whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation | roused the indignation of Heaven, and armed through faith in his blood,' Rom. iii. 25. You universal nature against them. But where will there behold victims, the types of him shall we find colours black enough to depict it? 'who, through the eternal Spirit, offered him- Here the most ardent efforts of the imagination self without spot to God, to purge the con- must fall far below the reality, and the most science from dead works, to serve the living lively images come short of truth. God,' Heb. ix. 14; a scape-goat, bearing' on his head all the iniquities of the children of Israel,' Lev. xvi. 21. The type of him who ⚫ suffered for us without the gate,' Heb. xiii. 13. If you run over the predictions of the prophets, you will find them, as with one mouth, announcing the death of Jesus Christ. Now it is Isaiah who lifts up his voice, saying, He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows who made his soul an offering for sin who is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. who was oppressed, and was afflicted who was cut off out of the land of the living,' chap. liii. 3, &c. Now it is Daniel who holds up the same object: Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself,' chap. ix. 26. Now Zacharias takes up the subject, and under the influence of prophetic inspiration, gives animation to the sword of the Lord of Hosts: Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man who is my fellow: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered,' chap. xiii. 7. Now the prophetic David, minutely describing his sufferings, in such affecting terms as these: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the day time but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent: . . . . I am a worm and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people: all they that see me laugh me to scorn; they shoot out the lip, and shake the head,' Ps. xxii. 1, 2. 6, 7; and, in another place: Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul: I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying, my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. . . . for thy sake I have borne reproach, shame hath covered my face. . . . . Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none; they gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink,' Ps. Ixix, 1, 2, &c. Such good reason have we to consider the death of Jesus Christ under this second idea: it is in our text. The Saviour appropriates to himself the prediction in the twenty-second psalm: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? and, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, he gives occasion to his executioners to present him with vinegar, which preceded his expiring exclamation, It is finished,' as it is related by another of the evangelists. 6 3. The death of Jesus Christ is, on the part of the Jews, an atrocious crime, which has Supposing we possessed the faculty of collecting, into one point of view, all that was gentle in the address of Jesus Christ, all that was fervent in his piety, humble in his deportment, pure in his conduct: supposing us capable of making an enumeration of all the bene fits which he accumulated on the heads of those monsters of ingratitude; the gracious exhortations which he addressed to them; the miracles of goodness which he performed among them, in healing the sick, and raising the dead: supposing we could display to you those malignant calumnies with which they loaded him, those abominable and repeated falsehoods, those cruel and remorseless importunities for permission to put him to death, worthy of the severest execration had they been employed even against the most detestable of mankind: could we represent to you all that was barbarous and inhuman in the punishment of the cross; by telling you that it was a huge stake crossed by another piece of wood, to which they bound the body of the person condemned to terminate his life upon it; that the two arms were stretched out upon that cross beam, and nailed, as well as both the feet, to the tree, so that the body of the sufferer, sinking with its own weight, and suspended by its nerves, was speedily reduced to one vast wound, till the violence and slowness of the torment at length delivered him, and the blood drained off drop by drop, thus exhausted the stream of life: supposing us to have detailed all the ignominious circumstances which accompanied the death of Christ; that crown of thorns, that purple robe, that ridiculous sceptre, that wagging of the head, those insulting defiances to save himself, as he had saved others-supposing, I say, all this could be collected into one point of view, we should still believe that we had conveyed to you ideas much too feeble, of the criminality of the Jews. Nature convulsed, and the elements confounded, shall supply our defects, and serve, this day, as so many preachers. The prodigies which signalized the death of Jesus Christ shall persuade more powerfully than all the figures of rhetoric. That darkness which covers the earth, that veil of the temple rent in twain, that trembling which has seized the solid globe, those rocks cleft asunder, those yawning graves, those reviving dead, they, they are the pathetic orators who reproach the Jews with the atrocity of their guilt, and denounce their impending destruction. The sun shrouds himself in the shades of night, as unable to behold this accursed parricide, and what courtly poets said in adulation, namely, that the orb of day clothed himself in mourning, when Julius Cesar was assassinated in the senate house, was here realized under special direction of divine Providence. The veil of the temple is rent asunder, as on a day of lamentation and wo. The earth trembles, as re fusing to support the wretches, whose sacrilegious hands were attacking the life of him who fastened the foundations thereof," Job xxxviii. 6, and founded it upon its bases,' Ps. civ. 5. The rocks cleave, as if to reprove the Jews for the hardness of their hearts. The dead start from their tombs, as coming to condemn the rage of the living. 4. The death of Jesus Christ is a system of morality, in which every virtue is clearly traced. If the divine justice be an object of fear, where is it more powerfully inculcated than on the cross of Jesus Christ? How very terrible does that justice there appear! It goes in pursuit of its victim into the very heaven of heavens. It extends on the altar a Divine Man. It spares not the Son of God, his own Son. And thou, miserable sinner, who canst present nothing to the eyes of thy judge but what is odious and abominable, how shalt thou be able to escape his vengeance, if violating the laws of the gospel thou renderest thyself so much the more worthy of condemnation, that thou hadst, in that very gospel, the effectual means of deliverance? which I endure for your salvation. At a spectacle so moving, is there an obduracy so invincible as not to bend? Is there a heart so hard as to refuse to melt? Is there a love so ardent as not to kindle into a brighter flame? 5. The death of Jesus Christ is a mystery inaccessible to reason, but which all the difficulties that reason can muster, are unable to impair. It is a mystery inaccessible to reason: let it explain to me that wonderful union of greatness and depression, of ignominy and glory, of an immortal God with a dying man. Let reason explain to me, how it comes to pass, that though God is unsusceptible of suffering and dying, the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ should, however, derive all their efficacy from his nature as God. Let reason explain to me, how Jesus Christ could satisfy divine justice, and be, at the same time, if the expression be lawful, the Judge and the party condemned, the Avenger and the party avenged, he who satisfied, and he to whom satisfaction was made. adoration of men and of angels, so that the Jew who crucifies him, is at once his executioner and his creature. If vice is to be held in detestation, where is Let reason explain to me, how Jesus nailthis lesson so forcibly taught as from the crossed to the cross, is nevertheless worthy of the of Jesus Christ? Let the man who makes light of sin, who forms to himself agreeable images, and feeds on flattering ideas of it, learn, at the cross of Christ, to contemplate it in its true light: let him form a judgment of the cause from the effects; and let him never think of sin, without thinking at the same time, on the pangs which it cost the Saviour of the world. Let reason explain to me, above all, that mystery of love which we see displayed on the cross of Jesus Christ, and how God, who is so great, and so highly exalted, should have vouchsafed to perform, in behalf of man, a being so low and contemptible, wonders so astonishing. Bend, bend, proud reason, under the weight of these difficulties, and from the extent of these mysteries, learn the narrowness of thy own empire. It is the wisdom of God in a mystery, which none of the princes of this world knew,' 1 Cor. ii. 7,8. It is the great mystery of godliness, If we wish for models to copy, where shall we find models so venerable as on the cross of Christ? Let the proud man go to the cross of Christ; let him there behold the Word in a state of humiliation; let him there contemplate the person who made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and condescended to submit to the Tim. iii. 16. These are the things of the punishment of a slave: the person who being Spirit of God, which the natural man receivin the form of God, thought it not robbery to eth not,' 1 Cor. ii. 14. This is the 'stumbling be equal with God: let the proud man look to block of the Jew: this is to the Greek foolhim, and learn to be humble. Let the volup-ishness,' 1 Cor. i. 23. These are the things tuous repair to the cross of Christ; let him which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neithere behold the flesh crucified, the senses sub-ther have entered into the heart of man,' 1 dued, pleasure mortified, and learn to bring forth fruits meet for repentance. Let the implacable repair to the cross of Christ; let him there contemplate Jesus Christ dying for his enemies, praying even for his murderers, and learn to put on bowels of mercies. Let the murmurer go to the cross of Christ; let him go and study that complete submission which this divine Saviour yielded to the most rigid commands of his Father, and learn to resign himself in all things to the will of God. If we are bound to love our lawgiver, where can we learn this lesson better than at the cross of Christ? From that cross we hear kim crying aloud to the guilty and the wretched: Behold, O sinners, behold the tokens of my affection: behold my hands and my feet: behold this pierced side: behold all these wounds with which my body is torn: behold all those stripes of the justice of my Father, Cor. ii. 9. This is a mystery inaccessible to reason, but it is a mystery, whose truth and importance all the difficulties which reason can muster, are unable to impair. The gospel tells us not that greatness and depression, that ignominy and glory, that the mortal, and the immortal nature, were confounded in the person of Jesus Christ. It simply informs us that God, in the depths of his infinite wisdom, knew how to unite depres→ sion to greatness, glory to ignominy, the mortal to the immortal nature. This is a mystery inaccessible to reason, but against which reason has no title to murmur. The gospel does not tell us that God, who is unsusceptible of either suffering or death, suffered and died, but that the subject susceptible of suffering united to the impassible, suffered; that the mortal, united to the immortal subject, died; and that, in virtue of this union, his sufferings and death possess an infinite value. This is a mystery inaccessible to re. son, but against which reason has no title to epine. The gospel does not tell us that Jesus Christ considered as nailed to a cross, as suffering, as dying, is worthy of adoration, but, in virtue of his intimate union with Deity, that he is an object of adoration to men and to angels. This is a mystery inaccessible to reason, but against it reason has not a title to reclaim. The gospel does not tell us that man, a being so mean, vile, grovelling, could have merited this prodigy of love; but that God has derived it from himself, as an independent source, and that he considers it as essential to his glory, to acknowledge no other foundation of his benefits, but the misery of those to whom he is pleased to communicate them. This is a mystery inaccessible to reason, but against which reason has not a title to reclaim. 6. There remains only one idea more, under which we wish to represent the death of the Saviour of the world. It is the triumph of Jesus Christ over death, and the consolation of the dying believer. Death may be considered in three points of view. (1.) It throws us into the darkness of gloomy night. (2.) It summons us to appear before a tremendous tribunal. (3) It strips us of our dearest possessions. Jesus Christ expires on the cross, triumphs over death, in these three several respects. But it would be necessary to possess the art of renewing your attention, in order successfully to undertake the task of pressing these ideas upon your minds, for they are more than sufficient to furnish matter for a complete new discourse. I must confine myself, at present, to one consideration, founded on the rending of the veil of the temple, mentioned in the text. We have already pointed it out as a token of the vengeance of heaven against the Jewish nation. It may likewise be considered in another point of view, conformably to the decision of St. Paul, and to the ideas of the Jews. That people looked on their temple as a figure of the universe. We have, ou this subject, passages expressly to the purpose, in Philo and Josephus. All that was on the outside of the most holy place, represented, to them, nature and the elements. The scarlet colour of the sanctuary represented fire. The hyacinthine represented the air. The seven branches of the candlestick represented the seven planets. The twelve cakes of show bread represented the signs of the Zodiac, and the twelve months of the year. But they said, that the most holy place had been set apart for God: that the Propitiatory was his throne, that the cherubim were his chariot.* On this principle, the veil, which separated the holy place from the Holy of Holies, was an image of the obstacles which interposed between the creature and the heavenly habitation, in which God resides. This veil is *Consult Joseph. Antiq. lib. iii. cap. 5, and Phil, de “Vita Mosis, lib. ûi. p. 667, &c. | rent asunder at the death of Jesus Christ; these obstacles are removed; access into the abode of the blessed is open to us: and this is the spirit of the ceremonial observance prescribed in the Levitical worship: Into the second went the high priest alone, once every year, not without blood,' says St. Paul in his epistle to the Hebrews; The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing: but Christ being come, a high priest' of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, by his own blood, entered into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us,' Heb. ix. 7, &c. Death, then, has nothing, henceforward, formidable to the Christian. In the tomb of Jesus Christ are dissipated all the terrors which the tomb of nature presents. In the tomb of nature, O sinner, thou beholdest thy frailty, thy subjection to the bondage of corruption: in the tomb of Jesus Christ thou beholdest thy strength and thy deliverance. In the tomb of nature the punishment of sin stares thee in the face: in the tomb of Jesus Christ thou findest the expiation of it. From the tomb of nature thou hearest the dreadful sentence pronounced against all the posterity of Adam : 'Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,' Gen. iii. 19: but from the tomb of Jesus Christ issue those accents of consolation: I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live,' John xi. 25. In the tomb of nature thou readest this universal, this irrevocable doom written: It is appointed unto men once to die,' Heb. ix. 27; but in the tomb of Jesus Christ, thy tongue is loosed into this triumphant song of praise: O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ,' 1 Cor. xv. 55, 57. All that now remains is to conclude with a few reflections by way of recapitulation. My brethren, for some weeks past, there have been traced before your eyes, the successive particulars of the passion and death of the Saviour of the world. You have seen him betrayed, apprehended, arraigned, condemned, and expiring under the most shameful, and the most cruel of all punishments. Do you comprehend all that is sublime in these truths? Do you feel, in all its extent, the value of these benefits? Have you, at least, made the attempt to take the dimensions of the love of God, and to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height: and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God?' Eph. iii. 18, 19. Ah! let us beware, my beloved brethren, that we deceive not ourselves as to this; after so many distinguished tokens of the grace of God, we are going to become the most wretched, or the happiest, of all creatures. Our condition admits not of mediocrity. The two interesting extremes present themselves to view-the extreme of justice, and the extreme of mercy. We are going to prove all that is mild and gentle in the peace of God, or all that is tremendous in his indignation: and that blood which we have seen poured out, must be upon our heads either to attract, or to repel, the thunder. His blood be upon us, and on our children,' Matt. xxvii. 25. This was the imprecation of those barbarous Jews, who with importunity demanded the death of Jesus Christ, and glutted themselves with his sufferings. But it was, in a far different sense, the interior voice of those believing souls, who entered into the design of God, who, by faith, sprinkled themselves with this blood, which was to form the bond of union between heaven and earth. His blood be on us, and on our children.' This is the voice which now resounds from ear to ear, and which must be accomplished on this assembly, in one sense or another. Yes, this blood shall be upon you, in vengeance and malediction, as it was upon ungrateful Je rusalem, in your families to trouble their peace, in your plans to defeat them, in your establishments to sap them to the foundation, in your consciences to harrow them up, in your death-bed to darken it with horror and despair, and through all the periods of eternity, demanding the expiation of the crime, of having trampled under foot the blood of the Son of God, and of having crucified afresh the Lord of glory. Or it will be upon you, yes, this blood will be upon you, to strengthen you under all your infirmities, to preserve you in the hour of temptation, to console you under the pressure of calamity, to speak peace to the troubled conscience, to support you in dying agony, to render your death blessed, and eternity triumphant. I dwell for a moment on these last ideas, and under an illusion of charity, I apply them to all those who compose my audience. Happy they, to whom they are applicable of a truth! To have been attentive to the history of the sufferings and death of the Saviour of the world, which, for some time past, has been the great subject of our address, to have traced it through all its successive circumstances, to have felt the necessity, and to have penetrated into the design of the whole; to have applied to ourselves the lessons which it inculcates, the consolations which it supplies, the hope which it inspires; to deduce, from those grand objects, consequences affecting the conduct of life, tending to promote sanctity of manners, superiority to the world, love to God so rich in mercy, desire of possessing that in perfection, of which displays so astonishing, convey ideas so sublime After that, to come next Lord's day to the table of Jesus Christ, with the understanding convinced, the heart overflowing, the soul penetrated to discern, in the bread and the wine of which we are to partake, the symbols of that death, whose memorial the church is ce lebrating: to promise unto God, over those august pledges of his love, to render to him love for love, and life for life: to expand the heart in such emotions; to communicate in such a disposition, and to wait for death under such impressions-these are the loftiest objects which man can propose to his meditation. This is the highest point of perfection which we are capable of attaining, in the course of this mortal pilgrimage. This is the purest delight that we can taste in this valley of tears. I trust, my dearly beloved brethren, that these sublime objects shall not have been presented to you in vain. I trust that so many exhortations will not fall to the ground totally without success. I trust that these first emotions, which it is impossible to withhold from an expiring Saviour, will not be as the early cloud, and as the morning dew,' Hos. vi. 4; which appear for a moment, and are dissipated in a moment. I trust they will henceforward engage your heart, your mind, your whole life, and that they will accompany you to the bed of death. I trust, that when this awful period comes, instead of that mortal reluctance, instead of those insupportable forebodings which unrepented guilt inspires, the image of Jesus Christ crucified, present to your eyes; what do I say, of Jesus Christ crucified? of Jesus Christ raised from the dead, glorious, sitting at the right hand of his Father; of Jesus Christ, presenting continually before his eyes the value of that blood which he shed for the salvation of the human race; of Jesus Christ extending his arms to receive your departing spirit, that he may bind it up in the bundle of life:' I trust that this image will dispel all the terrors of death, and thus prepare you to pass from the dispensation of grace, to the dispensation of glory. In the dispensation of grace, you have beheld the Son of God invested with the form of a servant;' in the dispensation of glory, you shall behold him arrayed in all splendour and magnificence. In the dispensation of grace, you have beheld the King of kings attended by an humble train of disciples of but mean appearance: in the dispensation of glory, you shall behold him accompanied by the heavenly hosts, legions of angels and archangels, of the cherubim and of the seraphim. In the dispensation of grace, you have beheld Jesus Christ expiring ignominiously upon the cross: in the dispensation of glory, you shall behold him in the clouds of heaven, judging the quick and the dead. In the dispensation of grace, you have heard the lips of your Saviour thus speaking peace to your soul: Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee:' in the dispensation of glory, you shall hear this decision from his mouth; 'Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,' Matt. xxv. 34. May God of his infinite mercy grant it! To him be honour and glory now and for ever. Amen. · SERMON LXXIV. OBSCURE FAITH; OR THE BLESSEDNESS OF BELIEVING, WITHOUT HAVING BEEN. JOHN XX. 29. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. STRANGE is the condition in which Providence has placed the Christian. He is ever walking in the midst of darkness and obscurity. He is placed between two periods of gloominess; between the cloudy night of the past, and the still darker night of futurity. Does he wish to ascertain the truths, which are the object of his faith? They are founded on facts; and in order to be assured of those facts, he must force his way backward, through more than eighteen hundred centuries: he must dig truth and falsehood out of the rubbish of tradition; out of the captious systems of the enemies of Christianity; nay, sometimes, out of the pious frauds, on which an indiscreet zeal has attempted to establish it. If he wishes to ascertain the reality of that blessedness which is the object of his hope, he must plunge himself, in quest of it, into periods which do not as yet subsist. He must 'walk by faith and not by sight,' 2 Cor. v. 7, he must depart, as Abraham did, and leave his kindred and his father's house, without knowing, precisely, whither he goes,' Heb. xi. 8. It is necessary that his persuasion, if I may so express myself, should form a new creation of things, which have no real existence as to him; or, to use the expression of St. Paul, his 'faith' must be the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen,' Heb. xi. 1. Now, it is to such obscurity, it is to such darkness, that a man is called to sacrifice all that the human mind is taught to consider as the greatest reality and certainty, I mean the decisions of reason, and the felicities of a present world. What a situation! What a strange situation! God: this is the night of futurity. I believe, and to that belief I immolate all the ideas of my intellect, all the systems of my reason. I hope, and to those hopes I immolate all the attractives of sensual appetite, all the charms of the visible creation: and were all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,' Matt. iv. 8, to be put in my offer, on the condition that I should renounce my hopes, I would consider the former but dung,' Phil. iii. 8, and cleave to the latter as the only real and solid good. Who is there among you, my brethren, who feels himself capable of this effort of mind! I acknowledge him to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. He may rest assured that he shall be received as a worthy partaker at that mysterious table, which sovereign wisdom is once more, this day, furnishing before our eyes. But he may likewise rest assured, that his felicity, veiled, invisible as it is, shall remain more firm and unshaken, than all those things which are the idols of the children of this world. To meditation on this interesting subject I devote the present discourse, to which you cannot apply an attention too profound. The occasion of the words of our text it would be unnecessary to indicate. Which of my hearers can be such a novice in the gospel history as to be ignorant of it? Thomas was not present with the other apostles, when Jesus Christ appeared unto them, after he had left the tomb. His absence produced incredulity. He refuses to yield to the united testimony of the whole apostolic college. He solemnly protests that there is but one way to convince him of the certainty of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, namely to produce But be it as it may, we, this day, place our-him alive. No, says he, except I shall see in selves, my brethren, between these two dark clouds; between the night of the past, and the night of futurity. In what are the duties of this day to terminate? What is the language suitable to the day which is now passing? I believe I hope. I believe that the Word was made flesh, that he suffered, that he died, that he rose again: this is the night of the past. hope that, in virtue of this incarnation, of these sufferings, of this resurrection, an entrance shall be ministered unto me abundantly, into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,' 2 Pet. i. 11, and that I shall partake in the felicity of the ever blessed his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe,' John xx. 25. Jesus Christ is pleased to adapt his condescension to the weakness of this disciple, and to gratify a pretension so arrogant and rash: he appears to Thomas, and says to him; Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing,' ver. 27. Thomas is drawn different ways; by the shame of having disbelieved, and the joy which he felt in being convinced by the testimony of his own senses, and ex |