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.  The nature and extent of that efficacy we are unable as yet fully to trace.  Part we are capable of beholding; and the wisdom of what we behold we have reason to adore.  We discern, in this plan of redemption, the evil of sin strongly exhibited and the justice of the divine government awfully exemplified, in Christ suffering for sinners.  But let us not imagine that our present discoveries unfold the whole influence of the death of Christ.  It is connected with causes into which we can not penetrate.  It produces consequences too extensive for us to explore.  “God’s thoughts are not as our thoughts.”  In all things we “see only in part”; and here, if anywhere, we see also “as through a glass. darkly.”

This, however, is fully manifest, that redemption is one of the most glorious works of the Almighty.  If the hour of the creation of the world was great and illustrious, that hour when, from the dark and formless mass, this fair system of nature arose at the divine command, when “the morning-stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy,” no less illustrious is the hour of the restoration of the world; the hour when, from condemnation and misery, it emerged into happiness and peace.  With less external majesty it was attended; but it is, on that account, the more wonderful that, under an appearance so simple, such great events were covered.

III.  In this hour the long series of prophecies, visions, types, and figures were accomplished.  This was the center in which they all met:  this the point toward which they had tended and verged, throughout the course of so many generations.  You behold the law and the prophets standing, if we may speak so, at the foot of the cross, and doing homage.  You behold Moses and Aaron bearing the