Sin, under a perfectly just administration, can never be forgiven without an atonement. Mercy fails to be truly and beneficially exercised, when it fails, at the time of its exercise, to yield its homage to what is right. Hence the necessity of a mediator. We are taught, in many passages of Scripture, that Christ came into the world, that he was born, and died, in order that man's sins might be forgiven, and that God, in connection with forgiveness, might recreate the principle of faith, and restore him to sonship. "Behold the Lamb of God," said John the Baptist, "which taketh away the sin of the world." "Christ," says the apostle Paul, in the Epistle to the Galatians, "hath redeemed us from the curse of the law." And again he says, in the same Epistle: —"When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." "Christ," says the apostle Peter, "also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow his steps, who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live to righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed." Isaiah, in one of the many prophecies which are understood to have relation to the Saviour, says, "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows." And again, "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." The word of God, whether we consult its history or its poetry, its prophecies or its precepts, is full of this great truth. So that the apostle Peter, when "filled with the Holy Ghost," had good reason to say to the rulers of the people and the elders of Israel, — "This is the stone, which is set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved."
