Perfection of Christ.

Christ was this perfect person; and so was such an High Priest as became us, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens, having an unchangeable priesthood, to which he is consecrated for evermore.

These are the reasons of all his labours in love and righteousness: and he was able to merit and go through them, being Jehovah in man; as well as to suffer what he took upon him, being man in Jehovah.

O what a task of unparalleled grace and humility is here! Who could have done such unimpeachable works; but he who is perfect in himself! Who could have done them to render others perfect for ever before God; but one so much above all created perfection, as to have for others an unbounded perfection to spare?

Lord, help me to meditate upon thee, and upon all that thou hast done for my soul! O put on this garment of salvation, this robe of righteousness, which thy blessed hands have perfectly wrought, that it may be my wedding-garment in the day of my espousals when I shall leave the world, and appear before the Majesty on high! This is the righteousness of saints, pure, white, and shining, in which they walk with thee in glory, and in which I also hope to walk, unworthy creature as I am, both with thee and with them. O then shall I appear without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, all-acceptable to God, all illustrious in thee! Lord, what hast thou wrought indeed? Thou hast wrought for me to entitle me to heaven; and thou hast wrought in me to fit me for heaven; a work, as it seems to me, no less difficult than the other; so stubborn and vile am I, and so opposite to thy pure nature is mine. I

Death of Christ.

marvel, and with tears of joy I maryel, at all the mysterious wonders of thy redemption, at thy plain and clear, yet unsearchable love, at thine awful justice magnified even by grace itself, at the kindness thou hast shown, and the goodness thou hast promised, at the never ending line of wisdom in thy holy word, and at the unbounded scene of glory yet before me. I am overwhelmed, I am astonished, at the weight and grandeur of thy divine benevolence. Accept the faculties of my body and soul, all I am and all I have; and let them be found to thy praise, and honour, and glory, both now and at the day of thine appearing! Amen!

CHAP. XI.

ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST.

BEHOLD, and see, if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which was done unto me, wherewith the LORD afflicted me, in the day of his fierce anger.

No, my Jesus, never was sorrow like thine.Thou barest the grief of millions; griefs, which would have sunk those millions into unsufferable woe. Omnipotence itself groaned under the tremendous load, which forced from thy pure and perfect body, not common sweat (the curse inflicted with human labour,) but a dreadful sweat bursting forth in great drops of agonizing blood. O what a doleful cry didst thou utter, and who but thyself can conceive those (to us unknown) pangs and sufferings, which forced from thy sa

Suffering of Christ.

cred lips, My God, my God! why hast thou for

saken me?

The meditation of thy sufferings and death is painful in the sympathy of nature: yet I cannot wish that thou hadst not endured them, nor didst thou fully wish it for thyself. Thou wast contented to be betrayed into the hands of sinful men for this very purpose. It was by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, that all the parts of this solemn event were transacted. And it is for the everlasting interest of me and of thou sands, that all the scriptures concerning thee were thus awfully fulfilled."

Thou truly art the Lamb of God, and, under that figure of innocent purity, was designated in the covenant of grace for human redemption before the foundation of the world. In the fulness of time, thou madest thine appearance in the body prepared for thee, and wast slain, as a victim in sacrifice for thy people, washing them from their sins in thine own blood. Not merely by thy strong crying and tears, though these were frequent; but by the bitterness of death, which it became indispensably necessary for thee to taste, could an atonement be made to the insulted justice of the Godhead. By this burning sacrifice of thyself alone could sin be taken away, according to the unerring wisdom, the indefectable holiness, the provident mercy, of JEHOVAH, in his counsels of faithfulness and truth. And (O astonishing words of that ETERNAL SPIRIT, who gave them to man!) Thou wast MADE SIN, who knewest no sin, that I and such as I, through the grace of faith vouchsafed unto us, might be made the righteousness of God in thee!

Indeed, when I consider thy glorious attributes,

Imperfection of Man.

God of my hope, there is a necessity in the case for the fulfilment and illustration of thine infinite perfections in the salvation of sinners. In thy sight no man living can be justified by himself; for thou art of purer eyes than to behold, without abhorrence, the least iniquity: how then can a mortal man, a man made mortal by inherent and accumulated sin, appear before thee! If I am privileged to enter into thy kingdom, O Lord, I must be presented faultless; for thy word declares it. I must stand before thee without one spot of sin, or I cannot stand at all. My guilty nature must be made whiter than snow: I must be altogether unblameable and unreproveable in thy piercing sight; I must be without spot or wrinkle or any such thing; yea, I must challenge the creation around me, and ask, with all the confidence of unsullied purity, "Who shall lay any thing to my charge? ?" or, "Who can find wherewith to condemn me?" If I cannot stand this challenge in the face of heaven, earth, and hell, holding the record of thy law in my hands; or, if, in other words, I should appear before Thee, thou righte ous Judge, with one only sin upon my body and soul; that one only sin, like the one sin which ruined my first parents with all their posterity, would suffice to sink me down from thy presence for ever. It would plunge me into the blackness of darkness, beyond the possibility of help or hope, throughout a dismal eternity. But, O the loving kindness of God my Saviour! I shall be able to stand boldly, without fear or blame, before the throne of the Majesty on High; not on account of works of righteousness which I have done, or could do; but pleading the record of thy gospel only, upon the ground of thy divine atone

Perfection of the Saviour.

ment. The infinite sufficiency of this shall swallow up all my sin and sinfulness, like an unbounded ocean absorbing one atom of impurity; and thus, while all my vileness shall shrink away and be lost for ever, I, a monument of mercy, through faith in thee, my God and Saviour, shall be clothed with unimpeachable righteousness, and every perfection of holiness and beauty!

So the thief, upon the cross, was redeemed, purified, and justified, and could bring to the unspotted holiness of heaven, an holiness equally unspotted; or he could never have been there. He had previously done nothing but enormous transgressions, till he was suspended by the side of his Saviour; and then it was clearly impossible for him to perform one personal act of righteousness to save himself.-But, blessed Redeemer, he was saved through wonderful faith in thine! If thou hadst not been JEHOVAH as well as Jesus, a Person in the ever-living Godhead united with dying manhood; how could all this efficacious merit have existed! how could so much as one wretched, helpless, sinner have been saved! But thou art IMMANUEL, God with us, God in our nature; and therefore to Thee, nothing was impossible. O the depth of the riches of thy grace and love!

Lord, what is sin, that thou thyself couldest not be spared; when, from the souls of thy people, it was taken off, and laid upon thee? Can any thing more solemnly describe the hatred of the divine nature to sin, and the severity of divine justice upon account of it, than the pangs, the horrors, the cries of thee, my Jesus, thou suf fering son of God? And if thou wert sacrificed for sin, who in thyself knewest no sin; what shall