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Those everlasting chains were forged in love
Impartial; perfect goodness binds them on,
And turns the fatal key that locks up all

Who enter once that dreadful gate; unlocked

To none returning."

If these lines of the gentle author of "The Age of Benevolence" be less genial than the gorgeous imaginings with which the author of "Festus" marshals the entire tribes of Gehenna, Satan their suzerain not excepted, into heaven, at the windingup of the final Judgment

"Behold they come, the Legions of the lost,
Transformed already, by the bare behest
Of God our Maker, to the purest form

Of seraph-brightness"—

it is not difficult to determine which representation has the endorsement of sound ethics and inspired truth.

The introduction of the atonement into the administration of God over our race, which was no after thought but a counsel from eternity, does not vary our conclusions concerning the equity of the Divine goodness. Its triumphant justification is, that it fully maintains the sacredness of moral law and infinite truthfulness, while it transfers the decreed punishment of sin, as an expiation, to the head of one victim, himself unstained by depravity, able to propitiate a world's transgressions, willing to do it, and so allied to the Godhead as to make obvious to all worlds that Jehovah, in refusing to issue pardons to rebels except by such a vicarious ransom, is no less the foe of sin and the determined upholder of a holy law and government, than if the course of his justice had taken its distributive execution on each individual offender.

The sacrifice of Christ, meeting the just and good demands of God's violated statute by its substitutionary virtues, guards at every point, with extremest vigilance, the integrity of his moral government over man. Its mercy leans, in no wise, toward license. It offers to the condemned reconciliation with God, as it lays an ample basis for the reconcilement of God's regal position with revolted subjects. But the death of Christ was never designed actually to effect our restoration to God. All that the atonement could do, unless by breaking down all

equity, was "to render pardon possible on conditions seen to be safe and wise." Its provisions for forgiveness are unlimited, but of itself it no more accomplishes the salvation of men, than the original promulgation of God's perfect law secured universal obedience; than the loading a table with food removes, without further action, the hunger of the starving beholders. The final cause of this wonderful measure was the same as that which inaugurated the administration of Jehovah under the code of Eden, namely, the securing of a character in the creature conformed to that of the Creator. It aims at the reproduction of holiness, where it should ever have been, to the widest attainable extent. But it operates no arbitrary, unconditional revolutions. Christ's work of expiation makes no man holy save by his free, unforced abandonment of sin as his chosen portion. Penitently and submissively he must believe on the Son of God. This is a requisition inseparable, in the nature of the case, from a plan of redemption the only purpose of which is, to bring about a cheerful return to loyalty of those who have been trav elling, all their lives, the road of rebellion and death. Beyond this, the divine mercy goes not in proposing a basis of reunion with the fallen. It could not go beyond this and sustain its rectitude as pledged to the defence of moral purity. Every sinner may be saved through our Lord's mediation. Whether he shall be depends on his own decision under the movements of the Spirit of God. Much as Jehovah desired man's observance of the law of Eden, he did not compel him to keep it. He did not compel angels to hold their first estate in heaven longer than they elected. Sɔ, under the purchased grace of the blood of Jesus. Whether we now discern the truth or not, light enough will doubtless illumine it at the final day to show to all the gathered multitudes at the Judgment, that the equity of the divine goodness demands that the persistent rejecter of Christ's atonement shall perish in his sins.

The principle which we have illustrated and vindicated runs not less obviously through the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit in human hearts. There is here no arbitrary exertion of almighty power in the production of holiness, which might imperil the sanctions of virtue by deadening the conscience with the opiate of irresponsibility. Holiness is a voluntary, an

active exercise, a preferred habit of the soul. While the trophies of the Spirit's power are as many as the truly regenerate on earth and in heaven, that agent of grace well understands, for his own inspired word has affirmed it, that the only submission which God will accept, which in fact can be called submission, is the sinner's own choice to return to the service of his sovereign. This the Spirit of God secures, by agitating the conscience, enlightening the understanding, moving the affections. Yet with his last, most melting entreaty, he still but says, "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." If, when this invitation given in good faith to all, is naturally negatived so far as God's rights and claims are concerned, the Divine Spirit continues his efforts with a remnant of the unbelieving and disobedient throng, until they relent and are converted, who shall impeach the justness or the goodness of this sovereign election of the saved to everlasting life? That selecting mercy is as equitable as it is efficacious. It simply decrees that all shall not utterly perish in their needless and most guilty impenitency. It holds the prerogative of judging, according to its own wisdom, how many and whom its long suffering patience can thus wait upon with the offers of forgiveness, until their wills submit to duty. It has adjudged this question from the beginning. It interferes with no one's salvation, while it prevents a promiscuous and universal destruction of infatuated rebels. It prevents this by no coercive measures, but in strict accordance with the free and responsible nature of the soul of man. The election of grace, so far from hindering salvation, is the last and only hope that any of our fallen and sin-bewitched race will avail themselves of Christ's redemption. Instead of quarrelling with this doctrine, every lover of God and man should rather join most heartily in the apostle's doxology:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: "According as he hath chosen us in him, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

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Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

"To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved:

"In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace."-Eph. i. 3—7.

Throughout this vindication of the equity of the divine goodness, two facts are conspicuous. The one is :-That God is unchangeably resolved to uphold free moral action in his intelligent offspring. The provisions of his law, the arrangements of his grace recognize every where man's personal responsibleness to duty. Jehovah has ever kept open an avenue to the human mind to influence its decisions; he is its actual source of power, without whom it can do nothing: he has steadily plied it with motives, agencies, spiritual forces, adapted to its constitution, to secure right feeling and action. But he who fashioned the human soul on the model of the divine has never offered "violence to the will of the creature.” He never will. Who would desire him to depart from his fixed rule of conduct? to level his jurisdiction over mind to the low impulsions of mere mechanical force? They might covet this self-contradiction and self-subversion, who, wishing to live a brutal life, would escape the necessity of accounting for its selfabuses to God. Sin is ever restive under restraint. Is it wise for theological speculation to propound views either of divine or human agency, legitimate inferences from which will furnish the restive transgressor with an almost certain quietus for his fears?

The other fact which confronts us in the light in which we here are standing is :-That God will forever hold in his own hand the right of confirming unalterably man's final determinations. When, in the individual history of men, that act of confirmation is made, the Omniscient alone knows. In the case of the lost, its moment is that at which the spirit of truth and grace leaves the transgressor, not again to renew his saving endeavors. Then, whether at death or previously, hope to him terminates.

"To pass that limit is to die!"

In the saved, the hour of the soul's submission to Christ confirms its title, by its adopting Father, to ultimate, complete salvation. These ratifications of the decisions of time the Judgment will authoritatively announce to all worlds, and eternal ages will perpetuate in the fruit of the seed sown in the body, whether it be good or evil.

How true of these harmonies of Jehovah's attributes of good

ness with the demands of universal equity are the Psalmist's inspired words: "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other!"

ARTICLE II.

CULTURE OF SOCIAL LIFE IN THE CHURCHES.

WE revert very naturally to the first age of the Christian church for examples of the spirit and practice of a pure and apostolic Christianity. It seems quite certain to us, that they, who so recently had received the epistles of holy doctrine and living from the personal followers of our Lord, should furnish illustrations of the power of this faith over the life, which would be well worthy the study and imitation of all after times. As we might thus expect, so we find it. Concerning regulations of church order and administration which are not vital to the Christian body, we discover no positive and invariable rule: while nothing can be more clear and satisfactory than the light shed upon the really essential questions of the personal character and social intercourse of the early believers. With the precept of Christ so fresh upon the record: "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another"; with the ink scarce dry upon the letters of a John and a Paul; "My little children, love one another"; "Be kindly affectioned one to another, with brotherly love"; we look to see, in the common lives of those Christians, a marked expression of mutual regard and helpfulness.

Nor are we disappointed. The outburst of charitable sympathy, which made the days of Pentecost so memorable, was not a momentary freshet of brotherly love. It was the headspring of a deeply flowing river of benevolence and beneficence which did not lose itself in the sands of selfishness and indifference for many generations. On a large scale, the first period of the church of Christ gives us the truest and fairest manifest

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