The Christian Calls on his Soul to Remember This

This is the incredible last paragraph in George Smeaton’s book “Christ’s Doctrine of the Atonement”

The manifold and various motives derived from the cross are enforced in all the apostolic epistle. The final purpose which we are told the atonement was meant to effect, according to the divine plan, becomes to believers a guiding principle in the sphere of motive. Thus when the redeemed apprehend that they are not their own but bought with a price, they are directed on this very account to glorify God with their body and spirit. (1 Cor 6:20). When holy fear is inculcated on Christians during the time of their sojourn, it is enforced by the consideration that we are redeemed by precious blood (1 Pet 1:18). The Christian thus falls in with the ways of God. The ground and motive for holy duty, for inflaming and increasing the true fear of God, and for expelling misleading aims or tendencies, as seen in almost every point of practical religion, will be found in the apostolic epistles, traced up to the atonement of Christ. The Christian calls on his soul to remember this, weather he discovers in the death of his Lord indications of divine holiness or of compassionate love. And he contemplates the doctrine of the atonement, in order to find motives for the discharge of sacred duties, for the cultivation of love, fear, confidence. He investigates the source from which these graces can be most effectually derived, and he finds all this in the doctrine of reconciliation effected by the atone blood of Christ. pg 413