is an unknown light within your soul, which will wake when you command it. The day may come when all that is human, man and woman, will fall off from you; as they did from Him. Let His strength be yours. Be independent of them all now. The Father is with you. Look to Him, and He will save you. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ROSWELL DWIGHT HITCHCOCK was born at East Machias, Maine, in 1817. To his pulpit delivery, which was direct, fluent and impressive, he brought the results of profound Bible research. He was an evangelical transcendentalist, and many years addressed large and cultured congregations in New York City. As a teacher he was clear and inspiring, particularly in historical theology. In 1880 he was made president of the Union Theological Seminary. His best-known work is the Complete Analysis of the Bible." He died in 1887. 66 HITCHCOCK 1817-1887 ETERNAL ATONEMENT1 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.— Revelation xiii, 8. M' Y subject is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. My text is Revelation xiii., 8, the precise import of which is disputed; and I will therefore give you the rival renderings. As we have been used to it in the Authorized Version, it reads: "Written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." The Anglican revisers, following the lead of Alford, make no essential change: "Written in the book of life of the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world." The American revisers, following the lead of Bengel, De Wette, and many others, would have it: "Written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that hath been slain." The American rendering makes 1 From Dr. Hitchcock's book of the same title by permission of the publishers. Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons. the election eternal. The Anglican rendering makes the atonement eternal. The prevalent opinion no doubt has been that the atonement is simply an historic fact, dating back now some nineteen hundred years; and that only the purpose of it is eternal. But Johann Wessel, the great German theologian, who died only six years after Martin Luther was born, got hold of the idea that not election only, but atonement also, is an eternal act. And this, it seems to me, is both rational and scriptural. Eternal election, profoundly considered, requires eternal atonement for its support. Both are eternal, as all divine realities are eternal. If the passage in Revelation were given up, we should still have to deal with 1 Peter i., 19, 20, where the Lamb is spoken of as foreknown before the foundation of the world, but manifested at the end of the times; eternal reality becoming temporal fact. We should still have to deal with John xvii., 24, which also carries back into eternity the redeeming relationship between the Father and the Son. Even on Calvary, as temporal actuality, the Lamb slain is only a figure of speech, and, of course, it can be no more than a figure of speech as eternal reality in the bosom of God. But whether in time, or in eternity-whether on Calvary or in the bosom of God, the figure must stand for something. For us the meaning is, and must be, that not election only, but |