whereby the Father's purpose of salvation to lost man, which the incarnate Son had undertaken to execute was to be accomplished; and whereby He took away the hand-writing that was against them, nailing it to his cross. But that death of shame and agony, to which He then looked forward, was perfected, when He cried, from his station of unsearchable mercy on the cross, "It is finished." The wilderness of suffering was now triumphantly passed; all enemies vanquished; and the rest of the promised land, the glory of his double nature, one with God and one with man, was now to be entered upon, in his Father's presence; and to be consummated, with the blessedness of his saints, at the restitution of all things. And surely, if angels desire to look into the act and process of human redemption, they must have listened to this solemn cry, uttered by the Lord of glory, with wonder that filled even their minds, familiar as they were with lower depths in the im

mensity of divine wisdom, than men, the immediate subjects of Christ's great salvation, in their distance of sin and darkness from God, probably could be. When they heard the Lord Jesus utter this cry, the presage of his final and everlasting victory, before He bowed his head, soon to be radiant with many crowns of glory, and gave up the ghost, they must have echoed it back through all their host, with songs of praise and love to its great Author. My dear brethren, the world through all its generations, has heard and handed down the saying of philosophers and sages; and they are familiar to our ears, with a reputation for wisdom, at least equal to their deserts, if not to the confidence of their claims: but no words were ever uttered by men, nor angels, nor (so far as we are involved, together with all the mighty and eternal interests of our souls) by God Himself, of higher moment than these of the dying Jesus" It is finished!"

I would gladly have so spoken in ex

planation, and enforcement of the previous sayings of our Emmanuel, as to have kept alive your attention in the consideration of them, during the solemn services through which we have passed and to have brought you hither, not only with unwearied, but with refreshed and re-invigorated minds, to dwell upon the two remaining cries, now no longer cries of conflict, but of triumph, uttered by Christ Jesus our Lord. But my wish has been ill-seconded by my power. If, however, an angel's love to God and souls, had been seconded by an angel's knowledge, and an angel's tongue,-the knowledge and the language would have been in vain, unless the Spirit of light, and life, and truth, accompanied the word, and made it the power of God to your salvation. And here is the comfort of every minister of Christ, whether the most eloquent and gifted of all his order, or the feeblest stammerer amongst his brethren, that the Holy Ghost saves by the foolishness of

preaching; in order, that your faith may not stand in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God. The sayings of Jesus, and the priestly life of Jesus in human flesh, so far as it had its blessed exercise in offering the atonement for sin, have their end in the services of this day.1 I beseech you, therefore, with love towards Him, with faith in his atonement and righteousness, and with desire to draw instruction from the expressions of his latest breath, to consider for a little space the high and glorious purport of the cry in the text-" It is finished!"

I. THE

SUFFERINGS UNDERGONE BY

THE GOD-MAN, IN BEHALF OF SINNERS, WERE NOW ENDED. He had drunk the cup of wrath; He had drained it to the dregs; and not one drop remained for Him, or for those who are one with Him by faith, to taste, thenceforth, even for

1 Good Friday.

ever. That cup had been large, and full, and bitter so large, that only the infinite Godhead of Jesus could have heid the vials of indignation against sin which were poured into it: so full, that it left space for no further indignation against the travail of the Saviour's soul; and not one curse remained for the condemnation of that seed, which Jesus should see growing by faith on Himself, the tree of life, as the Father gave it for fruitfulness in Him; so bitter, that the nature of any one inferior to the Son of God must have been unable even to taste the least drop of it. He had cried, when his humanity seemed to be bowed down for a moment before the coming trial, with all its overwhelming character of sorrow, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." But, He was heard in the filial alternative of his petition" Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt; because a rẹmission of suffering would have been inconsistent with his own covenant, and with