in our hearts; enabling us to see that work, and to see in God's peculiar, eternal love to us; not opening to us the book of life, and showing us our names there, but doing something that makes us almost as joyful as though that book were opened to us; showing us the hand of God in our own souls his converting, saving hand- his hand apprehending us as his own; making us feel, as it were, his grasp of love, and feel, too, that it is a grasp which he shall never loosen.

Were the

2. Mark, next, the character of these comforts. They correspond with the psalmist's affliction or sorrow. sorrows" within him;" not superficial, but low down (as his words seem to imply) in his heart? These comforts also were "within him; " he does not say "they delight me," but "they delight my soul" enter deeply within me, get to the diseased, wounded part, and carry comfort there. And were his sorrows great? was he suffering from "a multitude of thoughts?" His comforts also were great and numerous; as he says in another place, "I will go into thy house in the multitude of thy mercies"-surrounded with mercies - carrying within me comforts so many that I cannot count them. You remember how he prays in the fifty-first psalm; when he supplicates the pardon of his sins, he beseeches God to have mercy on him "according to the multitude of his tender mercies." He knew his sins to be great; he wanted a pardon as great. And so here, brethren, with his sorrows; they were many, but not more in number than the comforts God gave him. He could find something in God to set against every distressing thought within him.

In some versions of this passage this idea is more clearly expressed. They read it thus: "according to the multitude of my thoughts within me, thy comforts delight me." "My troublous thoughts I find to be the measure of thy consolations. Thou lookest at my sorrows, to see how many and how great they are; and then thou takest of thy comforts, and pourest them into my soul, till thy comforts equal my sorrows and surpass them." Changing disquietude, not simply into peace, observe, but into pleasure: "delight." He does not say, "Thy comforts strengthen," or "sustain," but "Thy comforts delight my soul." Here is another blessed truth taught us, brethren. We can soon empty earthly things of all the good they contain. We sometimes feel, in trouble, as though we had got from earthly friends all the comfort they could give us. But God is a fountain of good; there is no emptying of him. In him there is a well of consolation; or rather, many wells of it: there is no drawing of them dry. As our sufferings abound, so he can make our consolations also abound; and superabound, rising above our sufferings, so that we are ready at times to forget

them.

Does he send heavy and deep afflictions?then is the hour in which the soul often discovers for the first time how rich the Lord is in consolation, how mighty to comfort, as he had found him before "mighty to save." Then, dear brethren, is the time to look upwards and say "Now, Lord, comfort me; now let the long looked-for abundance of thy consolations come. Thou hast long sustained, long upheld me; where should I have been, hadst thou not? But now, Lord, now in this hour of trouble, delight my soul.' There is joy in thee-joy in thee for sinners such as I am; now, O Lord, let my soul receive of it. It has long thirsted, long waited for it; oh! let it come." And this joy, brethren, these comforts, let me add, are frequently imparted to the believer at such seasons as these; when he least expects them. The text seems to intimate this also. The psalmist says, that it was in the very thick of his disquieting thoughts, "in the multitude of them," when his heart was full of them, when they were at the very worst, and he was suffering most from them-it was then that the Lord's comforts came and delighted him. And look at the eighteenth verse: there is the same idea. "When I said, My foot slippeth," when I thought myself in the very act of falling, " thy mercy, O Lord, held me up." The Lord's mercies and the Lord's comforts are often the nearest to us when we think them the farthest away. In this sense, as well as in many others, our extremity becomes his opportunity. So some of you, brethren, I doubt not, have found. There have been times when you have thought, and thought again, on this point and that, and all to no purpose; you have taken counsel, and much counsel with your soul, but the only fruit of it has been, you have had sorrow in your heart daily; your hope has failed you, your spiritual strength has failed you, darkness has seemed to be spreading itself all around and within you. Have you never found, brethren, that this has been the time God has chosen for sending relief- for pouring into your souls from himself such beams of light and consolation as have made your whole souls wonder and rejoice together? There was no delight, no sensible comfort within you, while the crowd was collecting - while only a few disquieting thoughts or things troubled you; but when the crowd was collected — when trouble without, or trouble within, or perhaps both together came on you in their full measure and force, then God's comforts came and "delighted your souls." In the "evening time," when you thought that darkness was about to set in, the thick darkness of a long night, in the "evening time," he made it "light."

So it has been with us, brethren, and so probably it will be with us many times again. We must learn to strengthen our faith from our

past happy experience; learn to look for "the goodness of the Lord” in the days that are to come, just as we have experienced it in the days that are past. While we make this our prayer- "Thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation; " let us make this our resolution - "Thou hast been my help, O Lord: therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice."

Is there a man here who is suffering from "thoughts within him," about which I have scarcely said one word? a man whom God by his Spirit has made to think of his ways, and who at this moment is disquieted with thoughts concerning the sinfulness of those ways, and the end to which they may lead him? Is there any man here whose chief sorrows are sorrows about a guilty soul, and what he thinks a near opening hell? Oh! if there is such a man here, (and would that these walls contained hundreds of such !) I would say to him from this text not one atom of comfort, real safe comfort, can you ever get, till you look out of yourself, and entirely out of yourself for it. You want pardon, you want help, you want hope, you want salvation; dear brethren, you may think about these things till you drop into the grave, but you will never get one of them till you have found out that mere thinking will never do- will never turn a guilty soul into a pardoned one, will never take off from a man's guilty head the burden of his great multitude of sins, will never close an open hell, nor open a shutup heaven. These things are all made over the blessings you want are all made over to the Lord Jesus Christ; they are dwelling in him for you: and there is no way of getting them but by looking to him for them, making him your pardon, him your help, him your hope, him your salvation. It is a mercy that you have been led to think; it is thinking, that through God's mercy has brought you acquainted with your real condition. It has discovered to you the evil; it has done its work. But it can do no more than that, brethren. It is looking upwards it is believing that must bring you the remedy; a going out of yourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ; a turning of thoughtfulness into prayerfulness; a turning of painful musings within you, into earnest supplications to that Savior who is above you. It is making him, to your souls, the spring of all you want, and all you desire.

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SERMON XVIII.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT.

BY REV. W. M. BUNTING,

OF HALIFAX.

"The precious blood of Christ.”—1 PETER i. 19.

THE atonement is exhibited in Scripture, not only as the procuring cause of sanctification, but as the most powerful of motives to personal holiness. The notion that it operates and avails wholly, or chiefly, in the way of persuasion, to the exclusion of its propitiatory value, is one which is unsound and Socinian; its primary effect is in the mind of God, engaging him to forgive sin, and by his Holy Spirit to restore the forgiven sinner; but yet, by turning him to a consideration and regard of the righteousness which does so, it undoubtedly exerts a secondary influence upon the mind of the sinner, animating his faith, attracting his love, and stimulating him to duty and obedience. Therefore to trust in Christ as an all-sufficient sacrifice is not only the authoritative condition of God's maintaining his fixed design in the salvation of the sinner; but that adherence to Christ, and affection for him, which such a faith necessarily includes in it, has a natural tendency to assist in maintaining, by its continued agency, habits and dispositions to holiness in the mind of the Christian believer; who, by contemplating the atonement thus set before him, is led, in some degree, to appreciate the value of its offers; and to draw such inferences with regard to the immensity of the blessings it secures, as well as to the demerits of that moral evil which it expiates, as greatly to heighten his desires after the former, and deepen his abhorrence of the latter.

And this is the view which the apostle takes of the words in connection with the text, "Be ye holy, for I am holy. And if ye call on the Father," if your hopes are spiritual, consistent, acceptable, -"who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear:" such is the practical exhortation of the apostle. And this is the grand motive which he exhibits: "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ." And I hope, in dependence upon your prayers, that it may tend in some measure to promote your growth in holiness, and

other valuable objects in the Christian life, if we expatiate for a few moments upon the ineffable and inestimable preciousness of that blood, as it presents itself under several separate, essential, and enhancing considerations.

Suffer me, however, to remind you that our approach to this subject should be reverential, tranquil, and deliberate; it is a subject for much thought and much fear. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit may fill our minds with this truth; that he will prepare our hearts to receive the moral and practical directions it suggests, and that he may enable us to form a proper estimate of the preciousness and value of the atoning blood, as the foundation of all our present holiness and happiness, and of all our future hopes.

I. LET US ENDEAVOR TO ESTIMATE IT IN ITS ADAPTATION TO ALL THE WANTS OF MAN, AND ITS ANSWERABLENESS TO ALL THE PROPERTIES OF GOD.

We must admit it to be important, to be necessary, and to have precisely the relation which it should bear to our interests and hopes. The alternative to the atonement would not have been God's dishonor, but it would have been man's ruin. The redemption of the soul is precious; and therefore the redemption of Christ must be so. Man of himself has wronged, and would wrong God by his rebellion; he is a rebel against him; and if ever that rebel was to be forgiven, if ever Jehovah, if I may so say, and I think I speak upon the authority and with the warrant of the Scripture, if ever Jehovah was to be justified in forgiving him, it could but be by means of an atonement, adequate, appropriate, and acceptable.

Let us propose to ourselves the necessity of this sacrifice; and of course the foundation of the value of the sacrificial blood must be more particularly considered and ascertained. We will endeavor, then, in the manner of the great apostle of the Gentiles, to reason out of the Scriptures upon this point, not independently of their principles and tenor, but to reason out of them, by openly alleging, demonstrating, and explaining that Christ must needs suffer.

He who made man has an indisputable right to govern him. Of course he does so in conformity with his own nature, which is infinitely holy, just, and good. He has an essential, unalterable right in him, to uphold his government over him, and to compel his creatures to submit to him. Of course the principles of his government will be embodied in a well-understood law, which will be in its turn the basis of his practical administration. We learn from Scripture that this law was, in its origin, essentially a spiritual law; and as the natural effect of a