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that penalty the sufferings of the sinless Christ. At this point we find the main difficulty. We do know that God has thus accepted the sufferings of Christ, therefore it must be wise and right; but just how he can thus release man from a natural and deserved penalty and restore him to life, purity, honor, and immortality, is a difficulty we cannot explain. Not that we have any objection to a divine incarnation, suffering, and death; we have not. And for this reason the great law of sacrifice is the universal and immutable law of the universe. Parents, patriots, and philanthropists suffer vicariously, and often die for others. Life lives on death, therefore Christ's voluntary sacrifice of himself for a guilty race is but the grand culmination of this principle, the divinest expression of an allpervading, dominant law in the realms of life. As finite forms of life are under the law of sacrifice, we see no valid reason why infinite life, prompted by infinite love, and for highest purposes of law and government, as well as to make possible the salvation of a race of lost, responsible, immortal beings, should not surrender himself to his own law of sacrifice. This he has done. "The life was manifested" in the infinite Christ. He expressed the eternal Father's infinite thought, love, and righteousness by a life of vicarious work and suffering.

Notice, Christ's work, suffering, and death in no sense changed God's thoughts and feelings toward sin and sinners; but they did satisfy God, satisfy himself, and satisfy man. They satisfied the sense of justice inherent in the divine and human conscience. As soon as Christ had, by his atoning life and death, fulfilled and honored the law, and established righteousness on a firm foundation, the atonement was made and the sense of justice in God and man was satisfied. God accepted Christ's atoning suffering and death as a substitute for the enduring of the death penalty by guilty, hell-deserving sinners. Why he has done this is not revealed; and how they constitute, in his estimation, a sufficient atonement for the sins of the world is still among the "secret things that belong not to us. If we will but discriminate between suffering vicariously and being punished penally we shall obviate a great difficulty in our discussions of the atonement, as an innocent being cannot justly be punished for the guilty, but there is no principle of justice that forbids the innocent voluntarily suffer

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ing to save the guilty. Men do this as the highest expression of their love for their friends, or to maintain the life and unity of their nation. By what law, then, shall God be excluded from such an expression of his love? Men may sneer and be captious, and ridicule the atonement as betraying on the divine side a thirst for blood, but the reverent and devout mind will sce in the agony and bloody sweat of Gethsemane, and the sufferings and death of the cross, resultants of an eternal Father's love for sinners, truth, and righteousness.

In the atonement we may behold the eternal Father and Son struggling, not to harmonize conflicting attributes, but to save man from the grasp of violated law and insulted justice; a work that could not be done without suffering and death. Could not, we affirm, as infinite love of right was as inexorable as infinite justice. Love for sinners cannot act apart from love of right and justice. They dwell and act together in the most perfect harmony. Love can do nothing until law is honored and righteousness is lifted into supremacy. Infinite love, therefore, gladly satisfied itself and justice by suffering, dying, and rising again to save sinners. This vicarious work of infinite love is in perfect harmony with justice, and instead of involving cruelty, it is the sublimest possible expression of divine benevolence. The atonement, then, is the grandest embodiment and satisfaction of both love and justice.

What is needed to lead men to see that the atonement is the grand, central, life-and peace-giving truth of Christianity, is a candid, careful grouping of all the facts it involves; then an honest, prayerful effort to find out their meaning by comparing fact with fact; then submission to the fixed conditions on which its benefits can be realized. If its opposers would wisely do those things they would soon find out that this doctrine is no priestly invention or "butcher theory," designed to meet an unlooked-for contingency in the historic development of humanity, but an essential factor in the creative plan. And a clear vision of this fundamental truth would reveal to them that Christ was no forced victim of his Father's wrath; that he came not into our race to fulfill a bargain that he made with his Father, to pay his life as a ransom price for a few elect ones, but to manifest his Father's love, purpose, and righteousness, which he had revealed in. man's moral nature, history, and 46-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. III..

the Bible. He could say in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, "I am showing the Father's unutterable love for lost sinners; the consuming fire of his wrath against sin; and his righteousness, because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime in the forbearance of God." Here are deep, grand, and awfully sublime revelations! Nature trembles in their presence, the sun is darkened, the gates of death are violently opened, and the smiles of the eternal Father are withdrawn from the Son of his love. The Christ suffers alone, of the people none are with him! What mean those unique sufferings and death? There is but one explanation: "It pleased the Father to bruise him," by putting on him, because of his voluntary assumption of the position of the sinner's substitute, the penalty due to the iniquity of the world. The sword of his Father's wrath against sin pierced his soul, and caused him to feel as if he were forsaken by him. Of course, the forsaking of Christ in those last hours of fearful agony by his Father was only apparent, not real. Such a thing was impossible, as he and the Father were indissolubly one; but so dense was the dark cloud of suffering that rested on and penetrated his soul that he realized no sensible tokens of his Father's love. Never was the Father so near to his Son as in that last fearful agony, but his love could not write itself on a consciousness that was enduring a baptism of fire; and thus voluntarily tasting death, he drank the cup given him by his Father to its very dregs, and while doing it he had the sympathy, love, and support of his eternal Father.

Most assuredly, an atonement that is a resultant of such agony and blood has its difficulties-must have its difficultiesbut they are difficulties shrouded in love. "Herein was the love of God manifested, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him." His love expressed itself in divine suffering and blood, hence it represents an atonement of infinite value; one that satisfies both God and man. Bad men and shallow men may call it a "blood theology"-never mind; it saves souls from sin, death, and hell, and in doing this necessary and divine work it dem onstrates to the thought and Christian consciousness of the world that it rests upon impregnable foundations.

ART. V.-BISHOP MCKENDREE-A SKETCH.* WILLIAM MCKENDREE was a Virginian, and was born in King William County, 1757. He came from the best circle of Virginia planters. His parents were in easy worldly circumstances, though plain and industrious people. They were members of the Church of England, and brought up their children carefully in the tenets of the Church. In common with many others of the same class of people, they joined the Methodist Society on its first establishment in Virginia.

While McKendree was a child Whitefield visited the city of Williamsburg, near which his father lived, and there is little doubt that it was owing to his earnest ministry that Mr. John McKendree, father of the bishop, in after time joined the Methodists. William was a boy of seventeen when Mr. Shadford and Robert Williams visited the section of country in which he lived. He joined the Society, but by his fondness for gayety was led back to the world. He took part in the Revolution, and was an adjutant in a Virginia regiment. The war ended, and he returned to his home. Here he led the easy life of a country gentleman. He was very moral, free from all gross vices, and, while irreligious, was not at all skeptical.

John Easter was at that time a flaming evangelist, and came through the country in which McKendree lived. McKendree was at the house of a friend, drinking wine and reading a comedy. The wife of his host and companion went to hear Easter preach. McKendree heard from her the story of Easter's wonderful power. He went to hear him himself, and was profoundly awakened and deeply convicted, and after a little while soundly converted. He writes: ·

Not long after I had confidence in my acceptance with God, Mr. Gibson preached us a sermon on sanctification, and I felt its

* William McKendree. the First American Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. By GEORGE G. SMITH, of the Georgia Conference.

PAINE'S Life of McKendree.

STEVENS'S History of Methodism.

BANGS'S History of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

REDFORD'S Methodism in Kentucky.

Life of James O. Andrew, etc.

MCTYEIRE'S History of Methodism.

weight. When Mr. Easter came he enforced the same doctrine. This led me more minutely to examine the emotions of my heart. I found remaining corruption, embraced the doctrine of sanctification, and diligently sought the blessing it holds forth. In its pursuit my soul grew in grace, and in the faith that overcomes the world; but there was an aching void which made me cry,

'Tis worse than death my God to love,
And not my God alone."

One morning I walked into the field, and while I was musing, such an overwhelming power of the Divine Being overshadowed me as I had never experienced before. Unable to stand, I sank to the ground, more than filled with transport: my cup ran over, and I shouted aloud. Had it not been for a new set of painful exercises which now came over me I might have rejoiced evermore; but my heart was enlarged, and I saw more clearly than ever before the danger of an unconverted state.

This is as definitely as he ever professed the blessing of sanctification.

He now began to work to save souls, and Mr. Asbury sent him, in 1788, to a circuit. For four years he traveled circuits in Virginia, and considerable success attended his labors. He was closely associated with James O'Kelly, and sympathized with him in his opposition to an unrestrained episcopate; and when O'Kelly failed to secure the right of appeal for a dissatisfied preacher, and withdrew from the Church, McKendree went with him. After a very short time he became satisfied that he was wrong, and returned to the Connection. He was an older man than most of his compeers, and perhaps a more judicious one, and Asbury soon fixed upon him as an assistant Bishop, and he was made presiding elder of a very large district in Virginia. He was there when the mind of Francis Poythress gave way. Asbury, while on his way to Kentucky, heard Poythress was deranged. He said to McKendree: "William, I want you to take charge of the Western District." "When do you wish me to start?” "As soon as you can." "In an hour, sir, I will be with you." In less than an hour the bishop and the young elder were on their way to the far West.

The boundaries of the Western District in 1800 were immense. From the west of North Carolina they extended to the center of Ohio, and from the Blue Ridge Mountains in south-west Virginia to the Mississippi River. To make the

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