enabled him not only to maintain a respectable station in the world, but to give the helping hand to the miserable. Hence the wretched bankrupt is restored to the means of working out an independence; and the debtor, who was pining within the walls of a jail, is released by the sympathy of virtuous beneficence. Hence one man shall stand in the room of another, be his representative and his surety, and thus hold over him the shield of his vicarious protection. Hence the debts or offences, of one man shall be as if they had never been: they shall become in effect obliterated, or forgotten.*

I might have spoken also of the redemption of slaves and captives by the property of their friends, and their restoration to liberty by means of hostages acting as their representatives; but I wish to confine myself to cases of distress brought on by the voluntary misconduct of those who suffer by it. If Christ, then, has stood in our place with our offended God, and if he has borne our sins, is there

*Thus among the Romans one word to express "to pardon," literally meant "not to know" anything of that which was pardoned.

anything in this alien from the common course of nature?

"Though nothing," says a profound divine,* "that another person does, can make us more personally valuable; yet the common course of things every day proves, that, what another person does, may avert misery from us, or procure happiness for us. If there is anything wrong in such a procedure, then the whole course of nature is manifestly so: it being necessary, in the ordinary course of nature, which is no less God's appointment than His supernatural dispensations, that one man should be rescued from ruin or advanced to happiness by the interposition of another. And the argu

ments, which are brought against the grace of Christ, conclude with equal strength, that is with no strength at all, against the charity of our fellow-creatures."

We know that the good and the virtuous often suffer for the crimes of the vicious. We have had many illustrations of this fact in the preceding pages, and we need not repeat or add to them here. Can it seem strange, then, if this course of Providence is reversed, and if the wicked be in their turn benefited by the virtues

Discourses of the late Rev. Jeremiah Seed.

of the good? Or, to apply this, can it seem strange, if, after we have suffered through the sins of our first parents, we are restored through the sinless perfections of an almighty Deliverer?

We may proceed to speak of the prevalence of sacrifices, which show the feelings of mankind on the transference of the sins of the guilty to the poor victim which is made to stand in their place, and to bear their iniquity. We might speak even of the daily slaughter of sheep and oxen for our food, as an instance of individuals dying for the lives of other but, although this is a good illustration of mediation in a general manner, I wish to confine the subject, as I stated before, to suffering as taking place on account of the guilt of others :— though indeed it is true that Scripture gives us ample cause for believing that the whole system of living on the lives of others was occasioned by the defection of Adam, and thus might easily be brought to bear on our argument. However, the feelings of mankind, as evinced by sacrifices, give an absolute sanction to the grand scripture doctrine of the one great sacrifice offered for sin by "the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world."

And all these things, when taken together,

M

afford us the strongest grounds of assurance, that what at first sight seemed to be nothing but the dream of folly contains in it a weight of evidence, and a solidity of foundation, which nothing can overthrow; and that what seemed altogether opposed to "the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent," is in truth agreeable to the most consummate wisdom and the most perfect understanding.

The reader will see the subject of atonement treated in the profoundest manner by Bishop Butler, in Part ii. Chapter 5, of his Analogy of Religion; but I was unwilling to give a mere abstract reference to that work. The plan of salvation as laid down in Scripture is so intimately connected with it, and the ridicule of objectors has been so keenly directed against it, that it did not appear proper to dismiss it so easily from our notice.

SECTION LIV.

1 COR. vi. 9.-" Neither shall fornicators inherit the kingdom of God."

THE vice here mentioned is defended as a natural indulgence, and as therefore undeserving of the wrath of the God of nature.

But there are surely other propensities, to which our nature inclines us, which meet notwithstanding with universal reprobation, even among those persons who advocate this. And, although some are very willing to excuse this in the case of young men, what do these same persons say, when they find it indulged by the other sex? And what would be their feelings, if they were to find that their sisters no more checked these very natural inclinations than their brothers or their sons? and yet it is undoubted that nature has not formed the other sex less susceptible of passion.

But in truth, nature, not less than Revelation, has manifestly decided against the indulgence in question. I need scarcely allude to