And inasmuch as he was to be redeemed by the sufferings of One who
was at once man and not man, He was in a certain sense to share those
sufferings, in order to partake in the blessings they purchased for him.
A mystic union was to take place between the Saviour and the fallen
race, of which a community in suffering, as the instrument of
restoration, was to be for ever and in every case established. This
anguish, further, was to be twofold, including all the faculties both of
the body and the soul. Man had sinned in his whole being; in his whole
being, therefore, he was to suffer, both in the person of his Redeemer,
who was to suffer for him, and in himself, who was to suffer with his
Saviour. A "holocaust" was to be offered to the offended Majesty of God;
an offering, not only of his _entire_ nature, but a _burnt_ offering; a
sacrifice which should torture him in the flames of Divine vengeance,
and kill him with its annihilating fierceness.

As, however, it pleased the Divine Wisdom to postpone for forty
centuries the advent and atonement of the Redeemer, so, for the same
period, the race redeemed participated, in a comparatively slight
degree, in those restorative sufferings which derived all their virtue
from the sacrifice upon the Cross. Pangs of body and bitterness of soul
were, in truth, the lot of man from the moment that Adam sinned; but
they were the pangs and bitterness of a criminal under punishment, far
more than the sacrificial pains of the members of Christ crucified.
Asceticism formed but a small portion of the religious worship of the
people of God, until the great atonement was completed upon Calvary. Not
that any degree, even the lowest, of acceptable obedience could ever be
attained without some measure of the crucifixion of the natural man.
Patriarchs and Israelites alike felt the power of the Cross as the
instrument of their sanctification. But still earthly prosperity,
including bodily pleasures, was, as a rule, the reward with which God