conduct, and hopeless as to the result. And both alike have depended for their inception, their means, and their continuance, upon sympathy and help from abroad, and especially from the same sources, France and England. Both will continue, at all hazards and against all disasters, as long as there appears to be the smallest possible ground of hope that the expected help from England and France will yet come. And when that hope is utterly and finally abandoned, each will subside and expire as rapidly as it is possible for such a deep madness to die out of a deluded people, after having been cultivated and cherished so long by those to whom they looked for guidance. Seeing all this so distinctly, the writer before us still fosters their error by telling them that "aid may yet come." Aid cannot come. And those have much to answer for, who have failed to tell them from the beginning that there can no help come to them from abroad. Had that been said at the beginning, all the terrible losses and sufferings of these twin insurrections would have been saved.

And if our voice could reach the people of Poland, or even the Polish Committees, here or elsewhere, we would earnestly beseech them, in the name of our common humanity, and of that common Christianity which is acknowledged alike in Europe and America, by Greek, and Catholic, and Protestant, to cease contending against the inevitable. You cannot restore your country to its nationality, because your fathers could not govern it or protect it when it existed. They sinned against faith and against liberty when they persecuted and drove off their fellow Christians, and it is impossible to reverse the providential decree of retribution. You cannot resist the Russian power, and there is no human aid that can reach you. A while ago it was possible that your struggles might bring on a general war, and deluge Europe in blood, but it would not have restored Poland. France is too far off, with Germany between, to help you; and Louis Napoleon has too much on his hands already to attempt anything in your behalf except intrigues, which have all failed. The poor old Pope cannot help you, for he can only stay in Rome by the help of French bayonets, and he is unable to constitute a

bishop in all Italy. These can only get you into difficulty, and there leave you. The only alternative before you is to submit to the Russian rule on the best terms you can get, or to be utterly exterminated like the once proud "nationalities" of Tecumseh and of Black Hawk. You have nothing to lose by submission but the fond illusion of an impossible dream. Under the new policy of the Emperor, you will be secure of protection against foreign enemies and domestic turbulence; you will have religious liberty yourselves, and all your neighbors will have the same; the wise and statesmanlike methods by which Alexander II. is developing the resources of his whole empire, will of course include you and your posterity. Your serfs will be free, your laborers will have land, your peasants will have justice, your children will have schools, your families will have Bibles, your towns will have newspapers, your trade will have roads and telegraphs, and your land will have Peace, and prosperity will roll in upon you with a tide and a permanence, such as Sarmatia never knew through all its turbulent history.

ARTICLE IV. THE ATONEMENT.

It occurs naturally in the course of theological inquiry, that opinions and modes of thought precipitate themselves, or become crystallized,-theories are determined, and stereotyped; each has its advocates and its opponents; and every man falls inevitably into his appropriate rank, and henceforth treads the path of thought only to keep step with the music of the school to which he belongs.

There may be advantages resulting from this tendency; but there is certainly the disadvantage of a hindrance to the free exercise of that subtle affinity for truth, by which an honest and wakeful mind, as if by a certain magnetic attraction, gathers to itself whatever is really valuable in various and even conflicting systems.

One object of the present essay is to approach the subject of the Atonement as if de novo, from a fresh point of departure, and, regardless of theories, allow the elements of the question to precipitate themselves anew, obedient to the law of their nature rather than that of previous classification.

We shall confine ourselves to the central question as to the nature of the satisfaction rendered by Christ to Divine law and justice, by which God could be "just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus."

Among evangelical Christians, and especially among earnest ministers who spend and are spent in preaching regeneration, in the New Testament sense of the word, it should be understood that practically, and to the apprehension of the heart, there is neither question nor difference as to the position and office of Christ in the gospel plan of salvation. But back of this heart-apprehension lie questions of philosophy, the how, and the why,-questions not answered, save by inference, in the Scriptures; and in answering which the best of Christians, as they have done, will probably long continue to differ. It is

in this, properly modest and charitable, because debatable region, lies the field of our present inquiries.

Our approach to the subject will be on the side of an inquiry as to the situation in which man finds himself on the morning after the fall,-the essential elements of the consequences which hang over him,-the principles or laws which must be met, and satisfied ere the dawn of hope. Obviously, the nature of the satisfaction will be best determined in the light, of the principles which are to be satisfied.

First, and lowest, though not least obvious, there broods over the sinner the natural law of the consequences flowing from sin, like the fatal taint of some poisonous disease infecting the inmost springs and streams of life, a law inherent in the very constitution of nature, physical, intellectual, and moral, and whose sentence is, "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." And what power can turn aside, or satisfy nature's inexorable law? And until that hungry maw is filled, what hand can redeem the sin-stricken soul?

Secondly, there is the governmental necessity for the punishment of sin.

Sin is rebellion, and the majesty of sovereignty requires that it should be suppressed; sin is crime, and a just government must punish it; sin is the violation of the peace, and a ruler, considerate of the welfare of society, must frown upon it. The necessity for strenuously vindicating the sovereignty of the universe is infinitely greater than the like need in the case of any human authority.

"et quisquam numen Junonis adoret, Aut supplex aris imponat honorem."

All this mighty necessity bears, with mountain weight, upon the sinful soul, and the very skies and the stars are written over with the judgment,-" till heaven and earth shall pass, no jot of the law must perish."

The third element in the situation, is the principle of justice, which, with the voice of nature, as of revelation, declares that "the wages of sin is death." Justice, if it be more than an empty name,-a dream without reality,-is a principle or law,

vital and fundamental to all morals, to all government and society therefore; and perhaps even to all rational being and action, like the principle of truth or love. Principles like these are, in the constitution of the universe, like personality, identity, and the like, in the body and soul of man. With the refrain of its awful sentence, it fills the trump of time and destiny,-"The soul that sinneth, it shall die."

In its relation to the subject in hand, we soon distinguish two spheres, phases, or directions of justice, becoming virtually distinct principles, and requiring separate consideration.

The first is the law of direct moral judgment, sitting upon actual desert, or the present quality of sin. Sin must be condemned and stamped upon wherever the eye of God or moral being beholds it,-wherever in the universe it draws its slimy trail, or breathes its fetid breath. The sinner, then, as soon as seen, must be set upon, punished, crushed, annihilated, or cursed with the darkest, uttermost curse, because he is vile. and deserves it,-the quality is there, and must be stamped for what it is, and what it deserves. This is justice in the first, and perhaps the strictest sense. In the present Article it will be distinguished from another form of the principle by the epithet simple.

It will scarcely be necessary to prove the existence or the sacredness of a principle of this kind. It is only a proximate form of the general idea of the holy and the right. It is holiness testifying against sin,-the right stamping on the wrong.

Sin could not be approved or winked at by any right-minded moral being,-much less by an infinitely holy and far-seeing God. Aside from all consideration of its effects, the thing itself is bad, is vile, is hateful, is to be condemned, and made to bear the wrath and curse of all the holy universe, just as surely as the sun is enjoyed when it mounts up the sky, or death and pain are loathed at sight. If there is one thing in the broad field of morals, and of social relation, that is sure, it is the validity and propriety of the eternal decree, “The wages of sin is death." And from the moment when broke the lurid morn first on a fallen world, the dark necessity has