There must therefore be a peculiar degree of _importance connected with his death_ which does not belong to any event of his previous life. And this importance is attached, by the scriptures, not merely to the mode of his death, or to the degree of suffering which he endured in dying, agonizing and mysterious as his sufferings were, but more especially to the state of mind with which he suffered, and to the moral purposes which his sufferings were intended to accomplish. His body was broken, but it was broken “for you.” His blood was shed, but it was “the blood of the New Covenant,” “the blood that was shed for many, for the remission of sins.” His death is to be remembered therefore, not only as a fact, but as a doctrine founded on the fact. He died, but he died for our sins; he died, the Just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God. And in thus remembering his death, we are to connect it with his divine as well as with his human nature. The scriptures ascribe the sacrificial and saving efficacy of his death principally to _the peculiar dignity of his person_; and the language in which they teach this doctrine is remarkably emphatic. It is “the blood of Jesus Christ HIS SON that cleanseth us from all sin;” “WHO, being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, BY HIMSELF purged our sins;” and “WHO HIS OWN SELF bare our sins in HIS OWN BODY on the tree.” Now while these and similar passages by no means teach that the divine nature of Christ suffered and died—a doctrine as contrary to scripture as it is to reason—yet they do teach that he was competent to be a Saviour because he was the Son of God, and that because such a person as he gave himself for us, his sacrificial blood is an availing “propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”