to that new and glorious object of faith presented in Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom was set the seal of truth that he was raised from the dead. Delivered should be translated delivered up. Our offences were the cause of his sufferings, but he did not suffer to appease the anger of God, or to take the place of the punishment which men would otherwise have endured as a penalty for their transgressions. His death was to have a moral, not a diplomatic effect, and to change not the divine decrees, but the human heart and will. His resurrection was the attesting of the fulfilment of that system of Christianity in which all men, according to their faith or self-approbation of the benefits of the dispensation, would be put in a way of justification, i. e. religious privileges leading on to the righteousness of character and life from the elementary righteousness of faith, and perfecting all in a spirit moulded, colored, and inspired after the pattern of the divine in Jesus.

CHAPTER V.

1, 2. Having shown what the nature of this faith in Christ was, and how the elder dispensation justified it, the Apostle proceeds to develop its effects and fruits. The first of these is peace or reconciliation with God. When we have this confiding trust through Christ in God as our

Heavenly Father, and are put by it in the way of righteousness, the justification process, we become contented and satisfied. We bow to the will of God, we accept his dealings with us submissively, because we are assured that his laws and his dispensations, be they joyous or be they grievous, are well meant, and full of hidden blessings and love. - Access. A term taken from the custom of the East, where there is an officer whose particular duty it is to introduce persons to the king in his seclusion and state. Jesus introduces us to the presence of the Most High Sovereign.- - This grace, or favor, is the Gospel, to which the avenue is faith. We stand, or stand firm; in reference to the wrestlers in the games, who maintained a strong and erect position. joice. The same term in the original which is rendered boasting in iii. 27, and glory in iv. 2 and v. 3, and joy in v. 11. The hope of the glory of God is the hope of that glory which God gives, of which by sin we come short, but to which by faith we attain. ii. 23.

Re

3-5. Instead of regarding afflictions, as the Jews were prone to do, as judgments and tokens of God's displeasure, Paul, in the light of Christianity, deems them as means of greater attainments in the true life of the soul. He proceeds to point out the sequence of Christian expe

riences, and to rejoice in trials instead of being cast down by them. Ecclus. ii. 10; Acts v. 41. The order is trial, patience, proof, hope. Trials, properly borne, cultivate patience; patience affords us proof of what we really are, and this proof becomes the basis of our reasonable hopes for the time to come, such as will not fail or disappoint us, for the exercise of these affections and virtues in us is re-enforced by a higher power, by communications from the love and holy spirit of God himself. Robinson translates the word rendered ex

perience by proof, approval, tried integrity. Holy Ghost, in our version, begins with capitals, to indicate that it is a person; but no such idea is, we believe, intended by the original. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, which had in love imparted spiritual graces and gifts to the Christian Apostles and believers. Such are the glorious golden links of the chain which draw up the soul heavenward, -trial, patience, proof, hope, possession, but they are all melted and welded in the love of God to us, and are made pure by his spirit.

6. Without strength, - ungodly. Terms in which is described the state of the Jews under the Law, and of the Gentiles in a state of nature, at the time of the coming of Christ, according to chapters i., ii., iii. In due time, i. e. the fulness of time, as elsewhere expressed in the Scriptures, or the appointed time for the coming

of Christ. - For. In behalf of, or for the sake of, not in the place of, or as a substitute for, the ungodly.

7, 8. To exalt the idea of Christ's self-sacrifice, the Apostle appeals to the common experience of mankind. For a righteous man, i. e. one who simply did right, scarcely one would be willing to sacrifice his life, though for a good man, one who did good, a public benefactor, some would have resolution enough to give up their own lives. But the distinction of the death of Christ is, that it took place, not for the good, not for the righteous even, but for the downright wicked. Martyrs die for their country, die for Christ and God, and are, therefore, animated in their sufferings by the dignity and holiness or greatness of the beings with which they connect themselves by the act. But in the case of Christ the sacrifice was for the unrighteous and wicked.

9, 10. The antithesis established in these verses is between what Christ did for them in a state of sin, and what he could do after he had by his sufferings brought them into a state of faith and prospective righteousness. In the ninth verse the contrasted terms are justified and saved, and in the tenth reconciled and saved. These are most important verses, as showing the particular offices of the death of our Lord, as compared with those fulfilled by his life and teachings. The precise effect of his death was to produce faith; first, in his im

Son; much more, being And not only so, but we 11

mediate disciples and apostles, who, until that event and his resurrection, never really entered into the spiritual conception of his kingdom; and secondly, in all men, Jews and Gentiles, by this luminous and impressive proof of his love, self-sacrifice, disinterestedness, and the heavenly nature of the kingdom he came to establish. That faith thus produced was the access to justification, the righteous process; therefore, to believe was to be justified, to be reconciled; and in order to effect belief, a real, comprehensive, and spiritual faith, looking "before and after" the death of the founder of the system, seemed to be unavoidable and essential. Saved from wrath. Wrath in the punishment of sin, as seen from the human point of view, but benevolence as seen from the Divine plane. What is called wrath in God must be different from wrath in man, though it is not to be supposed that displeasure at sin and approbation of virtue are unknown to Him whose name and nature are Love and God or the Good. What the nature of the wrath here spoken of was, is evident from the fact that the love of God is said to have provided, ver. 8, 15, the means of saving the sinner.- Saved by his life. This declaration is highly worthy of note, as distinguishing the life of Jesus, his teachings, examples, &c., as the grand instruments of our own salvation no less than his death. His cross wins us, reconciles us, "draws," as John has it, "all men unto him"; but his spiritual life, his righteousness, carry on in us the process of sanctification, changing us into the same likeness, until our moral safety is secured. God now shows his mercy, not, as before, in the death, but much

1

more in the life of Jesus, his life on earth and his life in heaven.

11. Joy. Elsewhere rendered too capriciously by King James's men, boast, rejoice, glory. The Apostle institutes an indirect comparison here between the Christian glorying in God through Jesus Christ, and the Jew glorying in the Law by Moses, or in being the child of Abraham. — Atonement. This word occurs only here in the whole New Testament, but it has singularly given a name to a much disputed Christian doctrine. It is the same term which, as a verb, is translated reconciled in verse 10. It should be here reconciliation, a restoration of the sinner from a state of disobedience and hostility to one of union with God. This sense was intended by the translators themselves when they used the term atonement, for it meant reconciliation, not satisfaction or propitiation, in the contemporaneous literature, the "old English undefiled." Thus in Shakespeare's play of Othello:

"Lod. Is there division 'twixt my lord and

12-21. In this well-known passage Paul turns over a new leaf of his argument, and describes in a grand and comprehensive comparison the benefits of the Gospel as made free to all mankind. He represents Jesus Christ as the spiritual head, as Adam was the paternal ancestor, of the whole family of man. As Jew and Gentile both dated back to Adam as their great natural head, so was it designed in the new dispensation that they should both alike, one without exaltation over the other, hail from Christ as their spiritual head and progenitor. This is the leading outline of thought, but the Apostle descends into a minute comparison in many points between the physical and the spiritual Adam. The sin of the first Adam is set against the righteousness of the second Adam; death produced by sin, against the life produced by righteousness; condemnation, against justification; many made

sinners

by one man's sin, against many made righteous by the obedience of one; offences abounding by the detective power of the Law, against grace abounding even more; sin reigning unto death, against grace reigning through_righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ.

We

read so familiarly and technically the sublime strains of Paul, and take them so much as a matter of course, inwoven as they are into the current theology, that we fail to appreciate their wonderful power and richness, and the immense addition they are to the treasures of Christian thought. However unable we may be to arrange the exact joints and articulations of this compact logic, we can yet gain sufficient inkling of the general purpose to be satisfied that Paul was no loose, inconsequential writer, and that, though addicted to rabbin

ical styles of expression and arrangement which sometimes embarrass us, he yet soared with a lofty genius and a Christian freedom into regions all his own.

12. Sin entered into the world by one man, because, according to the history in Genesis, Adam was the first to sin, the first to set an example, and to infect his constitution, and, through the laws of hereditary descent, the constitution of his posterity, with evil more or less inveterate. But the supposition that Adam acted in any federative capacity by which all men became hostile by their very nature to all good and prone to all evil, is a monstrous impeachment of His goodness who should thus place on so perilous a contingency the fate of a whole race. It is a supposition not sustained by facts; for bad as men are, they are not purely evil. It is a supposition not required by any means in this course of reasoning; for it is of sin, actual transgression, positive offences, disobedience, not of depravity of nature, that Paul is here speaking. By turning rhetoric into logic, and figures of speech into literal propositions, the warm pictures of man's actual wickedness have been converted into cold formulas, expressive of the total theoretic depravity of his spiritual constitution. - One man. Adam is mentioned as being the more conspicuous actor, and standing for the twain who were one flesh. Death by sin. The penalty joined to the offence. What is that penalty? That it is not merely natural, physical death, is evident from the fact that the grace of God by Christ does not remove it, but men continue to die as before. By death we are to understand, then, moral as well as natural evil; it is a general term to describe all the bad consequences of disobe