ment, to be disciplinary or corrective, must be limited of course,-being not an end, but a means to an end, to issue in correction. Well, when the soul is wearied in suffering, and sick of sin, and has turned to Christ, received his light and risen into the life of his truth and love, his spirit assimilated to the spirit of the Eternal, needing punitive discipline no more, Dr. A. thinks he will then desire to go back into darkness and sin, and the consequent suffering of punishment, for the sake of being disciplined back again to sin-sickness and to Christ!

Well, this argument is not original with my worthy friend. It was wielded against the doctrines of St. Paul in his day. Because he held that God over-rules evil for good, it was slanderously reported of him that he said, "Let us do evil that good may come.' (Rom. iii. 8.) And because he taught that, "where sin abounded grace did much more abound," it was charged to be the tendency of his doctrine to lead men to continue in sin that grace might abound. But the apostle disposes of the opposing argument thus:

"Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein." (Rom. v. 20; vi. 1.) The Christian religion, in all its principles of faith and practice, is so beautiful, so lovely and glorious, that when it is received by the believing soul, it captivates and assimilates to itself all the affections, produces a deadness to sin, a detestation of it, and renders impossible the desire to go back into it for the sake of some more corrective punishment. And thus vanish

es the force of our friend's ingenious argument from the hypothesis of punishment being corrective.

"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law." He could not have redeemed us from the curse of the law unless we had been under that curse. All were under the curse of the law, all having sinned, for "cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." " Being made a curse for us." How? Is Christ doomed to suffer future endless punishment for us? Never. And that is not “the curse of the law." The apostle explains the sense in which he spoke in this instance of Christ's being made a curse for us. And how is it? If he was, as a substitute for sinners, plunged into the infernal deep,

"The land of horror and despair,"

into the suffering of

"Eternal plagues and heavy chains,
Tormenting racks and fiery coals,
And darts t' inflict immortal pains,

Dipt in the blood of damned souls,”

if this is the curse of the law, borne by Christ for us, here is the place where we may expect to find it stated. How is it? Read-(Gal. iii. 13,) "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” There where is the Endless-miserian argument from the death of Christ? Where is the vicarious, the substitutional infliction of "future endless punishment" upon Jesus, as the scape

goat for sinners? Not in the Bible-nowhere but in human creeds.

"Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." The extreme curse of the Mosaic law was an ignominious death. And Jesus Christ the righteous, by submitting to this death in the prosecution of a work of infinite love in our behalf, was made a curse, not in our stead, but for us; and as a ritual sacrifice, the antitype of the legal types, terminated the necessity of our subjection to the legal rites; but, above all, attesting with his blood the indissolubility of Heaven's love to man, gives us a strong filial faith which works by love and purifies the heart, and thus redeems us from the greater curse, that of the moral law, by delivering us from the love and power of sin. For, "there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." Ah, this is the manner of Christ's redeeming us from the curse or condemnation of the moral law, not by a commercial substitution, satiating God's vengeance by receiving punishment from his hand in our stead! but by making us free from the law (the power) of sin and death, by the law (the power) of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

2d. SCRIPTURALLY. It is but an easy and brief work to show the unsoundness of our opponent's argument from "the curse of the law," Scripturally. Indeed we know not how to account for his position in this case, but by supposing that his life-long famili

iarity with the terms of his theology on the matter here in question, produced such an unquestioning assurance of his being right, that he did not deem it needful to consult the Scriptures in relation to the question. The book of the law itself variously and conclusively decides the question, whether its curses are future, revengeful, and endless punishments, or whether they are temporary, and designed for restraint and correction.

Read the 28th and 29th chapters of Deuteronomy, from which we will here transcribe a few brief sentences. "But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee; cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field." "And the heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron." "Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people." "And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a by-word, among all the nations whither the Lord shall lead thee." "So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sickness which the Lord hath laid upon it; all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the cove

even

nant of the Lord God of their fathers, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book."

Here you have no assertion of mine, no explanation of mine, but the direct asseveration. of the book of the law itself, that all its curses should be suffered by the transgressors in the land of their transgression, and in their dispersion among other nations. And now, what will you ask of me, who know nothing on these subjects but what I can learn from the sacred record? Will you ask of me that I keep back such Bible testimonies as these, and manufacture a theory, or sell myself a minister to a theory of other manufacturers, which shall be better for the morals of the people? Ah, we have seen the injuries which have accrued to poor humanity from religious leaders presuming to do better for the people than to study and preach God's plain, simple truth. Ours be the motto of the prophet:"To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."

But there is another question. Notwithstanding all the curses of the law are fulfilled in temporal evils, are they not purely revengeful, and never intended to be corrective? Dr. Adams thinks they must be so, whether in this world or the next. See the closing words of this division of his "Argument;"-" But we cannot find that curse, neither here nor hereafter, unless there be punishment which is not intended for the recovery of the sinner."