selves that great good of humbling ourselves before God, searching and confessing our past offences, and beseeching HIM that the Cross, which He has laid on us, may be in His own mysterious way united to the Cross of His Son, and made profitable to our salvation.

VOL. VI.

F

SERMON CLXXIII.

PRESSING ONWARD TO THE CROSS.

PREACHED ON PALM SUNDAY.

ST. LUKE xii. 50.

"I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished?"

Most persons know something of the feeling of suspense and anxious curiosity, when they are looking forward to any thing very serious, any thing which they think will greatly affect their happiness; especially when they have been a long time kept in expectation of it. The hours, days, months, years of waiting appear to them more and more tedious; they are more and more alive and awake with curiosity, to know what sort of a thing it will be when present, which now at a distance occupies their mind so much.

No one will wonder that this should be the case, when the thing we look on to is pleasant; but there is a feeling of the same sort of impatience, even though it be ever so painful. As those who are standing on some very high place, when they turn giddy, are half tempted to cast themselves down, so persons on the edge of any great and terrible change are more or less inclined, oftentimes, to plunge themselves into it: any thing, to their irritated minds, appears better than doubt and delay: they seem to themselves to know the worst, and not to care how soon it comes.

Now our Blessed LORD, as one of us in all things, sin only excepted, had His share of this feeling, so far as it is natural and innocent; at least, so we may understand His saying in the text. He is speaking of the effects of His coming, the sacred fire which would be kindled in the whole world by His HOLY SPIRIT, the un

happy division and warfare which His Gospel, though meant to be a Gospel of peace, should every where produce. "I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?.. Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division1."

With these expectations of what should befall His Church, our LORD mingles also the sure and certain thought, which lay deep in His Divine Soul, of His own sufferings. "I have a baptism to be baptized with;" that is, "A flood of pain and fear and anguish, both of Soul and Body, is preparing in the counsels of GOD to overwhelm ME: I came into the world on purpose to endure it, and it is never out of My thoughts; rather it occupies them more and more, and the time seems longer and longer, as I draw nearer the great trial and Agony, the bloody Sweat, the Cross and Passion."

He knew how bitter it would be to flesh and blood; knew it far better than any of the children of men, even though they were inspired Prophets, ever knew of the pain they should suffer; for HE was the Creator both of His own soul and body, and of the very Cross on which they were to be tormented. None could know, as HE, what He should suffer when He entered on the work. Yet here you see what His mind was. Instead of shrinking from it, HE was the more eager to begin: so high, so courageous was His love to us, and His zeal for His FATHER'S glory; so complete the condescension with which He entered into this and all other innocent feelings of ours.

He seems in the very next chapter to express the same kind of feeling, when told by the Pharisees of Herod's purpose to kill HIM. "Go ye and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected." As if HE should say, "Herod need not trouble himself about slaying ME; I know well when it will be My time to be pertectea ;to be fully offered up in sacrifice for the sins of My people ;-but it cannot be just yet; 'I must walk to-day, and to-morrow, and the day following;' I must enter into Jerusalem, for it is a law of GOD's Providence, that a Prophet can hardly perish any where else. And all this must take some little time."

Thus our SAVIOUR expresses HIMSELF, Somewhat in the same

1 Luke xii. 49. 51.

way as an ordinary child of Adam might, when he found himself drawing near the great object of his whole life. And there are many other signs, in St. Luke's Gospel particularly, how His thoughts and wishes were continually turning that one way. "HE stedfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem :" there was no thought of drawing back on account of the sufferings which He foresaw there; rather, like a true and brave warrior, who would " tread the winepress alone," HE went on calmly and resolutely towards His great end, the saving of us by suffering. The expectation of it ran through all His sayings and doings, especially in whatever fell from HIM about taking up the Cross: that famous saying, which to His Disciples at the time must have seemed far beyond their understanding, but which they would understand when they came in sight of our LORD's Own Cross. The Agony in the garden, that deep mysterious trial, was in this way but the completion and perfection of what He had been enduring inwardly, during the whole time of His ministry. He was straitened, as He had been before, only far more intensely, till His great work should be accomplished.

To the children of this world the time seems long, until they have tried such and such a project, by which they expect to mend their fortunes; till they meet such and such a friend, from whom they have been long separated; till they receive such a favour or benefit, on which they have set their hearts. But to the Son of God the time seemed long, until HE should be betrayed by His friend, seized by His enemies, bound, spitted on, shamefully entreated, scourged, nailed to the Cross, and hanged on it; till His Soul should be "exceeding sorrowful, even unto death," so as to force great drops of bloody sweat from His holy and suffering Body; nay, till He should have to endure that unknown grief, which caused HIM to cry out, "My GoD, My God, why hast Thou forsaken ME?" He felt as it were straitened and uneasy till these things were accomplished: so great was His love of souls, so unspeakable His anxiety to deliver a lost world from eternal ruin, and to pay down the price of His Blood for the Church, which He was to redeem and unite to HIMSELF for ever.

In His mighty works and manifestations of power, He had continually been looking on to this. On His first coming to the Baptist, to be set apart for His great sacrifice, He used words

which most likely have some reference to His future sufferings: "Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness;" "thus," that is, 'by being plunged in afflictions, which are to come round about ME like water, and then rising again out of them in the power of the quickening SPIRIT." This seems to be part of the meaning of those deep and mysterious words.

And when He began to work miracles, it would seem as if the secret silent feeling of His future sufferings accompanied HIм all along, and caused HIм, in a wonderful way, already to bear the burthen of those whom He came to relieve. Somewhat of this sort St. Matthew appears to signify, where he says that our SAVIOUR, by healing the sick, fulfilled what Isaiah had written concerning HIM, "HIMSELF took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses." Accordingly, in many of His miracles He showed tokens of a heavy heart. When about to heal one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech," He sighed, and looking up to heaven, said, Be opened." HE wept by the grave of Lazarus, though He was just on the point of raising him. And when setting out into Judæa to perform that miracle, HE spake words which showed how straitened HE was in heart, how earnest until His hour came. His disciples had objected to His going again into Judæa, because the Jews of late had sought to stone. HIM. His answer was, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not." As much as to say, "My time is measured, and it is short, and I cannot afford to lose any of it:" or, as He had before warned the same disciples about the man born blind; "I must work the work of HIM that sent ME while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work."

Thus, as He in His merciful and infinite condescension limited HIMSELF as His creatures are limited,-HE who is the God of Eternity limited HIMSELF to a certain time,—so He set us an example, who are all of us so limited, which way our thoughts should tend. Men are apt to think they shall die contented, when they have satisfied this or that wish, when they have done this or that work, when they have made so much money, when they have obtained such and such an advantage for those whom they leave behind them; and that favourite object, whatever it be, haunts them night and day, and colours in a manner almost all their thoughts and words. So were our blessed MASTER's sayings tinged all over