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martyrs. They met death with unshaken fortitude: they braved the most cruel torments; their firmness struck their very executioners with astonishment. In Jesus Christ we behold nothing similar to this.

Nay, I will go farther, and say, that even the penient thief discovers more firmness, in his dying moments, than the Saviour himself. He addresses himself to Jesus Christ, he implores his mercy, and, set at rest by the promises given to him, he expires in tranquillity. Jesus Christ, on the contrary, seems equally to despair of relief from heaven and from the earth.

The opposers of the satisfaction of Jesus Christ, will find it absolutely impossible to resolve these difficulties: the doctrine of the satisfaction is the only key that can unlock this mystery. Innumerable evils have compassed me about, is the prophetic language of the psalmist; mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up they are more than the hairs of mine head; therefore my heart faileth me, Ps. xl. 12. He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him: as Isaiah expresses himself, ch. liii. 5 God spared not his own Son, Rom. viii. 32. he hath made him to be sin for us, 2 Cor. v. 21. being made a curse for us, Gal. iii. 13. to use the language of St. Paul: this is what we undertook to prove and this is the first idea under which we proposed to represent the dying Saviour of the world.

SERMON IV.

PART II.

THE CRUCIFIXION.

MATT. xxvii. 45-53.

Now, from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land,
unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with
a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say,
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Some of them
that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for
Elias. And straight-way one of them ran, and took a spunge,
and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and
him to
gave
drink. The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come
to save him. Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice,
yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the vail of the temple was
rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake,
and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bo-
dies of saints, which slept, arose, and came out of the graves after
his resurrection, and avent into the holy city, and appeared unto

many.

HA

AVING represented the death of Christ under the idea, 1. of an expiatory sacrifice, in which the victim was charged with the sins of the whole world: we proceed,

2. To consider it as the body of all the shadows,

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the truth of all the types, the accomplishment of all the predictions of the ancient dispensation, respecting the Messiah. In fact, on what state or period of the Old Testament church can we throw our eyes, without discovering images of a dying Jesus, and traces of the sacrifice which he offered up?

If we resort to the origin of all our woes, there also we find the remedy. You will discover that Adam had no sooner by transgression fallen, than God promised him a seed, whose heel the seed of the serpent should bruise, but who, in that very act of suffering, should bruise the serpent's head, Gen. iii. 15. You will find this same promise repeated to Abraham; that seed announced anew to the patriarchs; and, taking St. Paul for your instructor, you will discover that this seed is Jesus Christ, Gal. iii. 16.

If you contemplate the temporal wonders which God was pleased to work in favor of the Jewish nation, you will discover every where in them an adumbration of the spiritual blessings which the death of Jesus Christ was to procure for the church. You will there see the blood of a lamb on the doors of the Israelites. It was the shadow of that Lamb without blemish and without spot, fore-ordained before the foundation of the world, 1. Pet. i. 19, 20. You will there behold a rock, which, when smitten, emitted a stream sufficient to quench the thirst of a great people. This was a shadow of Jesus Christ. St. Paul tells us that it was Christ himself, who refreshes us with living water, springing up into everlasting life, 1 Cor. x. 4. and John iv. 14. You will there behold a serpent lifted up, the sight of which healed the deadly wounds of the Israelites. It was a shadow of him who was to be lifted up on the

cross.

If you look into the Levitical worship, you will perceive through the whole of it, types of his death a perpetual sacrifice: the type of him whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, Rom. iii. 25. You will there behold victims, the types of him who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God, to purge the conscience from the dead works, to serve the living God, Heb. ix. 14. a scape-goat, bearing on his head all the iniquities of the children of Israel, Lev. xvi. 21. The type of him who suffered for us without the gate, Heb.

xiii. 13.

....

If you run over the predictions of the prophets, you will find them, as with one mouth, announcing the death of Jesus Christ. Now it is Isaiah who lifts up his voice, saying: He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows . . . . who made his soul an offering for sin .... who is brought as a lamb to the slaughter; and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. . . . who was oppressed, and was afflicted. . . . who was cut off out of the land of the living, chap. liii. S, &c. Now it is Daniel who holds up the same object: Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself, chap. ix. 26. Now Zacharias takes up the subject, and under the influence of prophetic inspiration, gives animation to the sword of the Lord of Hosts: Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man who is my fellow: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered, chap. xiii. 7. Now the prophetic David, minutely describing his sufferings, in such affecting terms as these: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not;

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and in the night season, and am not silent: .... I am a worm and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people: all they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, and shake the head, Psa. xxii. 1, 2, 6, 7. and, in another place: Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul: I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the flood overflow me: I am weary of my crying my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God.... for thy sake I have borne reproach, shame hath covered my face. .. 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: they gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink, Psa. Ixix. 1, 2, &c.

Such good reason have we to consider the death of Jesus Christ under this second idea: it is in our text. The Saviour appropriates to himself the prediction in the twenty-second psalm: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, he gives occasion to his executioners to present him with winegar, which preceded his expiring exclamation, It is finished, as it is related by another of the evangelists.

3. The death of Jesus Christ is, on the part of the Jews, an atrocious crime, which has roused the indignation of heaven, and armed universal nature against them. But where shall we find colors black enough to depict it? Here the most ardent efforts of the imagination must fall far below the reality, and the most lively images come short of truth.

Supposing we possessed the faculty of collecting, into one point of view, all that was gentle in the

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