It was the hour when that
great sacrifice was offered up, the efficacy of which reaches back
to the first transgression of man, and extends forward to the end of
time; the hour when, from the cross, as from a high altar, the blood
was flowing which washed away the guilt of the nations.
This awful dispensation of the Almighty contains mysteries which are
beyond the discovery of man. It is one of those things into which "the
angels desire to look." What has been revealed to us is, that the
death of Christ was the interposition of heaven for preventing the
ruin of human kind. We know that under the government of God misery
is the natural consequence of guilt. After rational creatures had, by
their criminal conduct, introduced disorder into the divine kingdom,
there was no ground to believe that by their penitence and prayers
alone they could prevent the destruction which threatened them. The
prevalence of propitiatory sacrifices throughout the earth proclaims
it to be the general sense of mankind that mere repentance was not of
sufficient avail to expiate sin or to stop its penal effects. By the
constant allusions which are carried on in the New Testament to the
sacrifices under the law, as pre-signifying a great atonement made by
Christ, and by the strong expressions which are used in describing the
effects of His death, the sacred writers show, as plainly as language
allows, that there was an efficacy in His sufferings far beyond
that of mere example and instruction.
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