that holiness is happiness, and that sin is misery. Then how comes it to pass that a Being who was Incarnate Holiness, was yet the greatest sufferer? God's law was broken,-God's providence was defied,-God's sceptre was treated with contempt,—if Christ died in any other capacity than that of a Sacrifice and Sin-bearer, bearing on his own body the sins of all that believe.

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And again, I notice that Christ's death was voluntary. Now, this is a remarkable fact. He did not, die by constraint, but voluntarily. When his enemies tried to seize him and put him to death before, he evaded them, because his hour was not come; but when the epochal hour of Christendom sounded from the heavens, and the time was come when the great Victim must suffer, and the grand Sacrifice must be completed, then he refused the aid of Peter's sword, and told him that legions of angels were at his service if he chose to appeal to them; "but how then," said he, "shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be ?" I lay down my life," he said, "that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." If Christ were not God, he was a suicide; and if I were a Socinian, I should infer that crime from that strange language. I have no power to lay down my life; it is not at my disposal. I have received it as a stewardship, and I possess it till the great Proprietor takes it back to himself. But Jesus said, "I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again"-I have jurisdiction over life; "no man taketh it from me." That was the language of suicide, or it was the language, which we know it was, of God manifest in the flesh. His sacrifice and death, therefore, were voluntary.

In the next place, the intensity of the agony that Jesus endured showed that his death was something very peculiar. Read the death of any martyr, and if Christ's sufferings were purely physical, I say that Paul, and Peter, and some of the martyrs of the 16th century, exhibited a magnanimity and a quietness greater than what appears to have been exhibited by Jesus. I say, if Jesus died a mere martyr, his sufferings are not without parallel-his death is not without a precedent. Others have as nobly and magnanimously died as he, if he were only a suffering and a patient martyr. But can I explain such sorrow as this on the supposition that he was no more? He began, we are told, to be in great heaviness and amazement of mind; he prayed in his agony three times, and the intensity of the mental and moral oppression on his soul was so great, that he sweat great drops of blood upon the ground. I think that is the most awful expression, as it was the most awful feature, of that singular, peculiar, unparalleled agony. And again, when He looked forward to what was before him, he said, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." And again, he said, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" If Christ had been merely a patient martyr, God never would have forsaken him. God never forsook a martyr yet; but the fact that Christ was forsaken is the proof that he was more than a martyr. He was forsaken, that we might never be forsaken. And any one who will examine what the word "travail" means-"He shall see of the travail of his soul"-and apply that expression to the heart, the soul, the mind, will understand that it conveys, as it does to those who can thoroughly appreciate it, a deep and awful sense of the agony endured by the Son of

God. All this, then, indicates that his death was no common one; and it is a step towards the conclusion which we shall arrive at by subsequent details, that he died a Sacrifice, and not simply a martyr.

And lastly, I notice to-night that unless there was something in Christ's death totally different from what characterises the death of any sufferer, his death was a calamity. I cannot see what was the use of the death of Jesus, unless it be regarded as a Sacrifice. It did not give an impulse to his religion, but was calculated to impede it; for one of the strongest objections to the Gospel is, that it has its commencement with the Crucified. And if that death was not required because a Sacrifice was demanded, it was a death uncalled for and unnecessary; but on the supposition that it was, what we allege it was, a Sacrifice, an Atonement for our sins, it was necessary and inevitable. It is the glory of our religion, it is the element of our hope.

Give us a Socinian religion, and we have a cross without glory, a religion without a sacrifice, an eternity without a hope, and a grave without a beam to irradiate it, or a pathway to strike through it to that rest that remaineth for the people of God.

NOTE. [29.] It does not appear whether the purpose of the crown was to wound, or simply for mockery; and equally uncertain is it of what kind of thorns it was composed. The acanthus itself, with its large succulent leaves, is singularly unfit for such a purpose; as is the plant with very long sharp thorns, known as

Spina Christi, being a brittle acacia, (robinia,) and the very length of the thorns, which would meet in the middle if it were bent into a wreath, precluding it. Some flexile shrub or plant must be understood,-possibly some variety of the cactus or prickly pear. Hasselquist, a Swedish naturalist, supposes a very common plant,-naba or nabka of the Arabs, with many small spines; soft, round and pliant branches; leaves much resembling ivy, of a very deep green, as if in designed mockery of a victor's wreath.-Travels, 288, 1766 (cited by F. M.). -Alford.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE RESURRECTION-THE SABBATH-MISREPRESENTATIONS OF SCRIBES, AND PHARISEES, AND SOLDIERS SIFTED AND SHOWN.

You may first of all observe that the precautions taken by the scribes, the Pharisees, and the elders, were overruled to be the completest and the most triumphant evidences of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. You recollect that in the previous chapter a deputation of the priests and the Pharisees came to Pilate, and stated that they had heard that Jesus had predicted that on the third day he would rise again from the dead. They said they did not believe any such prophecy; but lest some trick should be played, and the disciples and apostles should come and steal the body of Jesus, and pretend he had risen, let us, said this deputation, place a large stone at the mouth of the sepulchre ; let us plant beside it a Roman watch-men who would rather have encountered death, than have betrayed their duty-and take every requisite precaution in order that the disciples may not carry away the dead body of their Master, and spread the apocryphal report, that Jesus who was crucified for his crimes has actually risen from the dead. These precautions were taken. Pilate said, "Ye have a watch," that is, a competent body of soldiers; "go your way, make it as sure as ye can." It turns out, that while man in his folly devised the precaution, that precaution was overruled by the wisdom of God, to be the most triumphant

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