in a strait between things which pressed in opposite ways, and which

in a strait between things which pressed in opposite ways, and which

me. I am weary of my crying; my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God." Such are the utterances of his human soul under the pressure of its infinite sorrows. He did not shake off the burden, yet the weight was intolerable. He did not refuse the cup, yet its gall and wormwood were such as to wring from him many an awful cry. He did not turn back from the anguish, or the darkness, or the death, yet he speaks as one overwhelmed with the very thought of them.

If, then, his humanity was thus proved to be true and real, altogether like our own, in everything save sin, how true and real must have been those sorrows which thus agonized that holy yet true humanity! His burdens were all real; his pangs were all real; his terrors were all real, as were his hunger and his thirst,—real as was his death upon the Roman cross, or his burial in Joseph's tomb. His divine nature did not relieve him of one grief, or make his sufferings mere shadows. It fitted him for being filled with more sorrow than any man could be. It conferred on him an awful, we may say a divine, capacity of endurance, and so made him the subject of sharper pain and profounder grief than otherwise he could have been. So far from his suffering less truly, or to a less degree, because he was the Son of God, he was, in that very way, made capable of an amount of bodily and mental agony of which, as a mere man, he could not have been susceptible.

And as the sorrow was thus all real,—increased, not lessened by his Godhead,—so was his substitution for us as real. "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities." His endurance of our penalty was as true as was his partaking of our sorrow. It was "the chastisement of our peace that was on him." The more that we contemplate this his suffering, his baptism, the more will the whole reality of his sin-bearing work appear. He, "his own self, bare our sins, in his own body, on the tree."

3. The straitening in regard to its accomplishment. Like Paul, he was in a strait between things which pressed in opposite ways, and which

must continue to press till the work was done.

(1.) He was straitened between the anticipated pain, and the thought of the result of that pain. How fully was this feeling brought out in that remarkable passage recorded by the Evangelist John (12:27), "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name." Here was the straitening expressed in our text; the same straitening that we find again in the scene of the garden agony.

(2.) He was straitened between grace and righteousness. Till the great sacrifice was offered, there might be said to be conflict between these two things. The reconciliation was not actually accomplished between them. Mercy and truth had not yet met together; righteousness and peace had not yet kissed each other. Between his love to the sinner and his love to the Father there was conflict; between his desire to save the former and his zeal to glorify the latter there was something wanting to produce harmony. He knew that this something was at hand, that his baptism of suffering was to be the reconciliation; and he pressed forward to the cross, as one that could not rest till the discordance were removed,—as one straitened in spirit till the great reconciliation should be effected. "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!"

Such was the baptism of the Son of God, and such the straitening of spirit, till it was accomplished. It was infinite suffering to which He looked forward; suffering from which his soul would naturally shrink; yet he could not rest, till the life-time's endurance had been completed, and the great work done. He pressed forward in the path of suffering, nor did he stay, till he had reached its end. The spirit was willing, though the flesh was weak.

And now, as the result of this accomplished baptism, we have forgiveness and salvation proclaimed to us. He has finished transgression, made an end of sin, brought in everlasting

righteousness, made reconciliation for iniquity. No second baptism like his is needed now. The one baptism has done the work. No second cross requires to be erected on some new Golgotha. His one cross has completed the great propitiation, and brought redemption to the captive. No second death can be demanded now, by law or righteousness. The one death of the Prince of Life has secured for us the everlasting life, which no other death could have done. The knowledge of this one baptism, this one cross, this one death, is all we need to put us in possession of forgiveness and life, of righteousness and glory.

What, then, remains for us but that we enter into his rest, reaping what he has sown, and gathering fruit from the vine which he has planted? So complete is the Father's testimony to the accomplished baptism of his Son, the finished work of the Substitute, that, in receiving that testimony, we receive the full measure of blessing purchased for us by that baptism and death.

Nor are the results of this bloody baptism of the Son of God limited or temporary. The whole earth is yet to share them. The eternal ages are yet to know them. There come, no doubt, first the sword, the discord, the persecution, and the fire. All these have been doing their work on earth, and shall do so, yet for a little season. But ere long the sword shall go through earth for the last time; division shall disturb its peace for the last time; persecution shall seize its victims for the last time; the fire shall be kindled for the last time. And then shall come the peace, and the love, and the holiness. Then shall come the deliverance of creation, the reign of peace, the kingdom of glory, the new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Then shall He see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied. Then shall He reap the fruit of his awful baptism. That baptism will not then seem too bitter or too terrible, when its issue shall be seen to be so glorious and eternal. Nor will the time then seem to have been too long, even though the kingdom should be deferred for many a day; seeing there is to be so infinite a compensation for the sickness of

hope deferred, and so blessed a termination of the long, long ages of delay.

SERMON XV

THE SURETY'S SORROW

"Now is my soul troubled."—JOHN 12:27

THIS twenty-seventh verse connects itself, not so much with the three previous verses, as with the twenty-third. The first announcement is, "The hour is come, that the Son of Man should be glorified;" the second is, "Now is my soul troubled."

The connection between these two statements does not seem at first sight very plain. The second is not the statement we should have expected to follow the first. Rather, we would say, it should have been "Now is my soul glad," not "troubled;" for the prospect of the glorifying ought naturally to call up joy, not sorrow. We feel at a loss to know why he should be so troubled, when arriving within sight of the glory.

Was earth so desirable an abode, that the thought of leaving it should sadden him? Did he wish to remain among sinners and enemies? Did he prefer the land of death, and curse, and woe, and shame, to the glorious heaven above, to the society of angels, to the honour of the throne of the majesty in the heavens? That, we know, could not be.

He, far more than David ever did, longed for the wings of the dove that he might fly away and be at rest.

Why, then, did the near prospect of the glory thus overwhelm him with sadness? If there was nothing in the glory to produce this, what occasioned it? It was evidently no common sorrow; it was something new and terrible, even to him whose life was one weighty sorrow, and whose acquaintanceship with grief was of thirty-three years' standing. "Now is my soul troubled."

In bringing out the import of our Lord's words here, let us take up these four questions:—

I. What was the trouble of his soul?—As it could not be the glory itself, it must have been something either on this or on the other side of it; something which lay on his way to it, or was to be encountered immediately after it. It could not be the latter, as the entrance into the glory was the absolute ending of every thing like sorrow. It must, then, have been something which lay on this side of it,—something which he had to pass through in order to reach it.

There were three things which occasioned trouble to Christ when here; (1.) The sorrows and sins which he saw on earth; (2.) Sin imputed to him; (3.) The wrath of God on account of this imputed sin. The first of these was a constant source of sorrow to the compassionate Saviour; but there was nothing in the present scene to make it peculiarly so. The burden of sin, and the wrath of God, due to him as the Sin-bearer, were also continual sources of sorrow; and increasingly so, as the great crisis drew nigh, when the whole load of that sin and wrath was to press upon him in all its terribleness. The sin laid upon him was that which he infinitely abhorred; need we wonder, then, that, as it pressed more and more upon him, his soul should be troubled, nay, become "exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death?" The wrath and curse, due to this sin which was laid upon him, was that which he infinitely shrunk from: for, as the Son of the Blessed, he could not but be troubled at being made "a curse;" and as

the object of the Father's divine complacency and love, he could not but feel troubled at the outpouring of the Father's wrath.

Such was the trouble of his soul. All along these things had been felt, and they had made him the man of sorrows. But as the great hour drew on when the Lamb was to be slain, the weight of the burden increased,—till, as he came within sight of the cross, it oppressed him so fearfully, that it seemed as if he would sink under it, ere he reached his destination. Intense was this trouble of his soul. So intense must have been his hatred of sin, and his shrinking from the Father's wrath. So intense also must have been his love to the sinner, and his zeal for the glory of the Father.

And if sin, though but imputed, was so hateful to him, what ought that sin, which lives in us, and pervades our whole being, to be to us? If divine wrath, though brief and for another's sin, and with all heaven's glory beyond, was so intolerable, what will that wrath be to the lost sinner, which is for his own guilt, and which will therefore burn into his innermost conscience, not for a day or a lifetime, but for a whole eternity, with no prospect of cessation or diminution, or glory beyond it all?

II. Why was he thus troubled now, and not before.—In a certain measure he was always troubled, for he was, from his birth, the Sin bearer; but as he drew nearer the crisis, the sorrow increased, and the burden grew heavier. He realized more of that awful hour when the whole wrath should be poured out upon him; and the nearness of the glory reminded him of the greater nearness of the sorrow that lay on this side of it, and through which he must pass, in order to reach the blessedness beyond. The very vision of the glory, too, would serve to enhance and augment the trouble, as the dark peaks of Sinai look darker and more terrible, when the sun is seen going down behind them, and by his radiance bringing out each fierce and rugged cliff in full relief against the glowing sky.

Christ's soul was thoroughly human, in everything but sin; and hence objects, whether of joy or sorrow, affected him in proportion to their nearness or their distance. He always knew that the Father's will would infallibly be accomplished; yet it was not till the Seventy returned to him with joy, saying, "Lord, even the devils are subject to us through thy name" (Luke 10:21), that he "rejoiced in spirit." He knew that Lazarus was dead before he came to Bethany; yet it was not till he stood by his tomb and addressed the weeping all around, that he "wept." The nearness of either, or joy, or grief, affected him as it affects us. Our natures do not admit of our feeling them as much when they are far off as when they are near. So was it with Him. He knew the sorrow that lay before him, and doubtless it had thrown its shadow over him long ere this; but as he neared it, that shadow grew darker and darker, till, as he actually came within sight of the cross, his soul was troubled.

He must go to the cross with the full knowledge of what he is to suffer there. That suffering is not to overtake him unawares. He is to know, before he drinks it, the bitterness of the cup which the Father hath given him to drink, the anguish of that baptism with which he is to be baptized. He must see the sword that is to smite; and try the sharpness of its edge before it awakes against him. He must have a foretaste of the wrath and the curse, of death and of the grave, that he may calmly measure them, and give to them the entire acquiescence of his understanding and will. It was only thus that he could offer himself up as a freewill offering, fully cognisant of, and acquiescent in, all that was to be inflicted on him by the Father's justice. It was needful that he should suffer willingly; and in order to do so, he must suffer knowingly; the blow must not take him by surprise; he must give his own full consent to all that he was to endure; not to shut his eyes, and be led, as it were, blindfold to the cross, but to see it all, know it all, consent to it all; and then, after having thus seen and known and consented, go forward to the place of sacrifice, saying, Not my will, but thine be done.

Twice at least before he went to the cross, the Father brought the cup which he was to drink of, and placed it by his side, that he might look into it, and measure it and taste it; once at the time before us, and again in Gethsemane, when his "soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death," and his "sweat, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground." In both of these cases, there seems to be the same meaning and the same result. In both of them the Father was bringing the cup of wrath, and setting it down by his side, that he might fully know what he was about to drink; that having examined the contents, and tasted some of the infinitely terrible mixture, he might express his calm determination to drink it all, in that day when it should be put into his hands for this end; nay, might say, before heaven, and earth, and hell, holding the cup which he had examined up to view, "I delight to do thy will, O God;" "the cup which my Father hath given me to drink, shall I not drink it?"

The best commentary on these words of our text are those Psalms in which Christ speaks as the Sin-bearer, as the 38th or 40th, or 69th or 88th. In them we find Christ examining the bitter cup, and trying its contents, and tasting them day by day; and though, on such occasions as the present, or in Gethsemane, his soul was specially troubled, yet often, at other times also, was he made to feel the sorrow to which he had subjected himself for us. Each time that he used them he would enter into the trouble of soul which they express; but as the consummation drew nearer, he would enter more deeply into that trouble; and at each successive time they would acquire a more profound and solemn meaning. With us, familiarity with sorrow, and continual repetition of its bitterness, would harden and produce indifference. With Christ it was otherwise; for, though all was human, yet all was perfection in him; and each time these Psalms were read by him, they would convey a deeper and deeper experience of the awful realities which they expressed. For, though uttered in the feeble language of man, which could not fully enunciate the great things of God, yet, as understood and interpreted by the Son of God according to his perfect wisdom, what a reality

would these cries of anguish convey to his soul; what a depth of meaning would each word possess!

How fully did the Son of God understand the conflict into which he entered for us; measure the weight of the burden which he bore for us; realise the sin which was laid upon him; take the dimensions of the wrath which was to be poured out on him for us; and examine the contents of the cup which he was to drink for us!

III. Why did not his divine nature ward off the trouble?—This question may be answered by another, Why did not his divine nature prevent sin from being imputed to him at all? If his Godhead did not do the one, why should it do the other? We know that the Godhead, so far from hindering the imputation of sin, was that which made it possible for sin to be imputed to him. Had he not been divine, there could have been no imputation. If, then, his Godhead did not hinder, but help the imputation of sin, it surely would not hinder the consequences of that imputation. If the imputation was real, the sufferings must be real. His Godhead availed not to diminish or neutralise the sorrow, but to give to that sorrow its infinite value and sin-bearing character. The union of the divine nature with the human was, not to interfere with the actings of the human, but to make them efficacious; not to ward off suffering, but to impart to it its vicarious potency; not to make the cup less bitter, but to make its contents healing and saving; not to save the victim from the cross, but to make crucifixion atonement; not to ward off death, but to impart to that death the character of an infinitely precious ransom; not to bar the grave against the entrance of the mighty victim, but to make that grave the womb of immortality and incorruption, the cradle of the church, the well-spring of resurrection-life and everlasting glory.

Besides, think what is meant by the divine nature warding off the suffering? If it mean anything at all, it must mean the turning of that suffering into a mere form or pretext. This, we are sure, was not the case. Instead of making the sufferings less real, it made them more

real. The union of the divine with the human nature enabled the latter to bear more suffering than it otherwise could have done; and to have called in the Godhead in order to ward off the suffering, would have been to have called it in to hinder one of the very results contemplated by the union. The payment of the penalty was the suffering and the death of the Christ; and to have interfered with that suffering, or with that death, would have been to have hindered the payment of the ransom. Nay, and even when the human nature of the Lord was sinking under the pressure of the sorrow, it was not the Godhead that was sent to mitigate that anguish, or to sustain him under it; it was an angel,—"there appeared an angel from heaven strengthening him." For the Godhead to have interposed to shield Him either from the suffering or the death, would have been to maim his work, to destroy his substitution, and to turn the payment of the awful penalty from being one of the greatest of all realities into a mere pretence.

IV. Why did not the joy in prospect of the glory outweigh and neutralize the sorrow?—Here, again, we must remember that Christ's humanity was perfect; that the divine was not mixed up with the human, nor the human mixed up with the divine. Each acted according to its nature. The glory therefore, however great, could not prevent Christ's human soul being acted on by the sorrow, according to its greatness, and according to its nearness. The cause of the sorrow was infinitely great, and the sorrow itself was at hand, therefore it was impossible for human nature not to feel profoundly that which was so great and so near. Had the sorrow been like our sorrow, then the difference between it and the glory would have been so great as to have made him call it a "light affliction," not worthy to be compared with the glory to be revealed. But his sorrow was not like ours. It was not indeed lasting; but it was unutterably vast; its vastness could only be measured by the greatness of our sins, and the greatness of him who was bearing them. There is no proportion between our suffering and our glory, any more than there is between time and eternity; but there is some proportion between Christ's sufferings and Christ's glory; it was, if one may so speak, the

proportion between two eternities, two infinities. No wonder, then, that with such an infinity of suffering, the glory should have been for a season shut out, the human nature of Christ should have been bowed down under the awful load, and his soul made exceeding sorrowful even unto death. No vision of the coming glory could make his present suffering less, or alter the necessity for his bearing it, however much it might tend to sustain him under it. The sin laid on him was still the sin, the wrath was still the wrath, the curse was still the curse; and all these were infinitely terrible, to one who so thoroughly understood them; nor could the glory, however bright, lessen that terribleness, or mitigate the suffering which it was producing in the soul of the Son of God.

Oh, if his trouble of soul were so great, what must the sin be which produced it? Yet what must be the completeness of that deliverance from trouble, which is the portion of the believing soul, in consequence of his bearing it all? Not a pang remains for us; not a drop of bitterness is left behind. All is peace.

But, on the other hand, what must be the wrath of God against the transgressor? What must be the torment of the eternal curse which the lost sinner is to bear? And what must be that hell, that unending and unchanging hell of woe and torment, in reserve for those who, having rejected the sinbearing of the divine Substitute, shall be compelled to bear the penalty of their guilt, without help, without alleviation, and without sympathy, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire!

SERMON XVI

THE SURETY'S THIRST

"Jesus saith, I thirst."—JOHN 19:28.

THREE things need our notice here: the thirst, the cry, the answer. They are not trifles, nor accidents, either in themselves or in connection with the great event of which they form a part. They have much to tell us of the Sufferer, and the nature of his sufferings; and they help us to get at the meaning of the mysterious transaction of that hour,—an hour of the deepest darkness that ever rested over earth, yet an hour which proved the forerunner of the brightest and most blessed day-spring that ever shone from heaven.

I. The thirst.—It was a true thirst, and as deep and sore as it was true. It was a thirst corresponding with the character of him who felt it. He was human, and He was divine. It was, of course, humanity that thirsted; but it was humanity in union with divinity, and therefore made more susceptible of suffering, more capable of enduring what alone it would not have been capable of undergoing. Christ's humanity was perfect; but that only made it more sensitive, more acutely alive to suffering, so that his hunger, his thirst, his weariness, instead of being mitigated or made unreal, became more real and intense, more unmodified and harder to bear, than they are or can be in our imperfect humanity. The perfection of humanity implies the perfection of suffering, whenever that perfect humanity comes into contact with suffering at all. Pre-eminence in sorrow, and preeminence in joy, must be the portion and prerogative of such exalted perfection. It is only perfection such as this that can sound the depths of creature-sadness, or reach the heights of human joy. Had there been one taint of imperfection, about either the body or the soul of Jesus, he could not have tasted the whole bitterness of our anguish; he could not have drained our cup; he could not have paid our penalty; he could not have felt that extremity of thirst, regarding

which he uttered the bitter outcry in the hour of his conflict with death, and with the powers of darkness, upon the cross.

Christ was filled with the Spirit, "without measure," in a way and to an extent such as no other man ever was or could be; yet this did not exempt him from pain, or make his thirst unreal, or alleviate one pang which fell to his lot as the Sin-bearer. With that Spirit He was filled; by that Spirit he was sustained and strengthened; by that "eternal Spirit" he offered himself "without spot to God;" but in no way and at no time did this Spirit come between him and suffering, either to blunt the edge of the weapon or ward off the stroke. The indwelling of the Spirit in him added to his perfection, and every addition to his perfection was an increase of his susceptibility to suffering; so that he felt pain more than we can do; he felt weariness, hunger, thirst, more than we can do. The Spirit that dwelt within him could not, indeed, feel the pain or the thirst; but the human nature thus inhabited by the Spirit was made capable of containing or receiving more pain, and thirst, and sorrow than it could have done otherwise, even as perfect humanity.

Christ was God-man; very God as truly as very man. But this did neither prevent nor nullify his sufferings. No abatement could be made from his sorrows, either in respect of number or intensity, because of his Godhead. That Godhead seemed only to present him as a broader mark for the arrows of his enemies; to make him a more capacious vessel for containing the fulness of the divine wrath due to him as the sinner's substitute. The Godhead could not, indeed, suffer, nor hunger, nor thirst, nor weep; but, by its union with the manhood, it could make all these endurances more true and more intense to that humanity with which it was united; not only attaching to these sufferings a value which they could not otherwise have had, but imparting to them a profound reality, which, in other circumstances, could not have belonged to them. We need to be cautious in using language respecting Christ not expressly employed in Scripture; but, seeing the love of Christ is called the love of God,

and the blood of Christ is called the blood of God may we not term the thirst of the Son of God upon the cross, "the thirst of God?"

How true was the humanity of Christ! That thirst proclaims him truly a man; in body and in soul a man; in sorrow and in joy a man. His Godhead did not neutralize his manhood, nor make any of its actings less truly human. That which was divine in his person made that which was human more thoroughly human than it could have been in any other circumstances. As his humanity shewed forth his Godhead more illustriously, so his Godhead brought out his humanity into fuller, wider, truer, and more perfect action, exhibiting it in an extremity of weakness and suffering, to which it could not otherwise have been reduced without wholly giving way. No mere man could have passed through Gethsemane and Golgotha, could have endured the agony of the one, and the thirst of the other, without being annihilated.

And what does this thirst mean? Is it a mere vain exhibition of what humanity can bear; of what the Creator can enable the creature to endure? No. He thirsts as the sinner's substitute; and his strength is dried up like a potsherd, because the heat of divine wrath was withering up his moisture. That thirst is expiatory; for he suffers the Just for the unjust. He thirsts, that we might not thirst. He is parched, that we might not be parched. He is consumed with wrath, that we might not be consumed. That thirst is the bearing of your sin and your hell, O believer. That thirst is the unsealing of the eternal fountain, that its waters might flow forth to the parched and weary sons of earth. How much we owe to that awful thirst! How much we owe to the love of Him who thirsted upon that cross for us!

II. The cry.—"I thirst," or, "I am thirsty." These are common words among us; and the cry, in itself, does not strike us as remarkable. "I am thirsty," says the child to its mother. "I am thirsty," says the traveller on the highway. "I am thirsty," says the sick man on his hot bed of fever. We are familiar with the cry; it is that of a fellow-mortal;

and we know that it will be met with a quick response, for it is a cry for something which can be easily and cheaply supplied.

But when such words come from the lips of the Son of God, the case is wholly different. It is no remarkable thing to hear a beggar asking alms on the highway or at our door; but when the great Roman general, the conqueror of kings, is reduced to poverty, and begs his bread, we are amazed; an interest is immediately excited, and we ask, How is this? So, when the cry comes from him who is God over all, the Creator of heaven and earth, the framer of all earth's fountains and streams, the fashioner of man's soul and body, we are startled. How can this be? Whence does it arise? What can it mean? Is the cry a real and natural one? Is it the true expression of deep-felt pain in the divine utterer? or is it the mere indication by him of what, in such circumstances, a crucified malefactor would feel, but which he himself, in virtue of his exalted nature, could not possibly have been supposed to suffer?

One thing strikes us much here. His is the only cry heard at this time. There are two men on crosses beside him; but they utter no cry. One spends his breath in reviling, the other in praying; but they do not say, "I thirst." This is a peculiarity which we cannot fail to notice. Of the three sufferers, the Son of God alone utters the cry of thirst. How great must that thirst have been! how bitter the cry thus wrung from his expiring lips!

Specially does this appear when we call to mind the meek and uncomplaining character of the holy sufferer. Only once or twice, in a life of unutterable sorrow, did he allow any expression of his grief to escape him, as when he said, "Now is my soul troubled;" and when in Gethsemane he said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;" and now on the cross, when he exclaimed, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and again, in the words of our text, "I thirst." Intense and overpowering must have been his thirst ere it could have extorted from him such an utterance at such a time.

SERMON XVII

THE SURETY'S THIRST

"Jesus said, I thirst."—JOHN 19:28.

THE present is the only reference which the Lord makes to pain of body; the others are to the griefs of his troubled soul. No doubt, in the Psalms he alludes once or twice to his bodily sufferings, as when he speaks of his bones being out of joint, his heart melted like wax, his strength dried up like a potsherd. But these intimations of corporeal pain are few; it is of the sorrows of his soul, in connection with the wrath of God, that he speaks so fully. In the Gospels, this cry of thirst is the only expression of bodily anguish that is recorded; and from the way in which it is introduced we are plainly given to understand that even this cry would not have been uttered had it not been for the fulfilling of Scripture. However terrible the thirst, the cry would have been repressed, had it not been for what was written in the Psalms concerning this,—"In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink" (Ps. 69:21). For thus the Evangelist writes: "After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst."

Not that the cry was unreal, and merely uttered, as one might say, to serve a purpose. The cry was the embodiment of the most real anguish ever felt on earth. But this anguish was, as we see in the Psalms, only poured out into the Father's ears; for these Psalms which I refer to are the secret and confidential utterances of Christ in

his intercourse with the Father. The outpourings of his human griefs, the outcries of his anguished spirit, were not for man's ears; only on the present occasion he allows himself to be overheard by man, in order that thereby he might put honour upon the Father's word, and shew himself in all things the obedient Son, the doer of the Father's work, the fulfiller of the Father's will.

Terrible was that cry, "I thirst;" for it was the cry of God. It is a fearful thing, they say, to see strong men weep, or hear strong men cry; but here was One stronger than the strongest, higher than the highest, the Son of God himself, constrained to give vent to his suffering in this piercing cry, "I thirst!" To what an extremity of weakness is he here reduced, and under what a burden of agony is he weighed down, when he utters it! He would rather not utter it; he has repressed it long; he has put forth his strength in repressing and in bearing up under the pain, uncomplaining; but now he can refrain no longer; he must cry out, that he may give vent to the long pent-up agony.

Terrible was that cry; for it was the cry of One sinking into death under the condemnation of man's sin, under the weight of infinite guilt. It was the cry of One subjected to the wrath of him who is a consuming fire; of One who felt himself about to be overcome of his great enemy, in deadly conflict; of One who knew that no help was nigh; that he was to be left unsuccoured by God and man.

Such was the cry of the Substitute,—a piercing, bitter, agonising cry! No parched and weary Ishmaelite, throwing himself down in despair beside a dried-up well, ever uttered such a cry as this. But it is the very bitterness of the cry that tells us its efficacy. It is a cry wholly relating to the sufferer himself, not to us; it is the cry, not of intercession, but of agony; yet, it is not on that account the less sufficient and satisfying for us. It tells of propitiation fully made, of redemption gloriously accomplished, of the debt paid to the last farthing. It tells us, too, of love; love immeasurable and unutterable; love triumphing over shame and anguish, over hunger and thirst;

love which many waters could not quench, nor the floods drown; love to the Father, love to the sinner; the love of the Shepherd to his flock; the love of the Head to the members; the love of the elder Brother to his brethren; the love of the Redeemer to his Church; the love of the Bridegroom to his bride-elect; the love that passeth knowledge, and whose breadth and length, whose height and depth, are beyond all measure and comprehension; the love of the Just to the unjust; the holy to the unholy; the heavenly to the the earthly; the Creator to the creature; the love of the Only-begotten of the Father, like himself, infinite and divine.

That awful cry, as it was the expression of the bodily anguish which was filling him, as the Substitute, so was it the indication of that bodily torment from which his people have been delivered by his endurance of it in their stead. He drank it that they might never taste it; for "they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat;" "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, for the former things have passed away" (Rev. 21:4).

That awful cry, as it was the expression of the bodily endurance through which the Surety passed, so is it the announcement of the bodily torment of the lost for ever. Oh, what must hell be! What must be the unquenchable fire! What must be the everlasting thirst! What must be the weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth! "Have mercy upon me," cries the rich man in hell, "and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame" (Luke 16:24). Such is the eternal thirst, and such its awful utterance. A day's thirst, under a scorching sun, is terrible; what must be an eternity of thirst in the heat of the devouring fire! O lost soul, you must thirst for ever! Because thou hast, while here, forsaken the fountain of living water, and hewn out for thyself cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water, therefore, instead of the living water, clear as crystal, thou shalt drink of the WINE of the fierceness of his wrath; "the wine of the

wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation, and shalt be tormented with fire and brimstone, in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb" (Rev. 14:10).

III. The Answer.—From above there came no answer. God was silent. From around there came derision. Man answered with laughter and with vinegar.

It is not God's wont to be silent in such a case. He feeds the young ravens when they cry. He regards the prayer of the needy. His ear is ever open to the cry of the destitute and the sorrowful. But here he answers not a word. No wonder that Christ should say, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He thirsts, but the Father seems not to regard his thirst; he cries, but the Father gives no heed to his cries. When Hagar cried out for thirst in the desert of Beersheba, God sent his angel and led her to the unseen well. When Israel cried at Marah, God sweetened the bitter waters for them; and when they cried in Horeb, he smote the rock, and the waters gushed forth. When Samson cried out for thirst at Ramath-Lehi, God opened a spring for him in the very jaw-bone which he had used as a weapon.

But now God answers not. It is not Hagar, nor Israel, nor Samson, that cries, but One far greater and more beloved than these. Yet God answers not. This is the crisis of the abandonment; God must have forsaken him, when a cup of cold water is denied. An angel came to the Sufferer in Gethsemane to strengthen him; but no angel comes with a cup of water to quench his thirst. All heaven seems to stand aloof.

Ah! this is the hour and the power of darkness. He has taken the sinner's place, and he must bear the sinner's anguish, both in soul and body. He must suffer the sinner's thirst, as well as die the sinner's death. Every drop of the cup given him he must drink; and neither he himself nor his Father will interfere to put aside the draught, or to abstract a single drop. The Father's love to the Son is

still the same; but righteousness stays his hand, and restrains the forth-putting of his delivering power. His readiness to hear the prayers of the beloved Son remains unaltered; but love to sinners, love to the Church, constrain him to shut his ear against this last cry of anguish. Ah! that "no answer" from heaven, that silence of the Father, is the proof that the great surety-work for us is going on successfully, and approaching its consummation. In the infliction of judicial wrath, and the withholding of fatherly deliverance in the hour of need, we see the inflexible carrying out of those principles of law and justice on which alone substitution can proceed, forgiveness be founded, and salvation secured. It is not of diluted wine, nor of a half-filled cup, that the sin-bearing Son of God must drink. The wine must be unmixed, and the cup full; otherwise the sin is not wholly borne, nor the great work perfected, of the just for the unjust. Love would have said, Oh, hear that cry, and quench that thirst; but law said, Not so, else the sacrifice is blemished, and the suretyship rendered invalid.

Thus the Father kept silence; he, who alone could have relieved that anguish, stood aloof. Justice took its course, and law was satisfied. The sacrifice was completed and the penalty exhausted; for, immediately after this, Jesus said, "It is finished," and, bowing the head, he gave up the ghost.

SERMON XVIII

THE SURETY'S THIRST

"Jesus said, I thirst."—JOHN 19:28.

OH, well for us that thus the work was so completely done! What glad tidings of great joy to us come forth, not only from that thirst and that cry of the Son of God, but from the silence of the Father! It is finished, said the Son on earth. It is finished, said the Father from heaven. And it is when we learn the meaning of that thirst and that cry; when we so learn their meaning as to add our Amen to the "It is finished" of the Father and the Son, that the great reconciliation begins between us and God; and in proportion to our increasing perception of the completeness of the wondrous sacrifice, our peace deepens, our joy overflows, our hope kindles into new brightness; the shadows of the cross bringing out, in full relief, the vision of the approaching glory.

But it is not only from heaven that there is no response; from earth there comes no answer, or, at least, no sympathy. Man does not understand the thirst, and heeds not the cry of the Sufferer. If ever there was an appeal of anguish that could reach man's heart, and call forth any latent spark of love or pity, it was this cry from the cross. This seemed to be God's last appeal to man,—his last test, applied, to see if there was any goodness, any right feeling remaining in him, any sympathy with the Son of God. For when was the cry for water refused, or the thirst of the dying mocked? But man heeds not the anguish of the Crucified. God's last appeal to him is in vain. He meets the cry of the Son of God with mockery.

It would seem that Jesus was offered vinegar more than once, and possibly among some of those who presented it there might be a feeling of pity; for the simple fact of its being vinegar is no proof of its being meant as insult, seeing that vinegar was the only thing at hand; being the usual drink of the Roman soldiers. If this were the case, it only shews how utterly unable man was, even if willing, to relieve the anguish of the Sufferer. Help from man was vain. All that he could offer was but like the feather wetting the lips of the dying. But it is clear, both from the passage itself and from the Psalms, that

the offering of the vinegar was meant as mockery. The Jew said, in taunt, and with pretended misunderstanding of his words, "This man calls for Elias;" and the Gentile presented his vinegar; thus between them completing the mockery. This is the last venting of man's enmity against the Son, the last drop of the old serpent's venom poured upon the seed of the woman.

It was not, indeed, in man's power fully to relieve this awful thirst; yet he could have done something; and even had he failed, he could have shewn his pity. But pity is not in his bosom where God is concerned. "This is the heir; come, let us kill him," is his feeling. He has got God into his power; he has got the Son of God hanging helplessly on a tree; and his enmity to God now gets vent to itself. He can mock God safely now. Samson has lost his strength, and his enemies may work their fill of malignity against him. Thus man's hatred of God comes out in all its bitterness; and it does so, just at the very point where God's love was coming out in its fulness. Never did love and hatred, kindness and enmity, so meet together. Never was love so requited, and kindness so mocked, as here. God has come down to prove man: he dwelt on man's earth; he lived a life of service for man; he emptied himself; he reduced himself to the extremity of weakness and suffering; he put himself into man's power, and appealed, not to his highest and noblest feelings, but to the commonest sympathies of mere humanity. But all in vain. In such circumstances even the worst malefactor would be pitied and relieved. The fact, however, of the sufferer being a holy man shuts out their sympathy; and the fact of his being the Son of God rouses their hatred. That very thing, which ought to have overawed them, and drawn out their profoundest sympathies, is that which calls forth insult, which extinguishes pity, which steels them against the Sufferer's cry, which rouses all hell in their bosoms! Towards men they would have acted and felt as men; towards God they are as devils!

Now is their time for taunt, and insult, and cruelty. So long as he is going about, doing miracles, they are afraid to touch him. They know

not how he may avenge himself. But now, when he is dying on a cross, they may hate and mock him as they please. Now, when the lion of the tribe of Judah is in chains, and expiring of his wounds, they may trample on him at will. O man, such is thy heart! Such is the extent of thy enmity to the God in whom thou livest, and movest, and hast thy being!

But though, at the time, there was no response from heaven, and nought but mockery on earth, this state of things was only for an hour. The silence cannot last; the cry of the only-begotten Son must be heard, though at another time and in another way. Him the Father heareth always; and this appeal of the Son of God for something to quench his thirst is not unheeded. The answer is denied at the moment, but only that it may be given in all its largeness thereafter. The denial of the request finished the mighty work, through means of which, a glorious answer was to be vouchsafed, in which he was not merely to have his thirst quenched, but to see of the travail of his soul, and to be satisfied. His death, which immediately followed this silence, was the smiting of the rock, from which the waters were to gush forth which were to quench the thirst both of soul and body; and not his own thirst alone, but that of millions,—the whole vast multitude of the redeemed from among men.

Yes; God's answer to the cry of his Son is his raising him from the dead, crowning him with glory and honour, exalting him to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance and forgiveness; depositing in him those gifts for the rebellious, which he was to bestow on men; making him King and Head over all things, and investing him with a kingdom which shall have no end. He humbled himself to the death of the cross, and therefore God hath highly exalted him. Thus, in the end, the Father's love to the Son is manifested, and his righteousness vindicated. He hath done all things well.

And then, how has God avenged himself on man for his refusal to heed the cry of his Son? Here, too, evil has been overcome of good; and where sin abounded, there grace has much more abounded. Man

mocks the thirst of God, but God pities and relieves the thirst of man. He makes man's wrath to praise him, and to be, besides, the means of blessing to himself. This crucified Christ, whom man only insults, is the appointed Saviour; and man, though he knew it not, has been carrying out God's redeeming work. Man, though he meant it not, has been slaying the sacrifice by which reconciliation is accomplished. He has been helping to smite the rock, from which the living water was to gush forth to satisfy the thirst of sinners.

Herein is love; not man loving God, but God loving man; so loving man as to persist in his great work of grace, notwithstanding man's utmost hatred and rejection. Here is the fountain which love has opened, and which flows in the waste places of earth like a river. Here is God's provision, not only for man's pardon, but for his fullest joy. The Surety thirsted that we might not thirst; he drank of the vinegar that we might not drink it; he drained the cup of wrath that we might never taste it; he was wounded that we might be healed. And, standing by that very cross, where the Son of God was mocked in his thirst, and refused a cup of cold water to moisten his parched lips, the messenger of God's free-love lifts up his voice, and says, "Let him that is athirst come; and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely."

SERMON XIX

THE SURETY'S CROSS

"The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."—GAL. 6:14.

THE death of the cross has always been, above every other, reckoned the death of shame. The fire, the sword, the axe, the stone, the hemlock, have in their turns been used by law, as its executioners; but these have, in so many cases, been associated with honour, that death by means of them has not been reckoned either cursed or shameful. Not so the cross. Its victim, nailed in agony to the rough wood, suspended naked and torn to the gaze of multitudes, has always been reckoned a specimen of disgraced and degraded humanity; rather to be mocked than pitied. With Jew and Gentile alike, evil and not good, the curse and not the blessing, have been connected with the cross. In men's thoughts and symbols it has been treated as synonymous with ignominy, and weakness, and crime. God had allowed this idea to root itself universally, in order that there might be provided a place of shame, lower than all others, for the great Substitute who, in the fulness of time was to take the sinner's place, and be himself the great outcast from man and God, despised and rejected, deemed unworthy even to die within the gates of the holy city.

Not till more than four thousand years had gone by, did it begin to be rumoured that the cross was not what men thought it, the place of the curse and shame, but of strength and honour and life and blessing. Then it was that there burst upon the astonished world the bold announcement, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." Greek and Roman, Jew and Gentile, prince, priest, philosopher, Rabbi, Stoic, Epicurean, Pharisee, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free, North, South, East and West, looked to one another with contemptuous impatience, indignant at the audacity of a few Jews, thus affronting and defying the "public opinion" of nations and ages; assailing the faiths and unbeliefs of earth with this as their only sword; striking down the idols with this as their only hammer; and with this, as their one lever, proposing to turn the world upside down.

From that day the cross became "a power" in the earth; a power which went forth, like the light, noiselessly yet irresistibly, smiting

down all religions alike, all shrines alike, all altars alike; sparing no superstition nor philosophy; neither flattering priesthood, nor succumbing to statesmanship; tolerating no error, yet refusing to draw the sword for truth; a power superhuman, yet wielded by human, not angelic hands; "the power of GOD unto salvation."

This power remains;—in its mystery, its silence, its influence;—it remains. The cross has not become obsolete; the preaching of the cross has not ceased to be effectual. There are men among us who would persuade us that, in this late age, the cross is out of date and out of fashion, time-worn, not time-honoured; that Golgotha witnessed only a common martyr scene; that the great sepulchre is but a Hebrew tomb; that the Christ of the future and the Christ of the past are widely different. But this shakes us not. It only leads us to clasp the cross more fervently, and to study it more profoundly, as embodying in itself that gospel which is at once the wisdom and the power of God.

The secret of its power lies in the amount of divine truth which it embodies. It is the abridgment of the Bible; the epitome of Revelation. It is pre-eminently the voice of God; and, as such, conveying his power as well as uttering his wisdom. "The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty."

Yet is the cross not without its mysteries, or, as men would say, its puzzles, its contradictions. It illuminates, yet it darkens; it interprets, yet it confounds. It raises questions, but refuses to answer all that it has raised. It solves difficulties, but it creates them too. It locks as well as unlocks. It openeth, and no man shutteth; it shutteth, and no man openeth. It is life, yet it is death. It is honour, yet it is shame. It is wisdom, but also foolishness. It is both gain and loss; both pardon and condemnation; both strength and weakness; both joy and sorrow; both love and hatred; both medicine and poison; both hope and despair. It is grace, yet it is righteousness; it is law, yet it is deliverance from law; it is Christ's humiliation, yet it is Christ's

exaltation; it is Satan's victory, yet it is Satan's defeat; it is the gate of heaven and the gate of hell.

Let us look at the cross as the divine proclamation and interpretation of the things of God; the key to his character, his word, his ways, his purposes; the clue to the intricacies of the world's and the Church's history.

I. It is the interpreter of man.—By means of it God has brought out to view, what is in man. In the cross man has spoken out. He has exhibited himself, and made unconscious confession of his feelings, especially in reference to God,—to his Being, his authority, his character, his law, his love. Though "the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2:23) were at work in the awful transaction, yet it was man who erected the cross, and nailed the Son of God to it. Permitted by God to give vent to the feelings of his heart, and placed in circumstances the least likely to call forth anything but love, he thus expressed them, in hatred of God and of his incarnate Son. Reckoning the death of the cross the worst of all, he deems it the fittest for the "Son of the Blessed." Thus, the enmity of the natural heart speaks out, and man not only confesses publicly that he is a hater of God, but he takes pains to shew the intensity of his hatred. Nay, he glories in his shame, crying aloud, "Crucify him, crucify him;" "This is the heir, come let us kill him;" "Not this man, but Barabbas." The cross thus interpreted man; drew the mask of pretended religion from his face; and exhibited a soul overflowing with the malignity of hell.

You say, "I don't hate God; I may be indifferent to him; he may not be in all my thoughts; but I don't hate him." Then, what does that cross mean?—Love, hatred, indifference;—which? Does love demand the death of the loved One? Does indifference crucify its objects? Look at your hands! Are they not red with blood? Whose blood is that? The blood of God's own Son! No: neither love nor indifference shed that blood. It was hatred that did it; enmity; the enmity of the carnal mind. You say that I have no right to judge you. I am not

judging you. It is yon cross that judges you, and I am asking you to judge yourselves by it. It is yon cross that interprets your purposes, and reveals the thoughts and intents of your heart. Oh, what a revelation! Man hating God; and hating most, when God is loving most! Man acting as a devil; and taking the devil's side against God! You say, "What have I to do with that cross, and what right have you to identify me with the crucifiers?" I say, "Thou art the man." Do not say, "Pilate did it, Caiaphas did it, the Jew did it, the Roman did it; I did it not." Nay, but you did, you did. You did it in your representatives,—the civilised Roman and the religious Jew; and until you come out from the crucifying crowd, disown your representatives, and protest against the deed, you are verily guilty of that blood. But how am I to sever myself from these crucifiers, and protest against their crime? By believing in the name of the crucified One. For all unbelief is approval of the deed and identification with the murderers. Faith is man's protest against the deed; and the identification of himself, not only with the friends and disciples of the crucified One, but with the crucified One himself.

The cross, then, was the public declaration of man's hatred of God, man's rejection of his Son, and man's avowal of his belief that he needs no Saviour. If any one, then, denies the ungodliness of humanity, and pleads for the native goodness of the race, I ask, what means yon cross? Of what is it the revealer and interpreter? Of hatred or of love? Of good or of evil? Besides, in this rejection of the Son of God, we have also man's estimate of him. He had been for thirty years despised and rejected; he had been valued and sold for thirty pieces of silver; a robber had been preferred to him; but at the cross, this estimate comes out more awfully; and there we see how man undervalued his person, his life, his blood, his word, his whole errand from the Father. "What think ye of Christ?" was God's question. Man's answer was, "THE CROSS! Was not that as explicit as it was appalling?"

As the cross reveals man's depravity, so does it exhibit his foolishness. His condemnation of him, in whom God delighted,

shews this. His erection of the cross shews it still more. As if he could set at nought Jehovah, and clear the earth of him who had come down as the Doer of his will! His attempt to cast shame upon the Lord of glory is like a child's effort to blot out or discolour the sun. And as his erection of the cross was the revelation of his folly, so has been his subsequent estimate of it, and of the gospel which has issued from it. He sees in it no wisdom, but only foolishness; and this ascription of foolishness to the cross is but, the more decided proof of his own foolishness. He stumbles at this stumbling-stone. The cross is an offence to him, and the preaching of it folly.

My friend, what is that cross to you? Is it folly or wisdom? Do you see, in the way of salvation which it reveals, the excellency of wisdom, as well as the excellency of power and love? Has the cross, interpreted to you by the Holy Ghost, revealed your own heart as a hell of darkness and evil? Have you accepted its exposition of your character, and welcomed it also as salvation for the lost,— reconciliation between you and God?

II. It is the interpreter of God.—That "the Word was made flesh" is a blessed fact, fraught with grace to us. But incarnation is not the whole of the Bible; no, not half of it. It is not at Bethlehem, but at Golgotha, that we get the full interpretation of God's character. "Unto us a child is born" is the dawn; "It is finished" is the noon. The cross carries out and completes what the cradle began.

It is as the God of grace that the cross reveals him. It is love, freelove, that shines out in its fulness there. "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us" (1 John 3:16). It is as "the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious," that he shews himself. Nor could any demonstration of the sincerity of the divine love equal this. It is love stronger than shame, and suffering, and death; love immeasurable; love unquenchable. Truly, "God is love." In his treatment of the Son of God, man was putting that love to the test. In the cross he was putting it to the extremest test to which love could be put. But it stands them all. Man's most terrible tests but

draw it forth the more copiously, and give it new opportunities of displaying its riches. What more extreme test can man ask, or God give, than this?

But righteousness as well as grace is here. The God who spared not his own Son is "the righteous Lord who loveth righteousness," and who "will by no means clear the guilty." We learn God's righteous character in many ways. We learn it from its dealings with righteousness, as in the case of all unfallen ones; we learn it still more fully from its dealings with sin, as in our fallen world; but we learn it, most of all, from its dealings with both of these at once, and in the same person, on the cross of Christ. For here is the righteous Son of God bearing the unrighteousness of men. How shall God both reward and punish at once; reward the righteous one, yet punish the substitute of the unrighteous? Surely righteousness will deal mildly with sin, when found laid on one so righteous, and so beloved for his righteousness? It will mitigate the penalty, and spare the beloved one? No; it does not. It will not admit of the principle that sin is less sin, or less punishable, in such circumstances. Even when found lying on the most righteous and the most beloved of all, upon the very highest person in the universe, it must be dealt with as sin, and punished as truly as when found upon the common sinner. There must be no exemption, and no mitigation. How terrible is the righteousness of God, as interpreted by the cross of Christ! How infinitely holy, how gloriously perfect, how inexorably just, is the God who gave his Son! His love is no weakness, no good nature, no easy indifference to wrong and right. It is righteous love; and, as such, the cross proclaims it with loud and most unambiguous utterance. All the divine perfections are seen here in harmonious glory, mercy and truth, grace and justice; the perfection of holiness combined with the perfection of love. A righteous Judge and a righteous pardon! Righteousness forgiving, saving, justifying, glorifying; taking the side of law in condemning sin, yet taking the side of love in delivering the sinner himself.

O wondrous, glorious cross! Blessed interpreter of God to us! Scene of the great self-manifestation, the great revelation of the mind and heart of God! O cross of Christ, tell us more and more of this grace of God! Preach reconciliation to the alien, pardon to the guilty, assurance of God's free yet holy love to the dark and suspicious soul! Speak to our hearts; speak to our consciences; pour in light; break our bonds; heal our wounds;—all by means of thy interpretation of the divine character, thy revelation of the righteous love of God!

SERMON XX

THE SURETY'S CROSS

"The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."—GAL. 6:14.

III. It is the interpreter of law.—It tells us that the law is holy, and just, and good; that not one jot or tittle of it can pass away. The perfection of the law is the message from Calvary, even more awfully than from Sinai. The power of law, the vengeance of law, the inexorable tenacity of law, the grandeur of law, the unchangeable and infrangible sternness of law,—these are the announcements of the cross. Never was there so terrible a proclamation of law, and so vivid a commentary upon it, as from the cross of Christ. In the crosses of the two thieves there was the declaration of law, but not half so explicit as in the cross of the righteous Son of God. He who has most honoured the law is the one whom the law refuses to let go; nay, whom it compels to suffer most. All his life-time's honour of the law seems to go for nothing. It stands him in no stead, now that he

has undertaken to answer for the sinner. There is no relaxation of law in his behalf. Law,—unpitying, relentless, remorseless law,— demands from him the double debt; first, the fulfilment of all its precepts, and then, the endurance of its penalties as if he had fulfilled not one of its statutes, but had broken them all.

Thus by the cross does God interpret the law to us; shewing us, with divine expressiveness, what it is, and what it can do. It was law that condemned the Son of God. It was law that erected the cross, and nailed the Sin-bearer to it. It was law that afflicted him and put him to grief. It was law that shed his innocent blood. Surely, of all the many illustrations and interpretations which law has received in the world's history, there is none like this.

By the cross does God protest against all attempts to destroy or dilute, to mutilate or modify the law. Man thinks it too strict, too broad; nay, affirms that Christ came to mitigate it, and to give us a salvation founded on a modified law, and obtained by our obedience to such a law. God, in the cross of Christ, says, I do not think so. See yon cross, and my Son upon it, bearing the law's penalty. Would I have made him to do so, had it been too strict? Did he obey too much? Did he suffer too heavily? Thus in the cross God upholds the law as well as expounds it; protesting against the idea that the gospel is just the law lowered and relaxed, so as to suit our fallen state of being; and proclaiming to us a gospel founded upon a fulfilled, an unmodified, an unchangeable law.

O man, read the divine comment on the law as given on the cross, and learn what sin is, and what righteousness is. Man, in erecting that cross, was no doubt making a mock both at law and at sin; he was refusing the love of God as well as the law of God; he was, like Cain, rejecting the sin-offering, and saying, "I need it not." But God was exhibiting to us the reality and the darkness of sin. In the cross God was condemning sin, and shewing how different his estimate of it was from that of man. And there is nothing so fitted to convince, to overawe, to overwhelm the sinner as the sight of that cross. "They

shall look on me whom they have pierced, and mourn." It is the sight of the cross that brings a man down to the dust; that produces genuine repentance,—godly sorrow, such as law alone could not accomplish. Look, then, and be smitten to the heart by the spectacle of the Lamb of God on the tree, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; "made under the law;" enduring the curse of the law, that from that curse we might be redeemed.

IV. It interprets sin.—As the interpreter of law, it is necessarily the interpreter of sin; for as "by the law is the knowledge of sin," so that which expounds the law must also discover sin. The cross took up the ten commandments, and on each of their "Thou shalts" and "Thou shalt nots," flung such a new and divine light, that sin, in all its hideousness of nature, and minuteness of detail, stood out to view, as it never did before, "the abominable thing" which Jehovah hates. Sin was on the earth before Sinai's thunder awoke the desert and shook the camp of Israel. But it was hidden, or but dimly seen. As the warrocket sent up at midnight shews the whole ground and camp, so did the blaze of Sinai light up the law and discover sin. There was sin upon the earth before the Christ of God died. But it was, with all the illumination of Sinai, but imperfectly known. As the lightning of heaven, more potent and penetrating than the most brilliant warrocket, bursting down at midnight on some plain or valley, lights up the landscape, far and near, so did the heavenly glory of the cross unfold, in awful vividness and infinite detail, "the exceeding sinfulness of sin."

It shewed that sin was no trifle which God would overlook; that the curse was no mere threat which God could depart from, when it suited him. It shewed that the standard of sin was no sliding scale, to be raised or lowered at pleasure; that the punishment of sin was no arbitrary infliction; and that its pardon was not the expression of divine indifference to its evil. It shewed that sin was no variable or uncertain thing; but fixed and precise; a thing to which God was pointing his finger and saying, I hate that, and that, and that. It shewed that the wages of sin is death; that the soul that sinneth must

die; that sin and its fruits and penalties are certainties, absolute certainties, before which heaven and earth must pass away. It shewed that sin is no mere misfortune, or disease; but guilt, which must go before the Judge, and receive judicial doom at his hand. It shewed all these, when it shewed us our divine Substitute, dying the Just for the unjust; God lowering none of his demands, nor abating aught of his wrath, even in the case of his beloved Son.

The cross shewed us, moreover, that the essence of sin is hatred of God; and that man is, by nature, just what the apostle calls him, a "hater of God" (Rom. 1:30). The law had told us but the one half of this. In saying, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, it pointed to sin as the want of love. But that was all. The cross goes farther than this, and shews us sin as enmity to God, and man as a murderer of the Lord of glory. Is not this a discovery of the malignity of sin, such as had never been imagined before? O what must man be, when he can hate, condemn, mock, scourge, spit upon, crucify, the Christ of God, when coming to him clothed in love, and with the garments of salvation? And what must sin be, when, in order to expiate it, the Lord of glory must die upon the tree, an outcast, a criminal, a curse, before God and man, before earth and heaven!

V. It interprets the gospel.—That good news were on their way to us, was evident from the moment that Mary brought forth her first-born, and, by divine premonition, called his name "Jesus." Good will to men was then proclaimed. But the Substitute had then only commenced his mission of grace. Step by step the good news unfolded themselves, as he passed over our earth, doing the deeds and speaking the words of love. But not till the cross is erected, and the blood is shed, and the life is taken, do we fully learn how it is that his work is so precious, and that the tidings concerning it furnish so glorious a gospel. The gospel is good news concerning a divine Sinbearer; concerning that death which is everlasting life to us; concerning that blood which purges the conscience from dead works, cleansing sin, and reconciling us to God. The cross is reconciliation between us and God, and that is good news. The cross is the bruising

of the heel of the woman's seed, and the bruising of the serpent's head; and that is good news. The cross is the adjustment of every question raised by law and righteousness, by God or by conscience;— the righteous and honourable settlement of every claim that can be made against the sinner. And that is good news. The cross is the appointed meeting-place between the sinner and God, where the ambassadors of peace take their stand, beseeching the wanderer to turn and live, the rebel to be reconciled to God! There the covenant of reconciliation was sealed; there peace was made; there the debt was paid; there the ransom was given. And are not these glad tidings of great joy?

VI. It interprets service.—We are redeemed that we may obey. We are set free that we may serve,—even as God spoke to Pharaoh, "Let my people go, that they may serve me." But the cross defines the service, and shews us its nature. It is the service of love and liberty; yet it is also the service of reproach, and shame, and tribulation. We are crucified with Christ! And this brings out our position as saints. We are crucified followers of a crucified Lord. We are crucified to the world, and the world to us, by the cross of Christ. But besides this, we have to take up our cross, and bear it. It is not his cross we bear. None but he could bear it. It is a cross of our own; calling us to selfdenial, flesh-denial, and world-denial; pointing out to us a path of humiliation, trial, toil, weakness, reproach, such as our Master trod. Yes; it is a cross of our own that we are to bear; not, indeed, of our own making or seeking,—for self-made, self-sought crosses are evil, not good,—but still a cross of our own. There is a personal cross for each, which we are to take up and bear; a cross which is the true badge of discipleship, the genuine mark of authentic service. What he bore for us is done; it cannot be borne over again; the cross of Christ is not for any but himself to carry. But as he had a cross to bear for us, so have we a cross to bear for him, and "for his body's sake, which is the Church."

"Follow me," he says; and we cannot but yield to the almighty voice. He draws us out of the world, and we follow him. He leads us in at

the strait gate, and we follow him. He guides us along the narrow way, and we follow him, our cross upon our shoulder and the crown before our eye. Smoothness, and brightness, and greenness, are not the features of the narrow way; but rather thorns and briars, darkness and dust, and ruggedness, all along; fightings without, and fears within. The road to the Kingdom is not so pleasant, and comfortable, and easy, and flowery, as many dream. It is not a bright sunny avenue of palms. It is not paved with triumph, though it is to end in victory. The termination is glory, honour, and immortality; but on the way there is the thorn in the flesh, the sackcloth, and the cross. Recompence yonder; but labour here! Rest yonder; but weariness here! Joy and security yonder; but here endurance and watchfulness,—the race, the battle, the burden, the stumbling-block, and ofttimes the heavy heart.

In entering Christ's service, let us, then, count the cost. In following him, let us not shrink from the cross. It was his badge of service for us; let us accept it as ours for him.

To the world the cross is an offence and a stumbling-block. It is so in two ways. It makes those, who have taken it up, objects of dislike to others; and it is itself an object of dislike to these others. Thus while it unites the saints, it divides them from the world. It is the banner round which the former rally and gather; it is the mark against which the arrows of the latter are turned.

For there are "enemies of the cross of Christ," and enemies of Christ himself. Of them the apostle says, "their end is destruction." Thus the cross is both life and death, salvation and destruction. It is the golden sceptre; it is the iron rod. It is the Shepherd's staff of love; it is the Avenger's sword of fire. It is the tree of life and cup of blessing; it is the cup of the wine of the wrath of God.

O enemy of the cross of Christ, know your awful doom. Do not take refuge in fancied neutrality; reasoning with yourself that because you are not a scoffer, nor a profligate, you are not an enemy. Remember

that it is written, "He that is not for me is against me;" and that, "The friendship of the world is enmity with God." That cross shall be a witness against you, in the day when the crucified One returns as Judge and King. The early Christians had a tradition among themselves, that the cross was to be the sign of his coming; appearing in the heavens, as the herald of his advent. Whether this is to be the case or not, the cross in that day will be the object of terror to its enemies. They would not be saved by it, and they shall perish by it. They would not take its pardon; they must bear its condemnation. The love, which it so long proclaimed, shall then be turned into wrath. The glorious light beaming forth from it, to light them to the kingdom of light, shall then become darkness; their sun shall set, no more to rise; their night shall begin,—the long, eternal night that has no dawn in prospect, and no star to break its gloom.

SERMON XXI

THE CROSS THE EXPRESSION OF MAN'S UNBELIEF

"They cried, saying, Crucify him! crucify him!"—LUKE 23:21.

CRUCIFIXION was the death of the outcast only, the Gentile outcast. Stoning was the Jewish death, crucifying the Gentile death, or rather the Roman death; the death devised and inflicted by the fourth great beast of Daniel, when exercising his power in trampling down the nation of God with his iron feet. "Crucify him," then, meant, Let him die the worst of deaths, the Gentile death, the death that is so specially connected with the curse; the death that proclaims Him to be not merely an outcast from Israel, an outcast from Jerusalem, but an outcast from the Gentile, an outcast from the race.

He to whom this cry is directed, is a Gentile ruler; and it is striking to observe the Jew handing over his fellow-Jew to the abhorred Gentile, the conqueror of his city and nation. With what a hatred must these crucifiers have hated their victim, when they give him over to the Gentile to have their utmost malice executed upon him!

He, against whom they thus furiously shout forth their bitterness, is the Son of God; not merely a holy man, but one in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells; one who has been sent of the Father to carry out his purpose of love. It is against "the Word made flesh," the "only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth," that the cry is raised, "Crucify him! crucify him! let him die the worst of deaths; not this man, but Barabbas." It was not his human holiness merely that excited the hatred and the outcry; it was his divine perfection. It was not merely man hating man because better than himself; it was man hating God; man seeking to rid himself, and rid his world of God altogether; man seizing the opportunity he had now got, in having God in a human form within his power, of making away with Jehovah, as the Being to whose absolute dominion he would not submit, and whose presence on the earth, in human form, was altogether intolerable.

Who were they who raised the cry and made this awful demand, in the name of justice and religion, upon a Gentile ruler, for the death of the Son of God?

They were the Jews, the Jews of Jerusalem; not the more ignorant and irreligious Jews of Samaria or Galilee, but the Jews of Jerusalem. Nay, and chief among these haters of Messiah were the men who professed most to be looking for his advent; the best educated, most learned, and, according to their ideas, most devout and religious of the nation. They were not Egyptians or Persians, or Greeks or Romans, worshippers of false gods; but children of Abraham, men who studied Moses and the prophets, men well-read in the Scriptures, and worshippers of the one Jehovah. They were the choice men of a nation which had been trained up, for well-nigh two

thousand years, in the knowledge of God; with whom God had taken infinite pains,—to teach, to guide, to elevate, to keep from surrounding falsehoods, and superstitions, and sins. They were a people that knew more of truth, heavenly truth, than any other on the face of the earth. They were, beyond comparison, the best educated, most enlightened nation on the earth. No blessing had been grudged, no miracle withheld, no privilege refused, no cost spared, to make them the nation of nations, religiously, morally, and intellectually, nay, and physically as well. They were, then, the best specimens of the race,—the representatives of humanity in its best estate,—the exhibition of the natural man, improved to the uttermost, by knowledge, and law, and government, and religion.

It was to this people that Messiah was proposed, for reception or rejection. If they rejected him, who could be expected to receive him? If they hated him, who could be expected to love him? If they treated him with dishonour, who could be expected to honour him? If the best portion of the race, who had been expressly separated from the rest, and divinely trained, in order to be ready for his advent, refused him, what could be expected of the worst; what could be expected of the race as a whole? As God gave Adam, and to our race in him, all advantages for standing, so did he give to Israel, and to our race in them, all advantages for receiving his Son. Yet, with all these advantages and privileges, they rejected him! "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Their cry was not, "Crown him," but "Crucify him;" not, Let the King live for ever, but, Let him die the worst of deaths.

It was thus that man rejected Christ,—civilised man, educated man, religious man! It was thus that the natural heart spoke out, and shewed the depths of its enmity and atheism,—the extent of its desperate unbelief. Yes, it was the unbelief of the human heart that here told itself out, and cried, "Crucify, crucify!"

All unbelief, then, is rejection of the Son of God. Whatever be its evasions, and subterfuges, and excuses, and fair pretences, this is its

essence,—rejection of the Christ of God. In thousands of cases it does not reach the length of the rejection in Pilate's hall; but not the less true is it that such is its true and ultimate form of expression; that to such a height all unbelief is tending, and would assuredly rise, did circumstances call it forth; and that the great reason why, in so many cases, it does not ripen into this awfulness of aspect, is, that man is not so directly confronted with the Son of God, face to face, and the natural heart is not so explicitly shut up to the choice between Christ and Barabbas, nor so immediately and peremptorily called to decide upon the reception or rejection of the Son of God. Were the natural heart, even in its best estate, called upon to speak out, by the demand being made upon it for immediate and unreserved affection and allegiance to Messiah, it would rise up into the same awful attitude of enmity, and manifest its unbelief, in the same terrific outcry for the crucifixion of the Son of God.

And why this desperate rejection; this feeling of man towards the Christ? For many reasons; but chiefly for this, that God's religion, of which Christ is the beginning and the ending, is so thoroughly opposed to man's religion, or man's ideas of religion, that to accept Jesus of Nazareth would be a total surrender of self, a confession of the utter absence of all goodness, an overturning of every religious idea or principle, which the flesh had cherished and rested on. In such a case, and with such an alternative, it does not seem so incredible that man should resist to the uttermost the claims of Christ upon his faith and his heart. His alternative is,—the denial of self, or the denial of Christ; the rejection of his own claims to be his own saviour, or the rejection of the claims of Christ; the crucifixion of the flesh, or the crucifixion of Christ. With such an alternative, what will the natural unbelief of the human heart not resort to; and what but the almightiness of the Divine Spirit can effectually oppose the claims of self, and prevent the most daring rejection of Christ, or turn that rejection into a cordial and trustful reception? Nothing else will overcome the unbelief, or turn it into faith and love. Allow it to take its own way, and run its course, and it will end in the crucifixion

of the Lord of glory. It will prefer self, the flesh, the devil,—the worst of criminals to Christ. "Not this man, but Barabbas!"

It is supposed by many that such a thing as the rejection of Christ could only have occurred among uneducated, uncivilized, lawless, irreligious men. But no.

Education will not hinder rejection of Christ. They who crucified Him were educated men; not ignorant and brutal.

Civilisation will not hinder rejection of Christ. It was the civilised Roman, and the more civilised Jew, that crucified him. Civilization is a poor rampart against the assault of man's natural unbelief.

Law will not hinder rejection of Christ. The Roman is the representative of man's law, and the Jew of God's; yet both combine to reject Christ's claims, and to crucify himself.

Religion will not hinder rejection of Christ. Christ was crucified by men who had more of what man calls religion than any other on the earth. They prayed, they fasted, they gave alms, they multiplied sacrifices; yet they crucified Christ! It was the Scribes and Pharisees, the religious and respectable men of Israel, that were the foremost in rejecting Messiah. God's way of dealing with them, as announced by Christ, was so opposed to their ideas of the way in which they ought to be dealt with, that rejection of the claims of Jesus, and hatred of his person, were necessary elements in, or at least indispensable deductions from, their religion. How often among ourselves, does a man's religion, or religiousness, or ritualism, form the great hindrance to his reception of the gospel! It is not Christ that is his religion; it is his religion that is his Christ! This being the case, the Christ of God cannot be prized, or loved, or trusted in; he can only be rejected, hated, crucified.

This rejection of Christ shewed itself in various aspects, in the different characters and events described by the evangelists, in this last scene in Jerusalem. In all of them, however, it is unbelief that is

shewing itself,—the same unbelief that still induces opposition to Christ, the same unbelief that keeps an anxious sinner oftentimes so long in darkness and distrust. And, as we judge of the real nature of a thing best, when fully developed and carried out, so we learn the true nature of all unbelief, from the modes in which it expressed itself at this great scene of rejection, enacting at Jerusalem, from the hour that Judas sold his Master, up to the moment when the thief railed on him from the cross.

Look at Judas then,—there is unbelief. The traitor is neither more nor less than an unbelieving man carrying out his unbelief in betrayal of his Lord. His is the unbelief that treats Christ as a piece of merchandise, bought and sold between man and man! O unbelieving man, thou art Judas, thou art the traitor; for all unbelief is betrayal of the Lord.

Look at the disciples; "they all forsook him, and fled." Professing to love him, they treated him as one unworthy to be suffered for. That act of forsaking was the unbelief even of the converted man, coming out and shewing itself again. Especially in Peter do we see it. In him there is open denial, and in that denial we see the old heart of unbelief again speaking out. O backslider! remember this, all unbelief is a forsaking of the Lord, a denial of the Master. Say what you will, this is your crime. You think you are not so bad as Peter. The difference is only in degree, hardly even that.

Look at Herod; he mocks him, and sets him at nought. Here is another phase of unbelief. O unbelieving man, thou art Herod; thou and thy companions are Herod with his men of war; for all unbelief is mockery of the Lord. You say you never mocked him; yet that unbelief, if unfolded, would make you a Herod.

Look at the Soldiers; they scourge and buffet him. There again is the natural heart acting itself out. These indignities and wounds are but another utterance of man's enmity. O unbelieving man, thou art the

executioner; for all unbelief is a buffeting and scourging of the Son of God.

Look at the Scribes and Pharisees, the Jewish crowds that demand his execution, and shout, "Crucify him! crucify him!" There is the evil heart of unbelief giving vent to itself. These crowds are fair specimens of the race; they are no worse than you are, O unbelieving man. In like circumstances, you would have said and done the same; for all unbelief is a crucifixion of the Son of God. Thou art the Scribe, thou art the Pharisee, thou art the vociferating Jew; it is the voice of thy unbelief that cries, "Crucify him! let him die the death, let him die the worst of deaths!"

Look at the thief that is nailed beside him; he rails at him there. Ah, surely unbelief might have been silent in such circumstances! Yet no; even upon the cross it reviles. O unbelieving man, thou art the reviler of the Son of God.

Look at the crowd around the cross; they wag their head, and taunt, and jest. It is still but man's natural unbelief that is speaking out. O unbelieving man, thou art the taunter, thou art the jester, thou art the mocker, of Jesus of Nazareth.

Look at the soldier that pierces his side, after he has breathed his last. He is determined to make sure of his death. Unbelief will not bear the thought that there should be the very chance of life left. O unbelieving man, thou art the soldier: it is thy spear that is drawing out the blood and water; it is thy unbelief that not only says, Let him die the death; but, let us make sure of his death; let there be no mistake as to this.

Learn, then, the true nature of all unbelief; its deceitfulness and desperate malignity; its rooted hostility to Christ and to his claims upon man; its determination to be satisfied with nothing but his death; its resolute rejection of his person, and work, and grace; its

natural and unchangeable watchword, "Not this man, but Barabbas;" "Crucify him! crucify him!"

Nor has this unbelief anything to say for itself. It cannot be accounted for by anything in the object presented. "They hated me without a cause" (John 15:25). "For my love they give me hatred" (Ps. 109:5). This is the plain statement of the fact. The object was most loveable, most trustworthy, most glorious; but man would have none of it. Here was the Being who, of all others, was most fitted to call up love and trust; for here was the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth; here was the embodiment of divine love and loveableness. But God's love is met with man's hatred; the most unambiguous revelation of divine love calls forth the most fearful utterance of human hatred and unbelief!

O man! can that heart of yours be anything but evil, which thus deals with God and his love? Can that unbelief of yours be a trifle? Can it be anything but the most resolute and guilty enmity; enmity which, though it may often slumber for a season, yet which, the moment it awakes and recovers strength, breaks forth in mockery against the Son of God, and demands his instant condemnation and crucifixion, —"Crucify him! crucify him!" Be ashamed of it; abhor it; cast it utterly away.

When Christ comes again in his glory, how will unbelief appear? It will be seen to be rejection of the Son of God,—rejection the same as Israel's. You will be of those that "pierced him." All that distrust, these misgivings, that standing aloof, will be seen in their proper character. Your unbelief brings you amongst those who "have not obeyed the gospel," and that brings you under the rod of him who comes to take vengeance upon such. Christ may come soon; but, whether or not, let the thought of the great day shut you up to immediate faith, immediate reception of Him whom Israel crucified.

SERMON XXII

LIFE AND FRUITFULNESS THROUGH DEATH

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."—JOHN 12:24.

IT is strange that, in a world made by the God only wise and good, there should be such a thing as death. It is more wonderful that this death should come out of a thing so glorious as life. But, beyond these, there is a wonder greater still,—that life should grow out of death, and corruption be the seed and parent of incorruption.

Yet this last is the process which God has been carrying on in our earth, since the threatening took effect against Adam: "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die."

It needs no great power to bring death out of life. Man can effect that without an effort. But to bring life out of death needs other power than man's. Man can kill, but God only can make alive. It is the Creator alone that can quicken; and hence the apostle sets these two things together when he says, "God who quickeneth all things, and calleth those things which be not as though they were" (Rom. 4:17). The power to destroy life has been given to the creature; but the power to impart it is a prerogative of Godhead and a function of Omnipotence. Thus all of death that is in us we owe to ourselves, and all of life that is in us we trace solely to God, to him whose name is "Jehovah," who not merely is King "eternal and immortal," but "who only hath immortality" (1 Tim. 6:16).

We can, however, go a step farther than this; and it is to this higher point that the apostle leads us when he says, "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die" (1 Cor. 15:36). These words are peculiar, and the thought embodied in them is not one which man has ever owned, far less originated. The apostle is speaking, no doubt, especially of the resurrection of the body, yet in so doing he enunciates a wider, more universal, and more subtile truth,—a truth unacknowledged by philosophy, but largely recognised in Scripture, and taught by many natural processes,—that death is the way to life, that the dissolution of the lower life is necessary in order to the development of the higher. Yes; this is the sum of the divine testimony concerning life and death; that the latter, instead of being the destruction or extinction of the former, is the preparation for and introduction to it; that the ascent from a lower kind and narrower region of life to a loftier and wider is through DEATH. This is the narrow isthmus, or rather the subterraneous passage, through which God is conducting us, from the bleak coasts of this poor moorland lake to the shores of that fair ocean, whose waters spread themselves out under calmer skies, and break upon a sunnier shore.

"That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." Strange words, and most marvellous truth! Yet the apostle speaks as if this were one of the plainest and commonest of nature's laws; so that a man must be a fool, if he has not read that law in the every-day processes of sowing and springing. And as it is with the seed, so is it with man himself. It is by means of darkness that we reach the light. It is by falling that we rise; by going down into the depths of the valley that we find our way up to the mountains of immortality beyond. It is through winter that we pass into spring. It is by dying that we are made to live,—live for ever; for the life that is not reached by death seems but half secure. The life that lasts,—the life that is truly immortal and eternal, is only obtained by dying. It is resurrection-life that is the truest as well as the highest form of life, the surest as well as the most glorious immortality. It admits of no reversal and no decay. These souls of ours are quickened to an

endless life, by having first passed through a death of trespasses and sins; and these bodies must go down into the grave, and there be dissolved, that every particle of mortality may be shaken out of them, ere they can be made partakers of the glory in reserve for them. They are sown in weakness, that they may be raised in power; they are sown in corruption, that they may be raised in incorruption. It is the grave, the abode of putrid loathsomeness, that is the womb of the undecaying and the undefiled. John Howe, in commenting on the expression, "armour of light," exclaims, "Strange armour that a man can see through!" so may we say here, "Strange life that is the offspring of death; how unlike the child and the parent to each other!"

Yet we shrink from death and abhor the grave! What! "are we afraid of becoming immortal?" Are we reluctant to part with weakness, and disease, and corruption? Do we refuse to enter the porch and gate of life's temple? Are we dismayed at the prospect of going into the robing chamber, where the vestments of this vile flesh are put off, and the raiment of a glorious immortality put on? Fools that we are! Do we not remember that "that which is sown is not quickened except it die?"

But our Lord's words add another truth to those already noticed on this point. It is not merely life, but fruitfulness, that is to be reached through death; so that death is the parent of fruitfulness, and to retain life is to be unproductive. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn" (or grain) "of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." It is as if he said, Look at that grain of wheat; it contains in it both life and fruitfulness; but these are locked up, imprisoned in it; nor can they be disengaged or set loose, so as to unfold and multiply themselves, save by death. The fruitfulness that is in it must remain all folded up and lost, unless death come in to break up its prison: it is life that is keeping it from living, and multiplying, and replenishing the earth; the outer life is imprisoning the inner, and not till that outer life has perished can the inner life flow out upon the world; the germs of a higher

excellence are so closed up in its secret cells, so bound together, that they cannot expand or shew themselves, till the dissolution of that which we call life has bidden these secret treasures come forth. The various elements of higher being and powers of propagation are so wrapt round with this covering, this coating of life, that ere they can come forth death must do its work, breaking the bars of the prisonhouse, and making the deep cells of happy life to give up their wondrous inmates.

Thus, that which seems to us the destruction of all fruitfulness, is its true paternity. That which appears to dissolve all excellence, to wither up all beauty, to scatter all sweetness, and to mar all power of reproduction, is the very thing by which these are led forth from inactivity and inertness to do their work upon the earth, and to fulfil the end of their being. Death, which is in itself an evil and a penalty, is yet God's instrument for opening prisons, and unloosing chains, and disengaging the higher vitalities and perfections of being. And we cannot but notice that our Lord, having thus vindicated the connection between productiveness and death, adds, by way of application, "He that loveth his life shall lose it; but he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."

Take that brown rough bulb, and preserve it with all care from damp and frost, and the foot of the destroyer; what is the result? Nothing. "It abideth alone." Whatever may be its treasures, they lie hidden. But cast it into the ground and bury it, and immediately a change comes over it. Corruption seizes it. Part after part falls off and dies. This, however, does not affect its inner vitalities, save to call them out, and send up to man the hidden beauty. It shoots up in its greenness to the sun; leaf after leaf unfolds itself; blossom after blossom comes forth from the mysterious recesses in the mouldering root; till the lily itself waves before us in its comeliness, and we feel "that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

Such is the law of creation, of the new as well as of the old creation: through darkness to light; through death to life; through corruption

to fruitfulness and glory.

But our Lord's words primarily and especially concern himself. He was the grain of wheat (sower and seed in one); and, as such, he must fall into the ground and die; for, without his dying, his coming would profit nothing, his incarnation would be barren. It was death that was to draw out his treasures, and unlock the storehouse of his unsearchable riches.

That he was the true seed, in which were deposited all life and fruitfulness, a few passages will shew. "It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell." "In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." "In him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

The Christ, the Incarnate Word, is the one divine depository of all the riches of Godhead, whether the riches of grace or of glory, of wisdom or of power. And as he is the one depository, so is he the one channel of conveyance, to the creature, of all this fulness of the everlasting God. He is to the Creator what the eye, the ear, the tongue, the whole bodily frame, are to the creature. He is the one fountain-head of divine blessing, the one outlet of heavenly love, the one medium of intercourse between the finite and the infinite, the human and the divine. The invisible becomes visible in Him, and he that hath seen him hath seen the Father. That which man calls development is a reality only as connected with him; and progress is but a name or a falsehood, save as rooted in him. Man has many Christs, but the true Christ is one.

SERMON XXIII

LIFE AND FRUITFULNESS THROUGH DEATH

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."—JOHN 12:24.

THE seed, then, is divine; and, as such, it contains an infinite store of treasure. But this is not enough. How are its riches to be made available for us? Let the following statements be considered:—

I. Incarnation is not enough.—No doubt, in the incarnation is wrapt up the love of God,—the love of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and the simple announcement, "the Word was made flesh," "unto us a Child is born," is glad tidings of great joy. Still there is something awanting. It is the beginning, but it is not the end. Is love to meet with no obstructions? And if sin opposes, and righteousness opposes, and law opposes, what is love to do, or how is it to reach the sinner? The Son of God might take flesh and dwell among us; but this did not secure life for the dead, or pardon for the condemned, or salvation for the lost, or victory over man's great enemy, or honour to God's broken law The fountain must be unsealed, else its waters are useless; the box of spikenard must be broken, else its fragrance will not flow out to cheer man's fainting heart, or heal this world's polluted air.

II. Power is not enough.—Love, though armed with almighty power, finds mighty barriers. It is hedged in by righteousness, and righteousness is stronger than power, as much stronger as the moral is higher and greater than the physical. And just as God cannot lie, so omnipotence cannot conquer law, or set its provisions aside. Mere strength cannot come to the judgment, or prevail with the Judge. In the eye of law, power is unknown; in the decisions of the judgmentseat, it is not recognised as an element at all. Power, however great, cannot reach the criminal, though it may walk round the walls of his

dungeon, and try its energies against the massive gratings. Infinite power dwelt in the man Christ Jesus; and this was, no doubt, good news." But, till something has been done to cause this power to flow out, and do glorious things in righteousness, it is unavailable for the sinner, whatever it may be for the righteous. The vessel may be full, but there is a wall of iron between it and us."

III. Suffering is not enough.—The Son of God did truly suffer; more truly and more greatly suffer than any other being has done or can do. His burden of grief was the heaviest ever borne by man; and from the cradle to the cross he was the Man of sorrows, the suffering One both in body and in soul. Yet these tears and groans were not enough; they could not unlock the heavenly treasure deposited in him, nor draw forth the provision for a needy world contained in his unsearchable riches. If any amount or intensity of suffering could have done this, it would have been that of the man Christ Jesus; but even his suffering was not enough. It was part of the process, but it was not the whole. Something deeper and more penal, something that had in it more of condemnation and wrath, was needed. Only such suffering as ended in death, could draw out the life and fruitfulness wrapt up in the divine seed.

IV. Holiness is not enough.—At his conception he was "the holy Thing;" and during his life he was "the holy One;" and in his walk on earth there was seen an obedience, which, of all other obediences, was the most perfect; both for admiration and example. Yet this did not touch the law's inexorable penalty, nor help to bear the legal curse. He that would save us must be a substitute, as well as an example, and must undergo the law's last sentence, ere he is in a legal condition to bless, or to pour out the divine love on us, in pardon, and healing, and joy.

V. Death alone can do the work.—The love that stops short of this effects nothing; and, however large it seems, or near it comes, it but mocks the sinner. If the fulness treasured up for us in the "Word made flesh" is to come forth, then he must die. There must be the

pouring out of the soul unto death. Even he is not at liberty to communicate his love and joy to us, save through his own death; his death as the payment of the righteous penalty, and the fulfilment of the unchangeable sentence, "The soul that sinneth it shall die." He, though the true wheat, must "abide alone," except he die.

He has died, the Just for the unjust; dying the sinner's death, and bearing the sinner's curse. Thus he "brings forth much fruit." All that made this fruitful One barren has been taken away. Death has done what life, in all its divine vigour, could not do. In the sinner's grave, to which the Surety went down, the dissolution of legal bonds has been effected, whereby the fulness, hitherto pent up and imprisoned, comes forth to a dead world, like spring sending up its warm breath and covering earth with verdure.

This truth is not here spoken for the first time. It is the truth wrapt up in the first promise respecting the woman's seed, the man with the bruised heel. It is the truth to which Abel's sacrifice pointed so explicitly. It is the truth coming out in all the Levitical sacrifices and rites. It is the truth uttered by prophets: "When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days." It is the truth announced by apostles: "Without shedding of blood is no remission." It is the truth to which such prominence is given in the Apocalypse, when the Son of God is seen as the Lamb slain, and when the saints sing, "Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood." It is this which the apostle Paul had specially in view when he interprets the tabernacle veil as meaning "the flesh" of Christ (Heb. 10:20). That which shut out the worshipper from the mercy-seat was the symbol of the body of the Son of God! The veil, which was hung before the holiest, said to the Israelite, "Godhead is within; the mercy-seat is within; the glory is within; but there is a hindrance which makes them at present unapproachable. Ere you can draw near, that veil must be 'RENT,' and then all is open; but till that is done there is no access to God, even to that God who has come down to make his dwelling in the midst of you." The flesh, or body, of Christ said to every one, "Godhead is within; Jehovah has come

down; he is at your side; but ere this can profit you that body must be broken, that flesh must have its life poured out."

These, then, are the glad tidings which we bring. This veil has been rent in twain from the top to the bottom; the way is open for the sinner; go in at once into the holiest; go in now, go in as you are, and stand boldly before the mercy-seat. It is now the throne of grace for you! Yes; the good news to the sons of men are not merely that the Word was made flesh, but that that flesh was wounded, that body broken for us. The good news are, that the corn of wheat has fallen into the ground and died. Having died, it has not merely been again "quickened," but has itself become the quickener of the dead. It is death that has imparted to it this productiveness, this life-giving energy. It will not now abide alone; it will bring forth much fruit, and that fruit will remain.

The extent of this fruit-bearing we do not yet see. It is only one here, and another there, whom we see quickened from the death of sin by the all-vivifying power of him who, as the last Adam, is made a quickening spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). But, in the day of his glorious reappearing; when he comes with the ten thousand of his saints, those who have slept in him, and those who shall be alive at his return; when he comes to smite Antichrist, to bind Satan, to deliver creation from its groans, to bless Israel, to be a light to the Gentiles, to set up his righteous kingdom, and to make all things new; it shall be seen what he has done by dying. In that day, when he presents to himself the Church of the first-born, the redeemed from among men, without spot or wrinkle, a great multitude that no man can number, we shall learn the extent and excellency of that fruitfulness which he acquired by dying. Heaven and earth, men and angels, shall then see why it was that this corn of wheat fell into the ground and died.

That which is true of the Head is true also of the members, though in different manner and degree. The better life, both of soul and body, is only reached by death. And as the "quickening" comes by death, so does the fruitfulness. It is not merely the "eternal weight of glory"

that is to be wrought for them by their present affliction, but their fitness for future service as God's kings and priests; their power of eternal ministry in the kingdom hereafter; their completeness, both of character and qualification, for the unending work; the kind and amount of their everlasting success; in other words, their "fruitfulness" depends on their assimilation to their Lord here, in weakness, in humiliation, in suffering, and in death.

Hence we sorrow not as those who have no hope, as to their life, or their glory, or their fruitfulness. Their life is hid with Christ in God; and when he who is their life shall appear, they also shall appear with him in glory.

The heathen sorrowed without hope. To the philosophic Athenian, even the bold Roman, death was gloom, and nothing else. There was no hope about it. Their Elysian fields were poor, and the prospect of reaching them a sorrowful uncertainty. To them death connected itself with no hope, no brightness, no triumph. It was not sunset to them; for that bids us be on the outlook for another Sun. as bright as that which set. It was not autumn, nor winter; for these speak of returning spring and summer. It was not the seed cast into the rough soil; for that predicts the future tree or flower, more beautiful than the seed. It was pure and simple darkness; all cloud, shadow, desolation. The death of childhood and youth was especially bitter and terrible; nor can anything be more touching, nor more expressive of the "sorrow without hope," than the emblems, which we still find carved upon Grecian or Etrurian tombs. A shattered pillar; a ship gone to pieces; a race lost; a harp lying on the ground, with snapped strings, and all its music lost; a flower-bud crushed, with all its fragrance in it;—these were the sad utterances of their hopeless grief. The thought that death was the gate of life, came not in, to cheer the parting or brighten the sepulchre. The truth, that the grave was the soil, and the body the seed sown by God's hand, to call out all the latent life; that the race was not lost, but only a little earlier won; that the column was not destroyed, but transferred to another building and another city, to be "a pillar in the temple of

God;" that the bud was not crushed, but transplanted, for fuller expansion, and with all its odour unexhaled and unimpaired, to a kindlier soil and air; that the harp was not broken, nor its music spilt and lost, but handed up to a truer minstrel, who, with a finer touch and heavenlier skill, will bring; out all the rich compass of its hidden music, which man would not have appreciated, and which earth would but have spoiled;—these were things which had no place in their theology, hardly in their dreams. They sorrowed as those who had no hope.

But the death even of the ripe and aged, was to them a thing of darkness and fear. It was less strange and sad than that of childhood and prime; but it was still a perplexity, an unsolved mystery.

And do we not sometimes forget that this mystery has been, cleared away? Not that we doubt the personal safety or blessedness of the departed heir of the kingdom; but we speak of his usefulness being ended, or at least only prolonged here on earth, in the good deeds, or good words, or good report which he has left behind, and by which he, being dead, still speaketh, and still is useful. Now, no doubt, that which the text calls "fruitfulness" is thus carried out; so that a saint's death becomes a thing of life to thousands, and a saint's memory becomes as fruitful as his living person was. But there is another productiveness, which spreads itself out over eternity, and which death, so far from destroying, only develops. It is for this that he is educating here,—for this that he is undergoing his training below, and serving his earthly apprenticeship. The fitness for service,— whether of priesthood or of kingship, for we are kings and priests unto God, the power of working truly and successfully for God, acquired here by hard experience, during years of doing and suffering,—these, so far from being lost, or superseded, or thrown by, are but matured and unfolded hereafter; transferred from a narrow corner here to the spacious universe of God; set free from fetters and limits, to spread themselves out over a far wider range of objects, in the exercise of a ministry, at once priestly and kingly; a ministry as perfect and successful as it is boundless and everlasting.

No man's usefulness ever ends. The true becomes truer; the powerful becomes more powerful; the noble becomes nobler; the fruitful becomes more fruitful; the successful multiplies successes; and without fear of reverse, or failure, or discomfiture, or weariness, the liberated saint rejoices in the anticipation of an eternal future of usefulness,—usefulness in all respects illimitable, usefulness far beyond that of his most productive days on earth. The corn of wheat, before it fell into the ground, was comparatively barren; but having fallen into the ground and died, it brings forth much fruit.

SERMON XXIV

THE RISEN CHRIST AND THE THINGS ABOVE

"If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God."—COL. 3:1.

THE word "if" is not, in this place, expressive of doubt. It does not imply that those "saints at Colosse" were uncertain as to whether they were risen with Christ. Rather, it is the apostle's way of denoting the surest of all certainties. Thus he uses it in Rom. 5:10, "If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God;" and in verse 15, "If through the offence of one many be dead." So that more truly it might be rendered "since," as assuming the fact, and setting it down as beyond all doubt.

No countenance is here given to uncertainty or non-assurance on the part of a saint, as if he were one not entitled to say more for himself than "If I be a saint." The gospel does in no way, and by no word, directly or indirectly spoken, encourage uncertainty, or give us leave to call it humility. The result of a believed gospel is not uncertainty, but certainty; not trouble, but peace; not the continuance, but the expulsion of all anxiety. The gospel presents me with that, in believing which I am entitled to say, "I am a child; forgiven, saved, risen." Such is its nature that, in receiving it, so far from being brought into uncertainty, or kept in uncertainty, I am relieved from all uncertainty; my soul is set at rest. I am not only warranted, but commanded to claim my sonship. My not claiming it, my standing still in doubt as to reconciliation between me and God, shews that I have not yet fully understood the freeness and meetness of the grace which the gospel makes known. For God here presents to us such a gospel as to shut each hearer of it up to this alternative,—either to doubt the good news, or enter into conscious friendship with himself.

Sad it is that uncertainty such as this should be so common amongst us, as if there were no sin in it, no blame attaching to those in whom it exists; as if God's sovereignty would account for it entirely, and as if man's rooted self-righteousness, his evil heart of unbelief, were not the true and real cause.

Yet sadder still, that man should be contented with this uncertainty; soothing his conscience to sleep with the idea that he may be a Christian though he has no assurance; nay, that his very doubtings are the best evidences of his faith; as if unbelief could be the fruit of faith, or distrust the offspring of confidence! Surely matters have come to a low ebb indeed, when such is the case with us; not in rare examples, but in instances innumerable; when assurance is the exception, and doubting the rule; when peace with God is strange in the Church, and uncertainty tinges with gloom the religion and the life of so many who name the name of Christ.

May we not ask, What is there about this uncertainty so attractive and loveable, that we should fondle it so tenderly, and cling to it so desperately? Does it bring peace? That it cannot do: for its very nature is to distract and trouble us. Does it console us under the pressure of life's sore calamities? It cannot; for it is itself our heaviest burden. Does it heal our wounds? No; it is daily inflicting wounds, but healing none. Does it sweep off the clouds that overshadow us in our pilgrimage, or brush aside the entangling thorns and briars of the wilderness? No; it is itself the thickest cloud, the sharpest thorn that can wound us. Does it raise us above the world, or make us holier men? That it cannot do. It drags us down, and hinders all holy walking. Does it enable us to serve the Lord more truly or fervently? No; it keeps us in dark bondage; so that thus chained and prisoned, we cannot serve him. Does it conform us to the image of God's Son? Ah, no; in him we see the true filial spirit and the devoted life; and how can these exist in us so long as we know not in what relationship we stand to God; so long as we are uncertain whose we are, and whom we serve.

If, then, uncertainty be such a thoroughly unprofitable thing; if it be such a hindrance, such a sore evil, such an enemy to our souls, why cherish it as many seem to do? Why cling to it, instead of casting it away? Why not abhor it, and ourselves because of it?

The condition, then, of a saint, is one of certainty. That certainty is this,—he is risen with Christ. It is not that he ought to be risen, or that he hopes to be risen, but that he has risen. This is the blessed fact that forms the commencement of his history as a saint. This event stands at the very threshold of his career; nay, constitutes its outset. His life is the life of a risen one. His story is that of one who has risen. He cannot tell of his change without telling of resurrection. He cannot speak of his new course and conversation, without referring to resurrection. He cannot account for the high level on which he stands, or the privileges which encompass him, or the hopes that rise before him, save by tracing all these back to this one fountainhead,—RESURRECTION.

What, then, is the meaning of this fact or event in the life of a saint, which forms the commencement of his history? It cannot in any way be understood of the resurrection of the body, which is the Church's hope. For that is altogether future; and is, besides, connected with the second coming of the Lord, whereas this is connected with His first. The privilege or blessing, pointed at by the apostle here, is something past, something which had commenced when they believed; whereas the resurrection of the body is still a thing for which we wait and long.

Nor does the apostle's statement simply mean that the resurrection of Christ has secured to us certain blessings, or opened a door for us into the participation of certain privileges, or made sure to us the title or right to certain future glories. All this is true; but it is much below the whole truth, and only very partially expresses the apostle's great idea regarding the standing and privilege of a saint.

He is telling us in what light God looks upon the soul that has believed on his Son, and therefore in what light we are to look upon ourselves. He is shewing us under what special character God is dealing with us; on what footing he has set us; to what extent he is placing to our credit the work of his Son; in what way he regards him as our complete substitute, and us as doing, suffering, passing through, and deserving, all that he did, suffered, passed through, and deserved.

Hence, pointing to the cross of Christ, he says, that cross was your cross—"Ye were crucified with Christ," and on that cross you endured the wrath which you had incurred; you paid the whole penalty, so that there is not a farthing of it remaining unpaid. Pointing to the death of Christ, he says, that death was your death—"Ye died with Christ;" it was you who then died, and in dying met the full demand of the inexorable sentence; "The soul that sinneth it shall die." Pointing to the grave of Christ, he says, that grave was your grave; —"Ye were buried with Christ;" there you lay, victims to the law's righteous requirements, and the Lawgiver's righteous execution of these in full; there you lay, during the three days in which your Substitute was lying there, just as those who have refused the Substitute shall lie eternally, bearing the penalty which no time can cancel or exhaust. Pointing to the resurrection of Christ, he says: That resurrection was your resurrection; "Ye rose with Christ;" having exhausted every claim against you, and paid to the full each farthing of the righteous penalty, so that law has nothing now to insist upon against you. Yes; it was you that rose eighteen hundred years ago, when your Substitute arose. In rising, you left behind you in the grave all the guilt that laid you there. It was the prisoner's dungeon in which you were laid; but you have come forth from it, because the reasons why you entered it no longer exist. It was law that chained you there, and it is the same law that now unchains you; because it has nothing now to say against you. It was righteousness that cast you into that prison, and barred its gates against your return from it; and it is the same righteousness that has brought you forth in triumph, having found far more and stronger reasons for

your deliverance than for your imprisonment. You have thus come forth from the cell to which your transgressions had consigned you; and not as one that has evaded justice, but as one who has satisfied it to the full, having given it far more than it sought. You have come forth, not with the felon's brand upon you, not with the shame and stigma of your former life, to darken and disgrace you, but as one risen to a new life altogether; a new life in the eye of righteousness, in the eye of the law, and in the eye of God; as one entirely severed from his former self; between whose present and former self there is such a great gulf fixed that he is entitled to say, I am no longer the same individual, I have acquired a new personality, a new legal identity.

The mighty truth here taught is, in fact, just this: Being identified with our Substitute in death, we, i. e., our former self, perished. That death destroyed our identity; it cut the legal link for ever between our present and our former selves, so that law cannot identify us as the individuals against whom it thought to urge its overwhelming claims. It is baffled; it is brought to a stand; and to every one of its charges we can confidently plead "not guilty," on the score of not being the same individuals against whom the charges are laid. Again; being identified with our Substitute in resurrection, a new personality has been formed; a new individuality has been established in law; and it is on the footing of that new personality, that new individuality, that we stand, and bid defiance to every accusation that the law without, or conscience within, can press against us.

In believing, this identification between us and our Surety took place. In believing, we became legally one with Him, in death and resurrection; that is, we died and rose again. In believing, the mighty legal spell was wrought, the mighty legal miracle was accomplished, whereby our former self passed entirely away, and a new self came up into glorious being.

Nor is this new personality a mere figure, or fiction, or romance. Those who never realised the momentousness of that central

doctrine of the Word of God, the substitution of the righteous for the unrighteous, nor tasted the peace which comes from the knowledge of that substitution, may say that this is but a figure. But they who feel that this legal transference of guilt from themselves to their Surety lies at the root of all their peace and hope, will neither be stumbled at the apostle's statement in our text, nor look upon it as the mere boldness of figure. For whatever difficulty there may be in understanding the nature of the transaction, or the very manner in which it is accomplished, still the thing itself is sure, and its results, in so far as God and we are concerned, are of the most real and blessed kind.

It is on this new legal personality that God acts in his treatment of us. It is on this ground that he confers his favour, and pours out his blessings. He deals with us, not according to what we were, but according to what we have now become, in consequence of our oneness with him in whom his soul delighteth. This oneness is our claim for blessing. This is the plea which we present, and which we know God rejoices to accept.

Why, then, should there be such unwillingness to identify ourselves with the Son of God? Is oneness with him a thing so shameful, or so terrible? Is our own identity so precious a thing that we are unwilling to part with it, and to sink it in his? Surely this cannot be. What can be more blessed than to lose ourselves in him; to be so completely identified with him that the law and the Lawgiver should treat us as entirely one! What can give our souls a surer resting-place than the knowledge that this treatment of us is the very thing that magnifies the righteousness of Jehovah, and enhances the glory of his incarnate Son!

SERMON XXV

THE RISEN CHRIST AND THE THINGS ABOVE

"If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God."—COL. 3:1.

THIS new identity or new self is not a thing gradually formed; wrought out step by step as we advance in likeness to Christ; it is not a thing dependent upon our graces, a thing which is more or less complete, as we are more or less holy men; it is a thing of state, not of character; a thing of law, not of moral fitness; it is therefore formed at once,—the moment that we believe. Then we become one with a dying and rising Saviour; as truly and thoroughly one with him as we shall ever be during a whole long life of holy doings. In believing, we are crucified with Christ; we die, and are buried with him. Thus our former self is gone. It perishes. Twice over it is declared to be gone; once on the cross, and a second time in the grave of Christ. Then we rise to a new life, and acquire a new self,—a new personality. We come forth out of the grave, where we had been buried with Christ, new men; not the same individuals in the eye of the law, but others altogether. We obtain a new life, a risen life, a life corresponding to that of him who rose as well as died, who was not only delivered for our offences, but raised again for our justification. We are risen with Christ. He is the risen Head, and we the risen members. "We are risen with Christ!" It is not merely that we are forgiven, reconciled, justified, but we have entered on a new and more elevated condition of being, a resurrection-life, a life which is truly the earnest and anticipation of the glorious state of being which is finally to be ours in the day when this mortal shall put on immortality, and death be swallowed up in victory. This resurrection-life let us realise as already ours; ours in right and title now, soon to be ours in reality, when He who is our life shall appear.

The expression "with Christ," which the apostle uses here, is one which applies to much more than to resurrection. All that we receive we receive with Christ; in conjunction with him; as sharers with him in what he has received from the Father. We are not simply said to receive blessings from Christ or from the Father for Christ's sake, but to receive them from the Father as joint-possessors, joint-claimants, joint-heirs with the Son. "We are made partakers of Christ," that is, made fellow-sharers, fellow-partners with him in all that he is and has. He is ours, and all that he has is ours. The love wherewith the Father loves him, the blessedness with which the Father has blest him, the honour with which the Father has honoured him,—all this he shares with us as being one with him; the members of his body; the bride in whose love he rejoices.

And as it is on this oneness between us and Christ that God acts in his treatment of us, so it is upon this that we are to act continually in our intercourse with him, and in our whole life on earth. Our life is to be the life of risen ones. Our whole walk and conversation are to be those of men who feel that they have died and risen, and that in this sense also they have become new creatures in Christ Jesus; old things having passed away, and all things having become new.

It is to this that the apostle refers in the words of our text, when he says, "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God," as if he would remind us that they who have died with Christ have died to all things beneath; and that they who have risen with Christ have, by their new life, been brought into connection with things above. Their death with Christ severed for ever the tie to earthly things; their resurrection with Christ fastened at once and for ever a new tie which links them to what is heavenly; their former connection with what is earthly has ceased, and a new connection has begun with heavenly things; they are to be not so much dwellers upon the earth as inhabitants in heaven, like angels come down to visit earth on some gracious errand, yet still mindful of their own proper home, their true descent, and rank, and character. "Our conversation is in

heaven, whence we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ." And if our conversation is in heaven, should not everything about us, everything said or done by us, correspond to this dignity?

What have Christ's risen ones to do with the vanities, or pomps, or pleasures of earth? The world has its own followers, and these things are for them! But for us who are risen with Christ, there are other things provided. We have other company, other joys, other hopes. Earth has too long detained us; heaven is now the home of our souls.

Seek the things that are above! Do we not need the counsel? Are not our eyes ever turning downwards? Are we not, like Lot's wife, too often looking back, remembering that Sodom out of which we have been taken? And what attraction do we find there, so fascinating, so irresistible, that we experience such difficulty in looking upwards? Is the bleak desert fairer than the blue starry heavens? Is the society of the world better than the companionship of angels and saints, nay, of God and Christ and the eternal Comforter? Strange that we should need a command to do what seems so natural, so unavoidable, so blessed! Yet we do require the command; and that not once in a lifetime, when some sore temptation besets us, but each day and hour!

Seek the things that are above! Heaven and the things of heaven; God and Christ, and the angels, and the saints, the kingdom, the city, the glory, the crown;—these are all above, and these are our treasures; why then should we still cling to earth and mind the things below?

Love not the world! for if we love this world we cannot love the world to come; if we love the world, we cannot love the Father; if we love the world, we cannot seek the things above. The friendship of the world is enmity with God, and therefore companionship with the things of the world cannot fail to hinder us from setting our affection on the things above. There must be no compromise, no lingering, no half-heartedness. All must be decided; for what can be more

expressive of decision and unwavering consistency than the idea of our being actually risen men! This sets aside all vain excuses, all idle pleas for mingling with the world. Either you are risen, or you are not risen. If you are not risen, then, of course, there can be no appeal of this kind to the conscience at all. Go on in your worldliness; fling yourselves headlong into the torrent of earth's vanities; but know that the end of these things is death! But if you are risen, then there is an end of all debate. The point is settled. You cannot take part with the world in its follies, and gaieties, and sins! What, risen with Christ and yet a worldling! Impossible, Risen with Christ, yet singing its idle songs, hurrying through its mazy dance, partaking in its mirth and revelry! Impossible. If you be risen with Christ there is no alternative; you must seek the things above.

The apostle evidently takes this for granted; that there is no alternative in such a case. The unrisen may seek the things below, but the risen must seek the things above. The unrisen may linger amid the vanities of earth, but the risen must set their affection on the things of heaven!

The things that are above, are those on which our eye, our heart, our hopes, are resting; we are seated with Christ in heavenly places, and hence our delight in the things connected with these heavenly places; we are come to mount Sion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant. And having come to these, we are conversant with these; we live amongst these; we realise these more truly than the things around, which we hear, and see, and handle. These are the scenes, and sights, and sounds, that occupy our souls! We have ceased to be citizens of earth's polluted cities; we are citizens of the New Jerusalem which cometh down out of heaven from God. We have ceased to be inhabitants of earth; we have become the inhabitants of heaven. We have ceased to call anything on earth our own, for we are heirs of God and joint-

heirs with Christ, so that all things are our heritage; as it is written, "He that overcometh shall inherit all things." We have a home, but not in the palaces or haunts of the world; a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

The things that are above are the real and the enduring; therefore we seek them, for all below is shadowy and transient; passing away like the morning cloud. The things that are above are the things congenial to our risen natures, therefore we seek them. All other things are repulsive, not attractive, because unsuitable and uncongenial; they have nothing in common with us, nor we with them. The things that are above are the satisfying and gladdening, and therefore we seek them. Nothing here can fill us, nor impart one hour's real enjoyment. But the things above both fill and gladden; we feel, even in the anticipation of them, far more of rest and peace diffusing themselves through our souls than in the full possession of what the world calls joy. The things that are above are the infinite and eternal. All else are narrow and limited; they have at the most but a life-time's duration; no more. But the things above have no limit either as to space or time. All connected with them is illimitable; so that we can look forward to an enjoyment of them which fades not, and changes not, and shall never end! Of this we have the earnest already, and the reality will not be long behind. It only awaits the coming of Him who is to shake the things that can be shaken, in order that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

The things that are above are thus those round which all our hopes and joys are daily gathering. They are our portion, our heritage, our treasure. What have we upon earth to compare with them, or to desire beside them? Day by day they are gathering more of our hopes and joys. One by one the affections of earth are loosening from the things of earth, and fastening themselves to the kingdom that is to come. One by one the objects of endearment here are detached from us and pass upwards, becoming part of the things above. We begin to feel as if heaven contained far more of our heart's affections than

earth; and as if the command to seek the things above were becoming easier and more natural, seeing we have so many fewer objects now to love on earth, so many more to love in heaven. And as flower after flower is transplanted from the wilderness below to the paradise above, we feel as if that paradise were assuming more and more truly the aspect of our real and proper home; the home of our kindred, and the home of our hearts; the home into which no foe shall enter, and out of which no friend departeth; the home where the shadow never falls, but where the sunshine ever rests; where the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall lead us to living fountains of water, and God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes.

SERMON XXVI

FAITH IN AN UNSEEN CHRIST

"Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."— JOHN 20:29.

HERE is another "beatitude" in addition to what Matthew gives; and from the same lips that spoke the others. For Christ was himself the "Blessed One;" and well knew who were "blessed," and what made them so. He knew not only who were to be partakers of the great beatitude, "Come, ye blessed of my Father," but who are partakers of blessing now. The substance of his statement here is just this: "The blessed ones are the believing ones; and of these the most blessed are they whose faith rests most simply on the bare word of God, without either sight or sign."

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