for words, and shows us how things spiritual can be no otherwise than spiritually discerned.'

Let none, then, journey on cheerless and disconsolate, when there is such a home set up in the world-the symbol of the everlasting love-the earthly treasury of the unfathomable mercy and goodness of CHRIST Our LORD, Whom the FATHER has "raised from the dead, and set at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things under His feet, and gave HIM to be the Head over all things to the Church, which is His Body, the fulness of HIM That filleth all in all."2

1 1 Corinth. ij. 14.

2

Eph. i. 20-23.

SERMON IV.

FOURTH SPEECH UPON THE CROSS.

ST. MATT. XXVII. 46.

AND ABOUT THE NINTH HOUR JESUS CRIED WITH A LOUD VOICE, SAYING, ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI? THAT IS TO SAY, MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?

WE have hitherto contemplated our adorable REDEEMER, in the midst of His dolorous Passion, mindful only of others, and seeming almost to hide from us, as it were, the intensity of His own sufferings by the veil of His love for those whose nature He had assumed. And we might well shrink from looking into the depths of that grief wherewith HE was afflicted, and from measuring or describing by any thoughts of ours the intensity of His woes, were it not that the HOLY SPIRIT of GOD has admitted us to a vision, as it were, of some of the causes of His great distress, whereby we learn why, in mercy, the sun was darkened, and none were permitted to witness, in all their horrors, the effects of GOD's vengeance upon a guilty world, as depicted in the

direst agony of His Incarnate SON upon the Cross. HE Who was fastened to His tree of shame, at the third hour (nine o'clock,) had been hanging, a tortured and a bleeding Victim, three long hours upon the Cross, and in the midst of His torments He had breathed forth His prayer of intercession for His very murderers. He had testified His kingly power, in the promise of admission into a kingdom for a dying man ;—He had shown that He was the Son of Man, in His commiseration for the lorn sorrows of His Virgin Mother;-and HE evidenced His loving filial duty, by His commendation of her to the care of His loved disciple. And now, from the sixth to the ninth hour,-from noon until three o'clock,-darkness overspreads the land, and nature is arrayed in a robe of shame, and wears the garment of heaviness and mourning; for the GoD of nature is torn with deepest anguish, and innocence is made to bear the penalty and exhibit the front and appearance of the most dreadful guilt. It was no ordinary eclipse which now prevailed. The time, during which it lasted, would be sufficient to disprove this view,' even if it could not also be satisfactorily shown that this was not a season of the moon and sun's conjunction. If, as has been supposed, our LORD was turned towards the west with His back towards Jerusalem, then about noon (twelve o'clock,) the sun would come more in view of its LORD and MAKER,-and it is no mean testi1 See Note M. 2 See Note N.

2

2

mony to the truthfulness of the SAVIOUR's mission,that the sun hid, as it were, his face from the dreadful spectacle, as if in conscious grief and shame. Then, indeed, in the language of the Prophet Amos, did the LORD GOD "cause the sun to go down at noon, and then did He darken the earth in the clear day. Over what extent this darkness spread, is matter of question. But while, on the one hand, its extending no farther than the land of Judæa, or the confines even of the devoted city, would mark it as the more special token of Divine interposition, and indicate the fearful guilt of those who had crucified the LORD of Glory, on the other hand, it accords well with the immensity of the Sacrifice then being offered to appease the wrath of GOD, and seems to mark, even more decidedly, the greatness of the Sufferer, that we should accept the opinion which considers that this darkness was distinguished from the Egyptian darkness, in that it enveloped, in its sable garb, the whole world; for an event was then taking place, which might well shake to their centre the systems of the entire universe, in sympathy therewith. For what is it that now draws on apace? the consummation of all that, which if God had not revealed it, man dare never have conceived. The Seed of the woman was indeed breaking the serpent's head, but most fearfully was His own heel being bruised in the encounter. ONE was now treading alone the winepress of the wrath of Almighty GOD: