cry-"Be not thou far from me, for trouble is near; for there is none to help."

Before I sit down I must make an appeal to the consciences of those (if such are present) who never sent up such a cry as this to the throne of God, who never knew the soul trouble which I have described. Oh, sinner! your day of trouble is at hand, when heart and flesh shall fail, and there shall be none to help; when the Judge of quick and dead will summon you to His bar, to give an account of the deeds done in the body; when all the rebellion of your life against God and truth, and all your neglect of His great salvation, will stare you in the face; trouble will indeed be near, and there will be none to help; and that glorious Christ, whom you now reject and despise, will say, "Those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." The sinner who lives and dies without bowing to the sceptre of Jesus, must be banished from His presence, to endure the blackness of darkness for ever; but the sinner who has "fled for refuge," in the midst of soul trouble, to 'lay hold on the hope set before him," shall find the Judge his Friend, and by Him be introduced to that glorious rest where trouble is for ever unknown.

May the God of all grace add His blessing to these solemn truths, and His name shall have all the glory.

THE 28TH SONG IN

MR. IRONS'S NEW VERSION OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS.

A DAY of trouble, great and sore,
Such as was never known before,
The Surety of God's people felt,
When bearing all their load of guilt.

His dol'rous cries were heard around;
His sacrifice acceptance found;
His heart's desire, all that He will'd
In ancient council, was fulfill'd.

So, when the days of trouble press
On those who wear His righteousness,
In Zion He is their defence,

And they obtain their succour thence.

He's the burnt sacrifice they bring,
Always accepted with the King;
He grants them all their heart's desire,
All that His high decrees require.

Delivered in Grove Chapel, Camberwell, Sunday Morning, July 1, 1849, BY THE REV. JOSEPH IRONS.

"And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon His head, and a reed in Ilis right hand: and they bowed the knee before Him, and mocked Him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews."-Matt. xxvii. 29.

AND could that which is commonly called the dignity of human nature transact a part so devilish, and worse than devilish, against the precious, glorious, innocent Christ of God? and could the Son of God, co-equal, co-eternal with the Father, stoop so low in the assumption of human nature, in the body which the Father had prepared for Him, as to humble Himself thus to death, even the death of the cross? "Wonder, O heavens, and be astonished, O earth!" The mighty Governor of all worlds submitting to the mockery, perfidy, and treachery of the governor of Judea! He who made all things, and upheld all things by the word of His power, veiled in humanity, submitting to the grossest indignities, the most cruel mockings, and the most painful and ignominious of deaths, from the hands of the very creatures He had given being to, and preserved in existence by His power.

And why all this? What was the first cause? What the final end? This same precious, glorious Lord had been seated upon His own essential throne of Godhead from everlasting; He saw, and saw from eternity, that His beloved Church, His bride whom the Father had given Him, His espoused one, must sink to eternal damnation, unless He came down to endure it for her. Now I wonder not that He stooped so low; now I wonder not at hell's rage and earth's malice; now I wonder not at the blushing sun, and the rending rocks, and the Published in Weekly Nos., 1d., and Monthly Parts, 5d.

VOL. II.

I

opening graves. Here is the grand secret: the best, the most glorious of all lovers, voluntarily to come down and suffer all for the object of His love. My Lord! my God! was it for me? Hadst thou an eye upon me in all this? Was it to remove curse, and wrath, and death, and destruction from me, that thou didst undergo all this shame and suffering? Do give me power to speak of thee, then; do give me power to love thee; do give me power to trust thee; do give me power to count nothing too much to do or suffer in thy name.

Who can read the afflicting account I have been reading to you this morning, in this chapter, of the sufferings of Christ, even if He were viewed only as mere man-who can read this account of them without being astounded at the dire enormity of the human heart, the deadly nature of sin, and the utter ruin brought upon all Adam's race by transgression? And who, in the prospect of commemorating, as we hope to do this evening, the sufferings of this precious Christ, but must be anxious, first of all, to know that he is specially interested in Him, in all that Jesus did and suffered, and then that he is perpetually employed in glorifying His precious name? Shall anything be withheld, in your life and mine, from Him who withheld not His life, His all, from us? God forbid! Oh! for power to love Him with His own love, and serve Him with His own strength, and exhibit Him in His own meekness, and confide in Him in His own faithfulness.

The words of my text have weighed heavily upon my spirit. I have been looking into them in secret, and asking where is the bottom, where is the summit, where is the length, where is the breadth, of the great mysteries wrapped up in this account? I have looked at them till I have been overwhelmed with awe, and I have felt the keepest of temptations to abandon them; but as God shall give me strength and direction, I want just to attempt to open them to your view under three prominent features:-First, the cruel coronation is set before us; secondly, the abjects exulting over their supposed victim, mocking Him and hailing Him with the supposition that He only pretended to be a king; but we cannot stop there-we must go on to notice His exaltation in consequence, and look to Him where He is.

I. I was led to the first statement from the circumstance of the rejoicings in the week that is past, on account of its being coronation week, or coronation day. "Well," I said in my own soul, as I turned over the leaves of my Bible, " every day of my life, God helping me, shall be a coronation day; and if I have no bells to tingle, to annoy all the parish, yet I will have a voice to lift up in commemoration of my precious Christ. He must be crowned Lord of all."

But mark, in His official character He must be crowned cruelly with thorns first. And here is a striking point which the Holy Ghost has left on record concerning Him-" they platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head." Little did these malicious Jews or soldiers think what they were doing. They probably had never turned their attention to the fact, that the thorns were the symbols of the curse-that when God pronounced a curse upon creation, in consequence of man's fall, it was said, "Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee." Not a few, yea, probably, all of God's saints have had to experience that there are thorns in their path, that there are thorns around them, that there are thorns in their choicest gardens, perhaps, in their families, in their children; that there are thorns in their most

pleasant circumstances, that there are thorns in their most prosperous businesses, that there are thorns in their fondest hopes; but none among them, that I have ever heard of, have been crowned with thorns. I sometimes flinch if a thorn only touches my finger-I sometimes flinch if a thorn seems threatening the destruction of my fond expectation. What should I do if I were brought to be crowned with them? That was only the honour belonging to the King of kings, who, though King of kings, was the Prince of sufferers; and this Prince of sufferers was crowned with that curse which belonged to poor, fallen, ruined sinners, and which must have crushed you and me into eternal destruction, if He had not been crowned with it. Have we never read, that He was "made a curse for us," because "it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree?" And if in all things our Jesus must have the pre-eminence, I am sure He must have it here, for He was "crowned with thorns." Blessed be His name, that while He now and then only permits a thorn to scratch one's little finger, His holy brow, His precious Head, His lovely face, were covered with the gore produced by His crown of thorns. And yet the holy sufferer had foreseen all this; He knew it to be the very portion He had voluntarily engaged for; He endured the cross and bore the curse in order to take it away, that His Church should never have to endure its consequences. Hence the apostle says concerning it, "There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."

Now pause for one moment while we gaze upon this rabble, mocking and insulting the precious Christ of God, which we shall by-and-bye dwell a little further upon, and mark how He stood. All the wrath and vengeance merited by that curse, and the consequences of that curse, pertaining to "the multitude that no man can number, of all nations, and languages, and people," in all ages, included in the election of grace, all heaped upon Christ. Never was being cursed as He was; never did being have such a curse to bear. Oh! beloved, let us never more flinch at a little scratch of the thorn; you will be sure to have it as you go through the wilderness; think most of Him who was crowned with thorns, and then your sufferings will appear light in comparison.

But mark His liability, in consequence of His covenant engagements. In those engagements He made Himself responsible for all that appertained to His Church; and upon this point I always desire and delight to dwell, because it puts on one side and for ever annihilates the idea of anything contingent or uncertain in the great things of salvation. I beg of you particularly to mark this point, and never to lose sight of it when you read your Bible, that everything pertaining to the salvation of ruined sinners is included in the voluntary Covenant engagement of Christ, when He said, as it is written in the Psalms, "Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O God, and thy law is within my heart." When He thus voluntarily entered into the covenant engagement, it was written "in the volume of the book," the Psalmist says, the book of eternal decrees; Jesus made Himself responsible, that whatever His Church should do, whatever she should deserve to suffer, whatever enemies should oppose her, whatever wrath should lie upon her, whatever condemnation and destruction should be justly due to her, He would have it all heaped upon His own head. Precious Jesus, how

can I love thee enough? Voluntarily engaged to have it all heaped upon His own head. Then, I ask, can the soul that trusts in Christ ever have it heaped upon his? Verily not. I insist upon this as the fairest of all reasoning-that it would not, could not, be just on the part of Jehovah to inflict punishment both upon the substitute and upon the culprit. If the substitute endures the culprit is freed; if the sinner's Surety bears all, the sinner for whom He bears it can have nothing to bear; and on this ground it is that the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ is exhibited; it is here we see its adaptation, its suitableness to man's utter ruin, because if there be anything left for the sinner, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, to endure, in curse and wrath, for judicial ends, then the Saviour has not endured it all. If He has not endured it all, then He told an untruth, for He said, "It is finished," when it was laid upon Him. The apostle must have told an untruth when he said, “He bare our sins in His own body on the tree;" nor was Isaiah correct when he said, "The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all." But there I behold Him, before the governor-there I behold Him, amidst the ruffian soldiers and the rabble crew, crowned with all the curse, and wrath, and condemnation due to me; bearing it all in His own body, as the very act and deed which He had stipulated for before all time, as the very sufferings which He volunteered to undergo, and which He declared to be His delight-" I delight to do thy will," and there do I behold the curse under which our precious Lord had laid Himself, as the Surety of His Church; thereby putting away sin from His bride by the sacrifice of Himself, and bringing in an everlasting righteousness, which, instead of having any curse in it, is all blessing, from beginning to end.

I dare not quit this point without another word, in order to trample beneath my feet all the Popish foolery about contingencies. I cannot refrain from calling it so, because everything like contingency is abstract Popery. Their Christianity, if such I may call it-they talk about believing in Christ, and carry a cross or crucifix about with them-it is all mockery; precisely, as we shall presently show, like what these chief priests had. We know that if there is a contingency in the matter of salvation, for any individual member of the Church of God, that individual must be lost; and if there were any contingency in it, how could it be true, when Christ said, "None shall perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand;" and “all that the Father gave me shall come to me;" and "it is the will of Him that sent me that of all that He gave me I should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last day?" These expressions, and multitudes more which I might cite from the precious word of God, seem at once to throw away every idea of contingency, and to insist that nothing is gospel at all but that which is certain—that nothing is gospel at all, or deserves that name, but that which stamps upon every provision, and every promise, and every doctrine, and every privilege of mercy, and every feature of its enjoyment, the grand certainty of Jehovah's faithfulness, Jehovah's "shalls" and "wills."

When this crown of thorns was placed upon the head of our blessed Lord, it was that as a crowned head he should proclaim the liberation of His people from the curse. As though He had said, " Plat it closely, take them all in, do not leave a single thorn for my bride, do not leave a single point that shall be experienced, in a judicial sense,