the Eternal Word, became incarnate, and offered himself a sacrifice for the sins of the world. This, we are aware, is not the common view, perhaps it is not the most natural view. It is not the one which first occurs to the mind, or commends itself at once, to our acceptance. Still, it may be the true view after all. The nature of God may be very different from what we commonly think, and it is possible that great and popular errors are cherished regarding it.

May not theologians have conceded too much to the philosophical sceptic, and especially to the natural theist, in admitting that". our God -the God of nature and of grace, is so bound in the chains of a rigid and everlasting immutability, as to be incapable of all affection, and consequently of those alternations of feeling, which, while they subject human beings, formed in the image of God, to some suffering, are yet the source of their most exquisite felicity? Is it certain that the perfection of the divine nature consists in its absolute fixedness, its unvarying placidity? We talk fluently of the unchangeableness of God, of his absolute impassibility, his "emotionless" calm, his boundless and everlasting blessedness; and yet, what are we to say to the fact of the incarnation? What a mighty and mysterious change was that, when the Godhead vested itself in clay! What infinite condescension-what pity-what sympathy-what privation! But pity, sympathy, privation are often the deepest forms of suffering! Indeed, what is suffering, in its fundamental sense, but privation? And if the incarnation of the Godhead was not a phantasm altogether, as many of the ancient heretics deemed it, does not this single fact prove that the idea of the divine passibility, in the matter of Christ's "passion," is by no means so unscriptural or extravagant as we may have deemed it? Was not the suffering Saviour "in the form of God"? Was he not in his higher nature, that is to say, in his relations to the Trinity, "equal with God?" Did he not "empty himself" -(to translate the language of Scripture literally,) in order that "being found in the form of a servant," he might become "obedient unto death, even the death of the cross"? Truly "great is the mystery of godlinessGod was manifest in the flesh!"

"Heaven wept that man might smile;

Heaven bled that man might never die!"

In all this, we ask again, was there nothing of privation, nothing of self sacrifice,-nothing of real, though sublime suffering-in a word, of suffering worthy of a God? "Heaven and the heaven of heavens," says Robert Hall, in one of his sublime bursts of eloquence, "could not contain him; yet he dwelt, to all appearance, in the body of an infant;-the invisible Creator clothed in human form, the Ancient of days cradled as an infant of days, he who upholdeth all things, sinking under a weight of suffering,--the Lord of life, the Lord of glory, expiring on a cross, the Light of the world sustaining an awful eclipse,-the Sun of Righteousness immerged in the shadow of death!" Works, vol. 1, p. 298. There is something in all this so stupendous, that we are lost in utter amazement at the bare conception of it, and can only exclaim, in the language of an old divine, who had gained some slight conception of the glory of God: "O the depths! O the depths!" A folly, an absurdity! cries the infidel world. A mystery, profound and adorable rejoins the devout Christian, as he gazes, with trembling awe, upon the cross of Christ. "Let it be counted folly, or frenzy, or fury, whatsoever," says Hooker, "it is our comfort and our wisdom; we care for no knowledge in the world, but this, that man hath sinned, and God hath suffered: that God hath made himself the Son of Man, and that men are made the righteousness of God." Discourse of Justification.

One or two distinctions, not made by "A Layman," deserve our attention at this point. For example, there are two kinds of suffering, essentially different. The one results from imperfection and guilt, the other from the noblest exercise of virtue. Remorse has no hope in it and ends in death. But sympathy with the sufferings of others, or the endurance of any kind of infliction, for a worthy object, is always cheered by hope, and results in the improvement of character. The one kind of suffering is associated with the deepest vice, the other, with the highest virtue. The former even indicates disordered moral action; the latter, the purity and harmony of all the

moral powers. Thus, then, while bad men suffer as a result of their vice, good men may suffer as a result of their virtue. In their endeavors to benefit their fellow creatures, the purest and best may subject themselves, voluntarily, to much suffering. Moreover, they seem capable of such suffering, just in proportion as they rise in the scale of being and excellence. By placing themselves in certain relations to the guilty or unfortunate, and assuming, to some extent, the responsibilities of such persons, the deepest and strongest sympathies of their nature may be so enlisted as to subject them to sufferings far more intense than ever spring from mere physical infliction. It is easy to imagine that such sympathy and such suffering are also possible to angels; for if they can rejoice over the repentance of a sinner, surely they can weep over his fall. Jesus Christ, as a man, was sinless and perfect; and yet how often he wept-how deeply he suffered! In his case, suffering which sprang, at least in part, from sympathy with the wretched, whose interests he assumed, indicated no disordered moral action. His very perfection rendered his sufferings the more intense and overpowering. Shall we then exclude the Deity himself from the very possibility of participating, if he so wills it, in such emotions? Is he alone, of all beings in the universe, to be shut out from sympathy with the wretched, simply because it involves something like suffering? The mere perfection of his moral nature can- ́ not certainly prevent this; the fact of its being infinite may seem to be a barrier to such sympathy; but we are satisfied that there is more in the seeming than in the reality. "In all their afflictions," says the prophet, speaking of the ancient church, "he was afflicted." "Is Ephraim my dear son," says Jehovah, by the prophet Jeremiah, "is he a pleasant child? For since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still. Therefore my bowels (or heart, perhaps.) are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord." Jer. xxxi. 20. We know the reply that will be made to such questions. They will be styled figurative, accommodative, and so forth; but the question still recurs, have they any meaning, any force; or are they a mere play upon words, or rather a mere play upon the feelings of

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those to whom they are addressed? Is there nothing in the heart of our Heavenly Father which responds to such expressions? Are we to regard him, notwithstanding the force and tenderness of his language, as a Being infinitely beyond our sympathies, a Being utterly impassive and cold? Have not critics and theologians, under the influence of certain abstract, metaphysical notions derived more from the "wisdom of man," than the "word of God," been too ready to explain away the most touching appeals of Holy Writ, by referring them to a refined anthropomorphism? Have they not, with a singular perversion of ingenuity, referred them more to the writers of the Scriptures, than to God who inspired them? But even admitting that God speaks to us in language accommodated to the views and feelings of men, has he not a reason, in his very nature, for doing so, and is it not unphilosophical as well as unscriptural, to divest all such language of its energy and life, to abstract from it, so to speak, the flesh and blood, and leave nothing but a dry skeleton? Why should it be deemed a thing incredible that the Infinite God should become incarnate, and in the exercise of a yearning, boundless pity for the sons of men, voluntarily suffer for their everlasting redemption?

It is true, all suffering, in itself considered, must be involuntary. That which leads to it, may be chosen, but suffering itself is not a matter of volition. It is a result of circumstances, an effect of a previously existing cause. Like happiness, it has no independent existence, but flows from a certain order of things, or a particular condition of mind. Hence it is only in a certain popular seuse that we speak of the Divine Being as possessed of the capacity voluntarily to suffer. By this it is meant, that his nature is such as to admit of his placing himself in such relations to the fallen, as to suffer on their behalf;—a distinction not made by the author of the work upon which we are commenting, but one, in our judgment, essential to the thorough discussion of the question which he has mooted. A good man cannot choose to suffer, by means of a mental effort, but he may place himself in such circumstances and relations, as eventually to subject himself to much innocent sorrow. He may assume the responsibilities of an unfortunate friend, or of an erring child, and thus suffer vastly more than even the friend and the child

themselves, possessing, as he does, a higher and purer nature. So the Lord Jesus Christ, "took not on him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham." In all things he "made himself like" unto lost and wretched man, put himself "under the law," and passed through "a baptism" of blood and agony, such as the universe has never seen. In all this, it is true he had a sublime satisfaction, as every pure and virtuous being has in suffering for a worthy object. But his agony was deep and overwhelming. Now did he act thus, and suffer thus, simply as a man, or as God manifest in the flesh? If the Son suffered, did not the Father suffer too, at least in sympathy with the Son? If perfection was no bar to suffering in the case of Christ, why was it a bar to suffering in the case of God? Infinity has nothing in it, that we can perceive, to prevent such suffering, but rather to render it more intense and overpowering. Is it not in the sufferings of Christ, that we see the love of God? Does not the Scripture place the principal stress upon this stupendous fact, when it appeals to us with reference to the love of God? And do we not feel that God and Christ being one, one in sympathy and suffering, in compassion and sacrifice, we are laid under a debt of infinite obligation as well to the Father as to the Son? In a word, is not this the very mystery-the very power of the cross? These views we are happy to corroborate by the following quotation from Chalmers, quoted in the work of "A Layman."

"It is with great satisfaction that I now clear my way to a topic the most salutary, and, I will add, the most sacramental within the whole compass of revealed faith; even to the love wherewith God so loved the world as to send his Son into it to be the propitiation for our sins. I fear, my brethren, that there is a certain metaphysical notion of the Godhead which blunts our feelings of obligation for all the kindness of his good-will, for all the tenderness of his mercies. There is an academic theology which would divest him of all sensibility; which would make of him a Being devoid of all emotion and all tenderness; which concedes to him power, and wisdom, and a sort of cold and clear, and faultless morality, but which would denude him of all those fond and fatherly regards that so endear an earthly parent to the children who have sprung from him. It is thus that God hath been presented to the eye of our imagination as a sort of cheerless and abstract Divinity, who has no sympathy with his creatures, and who, therefore, can have no responding sympathy to him back again. I fear that such representations as these have done mischief in Chris