and come. And God help us, every one of us, to hail the coming hour in the spirit and truth of our passing hour-for the hour now is, now is, now is! VI. THE PASSION. FOR CHRIST ALSO HATH ONCE SUFFERED FOR SINS, THE JUST FOR THE UNJUST, THAT HE MIGHT BRING US TO GOD, being PUT TO DEATH IN THE FLESH, BUT QUICKENED BY The Spirit. 1 Peter iii. 18. 9 THE PASSION. ALL believers see in what is called the Passion of our Lord the focal point of the divine revelation. Without the cross, there is no Christianity, whatever there may be of religion. With the cross, there is nothing but Christianity; since all other lights are not pale and ineffectual by comparison, but actually swallowed up in this, so as to have no longer any separate existence. Hence it is, that when one opens one's eyes on Christ, no matter what may have been his religious system or discipline before, he finds the contents of his mind immediately resolving themselves: all that was true assimilated to the substantial and eternal truth as it is in Jesus; all that was false cast out and dissipated with the airy nothings of his dreams, to which he will not grant a local habitation or a name, when once the darkness is past. Moreover, as the revelation of Christ takes up and substantiates what is true in man; so, also, does it fill out that truth into completeness. We are complete in him. There were laws, and there were prophets, that undertook to teach us before; but their teaching was partial-'line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, and there a little.' But when Jesus is come, then is come that which is perfect; and when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.' Jesus offers himself to us, that we may give ourselves to him, and be filled with all the fulness of God. We need to think often and deeply upon the mystery of Christ's suffering. All the prophets and the law bear witness to that only sacrifice; while every baptism, and every holy supper is an epitome and memorial of the great offering-at once and forever the perfection of divine love and human virtue. It is through the fellowship of Christ's suffering that we know the divine love and human virtue, and become conscious of the eternal life. We need to think of our Saviour, not for the most part systematically, as believing in some abstract doctrine of atonement; but historically such things he actually endured; sympa |