tually put away as though the fountain | the hardest thing we may believe. had been opened, in which the vilest may wash and be clean. which his humiliation involved, was, that members of this church, being yet sinners, took share in the fierce mocking which was poured upon his Now we are not to strive and calculate-for the data of such calculation lie wholly out of reach-mission. the precise instant at which it was needful that the Deity should take possession of humanity; neither are we in any sense competent to decide how much of the mechanism of redemption might have been put into action before the mediatorial work was literally effected. We know only that although in the strictness of truth our race could not have been reconciled unto God until, by obeying in human nature, and suffering in human nature, the second Adam had repaired the breaches made by the first, still that faith in the promises caused its possessors to be dealt with as reconciled creatures, and annihilated, so to speak, intervening centuries, and brought man into an immediate juxta position with all the business and all the apparatus of expiation. Why, therefore, may we not suppose that the same system might have been still further carried on, and that GoD by the extension of his revelation over the provinces of the earth might have continued to gather in his elect, deferring the actual period of humiliation and agony until a clear space had been swept for the prodigious exhibition, and the Mediator might at least have been spared that bitterest of all pangs, the being rejected by those who had been given him by the Father? If there be any force in the expression, Without, however, insisting further on the word, which has called forth these remarks, we may certainly contend, that Christ's sufferings were vastly aggravated by the sinfulness of those amongst whom he was constrained to tabernacle. The two great principles which possessed the soul of the Mediator were, love to the Father, and love to mankind; and I call upon you to observe, how each of these was made the vehicle of anguish through the fact, "that whilst we were yet sinners" Christ wrought out our deliverance. He possessed infinite perceptions of the nature of sin, and understood, therefore, after a manner which we can but faintly appreciate, how transgression extended itself upwards in dishonouring the Creator, and downwards in destroying the creature. He thus saw iniquity under its opposite ramificacations. He saw it without any of the disguise or varnish which it draws from human passion, or human sophistry; and he discerned by a vision, over which there passed nothing of earthly mist, that the least acting of impurity struck so vehemently against the bosses of the Almighty's attributes, that it rebounded in vengeance, which must eternally crush the transgressor. Now to this capacity of estimating sin, add, first of all, the love which he bore to the Father, and you will, in some degree, understand the vastness of the endurance, when he found himself encompassed by the hosts of the ungodly. It would have accorded well with the longings of his heart, that he should succeed in bringing back the earth into an orbit of righteous obedience, and that, by the blood which he should shed, and the glad tidings which he should proclaim, the scene might be changed into one whence the Almighty might draw his full revenue of honour. But when, from the contradiction of sinners against himself, it became palpable, that in the stead of restoring the earth to the position from which transgression had hurled her, he must still leave her territories to be tenanted by generations, who would do despite to his heavenly Father-oh, we do not say that the Mediator wept scalding and bitter tears over the deep dishonour that would be offered to GOD -the glory of the Maker is too sublime a thing, and too secure a thing to stand in need of human contributions, or, when these are withheld, to claim for its loss the sympathies of holy beingsbut, if the Mediator wept not when he perceived how sin would continue to throw contempt on the Almighty, the pulse of a righteous indignation must have beat high within him; and inasmuch as God was to him the object of supreme love, the centre of burning affections, the goal of the spirit's soarings, assuredly the spectacle of the shrivelled things of mortality leaguing themselves to insult, and grieve, and provoke the being with whom he delighted hourly to commune, this must inexpressibly have pierced and facerated his soul; and the very climax of woe will be found in the description, that "whilst we were yet sinners" Christ appeared as our surety. | which shall delineate what is most exquisitely tender, and most heroically disinterested, and most unblenchingly resolute, the simple exhibition of Christ Jesus appearing as the surety of mankind remains ever the overwhelming and immeasurable prodigy, and language hath done its utmost in making the announcement, "the good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." I have already suggested that the just view of redemption is that which surveys the whole race of mankind, without the exception of one lonely individual, as ransomed or purchased by the blood of the atonement. When we look out upon the whole world as redeemed, though we know that only a part of that world shall be finally saved, we obtain something of an enlarged notion of the expatiations of the love of Christ-we behold him yearning, with an unspeakable compassion, over each member of the human family, and possessed of such an affection for all whom he had made bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, that he was just as ready to lay down his life for the solitary unit, as for the enormous combination. Now carry on this view of the love of the Redeemer, and connect it with the fact of the utter sinfulness of the creatures by whom he was surrounded. He could not, as I have just intimated to you, be met by a single child of our rebellious seed, on whose behalf he was not prepared to offer up the precious sacrifice of himself. And when he beheld the beings, for every one of whom he was content to endure ignominy and death, pursuing obstinately the courses of unrighteousness, throwing from them the proffered boon of deliverance, and drawing down upon themselves the tremendous curse which he well knew must follow transgression, oh, it is not too much to affirm that he must have felt con But if his love to the Father was vast, so also was his love to mankind; and here again his apprehensions of sin come into the account, and swell the endurance of having been constrained "to dwell in Mesech, and to have his habitation among the tents of Kedar." It would be idle to enlarge on the greatness of that benevolence which had prompted the Mediator to undertake our rescue. When creation has been ransacked for imagery | tinually the sickness and sadness of a fore us a field of agony, in which are set up none of the material emblems of his excruciating passion, but which is occupied in its length, and in its breadth, by tokens of that mental conflict which doth most surely dislocate the energies, and putting out of joint the very faculty of endurance, casts man down to the earth, and leaves him to be trampled on as a worm. We attempt not to examine too nicely into the awful matter of the Mediator's sufferings, suffice it, with respect to the baptism through which he passed, that there is not one amongst us who added not something wearied spirit, and the infidelity of mankind must have entered like a poisoned arrow into his pure and affectionate heart, and lacerating and cauterizing wherever it touched, have | made an inlet for sorrow where there never could be found admission for sin. Yea, it must have been the very extremity of anguish, that the sight with which he was compelled to be most familiar, was that of beings whom he loved, whom he longed to clasp in affection, in amity, in brotherhood, lighting funeral piles for their own souls, and spurning him from them when he entreated that, with his own life's blood, he might quench the Go-to the fiery dew and the swelling morrah-like conflagration. And forasmuch as this spectacle was forced upon him by his having undertaken to die for us while we were yet sinners, then we argue from Christ's love of man, just as we before argued from his love of God, that his sufferings must have been vastly aggravated by the sinfulness of those amongst whom they were endured. It is from incidental notices of this kind scattered up and down the Scriptures, that we obtain the keenest apprehensions of the Saviour's agonies. If a human artist study to set forth the sufferings of the Redeemer, then he has immediate recourse to the outward paraphernalia of woe-he must introduce the scourge, and the buffetings, and the crown of thorns, and the cross-and it is just by the accumulation of the apparatus (if I may so call it) of bodily torture, that he will work up his picture of the "Ecce homo." Yet there is more in the simple expression that Christ died for us "whilst we were yet sinners," than in all that the crayon ever produced, when the genius of a Raphael guided its strokes. We look in, if I dare use the expression, at the soul of the Redeemer -we are admitted as spectators of the solemn and tremendous workings of his spirit, and there is mapped out be surges-not one who was ought else but a direct contributor to that weight of sorrow which seemed for a time to confound him and to crush him. “God calleth those things which are not, as though they were;" and we had all, though yet unborn, passed before Him in our degradation and in our pollution -"we were yet sinners”—and He took our transgressions just as well as those of the myriads then living upon the earth, and cast them into the rushing deluge, and then it rolled on, an immensity of wrath, and the innocent surety bowed down and trembled, and sank beneath the impetuous torrent. And ye cannot put aside the strictness of the proof, that if Christ's sufferings were bitterly aggravated by the sinfulness of those among whom they were endured, then it follows that "GOD commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." The proof is most accurate and most logical-our being yet sinners, heightened, to an inconceivable degree the Mediator's trials nevertheless love could not be daunted by woe even in this its most colossal stature—and advancing in the very front of the mighty trouble, became certainly commended or displayed with a vigour and a vividness to which creation had heretofore been a stranger. PART OF THOSE FOR WHOM THEY WERE I would press this consideration upon you, for it is one of paramount importance. We were not in the strictest sense parties to the transaction which gave into the hands of Adam the destinies of his posterity; it is undeniable that we did not ourselves elect Adam to act as our representative-but I hold it to be, at the least, equally undeniable, that if we had had the power of electing we should have elected Adam, and that there would have been a wisdom in such procedure, which is vainly looked for in any other. I hold that reason, warped though she now be, and weakened, finds herself, nevertheless, compelled to pronounce as her verdict, that in appointing mankind to stand or fall in Adam, GoD dealt with them by the dictates of the amplest charity, and that it is not possible to conceive of any arrangement which would have been equally likely to advance their well-being. And if this reasoning be sound reaSoning, then it necessarily follows that every tongue must have been silent, had GoD abandoned mankind to the issues of apostacy; and had he left this planet, blighted and blackened by the curse, to walk among the stars, a monument of his wrath against transgression. We are born, indeed, under condemnation, and for a rebellion in which we took no actual share, we are the outcast and the alien; but if it be true that the dispensation of which these are the consequences was the produce of infinite benevolence, that it was a dispensation whose excellence even reason herself is constrained to admit, then where is the claim which can be urged for mercy? and how would the loving-kindness of Deity have been, in the smallest degree, compromised, had he never interposed between man and ruin, and had this earth never been made a stage which drew on it the regards of the whole intelligent creation, whilst the high transactions went forwards of the suretyship of our Immanuel ? No, brethren, there is nothing but the insolence of impiety which can dare to arraign either the justice or the goodness of the appointment which involved posterity in the disobedience of their earliest ancestor-and if this appointment cannot be arraigned, then it must be idle to speak of any claims which the fallen have upon the Creator; and whatsoever is done on their behalf must be in the largest sense gratuitous, and whatsoever is undertaken for their rescue must be sublimely independent on titles or demands. If it could be shown that love stamped not its impress on the arrangement which constituted Adam the repre sentative of mankind, why, then, (with | heighth in it, and a breadth in it, which reverence be it spoken) the creature, who inherited a birth-right of wretchedness, might have pleaded for deliverance with some semblance, at the least, of equity. But if the arrange. ment were one, as we maintain it was, which love had charactered with her most brilliant lineaments, into which (if it be lawful thus to speak) the love which prompted the creation of man gathered and condensed its beauty, and its majesty, and its fulness, and its tenderness, then we lay it down as an unasailable proposition that the compassions of the Most High towards our race might have closed themselves up as within a wall of brass, and they might never have sent forth a lonely throb of sensibility over our sinburdened provinces, and, nevertheless, the inscription, "GOD IS LOVE" would have been graven upon our archives, and the lying tongue of blasphemy alone would have dared to throw doubt on its accuracy. But the love of God -oh, it was a love which could not be content with having just done enough, with having vindicated itself, and thus taken away all justice from murmurings-it was a love which must commend itself-a love which must triumph over every thing which could quench love—a love which must bring down its possessor to the level of its object, and give him to taste the bitterness of human allotments, and to drain out the dregs of mortal wretchedness-and where, then, is a truth more unquestionable than that GOD commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." we cannot measure-if we would scale it, "the path is one which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen"-if we would pierce it we must enter into the springs of the sea, and walk in the search of the depth"-if we would scrutinize its boundaries, lo, "the cloud is its garment, and thick darkness its swadlingband”—we were unworthy; the least mercy, we had no claim to it-the minutest benefit, we had no right to it— but GoD commended his love towards us; and wonder, O heavens, and be astonished, O earth, whilst we were yet sinners, whilst the loathsomeness of disease was upon us, whilst the leprosy was in our veins, and the treason-cup in our hands-whilst we were yet sinners Christ died for us, the just for the unjust; and "God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of GOD in Him." Now, I think, brethren, that if you gather together the several portions of our argument, you will find St. Paul's assertion in the text completely exemplified. I have contended, in the first place, that the sufferings of the Redeemer were vastly aggravated by the circumstance, that it was amongst those that were yet sinners, these sufferings were endured. In the second place, I have shewn you, that since the interposition was on hehalf of sinners, the sufferings undergone were irrespective of all claim on the part of those for whom they were sustained. We learn from the first argument how intense were the sufferings to which love submitted; and from the second, how absolutely voluntary were those sufferings; and if the fact of Christ's having died for us while we were yet sinners hath conducted to these several conclusions, it follows with a kind of mathematical precision, "that GoD commendeth his love towards us, in |