whole world, and of sustaining the punishment due to all the millions of mankind ? Was there an angel that could take upon him this office ? Were all the angels in heaven capable of rendering such a service to mankind 1 Could any one less than God himself undertake so great a work ? And could it be con- ceived possible that God should exercise such love towards those who had trampled on his laws, and risen up in rebellion against him ? But, supposing that God was willing to undertake the office of restoring man, how shall he do it ? How shall God endure sufferings for man ? How shall he put him- self in the place of man ? How shall any thing that he can do be made available for man, so as to be put to man's account, as if he had done it ? And, sup- posing that God were to become a man, for the pur- pose of putting himself in the place of man, and doing and suffering what man was bound to do and suffer, how could it consist with the holiness and justice and truth of God, to let the innocent suffer and the guilty go free ; yea, to let the innocent suffer on purpose that the guilty might go free ?
The more we enter into the consideration of these things, and contemplate the difficulties which lay in the way of man's recovery to God, the more we shall see how impossible it was that any created wisdom should devise a way for effecting it, in consistency with God's honour. But here Divine wisdom inter- posed ; and in the councils of the Eternal Three it was determined, that God's co-equal, co-eternal Son should " undertake for us ;" that " a body should be given him ;" that, in the fulness of time, he should be born into the world, and, as the Substitute and Surety of all mankind, should bear their sins in his own sacred body; and, by his own obedience unto death, should work out a righteousness for all who should believe in him, even a righteousness commensurate with the fullest demands of God's law ; that so, Divine justice being satisfied, " God might be just, and yet the justifier" of our sinful race".
-■ Rom. iii. 26.