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I want something more than to know that God will establish Zion for ever. What about me, my own individual self? And the last words answer that. Not merely the city abides, but "He will be our guide even unto death." And surely, if so-if His loving hand will lead the citizens of His eternal kingdom even to the edge of that great darkness, He will not lose them even in its gloom. Surely there is here the veiled hope that if the city be eternal and the gates of the grave cannot prevail against it, the community cannot be eternal unless the individuals be immortal.

Such a hope is vindicated by the blessed words of a newer revelation: "God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city."

Dear brethren, remember the last words, or all but the last words of Scripture which, in their true text and reading, tell us how, instead of aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, we may become fellow-citizens with the saints. "Blessed are they that wash their robes that they may have a right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gate into the city!"

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SERMON XIII.

CHRIST HASTENING TO THE CROSS.

LUKE ix, 51.

And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem.

HERE are some difficulties, with which I need not

THERE

trouble you here, as to bringing the section of this. Gospel to which these words are the introduction, into its proper chronological place in relation to the narratives; but, putting these on one side for the present, there seems no doubt that the Evangelist's intention here is to represent the beginning of our Lord's last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem-a journey which was protracted and devious, and the narrative of which in this Gospel, as you will perceive, occupies a very large portion of its. whole contents.

The picture that is given in my text is that of a clear knowledge of what waited Him, of a steadfast resolve to accomplish the purpose of the Divine love, and that resolve not without such a shrinking of some part of His nature that He had "to set His face to go to Jerusalem." The words come into parallelism very strikingly with.

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a great prophecy of the Messiah in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, where we read, "The Lord God will help me, therefore shall I not be confounded”—or, as the words have been rendered, "shall not suffer myself to be overcome by mockery "therefore have I set my face like a flint." In both the words of the Prophet and of the Evangelist there is the same idea of a resolved will, as the result of a conscious effort directed to prevent circumstances which tended to draw Him back from producing their effect. The graphic narrative of the Evangelist Mark adds one more striking point to that picture of high resolve. He tells us, speaking of what appears to be the final epoch in this long journey to the cross, "They were in the way, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went before them; and they were amazed: and as they followed, they were afraid." What a picture that is, Christ striding along the steep mountain path far in advance-impelled by that same longing which sighs so wonderfully in His words, "How am I straitened till it be accomplished,"-with solemn determination in the gentle face, and His feet making haste to run in the way of the Father's commandments! And lagging behind, the little group, awed into almost stupor, and shrinking in uncomprehending terror from that light of unconquerable resolve and more than mortal heroism that blazed in His eyes!

If we fix, then, on this picture, and, as we are warranted in doing, regard it as giving us a glimpse of the very heart of Christ, I think it may well suggest to us considerations that may tend to make more real to us that

sacrifice that He made, more deep to us that love by which He was impelled, and may, perhaps, tend to make our love more true and our resolve more fixed. "He set his face to go to Jerusalem."

I. First, then, we may take, I think, from these words, the thought of the perfect clearness with which all through Christ's life He foresaw the inevitable and purposed end.

Here, indeed, the Evangelist leaps over the suffering of the cross, and thinks only of the time when He shall be lifted up upon the throne; but in that calm and certain prevision which, in His manhood, the Divine Son of God did exercise concerning His own earthly life, between Him and the glory there ever stood the black shadow thrown by Calvary. When He spoke of being "lifted up," He ever meant by that pregnant and comprehensive word, at once man's elevation of Him on the accursed tree, and the Father's elevation of Him upon the throne at His right hand! The future was, if I may so say, in His eye so foreshortened that the two things ran into one, and the ambiguous expression did truly connote the one undivided act of prescient consciousness in which He at once recognized the cross and the throne. "And so, when the time was come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem."

Now, there is another thing to be noticed. That vision of the certain end which here fills His mind and impels His conduct, was by no means new with Him. Modern unbelieving commentators and critics upon the Gospels have tried their best to represent Christ's life as,

at a certain point in it, being modified by His recognition of the fact that His mission was a failure, and that there was nothing left for Him but martyrdom! I believe that that is as untrue to the facts of the Gospel story upon any interpretation of them, as it is repulsive to the instincts of devout hearts; and without troubling you with thoughts about it I need only refer to two words of His. When was it that He said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up"? When was it that He said, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up"? The one saying was uttered at the very beginning of His public work, and the other in His conversation with Nicodemus. On the testimony of these two sayings, if there were none else, I think there is no option but to believe that from the first there stood clear before Him the necessity and the certainty of the cross, and that it was no discovery made at a certain point of the course.

And then, remember that we are not to think of Him as, like many an earthly hero and martyr, regarding a violent and bloody death as being the very probable result of faithful boldness, but to believe that He, looking on from the beginning to that end, regarded it always as being laid upon Him by a certain Divine necessity, into which necessity He entered with the full submission and acquiescence of His own will, and from the beginning knew that Calvary was the work for which He had come, and that His love failed of its expression, and the Divine purpose failed of its realization, and His whole mission failed of all its meaning, unless He died for men.

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