know and think of that suffering which belongs to your present condition as connected in general with your fallen state, at once as its penalty and its corrective, for this is the view by which you must learn the vanity of created things as a source of happiness, and see the malignity of sin as the blasting of all earthly comforts. But still, however pure your hopes and however just your views, the principal question always must be,-What is their influence upon your own character and conduct as Christians? what are they doing for your perfection in any devout disposition?-for your progress in any fruit of grace?—for your energy in any prescribed duty ?-for your perseverance in all these to the end? "Wherefore, beloved," says the same Apostle, "seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent, that ye may be found of him in peace without spot and blameless." This is the Apostle's prayer in the text before us, -his prayer for all to whom his words might come, that such may be the blessed fruit both of your consolations and of your corrections; and what was his prayer for you should assuredly be your earnest prayer for yourselves; and what is your solemn prayer to God, ought certainly to be your actual, your settled endeavour before God to work out under his blessing. Let this, then, always be your course in reality. At all times, and in all conditions, you are all exposed to many sufferings and sorrows. Take always this Christian view of them,-make always this Christian improvement of them. It is always right and warrantable to endeavour to remove them, and to find relief under them. It is your especial duty, both in regard to your own troubles and in 'regard to the sufferings of others around you, to consider what may be the direct causes of them, or what may be the proper remedies for them, as far as any remedies may be expected in the good providence of God, or practicable through the help of man. You are always concerned to “ remember them that suffer adversity," and to relieve them and comfort them, if you can, even when they are men clearly "suffering according to the will of God." But, while you are doing all this, doing all in your power to keep away suffering or to put away suffering from yourselves or others, nevertheless see that you take always the Christian view, and make the Christian use, of whatever befals you or takes place around you as suffering creatures. Let no man persuade you, in any case, that you suffer this evil or that evil merely through the fault of others; and that, if it had not been for such and such occurrences, or for such and such persons, you would have been free from such and such sufferings. It is your lot, your unavoidable lot, as fallen creatures, that here you must "suffer a while;" and it is often your truest blessing, as "called to eternal glory," that you here feel the chastenings of affliction from a heavenly Father's hand. Whoever, then, may be made the means, and wherever may rest the

blame, remember always that your sufferings are ordered in God's wise and gracious providence, and that they may be improved to your own everlasting benefit. Even when such suffering proceeds most clearly and most directly from some wickedness or weakness of your fellowcreatures, let this be your view of it and your use of it as believers. What, for instance, were the sufferings to which the Apostles so often refer as befalling the believers, whom they addressed in such words as those of the text? Were they not chiefly acts of persecution,-oppressive and bloody persecution, from the hands of men, from the tyranny of their rulers, or the barbarity of the people? Yet how invariably do the Apostles enjoin the disciples of Christ to bear these very trials with all meekness and patience, as coming from God, and at the same time to improve them with all diligence, as designed for their good. Clearly is it your duty to follow the same counsel, and to act in the same spirit, in all cases of affliction or distress, or suffering of any sort. Connect them all with your spiritual progress as Christians. Make them all yield to you the peaceable fruits of righteousness. March forward upon them all, and through the midst of them all, as steps even to your eternal glory.

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Let it be your full purpose, let it be your fervent prayer, that, whatever ye may suffer, ye shall not suffer as evil-doers; and then, when suffering according to the will of God, "commit the keeping of your souls to him in well-doing, as to a faithful Creator." Humble yourselves under his mighty hand, that he may exalt you in due time." "Cast all your care on him, for he careth for you." “Watch always, and pray," lest your great adversary should gain any advantage over you in any of your trials; but, "resisting him steadfastly in the faith," make it your daily supplication to the God of all grace, who hath called you to his eternal glory, that, after ye have suffered a while, he would make you perfect, 'stablish, strengthen, settle you"-and finally present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.

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23

SERMON III.

THE SAVIOUR'S SUFFERINGS, AND HIS SATISFACTION IN THE FRUIT

OF THEM.

BY THE REV. J. ROXBURGH, A.M., DUNDEE.

"He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied."—ISAIAH liii. 11.

THERE are three things to which these words invite our attention. 1st, The sufferings of Christ, here described as the "travail of his soul." 2dly, The fruit of his sufferings; "he shall see of the travail," that is, of the effects or consequences of it. 3dly, His satisfaction in beholding the results of all his pain; "he shall be satisfied."

1st, Our attention is invited to the sufferings of Christ; and in respect to them, we are taught that they were not only bodily, but also and chiefly soul sufferings. It was in his inward spiritual anguish-in his conflicts with the wrath of God-in what he endured from the curse of the law and the temptations of the powers of darkness-that the price of the redemption of the elect principally lay. The expression, "the travail of his soul," farther indicates the greatness and extremity of his sufferings. The word is employed to express the highest degree of endurable agony, for example, the pains and groans of creation under the curse.

In order that we may arrive at even the most faint and remote conception of the indescribable sorrow and heaviness of the Saviour, it is necessary for us to have our mind impressed with the doctrine of Scripture regarding the constitution of his person. We are too apt ignorantly to conclude, that to him in whom dwelt all the fulness of the godhead bodily, nothing could be a difficulty, nothing could cost a struggle --that his omnipotence must have borne him onward above the power of pain, and grief, and distress—and that, if his apparent sufferings were not altogether unreal, they must to him at least have been trifling and contemptible. Now, it is to be remembered that, while he was truly God, co-eternal and co-essential with the father, he was at the same time complete and perfect man, possessed of a true body and a reasonable soula soul of the most exquisite sensibility, and susceptible of the most painful impressions from every form of evil. The union of the two natures in his one person was without confusion of their properties. Notwith

standing the union, the natures remained distinct, and their operations distinct. Neither his original dignity as the Son of God, nor the union of the Divine nature with the human, nor the sacred distinction attending his birth, furnished the slightest ground to doubt his absolute participation of our nature and actual communion with us in all our sufferings. In the body, he was liable to hunger, and thirst, and weariness, as much as any of us. He was capable of being bruized with stripes, torn with scourges, pricked with thorns, pierced with nails, transfixed with a spear. So also his soul was endued with the same faculties and affections as ours. He was moved with pity and compassion. He was stung with reproach and ingratitude. He was susceptible of affliction, and disturbance, and agony. He was devoid of no property that belongs to us. He was free only from the contamination that adheres to our corrupted nature. Such was the depth of humiliation, such the capacity of suffering, to which he stooped who was the Lord of nature and fountain of life, the eternal partaker of the Father's happiness, the brightness of his glory, the express image of his person.

Now, as has already been said, his sufferings were chiefly soul sufferings. His anguish was mental anguish. It arose from moral and spiritual considerations, rather than from the cruel inflictions of his persecutors. He that killeth only the body could do little to produce that dejection which he discovers in his agony. There was a power beyond this at work. There was a province of pain to which it could not reach. "The iron entered into his soul." It was there the bitterest part of his afflictions was endured, and he tasted the essence of unutterable sorrow. Soul trouble is in its very nature more heavy and overwhelming than bodily. "The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity: but a wounded spirit who can bear?" Our Lord's bodily tortures were not without a parallel, but the pangs he endured in his soul were; and this is the only explanation that can be given of his indescribable grief, and anxiety, and dismay, in the day when he became a sacrifice for sin. History furnishes accounts of saints and martyrs, who, animated by the faith and hope of the gospel, have endured bodily pain as severe and as prolonged as that of Christ, not only without any of those expressions of peculiar amazement and grief to which he gave utterance, not only with the most unflinching resolution, but even with triumph and exultation. The apostles joyed in tribulations the most unexampled. We read of those who "were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection "-who, under all the multiplied miseries that were heaped upon them, exhibited a patience, a constancy, a cheerfulness, which provoked their blood-thirsty enemies to the last degree of cruelty --and yet even that, though it forced the reluctant spirit to quit its

earthly tenement, could not daunt their courage, could not shake their resolution. These were disciples of Christ; and yet Christ himself appears, though not inconstant, yet dejected and desponding in his sufferings, and sadly racked with anxiety and amazement. The reason is, they had sources of spiritual consolation that enabled them to smile on death in its most formidable shape; whereas he had sources of mental anguish which pointed every sting, and magnified every gloomy feature of that king of terrors. Indeed, in all the representations of his sufferings, whether contained in the prophetic or apostolic writings, there is a pressure of agony, a mysterious sorrow, a terrible and unknown conflict of soul, which is inconceivable by our minds. Language labours to give us even a glimpse into it; and the very sight of its outward expression seems to have overwhelmed the Disciples, for "when Jesus had risen up from prayer, and was come to them, he found them sleeping for sorrow."

But although we cannot measure the length and breadth, the height and depth, of the Redeemer's agony, we can discover some of the reasons of it, and these it is profitable to ponder in our heart. We cannot estimate the bitterness of his tears, but we may comprehend in some faint degree what caused them to flow; and that we may be prepared to enter into the consideration of this subject, it is needful that we carry along with us right views of the holiness of Christ's human nature, in which all his sufferings were endured. His spiritual perceptions were not darkened, nor his moral feelings blunted, as they are even in the best men, by the influence of natural corruption or the remaining power of sinful habits. There was not a cloud upon his understanding to obscure its spiritual vision; his will did not decline in one particular from the perfect rule of rectitude,—had no wish but what was agreeable with the will of his Father; his conscience was most tender and sensitive; his affections pure and unstained. In all the faculties of his soul he was holy, harmless, and undefiled. Such a being must have been sensibly affected with all the evils attending his passion in a measure far beyond what any other man was capable of. No one could have felt, no one ever did feel, pain, and grief and shame as he did, so that we may truly apply to him the words of the prophet, "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger." His spotless soul was capable of a full view of the awful malignity and hatefulness of sin, and alive to a sense of its exceeding sinfulness. He could appreciate the disorder and confusion it has introduced into the creation of God. He could feel the abhorrence with which its pollution is fitted to affect a soul that has never yielded to its power. He could estimate the

No. 3.-SER. 3.