"The men that held Jesus mocked Him, and smote Him, and when they had blindfolded Him, they struck Him on the face, and asked Him saying, Prophesy, who is it that smote Thee? and many other things blasphemously spake they against Him.”

"And Herod with His men of war set Him at nought, and mocked Him, and arrayed Him in a gorgeous robe, and sent Him again to Pilate.”

"Pilate therefore took Jesus and scourged Him; and the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand, and they put on Him a purple robe, and said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote Him on the head with a reed, and did spit upon Him, and, bowing their knees, worshipped Him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe."

Lastly: "When they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they crucified Him'” -between two malefactors, and even there they did not cease insulting and mocking Him; but all of them, chief priests and people, stood beholding, and bidding Him come down from the Cross.

Now I bid you consider that that Face, so ruthlessly smitten, was the Face of God Himself; the Brows bloody with the thorns, the sacred Body exposed to view and lacerated with the scourge, the Hands nailed to the Cross, and, afterwards, the Side pierced with the spear; it was the Blood, and the

1 John xviii. 22. Matt. xxvi. 67. John xix.1, 2. Matt. xxvii. 29.

Luke xxii. 63–65; xxiii. 11.
Mark xv. 19. Luke xxiii. 33.

sacred Flesh, and the Hands, and the Temples, and the Side, and the Feet of God Himself which the frenzied multitude then gazed upon. This is so fearful a thought, that when the mind first masters it, surely it will be difficult to think of anything else; so that, while we think of it, we must pray God to temper it to us, and to give us strength to think of it rightly, lest it be too much for us.

Taking into account, then, that Almighty God Himself, God the Son, was the Sufferer, we shall understand better than we have hitherto the description given of Him by the Evangelists; we shall see the meaning of His general demeanour, His silence, and the words He used when He spoke, and Pilate's awe at Him.

"And the high priest arose and said unto Him, Answerest Thou nothing? What is it which these witness against Thee? But Jesus held His peace'."

"When He was accused of the chief priests and elders, He answered nothing. Then said Pilate unto Him, Hearest Thou not how many things they witness against Thee? and He answered him to never a word, insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly 2."

"The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God. When Pilate therefore heard

that saying, he was the more afraid, and went again

1 Matt, xxvi. 62, 63.

VOL. VI.

2 Matt. xxvii. 12-14.

G

into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art Thou? But Jesus gave him no answer 1."

"And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad for he was desirous to see Him of a long season, because he had heard many things of Him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by Him. Then he questioned with Him in many words, but He answered him nothing 2."

Lastly, His words to the women who followed Him, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us "."

3

After these passages, consider the words of the beloved disciple in anticipation of His coming at the end of the world. "Behold He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, they also which pierced Him and all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen 1."

4

Yes, we shall all of us, for weal or for woe, one day see that holy Countenance which wicked men struck and dishonoured; we shall see those Hands that were nailed to the cross; that Side which was

1 John xix. 7-9.
3 Luke xxiii. 28-30.

2 Luke xxiii. 8, 9.

4 Rev. i. 7.

pierced. We shall see all this; and it will be the sight of the Living God.

This being the great mystery of Christ's Cross and Passion, we might with reason suppose, as I have said, that some great thing would result from it. The sufferings and death of the Word Incarnate could not pass away like a dream; they could not be a mere martyrdom, or a mere display or figure of something else, they must have a virtue in them. This we might be sure of, though nothing had been told us about the result. But that result is also revealed; it is this, our reconciliation to God, the expiation of our sins, and our new creation in holiness.

We had need of a reconciliation, for by nature we are outcasts. From the time that Adam fell, all his children have been under a curse. "In Adam all die1," as St. Paul says. So that every one of us is born into this world in a state of death; such is our natural life from our very first breath; we are children of wrath; conceived in sin; shapen in iniquity. We are under the bondage of an inborn element of evil, which thwarts and stifles whatever there is of truth and goodness remaining in us, directly we attempt to act according to it. This is that "body of death" under which St. Paul describes the natural man as groaning, and saying, "O wretched man, who shall deliver me!" Now for ourselves, my brethren, we know (praised be God) that all of us have from our infancy

1 1 Cor. xv. 22.

been taken out of this miserable heathen state by holy baptism, which is God's appointed means of regeneration. Still it is not less our natural state; it is the state in which every one of us was born; it is the state in which every little child is, when brought to the font. Dear as he is to those who bring him thither, and innocent as he may look, there is, till he is baptized, an evil spirit in his heart, a spirit of evil lying hid, seen of God, unseen by man (as the serpent among the trees of Eden), an evil spirit which from the first is hateful to God, and at length will be his eternal ruin. That evil spirit is cast out by Holy Baptism, without the privilege of which his birth would but be a misery to them. But whence did Baptism gain its power? From that great event we are so soon to commemorate; the death of the Son of God incarnate. Almost all religions have their outward cleansings; they feel the need of man, though they cannot supply it. Even the Jewish system, though divine, effected nothing here; its washings were but carnal; the blood of bulls and goats was but earthly and unprofitable. Even St. John's baptism, our Lord's forerunner, had no inward propitiatory power. Christ was not yet crucified. But when that long-expected season came, when the Son of God had solemnly set Himself apart as a Victim in the presence of His twelve Apostles, and had gone into the garden, and before three of them had undergone His agony and bloody sweat, and then had been betrayed, buffeted, spit upon, scourged, and nailed to the cross, till He