Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/176

28 pies in the Divine mind, altogether independent of its effects on the hearts of those who are interested in it. The second leads us to consider the adaptation of the history of the Atonement, when believed, to the moral wants and capacities of the human mind. ...... There is something very striking and wonderful in this adaptation; and the deeper we search into it, the stronger reason shall we discover for admiration and gratitude, and the more thoroughly shall we be convinced that it is not a lucky coincidence, not an adjustment contrived by the precarious and temporizing wisdom of this world, but that it is stamped with the uncounterfeited seal of the universal Ruler, and carries on it the traces of that same mighty will, which has connected the sun with his planetary train, and fixed the great relations in nature, appointing to each atom its bound that it cannot pass." pp. 97–100.

These last remarks are true of course in their place; so far as we think we see an adaptation, even though Scripture does not expressly mention it, let us praise God and be thankful;—but it is one thing to trace humbly and thankfully what we surmise to be God's handywork, and so far as we think we see it, and quite another thing to propound our surmises dogmatically, not only as true, but as the substance of the revelation, the test of what is important in it, and what not; nay, of what is really part of it, and what not. Presently he says as follows:—

Now that the doctrine of the Atonement is so essential a doctrine that none other is more so, (true as it is,) does not at all hinder other doctrines in their own place being so essential that they may not be moved one inch from it, or made to converge towards that doctrine ever so little, beyond the sanction of Scripture. There is surely a difference between being prominent and being paramount. To take the illustration of the human body: the brain is the noblest organ, but have not the heart, and the lungs their own essential rights (so to express myself,) their own independent claims upon the regard of the physician? Will not he be justly called a theorist who resolves all diseases into one, and refers general healthiness to one organ as its seat and cause?