Two motives for punishment.

Their operation in this case.

punishment, any means whatever of giving him pain, either by severe reproof, or deprivation of enjoyment, or direct suffering. There are two distinct feelings which may prompt him to inflict punishment. First he may be a passionate man, and feel personal resentment against the boy, and punish him under the influence of those feelings; a case exceedingly common. Secondly, without feeling any resentment, but rather looking with tender compassion upon his son, he may see the necessity of doing something effectual to stop this incipient sin, and to prevent its extending to his other children. If now the former is the father's feeling,— an emotion of resentment and passion, on account of the trouble which the fault has caused, and is likely to cause him, there is no hope for the poor offender;- resentment can only be gratified by the suffering of the object of it. If, on the other hand, the feeling is only a calm, though perhaps anxious regard for the moral safety and happiness of his family, there is some hope; for punishment in this case, would only be resorted to on account of its promoting this safety and happiness, by the moral impression it would make, and there may perhaps be some other way of accomplishing this object. But let us look at this more particularly.

The reason why truancy is so serious an evil, is not the loss of a day or two at school, now and then,— or any other immediate and direct consequence of it. It is because it is the beginning of a long course of sin; it leads to bad company, and to deception, and to vicious habits; it stops the progress of preparation for the duties of life, and hardens the heart, and opens the door for every temptation and sin, which, if not closed, must bring the poor victim to ruin. These are what constitute its dangers. Now the difficulty with the boy is, that he does not see these things. He is spiritually blind, and argument and persuasion will not open his

Substitute for punishment.

The father's plan.

Visit to the poorhouse.

eyes. Punishment is therefore necessary to make such an impression upon his mind and that of the others, as to arrest the progress of the sin. It may be confinement. It may be some disgrace or deprivation; or suffering in any other form. If it is however judiciously administered, and in a proper spirit, it must have an effect, and it may remove the evil altogether.

But there may be some other way of accomplishing the object, that is, of producing the needed impression. Let us suppose such a way. Let us imagine that after learning that his son had been guilty of the offence, the father gives no indications of resentment, or any other personal feeling, but begins to think what he can do to arrest the evil, without bringing suffering upon his boy. At last he says, 'My boys: I want you all to understand what the real nature of truancy is. I shall, however, say no more about it now, but to-morrow I shall wish you to go and take a walk with me."

The boys look forward with eager interest to the time, and when it arrives, the father takes them to a neighboring poorhouse, where lies a man sick, and suffering excruciating pains under the power of diseases brought on by vice. We may suppose the father to have been accidentally acquainted with the case. The boys enter the large and dreary apartment, crowded with beds, tenanted by misery in every form; for there is an apartment in every extensive poorhouse, where you may see the very extreme of human wo,- the last earthly stage of the broad road, — where life lingers in forms of most excessive misery, as if to show how much the mysterious principle can endure. On one narrow couch, foaming mania glares at you, on another lies sightless, senseless, torpid old age, a picture of indescribable decrepitude and deformity;- from a third, you hear the groans and see the restless tossing of acute suffering, and gibbering idiocy laughs upon a fourth, with a noise which

The scene.

The abandoned.

Consequences of truancy.

grates more harshly upon the feelings than the deepest groans.

Into such a scene the father enters, followed by his sons, pale and trembling, for it is a scene which they have scarcely nerve to endure. The attendant, knowing whom they wish to see, precedes them, guiding them to a bed in the corner, where lies the only patient in the room who has mind enough left to be conscious who, and what, and where he is. He has covered his head, in the vain effort to hide from the horrors of his last earthly home. The attendant raises the corner of the blanket which covers him, and the visiters see there a haggard face, with its two glazed and motionless eyes rolled up towards them and staring wildly from their sunken sockets.

The visiter has brought the wretched patient some little comfort or luxury, which may amuse and gratify him a moment, though it cannot relieve. He then falls into conversation with him, and the boys who stand by, learn something of the progress and the termination of a life of vice and crime. The father carries him back to early childhood, and learns from the sufferer's own lips, that truancy and the bad company which it led him into, were the first steps of his wretched course.

Now there is nothing unnatural in all this. Precisely such an experiment may never have been made, but plans for producing moral impressions exactly analogous to it, have been successfully adopted a thousand times, and every reader will see that if such a plan were adopted, and if the hearts of the boys were in such a state as deeply to feel it, it would, in this case, have rendered all farther proceedings unnecessary. If the guilty one's heart was really touched by the scene, so that he should go home penitent and humbled, and resolved to sin no more, it would be perfectly safe to forgive him. And the point to be kept most distinctly in view in the case, the point which it is, in fact, the whole design of the

Moral impression made by the death of Christ.

case to illustrate, is, that free forgiveness, which would be dangerous alone, may be rendered safe by measures ingeniously and judiciously adopted, which shall produce the same moral impression upon the community which punishment would have made; and that the moral Governor who is actuated by a calm regard for the general good, and not by personal resentment, will devise such measures if he can. It is the great glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that it thus provides a way for the safe forgiveness of sin. We are taken to the cross, and we see the nature and effects of sin there; and the great sacrifice which was made on Calvary, goes instead of the just punishment of men, to make that great moral. impression which is necessary to sustain law, and satisfy justice, and arrest the consequences of sin.

The imaginary case we have been describing, is evidently very different in many respects, from the plan of salvation by the sacrifice of the Son of God. It would have resembled it more closely if, instead of one offender, we had supposed two, one of whom should be affected and led to penitence by the scene he witnessed, while the other remained hard-hearted and stubborn. The father would then have felt compelled, while he forgave the one, to take some farther measures with the other. The resemblance would have been closer still, if instead of showing the boys some existing misery, an innocent brother could, in some mysterious way, himself have voluntarily assumed for a time, the sufferings which were the inevitable consequences of the sin. These changes, however, and many others designed to make it correspond more closely with the original, do not alter its nature, or touch the great principle which it brings to view: viz. that to render it safe to forgive sin, some plan must be divised, for producing, by other means, the moral effects for which punishment is intended.

We have, in former chapters, taken a view of two

Extent and power of it undeniable.

Its present influence.

great objects for which the Son of God appeared here, to set us an example, and to teach us, by precept, our duty. We have considered the nature of the example, and also the system of duty which he held up to men. We now come, however, to look at another great design, far greater, probably, than either of those, to make, by perfect obedience during his life, and the sufferings he endured at the close of it, such an exhibition of the nature, and the effects of sin, and such an expiation for human transgressions, as should render it safe to forgive all who are penitent. He came, in other words, not only to teach us duty, and to set an example of its performance, but to suffer for us, and to make, by that suffering, a moral impression on the great community of intelligent beings, which should go instead of our punishment, and render it safe that we should be forgiven.

It has made such an impression. It is now eighteen centuries since that death occurred, and among all the varieties of opinion which have been adopted in regard to it, by Atheist, Deist, and Christian, in one point all must agree, that the death of Jesus Christ has made a stronger impression upon the human race, than any other transaction since the creation of the world. In the re

mote and subjugated province where it occurred, it was witnessed, indeed, only by a few thousands, and they looked upon it with little more interest than would have been excited by the execution of any other object of popular fury; they perhaps supposed too, that in a few months, it would be forgotten. But no. In a very few weeks, it was the means of arresting the attention, and subduing the hearts, and altering the characters and lives of thousands. The tidings of the transaction, and the explanation of it, spread like a flame. The walls of the city could not confine it; the boundaries of the province could not confine it. The influence of wealth, and the coercion of military power, were equally insufficient to