torial acts, yet it was only as a man that he was or could be under its authority. Let it be observed, that when Christ is said to be under the law, we do not consider it simply as the standard of duty, but as possessing that form which it acquired when God converted it into a covenant with men. He was made under the law, in all the obligations which it imposed upon us, both in requiring obedience to its precepts as the condition of life, and denouncing its penalty as the recompense of our transgressions. The law regarded him as the representative of sinners, and demanded the unabated fulfilment of its terms. It was enjoined upon him, who, in consequence of his relation to the second Person of the Trinity, had a title to the highest honour and felicity, and might have ascended to reign in heaven as soon as he was born upon earth, to go through a course of obedience amidst toil and sorrow, in order to obtain eternal glory for himself, as well as eternal life for his followers. Notwithstanding his unspotted purity, he was treated by the law as if he had been a sinner. It arraigned him before its tribunal, and condemned him to bear the punishment which it had pronounced upon the guilty. By being made under the law, he was made under the curse. The curse is the sentence by which the transgressor is doomed to suffer; and he was subjected to it, by becoming our surety. "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. A more humiliating situation cannot be conceived. The Son of God is confounded with the meanest and vilest of mankind. The law made no concession to his dignity; it waived none of its rights in his favour. It spoke to him with the same high tone of authority in which it addresses a mere mortal; it was equally strict and unrelenting in its demands; nothing less would satisfy it than his blood, as a compensation for the wrongs which it had sustained from those whom he had undertaken to befriend.

The subjection of our Saviour to the law, accounts for all the other parts of his humiliation. As it would not have been fitting, that he who stood in the room of sinners, should have spent his days in ease and splendour, so his degradation and sorrows were necessary to fulfil the demands of the law. The Deliverer of mankind must submit to the labour, and suffering, and death to which they were doomed, because it was not by an exertion of physical strength that his design should be accomplished, but by such moral acts as should uphold the authority and honour of the law, although those who had transgressed it were forgiven. You perceive, then, that the humiliation of Christ was not the consequence of an arbitrary appointment. It was an essential part of a great plan, originating in the wisdom and justice of God, for the manifestation of the glory of his attributes in the redemption of the world. "Although he was rich, yet, for our sakes, he became poor, that we, through his poverty, might be rich."t

We know little about our Saviour in the early part of his life, till, at twelve years of age, he appeared in the temple, and astonished the doctors by his wisdom; except that, for the preservation of his life from the murderous designs of Herod, he was carried by his parents into Egypt, and brought back to Galilee when the danger was past. Many stories, indeed, are to be found in an ancient composition, called the Gospel of the Infancy; but they rest entirely upon the authority of the anonymous author, and are too silly and absurd to deserve a moment's attention. While a child, he was dependent, like other children, upon others; and, although there is no doubt that the blessed Virgin treated him with the most tender affection, it was impossible that he should not have suffered through the inattention, and neglect, and awkwardness of those to whose care he was occasionally committed. Living among imperfect mortals, he must have experienced the effect of their ignorance and irregular

tempers, especially while his mental faculties, not being sufficiently matured, nor his bodily strength confirmed, he was not yet qualified to manage himself. His food might be withheld, when his appetite craved it; his rest might be disturbed by unseasonable intrusions; his mind might be vexed by the peevishness and frowardness of those with whom he associated. These things are only matters of conjecture; but they are by no means improbable, as he was placed in circumstances exactly similar to those in which we find ourselves. It may be thought, indeed, that, as the Son of God, he would always command profound reverence, and uninterrupted attention to his comfort; but amidst the familiarity of daily intercourse, even his parents might sometimes think of him only as a child; and to his fellow-creatures and neighbours, perhaps, his dignity was unknown. Of this there can be no doubt, that it was humiliating to such a person, to be found in a situation in which he was indebted to others for the necessaries of life, and for instruction and protection, and was exposed to the rudeness of the young and the caprice of the old. When he grew up, it is probable that he was engaged in the same occupation with Joseph, his reputed father, whose circumstances might render it necessary that Jesus should contribute his labour for the maintainance of the family. Thus the Lord of all was reduced to a level with the lowest of the human race, and literally underwent that part of the curse, which doomed man "to eat bread in the sweat of his face." He is called not only ὁ του τεκτονος υιος, * the carpenter's son, but TT, the carpenter. The word is equivalent to the Latin term faber, which signifies a workman, the nature of whose employment is specified by the adjectives, ferrarius, ærarius, ligneus, denoting respectively a blacksmith, a brazier or coppersmith, a carpenter or worker in wood. The last is the occupation in which our Saviour is commonly supposed to have been engaged.‡

Of his public life, there is a more ample detail in the Gospels, from the narrative in which it appears, that he was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." We have no reason to think that he was subject to disease. We never read that he was sick, or that he suffered any of those pains which are inflicted upon us by alterations in the state of our bodies. As he was perfectly holy, there were no seeds of decay and dissolution in his frame. But he experienced all the other sinless infirmities of our nature. He was hungry, and thirsty, and weary; he felt the inconvenience of excessive cold and heat; and, as he was endowed with the common passions and feelings of human nature, he was not a stranger to disappointment, and vexation, and sorrow, and the pangs of unrequited kindness and violated friendship.

To those evils were added the hardships of poverty. He became literally poor when he assumed our nature; and, in doing so, he humbled himself, because he was originally rich. The Possessor of heaven and earth had not where to lay his head; he could not call the lowliest cottage in Judea his own, Women ministered to him; he was often indebted for his daily bread to the hospitality of others; and, when the tribute for the use of the temple was demanded from him, he found it necessary to work a miracle to obtain the small sum of a stater, equal in value to half-a-crown, for himself and Peter,

During his public ministry, if he was admired and followed by some, he was hated and persecuted by others. The indignation of the proud rulers, and worldly-minded Pharisees, was caused by the loftiness of his pretensions, and the lowliness of his condition. His doctrine gave them particular offence, because it was levelled against their corruptions of religion, and exposed to public view their base dispositions, and the crimes in which they secretly indulged. Their rage and malice were vented in terms of obloquy, and every

Matt. xiii. 55.

† Mark. vi. 3.

Justin Mart. Dial. cum Trypho,

opprobrious name was applied to him, to stain his reputation, and render him odious in the eyes of the people. He was called a glutton, and a drunkard, a friend of publicans and sinners, and an emissary of Satan, who, in concert with that spirit, and aided by his power, was carrying on a nefarious design of blasphemy and wickedness. To these efforts of malignity he was not insensible, notwithstanding his consciousness of perfect innocence. Hence he expresses his feelings in the following affecting language: "Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness; and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none."

Men of flesh and blood were not the only enemies with whom he had to contend. The hostility of the old serpent was awakened by the appearance of the seed of the woman, against whom he directed his malicious, but ineffectual efforts. Immediately after his baptism, he was carried into the wilderness by the devil, where, for forty days, he was exposed to his temptations, and overcame them; not, however, we may be certain, without enduring much mental uneasiness, arising from the importunate and impudent solicitations of his adversary, and from the abhorrence which his impious suggestions excited. No subsequent opportunity of harassing him would be neglected by the vigilant and unwearied malignity of the alarmed and enraged spirit, whose kingdom he had come to overthrow. Of his final assault upon him at the close of his life, we have a hint, and only a hint, so that we cannot explain in what manner it was conducted, nor tell what trouble it caused to his illustrious opponent: "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." And again, "This is your hour, and the power of darkness." This, however, we know, that, by his immediate temptations, and by stirring up wicked men to betray and crucify him, he accomplished what had been foretold from the beginning, that the heel of our Saviour should be bruised.

All these sufferings were severe; but they were light when compared with the sorrow which he felt from a sense of Divine wrath. The wrath of God does not signify furious anger, as in the case of men, but calm displeasure against sin, expressed in the punishment of offenders. Our Lord Jesus Christ was the object of it, not considered in himself, for he was the beloved Son of God, but as the representative of the guilty, who had engaged to "bear their griefs, and carry their sorrows." It was with our sins that his Father was displeased; and as our Saviour had made them his own in a legal sense, by the voluntary susception of the office of our surety, he experienced the effects of the Divine anger, not only in bodily pain, but also in mental anguish. The scene exhibited in the garden of Gethsemane was awful: "Being in agony, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." An agony signifies, in this case, a violent agitation of the mind, in which every excruciating feeling was mingled, except remorse and despair. The intensity of his anguish was demonstrated by the effect upon his corporeal frame. It has been questioned, whether this was literally a bloody sweat, or only resembled blood in the largeness of the drops. On the one hand, we may conceive his body to have been agitated to such a degree by the commotion of his mind, that a part of the blood was forced from the veins, and mingled with the other moisture which exuded from his pores. On the other, we may plead that the expression used by the evangelist necessarily implies no more than resemblance, pares, which is rendered in our version, as it were great drops of blood. Without venturing upon a positive decision of this question, although the latter opinion seems to be more probable, we observe that the agony of his mind must have been dreadful; for, even upon the lowest supposition, what could have produced such profuse § Ib. xxii. 44.

• Ps. Ixix, 20,

† John xiv, 30,

Luke xxii. 53.

perspiration in the open air, at a season when the night may be presumed to have been cold, and in a person of so much fortitude and self-command, but an intensity of mental feeling, which cannot be accounted for by any natural cause? The causes of his agony which some men have assigned, with a view to evade the evidence which it affords of the expiatory nature of his sufferings, are manifestly inadequate. To talk of its arising from the foresight of the treachery of Judas, the desertion of his disciples, the unbelief of the Jews, and the wickedness of mankind, is to say any thing rather than acknowledge the truth; and to suppose that it arose from the fear of death, would be to degrade him below his own followers, many of whom encountered death in as terrible a form, not only with composure, but with triumph. Nothing but the burden of our guilt could have made him lie prostrate on the ground; nothing but an appalling sense of Almighty vengeance could have extorted from him the thrice-repeated prayer: "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." Bitter must have been the ingredients of a cup, which he would have put away from his lips, although it was presented to him by the hand of his Father, and he had long purposed to drink it. How profound was his humiliation! We see him in extreme anguish, giving signs of ineffable distress by the agitation of his body; shedding tears, and uttering vehement cries; kneeling in the posture of a suppliant, and sinking to the earth under the dreadful pressure of his woes. But his sorrows were not yet at an end. The solemnity of this scene was disturbed by the intrusion of a band of ruffians, who, in obedience to the command of their masters, rudely laid hold upon him, and dragged him as a felon to the tribunal of the high-priest, where he was accused of the foulest crimes, and subjected to every indignity. He was reviled and insulted in all the forms which inveterate and unmanly hostility could invent: "I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face from shame and spitting."* There, at the judgment-seat of Pilate, and in the presence of Herod and his courtiers, he was treated as the vilest of mankind, and at last was delivered up as a victim to the clamour of the rabble. We then see him led forth to Calvary, and nailed to a cross, on which he hung for some hours, till he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

Of the various modes of taking away life by violence, crucifixion is probably the most tormenting. It is one of the many contrivances of barbarity, the object of which is to make the unhappy sufferer feel himself dying. He was fixed to the cross with nails driven through his hands and his feet. Besides the exquisite pain caused by the perforation of so many parts full of nerves, which are the instruments of sensation, great torment must have arisen from the distension of his body, the forcible stretching of its joints and sinews by its own weight. To this circumstance he alludes in the twenty-second Psalm: "I may tell all my bones." "All my bones are out of joint." There are some kinds of torture, which, by their severity, bring speedy relief. Nature sinks under them, and is released. As, in crucifixion, no vital part was touched, life was sometimes protracted for days. Our Lord expired sooner than the malefactors on his right hand and on his left, perhaps because he was partly exhausted by his previous agony; but even his sufferings lasted for six tedious hours; for they began at nine in the morning, and did not end till three in the afternoon.

Some modes of putting persons to death are deemed more honourable than others, although it is the merest fiction of imagination to attach an idea of honour to what is in its own nature a disgrace as well as a punishment. The most ignominious was reserved for our Saviour, who suffered the death of a slave. Crucifixion was a Roman punishment, but was accounted so infamous · † Ps. xxii. 17, 14,

VOL. II.--13

* Is. i. 6.

I

that it could not be inflicted on a Roman citizen; only the offscouring of mankind were nailed to the cross. The very manner, therefore, of our Saviour's death was a part of his humiliation. He was exhibited on Calvary as a man who had no civil rights, who was protected by no law, whom society regarded as an outcast; as one who had not only forfeited his life by his crimes, but deserved to be associated with the lowest and most worthless of our species. Accordingly, to add to the ignominy of his sufferings, and to express the utmost contempt for him, two male factors were led forth to be crucified along with him two robbers, as the word signifies which we have translated thieves, who, by their daring outrages, had called down upon their heads the just vengeance of the laws. In the midst of these he was crucified, as if he had been the worst of the three; and thus the prophecy was fulfilled, " And he was numbered with the transgressors.' 濠

The last circumstance which demands our attention, is, that he suffered an accursed death; for the law of Moses had said, "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."† There is some difficulty in settling the meaning of this denunciation. It cannot signify that every person who was hanged upon a tree, was doomed to eternal perdition; because the sentence which fixes the future state of men, depends no more upon the manner of their death than upon any other trivial circumstance. But whatever be its import, it is applied to our Saviour; and we are taught to consider the manner of his death as an indication that he died under the curse of the law. It was Pilate who condemned him to the cross; but the sentence was ratified at a higher tribunal, and with aggravations which the power of the Roman governor could not add to it. He died by the sentence of his Father acting as a righteous judge, and subjecting him to the punishment of sin. Great, therefore, as were his bodily torments, there were unseen sorrows which were far more severe; sorrows of the same kind with those which caused his agony in the garden, and the extremity of which drew from him that mournful complaint, "My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me?"‡

How great was his humiliation! The Lord of life and glory appeared like a common mortal and was distinguished only by the intensity of his sufferings, and the state of complete dereliction in which he expired. The multitude looked on with unpitying eyes: heaven frowned in preternatural darkness, and all consolation was withheld from him.

We shall have finished this view of the humiliation of Christ when we have added, that his body being taken down from the cross, was committed to the tomb, where it remained in a state of insensibility for at least thirty-six hours. Had it been immediately restored to life, it would have been said that it did not die, but only fainted on the cross; and the evidence of his messiahship, which his resurrection affords, would have been weakened. Had it continued longer under the power of death, the natural process of corruption would have commenced, unless preserved by a miracle. But the Scripture had foretold that the Holy One of God should not see corruption ;" and, accordingly, the time was abridged; and on the morning of the third day he arose in triumph from the grave.

When Joseph had taken down his body from the cross, he laid it in his own sepulchre, which he had hewn out of a rock. May we not observe in this circumstance an illustration of the poor and destitute condition to which he had descended? Although it was his own world in which he sojourned, yet he was in it, not as a Lord, but as a servant-not as a possessor, but as a stranger who has no interest in any thing around him. His entrance into it was humiliating; his passage through it was comfortless; and when at last it § Ps. xvi. 10.

• Is. liii. 12.

† Gal. iii. 13.

Matt. xxvii. 46.