enables us to understand how it was necessary to the glory of God, that in the day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, every heart should feel that none of those circumstances which he had laid upon man, had necessitated man's continuance in disobedience: that even all the sufferings and miseries arising out of God's sentence, had in no way conduced to the destruction of those who shall perish; nor could therefore be accepted as in any way extenuating or palliating disobedience.*

But for the obedience through sufferings, of Christ, as man, the glory of God would not have been so vindicated in the day in which he will judge the world, as to leave every soul without excuse before him. But his obedience through sufferings, has done so now, and will do so in that day. He who will judge the world, will need only to present HIMSELF to the disobedient, and that will be enough. They will see, in their Judge, one, ONCE a man like themselves, who did always those things that pleased God. Who did so in spite of the accumulation upon him, of all that the devil or man could devise and execute! In spite of opposition, mockery, attempts to take his life, ignominy, spitting and scourging! In spite of a cruel death; of the passing away of his soul in the midst of jeers and scorn, he was able to persevere in unshaken obedience to God.

What reply can there be to that? Who can have the hardihood to hope from his sufferings a claim to consideration, to glory; seeing that the example of Christ shews they are no excuse for disobedience!

We may here see another reason for the jealous care evinced in the Scriptures to assert that Christ came in the flesh. That is, that he did indeed partake of the flesh and blood of which man is a partaker, because the vindication of the name of God from the thought that the eternal ruin of those who perish has been in any shape attributable to his sentence, depends entirely upon the fact of the bona fide humanity, and bona fide sufferings of Christ. To deny the real humanity is to throw to the winds all the argument from sufferings, for they must have been unreal too.

It is scarcely possible to avoid seeing, that the design of God has been to place his Son in all the circumstances-sin alone excepted-in which man was found; in order that he might, in the day of judgment, furnish in him, an overwhelming reply, which shall stop the mouths of all men, and make all creation guilty before him.

It is only when we are able to perceive the importance of the sufferings of Christ as man, in connection with the day of judgment; when we understand that the glory of God will then be vindicated by the fact of his obedience through sufferings, that we can feel the exceeding importance of weighing well every word which may, by possibility, seem to detract from or lessen the value of the sufferings of Christ, as man.

As regards the fallen angels, the argument from the continuance in obedience of Christ, through sufferings, is damning in the highest degree. It is so because they knew not of sufferings before they fell. We have not the least

Note. -What if, on the contrary, a state of suffering now shall be found to enhance the sufferer's condemnation! What if sufferings are the voice of God, speaking to man, to remind him (without avail) of God, of life, of death! This will be touched upon hereafter but it is suggested that the value of such thought is seen by reflecting that it is only when a man feels every hope, in himself, stripped from him, that he will close heartily with the mercy of God in Christ.

ground to say they did; but rather the entire analogy of God's dealings with his creatures, quite forbids the thought that he would permit suffering to any but as a consequence of disobedience.

And with respect to man, the same argument will bear with an overwhelming power of condemnation upon them. The mouth of man is stopped. None can hope to justify or palliate his continuance in disobedience in the face of one who has evinced the possibility of persevering in obedience through circumstances infinitely more trying than ever fell to the lot of any of themselves.

It has been said that it was the design-that is, the express purpose, of God, to place his Son in all the circumstances in which man is found. Let us endeavour to ascertain in what manner this is seen.

1st. Christ was found in this circumstance of Adam before he fell; namely, that he too was subjected to the temptations of Satan, as Adam had been.

In three of the Gospels we have the record of Christ's temptation by the Devil. In two of them it is stated, "He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness;" in one of them, that he was driven by the Spirit there. In one of the Gospels the purpose for which he was led into the wilderness is also stated, to be tempted of the Devil." We are, then, expressly taught, that it was by the agency of the Holy Ghost himself that Christ was led into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil.

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He was led into the wilderness! How different from the circumstances of the first Adam! God had placed him in the garden of Eden, where was every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food. (Gen. ii. 8, 9.) Our first parents had therefore no want to plead in extenuation of their yielding to the tempter's voice. But Jesus was led into the wilderness, where there was nothing good for food and after he had fasted forty days, he was an hungered. Here were circumstances infinitely more favourable to Satan; and he was not slow to seize upon them. "If thou be the Son of God!" said he, "command these stones to be made bread." We may observe here the close resemblance of the spirit of this speech to that in which he had accosted Eve. "Yea hath

God said!"—" If thou be!"—they have both the same character of doubtful insinuation. Insinuation is ever calculated to infuse doubt—with man it almost always suceeeds in stirring up pride, and eliciting a course of independent action: it succeeded with Eve.

But we cannot suppose that Satan had, himself, any manner of doubt that Christ was indeed the Holy One of God. We cannot tell what his ideas were as to the double nature of the being who stood before him; but it is evident, from the facts, that Satan did see in Christ all that resembled the man whom he had originally made to fall. We cannot doubt this, or he would have scarce attempted to deceive and to seduce him, whereas he did make both attempts. The nature of the temptations, too, which were presented by Satan, clearly shews that He believed he saw a man before him: they were such as are plainly calculated to overcome the constancy of such a being as man, and only of such a being as man. What an argument of the perfect humanity of Christ—a testimony wrung even from Satan himself!

We may also remark the difference in our Lord's mode of meeting temptation. Eve listened at once to the tempter's voice, and Adam followed her. Neither of them appear to have once thought of God's command, "Thou shalt not eat of IT." But the second Adam met each successive temptation by

instant reference to the Word of God, "It is written." That is the expression of a faithful servant.

Thus we see Jesus was placed, and placed by God, in a position similar to, but under circumstances infinitely more trying than, those of the first Adam.

2ndly. It was the purpose of God, to place his son in those circumstances of Adam (and therefore of man)—sin alone excepted-after he had fallen. The sentence of God upon Adam for disobedience, may be summed up in the words sorrow, labour, and death of the body.

Under the general head of sorrow, we are doubtless to range all the sufferings to which man is liable. Labour is but another word for humiliation. It is an indication of an humble state. The pride, even of fallen man, looks down upon those who are necessitated to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. Such a condition is called, and it is, an humble state of being. These three then are the circumstances which God laid upon Adaro, because of his disobedience. That is sorrow, and all that is comprised in it. cating circumstances of humiliation and the death of the body. these three circumstances have passed upon all men.

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Labour indi-
From Adam

If we now read the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, wherein Christ is especially foreshewn as the righteous servant* (ver. 11), the one by knowledge of whom many should be justified, we find it foretold of him, 1st. That he should be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; that he should be oppressed and afflicted. 2ndly, That he should be despised and rejected of men-despised and not esteemed. 3rdly, That he should taste of the death of the body. was cut off from the land of the living." "He made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death."

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It is in this prophecy therefore distinctly affirmed, that Christ should come in all those three circumstances which God had laid upon man-namely sorrow, humiliation, and death.

And if we turn to the Gospels we do find that Christ is therein expressly represented as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. That he was despised and rejected of men; that he was afflicted and oppressed. That the full place of humiliation was taken by him, is seen from two facts, 1st. That he had no where to lay his head. 2nd. That he was subsisted by the charity of others. If there be one place lower than another in the estimation of men, it is that of one indebted to others for his daily bread; and into this place did it please the Father, that his Son should come! Lastly, we read in the Gospels, that Christ did taste of death from the hand of the Jews upon the cross, when he poured out his soul unto death.

It can scarcely need to be said, that in averring that Christ came, or was found, in all the circumstances of man, this is spoken generally, that he did partake of the three circumstances which God did lay upon man.

Let us now consider how these three circumstances, in which it may appear to some that Christ did but share them, in common with man, were in His instance, of a character to entitle him to say with entire truth, "No sorrow is like unto my sorrow." There is a line of thought which may serve to point out in what way the position of Christ under sufferings was so much more trying than that of men in general, that his perseverance in obedience through

*Note. He is also therein represented as the sin-offering: but that is a point which is not controverted, and therefore not touched upon.

them has not only vindicated the glory of God from the thought that he has added difficulties to men, in the sentence which he passed upon them, but has quite deprived men of all shelter from the hope that their lesser endurances can form ground to the consideration of God.

An attentive consideration of the circumstances of the fall, will not fail to enable one to observe, that before the sentence of sorrow, labour, and death, was passed upon Adam, he had already received a marked deterioration of mind. It is evinced in the deliberate lie which he uttered before God. He says, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself." Now we know that God had said to him, "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Is it possible to believe that those words were not ringing in his ears, and that it was because he had disobeyed God, and was afraid of death that he hid himself; and not because he was naked? Surely that was Adam's fear, and he told a deliberate lie in the words which he used to God. A lie, to us who are so used to hearing and seeing falsehood, may seem but a small thing. But not so before God. Whom has he said to be the father of lies? Adam had, therefore, passed from the region of fellowship with God who is light, into that of fellowship with the Devil, who is "a liar and the father of it," and is darkness. But the lie of Adam was only a token; it was only the single plague spot; but it was a true indication of the depth and virulence of the disease which had entered the heart and deteriorated the mind of him who had been created perfect. Adam's moral sensibilities were thenceforth blunted, and he was the better able to bear all that was comprised in the sentence afterwards laid upon him.

The truth of the principle that deterioration of mind does blunt the painfulness of shame and poignancy of suffering cannot be denied.

We know that in exact proportion to the degree of purity in any mind, is practical impurity shrunk from as something painful and even terrible. And where, on the other hand, practical impurity has been indulged in, it gradually deadens the moral sensibilities, so that the utmost excess of vileness is not only looked upon without pain but with positive approbation. (Rom. i. 24-32.) So in proportion as the sense of honour is felt, dishonour or even the breath of dishonour will break down and overwhelm the heart; causing even fallen men to prefer death to life: and where, on the other hand, the feelings of honour have been suffered to die, a man can suffer disgrace, not merely without shame, but with contempt even, of that which would be misery and death to another.

This line of thought is only suggested as one whose truthfulness a very little reflection will suffice to show. As a general principle, it amounts to this, that according to the greater or lesser degree of the existence of moral sensibility, even in fallen man, is suffering an evil or barely a name. The beast of the field suffers pangs as great as man suffers; he too, has death in common with man. Whence then does it arise that, by the one, pain, if it does not utterly disable, seems to be scarcely heeded, while in the other, it often lashes to madness or sinks to grovelling despair? To the existence of mind alone it is to be referred. To the absence of mind in the one, to its presence in the other. It is the mind alone which enables man to appreciate sufferings and it aggravates those sufferings by its own suggestions.

To the degree of perfectness of this appreciation, that is, according to the

degree in which moral sensibility exists in the man, is suffering a greater or a lesser evil; the suffering is measured by the mind of him who suffers. The mind may therefore be said to be the true seat of suffering-for even where it is not literally so, it is that which gives to suffering its sting; and which is often seen to goad the sufferer to self-destruction, rather than continue under mere bodily pain.

The Scriptures of truth present one continued testimony to the existence of this deterioration of mind, as being part and parcel of fallen man. It is variously described; oftenest under the name of blindness or hardness of heart. It is strongly affirmed in Ephesians iv. 17-19. The natural man is there spoken of as "having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts, who being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness;" and this their state, is accounted for in Romans i. 28, in the words "even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind."

A very important line of inference arises out of this thought-namely, that appreciation of a state of sin, or of the circumstances of those who are in a state of sin, so far from inferring that the appreciator must himself feel the emotions of sin, infers quite the contrary. One who feels the emotions of sin

is already on the side of sin. Sin which works in the members, brings also into captivity (Rom. vii. 23), and such a one is necessarily incapacitated from appreciating sin, as sin. The hatefulness of sin cannot be rightly estimated by one who is already won by its emotions-who is a lover of darkness (as man is, by nature, said to be.) The perception of sin, in its vileness, is necessarily blunted and blinded, in one whose very flesh has in it the principle of sin.

He alone can appreciate sin, and the terrible circumstances of those who are under sin, who is separate and apart from sin, whose moral sensibilities are like light, which exposes, without mingling with, or having anything in common with, darkness—whose mind and body are alike untainted by sin or its emotions. To appreciate sin, as God does, one must be as God. He knows what sin is because He sees it in all its defilement and horrible deformity. He is light, and can therefore know what darkness is, by its contrast with Himself and He alone who is in that position, can appreciate sin in all its defilement and horrible deformity. (It is concerning this word appreciation" that "Plymouth Brethren" have "striven to no profit" but certainly "to the subversion of their hearers.)*

If it be true that according to the greater or less degree of perfectness of the moral sensibilities, even in fallen man, is suffering an evil, or barely a name-if it be true that in proportion to the purity of the mind is impurity painful and terrible-if it be true that according to the degree in which

*Note-.Strange to say, one of the Brethren, the strongest opposer of the idea that Christ could appreciate the sinful state of man without being Himself subject to the emotions of sin, has based his conviction upon a principle which itself refutes that conviction ! He writes "In a word, it is not the being Himself in the state with which he sympathises, which gives the sympathy." If so the necessary inference is that Christ could sympathize with sinful man without being in a state of sin. But this writer reverses all that and seems indeed to perceive true principles only to turn them upside The quotation is from Mr. Darby's "Remarks," page 22.

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