direct and specific statement of the doctrine of Atonement, in this
important section of Christ's teaching, has been instanced by the
Socinian opponent as proof that this doctrine is not so vital as the
Church has always claimed it to be. But, Christ was purposely silent
respecting grace and its methods, until he had _spiritualized Law_, and
made it penetrate the human consciousness like a sharp sword. Of what use
would it have been to offer mercy, before the sense of its need had been
elicited? and how was this to be elicited, but by the solemn and
authoritative enunciation of law and justice? There are, indeed, cheering
intimations, in the Sermon on the Mount, respecting the Divine mercy, and
so there are in connection with the giving of the Ten Commandments. But
law, rather than grace, is the main substance and burden of both. The
great intention, in each instance, is to convince of sin, preparatory to
the offer of clemency. The Decalogue is the legal basis of the Old
Dispensation, and the Sermon on the Mount is the legal basis of the New.
When the Redeemer, in the opening of His ministry, had provided the
apparatus of conviction, then He provided the apparatus of expiation. The
Great High-Priest, like the Levitical priest who typified Him, did not
sprinkle atoning blood indiscriminately. It was to bedew only him who
felt and confessed guilt.

This legal and minatory element in the words of Jesus has also been
noticed by the skeptic, and an argument has been founded upon it to prove
that He was soured by ill-success, and, like other merely human reformers
who have found the human heart too hard, for them, fell away from the
gentleness with which He began His ministry, into the anger and
denunciation of mortified ambition with which it closed. This is the
picture of Jesus Christ which Rénan presents in his apocryphal Gospel.
But the fact is, that the Redeemer _began_ with law, and was rigorous
with sin from the very first. The Sermon on the Mount was delivered not