CHAPTER VI. THE FEARFUL ALTERNATIVE OF REJECTING THE ATONEMENT. THE IMPENITENT SINNER WARNED. There remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries." Heb. x. 26,27. MANY will doubtless be induced, from various motives, to read these humble pages, who will assent and consent to the truths it discusses, the doctrine it advocates, and even the one principle on which it constantly insists-viz. The necessity of experimental religion—and yet shall close it and retire, thinking as lightly of the great Atonement of the Son of GOD as the child of the diamond with which it for a moment toys, then crushes as a thing of no value, beneath its feet. There is such a thing, my impenitent reader, as assenting to the great Atonement of Christ, defending ably and successfully its Divine char acter, its expiatory nature and its definite design, and yet living without its practical influence upon the mind, the affections and the life; and dying, as fearfully rejecting it and with equal guilt, as he, who openly avowed his disbelief in the Divine revelation of the doctrine. There may be a secret, practical rejection of the atoning blood, while the judgment fully and cordially assents to its truth and its necessity. It is not he who merely yields an intellectual assent to the truth of God's word, who is accepted of God. Something far beyond this is needed. The Atonement is a practical, influential, life imparting and life sustaining principle. It demands more than the bare and cold assent of the judgment. The heart must welcome it, and in order thus to welcome it, that heart must have mourn. ed over the bitterness of sin and in deep and unfeigned repentance before a holy GOD. Again we assert it, and, would that the sentiment were carried to the conscience of the reader and fastened there by the Eternal Spirit of GOD-no man shall value the precious blood of Christ, until he has been made to see and feel himself to be a lost and undone sinner. Christ is pre ness cious only to the soul that feels its spiritual poverty, its vileness, its emptiness, its nothing-To such an individual, Jesus is every thing. The deeper the Eternal Spirit leads him to an acquaintance with himself, the more precious is that Saviour, whom he now finds to be the very Saviour that he needs. The daily discovery of indwelling corruption, inordinate affection-pride-self esteem-instability-love of the world, and the innumerable other forms which indwelling depravity assumes, endears to him the fountain that cleanses from all sin-He repairs afresh to it—washes again and again in it, and these daily applications to the Atoning blood makes sin increasingly sinful, and strengthens the panting of his soul for Divine conformity. But, not so is it with the man who is a stranger to himself, while yet assenting with all the vigour of a masculine intellect and an enlightened judgment to the truth of the doctrine of Christ's atonement. Reader, what is the atoning blood to you as far as its saving influence extends, so long as you have never experienced its power in your heart? We charge you not with an open hostility to this doctrine-we rank you not among the number who profess no belief whatever in its existence,—who deny it to be a doctrine of revelation,-who refuse Divine honours to the person of the Redeemer, and trample under foot His most precious Atoning bloodwe rank you not with this class of errorists. You are in a sense, a believer in the Atonement -you have always so believed in it-It has always been an article of your orthodox creed. You have never denied it-you have sat, and still sit, beneath a ministry that holds it up to view as the one hope of the sinner, the exclusive ground of acceptance with GoD, and still you are "dead in trespasses and in sins." What an awful, and anomalous spectacle do you present! A believer, and yet an unbeliever in the Atoning blood of Christ. Receiving, and yet rejecting it-Consenting to, and yet denying it— Vindicating it and yet turning your back upon it-your judgment assenting to it, your heart refusing it!--What a spectacle do you present to the whole intelligent universe--and to the GOD of the universe! Bear with the writer while he says it--he speaks with tenderness and affection-your intellectual reception of the doctrine in question will avail you nothing while your heart is yet a stranger to the experience of the truth-Ah! you approve even of this-you assent even to the justness of this remark. What is your approval and your assent but, as the signing of your own death warrant ?-See what an alarming callousness a long life of impenitence, and Gospel preaching has produced, that you can cordially approve of the most solemn and affecting statements-statements which bear strongly upon your own condemnation, and yet live on in a practical rejecting of Christ. But, perhaps your reception of Christ in the judgment—your long life of approval of His person and His work, have beguiled you into the belief that you have really welcomed Him into your heart-For this is not a mere hypothetical case. There is such a thing as persuading oneself into the belief that all is right, that the heart is changed and heaven secured, from the mere circumstance of the understanding being enlightened. But let us examine for a moment into this. You think you are converted, what reason have you for thinking so? Upon what grounds do you base this belief? Can you give |