the pain, and shame, and trouble, and agony, of HIM who was hanged on a tree in Jerusalem, so far away, so many years before we were born? We shall never think on it as we ought, except we begin to have some true love of that Divine Sufferer in our hearts. To fix our eyes in earnest upon the Cross, we want love and faith too; faith, to represent to our hearts, as true and real, the things which happened at Jerusalem so long ago; love, to hinder us from withdrawing our mind's eye from things so painful and distressing. It is want of faith and love, which hinders us from true and thorough contemplation of the sufferings of our Divine SAVIOUR, even as the Saints' overflowing faith and love have ever caused them to give themselves up to steady meditation on those sufferings; to realize them in every way, and make them their own.

The disciples at that time wanted faith and love, out of a kind of childishness. As children cannot look on to distress and illness, and when they hear of it, do not know what it means, so the twelve could not at that time know what our LORD meant, when He spoke to them of being ill-used and crucified. But what is our reason? Why cannot we think steadily on His passion? Alas! there are too many reasons and too evident.

Too many of us are wanting in seriousness altogether. Suppose an Angel, at a certain season— —at this holy season of passion-tide,— were to go round to every house, knock at every person's door, and say, "This is the solemn time-this is different from all other weeks in the year: the Cross is lifted up among you; come round it and adore. Put away the strange gods, the earthly thoughts and pursuits, from among you; and force yourself now, for a time at least, to follow your LORD in heart whithersoever He goeth. Watch HIM from morning to night, on His way into Jerusalem, during His nightly devotions in the Mount of Olives, discoursing in the Temple, foretelling the end of the world, at His Last Supper, in the garden of His agony, bound before His persecutors, bearing His Cross to Calvary, lifted up upon it between earth and Heaven. Fix the eyes of your heart upon Him for these days of His Passion, at least; do not willingly let them wander." Suppose, I say, one of God's Angels were to go round from house to house at the beginning of the Holy Week, with such a warning as the; how would he find himself received? I will not now

speak of those houses in which such a call would be clearly out of place, because they who dwell there have been all their lives long so entirely taken up with other things, that they do not even understand what is meant when they are called on to look to the Cross. I will not suppose this Angel's voice falling on ears altogether unholy and profane: let us imagine those who hear it to be in some respects serious persons; yet will the meaning of the voice be more or less hid from them-they will not know the things which are spoken, they will not understand the call to keep Passion Week, except they have been on their guard against such an error as I am now going to mention.

If we have been leading soft and delicate lives, indulging ourselves without scruple in all delights and amusements which were not plainly sinful, how can it be possible for us, then, to taste at all with our LORD the bitterness of the Cross ? We have read of one who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day, and was satisfied with such delights, and sought nothing better; and the consequence was, he could have no feeling for Lazarus, who laid at his gate full of sores. And if you have been living like him, not perhaps in purple and fine linen, but just pleasing yourself in the enjoyment of such earthly and bodily pleasures as your condition afforded, depend upon it, you cannot have any true sense of CHRIST'S sufferings. You may take good words, Church and Scripture words, in your mouth, confessing His Cross, yet somehow it will be hid from you. You may kneel down and try to say good prayers, yet somehow, while you are at your prayers, the thoughts and cares connected with these your earthly pleasures will come in and take off your mind from your SAVIOUR. When you set yourself to meditate on the Cross, you will hardly know how to begin. It will seem to you like learning a lesson in a strange language, of which you have not learned the first and simplest sounds. All your notion of it will probably be, that it is something very bitter, which CHRIST endured for your sake to save you from suffering, and that you ought to be very thankful to HIM for it; but in the mean time, not denying yourself, you will be inwardly unable to enter into the spirit of His sufferings. You will not really feel the power of His Cross at all. On the other hand, as soon as you begin, humbly and secretly, to deny yourself for His sake, to give up pleasures,

to subdue importunate desires, to bear with troublesome, disagreeable people, to forgive affronts and wrongs immediately, to recollect His presence and your own sins' continually-that moment His Cross and kingdom comes to you, not in word only, but in power; that moment you begin to know HIM, and the fellowship of His sufferings. Therefore the Holy Church, no doubt by Divine guidance, has ever ordained that there should be a Lent before Passion Week; a time of denying and mortifying our earthly members, before the time of giving ourselves up to meditation upon CHRIST's sufferings. For want of such holy discipline, no doubt this Holy Week finds us in general but ill prepared to receive the blessing prepared for us in it. How can we expect the Cross of our SAVIOUR to enter suddenly into our hearts, and fill up all our thoughts and desires during this one week, when, up to the very last hour of the former week, we have been filling them without scruple as full as they could hold of this world's vanities? It cannot be, my brethren; it is in vain to look for it. If we will not try to punish ourselves, with CHRIST and for CHRIST, in Lent, we must give up the hope of suffering with HIM in Passion Week.

But as I will hope that no well-meaning Christian among us has passed his Lent altogether without some kind of wish and effort to deny himself, I would now earnestly advise one and all to take, without delay, the mournful privilege which our dying REDEEMER offers them. I would say, Accept with all your heart that gracious invitation which the SAVIOUR of your souls now gives you. "Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow;" "Look unto ME, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth;" "Take up My Cross, and follow ME." And, by way of some little beginning, let us set ourselves this rule: to have our LORD and His sufferings as much as we can before our minds during this whole week, so that, as often as we are led to think of the necessary businesses and refreshments of life, we may presently awake and recollect ourselves, and say in our hearts, What have I to do with the world, I, whose LORD is even now in that severe course of suffering for my sins? Let us, on each day of the Holy Week, follow HIм in our minds, and silently draw an inward picture of HIM in some one moment of His Passion. Let us try to think it well over in the mornings, and get it strong be

fore our mind's eye, that we fly back to it, and gaze upon it in silence and humility, as often as we have any leisure during the day. Why, think you, did the HOLY GHOST, by the Evangelists, set forth so particularly the circumstances of our LORD's Passion? Surely they are written for our remembrance: we were to contemplate His Divine image, first preparing for His Cross, then in the act of being fastened to it, then lifted up upon it, then dying on it by degrees, then hanging dead upon it, then taken down from it and laid in the grave. We know exactly how many wounds there were, and where they were inflicted; how many words He spoke, and on what occasions; who were by HIM, and how they behaved; at what hour He was brought before Pilate; when condemned, when crucified, when He cried with a loud voice and gave up the Ghost. There is not one of us, that has ever heard or read the Gospels for this week with any attention, but has a sort of picture in his mind, more or less distinct, of the crown of thorns, the purple robe, the soldiers spitting and bowing the knee in mockery, the Cross laid upon our LORD, His sacred and adorable feet and hands so cruelly fastened to it, the offering vinegar, the bowing of His head, the loud cry, the yielding up the ghost, the soldier piercing His side, His burial by Joseph. Now, what imaginations we have of all these unspeakable things, let them not go, let us dwell upon them; we cannot study them too earnestly, provided we do so with deep reverence, remembering that this heavenly Lamb, so cruelly slain, is our LORD, our KING, our SAVIOUR, and our GOD; the GOD whom all the Angels worship. Keeping this in mind, let us really try, this one week of our lives, to have CHRIST and His Cross constantly before us. We cannot tell how much good such holy pictures may do us. The Church puts them before us on purpose; let them not pass away unimproved. So may we come to Good Friday, and to the Holy Communion on Easter Day, with minds every way better prepared, humbler, more loving, more penitent. So may we learn by degrees "to endure hardness, as good soldiers of JESUS CHRIST." So may we be practised in the true love of the Cross, embrace it more and more with both hands earnestly, and by its healing power become at last fit for Heaven.

SERMON CCXLVII.

THE LIFTING UP OF THE SON OF MAN.

GOOD FRIDAY.

ST. JOHN iii. 14, 15.

"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in HIM should not perish, but have everlasting life."

ALL Christians know that the sum of their religion, their hope and faith and love towards GOD, and, in a word, all their duty to HIM, are gathered together, as it were, in a point, in the Mystery of this great and awful day. We all know that the Cross of our REDEEMER must always be all in all to us. We all acknowledge it in words, when we are asked. Some of us make mention of it often, and seem, indeed, to depend on it. But there is great danger of our very often letting it slip out of our minds: great danger of our speaking without seriously thinking of it; and the greatest danger, perhaps, of all, that we shall be contented with very slight and imperfect notions of the Cross, of its power and meaning, and of the portion we must have in it ourselves, if we would not make void the gracious purpose of HIM who bore it, and died on it for us.

Some Christians I fear there are among us, who, although they have been so often told, yet do not seem ever to have laid it to heart, who this great and holy SAVIOUR is, who did so great things for us all. I speak particularly of some of the poorest, and some who, though not poor, are yet most ignorant among our brethren, who cannot read, or who have much neglected their reading, and have also neglected, most

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