out.

But the mediatorial sovereignty of the Redeemer was to be based upon His sacrificial sufferings and death; and until He had passed through them He could not enter into His glory, or establish among men His reign of righteousness and grace. As He was approaching the cross, He said, 'Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself' (John xii. 31, 32). After He had gone through His deepest sorrows, and had risen again from the dead, He said to two of His disciples, Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?' (Luke xxiv. 26). And thus, when He gave His solemn commission to the eleven on the mountain in Galilee, He introduced that commission with the words, All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth' (Matt. xxviii. 18).

The Saviour is now enthroned in the heavenly world. In Him the prophetic oracle is accomplished, "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. The Lord shall send the rod of Thy strength out of Zion: rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies' (Psalm. cx. 1, 2). But the exercise of His mediatorial sovereignty, in its relations to the Church, to the world, and to the whole Universe of being, will come under consideration in a subsequent Chapter, when we contemplate the Lord Jesus in His state of exaltation.

CHAPTER V.

CHRIST-DECLARATIONS OF OUR

THE SACRIFICIAL DEATH OF

LORD HIMSELF.

HE death of the Lord Jesus is the most momentous fact in

the Apostles went forth to proclaim, as that to which the faith and hope of men should be directed, and through which the reign of moral evil on this earth might be subverted and destroyed. The memorable declaration of St. Paul beautifully shows this: Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumblingblock, and unto Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God' (1 Cor. i. 22-24). This fact, too, has been kept before the view of the Church, in every age, and its relation to human salvation has been impressively set forth, in the most solemn ordinance of our religion. Wherever Christianity has been embraced, the disciples of the Saviour have met together, in obedience to His own command, to partake of the sacramental emblems of His body and blood, and to avow their faith in His death, as the one all-availing sacrifice for sin. It is to the Cross that we turn, as we labour under the burden of conscious guilt, and as we look forward to the realities of eternity.

In speaking of the priestly office of the Lord Jesus, we have necessarily adverted to the sacrifice which He offered once for all, and which He still presents in the heavenly world. That sacrifice we have now reverently to contemplate.

In eutering upon this profoundly interesting subject it becomes us to remember that, when the Saviour appeared on earth, there had existed, for many ages, a system of sacrifice and priestly mediation, which would prepare those who devoutly contemplated it to understand the sacrificial character of His death, when that truth was set forth in the Christian message. God had His dwelling among His people Israel; and the tabernacle, and afterwards the temple, was 'sanctified by His glory.' But all the arrangements of the Levitical economy were calculated to show that God, as the Holy One, cannot come into fellowship with man except through the intervention of a sacrifice, and that sacrifice one of His own appointment. Into the special dwelling-place of Jehovah, for instance,—the holy of holies, only the high priest was permitted to enter, and he only once in the year, on the great day of atonement; and as he drew aside the veil which separated that most sacred spot from the outer sanctuary, and went, amidst the smoke of burning incense, into the immediate presence, as it were, of God, he was to take the blood of the prescribed victims, and to sprinkle it upon the mercy-seat and before it (Lev. xvi). But we need not enumerate the various sacrificial arrangements of the Levitical system. It will suffice to say, that the grand feature of that system was that stated by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews:- According to the law, I may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission' (Heb. ix. 22). The deep import of these typical arrangements was doubtless apprehended with varying degrees of clearness by different minds: but all who devoutly pondered them would be prepared, in some degree, to understand the awful mystery of the cross, when the Apostles went forth to proclaim their crucified and risen Lord as the Refuge and Life of men.

In considering the teaching of the New Testament on the subject of the Redeemer's death, we have first to ponder His own declarations. To that solemn event He looked forward through the whole period of His ministry. He referred to it

again and again, placing it under different aspects, all of which are eminently instructive.

1. He affirmed the necessity of His death, in order to the fulfilment of the Father's counsel, and in order to constitute Himself the proper Object of trust for salvation. Thus He said to Nicodemus,‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life' (John iii. 14, 15). When Peter presumed to expostulate with Him, that surely He would never have to submit to the extremity of shame and suffering, and to die as if He had been an outcast, our Lord rebuked him, 'Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art a stumblingblock unto Me: for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men' (Matt. xvi. 23). Now these words of Christ clearly imply that there existed a moral necessity for His death, and that it was essential to the working out of the Father's plan for man's redemption. The remonstrance of Peter was as a stumblingblock cast in that path of service and suffering by which the Incarnate Son was to accomplish the great purpose of His mission to our world.

2. The Lord Jesus affirmed the intimate connection between His death and the communication of spiritual and eternal life to men; and, as He dwelt on this theme, He intimated that His death would sustain a sacrificial character, and that the appropriation of His sacrifice would be the grand condition of spiritual life. In His discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum, recorded in John vi., He declared, I am the living bread which came down out of heaven: if any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever: yea, and the bread which I will give is My flesh, for the life of the world.' And when the Jews strove among themselves, saying, 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?' our Lord went on to affirm, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day' (vers. 51-54). A degree

of mystery necessarily attached to these words at the time when they were uttered: but now that the revealing Spirit has shed light on the work of Christ and the arrangements of the economy of grace, we can perceive, in some degree, their deep significance, while we rejoice in that fulness of life which they hold forth to us. They teach us, emphatically, that the death of Jesus is the one all-availing sacrifice for sin, and that each of us must appropriate that sacrifice,-must make it his own by a faith that rests on it alone, and seeks through it spiritual life and strength.

3. There are two other declarations of our Lord which we may place in a separate class, as giving prominence to the vicarious character of His death, and as showing how distinctly He set forth that death as the objective ground of the forgiveness of sins. The former is found in Matt. xx. 28: 'Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for '-in the stead of—' many.' No words can assert more clearly than these the substitutionary character of our Lord's death, or present to us more forcibly the truth, that the redemption of mankind by His substitution and sufferings was the great purpose of His coming into our world. The other declaration referred to was uttered by our Lord in the institution of the sacrament of His Supper, just before He entered on the solitudes of Gethsemane. As He handed the bread to His disciples, He said, 'Take, eat, this is My body which is given for you;' and when He gave them the cup, He said, 'Drink ye all of it; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is shed for many unto remission of sins' (Matt. xxvi. 26-28, collated with Luke xxii. 19).

4. Still further, our Lord distinctly declared that His sufferings and death were the necessary introduction to His state of glory as the Mediator, and to the establishment of that economy under which the Spirit should be given in the fulness of His grace and power. Two passages bearing on this subject have been cited towards the close of the preceding Chapter;