insensibility of mankind-so closely, so far more than all others interested in this great matter if they shall continue regardless, and cold, and insensible, and absorbed by the things of earth and time, while all beside themselves are interested in the matter before them.

We think, then, it is a very profitable ordinance, that we are called together from the midst of our week-day work, from the midst of the secularities of life, from the midst of the absorbing engagements, the clinging, cleaving interests of the world; and that we are now, by the direction of our Church, assembled together in the sanctuary of the Lord, to consider the most august and the most magnificent thing which can be brought before human contemplation. And truly does it open to us a very wide field of consideration. We might endeavour to bring before you how all the prophecies were fulfilled which especially related to the great events of this day. We might shew you how the Lamb, the appointed Paschal Lamb, of which not a bone was to be broken-how the morning and the evening sacrifice-how the blood sprinkled on the doors-how the scape-goat, over which the sins of the people were imprecated, and which was then driven into the wilderness-were all telling of what was to come to pass when Jesus died. We might shew you not only how these daily and standing prophecies amongst the Jews had their fulfilment-the palpable, and the visible, and the evident prophecy and type; but we might shew moreover, how the written records and predictions had their exact and their most precise fulfilment, when Christ was betrayed by his own familiar friend; when he was sold for a specific price, and that price employed in a predicted use; how his garments were rent, how they were parted among the soldiery, and how for some of them a lot was cast; how his side was pierced, and the gall, ere he died, was given him to drink. And we might shew you how strong the evidence of this is from prophecy; shewing you, at the same time, that the persons who were most interested in denying the fulfilment, were the very persons to whom the custody of these written records were committed.

But our text seems to open to us another line of contemplation; and we throw out these suggestions because they may serve as a profitable subject, whereon, during the remainder of the day, you may fasten your minds. Taking this present verse as the subject of our consideration, we rather propose, first, to speak to you of the amount of suffering in connexion with the character of the divine Saviour; and in the next place, the cause of the endurance to which the Saviour was called.

As to the first head of our subject, THE AMOUNT OF SUFFERING IN CONNEXION WITH THE CHARACTER OF THE DIVINE SAVIOUR. It is said, that he was "the just one;" that he suffered "the just for the unjust." Now, concerning human righteousness, it is spoken of in the Bible only in two ways: either by way of comparison-so that one who lives under the fear of God, and under the influence of his Holy Spirit, leading a life of comparative obedience and duty, stands out, as it were, from the dark back-ground of the low morality and the evil practices of the world wherein he mingles; so that in contrast with them he shall be called a "righteous one;" and yet, if he be brought to another measure, and if he be tried by another standard, if the balance of the

sanctuary be applied to his doings, there shall be found such an utter deficiency in all the apparent excellences of his moral character, and such a mingling of sin, even in his holiest and most righteous doings, that we cannot positively pronounce (though we can comparatively do so) of such an one that he is righteous. For the righteousness of man may be spoken of in the Book of God as his own, whereas it is imputed to him; it is, as it were, delivered to be his: complete in the Saviour, it is attributed to the saved

one.

But you will see how the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, the complete and stainless holiness of his character, is something altogether separate from this it is not a thing of comparison, but a thing of positive essence: it is not a thing imputed from another, but it is a thing which he eternally and inalienably possessed himself. Now we can conceive no point more important to be kept continually in mind-especially as there are such erroneous and heretical opinions abroad on this head; we think there is no point that we can hold more firmly than this-that the Saviour was as pure in his human nature from sin, as in his divine nature. Now it has not been asserted by any, even the enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ, that actual sin might be imputed to him. Even the infidel, who denies the divine mission of Jesus, who denies that he came from heaven on an embassy from heaven's King-will yet marvel at the self-denying beauty of his moral character: and he will tell us that the Gospel, though it is not inspired, though it tells us nothing of the counsels of God, is yet a most precious book, because it opens such, in the way of precept and example, as the world had never before seen. It is not, therefore, of actual sin, but it is of original sin, that we must speak.

Now we cannot assert how original sin can possibly be imputed to the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, any more than actual sin; because the very entailment was cut off, and the succession was interrupted. He lived not in the line of the first Adam; he was included not in the covenant of our first father: and therefore he did not inherit that stained, and polluted, and defiled nature, which has belonged to all his progeny. If it were not on this account, we can see no reason why there must have been a miraculous conception; we see no reason why the Lord Jesus Christ should not have been born into the world by the very parentage by which others are produced. But it was for this very purpose that the line of succession might be interrupted, and that the entail might be cut off, and that the inheritance might come to him in a nature as pure and sinless, as that wherein the first Adam stood before his Maker on the morning of his creation; that morning when he walked unstained and unspoiled in Eden, and held communion with his God, conversing with him even as a man would converse with his friend.

Now, we think that it is indeed a most touching thing, that He, who alone on the broad platform of this globe, was unchargeable with sin, was the one on whom all the burden of transgression was to be bound; that He who in his own character was altogether blameless, against whom his enemies could bring no sinful charge, of whom it was pronounced by the judge who condemned him that there was 66 no fault in him," and by the rude soldiers who stood by his cross to guard his execution, that he was "truly the Son of God;" we think it

is indeed a most affecting thing, that on Him, thus the pure and innocent, was laid the burden of all conceivable transgression.

But in opening to you this head of the subject, we desire to shew, not only that Jesus, the just, suffered for the unjust, but that the very righteousness of his character enormously enhanced the amount of his sufferings.

Now, the very purity, and innocence, and blamelessness of the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, caused that there should be a strange incongruity between the nature that he bore, and the region that he inhabited. All was strange and all was alien; so that whatever he looked upon, and whatsoever he heard, was revolting, and loathsome, and hateful to him. We may conceive this, though it may be in some very small degree. If a man in whose heart the work of sanctification had made the greatest progress, a man who had grown up in the knowledge and in the practice of divine things, a man who should stand forth from the society by which he was encompassed, and whose life should be a daily and prevailing censure on evil practices; if we can conceive of such an one, condemned to the companionship of the most unholy, constrained to have daily and hourly intercourse with the infidel and the blasphemer, who should pour forth from the evil heart words of corruption and defilement; we should readily conceive, that on such an one would be laid a far more dreadful infliction than human malice could otherwise devise: and if such a man were locked up in the dungeon cell, with evil companions such as we have described, death would be a light infliction: all the agony and all the torture that could be laid on the suffering frame-work of flesh, would be light and insignificant compared with the laceration and agony of his spirit. And yet even this does not represent to us the sufferings that came to the pure and holy spirit of Jesus; just in consequence of this contrast between his own righteous nature, and the unrighteous wherewith he was surrounded: because in ourselves, even when we have made the utmost advancement, even when we have gone the farthest forward in the attainments of the Christian character, there remains so much of the old nature, so much of unconquered and unexpelled sin, that we are not so keenly alive as we should otherwise be to the dreadful torment of such intercourse with sin.

Moreover, this purity in the nature of the Lord Jesus which we assert altogether as much in respect of his freedom from original as from actual sin, made him the especial object of unceasing and most malignant attack to Satan. The prince of this world came but he had nothing in Jesus: of the heart of the pure and the holy Jesus it might alone be affirmed, that Satan had no resting-place there. It was a hopeless thing for Satan to drive him from his purpose: it was a hopeless thing for him to bring all his power to bear, all the violence which he could command, or all the alluring enticements that he could bring. It was in vain; the holiness of Jesus never faltered for one single instant; there was no relaxation of principle; there was no pause; there was no questioning; there was no doubtfulness. And therefore Satan, knowing that he could not turn Christ aside from his purpose, and that he could not hinder the accomplishment of his work, spent all his malignity, his stored-up hostility, in hindering it; or, according to the language of Scripture, in bruising the heel of the seed of the woman.

And precisely to the same cause must we trace the unchangeable malignity which was manifested against Christ by the Jews amongst whom he dwelt. We do not think there is any thing in the low condition of the Lord: we do not think there is any thing in the circumstance of his being of peasant origin; of his being a man without education, not knowing letters; a man without influence, mingling in the lower spheres of society; we do not think there is in this enough to account for his rejection by the Jews, when we remember, that he came commanding such powers of miracle, such stupendous might, that they might well have trusted the destinies of their fallen nation to his direction. But it was that he, the Just, was dwelling in the midst of the unjust and therefore the very loveliness of his character, the unsullied purity of his life, the zeal and the devotion of his heart, would be the very cause for waking up amongst them deeper and more abiding malignity. And hence it is that in this way was the purity of the nature and the life of Jesus, the great cause of the amount of his sufferings. You will see, that just as this exposed him to greater opposition from his enemies, so did it make him, at the same time, more susceptible. It belongs to high, generous, and noble natures, to care for disgrace. We can easily conceive of one who shall be unjustly condemned to die, and who, with the consciousness of his own innocence, might be content to yield his life. With the lofty contempt which he should feel for the pain and the anguish of his last hour, he would be content that the body and soul should be parted; he would be content to go to his grave unmurmuringly but he shrinks from the shame; he shrinks from being dragged before the vile populace, and, looking around on the sea of faces, to find not one which has not written upon it hatred, and mockery, and scorn. This would be the agony of the death

of such an one.

:

Now, just conceive what was the death of the Saviour. All the indignity that could be possibly conceived was heaped on him; and all the disgrace that might be accumulated on the malefactor, seemed, as it were, to be stored up for his death hour. We sympathize, perhaps, with the physical nature of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. We may conceive something, though inadequately, of the pain which would result from all those external inflictions of which we read, when every quivering fibre would be made in its acute sensibility, an engine of the greatest bodily distress. But we do not so much sympathize with the disgrace laid on the noble spirit; and remember, that Jesus in his own nature, had all our sensibilities, and all our capacity for suffering. Herein we think the contrast between the character of Christ and the character of all those among whom he mingled, was the cause, in the first place, why the amount of suffering was so greatly increased; and why, in the next place, he was far more keenly alive to this amount of suffering.

Now we might carry out this argument further, but we pass on, as we proposed, to the second head of our subject, which was to speak of THE CAUSE OF THE ENDURANCE TO WHICH THE SAVIOUR WAS CALLED. It was sin that caused all that Christ suffered. There was a mighty controversy between the Creator and his fallen creatures; and sin was the subject of it. There was a wide separation, an interval of untravelled distance, between God and the

inhabitants of this lower world; and sin had interposed this distance: and the world which God formed for the stately dwelling-place, for the accommodation of his sentient and intelligent creatures, had been now made the abode of misery, and the very lodging-place of woe: and sin was the cause of this.

Now, if we wanted to speak prevailingly and convincingly to you concerning the misery which sin has introduced, it would be very easy for us to expatiate on the contrast which there is subsisting between the first creation of God, as a fair and blooming garden, resting beneath the sun-light of his favour, and the world which hath become changed into a howling wilderness. Or we might go yet further back, and tell you how sin came into heaven, and cast the angels down, and changed them into devils, and built up a prison-house where they should be locked in, and forged the fetters wherewith they should be bound, and kindled the flames wherein they should be tormented. But it is not so much of the apparent consequences of sin, whether it be the external, seen on the face of this spoiled creation; or whether it be that which we are carrying about as evidence in our own bosoms. We would not speak so much of the thorn and the brier that have been made to spring up on the surface of the earth we would not tell you of the cities which sin hath ruined and laid waste; and how it makes eyes to be fountains of tears, and how it breaks hearts, and separates families, and severs the ties of affectionateness and love. We would not tell you how it has peopled the grave, and sent generation after generation to its last resting-place. But if we wanted to tell you what sin has done; if we wanted to concentrate into one expression all the tremendous amount of what sin has brought, in the way of misery and woe, into the world, we tell you it in this one thing-Christ suffered for sin. Or if we would speak to you of the amount of punishment, of the penalty which sin brings in its train, we might speak of what the Lord hath in store hereafter: we might speak of the worm that never dieth, and the flame that never shall be quenched: we might speak of the awful sentence to be pronounced at the judgment-seat of the Eternal, which shall cause the lips of the scorner to grow white with terror, and shall palsy his heart, and cause his blood to stagnate in his veins. But we tell you yet more tremendously of what sin hath done, when we tell you that CHRIST died for sin; that the penalty was such that all the bounds of creation might have been sought over, and not one but Jesus found who could bear the tremendous weight of all its accumulated punishment. And therefore when we lead you to the cross of Christ, and when we shew you the throes, and the anguish, and the death of the Incarnate God, we think we are telling you, on the one hand, the most prevailingly and the most convincingly, of the evil of sin, and the danger of sin. And this was the cause why Christ came: it was because sin was raising the yell and the groan throughout this fair creation. But Jesus left it not to perish, and would not permit it to remain in its off-cast condition: he came himself to wrestle with the evil spirit, and to subdue and trample it under his feet. He came, he suffered for us, "the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God:" that he might establish a reconcilement. There had been a long alienation: God, as it were, had hidden his face, because he was holy, and could not be approached without holiness; but