city? Is it possible for any one to help seeing, that this was one of the innumerable examples in the Bible, where the tender compassion of that God whose name is Love, suspends the stroke of his justice, even although it is sure to descend at last? Alas! brethren, can any error in doctrine be more pernicious than this, which turns the very pity of the Lord into an imaginary judicial calculation, and makes three days' suffering of penance in fasting and sackcloth, a discharge in full of the temporal debt due to that fearful and tremendous attribute-the JUSTICE OF ALMIGHTY GOD?

But our author, having thus closed his list of proofs from the Old Testament, thinks that he finds corroboration in the encouragement given by our blessed Redeemer to fasting. Here, however, is the radical error of all such reasoning. Fasting and abstinence, with every other act of self-mortification mentioned in Scripture, such as wearing sackcloth, or covering the head with ashes, may be used and often have been used, for reasons which had not the slightest reference to the Roman doctrine of satisfaction. First, as an exercise of authority by the soul over the body, according to St. Paul.

I keep my body under," saith he, "and bring it into subjection;" the believer designing in this way, to confirm, as it were, by habit and practice, the dominion of the spirit over the flesh. Secondly, as a useful act of self-denial, to conquer certain common propensities to sin. As, for example, intemperance in eating and drinking, or the sin of gluttony, was directly combated in the act of fasting; while vanity and pride in personal appearance and apparel, were directly combated in the wearing of sackcloth and the covering of ashes. And thirdly, these acts of mortifying discipline might be designed as an open acknowledgment of the penitent's share in the common guilt and danger, which was the principle of those public and general acts of humiliation of which we read in Scripture. Now here are three motives for these penitential

observances, sufficient in themselves, and yet perfectly distinct from the strange corruption of the Church of Rome, which can see nothing in them but a satisfaction or discharge of a certain portion of the debt due to God's justice; thus converting the very discipline of our fleshly appetites into a claim of merit, and persuading the sinner that he has done something towards the stupendous work of atonement for sin, which the infinite love and majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ were alone able to perform.

While, therefore, we can thus assign valid and sufficient reasons for the occasional austerities of the Old Testament saints, we deny that there was any thing in their lives like the Roman notion of satisfaction, where every voluntary act of suffering is regarded as a positive payment of so much of the debt due to God's justice, either for themselves or for others. Hence, too, in the instructions of our blessed Lord, while the whole weight of his authority is directed against the Pharisaical practice of fasting for ostentation and display, he adds no new day of fasting to the Mosaic ritual; he gives no precept in favour of sackcloth or ashes, nor does he prescribe a single rule of bodily suffering or self-mortification. Nor is there one of his apostles who recommends any regulation of the kind, as a law to be bound upon the Church. But if the Roman doctrine be true-if penitential voluntary works, performed by the sinner himself during life, or by the Church after his death, were necessary to discharge the temporal debt due to God's justice, over and above the atonement of Christ,—and if, for want of these, temporal afflictions in this world, and the excruciating fires of purgatory beyond the grave up to the very day of judgment, might be the lot even of the righteous, how does it happen that the blessed Saviour and his inspired apostles should have left so much of all other doctrine to the Church, without saying one word on so important a matter?

But let me not forget, brethren, that Dr. Wiseman gives us

one other passage from Scripture, which he seems to think conclusive in his favour, and therefore it must be considered with all due attention. It is the passage in which the great apostle, writing to the Colossians, declares: "I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things which are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the Church." Now this text, like a very large portion of St. Paul's writings, is elliptical and somewhat obscure; reminding us of what St. Peter records, when he saith, that in his beloved brother Paul's epistles, "there are some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." Nevertheless, there is nothing in it which at all militates against our doctrine, or lends any support to the theory of human justification, which our learned advocate would rest on its authority. Let us examine it thoroughly, and I trust you will see that it teaches a very different lesson.

Three propositions are distinctly marked in the sentence: first, that the apostle rejoices in his sufferings; secondly, that he calls these sufferings a filling-up of those things which are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in his flesh; thirdly, that this is for the benefit of Christ's Church, which is his body.

On the first point there can be no room for cavil. Our gracious Redeemer himself said: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven." In perfect agreement with this, we find that the apostles, when they had been scourged and imprisoned for preaching Christ, " rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name." And St. James has recorded the same principle where he saith: "Beloved, count it all joy when ye fall into divers trials, knowing that the trial of your faith worketh patience, and patience hope." Here we have a general princi

ple, lying at the very root of all religion. We must sow in tears, if we would reap in joy. "Through tribulation," saith Christ, "ye must enter into the kingdom of heaven." "If we suffer with Christ," saith St. Paul, "we shall also reign with him." And again: "Our light affliction, which endures but for a moment, worketh out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

Thus far, the meaning of the passage is sufficiently plain. But now comes the second proposition, that the apostle calls his sufferings, "a filling up of those things which are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in his flesh." Here, it is evident, that the words, taken by themselves, might be thought to signify a deficiency in the amount of Christ's sufferings, which was to be supplied by St. Paul. But this is an absurdity which the Church of Rome would by means tolerate. So far from it, that she undertakes to pronounce, as you will see by and by, that our Lord suffered much more than was necessary, for one drop of his blood was sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world; and therefore the rest, as they imagine, has been laid up along with the superfluous good works of the saints, as a treasure to supply the deficiencies of merit in Christians at large. It is plainly impossible, therefore, for Dr. Wiseman to ask, that we shall believe that there was a deficiency in Christ's sufferings, since clearly there cannot be, at the same time, a superabundance and a deficiency of the very same thing. This interpretation, therefore, being discarded by both sides, we must look for another; and that brethren, we can readily find in the beautiful and affecting announcement of the same apostle, where he saith to the Hebrews, "We have not an High Priest who cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities, but was tempted in all points like as we are, and yet without sin." Christ Jesus, our great High Priest, although the atoning sufferings of his own sacred Person are over, still sympathizes with the suffer

It is one

ings of his people, and considers them his own. of the precious privileges resulting from the completeness of our union with him, from which union flows our only hope of salvation. To express this most essential principle of the believer's life, every metaphor and allegory of language are exhausted. If he is the vine, we are the branches. If he is the rock, we are the living stones built upon it. If he is the Bridegroom, his Church is the Bride. He gives us his flesh to eat, his blood to drink; he enters into our hearts by his Spirit, and dwells there that we may be one with him. In his own description of the judgment day, he accounts every act of kindness performed for the least of his people, a charity done to his own person; every injury and neglect, a wrong to himself: "Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it to the least among my brethren, ye did it unto me." But none of these metaphors is more full of expression than that which St. Paul so often uses, and especially in the passage before us; where Christ is the head, and his Church is the body, and each particular Christian is a member of that body. Here, then, we have a simple key to the whole of this seeming mystery. Christ, in his own glorious Person, God and man, satisfied all the claims of divine justice against our ruined race, by his precious and perfect obedience and death. To that end, his sufferings were all sufficient, and no creature is entitled to share with him in the very least portion of that mighty and stupendous redemption. But his people can only be made partakers of the immortality and bliss thus purchased for them, by becoming united with him; and this union requires not only the powerful and regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit to change their hearts, but also the discipline of trials and sufferings, that they may learn to know, and love, and resemble HIM, in holiness and virtue. Understanding, therefore, to what end this discipline is appointed, his saints rejoice in it. That very suffering over which the worldly