our conscious debt to grace exceed all computation, and defy all repayment. We may conceive the intensity of this love by numbering, and estimating, if we can, the difficulties through which it had to wade. He had to save sinners, not in spite of the law, but according to the law, to show God's law righteous while it condemns, and righteous still while it acquits; God true while he stands by his testimony, "the soul that sins shall die;" and no less true while he makes real his declaration, "he that believeth in the Son of God hath everlasting life;"-God just while he justifies the ungodly, and holy while he takes sinners to his bosom. These are some of the seeming impossibilities that love had to do -the innumerable contrarieties it had to reconcile-the infinite obstructions through which it had to work its way, to reach us. The height from which it came is the throne of Deity; the depthto which it descends is the ruin from which it plucks us; its breadth is the earth which it circles as with a zone, and its length from first to last is Eternity.

"He washed us from our sins in his own blood." This is the scriptural phrase employed to denote his atoning expiatory sufferings. Nothing else but the life of the Son of God expended on the cross could insure the forgiveness of the least and fewest of these sins of ours. No other element had virtue. No voice from height or depth in the universe could say, with authority, to the least transgressor, "thy sins be forgiven thee." No fasting, mortification, or penance, or absolution of the priest, or indulgence of pope or jubilee, ever approached the inner seat of the soul's disquiet; none of these rise high enough to reach God, or descend low enough to reach us. The accusations of conscience in the midst of all these "refuges of lies," outnumber its excuses, and the law of God, in spite of these and thousands more, will fulminate and make felt its lightnings. Nor does sin ever exhaust its penalties, and thus render forgiveness unnecessary, and the shedding of that blood uncalled for. A convict banished for a definite period, exhausts his sentence, and thus becomes free; but were that convict to commit, in the course of his exile, a new crime, a new sentence would fasten on him, and add to the years of his banishment; we sin while we suffer, we add to our punishment by adding to our guilt, and thus, by the very nature and

necessity of the case, sin is an eternal evil-never working out its cure, but ever its perpetuity; it is a self-generating evileternity does not exhaust it, it adds to it. An atonement was essential to our restoration; without shedding of blood there could be no remission of sins-and what an atonement! it has touched the deep spot of anger in the bosom of God, and, descending along its dark line to its utmost havoc and curse, it has rescued, reconciled, restored us. Christ pardons us while we sin, and draws us off while he pardons alike from the love and practice of sin.

It was his own blood that made this atonement, and it alone. No other element mingled with it, nothing could heighten its value it needed nothing. He trod the wine-press alone. He suffered alone, and his suffering was sufficient. He obeyed alone, and his obedience was all that was required. His is all the merit of the process, and therefore all the glory of the result. He paid all we owed to God, and purchased more than God owed to us. He began it in the manger, and finished it upon the cross. He humbled himself to merit, and he is exalted to bestow salvation. What depth of dye must there be in sin! what intensity of evil in that terrible monosyllable! what concentrated poison, seeing no less illustrious a victim, no less costly a price was required for its expiation, and no less precious a thing than the blood of Christ could wash it away. Tremble at sin. Plague, pestilence, and famine are nothing to sin. These scathe the body, it blasts the soul. These have but a temporary effect, while sin creates an eternal wo. But through Christ I am washed from my sins by that precious blood, alike from their curse, their condemnation, and all their penal consequences. The law remains in all its force, its sacredness, and its stability, and yet it has no hold of me. All my guilt is put away, all my demerits are cancelled, and from no spot in the wide universe can a sentence of condemnation come upon me, or the thunder of a violated law smite me. But I see in the atonement of Jesus not merely a channel for the efflux of the love and forgiving mercy of God, but a standing proof of that love, its measure, its exponent, and representative. It not only shows me that God can forgive me consistently with all his attributes, but also that he delights to do so. Hence what

this sacrifice expresses, is as precious as what it does. It is evidence to me that my salvation is not a mere provision for a bare escape from punishment, but the proof of the existence of a love in God my Father that longs to embrace me. It meets precisely what I need-it supplies what I long and thirst to know. I require to know, in order to have peace, not only that God shall not punish me, but that he will love me-not only freedom from the curse, but friendship with God. I cannot be happy with mere safety. I require reconciliation. I cannot consent to enter heaven, and spend its cycles as a pardoned convict, tolerated, spared, but no more-I long, I pant to be there, an adopted son. I feel that God must not only let me go, but take me back, ere I can be happy. I must be placed, not merely beyond the penalties of the law, but beneath the love of God. I require to be raised higher than pardon, justification, and sanctification; I must not only pass the tribunal of the legislator; I cannot rest till I repose in the bosom, or rest amid the sunshine of the reconciled countenance of my Father. I see all this embodied, expressed, and secured in the atonement of Jesus. It is not only the way to heaven, but the measure and the pledge of the welcome that awaits me there. It is thus I hear richer music in the words, "It is finished," than I ever heard before. Now can I say and sing with an emphasis I never felt before, "Unto him that loved me, and washed me from my sins in his own blood; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever."

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It

But safety from the curse and reinstatement in the love of God does not exhaust the destiny that awaits the children of God. He that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, makes us kings and priests unto God. is not enough to save us to love us. He will also dignify us. The safety of the pardoned, the joy of the restored, the adoption of sons, are heightened by the superadded dignity of kings and the sacredness of priests. The crown of beauty and of empire we lost in Adam, is restored in Christ. "Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood." Paradise regained, includes man's sovereignty restored. How precious that sacrifice, which not only saves from destruction, and restores to love, but lifts also to a dignity beside which all earthly

royalty is but a gleam on the troubled waters of earth! We are kings, hid it may be, but true and real.

We are also made priests. "Ye are a royal priesthood." If priests, we must have sacrifices: what are these? "To do good, and to communicate, forget not; with such sacrifices God is well pleased." "I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." Our altar is no perishable one; we have an altar of which they have no right to eat, which serve the tabernacle." "By HIм let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually." Thus Christ is the eternal altar that sanctifies all that is laid on it, the widow's mite, the royal dowry, and the angel's anthem. Man shall once more be replaced in his pristine position, as the priest of the world,—the eye of the earth, to see above it that innumerable host in the overshadowing sky, the sentinels and outposts of which only we now catch a glimpse of, and God throned in the midst of them; the ear of earth, to hear the voice of God,—the mind of the earth, to know God, the heart of the earth, to love him; and all this that he may be the priest of the earth, to devote, in ceaseless offering, all its treasures to him whose will called them into being, and, like the priests of Levi, to have no portion save God, the portion that includes all besides. To him who thus loved us, we give all the "glory."

Ours is the enjoyment of the blessing. His is the glory; this is the light of heaven, this the language of the redeemed, the key-note of their songs, the expression of their inmost hearts. Not one voice in that innumerable multitude will be lifted up in praise of itself; were there such a voice, it would be intolerable discord. All the inhabitants of heaven feel that they can never overpraise "Him who loved them, and washed them from their sins in his own blood." There are no Socinians in heaven, for all there adore and worship the Lamb. Nor are there any Romanists there, for the undivided glory is given to him who sits upon the throne; all tribes, and nations, and people, and tongues are there, but in virtue of the sacrifice of Jesus; circumstantially different as tongue and tribe can make them, essentially one, as the blood of Christ alone can constitute them.

Dwellers on the Mississippi and Missouri, and in the backwoods of Canada, and the prairies of the West, are there. Millions from the Andes, and the isles of the Pacific, from the mountains of Thibet, and the cities of China, from every jungle of India, and from every pagoda of Hindostan, the untutored Arab, and the uncultivated Druse, and the "tribes of the weary foot," the children of Salem are there, and Abraham, and Job, and Isaiah, and John and Peter, and Augustine, and Wickliffe, and Luther, are there also, and many we in our uncharitableness, or bigotry, or exclusiveness, or ignorance, excluded from heaven, will be there also; and our sires, and sons, and babes, and parents will be there, completed circles, never again to be broken; and their united voices will give utterance to their deep and enduring gratitude: "Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God, even the Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever, Amen."

Dear brethren, do not say the Book of Revelation is not the gospel.

John and those associated with him show their sense of the obligations and mercies of which they are the happy recipients, by ascribing unto the Fountain of them all "the glory and the dominion for ever." We thus show our gratitude on earth by ascribing audibly to our Eternal Benefactor the glory of all. We cannot be silent even in this world, as the children of such and so countless benefits. We will not consent to wrap our blessings in a napkin, or bury them in oblivion. We are not so unaffected by them that we can easily forget them, nor so ashamed to acknowledge them that we shall refuse audibly to proclaim them. While we never forget on earth the sins by which we have dishonoured God, we can never forget the rich grace in the exercise of which he has most graciously forgiven them. The recollection of the former will keep us truly humble, and the recollection of the latter will preserve us eminently thankful. It is related that when the Greeks heard that the Macedonian invader was overthrown, a whole nation raised to the skies so loud a shout, owenp, owτnp, Saviour! Saviour! that birds upon the wing dropped down. Fable should become fact in our case. They