What sort of 'Moral Influence' does 'Moral Influence' have?

"Suppose - if it can be possible to suppose anything so unnatural - that an earthly king should seek to conciliate his disaffected subjects by taking his beloved son, and depriving his of life before them, for no other than the avowed purpose of assuring the rebel multitude than that his heart is full of clemency and kindness towards them - how would they be affected by such a spectacle? Can we imagine that it would have the intended effect? Even if the child were ever so willing a victim - cheerfully placing his life at his father's disposal - we cannot concieve that the taking away of that life, if no public benefit otherwise unattainable directly issued from the sacrifice, could, as an alleged proof of love towards the rebels, have the slightest tendency to bring them back to their allegiance. Rather might we suppose it to have a tendency to confirm them in their alienation from a sovereign whose treatment of his own son was as far as possible from being indicative of a kindly and conciliatory disposition towards his subjects. In like manner I am utterly at a loss to see how the humiliation and sufferings of the Son of God should be held to manifest or commend His Father's love to us, if they were not the procuring cause of our deliverance from forfeitures and penalties which could not otherwise have been averted."

-Thomas Jackson Crawford, The Scripture Doctrine of the Atonement (Edinburg and London, William Blackwood and Sons, 1874) Pp. 297-8