open enemy, but by one with whom he had taken sweet counsel that he had been tried in mockery, and savages had paraded him through their streets, now venting upon him cutting words, now macerating his flesh with their heavy thongs, now buffeting him with their foul hands, now overburdening him with the weight of the instrument of his execution, and finally putting him to death with the most cruel tortures, amidst the derisive wagging of their heads and their sneering triumph;— when this intelligence reached us, with what conduct should we meet it? The most iron heart would be shocked at the treatment of his own dear friend, and if he were of softer mould, his own feelings would suffer from those scourgers, his own ears would ring with those yells, and at the mockings his own indignation would arise. But we have none of these passions awakened when we hear of CHRIST's agonies. And why? Simply because the intelligence is not new. When first announced to a royal barbarian, they had somewhat of the effect I have here described, but we knew them before, and so they lend us no impulse, and touch no sympathizing chord in our hearts. But yet as we enjoy, and hope to enjoy infinitely more, the benefits they purchased, the true friend of CHRIST will think that gratitude still calls for sympathy.

But let it be admitted that our chief concern is with the future, that amendment of life should be a grand object with us. Well then, on this account you will meditate on the Nature of GOD, as contrasted with the nature of sin, and you will sorrow, not because you are really unhappy in your worldly circumstances, but because you deserve to be unhappy.

On next LORD's day, it is to be hoped we shall partake of the Blessed Communion, that glorious legacy

which our LORD committed to us on the eve of His Passion. Why then should we not prepare ourselves as did CHRIST before He passed to His FATHER through the gate of that Death which we are then to commemorate? If we take such anxious pains to improve our hearts in humble faith, GOD cannot leave us, but HE will nerve us with His grace to withstand temptations, and to continue such awakened impressions for another year. As sure as is my belief in CHRIST, so sure am I that if I thus labour, it will not be in vain. No, we we shall be preparing the mansion of our hearts, so that if CHRIST should come in the ensuing year, and summon us to go hence, we shall be ready to comply. We shall take up the guard and post which the Apostles have left us, we shall tarry and watch with CHRIST, and we shall partake in the blessing promised to those servants whom, when their LORD cometh, He shall find watching.

P. A.

SERMON XXXVI.

THE AGONY OF OUR

OUR LORD.

Tuesday before Easter.

ST. LUKE XXII. 44.

AND BEING IN AN AGONY HE PRAYED MORE EARNESTLY, AND HIS SWEAT WAS AS IT WERE GREAT DROPS OF BLOOD FALLING

DOWN TO THE GROUND.

THERE is something most painfully interesting to the mind of the thoughtful Christian in these pregnant words. Let us reverently dwell upon them and be taught by them the intensity of the love of CHRIST, and the heinousness of that sin which so painfully bruised the heel of HIM Who has abolished death, and wrought for the outcast race of man pardon and deliverance. Who is it of Whom these words are true? Who is it that being in an Agony prayed more earnestly? Who is it Whose sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground? Who? but the SON of GOD MOST HIGH, Who was also born miraculously by the conception of the HOLY GHOST of the Virgin Mary. HE Who uniting the two natures human and Divine, in the One CHRIST came to be our Ransom. There is a most astounding mystery in the Incarnation, and when we have brought our faith fully

when we believe and con

up to the Gospel standard ... fess that our LORD JESUS CHRIST, the Son of God, is GOD and Man-GOD, of the substance of the FATHER, begotten before the worlds, and Man, of the substance of His Mother, born in the world-Perfect GoD and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting equal to the FATHER as touching His GODHEAD, and inferior to the FATHER as touching His Manhood-Who, although HE be GoD and Man, yet He is not two but one CHRIST-One, not by conversion of the GODHEAD into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into GOD-ONE altogether not by confusion of substance, but by unity of Person . . . when in all the unsophisticated fulness of its mystery we really and truly admit the solemn fact of the Incarnation-when we are content to believe that the Immortal became mortal, although we cannot understand how it could so be, then we are in a condition to consider how the Impassible could suffer. The Mystery is, in the Incarnation, in the becoming flesh of the Son of GOD. Hence it is that heresies, both modern and ancient, are so frequently to be dated from an imperfect belief in the thorough GODHEAD of the CHRIST Who died for us. The heresy of the Nestorians is not extinct, and there are still those who scruple not to distinguish between CHRIST and GOD, and to deny the very and true GODHEAD of the CHRIST in His every act. Once receive wholly into the mind and heart the truth that Perfect GOD is also Perfect Man, and you then can meditate with becoming reverence upon His Sufferings. Once believe that GOD has become Man, and then all the circumstances related of His intense Sufferings follow as the natural consequence of the iniquities of us all being laid upon HIM. That He Who was to be the Ransom of His people should suffer, is most clearly

revealed in the fifty-third chapter of the Book of Isaiah, that Prophet who is so commonly styled the Evangelical Prophet, and to whom with no inconsiderable fitness is assigned the name of the Jewish Evangelist. We read of the promised Messiah that "HE was to be a Man of sorrows, oppressed, afflicted, wounded, bruised, brought to slaughter, cut off from the living," and so exactly does this belong to the CHRIST Who was to come, that those of the Jews who resolved to expect a glorious Messiah have been compelled to invent two,-one a suffering Messiah of the tribe of Ephraim-the other a conquering King of the tribe of Judah. Of the fallacy of this distinction there can be but one opinion, for there is no such Messiah ever named in Scripture as of Ephraim: and whenever the MESSIAH is named, HE is always represented in one and the same Person, "the seed of the Woman-(not seeds as of many) the seed of Abraham, the Son of David-the HE Who was to come." It will indeed be sufficient for Christians to hear St. Paul say of the SON of Man that HE "must needs have suffered," and St. Peter tells us, "Now the SPIRIT of CHRIST which was in the Prophets testified beforehand the sufferings of CHRIST." But the gloss of the Jews that there were to be two Messiahs, one a suffering Victim, and the other a glorious Conqueror, is in itself a most overwhelming, though undesigned testimony to the truth of CHRIST'S Mission; for, was HE not at once a Victim Who suffered, and a Conqueror Who did gloriously? His two-fold character is herein most accurately pourtrayed. And that CHRIST should suffer, would seem to have been a compact between HIM and the FATHER. "Of a truth against the Holy Child JESUS, (as we read in the Acts of the Apostles) Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were