the suffering in temptation is in proportion to the nature of the love from which resistance is made, the Lord's sufferings were inconceivably greater than those of any other human being.

The passion of the cross was the Lord's severest temptation. In that temptation the Lord endured all the trial and suffering that can be conceived to be connected with death. In some respects it is the greatest, not only in itself, but in its attendant circumstances. As an effect of the Fall, death is the forcible separation of soul and bodytheir separation by disease or violence. Man was not created to live in this world for ever, but he was so created as to pass out of it by the law of natural decay, by which the connection between the soul and the body would have been gradually and peacefully dissolved. Life having run its appointed course, the soul, ripe for heaven, would have passed as through an infant's sleep out of the shade of mortality into the light of an endless day. Such a change could not be considered as a calamity, and hardly as a trial, either to the person removed or to those from whom he was taken away. But the periods of life at which death now so often happens, and the states and circumstances in which it takes place, necessarily in most instances make it a trial, and sometimes a severe one. According to the wise and beneficent arrangement of the Creator, man would have lived to accomplish all the temporal and spiritual uses of life on earth; and the natural ties which bound him to the world and the world to him having been gradually loosened, as the "silver cord itself became loosened," he would have been gathered literally and peacefully to his fathers. Upon this beneficent arrangement evil has broken in. Death now takes the infant from the mother's arms, and the mother from the midst of her children; the young full of hope, and the mature in possession of wealth and honours; the wicked in his impenitence, and the righteous in the midst of his usefulness. It is true that although evil has thus broken in upon the order of creation, its issues aré shaped by an overruling Providence. The law of death is under subjection to the law of life. He, without whom a sparrow falls not to the ground, overrules the event as to time, place, and circumstance, so that it shall be productive of the greatest possible amount of good, or the least possible amount of evil, to each and to all. In this, as in all other similar cases, the Lord, in a certain sense, brings light out of darkness, and good out of evil. Nevertheless, the untimely and violent separation of soul and body is to be regarded as an evil. And no doubt one of the ends for which the Lord died was as far as pos

sible to abolish even this death, because the purpose of His coming in the flesh was to restore mankind to the order from which they had departed; and so far as they return to that order, so far will this and all the other natural consequence of disorder bé removed.

But the grand end to be accomplished by the Lord's passing through natural death was the abolition of spiritual death. The conquest of him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, was the first part of the means by which this was to be effected, and the overcoming of hereditary evil, which made Him subject to death, was the second. By the redeeming and saving power which He thus acquired, He enables those who follow Him to overcome also, and to acquire new spiritual life. This does not, it is true, exempt us from the natural effects of the Fall, though it has a tendency to mitigate them. But it has this great use, it takes away in a great measure the sting of bodily death, by teaching us that death is the gate of life, and departure from this world the entering into a brighter inheritance. In passing through death, both spiritual and natural, we have the Lord's presence to strengthen us, and His example to encourage us. He Himself passed through the valley of the shadow of death in its gloomiest aspect and in its most terrible form. And by contemplating the Lord Jesus in His last trial, understanding what that trial really was, we cannot fail to derive from it instruction and improvement.

The passion of the cross, and the sufferings of the Lord previous to it, the agony in the garden, and the cruel mockery which He underwent in the judgment-hall, have long been selected as eminent subjects for depicting to the ear and the eye the extremity of human passion and exciting the deepest sympathies of the human heart with suffering humanity. Parallels, as already observed, have been instituted between the Lord's conduct during His last sufferings and that of men under similar circumstances. But all such comparisons are grounded in natural apprehensions of the Lord's sufferings, and in many cases in natural ideas of His person and character. If we consider the Lord's fear of death and His sufferings in it as only natural, His temper and conduct, meek, calm, and merciful as they were, are not such as to preclude all comparison between Him and other men. But the historical relation itself might teach us otherwise. Can it be supposed that the fear of death could cause the Lord to sweat great drops of blood, or even to pray that the cup might pass from Him? This, as well as His exclamation on the cross, may convince us that His sufferings were principally spiritual. The Lord declared this

Himself when He said to the chief priests, and captains, and elders, who have come to take Him, "This is your hour, and the power of darkness." This may, indeed, be understood to mean that the powers of darkness successfully prompted His judges to put Him to death. But when we find, as in the declaration of Paul, that "by death He overcame him who had the power of death," we must admit that the outward suffering of the cross involved the inward suffering of temptation, and that the natural was but the faint types of a spiritual agony and death. It is only by viewing the Lord's last sufferings in this light that we can see their depth and direfulness, and that we can form a just estimate of His patient endurance, and behold in Him a perfect example. When we follow the Lord from the upper chamber, where He partook with His disciples of the passover, through the various stages of His Divine work to its completion, His agony in the garden, His betrayal by Judas, His seizure by the rude and violent multitude, the contemptuous treatment He received from His judges, the clamours of the Jews for His crucifixion, their malignant mockery of crowning Him with thorns, and clothing Him with purple, and bowing the knee before Him in ironical worship, spitting in His face, and striking Him with the palms of their hands, their compelling Him to carry His cross, and demanding Him to come down from it that they might believe on Him; when we view all these, with the torture of crucifixion itself, and consider that every act which the Jews did to Him outwardly was but the index of an effort of the powers of darkness inwardly to move Him from His saving purpose, to rouse into activity the feelings of His frail humanity, and break down the barrier which His Divine work had raised, and was about to fix for ever, against their overwhelming influence; we must regard the Lord in a very different light from that of a mere bodily sufferer, or of one who, in addition to physical pain, has to contend with earthly regrets and apprehensions for the future.

But even if by an act of partial apprehension we regard Him in the character of an ordinary human being, how truly great does humanity appear in the conduct of Jesus during the whole of that period when He was regarded and treated as the vilest upon earth! As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth to the false accusations of His enemies; but His was not the silence of sullenness or contempt. Under their insults and mockery He betrayed no emotion; but His was not the calmness of callousness or indiffer. The torture of the cross extorted no complaint from Him; but

ence.

His endurance was not the effect of insensibility. With the ordinary feelings and frailties of our common humanity, the Lord, under circumstances the most trying to human nature, was a perfect pattern of patience, meekness, and forgiveness; and to Him may the disciple look in states of trial and suffering, and in death itself in its worst forms, for encouragement and support.

But, as we observed, this is only a partial view of the Lord's case, and consequently of the Lord's example. He was the subject at the same time of severer trials, of deeper sufferings, and of imminent death of a more dreadful kind. In reference to these the Lord was eminently the Christian's example. For these are real trials; they are spiritual in their character and eternal in their consequences. They are such as are felt when spiritual life is endangered and future happiness is imperilled.

The language which the Lord used during His arraignment, and afterwards, even to His death, shows in most instances that He looked and spake above His temporal state and sufferings.

Jesus gave no answer to the false accusation of the Jews, as a sign that the Church amongst them had so falsified the Word as to have silenced within themselves the testimony of the Divine Truth against them. The still small voice of conscience was quenched in the tumult of demoniacal passions. But when the high priest and when Pilate demanded of Him to testify to the truth, though given in the form of an accusation, the Lord no longer held His peace, but openly acknowledged the truth of the charge. "I adjure Thee by the living God," said Caiaphas, "that Thou tell us whether Thou be the Christ, the Son of God." Jesus said unto him, "Thou hast said." And then Pilate asked Him, "Art Thou the King of the Jews?" He answered, "Thou sayest," acknowledging Himself to be even what they said He was. But His language immediately afterwards is of a more lofty character, and indicates the Divinity of His Person and the spirituality of His words. To Pilate he answered, "Thou sayest that I am a King. To this end was I born, and for this came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice." He had previously declared to Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world, and He then taught him that He was a King,as being the Truth, the government of which constitutes His Kingdom. The declaration He makes to the high priest is, that he should see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. In the Revelation it is said that at the

Lord's Coming every eye should see Him, and they also which pierced Him. The Son of Man is the Lord as the Word, or the Divine Truth accommodated to the apprehensions of men; and the Coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven is the revelation of its spiritual sense. But if seeing meant to perceive and acknowledge, how could it be said that they who hate and pervert the Word would yet see it in the power and glory of its spirit? It may be true that the evidences of the Coming of the Son of Man shall be so clear that they shall be seen by all men. But the spiritual meaning of the Lord's words to the corrupt high priest is, that under that clearer manifestation of His truth which He promised, all false principles should be laid open and discovered by its light; that all effectual opposition to the truth should be rendered impossible; that the Divine Truth would not again be condemned and crucified as false and dangerous, but, armed with omnipotence and invested with light, would reign for ever and ever,

If the Lord's answers to His judges transcend the immediate occasion of His being brought before them, His language on the cross expresses deeper suffering and trial than could arise from bodily pain. His exclamation, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" is expressive of the deepest temptation, the feeling of spiritual despair, when evil and hell seem to shut out every ray of light and hope from the soul. The Lord suffered the extreme of temptation that He might know the depths of Satan, and, having overcome, succour those who are tempted.

The death of the Lord, involving all that could be felt of that spiritual death which the righteous experience,-the death of the old man, -His experience is the foundation of all human experience in corresponding states, and capable of teaching us the highest lessons of practical wisdom. His life, even its last period of manifestation in the frail humanity He assumed for our sakes, stands out in beautiful relief from the best and wisest among men, under circumstances at all similar. But when regarded as comprehending in itself all suffering, not only of body, but also of mind, suffering which could not be experienced, and cannot even be conceived of by us, in its full extent, His conduct becomes indeed a matter of wonder and of deep study for our confirmation in virtue and endurance.

We should contemplate the Lord in His last sufferings and death, that we may become impressed with the beauty of that example of meek and patient endurance which He has left for our imitation,