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curing reconciliation or atonement. They did not repent, because they did not believe that he brought them a command from God to repent. They did not believe him to be the Messiah as he claimed to be. That is, they rejected the ambassador whom God had sent. God was endeavouring through Christ to reconcile the world to himself, when by wicked works they were enemies to him. He offered them forgiveness simply on the terms of repentance and reformation. All that was wanting on their part was faith. The immediate disciples became convinced, with one exception, and were reconciled to God.

But the generality of the nation rejected him as their Messiah, and began to look upon him with hatred, and were determined to rid themselves of him and ruin his cause in the very inception. They therefore conspired together by false charges to take away his life. He was tried, condemned and crucified near the walls of Jerusalem. But for what was he condemned? For adhering to the declaration that he was the Messiah. He was called before the council of the nation and solemnly interrogated by the high priest. "I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ? And Jesus said, I am." Had he shrunk from that question and its consequences, there would have been an end of his religion and his mission. He died then a martyr to that one declaration, "I am the Christ," or Messiah. He sealed his mission, his embassy of repen

tance and reconciliation, with his blood.

We have this most affecting transaction described to us by the Evangelists in the most vivid and moving colours. And as we see him led forth to execution, and suspended on the cross, is there any thing in it which would lead us to imagine that he, who hangs upon that cross, from the sixth hour to the ninth, bore all the punishment which was due to all the sins of all the millions of the human race from the foundation of the world till its close? Such is the graphic power of the Evangelists that you cannot but place yourself in that cloud of witnesses to the crucifixion, and would it ever enter your mind, that that barbarous and cruel murder could be considered in the light of an acceptable sacrifice to God? Could these wicked hands who crucified and slew the meek and sinless Jesus be offering up an acceptable sacrifice to the Father of infinite compassion? Could the Deity be more pleased with the race of mankind, when a portion of them had cruelly and unjustly put to death the most spotless being who had ever appeared on earth? These are speculations about which the Apostles are profoundly silent, and are added to the scene by the imaginations of later ages. But while the Evangelic narrative is entirely silent as to these supposed effects of the death of Christ, it does state effects, which have been of unspeakable moment in the great office of the Redeemer, the reconciliation of the world to God. It drew upon him the intense and breathless gaze of that generation and all succeeding times. God did not need to be reconciled

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to man, to be changed, appeased and satisfied. But there was need that sinful man should be changed, and brought into such a state as that the spontaneous mercy of God might be consistently extended to him. "And I," said he, "if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." Myriads of hearts have been touched and melted to contrition, and thus reconciled to God by that affecting spectacle. These few hours of suffering then, though they produced no effect on the Deity to make him more ready to pardon mankind, for "God is love," did produce on mankind an immense, inestimable effect. The death of Christ was the mightiest agency ever brought to bear upon the human mind. "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish but have everlasting life.” Lifted up upon the summit of Calvary, amid the multitudes of the Jewish nation assembled to keep the Passover, "a spectacle to angels and to men," his dying and convulsed lips which had preached so much, and preached so much in vain, addressed the world in more moving language than they had ever uttered before, "Be ye reconciled to God." So the Jewish malice, instead of destroying him and crushing his cause, fixed upon him the sympathies and the confidence of millions of hearts. It put his character to the highest test, and by the manner in which he went through it, displayed him to the world in such a character of superhuman dignity, devotedness and

benevolence, as to make an irresistible impression upon the human mind in that and every succeeding age. Who then does not perceive, that this tremendous exhibition was intended to produce an impression on men and not on God? There was no need of an impression upon God to make him more merciful, for the very mission of Christ originated in love. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life." Now this was the very effect which his crucifixion had, to draw to him the attention and fix on him the belief of mankind, to lead them to accept the terms of repentance and reformation, which it had been the labour of his ministry to offer and urge upon them. Thus it was that the sufferings and death of Christ took away the sins of men, in the only way in which they can be removed, by producing faith, repentance and reformation. Thus Christ suffered and died on account of the sins of mankind, because men were sinners, and to take away their sins, but did not suffer their penalty. Had he suffered the full penalty of all the sins of all mankind, then they must in justice have been discharged, whether they repented or not, and all the sufferings inflicted on men in consequence of sin, is exacting the penalty twice, a proceeding which does not very well agree with those sentiments of justice which God has implanted within us. Besides, the death of Christ operated in another way to produce faith, repentance, and remission of

sin. The manner of his death was public, witnessed by multitudes. It was officially procured and officially ascertained. His body was placed under a guard of soldiers, and watched in a sepulchre hewn out of solid rock. What circumstances could have been devised by divine wisdom to render the miracle of his resurrection more striking and convincing, to the world? Thus it was, that the malice of the Jews prepared the way, in the most effectual manner, for God to place the grand seal of his authority on the mission of Christ, by raising him from the dead, in spite of all the powers of earth could do; and thus he "brought life and immortality to light" from the tomb, which since the creation had been a land of shadows, doubts and darkness. When, therefore, the angel came to roll away the stone from the door of the sepulchre, and thus open to man, to all future ages, an undying hope out of the very caverns of the grave, he found the way prepared, by all the attending circumstances of his death and burial, to spread the tidings far and wide, and call the nations from the death of sin to a life of holiness. Thus the malicious murder of Christ by the wise arrangement of Divine Providence, was made the most direct and efficacious means of promoting his cause, of reconciling the world to himself through Jesus Christ. These events did produce a sensation in the world which never was experienced before nor since, and which manifests itself in every page of the Acts of the Apostles. The accession

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