meek endurance, and listened to his gracious words; we have seen him bearing our griefs, and carrying our sorrows; we have seen him wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities:* and what has been the effect upon us? Do we, beholding what has been done, smite upon our breasts in true and unfeigned humility, and like them, in spirit, do we say, "God be merciful to me a sinner"? Consider, I entreat you, my brethren, what great things have been done for you, as on this day. Meditate, as so solemn and awful a subject should be meditated upon,—meditate deeply and devoutly upon the great redemption which has been wrought for your souls, by your Saviour's ready submission to that deed of darkness and of blood, which had its completion as on this very day. Oh! lay it to your account that, but for this mercy towards you, the gates of death would have prevailed against your soul, and hell, with its everlasting torment, would have been your only heritage. Ponder upon that truth, so constantly proclaimed by his apostles, that "there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved;"† and then, look back upon that scene of expiation * Isaiah, liii. † Acts, iv. 12. which we have just been considering, and count, as well as you can, the cost that expiation demanded. You cannot-I am sure, my dear brethren, you will not do this, without a vivid participation in those feelings, which so soon after made the Jews to be pricked in their heart, and to cry out, with a newly awakened conviction of their sin, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?"* You cannot estimate as you ought the magnitude of the sacrifice made, without a corresponding sense of the greatness of that iniquity on account of which it was made; nor can you once impress your minds with a due conception of the exceeding glory of him who died for you, without entertaining a corresponding apprehension of the inestimable treasure you possess in that immortal soul, for which he freely died. Oh! that it were given me now, to convey to you the height and the depth of the riches thus purchased for us that I could show you some small part of the value of those agonies Christ endured for the souls of men! Then will you feel it most, when most you love and estimate the promises of heaven, held forth through his name to you: then you show estimation of it most, when will your * Acts, ii. 37. with the most anxious earnestness, you labour to make your calling and election sure. May it be granted to us all, my brethren, so to have used this holy season of remembrance and of prayer, that when he who died in humility shall come again in glory, we may see him with joy and exultation. How solemn is the contemplation of that hour when, coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, the Son of Man shall be visibly displayed: how inexpressibly awful is it to contemplate the fulfilment of that prophecy, "They shall look upon me whom they have pierced." * But that fulfilment will come, we know not how soon, aud our eyes will behold it; and whether for joy or for sorrow, whether for blessing or for cursing, whether for heaven or for hell eternally, we shall look on him whom they pierced. Go, then, my dear brethren; go to your homes this night, bearing along with you the emotions of the witnesses to the sufferings of the Lord of life; like them, too, smite upon your breasts in sorrow for the part your lives have borne in the crucifixion of him who loved you; and like them, as we may hope they did, resolve that henceforth neither life nor death shall separate you from his love. * Zech. xii. 10. SERMON VI. JESUS OUR ONLY REFUGE. [EASTER DAY.] ISAIAH, Xxxii. 2. A man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. How expressive, my brethren, and how beautiful is this language of the prophet, when speaking of that Son of Man in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed: how clearly does it exhibit both the necessity that existed for his coming, and also the effectual blessing which should attend upon his coming. The wind and the tempest, the dry place and the weary land, show by the strength of the metaphor, and the fourfold repetition of the same idea, how great, in the prophet's mind, the need was for Christ to come; whilst the hiding place, and the covert, the rivers of water, and the shadow of the great rock, declare how effectual his coming would be. To that condition of distress, and trouble, and sorrow the prophet so powerfully describes; to that alternative condition of shelter, and protection, and refreshment he sets before our eyes so vividly and impressively;-to each of these, in turn, it becomes us to direct our attention, now,. that the fulfilment of these great assurances has given us an opportunity to compare the hopes, thus prophetically set forth, with the completion of them in our own personal experience. We have all been permitted, through his infinite mercy whose goodness directs all things, to find this hiding place from the wind, this covert from the tempest; the rivers of the waters of life have been permitted to pervade and refresh the dry places of this land; the shadow, that preserves us from fainting under the withering influence of sin, has been stretched over to shelter us. We, |