from his Son his love and his grace? Is not the question, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" a question which, from everlast ing to everlasting, must remain an unsolved mystery?

II. No, my beloved; through the mercy of God we have had this mystery revealed to us. In the painful judgment of self-condemnation, the wondrous enigma is solved. When once the blind eye of our spirit is opened, we discern, in the light of grace, the lofty end of the abandonment of the Son of God.

Wherefore, then, was the innocent Lamb of God thus utterly forsaken of God? Wherefore did his heavenly Father hide his face from him? Wherefore must the almighty Jesus be so weak, the visage of the spotless One so marred, the Helper so helpless? Because he, as all the prophets of the old covenant and all the apostles of the new testify, was delivered up for our transgression; because he, constrained by the compassion of his loving heart, suffered in our stead, and bore the punishment our sins deserved in his own body on the tree. And who are we? Are we not all universally rebellious children—“ children that are corrupted" -that have forsaken the Lord, the God and Creator of their lives, the supreme good-the only good? O yes! when sin allures, when gold and gain are to be won, when fleshly lusts are to be gratified, and earthly honors to be obtained, then do we eagerly go forward; then is there no road too long, no way too toilsome, no sacrifice too painful; but we inquire not after God: he is not in all our thoughts. Thus we go on in our natural state—God-denying, God-forgetting men-following the dictates of a depraved will, following the counsel of a darkened understanding, speaking our own sinful words, and working our own works of darkness; and we think not that the holy presence of God is, as the air, around us and about us; and we glorify not the God "in whose hand our breath is, and whose are all our ways." Far from our Father's house, cut off from communion with him, excluded from his grace, we are still at ease, and tremble not even for an instant before his awful majesty. Our idols, "the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life," are sufficient for us; we feel no need of reconciliation with God—of reunion with God. Alas! there is not one among us all who has not, like the prodigal son, forsaken his God. Every sin which we commit, is an abandonment of God; and as oft as we have thought, or spoken, or acted, without reference to him, and fellowship with him, so oft have we forsaken him. And even those among us who, through the grace of God, have been born again, created anew in Jesus Christ, even they must acknowledge, in deep self-abasement, that ever since their conversion, they also have, daily and hourly, shamefully forsaken the Lord their God. And this desertion is a transgression that reaches unto the heavens-a sin of deepest dye, that calls for vengeance-an ingratitude so vile, that by it alone we have a thousand times deserved inexorable and everlasting banish

ment from the presence of the Lord. Is not this forsaking of our God the fruitful parent of all our countless transgressions?

When, therefore, the Son of God, as our surety, exposed himself for us to bear the penalty of God's violated law, he must, when wrestling with death, be forsaken of God. Standing in our stead, he must feel the whole weight of the wrath of God, and in the judgment of God be regarded as one who has departed from God. He that defies the omnipotent God—that will not hear the all-wise God, that cares not for the omnipotent God, that makes the God of truth a liar, "despising the riches of his goodness and mercy," and repaying his love with base ingratitude-surely he well deserves to be forsaken of the everlasting God -to be overwhelmed by the weight of the wrath of God, who "is not mocked." And, as such, did our Lord Jesus Christ, as our representative, stand before God, and therefore was he forsaken of God.

We can not comprehend this desertion by God; it is beyond our every faculty, and every conception. Suffice it to say that the Son of God feels here the enormous weight of all that our sins deserved; the mercy of God is hidden from him; he feels only his wrath, and naught of his grace and loving kindness. Though we comprehend not how it was possible for the holy, undefiled Son of God, thus to be loaded with that abominable sin which he hated, and thus to pay its full penalty, it is yet certain that he was here "made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him ;" that "the deep waters" of the terrors of God went even over Is soul; that the thick clouds of deepest anguish were heaped up, one above another, till at last all the terrors of eternity, all the pains of hell, all the wrath of divine justice, were concentrated in the agony that forced from him the cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?”

Come hither, then, ye sinners, who would make of the living God a weak Eli, winking at the transgressions of his rebellious children! Come hither, ye impenitent sinners, who, with a few prayers and a little almsgiving, would purchase heaven!-come hither, and learn in the abandonment by his Father of Christ on the cross, that the wrath of God, that his holy indignation against sin, is no empty threat! If the great God spared not his own Son, but suffered him to feel the unutterable pangs of his avenging justice, how shall ye escape the threatened damnation of hell?

But come hither, also, ye despisers of God and of his word, who have turned from his ways to walk in your own way-that way whose end is death; come hither and see how ardently the loving heart of God desires the redemption of the most sinful, the most wretched. Behold in the hiding of his face from his beloved, a manifest proof that he is ready to lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and to blot out your unnumbered sins. Does he provide such a sin-offering as abundantly satis fies his justice? O doubt not then his perfect willingness to receive you into the bosom of his compassionate love! Here, in this desertion by

God of the Lord Jesus Christ, beams forth upon us not only the justice of God, but the fullness of his mercy in a divine radiance, sufficient to dispel every shade of doubt as to his desire "to save to the uttermost them that come unto him." Now is the great gulf that separated condemned sinners from a holy God, henceforth and forever so filled up that we may, with joyful hearts, fearlessly pass over it into the arms of a reconciled God-a loving Father.

III. But this leads us to the third point we had proposed for consideration: a still further contemplation of the fruits of this abandonment of Christ.

These fruits are precious above all price; but they are only for the penitent sinner, for believing hearts, for the poor in spirit, for "those that hunger and thirst after righteousness." We speak not now to you, proud sinners, who still turn your backs upon the Lord, and by presumptuous sins are still daily pouring contempt upon God and his laws. To you we must repeat the words of Christ, and may the Spirit of God reecho them in thunder-tones in your ears: "If these things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" Ye shall not see God, “for your sins," as Isaiah saith, "have hid his face from you." To you it is not said, nor, unless you repent, will it ever be said, "Come, ye blessed of my Father." Alas! to you rather belongs, in all its terrors, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." No; so long as your eyes are still unopened to see how "your iniquities have separated between you and your God," so long as you come not to Jesus, self-condemned, in contrition of heart, and in faith that he alone can save, he alone deliver,-even so long the fruits of this abandonment of Christ belong not to you. Only when we are made to experience somewhat of being forsaken of God, as Christ was; only when we bitterly feel and humbly acknowledge that we well deserve, for our multiplied transgressions, to be forsaken of God; only when, in the conviction of that utter helplessness which self-knowledge brings with it, we turn from the broken cisterns of human consolation, and as wretched, hell-deserving sinners, prostrate ourselves at the lowest step of the throne of God—then only do we become partakers of the glorious fruits of this abandonment of Christ. But to you, who are thus self-condemned as vile sinners, to you, highly-favored souls, who have been given to see in the desertion of Christ your merited curse, and whose heart's conviction, through grace, it is, that only free, unmerited mercy could have plucked you as brands from the burning-to you belong the precious fruits of these death-pangs of our surety. O! lay hold of them joyfully, and suffer neither Satan nor your own evil heart of unbelief to keep you back.

This abandonment of Christ on the cross is a bridge of God's own construction; firm as the rock, never to be destroyed. It is the passage

from the region of the shadow of death, into the abode of everlasting light and everlasting peace. We may tread it with firm step, confident, rejoicing in the name of the Lord; however the waves of our transgressions may roar, and rage, and swell, this bridge defies the roaring torrent and the swelling flood.

The abandonment on the cross is a deep gulf, an unfathomable abyss, into which we may cast all our anxieties, all our cares, all our sins— even those of deepest dye, even those that are grown up into the heavens and they shall no more be found, but shall be hidden forever and ever.

In this abandonment of Christ, a pledge is given unto us by the eter nal God himself, that he will never more abandon those debtors for whom the surety thus paid all the debt. He may indeed, at times, hide his face from us, and appear as though he would never again manifest himself to help and bless. But it is "for a small moment;" with great mercies will he gather us; his bowels are again "troubled for Ephraim," and he will surely have mercy upon him.

Again. This abandonment is a charter of our citizenship in heavena passport thither-a privilege which we may plead before the judgmentthrone. The effectual power of this abandonment of our surety and propitiation is so infinite, that we may fearlessly stand in the judgment. We shall be judged, but shall not be condemned, for "there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." They have already been judged, have already borne the curse, already been forsaken of God in their surety. Therefore, "rejoice greatly, O Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; make a cheerful noise unto the God of Jacob, ye children of the living God ;" to you the great day of the Lord will be a welcome, a blessed day, when you shall pass into the kingdom of God, there forever to see, and love, and praise him.

Still further. The abandonment of Christ on the cross is a key wherewith we may open to ourselves the secret chambers of communion with our God. No longer need we stand like slaves, trembling without; we are no more strangers, no longer afar off, but have been brought nigh to be fellow-citizens with the saints, and to receive the adoption of children. The high and holy One has become our Father, who takes us into his arms, and to his heart, as dear children, and sends "forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.”

And does any one ask how we dare draw near with such boldness, and hope in him so confidently, and speak to him so freely of all that is in our heart? We point to our crucified Surety, and reply, “Because he was forsaken for me, and in my stead." Here is my peace. "The mountains may depart, and the hills be removed, but the covenant of peace,” confirmed by the blood of the Lamb, "shall never be removed," but "standeth fast forever and ever!"

DISCOURSE IX,

PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D.

For the last fourteen years, this distinguished German divine has resided in this, the land of his adoption. He was born, Janaury 1, 1819, at Coire, Switzerland, the son of an honest mechanic of the same name, and became early united with the German Reformed Church. His education was received, first in the college at Coire, then in the Institution of Kornthal, the College of Stuttgart, and the Universities of Tubingen, Halle, and Berlin. In his 25th year he was ordained in the German Reformed Church, at Elberfield, by Dr. F. W. Krummacher, Dr. Sander, and other Prussian clergymen. He has never been pastor, but was for a time Professor of Theology at the University of Berlin; and, in the year 1844, was called as Professor of Theology to the Theological Seminary of the German Reformed Church at Mercersburg, Pa., a position which he has honorably filled ever since.

Dr. Schaff, though yet a comparatively young man, has become extensively known as an engaging and solid writer. Some of his best known publications are called: “Sin against the Holy Ghost,” 1841 (German); “Jaines, the Brother of the Lord," 1842 (German); "The Principle of Protestantism," 1845 (German and English); "Historical Development," 1846 (English); "History of the Apostolic Church,” 1853 (German and English; both editions were reprinted in Europe); "Life and Labors of St. Augustine," 1854 (German and English); "America; its Political, Social, and Religious Condition," 1854, in Berlin, and translated in 1855, n New York. He has also published a number of orations, essays, and articles in American and European journals, and is one of the editors of the "Mercersburg Review." It is understood that he has in preparation a "Manual of Church History," from the beginning to the present time, in three volumes, the first volume of which is now nearly ready for publication.

Dr. Schaff's reputation, however, as a writer, rests mainly upon his "History of the Apostolic Church,” which has received, in all quarters, high commendation. Its general estimate is pretty fairly represented in a notice of the "Princeton Review:"

"The book is eminently scholarlike and learned, full of matter, not of crude materials crammed together for the nonce by labor-saving tricks, but of various and well-digested knowledge, the result of systematic training and long-continued study. Beside the evidence of solid learning which the book contains, it bears the impress of an original and vigorous mind, not only in the clear and lively mode of representation, but also in the large and elevated views presented. The author's power of attending both to great and small in due proportion, throws over the details a pleasing air of philosophical reflection, rendered still more attractive by a tinge of poetry, too faint to vitiate the manly prose of history, but strong enough to satisfy that