sacrifices to the foes of mankind, who are to be bought off from injuring us by our offering them an equivalent pain to that they desire to inflict, but they are offensive when given to Him who is the Friend and Lover of Humanity. An Atonement which offers suffering as a propitiation can have nothing in common with God's will for man, and must be utterly beside the mark, perfectly inadequate. If we must have Atonement, let it at least consist of something which will suit the Righteousness and Love of God, and be in keeping with his perfection; let it not borrow the language of ancient savagery, and breathe of blood and dying victims, and tortured human frames, racked with pain. Lastly, I impeach the Atonement as injurious in several ways to human morality. It has been extolled as "meeting the needs of the awakened sinner" by soothing his fears of punishment with the gift of a substitute who has already suffered his sentence for him; but nothing can be more pernicious than to console a sinner with the promise that he shall escape the punishment he has justly deserved. The Atonement may meet the first superficial feelings of a man startled into the consciousness of his sinfulness, it may soothe the first vague fears and act as an opiate to the awakened conscience; but it does not fulfil the cravings of a heart deeply yearning after righteousness; it offers a legal justification to a soul which is longing for purity, it offers freedom from punishment to a soul longing for freedom from sin. The true penitent does not seek to be shielded from the consequences of his past errors: he accepts them meekly, bravely, humbly, learning through pain the lesson of future purity. An atonement which steps in between us and this fatherly discipline ordained by God, would be a curse and not a blessing; it would rob us of our education and deprive us of a priceless instruction. The force of temptation is fearfully added to by the idea that repentance lays the righteous penalty of transgression on another head; this doctrine gives a direct encouragement to sin, as even Paul perceived when he said, "shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Some one has remarked, I think, that though Paul ejaculates, "God forbid," his fears were well founded and have been widely realised. To the Atonement we owe the morbid sentiment which believes in the holy death of a ruffianly murderer, because, goaded by ungovernable terror, he has snatched at the offered safety and been "washed in the blood of the lamb." To it we owe the unwholesome glorying in the pious sentiments of such an one, who ought to go out of this life sadly and silently, without a sickening parade of feelings of love towards the God whose laws, as long as he could, he has broken and despised. But the Christian teachers will extol the "saving grace" which has made the felon die with words of joyful assurance, meet only for the lips of one who crowns a saintly life with a peaceful death.