THE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE. MARCH, 1827. Religious Communications. LECTURES ON THE SHORTER CATE one who continueth not in all CHISM OF THE WESTMINSTER AS- things written in the book of the SEMBLY OF DIVINES-ADDRESSED TO YOUTH. LECTURE XXVI. (Continued from p. 52.) Again-The answer before us further states that Christ humbled himself by enduring "the cursed death of the cross." This was a punishment inflicted only on malefactors of the most atrocious and of degraded kind-0 who can conceive of the humiliation of the Son of God, in consenting to die like slaves and thieves!-a death in which infamy and agony were united, and carried to their very extremity! The death of the cross was called a cursed death, because they who endured it were separated from all good, and devoted to all evil. Christ, although sinless in himself, was separated from all happiness, and devoted to all misery, while he suffered on the accursed tree. God spared him not, but gave him up to this awful death - for us all. Hear the words of inspiration, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written-Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." " Our blessed Redeemer had taken the law place of sinners, and in regard to these it was enacted-"Cursed is every VOL. V.-Ch. Adv. law to do them." It is, I presume, known to you all, that the cross was formed by a post sunk in the ground-toward the top of which a transverse piece of wood was firmly fastened: on this the victim had his arms extended, and nails were driven through the palms of each hand to fasten them above, while, in the same manner, the feet were nailed to the post below. In this manner hung, and bled, and died, that Saviour, my dear youth, who thus suffered, for your sins and mine. Having, in these circumstances, been pierced to the heart with a spear, to insure his death, he said "It is finished," -the great work is all accomplished-"Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit:" And "he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost."-The sun hid his face; the earth quaked; the rocks rent; the death of its Maker darkened and convulsed the universe! This death of the Redeemer had been typified, at a very early period of the ancient Jewish church, by the brazen serpent; which Moses, by Divine command, erected on a pole in the wilderness, and to which those who had been stung by serpents, were directed to look for healing: And although the ancient saints had not those clear and definite ideas of the atoning death N of Christ which we are favoured with, yet from symbols and sacrifices they knew enough to make this the object and reliance of their faith, and they were saved by it. I must not leave this part of the subject, till I have distinctly reminded you, that neither during the sufferings, nor at the death of Christ, was his human nature separated from his divine, as some have strangely affirmed. The natures were inseparable; though it was only in his humanity that the Saviour did or could suffer. Yet as the Divine nature gave worth and efficacy to all, if it had been separated from the human, there would have been nothing left but the sufferings of a perfect man; of no avail to take away sin, and exhibiting but a low example, comparatively, of humiliation. Finally-The answer states that Christ was "buried and continued under the power of death for a time." Temporal death had been a part of the penalty threatened to the transgression of the first covenant, and therefore the Surety humbled himself to taste it. In that remarkable prophecy of our Saviour, which we have in the 53d chapter of Isaiah, and which seems more like a history than a prophecy, there is one passage which, but for the facts, would appear extremely obscure and almost contradictory. It is said "he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death." Or as Lowth more accurately renders it-"His grave was appointed with the wicked; but with the rich man was his tomb." How wonderfully and exactly was this prophecy accomplished!-As our Lord suffered with thieves, so, no doubt, his grave was intended and appointed by the Jews, to be with theirs. Yet the purpose of God must stand-" With the rich man was his tomb." We have only to collect and read the several accounts of the evangelists, thus connected and translated by Lowth "There was a rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, a member of the Sanhedrim, and of a respectable character, who had not consented to their counsel and act: He went boldly to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus; and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out of the rock, near to the place where Jesus was crucified; having first wound it in fine linen, with spices, as the manner of the Jews was to bury the rich and great." Thus, literally, strictly, and strikingly, was this obscure prophecy fulfilled: The grave of Jesus was appointed with the wicked-with thieves and robbers-yet after all, with the rich man was his tomb. How wonderful is it that such prophecies do not convince the Jews!-They will, when the veil shall be taken from their hearts; and I think these striking predictions were partly intended for this very purpose. Our Lord's body was laid in a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid before; that when he should arise from the dead, there might be no room to affirm that it was some other possessor of the tomb that had risen, or been removed. The body of our Lord saw no corruption. It had never been tainted by a single sin. He was, in all respects, "God's holy One:" and his work of humiliation being complete, when he yielded to the stroke of death and was laid in the tomb, he saw no corruption. He remained a part of three days under the power of death; that is, from about three o'clock of the af ternoon of Friday, till after daybreak, on the Lord's day. This was a space sufficient to number him distinctly with those who are laid in the grave, and to ascertain beyond all controversy that he had been dead-that his body was deprived of every vital principle or indication. You learn in the creed that Christ "descended into hell." The word here translated hell, is hades in Greek. It means only the state of the dead-There is no reason to believe that Christ descended to the place of the damned. The awful agony of the garden, the death of the cross, and being numbered with the dead, fully satisfy this expression of the apostles' creed, and we believe that nothing further was intended by it. He said to the penitent malefactor"This day thou shalt be with me in paradise"-His holy soul was in paradise, while his body lay in the tomb. Thus have we considered the interesting subject of our Lord's humiliation. I could not forbear a number of reflections as I passed along. Let me entreat you, in addition, to consider 1. That the humiliation of Christ ought effectually to teach humility, to all who profess to be his disciples. Why was it necessary that the Son of God should stoop so low? Was it not because our sins had cast us from the standing which man originally held, and had sunk us deep in guilt, and infamy, and wretchedness? Was it not because it was indispensable that he should come down to the depths of our degradation, that he might raise us up from them? And is this deeply degraded state, that into which every child of Adam is born?-Is it that in which every one remains, till he is delivered from it, through the influence and application of the stupendous work which was accomplished by the humiliation of Christ? You know, my dear youth, the answers to which these interrogatories point you. Believe it, the humiliation of Christ, when rightly considered, will connect itself with such views of human guilt and debasement, as are fitted to hide pride forever from the eyes of every human being;-fitted to make him feel, that before his God, he is a polluted, abject wretch, who is ever out of his place, when he is out of the valley of humiliation. It was indeed an infinite condescension, for our blessed Redeemer to be in a state of humiliation; but to be in that state is no condescension in us. It is our only proper state. To claim to be in any other, is infinitely absurd, as well as sinful. O be sensible, that the very essence of sin is pride! It was the first sin, and it has been the mother sin ever since the first. Let us acknowledge, as becomes us, that we are guilty and vile. Let us, as sinners, take our place in the dust before our God. When there, we shall be prepared to receive the benefit of our Lord's humiliation. We shall be willing to owe our salvation entirely, to what he has done and suffered on earth and is now doing in heaven. We shall embrace him--most cordially and thankfully embrace him-as all our salvation and all our desire. We shall prove our discipleship by that lowliness of mind, and by all those acts of condescension and kindness to our fellow sinners, of which he has set us an unspeakably amiable example: and we shall find this lowliness of mind as favourable to our peace and comfort, as it is correspondent to the demands of duty-Yea, we shall find it favourable to true magnanimity, and genuine dignity of character. marks the ingenuous return of a convinced and humble prodigal, to the love and kind reception of the best of fathers. It is lovely in the sight both of God and man; and it prepares all in whom it is found, to be raised in due time, through the aboundings of the Saviour's purchase, to a crown and a kingdom, unfading and eternal. It 2. A due consideration of the humiliation of Christ, will most ef fectually teach us to be patient under sufferings. Was he patient. and resigned, and perfectly submissive to his Father's will, when he suffered for our sins? and shall we be impatient and rebellious while we suffer for our own sins? For let it ever be remembered, that if we had not been sinners, suffering had never been known, either by our Saviour or by ourselves. Sin is the cause of all the suffering in the universe. The sin of man has produced whatever of pain and misery has been felt by our guilty race, and by our glorious Redeemer. He endured the awful penalty due to the guilty, without a regret or a murmur, when he stood in their place and shall any sinner, on this side the place of torment, murmur, when he endures only a very small part of what his iniquities have deserved? With what pertinence and force is it asked in Holy Scripture-" Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins ?" By what Christ endured in his humiliation, the sufferings of his own people have changed their character. Their sting is extracted. They are no longer the wrathful inflictions of an incensed judge, but the wholesome, however painful discipline, of a wise, a kind, and a loving Father. Have the people of God this assurance, and can they think of what it cost their Saviour to give them this assurance, and yet can they complain? No-In the lively exercise of faith they cannot, they do not. A delicate woman, under one of the most painful operations of surgery which human nature can sustain, was observed to pass through the whole without a sigh or a groan-How could you bear it thus? was the earnest inquiry, after the operation was safely over. I thought, said she, how much more than I endured, my Saviour bore for me, and I could not find it in my heart to utter a complaint. Here, my dear children, is the blessed secret of bearing pain, and affliction of every kind, of which the ungodly world is entirely ignorant. The true believer thinks much of what his Sa viour bore; thinks that it was borne for him; thinks that his own sufferings are light in the comparison; thinks that they are all inflicted by a Father's hand; thinks that they are all needed, and that infinitely more are deserved; thinks that they give him the opportunity to exercise precious graces, that shall have an abundant reward; thinks that they will all increase the bliss of heaven; thinks, in a word, that "our light affliction which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." S. In the humiliation of Christ, we see more strikingly and impressively than any where else, the evil of sin. We see this evil, as already observed, in all the sufferings which mankind endure-in all the painful diseases to which our race is subject; in all that man inflicts on his fellow man; in all the calamities which arise from war, and famine, and pestilence, and inundation, and earthquake; in all the mortality which has long since made the number of the dead, a thousand fold greater than the number of the living-In all this, you see the consequences and the evil of sin; and truly it is an appalling view. But if you look into the invisible world, and contemplate the state of those who have gone to the place of endless perdition; to the abodes of hopeless despair; to the inconceivable agony described in Holy Writ, by the worm that never dies, and the fire that is never quenched-by the blackness of darkness forever; by the weeping, and wailing and gnashing of teeth, of those, the smoke of whose torment ascendeth up forever and ever-When you contemplate this, you think nothing of all the sufferings of the present life. Here you are ready to say-here, in " the damnation of hell," we see, in the most awful manner, the evil of sin-No, my dear children, there is one other view, that is more awful still. In all you have yet seen, not an individual being endures any thing, beyond what he has personally and justly deserved. But now turn your eyes to Gethsemane and Calvary, and there see "the Holy One of God," suffering by imputation only, for the sins of his people-suffering agonies beyond all your conceptions-and then tell, or conceive, if you can, what must be the malignity of that evil, which a righteous God could not consistently pardon, without these ineffable inflictions on his only begotten and well beloved Son. O flee to him!-that as your sins have caused his sufferings, so his meritorious righteousness, wrought out in pain and humiliation, may save you from suffering without hope and without end. This leads me to remark 4. That we may learn our infinite indebtedness to the Saviour, by contemplating his humiliation. We are accustomed to estimate our obligations to a benefactor, by considering both the intrinsick value of his gift, and what it cost him to bestow it on us. Estimate in this way, if it be possible, the obligations we are under to our adored Redeemer. Can man or angel tell, what is the value of the gift of eternal life, to those who were doomed to eternal death? But such is the gift of Christ to every glorified spirit, that shall be found in "the General Assembly and Church of the first born, whose names are written in heaven." Every individual of that whole assembly owes, and will eternally and entirely owe it, to Christ, that his are all the unknown joys of heaven, in place of all the unknown miseries of hell. And to procure for his people this happy exchange of destiny-to make them the gift of eternal life, their Saviour, in his humiliation, answered a debt which none but a God could pay. "We were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish, and without a spot-Feed the church of God-said the holy apostlewhich he hath purchased with his own blood." Now, when we thus consider what an infinite benefit our blessed Lord bestows on his people, and at what an expense he procured it, do you not perceive that their indebtedness to him is strictly inconceivable, is literally infinite. He knows that we can never repay him, and he does not require it-Nay, he not only intended that what he did should be gratuitous, but he demands that we receive it as such. It is the height of arrogant and impious self-sufficiency, so much as to think of rendering to Christ an equivalent for what he has done for us, or to think of adding to it by any deeds of our own. We are to receive his gifts "without money and without price." But he does expect and demand our gratitude-He expects and demands it, as the evidence of our sense of obligation. And where is the gratitude of that human being, who hears the gospel message, and does not feel that he is indebted to the Saviour, beyond what can be uttered or imagined. Consider then, I entreat you, in what manner you are to make known that you feel your indebtedness to your Redeemer. It is by accepting him as your only Saviour; it is by making nothing of yourselves, and every thing of him; it is by coming to him to deliver you at once from the guilt, the pollution, and the dominion of your sins; it is by devoting yourselves unreservedly to his service and glory; it is by obeying all his commandments; it is by cultivating a temper and spirit like his own, and walking as you have him for an example; it is by adorning his reli |