adequate, I gave a general reply, that the New Testament _confessed_
the imperfections of the older dispensation. I still presumed the Old
to have been perfect for its own objects and in its own place; and
had not defined to myself how far it was correct or absurd, to imagine
morality to change with time and circumstances.

Before long, ground was broken in my mind on a still more critical
question, by another Fellow of a College; who maintained that nothing
but unbelief could arise out of the attempt to understand _in what
way_ and _by what moral right_ the blood of Christ atoned for sins.
He said, that he bowed before the doctrine as one of "Revelation," and
accepted it reverentially by an act of faith; but that he certainly
felt unable to understand _why_ the sacrifice of Christ, any more than
the Mosaic sacrifices, should compensate for the punishment of our
sins. Could carnal reason discern that human or divine blood, any
more than that of beasts, had efficacy to make the sinner as it were
sinless? It appeared to him a necessarily inscrutable mystery, into
which we ought not to look.--The matter being thus forced on my
attention, I certainly saw that to establish the abstract moral
_right_ and _justice_ of vicarious punishment was not easy, and that
to make out the fact of any "compensation"--(_i.e._ that Jesus really
endured on the cross a true equivalent for the eternal sufferings
due to the whole human race,)--was harder still. Nevertheless I had
difficulty in adopting the conclusions of this gentleman; FIRST,
because, in a passage of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the sacred
writer, in arguing--"_For_ it is impossible that the blood of bulls
and goats can take away sins," &c., &c....--seems to expect his
readers to see an inherent impropriety in the sacrifices of the Law,
and an inherent moral fitness in the sacrifice of Christ. SECONDLY:
I had always been accustomed to hear that it was by seeing the