SERMON V.

FIFTH SPEECH UPON THE CROSS.

ST. JOHN xix. 28.

`AFTER THIS, JESUS KNOWING THAT ALL THINGS WERE NOW ACCOMPLISHED, THAT THE SCRIPTURE MIGHT BE FULFILLED, SAID, I THIRST.

In the exceeding bitter cry of lamentation which the dying REDEEMER uttered upon the Cross" with a loud voice"-loud in mercy to those who surrounded HIM on Calvary, and should have known the ancient Scripture which then He took upon His lips and which was "that day fulfilled in their ears":1 loud too, from the poignancy of the feeling almost amounting to despair, of which it was the expression :-in that cry, which formed the subject of our meditations yesterday, we discovered evidence that our LORD truly possessed a human soul, and, now, in the saying which we come to consider to-day, we have like unequivocal testimony to the reality of His human body. The Son of GOD-HE became 1 St. Luke iv. 21.

the Son of Man, and shrunk from no one condition

-no one property-of the nature which He assumed. He took not indeed that which now clings to every child naturally engendered of Adam's race, because in union with His all-holy Godhead nothing of defilement or of sin might have place; He took not our sinfulness, HE inherited not our sin, but this in no wise impeached His title to our true and proper humanity. Human nature, as it left the hands of GOD in the hour of its first creation, was pronounced by God to be "very good" in all its parts. Quickened at the first by the good SPIRIT of GOD, the flesh of Adam was pure and spotless, and inhabited by the gift of immortality, in virtue of the sustaining and animating power of that same HOLY SPIRIT. The body which Adam had was in all respects excellent, as the shape fashioned by such hands might be expected to be; and, so long as the Divine conditions were observed, it was as deathless as it was pure and beautiful. But in the hour of the first sin the death-poison became as it were incorporated into human nature, and all who inherit that nature, inherit along with it an imputed sin, which vitiates the very motives of all our actions, and is ever, in the regenerate, no less than in the natural man, showing itself in tendencies to sin and evil. "The body" or "the flesh" is, in Holy Scripture represented to us as the seat of this evil principle, and is constantly, in this point of view, contrasted with "the spirit." The body while it is

the servant of the passions of the mind and soul, would seem also to be the clog upon their free exercise; the check upon their upward-looking aims; and hence it is that Holy Scripture is so frequent in its admonitions that we should mortify the body and crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof.1 But it was not a body such as this which our LORD took of the Blessed Virgin. HE, from the first, even in His very conception, was pure and "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners: "2 His human Body, as it was never the minister of sin— so had it not in any measure the seeds of sin, or the fuel of evil passion. But yet it was a perishing Body in which, instinct with a human soul-the Godhead of the Everlasting Word was pleased to dwell. The inhabiting gift of immortality, whereby the body should live for ever, without subjection to such a change as that which we style death, or one equivalent thereto, would seem to have been wholly withdrawn in that hour when because man had eaten of the forbidden fruit the sentence came into force against him—"Thou shalt surely die;" but it was reserved for the SON of GOD in taking our human nature to cause the gift of immortality once more to become the portion of those who in patience and in hope should faithfully look for deliverance. In order thereto, HE took a true and proper human body, the dwelling and the minister of a true and proper human soul. And though, in

1 Rom. viii. 13. Coloss. iii. 5. Galat. v. 24.

2 Heb. vii. 26.

2

virtue of His miraculous conception, no sin was in that flesh, yet it was flesh which had forfeited the primal support through which flesh was immortal.' The ever present and sustaining power of the Spirit of Life, whereby corruption was prevented from doing its work, was withdrawn from human nature in the Fall. Death thenceforth had a hold in GoD's creation, and to infirmity and decay all flesh now of necessity tended, whereas of old, when man was first created, he had a food, in eating which, he was preserved from aught of deterioration. The human body with which our JESUS was born was a decaying, dying body, but it was not a sinful body. In this body, subject to cold, hunger, thirst, and weariness and faintness; punished by watchings and fastings; and by scourgings and insults offered by others, the CHRIST made experiment of human suffering, and learnt deep lessons of sympathy with the fallen race which He came to redeem. Of this deep and intimate sympathy mankind is made to reap the benefit in every successive age of Gospel story. And now that our LORD was about to show in death how truly it was more than a phantom-shape in which He walked our earth; while yet His brow and hands and feet were pouring forth the blood which was to purge us of our sins, He gives one token more of His bodily existence; expressing a bodily want, as characteristic of His being flesh and blood, as was His piercing cry expressive of mental anguish: "I thirst." Yet once more would

He by His very sufferings recall the dull and sluggish minds to spiritual things. He remembers that so far as He had gone, all had been accomplished ; and though, as it would seem to some, He had twice before refused to abate one iota of the sufferings which He had so willingly undertaken in man's behalf, by taking of the soldier's drink which either in mockery or in mercy, or perhaps with a mixture of both, had been offered HIM, HE now recalls one particular more which has to be fulfilled, and says, "I thirst." But though there are as many as three occasions on which, according to the different evangelists, they offered our LORD vinegar on the Cross, independently of the first mention of the vinegar and gall, yet it is not necessary to consider that they allude to more than one transaction. At the same time, considered as a fulfilment of Scripture, such fulfilment is probably the more marked, if we regard the present cry, "I thirst," as following upon previous refusals to drink what was offered, as now He "received the vinegar," tasting it sufficiently to fulfil His own word,' and satisfy the declaration by which it had been foretold that so it should be. If, as has been supposed, this vinegar mingled with myrrh, was used on occasions of crucifixion with a view to its stupifying effects, acting as an opiate in the midst of the excruciating agonies of the Cross, then indeed there is something highly significant in

1 See Note T.