have trodden under foot the Son of GOD," and counted His blood an unholy thing? This is very plainly hinted in the place from the Epistle to the Romans which I just now read to you. "GOD, sending His own SoN in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh;"-showed in the flesh of the Son of God, what punishment sin deserved-to what end? that we, having faith in HIM, might lead easier and less strict lives? that we might be excused in some measure from trying to keep all His commandments? that we might be less anxious in offering to HIM the sacrifice of exact obedience? No; His purpose was quite contrary: it was, "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." CHRIST died, not to excuse us from obedience, but to purchase for us strength to obey. The fruit of His death, besides pardon and deliverance from the stain of sin in which we were born, is His HOLY SPIRIT poured into our hearts, enabling us to fulfil the righteousness which the Law requires; or rather so uniting us to HIM, that not we, but HE HIMSELF, CHRIST dwelling in us, shall work what is good and holy; according to St. Paul's frequent sayings, "I am crucified with CHRIST; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but CHRIST liveth in me;" and again, "Not I, but the grace of God which is in me;" and again, "I can do all things through CHRIST, which strengtheneth me."

This agrees well with what our LORD elsewhere tells us, of the everlasting life, which, He here says, was the intended lot of whosoever believeth in HIM. The night before this awful day, in that solemn intercession to His FATHER, after setting forth the purpose of His kingdom to be the gift of everlasting life to as many as God should give HIM, HE goes on, and tells us in what consists this high and mysterious blessing-everlasting life. "This," says our LORD, "is life eternal, that they may know THEE, the only true Gop, and JESUS CHRIST, whom THOU hast sent." It is not merely living and escaping unpunished, as we, in our low, coarse way, are apt to imagine, but it is to know GOD and CHRIST. And what is knowing THEM? This is a question which eternity only can answer; since, when we have let our thoughts go as deep in eternity as we will, yet the knowledge of GOD and of CHRIST, which happy souls will then have acquired, will be as nothing, compared with what will still remain for them.

But thus much the Scripture most earnestly tells us concerning that knowledge of CHRIST which is our life-that it cannot be where wilful sin is: "Whosoever sinneth, hath not seen HIM, neither known HIM."

And another thing which it warns us of expressly is this, that our knowing HIM there in His glory will depend on our first having known HIM in His sufferings here. As one faithful saying is, that "CHRIST JESUS came into the world to save sinners," so another is, "If we have died with HIм, we shall also live with HIM; if we suffer, we shall also reign with HIM." If we would have the life of JESUS made manifest at last in our now mortal body, we must in this life be "always bearing about in the same body the dying of our LORD JESUS;" the marks of His death, the Cross, the thorny crown, the print of the nails; that is, mortification and self-denial; watchful obedience, even where obedience is irksome; the flesh constantly subdued to the spirit.

Thus it was that the great Apostle hoped to be saved by the Cross of His LORD; not only by gazing on it, at a distance, with earnest feelings, but by embracing it when laid upon him, and holding it fast, and using his cares, and sorrows, and self-denials, as so many nails to fasten him to it in regular obedience. His prayer was, "to know CHRIST, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death." He had no thought of being saved, without earnest, careful obedience for the whole remainder of his life, and pressing forward to make each day holier than the day before.

Depend on it, my Christian brethren, St. Paul knew the true way of salvation. If he thought it dangerous to look behind him, or at all to slacken his endeavours after more holiness, we may be very sure it was and is most dangerous.

How should it be other than most fearful danger, wilfully, in any measure or manner, to let go our hold of the Cross? to turn from HIM Who is there lifted up, and go back to our sins, though it be, as we think, but for a moment?

There are some of you, I believe, that come very seldom here, who yet are generally present on this day. Would to God they might be prevailed on to consider, and not turn their backs on their SAVIOUR all through the year besides! Would that they would make some small beginning of self-denial, by coming here

regularly to honour HIM, Who died for them, though it be sometimes irksome and inconvenient! Would that both they and we all, as we come here trusting in the blessed Cross of our LORD JESUS CHRIST, might be willing also to learn and practise how to bear it after HIM! For without this, HE HIMSELF has told us, we cannot be His Disciples. If we bear not His Cross, we forfeit the eternal life which He bought so dearly for all that believe in HIM?

SERMON CCXLVIII.

THE RENDING OF THE VEIL.

GOOD FRIDAY.

ST. MARK XV. 37, 38.

"And JESUS cried with a loud voice, and gave up the Ghost. And the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom."

CONSIDERATE persons, wishing to have right and religious thoughts of that on which they can never be long without thinking the Passion of our Divine LORD and SAVIOUR,-will naturally turn themselves, with deep and serious attention, to the signs and wonders in Heaven and Earth, which we read of in Scripture as happening at the moment of His death. From the sixth hour, when He was nailed to the Cross, "there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour," when HE gave up the Ghost. The sun was darkened so long, and at the very moment of His death, the veil of the Temple was rent in the midst, "rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after His Resurrection, and went into the Holy City, and appeared unto many."

Now these wonders, doubt it not, were not mere things to wonder at; they had other purposes, besides that of awakening and alarming the minds of those, who then saw, or who now read of them, and forcing them to feel, in a manner, GoD'S immediate Presence. They were so many signs and tokens, so many visible words, as it were, spoken from Heaven, to help serious and dutiful minds to right notions of that most awful of

mysteries, the humiliation of GOD the SON to the death of the Cross.

And among them all, it would seem that the Bible sets before us, with especial care, this which I have just recited from St. Mark; "The veil of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom;" because it is expressly mentioned by three out of the four Evangelists, and that in more immediate connexion than the other wonders, with the unspeakable moment of our LORD's death. There is surely something very significant in the sound of these two verses. 'He gave up the Ghost: and the veil of the Temple was rent." Every one, however ignorant, must perceive that there is some deep meaning here, more than what (as the saying is) meets the ear. For what great thing is there in the rending of a curtain, considered in itself, that it should be mentioned as the first effect of the sacrifice of the Son of God, as the thing to which the HOLY SPIRIT would first of all draw our attention? Moreover, we have, as you will presently hear, large explanations of the meaning of this miracle, in St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews especially; larger, perhaps, than we find in any other part of Scripture, of the darkness, the earthquake, or the other wonders of that moment.

For these reasons it will prove, I trust, no undutiful or unthankful exercise of our devout thoughts on this fearful yet most merciful day, if we enquire of Scripture, what most likely was the lesson, which ALMIGHTY GOD taught us from Heaven concerning the Sacrifice of His SON, by causing the veil of the Temple to be rent in twain.

The veil of the Temple was the curtain separating the Holy Place from the Most Holy; for Solomon's Temple, as the Taber nacle of Moses before it, was divided into two several parts or rooms, both holy, but one holier than the other; rooms differing, both in their furniture and in the offices to be performed in them, in such a way as to teach the worshippers, that God was indeed in both by a peculiar Presence, but yet that in the Inner, or Most Holy Place, He was by a nearer and more awful Presence than in the outer place, which was simply called Holy. The veil, or curtain itself, was made of “blue, purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen of cunning work;" it was adorned with images of cherubims, and was hung on four pillars, of some precious wood