suggestion, the most subtle of all his subtle. devices. Wait not till you have acquired a meetness for pardon, till by prayers, and tears, and an amended life, you have qualified yourself for Heaven. Your pardon is procured, Heaven is opened; all that is wanted is the hand of faith to grasp the fulness of your privileges. And look, too, Believer, as you think on this day, look, oh! look to the cross; there is the Rock of your faith, the Anchor of your hope, the Quickener of your love, the Restorer of your joy. O what so blessed as a sight of the cross when faith falters, and hope wavers, and the fire of love burns dim within the soul! You may have soared aloft on the wings of Faith, and pierced and penetrated "the third Heaven." You may have stood at the gates of the "new Jerusalem," those gates of pearl revealed in vision to the Angel of the Apocalypse; nay, you may have entered her shining courts, and gazed with rapture upon the throne of God, and the Seraphic host that crowd around it; you may have dived into all mysteries, and mastered all knowledge, and scaled the heights, and fathomed the depths of God; but an hour will come,-of sorrow, of trial, of sore temptation, when all this will fade from your view,

and melt away from your mind and memory like a lovely song heard to be forgotten, and you will fall back for rest and repose on something more solid, more stable, more enduring, the cross of Jesus. O it was here I learned my first lesson in the things of God; it was here I was first taught the preciousness of a Saviour; it was here I found, what " flesh and blood" had "not revealed" to me, that the salvation of Christ is a finished salvation, that the price has been paid, that the debt has been discharged, that the ransom has been effected, and that all I have to do in a work where all is done, is to come asking that I may have, and seeking that I may find, and knocking that the door of Heaven may be opened unto me.

O come, beloved Brethren, one and all, come and gaze upon Calvary's cross. Come, and realize, if you can realize it, the mighty fact, that upon that cross are laid the sins, the accumulated sins, of a world. Yes, not a single sin, in thought, word and deed, that ever has been, or ever shall be committed by the myriads of the human family, from the commencement to the consummation of time, but is laid upon the head of that solitary Man. All, all is heaped upon Him, and He sinks

beneath the load; He cries out in the agony of His soul, "Mine iniquities," mark, how completely He makes them His own iniquities,"Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, SO that I am not able to look up, they are more than the hairs of my head; therefore my heart faileth me." * Nor is this all. The Father hides His face from Him. He turns away His countenance in holy hatred, for He cannot look upon sin, one sin; how then shall He look upon the sins of a world? And it is not till the cry, "It is finished," announces that all is over, the atonement made, the curse rolled off, the stain for ever washed away,-that the Father's countenance beams back again the smile of reconciliation, affection, and love; it is not till that cry rings through the universe, telling to the Church in Heaven and in earth the ransom and the recovery of the once alienated family, that the Father again says, as He had before said, of the Son of His love, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased;"† "Mine Elect, in whom my soul delighteth.”‡

That cry we have now heard,-the death-cry of Jesus, a cry that announces that Suffering

* Ps. xl. 12.

Matt. iii. 17.

Is. xlii. 1.

is over, that Type and Prophecy are both fulfilled, that Atonement is fully made. Nothing more remained to be done. Jesus had "finished" the work which the Father had given Him to do, and "He bowed his head, and gave up the ghost."

"He bowed His head and gave up the ghost.' O how unlike death is this! how even here the Godhead triumphs over the Manhood, and the crown of Deity throws into deepest shade the crown of scorn! Ah! the cross, Beloved, was a hard pillow for one who was wrestling with "the last enemy;" but who ever witnessed on beds of down, such calmness, such composure, such dignity in death? "He bows His head," in token of submission to His Father's will. He "gives up the Ghost," or as we have already expounded it, "dismisses the spirit from the body," and so dies without constraint, a voluntary victim, a self-devoted sacrifice for your sins and mine. What a beautiful commentary on His own words, put by the spirit of prophecy into the mouth of David, "Lo I come, in the volume of the Book it is written of me, I delight to do Thy will, yea, Thy law is within my heart."* All the Principalities of Heaven,

*Ps. xlviii. 7, 8.

and all the Powers of hell, could they have banded together in an unnatural confederacy against Him, could not have forced Him to give up the ghost one moment sooner than the period He had assigned in His own Divine mind. He died, not in obedience to the law of nature, but in obedience to His own Sovereign pleasure,-In a word, He died because it was His will to die; He expired, because it was His will to expire. Did He not say to Pilate, when He reminded him of his power to crucify Him, and his power to release Him," "Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above;" and, did He not say to the Jews, in language we have already quoted, "No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself, I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again?" Could he have ventured to use this majestic language, unless He had been truly God, "very God of very God," one with the Father, in perfection, power, and will? His Divinity placed Him above the malice of men, and thus while writhing in the agonies of crucifixion, never perhaps did He show Himself so conspicuously the Lord of life and glory.

* John xix. 11.

с