A Tribute of Affection to the Memory of REV. Samuel B. Swaim

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF THE ATONEMENT. All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. ?ISA. liii. 6. By the scriptural view of the atonement, solicited for this occasion, is doubtless meant divine teachings in place of human opinions; .not what the philosophy of men may suppose, nor their predilections choose, but what the words of the wisdom of the Holy Scriptures set forth as the actual truth. The importance of knowing what really saith the Scripture in regard to the atonement can be measured alone by the practical influence allowed to it in the same sacred writings. If it be, as some have styled it, the cardinal doctrine or central truth of Christianity, as the death of Jesus is the great fact in its history, then all other views of its teachings, all ideas of duty and obligation in man, and all practical results, immediate and final, will be shaped and determined by the view first taken here. For, as the great Andrew Fuller has remarked, the atonement is not so much a member of the body of Christian doctrine as the life-blood that runs through the whole of it. There is not an importanttruth but what is supposed by it, included in it, or arises out of it, nor any part of practical religion but what hangs upon it. We may, then, well allow the full force of John Newton's happy expression: ? What think ye of Christ, is the test To try both your state and your scheme. But, in the brief hour allowed to this service, how can we compass so vast a theme, how present a view which shall be somewhat comprehensive and complete, except by a bare summary of Scripture statements, with no other explanations or defence than may set them as the landmarks of the true faith? Much scriptura...