history, the wonder which arises at the contemplation of his divinity deepens into a strange and melancholy awe. 'Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to day, and for ever,' is the motto emblazoned on the shield and banner of our faith; a motto which would be well nigh in explicable, were it not for the declaration, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' Whereby we are clearly taught that Christ, dwelling in the bosom of the Father, was the everlasting partaker of his boundless glory: that he shared inall his counsels, and foresaw the completed results of his will. This was the glory which Christ enjoyed before the worlds were-before aught had been created; and when it was the will of the Father that a universe should exist, it was by him that that will operated, for without him was not any thing made that was made.' Here, therefore, we behold Christ mantled in the power and majesty of Creator; framing, by his inherited might and wisdom, the globe we inhabit-the innumerable suns and stars which roll in the vast depths of space-establishing the laws by which they are suspended in their orbits, and imbuing the whole with the life and energy which has kept them, from the beginning, from returning into chaos. And the universe thus created, the presence and work of Christ were discernible from age to age, through the shadows

with which the Almighty chose to curtain the movements of his providence; for the Holy Ghost hath taught us, that it was He who, in the ancient times, conversed with God's chosen people, executed his desires, and rendered visible the skirts of the heavenly Majesty.

But in laying aside the splendour of Deity to become man, he could not do otherwise than remain the same in essence-in the unchangeable attributes which characterized him as the Son of God-in the perfect possession of the power and grandeur which pertained to him as the Word: for he voluntarily took upon him the nature of man ; and by coming to do the will of his Father, by glorifying him from whom He sprung, he surely could lose no particle of the glory which belonged to him in the beginning.

Solemn indeed, therefore, are the approaches of Christ to the suffering of bitter scoffings, the scourge, and the cross. The signs which attended his birth were sufficient to convince those who beheld them, that the kingdom of heaven was at hand; and his miracles appealed so directly to the senses and the plain understandings of men, that they who were resolved not to acknowledge them as the work of God, were constrained to proclaim them the work of the devil. There was a demonstration of power in them which they knew could not be of earth; and this manifestation of ceaseless, unbounded

energy, displayed by the Redeemer, did awaken the conscience, and convince the minds of many. At his approach to suffering, wonders still attended him; but they were wonders of another kind-wonders, not of power but of marvellous patience, love, and humility. The judgment-hall was a scene which all the world should look back upon, to learn how humble and how patient the Son of God could be. Silent and resigned, he bore the scorn of both Jews and Gentiles. His head bared to the smiters, he stood, scorned and buffetted like a base impostor: the vulgar gibe pealed around him; the rude Roman soldiers laughed contemptuously at the thought, that one so poor and weak should pretend to be the Son of God. The robe and the crown of thorns followed the scourge; and Jesus, the subject of all prophecy, the minister of the unlimited power of God, was presented to the multitude as a base, detected culprit, worthy only of stripes and mockery for his folly, and of death for the dangerousness of his doings.

The road to Calvary exhibited no signs of triumph. Faint and weary with the agony he had endured the preceding night, with the tumult and oppression of his useless trial, Jesus strove, with a bowed and exhausted frame, along the steep path of the mountain. The crowds saw him thus weak -thus more than humbled. He no longer raised

his voice, in stern rebuke as in the temple; or in promises of peace and pardon, as in the villages of Galilee. His hand was no longer lifted up to cure the trembling cripple, the palsy-struck, the deaf or the blind. Devils raged around him, defying his power, and he drove them not forth: his truth was blasphemed, and he answered not: no might was put forth-no glory was visible: and thus, amidst crowds of triumphing Pharisees, and their miserable admirers, Jesus was led to the cross. There it was expected he would again display his power, if aught remained to him. But he extended his unresisting limbs, and was nailed to the tree. The blood streamed from his torn veins: agony was visible over the whole surface of his convulsed frame: death came not, giving its intermitting slumbers— its feverish, but softening dreams. It struck not its dart with a direct aim; it finished not its work at once in any part of the quivering body. In the midst of the sharp, protracted misery, the scornful voice of bitter contempt and hatred rose to the ears of the dying Jesus: Let him come down from the cross! But it was not for Christ, now bearing the sins of the world, either to come down or answer. The mystery of iniquity was in the plenitude of its power and operation. It was not the nails which bound Christ to the cross, but the guilt which he bore for mankind: it was not the strength of the banded multitude in array against him, that kept

Christ from leaving the tree, but the host of sins that came armed for judgment against him, now the representative of sinners: it was these-some of them coming up from the graves of buried generations-some flooding forth, like the waves of a gloomy sea, from every quarter of the idolatrous earth-others getting the start of time, and rushing from the deep bosom of that futurity which is present now; it was these gathering troops of innumerable sins that kept Jesus to the cross, and clothing him, even to the bottom of his soul, with adopted guiltiness, made him, hour after hour, a mark for the withering fires of divine justice.

Nor was the humiliation of suffering all that Christ had to endure. At the moment the man was becoming a sacrifice for sin, deity left the humanity to fulfil the expiation which it was for humanity only to make; and while the crowds were hurling their scoffs against him, Jesus, so far from answering their mockings with any evidence of power or divinity, uttered the awful cry which indicated that the Father was then only looking on the Son as an offering for sin.

That from a spectacle so terrible we should be led to contemplate the glory of the resurrection and ascension, is the chief wonder of our religion. But great as is the marvel, the system itself affords so many helps and intermediate steps to its explanation, that the care and sorrow attendant on the one

VOL. III.

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