of the temple. In paying this money, he is expressly said to give a ransom for his soul, or, for both expressions are used, to make an atonement for his soul. The richest man was not allowed to give more than the half-shekel, the poorest man was not to give less than the half-shekel; an ordinance apparently unjust, if the design of the tax had been simply to provide funds for the temple. It is true that the funds thus raised were set apart for the service of the sanctuary, but if nothing had been contemplated beyond the support of public worship, we can hardly doubt that the rich and the poor would have been taxed in proportion to their means. Indeed, the expressions-"a ransom, an atonement for the soul," clearly show that the main design of the impost was a moral design, one therefore with which rich and poor have equal concern, so that we might naturally expect them to be equally taxed.

What meaning, then, you must attend closely to this,-what meaning can be attached to that giving a ransom or making an atonement for the soul, which is assigned as the object or result of the half-shekel payment? You cannot for a moment think, that we can here preserve the gospel notion of a ransom or an atonement; there was nothing of sacrifice, and, therefore, upon every reckoning, there could have been nothing of what we count propitiation. Indeed, this is the single instance, amid all the variety of legal institutions, in which an offering of money is commanded; therefore it seems highly probable that it was not a ransom for the soul, so much as a ransom for the life, which the Israelite made when he paid the half-shekel. There is great uncertainty about the word rendered soul; it as often denotes the vital principle as the immortal; nay, even in our own language we make just as much confusion between soul and body. If a ship goes down at sea, we talk of every soul on board perishing. So that you might as accurately translate our text-"They shall give every man a ransom for his life unto the Lord." And since on all occasions in which the soul, the immortal principle, is undeniably concerned, the appointed offerings are strictly sacrificial, we may fairly conclude, that in the solitary instance in which money is substituted for sacrifice, the life or vital principle is intended. This, then, is the first great truth which we have to work out. We shall not, indeed, confine our remarks to the atonement for the life, but introduce likewise the atonement for the soul. But at present it is of the natural life that we have to speak ; and we proceed to endeavour to explain to you what is to be understood by the commandment-" When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord."

Now, the atonement, as already described by its legal definition, is that which so covers or conceals what displeases, as to qualify a person or a thing for the service of God. If, then, a thing be forfeited to Divine justice, whatever prevents the seizure, and obtains for this thing the being yet employed for God, is rightly said to make atonement for that thing. Just thus it is with human life, or rather with the human person, including, as it does, both body and soul. Our persons are forfeited, we have not accomplished the great end of our being, and therefore we deserve every moment to die; and, of course, from the very nature of the case, it is wholly out of our power to offer reparation, or to ransom the persons thus forfeited. God is, however, pleased in his exuberant compassion to continue us in being, and so to prolong our opportunities of acting as his servants; and if, yet further, he were pleased to appoint that this continuance in life should be connected with the payment of a tribute, then, though this tribute in itself could have no lifegiving efficacy, and would be only an acknowledgment of dependence upon God, still, as being an instituted mode for the redemption of what was forfeited, it may justly be said to make atonement or to be a ransom for our lives. This seems most accurately to describe the case of the Israelites. You learn from our text, that the neglecting or refusing to pay the half-shekel was to be followed by the death of the party : "that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them." The tax was to be paid as a confession that life had been forfeited, and as an acknowledgment that its continuance

depended wholly upon God. God was graciously pleased to ordain, that the payment of this tribute should prevent the entrance of the plague, and thus effect what it was especially the province of an atonement to effect-the ransom of the forfeited, and the prolongation of the season in which it might be used in God's service. And if this be the design and import of the taxthe tax, as we have told you, being the same in amount, whether levied from the rich or the poor, there are great truths, my brethren, which its institution represents. In the first place, you are taught your entire dependence upon God. The Israelites were to pay the half-shekel, in confession that, body and soul, they were dependent upon God. It was a ransom for their lives, that there might be no plague amongst them. Let us look for a while at this great fact,

There are few men bold enough to question or to deny, that God possesses over them so absolute a sovereignty that they cannot draw a single breath, except by his allowance. In the dissipations of a worldly career the fact is, for the most part, overlooked; yet you will scarcely find the instance in which, if pressed to a confession, men will controvert the fact: but there was something eminently beautiful in an institution which brought a nation year by year to the acknowledgment that in God they lived, and moved, and had their being. It is a fine pause which every Israelite was compelled, as it were, to make, even though his course was one of thorough forgetfulness of his Maker, when tribute was demanded of him, in confession that he was a creature subsisting only at the pleasure of the Creator; and there would be a vast probability that many of you would be arrested in your indifference to religion, and prevailed on to consider your ways, if you were brought to such a pause as thus occurred at stated intervals to the Jews. If we could only bring home to you the truth, of all truths perhaps the simplest and least disputed, that God is unreservedly the Lord of life and of death, so that at any instant, if he issue the command, or suspend his providential supplies, you are withdrawn from this world, with all its business, and all its pleasures, we believe that we should find in you eager and interested listeners, as we went on to discourse on the need and the mode of preparing for eternity. It is just a forgetfulness of your dependence upon God, and a consequent taking, so to speak, your lives into your own keeping, from which flow the inattention and the procrastination which threaten you with everlasting ruin. That possibly I have but a moment to live! Could it ever be gathered from the deportment of the vast human throng, that there is not an individual in the busy assembly, but what is bound to address these words to himself? There is not perhaps one of us who lives in that habitual readiness for death, which ought to result from the uncertainty of life; but it may be too true of the majority, that they live as though assured of the long continuance of life. Oh! that we could induce you, according to the language of our text, to give a ransom for your lives! We only want you, the men of business more especially, whose days must be given to engrossing occupation, we only want you to fasten on the fact, that you depend for every breath on the invisible Creator, and to draw from the fact those inferences which naturally suggest themselves to rational beings. We have no language by which to describe to you your hardihood, if with this fact presented to you in its awfulness you can put away the pressing interests of another world, and go forward with your purposes and your plans as though you had the promise of many years upon earth. We can only account for so surprising and destructive an infatuation on the principle, that, after all, you never give yourselves in good earnest to the belief of the fact, but suffer yourselves, however unconsciously, to be deluded by the lie with which the tempter plied our first parents in Paradise, “Ye shall not surely die!" Ye do not bring the half-shekel as an atonement for your lives; in other words, ye have no practical remembrance that in God's hand is the soul of every living thing. Hence it comes to pass, that ye can go on, year after year, apparently indifferent to the fact, that you are approaching nearer and nearer to another state of being, as much engrossed with the world, as little in earnest with religion; and the fearful likelihood is, that in spite of every warning

and every entreaty, numbers will at last be found to have incurred the second death, and all because resolved to live as though secured against the first.

And whilst urging upon you, that the half-shekel payment was to keep alive the sense of dependence upon God, to serve as the memorial of his being the well-spring of all life, we would have you earnestly observe, that the rich and the poor were to pay just the same sum. I do not know that in the whole range of Scripture there is a more touching delineation of a truth which we are too apt to overlook, when observing the differences in human condition. We cannot imagine a finer exhibition of the fact, that there is no respect of persons with God, than was given when the Israelites, the rich man in his pomp, and the poor man in his penury, approached with the same atonement, and each offered the half-shekel as a ransom for his life. It was of all declarations the clearest and most unqualified, that in the sight of the Almighty the distinctions of rank and of estate are altogether as nothing; and that whilst he gathers the whole human race under his guardianship, there is no difference in the watchfulness which extends itself to the several individuals. And never do we view God under a more wonderful aspect, and never do riches and honours appear less worth our solicitude, than when all the members of the family of man are thus brought to the same level, and that providence which has to throw its carefulness to the farthest outskirts of creation is represented as circulating amongst them with a most thorough impartiality. It is common enough to speak of the life of this or that individual, as of more than ordinary value. The chieftain at the head of an army, the statesman on whom the welfare of a country seems to hang, the father on whose exertions a numerous family depend for subsistence; in these and the like cases we account life especially precious, and we give our deepest lamentation if death make an inroad. Let it be left to ourselves to impose a ransom, and we shall proportion it with reference to the interests which seem to us consulted by the life, and injured by the death of different individuals. I do not believe that any human legislation would have ordained a tribute, attaching the same worth to the life of a solitary beggar, pining away in his wretchedness, and the monarch whose death will be as an earthquake to an empire. The one will pass from life altogether unnoticed, and leaving no blank behind; whilst the other must depart amid the regret of thousands, bequeathing perhaps distraction to far-spreading provinces. And must both give equally the half-shekel tax-the rich no more, the poor no less? Is the life of the one of actually the same worth as the life of the other? Beyond all question. The beggar has been summoned into being, that he may strive for immortality; the monarch has been summoned into being, that he may strive for immortality. There is a difference in the stage on which they have to wrestle; there is no difference in the object of their creation. The life of the one may on every human calculation be vastly more important to his fellow-men than the life of another; but this is nothing; the ransom is for life, as of value to himself; and when God looks down from his throne, and takes the survey of the human population, oh! the separating circumstances of station and of wealth must altogether vanish. The palace is but the residence of a probationer for eternity; and the hovel is but the residence of a probationer for eternity: life, then, must be regarded in no other light than that of the preparation time for an unbounded duration; and in place, therefore, of a tribute graduated according to position in society, we can expect that nothing will be demanded but a uniform acknowledgment. There is, therefore, additional proof, if proof could be wanting, that the point of view in which men are regarded by their Maker is simply that of creatures passing through a state of probation. He has breathed into all the breath of life, in order that all may have opportunity of winning immortality. All, therefore, appear to him in the same light, and life, as being granted to each, that each may struggle for the same prize, is of the same worth to each, and shall be ransomed at the same cost to each. It cannot be important that this man should live, because others depend upon him; it cannot be comparatively unimportant that this

man should die, because this man stands alone in the world. God, who is the Father of the fatherless, can uphold a family as well without as with an earthly parent; and he who seems to us of least worth to others, may, for aught we can tell, prove the instrument in God's hand by which the suffering may be succoured. So that the value of life is only to be rightly_estimated by considering it the seed-time for eternity; and when thus considered all differences disappear, and the every moment of each individual seems infinitely and unspeakably precious. If I rank amongst the destitute, sorrow and privation making up my earthly portion, I am still a living thing; and in having life, I have, if I will, immortality. I may be classed with the great ones of the world, all that is attractive being woven for my heritage; but it were better for me had I never been born, if I simply live to any other end but that of securing admission into heaven. In both cases, then, ought I not to render the same tribute for my life? In the one case shall I give less than a half-shekel, because I am struggling with afflictions not worthy to be compared with the glory for which I strive? In the other, shall I give more than a half-shekel, because exposed to greater danger of losing that for which alone I was created? Shall I not rather, whatever mine earthly state, encourage myself in the persuasion, that all men are regarded by God as equally his children; that he has placed them all with distinct reference to the grand object for which they were called into being; that his providence encircles them all with the same carefulness, because all are permitted and all appointed to seek the same happiness? Ah! then, the lowly cottage, whose inmates are grappling with actual destitution, encloses beings as precious in the sight of the Omnipotent as those upon whom he has showered the rank and the riches of the earth. And if at any time I feel shaken in the persuasion, and the life of one insignificant as myself appear of too little worth to be cared for by God, why, it should scatter every suspicion, and it should restore all my confidence, to know it enacted, that the rich should not give more, and the poor should not give less than half a shekel, when the Israelites had to set themselves to obey the injunction of our text-"They shall give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord." Now, we have been proceeding on the supposition, that the ransom enjoined in our text was a ransom for the life; understanding by the word "soul" not so much the immortal as the vital principle in man. On this supposition we have connected the text with other passages, having reference to the tax, and have shown you from the professed object of the tax, and from its having been levied on all classes alike, that we are simply and entirely dependent upon God, and that there is no respect of persons in his sight. But if we take the word "soul" in its ordinary sense-if we suppose our text to appoint a ranson for the soul-there will be no need that we alter or restrict our observations. We may regard the prescribed equality of payment by the rich and by the poor as a clear indication that the thing ransomed, whether the life or the soul, was of equal worth in God's sight, whatever the condition of those who brought the half-shekel. If, then, the ransom be a ransom for the soul, and rich and poor were to pay the same tribute, the conclusion is irresistible, that God values at the same rate the souls of all human beings. He demands of us an atonement for the soul, as well as for the life; he would have us feel and confess that we are as dependent upon him for the continued existence of the immortal principle as for the prolongation of animal life. Is it fitting that I reverently declare my consciousness that I cannot draw another breath but by the Almighty's permission? Then it is also fitting that I own, that unless God please to communicate afresh from his fulness, the soul, unquenchable as I call it, would be suddenly extinguished. Of all beings throughout the universe, God alone is essentially and inherently immortal. It is not because I am material that I make an atone ment or ransom for my life; if I were purely spiritual, if I were all soul, I should still be bound to make atonement for my life. But who knows not that the whole creation, from the loftiest archangel down to the most insignificant tenant of a leaf or a bubble, hangs on the Creator, so that if he who first summoned him into being were for a lonely instant to cease to sustain,

there would be suspension of animation throughout all orders of existence, and the pulse of life beat only in the Godhead. I would offer, then, a ransom for the soul; I would present my acknowledgments of momentary dependence on God for the life of that mysterious principle which fits me for communing with himself. I count myself indestructible; I feel that I have that within me which can never die; but let me not forget that spirit as well as flesh subsists only at the pleasure of the self-existent Jehovah, and if I confess it of his mercy that I am still reckoned with the living, let me recognize that mercy in being yet classed with the immortal. And there is much, moreover, to be said, when the enjoined ransom is thus taken as a ransom for the soul, on the rich not being required to give more, and on the poor being forbidden to give less. If God demand the same ransom for the soul of every human being, we recur to our proposition, that the souls of all are alike precious in his sight. We have nothing to do, whilst we maintain such a proposition, with objections that may be brought from difficult doctrines or conflicting appearances. The rich and the poor were to ransom the soul at the same price; and therefore whatever may seem done more for one soul than another-more favour shown, more assistance extended-we are bound to conclude that in all cases God attaches the same worth to the soul, and regards it with the same desire for its happiness. We have no right to suppose differences in the natural constitution of the soul. There are, indeed, vast appearances of difference; you can hardly suppose the soul of the idiot the same in its capacities as the soul of a man pre-eminent in intelligence; but the present is not the season for the full development of the soul. This is, after all, but the time of its imprisonment; and though on some occasions this principle may wondrously stretch forth, and amaze a world by its magnificent actings, still it is to the future that we look for the soul's perfect freedom; and necessarily ignorant what causes may on earth have repressed in one case and encouraged in another the partial exhibition of power, we are also ignorant whether, amid the scenery of the unmeasured hereafter, all souls may not spring to the same greatness, and all souls prove the possession of the same endowment. So that souls may be strictly of the same worth, equipped with the same energies, capable of the same dignities, and therefore to be ransomed by the same tribute. And if we were void of other reasons for counting all souls of the same worth, should we not find abundance in the fact, that the souls of all have been actually redeemed at the same price? For the soul of each one amongst us the Lord Jesus Christ paid down the same price; it did not cost more to purchase one soul than it it did to purchase another; all were equally bought, and all and each bought at the wondrous cost of the untold anguish of the Mediator's death. Where is the soul not redeemed by Christ's blood? Where is the soul which less could have redeemed? Oh! we feel no marvel that the rich must not give more, and the poor not less than half a shekel, in atonement for the soul. Let rich and poor appear before God, to confess it of his grace that the soul, which long ago deserved death for its iniquities, still lives, still expects immortality; let them come to confess, that they might all have long ago been cut down as cumberers of the ground; and therefore it is only of the Divine unmerited goodness that the soul has still hope of pardon and acceptance. Shall there be any difference in the offering which conveys the confession? The soul of the rich man, God redeemed it by the blood of his Son; the soul of the poor man, God redeemed it by the blood of his Son. It was not because there were myriads upon myriads to be ransomed, that so unmeasured a price was paid to Divine justice; what sufficed for unnumbered generations was not too much for a solitary individual; and we have every warrant from Scripture for believing, that if there had been literally but one man to redeem, Christ must have died for that man, otherwise the lonely thing had everlastingly perished.

It is not, then, an overcharged statement, that every soul has been redeemed at the inestimable price of the blood of God's Son-that the Mediator died that this soul might live; and if, then, rich and poor acknowledge by a tribute, that from God is the life of the soul, shall they not acknowledge it