Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/316

 do not need an atonement on that account. Death is, therefore, a punishment, and that which is a punishment can never be an atonement. The dying Jew, then, if he be a reasonable man, has no hope that can yield him peace and consolation in that solemn hour. He prays that his death may atone for his sins, and yet believes the very contrary—that he is going down to the place of the damned, and that his son will have to undertake the work of his redemption. How any thoughtful man, especially how any Israelite who has read the Law and the Prophets, can be content with such a religion, we cannot comprehend. The very essence of religion, the very consideration that gives it any value, is the comfort which it affords to the departing sinner. If it cannot soothe, support, and comfort him in the hour of death, it is not worth the having. The Christian faith is very different, and, in our opinion, far more in accordance with the Old Testament. We believe, in the first place, that there is a full and perfect pardon for all sins by the atonement of the Messiah, so that the sinner who dies in repentance and faith, is delivered from all punishment and other consequences of sin, and enters at once into the abodes of the blessed, there to await the morning of the resurrection. The Old Testament promised that Messiah should bear our sins. The New Testament tells us that He has borne them, and that therefore we can "now be justified from all things from which we could not be justified by the law of Moses." (Acts xiii. 38, 39.) It tells us that "God made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. v. 21); and "that if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus, the Messiah, the Righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John ii. 1, 2.) We believe, therefore, that Messiah has borne all that we ought to have borne, as the prophet says—

"The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed," (Isaiah liii. 5,) and that now we are delivered. There is no twelvemonth of torment awaiting those whom Messiah has redeemed, neither do we trust in our own death as a possible atonement. Our hope is firmly fixed, and, therefore, though sinners, we can die in peace, resting on the salvation which God himself has wrought, in no fear of the torments of the damned, but humbly expecting, for the Messiah's sake, to be admitted into the mansions of the blessed. Resting on this hope, the Christian can say, "To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." (Philip, i. 21.) He can look forward from death to the glorious consummation, as St. Paul did, who, when