Now all this is done, and done for ever. Nothing can add to it, and nothing can take from it. We have nothing to do with any fresh sacrifice for sin. We want no masses for either the living or the dead, and we know we cannot make up any fresh sacrifice by penance or self-denial. In all such matters the one question is, Is the one redemption by the one substitute sufficient, or is it not? If it is, we want no further sacrifice, for the work is done. If it is not, we may give up in despair, for it must be obvious to any man that if the substitution of the Son of God fall short of the requirements of the law, nothing that we can add can ever supply the deficiency. But, thanks be to God, there is no room for discussion. As we are taught in our Communion Service, ‘He made there (by His one oblation of Himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.’ He was Himself the Anointed One of God, even the Son of God. In His death He fulfilled the covenant of God. In His resurrection He was accepted as having completed the work of God; in His ascension He entered into the holy place, by one offering having perfected for ever them that are sanctified. And now what is the result? What is the consequence of this completed act of substitution? Surely nothing short of this, that every soul found in Him is legally free. Of course I am not speaking of those who reject that substitution or live without Him. They must bear their own burden; and an awful burden, I fear, they will find it. I am speaking of those who accept Him as their representative, and are one with Him as their substitute. Now to any one of them the great act of substitution has brought a full, complete, legal release. They are as free from the curse of the law as if they had never sinned. The law has no more power to condemn them than if it had never been issued, or if they had never broken it. They are washed white as snow in the blood of the Lamb, and there is no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus. So there we may rest in calm, happy, peaceful trust, for the law is satisfied, and the curse is removed. In His agony we see our peace, in His death our life, and in His bitter cry on the cross our full, perfect, and everlasting reconciliation to God. X. ATONEMENT. ‘Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.’—GAL. iii. 13.