peculiar aptitude, acquired from his own personal experience, to become the efficient and divine succourer of tempted suffering, in every place and in every age, has been tested by the lapse of eighteen centuries. Does any unbelieving Thomas doubt the infinitude of this consoling truth? Let him look back to the "tempted," yet triumphant martyrdoms of the early Church. Let him trace the modern footsteps of the "tempted," yet patient and enduring missionary of the cross, on the pestilential and burning sands of Africa's physical and moral desert. Let him strengthen his morbid faith by communing with the voices that come up from the islands of the farthest seas.

That the footsteps of the mediatorial God are often apparent in the second chapter of Hebrews will not be denied by our opponents. But they will affirm that the footsteps of the mediatorial man appear still oftener; and that, in the suffering and dying scenes, the man is the sole actor. This is a just specimen of the cardinal fault of the prevalent theory in its whole representation of the character of the Messiah. Ever and anon it presents the God apart; still oftener it presents the man apart. Its scenes are perpetually changing, sometimes in the twinkling of an eye, from the Godhead to the manhood, and thence back again, as suddenly, from the manhood to the God

head. Not so the scriptural representation. In the grand drama of the New Testament, whose author is God, and whose theme is salvation, the Godhead and the manhood of the Mediator act throughout in concert. They are one and indivisible; separated, or capable of separation, in nothing. They are born together; together are they wrapped in the straw of the manger. They suffer together; together they die.

CHAPTER XII.

Death of Eternal Son continued - Acts, iii., 15: Ye "killed the Prince of life." 1 Corinthians, ii., 8: They "crucified the Lord of glory." John, x., 14, 15: “I am the good shepherd." "I lay down my life for the sheep"-The Lamb of the fifth Chapter of Revelation-John, iii., 16, 17: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world." Romans, viii., 32: "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all."

THERE is a passage in Acts, and another in Corinthians, which are kindred passages with those upon which we have been commenting in the preceding chapters. The passage in Acts stands thus: "But ye denied the Holy One, and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and killed the Prince of life."-Acts, iii., 14, 15. The passage in Corinthians stands thus: "Which none of the princes of this world knew; for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory."-1 Corinthians, ii., 8.

Who was the "Prince of life," the "Lord of glory," of these passages? Doubtless it was not the mere humanity of him of Nazareth. Beyond peradventure, he whom these passages denominated the "Prince of life," the "Lord of glory," was

the second person of the Trinity, arrayed in his vestment of flesh. We have, then, these additional declarations of the Holy Ghost, that the second person of the Trinity, thus arrayed, was crucified and killed. These declarations must have been accomplished in all the plenitude of their awful truth. Would they have been accomplished by the crucifixion and death of the mere humanity of the Virgin's child? A man is not perforated by the perforation of his vestment. That the ethereal essence of the second person of the Trinity was distorted by the wood, and lacerated by the irons of the cross, no one will be wild enough to intimate; but that his ethereal essence endured viewless sufferings, denominated in scripture death, inflicted by the invisible sword of the Lord of Hosts, of which the visible dissolution of his terrestrial being on Calvary was but the representative, we cannot doubt, with the declarations of the Holy Ghost to that effect sounding in

our ears.

The Sacred Three have," at sundry times and in divers manners," declared, without restriction or limitation, that their second glorious person, clothed in flesh, suffered and died for the salvation of the world. Man, for whose sake this miracle of grace was wrought, yields not his credence to these stupendous declarations but with qualifica

tions and exceptions, the creatures of his own reasoning pride, lowering their sublime truths, as it were, from heaven down to earth. What is the cause of this strange phenomenon? It is caused by the sin of unbelief, that great moral ailment of our natures. This ailment lost us paradise. It withstood the personal miracles of the Son of God. That celestial Physician could cure, by the word of his power or the touch of his hand, the physical maladies of man; but to mitigate this moral malady, he was obliged to lay down his most precious life. And even in the soul renovated by his blood, the final victory of faith over the remnant of unbelief is its last triumph. The sin of skepticism is not peculiar to the scoffing infidel; it is the evil spirit which haunts the path even of the pious Christian. It often obtrudes its "miscreated front" into the closet, whither he has retired to commune with his Redeemer; it sometimes pursues him to the very altar of his God. Regenerated man, while in this wilderness of temptation, is, alas! but a believer in part. The time, however, is at hand when his feeble, trembling, hesitating faith will be swallowed up in glorious certainty.

The following passage is specially relevant to the point in issue: "I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine."-John, X., 14. "As the Father knoweth me, even so