reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross” (Eph. i. 16). The Cross is the watchword of the Church and the only ground of glorying; for we are to glory in nothing else, and Paul looked on those who received not Jesus by faith, as “enemies to the Cross.”
It seems strange to have to write what all must know, and which those who hold to the statements on which we are commenting, would not deny; but we assert that which appears to be distinctly denied in the passage under review, namely, that the “pare” and only ground of atonement is the blood—shedding. Remission of sin rests exclusively on that which we see and know, and nothing added to it. It is this, which blessed be God, we know on His own testimony, and not any thing that came down on the soul of the Holy Sufferer, of which we know nothing, that is the ground of the justification wrought out on the cross. Mental sorrows there doubtless were, soul agonies of which God has said very little to us; but our peace, our rest, our hope, is on the ground of what we see on the cross. To this John alludes, when having witnessed the death of Jesus, he wrote under the teaching of the Spirit, as follows:—“One of the soldiers pierced his side, and forth with came there out blood and water. And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true that ye might believe.” Where fore this reiteration? so unusual in God’s Word, but to show that all atonement rested on what God here bears witness to by His Spirit. Over all the exercises of soul of the blessed Lord during those three hours of darkness, God has drawn the impenetrable veil of a miraculous darkness, when the Son of man entered into the “horror of great darkness,” out of which He was to rise, Himself the sun shining in His strength. God has drawn the veil, and this veil profane hands would lift, but it will end in their confusion. Is there nothing to be learned morally from the fact that the sun was darkened, thereby casting the mantle of a supernatural mid night around the sin-offering, hiding from view all that was passing within and around? Well may we tremble as we contemplate what we cannot fathom, and ponder on that into which even in thought we cannot enter, the Victim alone with God, bound by God, smitten by God, and the sword of God entering into His soul; and when thus smitten and forsaken, God’s face turned away from Him, who had ever walked in the sunshine of His countenance, and whose countenance had till then ever shone upon Him.
What have these teachings given us for our confidence as to atonement, when the sole visible ground of confidence borne witness to by the Holy
