so, according to the plain meaning of the words, Christ may be said to be our price, our ransom, and atonement, though all that He does for us, as buying, ransoming, and redeeming us, is done wholely and solely by a birth of His own nature and spirit brought to life in us.

The Apostle says, Christ died for our sins. Thence it is that He is the great sacrifice for sin, and its true atonement. But how and why is He so? The Apostle tells you in these words, The sting of death is sin. But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore Christ is the atonement of our sins, when by and from Him, living in us, we have victory over our sinful nature.

The Scriptures frequently say, Christ gave Himself for us. But what is the full meaning, effect, and benefit of His thus giving Himself for us? The Apostle puts this out of all doubt, when he says, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify to Himself a peculiar people ; that He might deliver us from this present evil world, from the curse of the law, from the power of Satan, from the wrath to come; or, as the Apostle says in other words, that He might be made unto us wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification.

The whole truth therefore of the matter is plainly this: Christ given for us, is neither more nor less than Christ given into us. And He is in no other sense our full, perfect, and sufficient atonement, than as His nature and spirit are born and formed in us, which so purge us from our sins, that we are thereby in Him, and by Him dwelling in us, become new creatures, having our conversation in heaven.

As Adam is truly our defilement and impurity by his birth in us, so Christ is our atonement and purification, by our being born again of Him, and having thereby quickened and revived in us that first divine life, which was extinguished in Adam. And therefore, as Adam purchased death for us, just so in the same manner, in the same degree, and in the same sense, Christ purchases life for us. And each of them solely by their own inward life within us.

This is the one Scripture account of the whole nature, the sole end, and full efficacy of all that Christ did, and suffered for us. It is all comprehended in these two texts of Scripture. (1) That Christ was manifested to destroy the works of the devil. (2) That as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.

From the beginning to the end of Christ's atoning work, no other power is ascribed to it, nothing else is intended by it, as an appeaser of wrath, but the destroying of all that in man which comes from the devil; no other merits, or value, or infinite worth, than that of its infinite ability, and sufficiency to quicken again in all human nature that heavenly life that died in Adam.

(From The Spirit of Love.)

DIVINE KNOWLEDGE

SPEAK, Lord, for thy servant heareth, is the only way by which any man ever did, or ever can attain divine knowledge and divine goodness. To knock at any other door but this is but like asking life of that which is itself dead, or praying to him for bread who has nothing but stones to give.

Now strange as all this may seem to the labour-learned possessor of far-fetched book-riches, yet it is saying no more, nor anything else, but that which Christ said in these words, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of God. For if classic Gospellers, linguist critics, Scripture-logicians, salvation orators, able dealers in the grammatic powers of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman phrases, idioms, tropes, figures, etc. etc. can show, that by raising themselves high in these attainments, they are the very men that are sunk down from themselves into Christ's little children of the kingdom of God, then it may be also said, that he who is labouring, scheming, and fighting for all the riches he can get from both the Indies, is the very man that has left all to follow Christ, the very man that labours not for the meat that perishes.

Show me a man whose heart has no desire, or prayer in it, but to love God with his whole soul and spirit, and his neighbour as himself, and then you have shown me the man who knows Christ, and is known of Him;-the best and wisest man in the world, in whom the first paradisical wisdom and goodness are come to life. Not a single precept in the Gospel but is the precept of his own heart, and the joy of that new-born heavenly love which is the life and light of his soul. In this man all that came from the old serpent is trod under his feet; not a spark of self, of pride, of wrath, of envy, of covetousness or worldly wisdom can have

the least abode in him, because that love, which fulfilleth the whole law and the prophets, that love which is God and Christ, both in angels and men, is the love that gives birth, and life, and growth to every thing that is either thought or word or action in him. And if he has no share or part with foolish errors, cannot be tossed about with every wind of doctrine, it is because, to be always governed by this love is the same thing as to be always taught of God. (From Address to the Clergy.)

SAMUEL RICHARDSON

[Samuel Richardson was born in 1689, and died in 1761. He was a printer by trade, and was the author of three works: Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740); Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady (1749); and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753).]

THE conscious and ostentatiously avowed end of Richardson's writings was moral edification; and doubtless much of what he wrote can serve no other. In Pamela he designed to recommend virtue to young women through a series of familiar letters; and the result is a monument of vulgarity, and an outrage upon morals. Sir Charles Grandison carries no less heavy a burden of moral purpose; but the picture of the ideal man, whose sole fault is a trifling hastiness of temper, and whom fortune has endowed with vast wealth, an agreeable person, engaging manners, and everything that can make virtue easy and vice detestable—if frequently ridiculous and not seldom fatiguing, is never offensive.

But Richardson is to be reckoned in the not inconsiderable number of those artists whose practice has triumphed over their principles. In Clarissa he attempted to compose a tract to prove (apparently) that a sincere belief in religion may consist with the most unbridled profligacy; and he contrived to produce one of the masterpieces of English literature. The characters are discriminated with nicety, and sustained with consistency; of the innumerable details scarce one is irrelevant; of the countless subtle strokes, scarce one superfluous; for Richardson was no niggler. The conduct of the plot is a model of ingenuity and artifice; every incident contributes to the one supreme effect; nor is any other modern tragedy so informed with the sense of the imminent inevitable. The character of Clarissa is noble and affecting. She meets her peril with courage, her ruin with dignity, and her end with cheerfulness. But it is in the portrayal of