report, unfurling every where the banner of the cross! And how different even the apparent reward of these persons, so various in their actions, and in the motives of their actions, though all equally necessary to the good purpose of Jehovah! Judas, self-rebuked, and too late covered with remorse, a miserable suicide! Pilate, an exile for crimes, impunity in which he had perhaps sought to purchase by his unjust sentence against Jesus, also perishing by his own hand! The Jewish nation, imprecating the blood of Jesus on themselves and on their children, still impressed with a moral stain which ages seem to declare indelible; and, to this day, an outcast race, fearing whatever is galling and degrading in obloquy and scorn, after having endured, on the very site of their great crime, more dreadful sufferings than ever fell to the lot of any people! While the Apostles are the blessing of the world, receiving such homage of respect, of love, of admiration, as philosophers, and conquerors, and legislators cannot so much as approach; and with a higher reward than earth can bestow (though she bestow her noblest and her best) are rejoicing now, with joy unspeakable and full of glory, in expectation of His presence, whose cross and shame they partook, and in whose triumph they are permitted to appear.

The wonderful complication and stability of the purposes of Jehovah, with the perfect subordination of every thing, rational and irrational, good and bad, willingly and unwillingly obedient, are singularly

exemplified in the death of Jesus: but they are not less really, though certainly less visibly true, in every passing event. What a noble foundation is this for confidence in the protecting and governing care of the Almighty! Men, good and bad, are busily and obtrusively engaged upon the surface of the tide of affairs, like barks that skim the bosom of the deep, for purposes of violence and fraud, or it may be of defence of commerce, of science, or of religion: but the purpose of God is below, like those mighty internal currents which perform his behests in the physical government of the world, with an energy noiseless indeed, and, to us, obscure; but constant as the course of ages, and more stable than the solid bars of the earth through which they sweep. It is only for our keel to reach this irresistible current, and we too are borne on in as certain and undeviating a course: It is but to love God and his will, and all things shall work together for our good, and ultimately perform even our pleasure.

Once again, the attributes of God are as certainly pledged in the smallest of his purposes as in the greatest; in the salvation of one single soul, as in the redemption and glorification of a whole guilty race. Let us mark, then, the demonstrations of the unerringness of the purposes of his mercy, as displayed in that view of the death of Christ which we have just taken; and let us apply it to ourselves for our individual comfort and assurance: or, if such hath been our life that this may not be, then for shame and reproof,

for anguish and for terror.

Where the fault is with

ourselves it is hard to say how little, as the world sometimes counts littleness in error, may destroy our souls: how far ignorance, or carelessness, or lukewarmness, or mistaken zeal, may rank us with the Judas, with the Pilate, or the Jews of our Lord's last sad scene. But, on the other hand, if our heart is right with God, and we are, or take diligent pains to become, grounded and settled in the truth; and continue to hold fast the sound faith which we profess without wavering; and constantly endeavour, in matters as well of practice as of faith, to learn the will of God and to do it then have we as sure a confidence that no machinations of men or of spirits can prevail against us, as we have that the eternal purpose of God shall stand, in the most important matter; and that heaven and earth, and the powers of darkness themselves, shall but effect that which the hand and counsel of God determined before to be done.

137

SERMON VIII.

HE DESCENDED INTO HELL.

66

LUKE Xxiii. 43.-Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise."

We have now followed our blessed Lord through his last sufferings, and left his body, no longer conscious of indignities or violence, suspended on the cross. But the necessary incidents of humanity extend beyond sensation and visible agency; and after the witnesses of our dissolution have received our last sigh, and have closed the lids of our eyes, already effectually sealed against the light of heaven, and no longer sparkling with the expression of intellect or feeling, there are yet other scenes which, as men, we must pass through; and there is yet another office which we claim from the pious care of our survivors: a grave is yet open for the body, and the abode of separate spirits for the soul.

From the assumption of a perfect humanity by Christ, it had been just to conclude, that he should,

so long as he lived, partake of all the necessary consequences of a human nature; and it is as just to conclude, that he was equally a partaker of all its necessary consequences after his dissolution: and this last conclusion receives additional strength from every thing which tends to prove the correctness of the former. It had been unreasonable to doubt that the Son of the Virgin should live, and act, and suffer, as a man it were doubly unreasonable to doubt, that he who was born, and lived, and acted, and suffered as a man, did, as man, descend into the grave, and to the place of departed spirits. It were monstrous to imagine that, having fulfilled, in every the smallest article, the conditions of humanity, so long as he was open to the observation of his fellows, he deserted, as soon as he left them, that nature in which they had seen him suffer, and in which they are to behold him glorified.

But we are not left to receive these facts concerning Christ, from the deductions of reason alone. Those deductions are supported by such Scriptural authorities, that what had otherwise rested on the foundation of a reasonable belief, we now hold with the assurance of a religious faith. While, on the testimony of the disciples, we believe (what was antecedently probable) that Jesus died and was buried; we deduce from most certain warrant of inspiration (what we might otherwise have well supposed) that while his body remained on the cross, and slept in Joseph's tomb, his soul had passed to the habitation of the de