The atonement and its results
“When thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin.” “Without shedding of blood there is no remission.” This sentence, written by the finger of God on the page of Scripture, is also written as a received truth on every page of the history of heathenism. However we may recoil from the fearful superstitions of Paganism, and weep over that sad ignorance which can suppose God delighted even with human sacrifice, never let it be forgotten that in the bloodiest rites of idolatry there are the vestiges of a truth which is the very sum and substance of Christianity. We can turn our gaze to the evidence of what is called natural religion, accompanied, it may be, and loaded with what is abominable; and there we find monuments in every age that God, at some time or another, hath broken the silences of eternity, and spoken to His apostate creatures, and taught them that unless there could be found a sufficient sin-offering, the sinful must bear for ever the burden of His displeasure. Thus from the first God gave notices of the plan of redemption, and gradually prepared the way for that oblation which could alone take away sin. In the deep recesses of Christ’s undefiled spirit was paid down the debt which man owed to God.
(H. Melvill, B.D.)
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