violated law of God-and sufferings and death the Son of God, in man's nature, the representative of his guilt, endured, that he might discharge man from punishment. It was thus that he "bore our sins and carried our sorrows."

You have listened, during the past week, in the services of the church, to the simple but affecting history of the passion of your Saviour. You beheld the cup of sorrow presented to him. "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done." He drank of that cup of trembling, into which were poured the phials of divine wrath. Fear, dismay, agony unutterable filled his soul. For, brethren, let us not forget, that, though the Son of God, he was also man-man capable of pain and agony, like ourselves. And what must have been that agony, which started, through every pore of his body, drops of blood?! What must have been that darkness under which the Son of the Father cried out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" These agonies display the infinite demerit of the sin which produced them. Let us contemplate" them with abhorrence of our iniquities, lest our unrepented sins expose us to this awful indignation. And let us contemplate the sufferings and death of the Son of God with holy hope; for they are the price of our redemption. By his stripes we are healed.

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Yes, my brethren; he whom we lately beheld extended on the cross, and whom we lately followed with mourning hearts to the sepulchre, is now exalted to be a Prince and Saviour, to give repentance and remission of sins. Of this God has given triumphant assurance, in that he hath raised his Son

Jesus Christ from the dead. He has shaken off the garments of corruption, and shines forth in the brightness of the Father's glory. He has loosed the bands of the grave, and broken the sceptre of the prince of darkness, and stands forth the King of the kings of the earth, the Conqueror of death and hell. "O death, he hath been thy plagues; O grave, he has been thy destruction." How illustrious the glory which encircled the Saviour when he forsook the dark mansions of the tomb! How awful that majesty before which the hosts of darkness fled dismayed, and that power which bound in everlasting chains death and the grave! How worthy of triumphant adoration that love which opens the kingdom of heaven to all believers, and prepares for them the seats of everlasting glory! "Sing, O ye heavens; for the Lord hath done it: shout, ye lower parts of the earth: break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and glorified himself in Israel."

When the whole world is represented as interested in that glorious plan of redemption which restores man from the ruins of the fall, and places him in that new world wherein dwelleth righteousnesswhen the heavens and the earth are summoned to bear their part in the chorus of thanksgiving to the world's Redeemer, to the Son of God rising in triumph from the tomb-let not those who are the immediate objects of these transcendent blessings, let not "Jacob, whom he hath redeemed, and Israel, whom he hath glorified," remain indifferent and insensible: let not these glorious and sublime truths, because they transcend our feeble comprehension, be slighted or rejected. We find in them. VOL. III.

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the means and pledges of virtue, and peace, and felicity, which nature and reason cannot supply; and it is therefore our highest wisdom to embrace them on account of their practical benefits, inscrutable as may be their speculative character. Many are the feelings within us which long for immortality; many are the feelings within us which turn back with horror from the dark thought of the annihilation of being; many are the suggestions with which reason aims to fortify those hopes of an endless existence with which nature would fain light up the darkness of that tomb. But on a subject so tremendous, so interesting as the grave and what is beyond it, the anxious soul seeks relief from all her doubts and all her fears in some fixed assurance of the Being who made, and who is to judge her. Amidst those apprehensions which the sense of guilt inspires, she looks with trembling solicitude for some mode devised by infinite wisdom and power, and accepted by infinite holiness and justice, by which she may escape the displeasure of her eternal Judge, which conscience tells her she deserves, and secure that immortal felicity of which she feels her purest services can never render her worthy. This mode of deliverance and acceptance, this assurance of life and immortality, are proclaimed by Jesus Christ the Son of God, and by him only. Satisfying divine justice, vindicating the divine holiness, sustaining the penalties of the violated law, he hath removed every obstacle which the just and holy character and government of the Ruler of the universe could oppose to the pardon of his rebellious creatures; and having himself burst the bands of the grave, he proclaims with power-"I am the resurrection and the life: he

that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die."

Every feeling of nature would wish to cherish as true, the assurance that life and immortality are brought to light by the resurrection of Christ from the dead: it claims our belief by an evidence which wilful prejudice and obstinate incredulity can alone withstand. The disciples of a man crucified as a malefactor, they who forsook their dying Master, suddenly became bold, courageous, undismayed in danger, in persecution, in death: illiterate, feeble, contemned, they established a pure, and holy, and self-denying religion on the ruins of those superstitions and corrupt systems which held so firm a hold on the prejudices, the power, the pride, and the passions of mankind. This must have been the Lord's doing: this moral conquest, this conversion of a corrupt and opposing world to a pure faith and a holy practice, could have been effected only by divine power, that divine power by which the Master whom they beheld crucified was raised from the dead. This was the truth forced on their own tardy belief, and which they attested by signs, and wonders, and mighty works, and to the belief of which they converted an unwilling and incredulous world.

Brethren, let us then seriously consider, if Christ be indeed raised from the dead, and is seated in power and majesty, the King of kings and Lord of lords, great will be the peril of rejecting or neglecting his offers of mercy, great the peril of remaining in rebellion against his righteous sway: and in rebellion against his righteous sway are all who have not, by the power of his grace, become

dead to sin, and new creatures in holiness. "God, who at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds."* "Great is the mystery of godliness: God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory."+ "Put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit," he is declared to be "the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead." Let us not then neglect this wonderful counsel of God for our salvation; let us not be unaffected by this most stupendous display of divine power, and love, and mercy; let us not reject the offers of peace and salvation from the God whom we have offended, and the Sovereign who is finally to judge us. But, on the contrary, let us gratefully adore the majesty, the mercy, and the grace of the Godhead in the plan of redemption, effected in the incarnation, the obedience, the sufferings, the death, and the triumphant resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Let it be our great object to be conformed to the likeness of his death, in mortifying all our corrupt affections, and to experience the power of his resurrection in living a new and holy life, that we may enjoy the new and lively hopes of everlasting glory which his resurrection assures to all true believers. And to testify our belief in our once crucified but now highly exalted Saviour-to show forth our confidence, our gratitude, our love to him who died for us, and for us rose again—let us humbly and joyfully advance