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Fifthly, The separation of his soul and body by death. These last sufferings of the blessed Jesus we shall treat of in such a method, as to shew how a devout Christian should meditate on them, and elevate his soul to his Saviour in pious ejaculations.

I. The first among these various sufferings of our blessed Lord was the darkness and desertion which

oppressed his spotless soul. The dreadful judgments, which God now poured forth on our blessed Saviour, were visibly attended with a total eclipse of the sun. Concerning this remarkable phenomenon, and the desertion of his soul, it is said in the words of the text, "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour; and the sun was darkened. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?"

When a pious Christian here observes the exact account, which the Holy Spirit has caused to be taken of the hour of this extreme inward sufferings of Christ, he perceives with a holy reverence, how the particular providence of God over-ruled every circumstance of the sufferings of his Son. For the Evangelists observe, that this darkness lasted from the sixth to the ninth hour; or, according to our computation of time, it began about twelve at noon with an eclipse of the sun, and drew towards a period about three of the clock in the afternoon. The hours are not so punctually set down in the account of any of the transactions of our Saviour's life, as they are in the history of his sufferings. It might seem as if Jesus had been entirely given up to the will of his enemies; but the case was quite otherwise: The providence of God had prescribed limits to their rage; so that they neither could lay hold of him before his hour was come, nor torment him longer than had been pre-determined by God's eternal decree. The same Providence had likewise set certain bounds to the prince of darkness, and confined to a limited time the duration of

his rage and fury against the blessed Seed of the

woman.

O my God, may an afflicted soul here say, my sufferings are not at all to be compared for merit to those of my Saviour; yet I know, that even the hours of my sufferings are limited by thy Providence, and that thou countest them out unto me. Thou appointest the beginning and end of my sufferings. Thou frequently orderest, that at noon day my soul shall be involved in darkness; and that it shall sometimes lose the comfortable assurance of thy love, at a time when it shone brightest, and when my soul was full of light, and joyed for thy salvation. Preserve me, O my Father, from ever finding fault with thy computation of the hours; but that I may rather acquiesce with my whole heart in what thou art pleased to inflict upon me. I know that thou orderest every thing for the good of thy creatures. Thou wilt not only count the hours of my sorrows and sufferings; but wilt graciously shorten them, and never suffer me to be tempted above what I am able to bear. Preserve me, O Lord, from the gloom of unbelief, from the darkness of spiritual blindness, and from the eternal night of the dark abyss. Grant that I may walk and work in the light while it is day, before the night comes on, when no man can work.

But justly is the soul astonished at seeing the Son of God, the effulgence of eternal glory, and the source of all light in the kingdoms of nature and grace, hang three tedious hours on the cross amidst the horrors of darkness. What can this mean, that the natural sun loses its brightness, and all the land, or rather the whole earth (Rom. ix. 17. x. 18.) in every part where it should then be day, is involved in thick darkness? The vast body of the sun, which imparts light not only to the earth, but also to the moon and other planets, is totally obscured! This was no usual or common eclipse of the sun, which falls out when the moon is in a direct line between the sun and our earth;

and even then, the sun does not properly lose its radiancy, but its beams are intercepted by the intervening moon from falling on the earth, and consequently illuminating it. Such natural eclipses can never happen at the full of the moon, as it was at that time, nor last above an hour and an half; whereas, this darkness happened at the full of the moon, and lasted three whole hours. In this instance likewise the rays of the sun were not intercepted by the moon; but, as St. Luke expressly says, the sun itself was darkened. When a pious Christian enquires into the signification of this extraordinary phenomenon which happened during our Saviour's passion, he will find,

that

1. With regard to the Jewish people, this total darkness denoted, that by crucifying the Messiah they committed such a horrid work of darkness, that the sun would not behold it, nor lend its beams to the perpetration of such an atrocious deed; consequently that God was in the highest manner provoked against the murderers of his Son, and would manifest his wrath from heaven on this wicked and perverse generation; that he would withdraw from them the light of his knowledge and grace, together with all true joy and comfort, and thrust them into the extreme darkness of blindness and obduracy. He may further conclude, that these words of Isaiah were to be fulfilled in the Jewish nation: If one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heaven thereof. And they shall look unto the earth, and behold trouble, darkness, and dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness,' (Isaiah v. 50. viii. 22.) To this also the prophet Amos possibly alludes when he joins the going down of the sun at noon, and darkening the earth in the clear day, with the famine of the word of the Lord sent upon the land, (chap. viii. 9, 11.) Thus, this extraordinary darkness of the sun was a dismal presage of the spiritual darkness of that wretched nation

to this very hour, which the Lord Jesus had predicted by saying unto them, 'Walk while ye have light, lest darkness come upon you,' (John xii. 35.)

2. With regard to our blessed Lord himself, this outward darkness was an emblem of the inward darkness, in which his sacred soul was then involved. For as the light of the natural sun was then withdrawn from the inhabitants of the earth; so the light of the Divine consolation and inward joy was at that time withdrawn from the soul of Jesus Christ: and as cold and darkness then prevailed throughout the whole region of the air, so the soul of our blessed Saviour was to experience something of the terrors of eternal darkness; which now overwhelmed his conscience, from a sense of the imputation of all the sins of the whole world, and threw it into the utmost anguish and consternation. This supernatural darkness was an extraordinary work of the Divine power, and served to shew that Christ was, during that interval, as it were, forsaken by God; so that the visible heaven, the outward court of God's glorious mansion, was deprived of its luminaries during this catastrophe, and no creature enjoyed the enlivening influence of the sun.

O my Saviour, a pious Christian may say, thus was it represented in thy glorious person, what a dark partition sin has made between God and mankind; how it obscured the light of God's benign countenance, and at last would have cast the benighted soul into outward darkness. It was I who deserved to be shut up in this dark prison, who had forsaken the Father of lights;. and had loved darkness rather than light. But thou didst appear in my stead, O thou bright effulgence of everlasting light! and didst permit the terrors of eternal night to environ thee, and the power of darkness to as ault thee; that thou mightest overcome them, and thereby open to me an access to light and glory, and acquire for me a right to the inheritance of the saints in light. O give me

VOL. II.

an irreconcilable hatred against the unfruitful works of darkness, that I may never have any fellowship with them, but rather reprove them. Grant that I hay walk in the light, as a child of light, that I may have fellowship with God, who is the source of light. But if, by my open profession of Christianity, I should be deserted by many, and be surrounded with obscurity and a disconsolate gloom; if the light of thy grace should hide itself from the soul; if the hope of my adoption, and of the remission of my sins should be extinguished, so that I must cry out with the Psalmist, Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, and in the deeps,' (Psalm lxxxviii. 6.) grant, that according to thy example, I may, in silent patience, wait for the dawn of thy light.

When a pious soul farther employs its thoughts on our Saviour's address to his Father about the ninth hour, towards the period both of the outward and inward darkness, when he cried out, 'My God! my Ged! why hast thou forsaken me?' it stands amazed at the filial disposition of the Lord Jesus; who, notwithstanding the agonies that surrounded him, as it were embraces his Father with cordial love, and with a loud cry, which appears to have been accompanied with a flood of tears, (Heb. v. 7.) twice calls to him, My God! my God! As if he had said, "Thou art still my Almighty God, who canst deliver my human nature from this extreme anguish. However severely thou dealest with me; though thou hidest thy face from me; yet will I never turn my looks from thee. The eternal covenant for the redemption of mankind, made between thyself and me, still remains fixed and unmoveable; and though all the floods of the river of Belial beat against me, my confidence in thee shall never be shaken." Moreover, our blessed Saviour asked the cause of this desertion, by saying to his Father, Why hast thou forsaken me?' But this was done for our sake, in order to awaken us to reflection. God never forsakes any, but those who have first

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