had, just before, seen him institute and celebrate the mystic supper, attended him in his last retreat to this once delightful, but now tremendous place. Well might a good man say, "All places are happy, or miserable, in proportion as God vouchsafes or denies his gracious presence therein." In Gethsemane, where Jesus had so often experienced the ravishing consolations of his heavenly Father's countenance; in this very Gethsemane, must the same blessed Jesus experience the first outpourings of his Almighty Father's wrath. Here it was, that his righteous soul became exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Here it was, that the spotless victim began to feel the dreadful weight of imputed guilt, and the terrors of avenging justice.-When his inward agony forced his very blood from its veins, which even made its way through his three-fold vesture, and fell* clotted

* Luke xxii. 44. And his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground: meaning, as it should seem, that the agony our Lord was in, forced, at once, his blood from its finer vessels, and the sweat from all his pores; which (the sweat and the blood) mingling in their fall, were by the extreme coldness and rigour of the weather, condensed and frozen into solid clots, before they reached the ground. The word wow, rendered as it were, does not, I apprehend, import that real blood did not actually transude from his body; but that it was not blood alone. Add to this, that, as Bengelius well observes, won relates, not to ȧqualos but to Egow Cos xaraCavvoνres; and implies, as another learned foreigner observes, that, his sweat was so mixed and discoloured with the concomitant blood, as to resemble, in its united appearance, mere blood only. Luke de Bruges, the critic last referred to, has a very valuable note on the passage: Illud, quasi, non significat, hunc non fuisse verum sanguinem, sed non fuisse verè guttas sanguinis, sed guttas aqueas mixtas sanguine; quod etiam fieri possit per naturam vim intus patientem, ac proinde per poras ejicientem unà cum acquâ sanguinem: præsertim ubi corpus est rarum ac aeticatum, et sanguis subtilis, ut in Christo indubié erat.

The note of Bengelius is equally judicious: goucos Grumi, à Igepar, i. e. anga. Ogouco aqualos, guttæ spissæ et concretæ veri sanguinis. Vis particulæ was cadit super gouco, non su er ȧualos, ut patet ex epitheto, ejusque plurali, xaraCaroles. Sanguis per minores guttulas è poris manans, concrescebat propter copiam. Si sudor noņ fuisset sanguineus, mentio sanguinis planè abesse poterat: nam vocabulum Igouco etiam per se competebat sudori spisso.

to the ground; when himself lay prostrate on the earth with his garments literally rolled in blood; when, as the surety of the covenant, and as the substitute of his people, he bore the sins and carried the sorrows of the whole believing world; when, with the names of his mystic Israel upon his heart, our Great High Priest, Jesus, the Son and the Lamb of God, sustained intensively, that punishment for sin, which must otherwise have been levied, extensively, on sinners, to all eternity: when he cried, in the bitterness of his soul, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; -he was seen, he was heard, he was deplored of angels. They joined with the agonizing petitioner. They united their supplications with his: and the prayers of angels went up, for once, through the hands of a Mediator.

But it was not possible for the cup to pass from him. The decree must be accomplished. The covenant of grace must be fulfilled. God's people must be saved, The Saviour, therefore, must die. Himself was sensible of this. Hence, though as man, his anguish induced him to wish that, if possible, he might drink no deeper of the penal cup; yet, as party to the covenant of redemption, he, in the same breath, consents to drink the dregs and wring them out: adding, Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done; if sinners can be saved, and thy Son not die, let thy Son be spared; but if otherwise, if my people must perish, or thy Șon be slain, O save my people and slay thy Son.-Alternate grief, and wonder, heaved the celestial bosoms of attending angels: grief, at the sufferings he endured; wonder, at his magnanimity of love to man; love, which the many waters of divine indignation could not quench, nor all the floods of horror and anguish drown.

Angels saw him receive the insidious kiss, by which he was betrayed. They saw him arraigned at

the bar of the very men, who were indebted for their creation to the word of his power; and who owed the stations they bore, to the disposals of his providence. Angels heard, and shuddered at the sentence, by which he was condemned to die. They saw him mocked, and struck, and clothed with insulting scarlet. He was seen of angels, when he deigned to wear a crown of thorns. They beheld, and if angels can weep, they wept, when he was tied to the ignominious pillar, and scourged with rods of knotted wire; when, according to the prediction of the royal prophet, The ploughers ploughed upon his back, and made long furrows.

Angels saw, and astonishment was in heaven, when he hid not his face from shame and spitting. They saw, when, through the extremity of grief and torture, his beauty consumed away, like as it were a moth fretting a garment: when he could say, Thy rebuke hath broken my heart; I am full of heaviness; I looked for some to take pity on me, but there was none; neither found I any to comfort me. The man Christ Jesus, being formed without sin, and by the immediate agency of the Holy Ghost, was doubtless, transcendently fair, and augustły beautiful. Hence his human nature was compared to the temple: a structure eminently holy, and peculiarly elegant. Prior to his sufferings, he was, literally, fairer than the children of men. It was not, till his blessed person had been disfigured with wounds, and emaciated with grief; until his face was foul with weeping, and on his eyelids sat the shadow of death; that he is said to have had neither form nor comeliness; but that his face was marred more than any man's, and his countenance than the sons of men.

Angels thronged around the majestic sufferer, when he was led forth to crucifixion, as a lamb to the slaughter. They saw him nailed to the

instrument of death, after he had fainted beneath its weight. And, had I an angel's tongue, I should find it impossible to tell what angels felt, when they heard him groan, from the deepest recesses of his agonizing heart, that exclamation of overwhelming woe;-My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?-Forsaken, cried the deserted Saviour. Angels caught the dismal accents. Forsaken, forsaken, the sad and astonished choir replied.

Surely, all heaven was, at that dreadful moment, emptied of its inhabitants. Surely, not angels only, but the spirits likewise of just men made perfect (who had been saved on the credit of that great sacrifice which was now offering up), started from their thrones, and dropt their crowns; quitted, for a while, the abodes of bliss, and, with pensive admiration and drooping wings, hovered round the cross of their departing Lord. If ever sorrow was in heaven; if ever the harps of the blessed were suspended, silent, and unstrung on the willows of dismay; if ever angels ceased to praise, and glorified souls forgot to sing; if ever the harmony of the sky was, not merely interrupted, but, if it be possible, exchanged for lamentation and mourning and woe:-it must have been during the six tremendous hours (such hours as nature never saw before, nor will ever see again), that the dying Jesus hung upon the tree.

Having, amidst all his personal agonies, detained himself on earth, until he had looked a dying blasphemer into repentance; and until he had made provision for the maintenance of his widowed mother (who stood, weeping and adoring, at the foot of his cross) by committing her to the care and guardianship of his best beloved disciple; he cried, with a loud triumphant voice, It is finished: "I have suffered enough. The types and the prophecies are accomplished. My covenant engag

ments are fulfilled. The debts of my people are paid. I have finished transgression; I have made an end of sin; I have wrought out and brought in an everlasting righteousness.. The law is magnified. Justice is satisfied. My warfare is over. My conflicts are past." His spiritual desertions were now superseded. The light of God's countenance gave the expiring Mediator the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of hea- . viness. The Sun of righteousness goes down without a cloud. He departs in peace, with those comfortable words of filial confidence on his lips, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. Words that pierced the earth to her centre, and shook her in her orbit; cleft the ponderous rocks; rended the vail of the temple, and exposed its sacred, but now superseded arcana, to common view; unlocked the abodes of death; and threw open the graves of many a departed saint, who, probably (as did their triumphant Lord shortly after) rose to die no more, but ascended, in their respective bodies, with him, when he went up from the Mount of Olives.I have already observed, that Christ continued alive on the cross, for the space of six hours. During the last three, there was darkness over all the earth. The sun hid his beams. The dreadful transaction on Mount Calvary

"drove back his chariot. Midnight veil'd the world: "A midnight, nature shudder'd to behold."

Why was the earth darkened? not only to demonstrate the dignity of him that bled, but, perhaps to shadow forth that still more deep and dismal darkness, which the soul of the Messiah was then experiencing, under the awful withdrawings of his Father's countenance. When his Father's sensible presence returned, and Jesus, with his dying breath,