Assuredly, the blessed Stephen saw the Lord in Heaven standing at the Right Hand; and the Angels said to His disciples, 'He shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into Heaven.'

2

"We know that 'in the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.' Him, having also become Man for our salvation, we worship, not as one equal, because become Man in a Body of equal nature, but as the Lord, having taken in addition the Form of a servant, and the Maker and Creator having come to be in the creature, that having in it delivered all, He might bring the world to the Father, and make all at peace, both the things in Heaven and the things on earth. For thus we both acknowledge His Godhead with the Father, and we worship His Incarnate Presence."

A pious mind, then, cannot but, with great reverence, think of those Blessed Wounds, through which its own redemption was wrought by Him Who, being "God and Man, was One Christ," "not by conversion of the Godhead into Flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God."

My Lord, there is one very solemn subject to which I must refer, in connexion with this, belonging to the deepest mystery of our Redemption, how Holy Scripture lays especial weight not upon the Death of our Lord only, but upon the shedding of His Blood. To your Lordship I need not say,

how through the Old Testament in type, and the Epistle to the Hebrews very specially, in reality, the shedding of Blood is insisted upon, as that which is atoning: "By the Death of One many became righteous." But the mode of that Atoning Death, as typified by God's appointment, from the very gates of Paradise, was by the shedding of Blood. This was the special ground why the Blood was to be shed on the earth like water, not to be eaten. It is the life of the brute creation, which was offered to God, as an atonement for sin, and a type of the Blood of Christ. All sacrifices, types of the Atoning Sacrifice, (except the scape-goat, which was an image of the sin being carried quite away,) were with shedding of the blood. St. Paul sums up in few words the varied Hebrew ritual, which yet, because it was varied, set the more continually before the eyes, that "without shedding of blood there was no remission." The animal varied: it was bullock, or heifer, or ram, or goat, or lamb, or turtle-dove, or pigeon. But in all alike the blood was shed. The mode of offering the blood was various. It was sprinkled on the four corners of the Altar, or upon the side of the Altar, or poured forth at its base; in the Holy Place, or in the Holy of holies; on the altar of incense within the Holy Place, or upon, or before the Mercy seat; or (in the case of the red heifer, simply) "towards the tabernacle of the congregation seven times;" or it was sprinkled or put upon the priest himself, and

The

his garments, and his sons, and his sons' garments, or the people, or upon the lepers, or those with issues, or on the leprous house. St. Paul adds that "he sprinkled the book of the law," as well as the people," saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. Moreover, he sprinkled likewise with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry: And almost all things are by the law purged with blood: and without shedding of blood is no remission 3." That which was sprinkled every where, was Blood. ends of the sacrifices were various; the Passover, and the burnt-offering, and the peace-offering, the sin-offering of ignorance, for the priest, the congregation, the ruler, or the private person, the trespassoffering or the sin-offering; but in all the blood was sprinkled. And so we come to the New Testament, the substance of these shadows, to Him whom through these shadows, the devout under the law looked on to, and was justified by his faith in Him who was to come. And there, there meet us, not only that actual Sacrifice, and the history of His Precious Bloodshedding in the Gospels, but all the statements of the efficacy, not of the Death only, but of the Blood of Christ.

"Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His Blood." "Much more then,

3 Heb. ix. 20-22.

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being now justified by His Blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him." "In whom we have redemption, through His Blood." "But now, in Christ Jesus, ye, who sometimes were far off, were made nigh by the Blood of Christ." "And, having made peace through the Blood of His Cross, by Him, to reconcile all things unto Himself." "Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own Blood, He entered in once into the holy place." "How much more shall the Blood of Christ, Who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" "Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the Blood of Jesus." "Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the Blood of the Covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing?" "Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the Blood of the everlasting covenant." "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the Blood of Jesus Christ." "And the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His Own Blood." "Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for Thou

wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy Blood1."

This will be to all very plain. lips may it be in their hearts! that they who speak carelessly

It is in every one's

But what I think about, or against,

those devotions, do not dwell upon, is, "Whence did this Atoning Blood flow?" It was the very characteristic of that Death, by which our Blessed Lord said that He should die, which the Psalmist foretold long before, that His Hands and Feet should be pierced, and out of them flowed that Redeeming Blood. It was out of those very Wounds, and those alone, which some would now forbid us to love, or to speak of, or to reverence, or to plead, one by one, to Him or to His Father. "The Precious Blood of Christ," of which Holy Scripture speaks, on which God Himself, from the very fall, fixed the eyes and the faith of our fallen race, is not a mere metaphor (as the Socinians would have it). But since there was a special value in that precious Bloodshedding, must not those Wounds, opened for us, out of which it was shed, be precious in our sight? It is to be said, too, that since that meritorious Bloodshedding must, in order to be meritorious, have been during His life, it was from His Sacred Hands and Feet and Head alone. When the Blood flowed mysteriously, and as a hidden mystery, from His Side, "it was finished."

4 Rom. iii. 25; v. 9. Eph. ii. 13; i. 7. Col. i. 20. Heb. ix. 12. 14; x. 19. 29; xiii. 20. 1 Pet. i. 2. 1 John i. 7. Rev. i. 5; v. 9.