essence. When, therefore, reasoning pride seeks to narrow down the term thus used by Christ, so as to confine its meaning to the inferior part of his immaterial or spiritual being, bearing a less proportion to the whole than a single grain of sand bears to the vast earth we inhabit, it seeks to render particular that awful declaration which the Son of God left general. To make the point clearer, let us suppose that the translators, instead of the present version, had translated the passages in question so as to make them conform, in terms, to the limited meaning now sought to be attached to them, by inserting the adjective human before the substantive soul. The exclamation of Christ would then have stood thus: "My human soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." This version would doubtless have been startling, even to the advocates of the prevalent theory. But if the adjective "human" is to be insinuated into the passages by construction, it might better have been openly inserted by the pen.

What were the contents of the cup, whose mere anticipation caused the sorrow, and amazement, and agony of the garden, the human imagination has not powers to conceive. It was the "cup of trembling," filled to overflowing with the "fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." The visible agonies of Calvary doubtless bore no com

parison to those which were unseen. The real tragedy was behind the curtain. There, impervious to human vision, was perfected the spiritual crucifixion of the eternal Son of God. The body of Christ heeded not the scourgings of the soldiery, but his whole immaterial being writhed under the anguish of those stripes by which we are healed. He looked down with indifference on the vindictive gaze of the crucifying multitude; but he looked upward with dismay at his Father's altered face. Through the opening skies he beheld that countenance, which, until he became a curse for us, had forever beamed on him with the sunshine of heaven, now darkened with a frown. The draught of mingled vinegar and gall he could reject; but now made sin, though sinless, he was compelled to drain to the very dregs the terrible cup of infinite wrath. The nails of the cross, which lacerated his quivering flesh, he regarded not; but he felt, in all the elements of his spiritual natures, that invisible, yet flaming sword of the Lord of Hosts, which was piercing him through and through, as the substitute for sinners.

But the scene was about to close. The last cry was ascending from the cross. "It is finished!" exclaimed the dying God, and gave up the ghost. "It is finished!" was echoed through the courts of heaven with triumphant acclamations. "It is fin

ished!" was reverberated through the vaults of hell in tones of despair. What was finished? The throes and spasms of a suffering Deity were finished. The reconcilement of infinite justice and infinite mercy was finished. The everlasting triumph over the powers of darkness was finished. The redemption of a world was finished.

We close this chapter by presenting to our readers the remarks of one of the master-spirits of the age on the extent and nature of Christ's sufferings. The remarks first reached our knowledge after these sheets were prepared for the press. The great and pious Chalmers says, "It blunts the gratitude of men when they think lightly of the sacrifice which God had to make when he gave up his Son unto the death; and, akin to this pernicious imagination, our gratitude is farther deadened and made dull when we think lightly of the death itself. This death was an equivalent for the punishment of guilty millions. In the account which is given of it, we behold all the symptoms of a deep and dreadful endurance -of an agony which was shrunk from, even by the Son of God, though he had all the strength of the Divinity to uphold him—of a conflict, and a terror, and a pain, under which omnipotence itself had wellnigh given way, and which, while it proved that the strength of the sufferer was infi

nite, proved that the sin for which he suffered, in its guilt and in its evil, was infinite also. Christ made not a seeming, but a substantial atonement for the sins of the world. There was something more than an ordinary martyrdom. There was an actual laying on of the iniquities of us all; and, however little we are fitted for diving into the mysteries of the divine jurisprudence—however obscurely we know of all that was felt by the Son of God when the deadful hour and power of darkness were upon him, yet we may be well assured that it was no mockery; that something more than the mere representation of a sacrifice, it was most truly and essentially a sacrifice itself a full satisfaction rendered for the outrage that had been done upon the Lawgiver-his whole authority vindicated, the entire burden of his wrath discharged. This is enough for all the moral purposes that are to be gained by our faith in Christ's propitiation. It is enough that we know of the travail of his soul. It is enough that he exchanged places with the world he died for, and that what to us would have been the wretchedness of eternity, was all concentrated upon him, and by him was fully borne."*

* Chalmers's Lectures on Romans, p. 318, 319. Carter's NewYork edition.

CHAPTER XV.

Humanity of Christ had not Physical Capacities to endure all his Sufferings-Body and Human Soul of Christ differed in nothing but Holiness from those of ordinary Men-Body can suffer only to limited Extent-So of Human Soul-Sufferings of Christ Infinite, or, at least, beyond Mortal Endurance-Christ's Physical Capacities not expanded at last Passion-If so, he would not have Suffered in our Nature-Shifts to which Prevalent Theory is put to reconcile Extent of Christ's Sufferings with limited Capacities of Humanity to suffer.

HAVING thus completed our review of the dismay with which Christ beheld his coming sufferings, and the perturbation which their endurance caused him, we may confidently deduce from the premises the sure conclusion that his sufferings were infinite; or, if not infinite, that they inexpressibly surpassed any sufferings which mortal man ever bore, or which the highest angel in heaven, united to humanity, could have endured. We may now, therefore, return to the farther development of the principle which we laid down in a preceding page, that the body and human soul of Christ had not physical capabilities to become the recipient of the amount of sufferings demonstrated by his unparalleled dismay at their ap

*

* See page 193.