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    propitiation , atonement , or reconciliation is attributed to the love of God . It was because he loved us , as the Apostle John declares , that he sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins , to be the means and instrument of delivering us from our wretched bondage , and of restoring us to the freedom and happiness of the children of God .

    Why should it be a matter of wonder that the apostles , themselves Jews , brought up in the faith and profession of the Jewish religion , with all their most sacred associations founded on Jewish institutions and cemented by Jewish phraseology—why should it be at all wonderful that , in speaking of the doctrines of the gospel , and in referring to the great facts of the Christian history , they should throw over them a Jewish dress , and exhibit them , especially when addressing Jews , in something of a Jewish form and

    attitude ? The deliverance of the Israelites from the land of Egypt , their rescue from the miserable bondage in which they had been long held , it was the habit of the Jews to characterize by the term redemption ; and . what could be more natural than that the apostles , Jews , and speaking to Jews , should make use of this term in designating the moral and spiritual deliverance effected by Christ } What , again , could be more natural than that the term propitiation or atonement , having been employed to express

    the means or instruments by which men were formerly brought into a state of outward privilege and communion with God , should be applied to the labours , sufferings ,, and death of Christ , by which mankind are brought into a state of far greater privilege , possessing far nobler promises , and opening into far more glorious possessions than ever appertained to the Jews ? How

    natural also was it that the apostles , having been accustomed to call by the word sacrifice every laborious effort , every suffering exertion , every act of self-denial in behalf and furtherance of truth and righteousness , should apply it to the death of Christ , that noblest effort to advance the cause of truth and virtue , that most complete and perfect act of obedience , that most precious and entire submission of the whole mind and heart to the will and

    service of God ? And to a Jew , what could be more natural and agreeable than the figure , that , as the high-priest under the old dispensation was accustomed to enter into the tabernacle with the blood of bulls , Christ , as the high-priest of the new dispensation , entered into the tabernacle , not made with hands , eternal in the heavens , with his own blood ? What is there in these allusions and comparisons to excite our surprise , or to make us look about for a meaning which is inconsistent with the acknowledged perfections of God and the plain , general language of Scripture ?

    On the supposition that the common doctrine of the Atonement is really a doctrine of the gospel , it is most extraordinary that Christ , when he treats expressly and explicitly , as he sometimes does , on the conditions of our future acceptance , —on the means of recommending ourselves to the favour and blessing of God , not only makes no allusion to this supposed essential doctrine of the gospel , —not only omits to say one word about what we are now so often told is the one and all-important article , but

    positively inculcates doctrines , and lays down terms and conditions of our future salvation , which not only have no reference to the supposed atonement , but are manifestly inconsistent with it , and utterly subversive of it . When he states the way and manner of a sinner ' s return to God , how he may regain the paths from which he has wandered , and be restored to the privileges and enjoyments which he had forfeited—by what means lie could be brought frack to his father ' s home , and receive again the blessing of a father ' s love , he points , for this purpose , to the paths of contrition and repentance , making

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    & 5 S Review . J 'S —Dr . . 7 \ SinithDiscourses .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1828, page 552, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2563/page/40/