conduct, the same beneficence, the same meekness, the same patience, the same temperance, the same piety, the same resignation, the same heavenly mindedness, which he so earnestly recommended to his disciples. Who, my fellow Christians, can be insensible to the advantages which we have it in our power to derive from the contemplation of such a character? Who will refuse to admit, that the exhibition of it to mankind forms a suitable subject for thanksgiving?

A third benefit resulting from the mission of Jesus, to which we can scarcely be insensible, is to be found in the satisfactory and delightful views of the divine character which it has been the means of disseminating. The representations given by our Lord of the benevolence and mercy of the Deity, of his providential care of his creatures, and of the paternal relation in which he stands to them, however beautifully they may correspond with the testimony of nature, could never surely have been the offspring of the unassisted intellect of man. Coming to us, as they do, like his moral precepts, under the sanction of divine authority, they form a treasure which every virtuous and reflecting mind must pronounce to be positively inestimable. They engage all the warmest and best affections of our nature on the side of duty, bind us by the

cords of love to the throne of our Creator, and are calculated, in the highest possible degree, to promote both our improvement and our happi

ness.

A fourth benefit, which, though in some degree included in the last mentioned, is entitled to particular notice, and the more so from the great, perhaps unreasonable, stress laid upon it in popular systems of faith, is the assurance that God is, at all times, willing to extend to the sincerely penitent the pardon of their past offences, and, if they amend their lives, to receive them into his favour. To illustrate the placability of the Divine Being, was at all times a leading object with our Lord; and we need not go farther than his discourses and parables for the most satisfactory assurances of it. It pleased God, however, to present to the world, through the mediation of his beloved Son, a most striking and splendid illustration of this attribute, by empowering him, and afterwards his apostles in his name, to proclaim the free pardon of their past offences to all who should sincerely believe in him as the Messiah, and become his disciples. We are not aware, however, that such proclamations of forgiveness were addressed even by the apostles to those already within the Christian pale, much less that they were designed to

be authoritatively pronounced by the ministers of religion in after ages, as they are at this day by those of the Churches of Rome and England. Be this as it may, however, the gracious proclamation then made should serve to confirm our faith in the divine mercy, and, so far as we are conscious of guilt, to quicken our desires of a similar reconciliation. To pray for such a reconciliation, at all times, in the name and as the disciples of Jesus, is a tribute of respect which we owe to his services, and which we are permitted, nay commanded, to pay to him as the appointed Mediator.

The last benefit to which we shall refer at present, as conferred upon us by the mission of Jesus, is the assurance which it has given us of a general resurrection, to be followed by the introduction, into a state of endless happiness, of all those whom the divine mercy shall judge deserving of it. There are few amongst us, it is to be presumed, who can be insensible to the importance of this intelligence; few who can fail to perceive what a powerful influence it is calculated to exert upon the moral conduct both of individuals and of mankind at large; few who can be ignorant what a consolation it is in affliction, and what a support in death; few who can receive it without emotion, or regard the

messenger of it with indifference; few whose breasts do not sometimes at least swell with emotion at the contemplation of a prospect so glorious, and who do not then feel disposed, in the fulness of their hearts, to burst into the enthusiastic acclamations of the Jewish multitude, "Hosannah to the son of David; blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosannah in the highest."

We proposed to inquire, secondly, whether the views of the objects and effects of the mission of Christ, taken by the generality of our brethren, really add to the number or magnitude of the benefits derived from it. The greater number of Christians regard it as the main object of the mission of Jesus, and one, indeed, in which they commonly merge all others, to make, by his death, a vicarious atonement for the sins of mankind. Now, the supposed necessity for such atonement arises from two circumstances; first, the innate depravity of man, a doctrine for which we have as yet discovered no sufficient foundation in scripture; and, secondly, the otherwise inflexible justice of the Deity, an idea which could never have entered into the mind of a disciple of Jesus, had it not been introduced into it by a desire of giving greater plausibility to this very doctrine of the atonement. Incapable, as

we are, therefore, of perceiving the necessity for such an atonement, it cannot be a matter either of surprise or of regret to us, if the oftener we rise from the perusal of the New Testament the more satisfied we become that the remedy is quite as visionary as the disease. Jesus himself never preached the doctrine of the innate depravity of human nature. He never made known to his disciples, in plain language, that his death was necessary to satisfy the divine justice; and we protest most earnestly against building articles of faith, supposed to be essential to salvation, upon figurative expressions, the disjointed fragments of an epistolary correspondence. Regarding the doctrine of a vicarious atonement, therefore, as contradictory to the spirit of our Saviour's preaching, dishonourable to the divine character, and required by no existing necessity, we are not conscious of suffering any loss by the rejection of it. To us, at least, the supposition of its truth would seem to diminish, rather than increase, the value of Christianity.

Having thus considered the two questions originally proposed, it may be well for us to say a few words with a view of accounting for the insensibility which many men display to the real blessings conferred by Christianity.

It is a