Another thing is here suggested, namely, while the future glory gives strength to bear the present trial, the present trial in turn will heighten the fruition of the future glory. I have said, no comparison can be instituted; but there is a contrast which the delivered soul will feel, and which will fill it with wonder-so sudden, so perfect. Mark that weary disciple, who had a long and severe discipline, and a sorrowing experience; whose sensibilities were mostly ministers of pain; whose clayey tabernacle was often turned into a prison by thick and brooding infirmities; who realized little faith and frequent fears-conflicts, doubts, sufferings, for years his bosom companions, till he seems to cleave to them, as though they were his inheritance. The hour of redemption at length arrives the submerging waters are passed: and in an instant, the celestial glory stands all revealed. As the darkness settles heavily here, the light opens transportingly there; and as the body is sending out the last moaning sounds of death, the spirit begins to hear and even join in those heavenly melodies. To such an one-to one coming out of that tribulation, rising above those billows, parting forever with those pains and glooms and labors, but remembering them all how refreshing must be that rest; how sweet that peace; how glorious that triumph; how immeasurably heightened all that joyous possession and experience by the scenes which have been gone through. We are lost here: we know but little. Blessed shall we be, if we reach that state, and learn by experience the riches and the mysteries of its glory.

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We see here the firm ground for the grace of patience; and how lovely is this grace; how important that we possess it; that it grow strong; that there be put into it firm nerves and sinews, so that we be able to bear the afflictions we cannot shun; not only the momentary, but those wearying burdens, which can only be laid down with the burden of our mortality. Happy those who thus endure to the end, and show, through all, the patience of the saints.

Let me say, finally, if these are light afflictions, these joys of sense are also light joys; these are shadowy and vain possessions. How low and mean, to be the great object of pursuit to one made in the image and for the service of God; and how these things must look in the retrospect of a lost eternity! If lost, you will see them then as the price of your soul. You will know that you bartered heaven for that now perished baseness. You will behold it in the distance, a floating trifle, a receding speck of dirt; and yet it was the price of your soul. Let me remind you that soon you will leave the little things, the gildings, the baubles, and the vanities, and go forth to the substantial, the infinite, the eternal. Awake! watch! strive! or this lying world will work for you, and lay upon you a dreadful burden; the burden of your Maker's curse, because you would not hear his counsel, and embrace his Son. You will lie under it forever-a far more exceeding and eternal weight of misery.

XVII.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE CROSS THE POWER OF GOD.*

BY REV. NOAH PORTER, D.D.

PASTOR OF THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN FARMINGTON, CT.

"For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God."-1 COR. . 18.

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THIS is the language of triumph. It is an appeal of the apostle to those who had been the witnesses and the subjects of his labors, that the preaching, or rather the doctrine, of the cross, was doing that for men which all the wisdom of the world had failed to do, and in comparison of which all things beside were unimportant. It was morally renovating and saving them-saving them from the power of sin and the misery of the second death: and so, to those who came under its influence, despised though it was by such as neglected it, and lay perishing in their sin, it was distinctively and demonstrably the power of God. Where is the wise?" he proceeds to say, "where is the reviler? where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

The doctrine of the cross to them that are saved is the power of God. In illustration of this, I would show what is the doctrine of the cross, and how this doctrine, to them that are saved, is the power of God.

I. What is the doctrine of the cross. As explained by the apostle, it is the doctrine of "Christ crucified." It is not, however, a mere history of his crucifixion; for this, taken separately from its relations, and import, would have no such efficacy as is attributed to the doctrine. Thousands of men have been crucified who have lived unknown and died unfelt. Nor does it refer to the suf* Preached at the annual meeting of the General Association of Connecticut, June 18th, 1850, and published at their request.

ferings of Christ on the cross, exclusively of his previous sufferings; but to his sufferings and humiliation, generally designated by the cross as having been consummated in the cross: nor yet are these to be taken exclusively of his obedience, for having been voluntarily endured, they implied obedience of the highest character. The doctrine of the cross is the scheme of doctrine concerning "Christ crucified" generally; and, among other particulars essential to it, these two are especially important-the peculiarity of his person, and the main end of his death. It is to the last of these more particularly that I invite your attention.

Assuming that Paul preached "Christ crucified" as being God incarnate, "of the seed of David according to the flesh," and "the Son of God according to the spirit of holiness," "God manifest in the flesh," I would show that, in respect to the main end of his death, the doctrine of the cross as preached by him is the doctrine of the atonement: that is, that Christ died, not as a martyr only, sealing his testimony with his blood; nor as an example only, leading the way to God, and encouraging us through suffering and shame, to follow him; nor only as an impressive manifestation of God in himself to bring us to repentance, and through our repentance procure our justification before the eternal throne,-but as an expiatory sacrifice freely offered to God, and, as such, the ground of our justification, on our believing in him for that vital benefit.

He who was in the beginning with God and was God, was made flesh and dwelt among us. Seeing the race perishing in apostasy from God, he appeared for our deliverance; he became one of us; he united himself to the race in its fallen state; cast in his lot with us; was made under the law as we are; was subject to its curse in respect to the evils of life and the suffering of death, in common with us; and, joining himself to us in the experience of a common lot, he was joined to us also in the tenderest sympathy: "took upon him our infirmities and carried our sorrows," in the feeling of our burdens, superadded to sufferings of his own; entered into the depths of our woe with a sensibility heightened by the purity that was pained at the sense of our sin, as well as the benevolence which shared the sense of our sufferings. Now are the toil, sorrow, and death, to which we are subject, to be regarded as divine inflictions for sin, and in this sense penal, however through grace, they have a disciplinary use? Is it so, as Moses, "the man of God," in his memorable "prayer," said, that we are consumed by his anger, and by his wrath we are troubled?” And to this dread lot was Christ subjected, although himself was not only sinless, but divine, coming among us for our redemption. Could there be no exemption for him-no mitigation of the curse? but, on the contrary, did it fall on him, interposing himself for our protection in all its terribleness? so that his visage was more marred than any man's, and his form more than the sons of men? in a world of sorrows, signalized as a man of sorrows and ac

quainted with grief? And when, beside the sufferings incident to humanity by the necessity of its condition, he was subject to all manner of abuse from the malignity of men, was there no voice from heaven for his vindication, and no legion of angels for his rescue? And when in immediate prospect of the last dreadful scene he prayed that if it were possible the cup might pass from him, was it not possible? And when forsaken of human sympathy, and given up to the will of his enemies to be mocked and crucified, was he also forsaken of God? and even when God was challenged by his crucifiers to deliver him, if he would have him, would he not deliver him? Must the dread sentence proceed with unbending severity until he who was the Prince of life bowed his head in death? And was all this ordained of God, as holy men, divinely inspired, had foretold, "to make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness?" or as Paul says, "to declare the righteousness of God for the remission of sins, that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus." Then I say, and this is what I mean when I say that Christ died to make atonement for sin-the sins of the world-he died that we might live, not merely to bring us to repentance, but to make repentance availing for our forgiveness; or in the language of Butler, "put us into a capacity of escaping future punishment, and obtaining future happiness." I would not say that Christ suffered the wrath of God. He was, and he could not but know that he was, God's well-beloved Son, but he was one of us, "all whose days are passed away in his wrath." I would not say that he suffered the penalty of the divine law,-this comprehends the eternal as well as temporal consequences of sin,-but he did suffer, and that in great measure, those temporal sufferings, which, coming on us, are penal. They were not punishment as appointed to him,punishment is evil inflicted on the guilty,-but they were appointed to him, and most freely borne as the divinely constituted substitute for the punishment due to us, to answer its end, and remove the necessity of its infliction on our return to God by him. They were not such, either in kind or degree, as those must endure whose end is to be punished; but they were great and dreadful, beyond all other experience in the present life. The sufferings of the cross were dreadful, and to those were added mental sufferings, more so. I cannot enter into the mystery of his agony in the garden, or of his complaint on the cross. I can imagine him to have suffered as none but one who loved as he did could suffer; under his sense of the ingratitude and malignity of men, I can imagine him under his own burden to have had an overwhelming sense of ours. him troubled in spirit at the grave of Lazarus. I see him weep. I hear him groan. It was in sympathy with the griefs, and in view of the death, the corruption, and the grave, which sin had caused in the world; and, when in the garden he had in prospect, and on the cross the experience, of his own sufferings for sin, I imagine his

I see

sympathy with a world of sinners sinking under the wrath of God into everlasting woe, to have been moved to its utmost depths. I know, too, that there is such a thing as the hiding of God's face; and that to those who love him, it gives pain which they alone can understand and feel: I can suppose this, in the experience of Jesus, to have occasioned a horror of darkness which "the only begotten of the Father" alone could experience. Still I regard the subject as involved in mystery, knowing only that his sufferings were inconceivably great. It is not, however, to the greatness of his sufferings, so much as the greatness of the sufferer, that the Scriptures ascribe the efficacy of his death as a propitiatory sacrifice. How much more," says Paul, "shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot unto God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" It was saying much to speak of our great High Priest as "offering himself unto God." It was saying more to speak of him as offering "himself unto God without spot." But when he proceeds to declare who he was that offered himself; when he proceeds to say that he was not a man only, but also the eternal God; that his offering of himself was through, or by, "the eternal Spirit," well might he make the appeal: and we tremble and rejoice to hear it, "How much more?" If the dignity of the sufferer and his relation to God, could be of any account at all, in the adequateness of his sufferings as a substitute for the punishment of a rebel world, what limit can there be to the efficacy of his death for this end, who was not only one of the world, but also the world's Creator and Lord?

That this is the doctrine of the cross, as it was preached by Paul, appears

1. From the importance which he attaches to the cross. Preaching the cross was in his view preaching the gospel. The cross was his constant, and, in a sense, his only theme,-the beginning and end, the sum and substance of his teachings; all deriving from this their distinctive character. The same importance is attributed to the cross in the other Scriptures. This was the great object of the Jewish ritual. As the apostle remarks, all things are by the law purged with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no remission; and the end of these expiations he declares to have been the foreshadowing of the great sacrifice in the death of Christ. This was the object to which the spirit of inspiration turned the gazing eyes of the ancient prophets. The scene which excited their most eager inquiries as the Spirit opened to them the curtain of futurity, was "the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow." This was the theme on which Moses and Elias, the giver of the law and the chief of the prophets, appearing in glory with our Saviour on the Mount of Transfiguration, held converse with him. They "spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." This, in its relation to his sub