properties it does not possess. For instance, many scientific men hold it to be a remnant of the lingering superstition of past ages to believe in an entity called life or spirit, and in a Personal Being called God, who created all things which we see around us, because they cannot, by what they call purely scientific methods, discover the existence of either.

We freely admit that many great and useful discoveries have been made by scientific men in this age; but when they set themselves up as the oracular teachers of truth in philosophy and theology, and claim for their speculations on these subjects scientific authority, we deem it right and useful to show that theirs are only quasi philosophical and theological speculations after all, and that their methods in treating these subjects are not more, if not less, inductive than were those of men who lived in early times, when there was less said about the glory and the omnipotence of science and scientific method, and on whose speculations modern scientists look back with pity, if not with contempt. Although scientific men boast of having a better and a snrer method of becoming acquainted with the arcana of nature than their predecessors, such as the Baconian methods of induction and verification, still we greatly doubt whether they have the same breadth or power of mind to grasp fundamental truths. That quality of mind which merely discovers certain facts in outward nature, although it may, in a sense, be called physically useful, is not, in the proper sense, great, if it is not competent to deduce from the facts which it discovers important principles connected with and satisfying to man's spiritual nature. If scientific men will regard with an all-absorbing interest the discovery of a new species of insect, and yet look upon the aspirations of their race after the knowledge of God and of their own spiritual nature and destiny with cold indifference, and pronounce all who believe in them to be unscientific because they do not in their investigations pursue what