IV. AND IF THIS THIRST OF EMMANUEL BESPEAK HIS ZEAL FOR YOUR SALVA

TION, DOTH IT NOT ALSO BESPEAK THE · FATHER'S INFINITE LOVE TOWARDS YOU? It well becomes the children of God to bear in mind, that it did not satisfy his love, freely to take them, without a particle of deserving, on their part, out of the mass of a guilty and condemned world, and to number them among his children, according to his own eternal purpose and grace. It should also dwell in their adoring recollection, that he hath committed the work of saving them, to his Son, and made that Son's soul an offering for sin. "Scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die but God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." "Herein is love; not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." He cried, "I thirst; " and the cry must have penetrated his Father's

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heart yet is not one pang remitted, one agony abated, one mite, of the boundless debt of sinners to divine justice, taken from the whole. "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him." O what a commentary is this, upon the record, that " God is Love!" love indeed, to men, to guilty, doomed, and dying men.

But then, did He really love his Son, or did all his affection centre upon rebels, while the heir of glory was forgotten? No, dear friends, God loved man in Christ; and He loved Christ, not only with the infinite intensity of paternal love, towards that divine nature, which was granted to the manhood, in Him; but also, for what Christ did for man: and thus He pours his grace upon the head of sinners, to melt them into holy gratitude and filial affection. O, when that cup of bitterness concerning which, in common with his other infinite mediatorial sufferings He cried, "Father, if it be possible, let it pass from me," was put to his lips, by the malice

of his enemies, angels, in the heaven of heavens, looking down into the abodes of their lost fellows, whom mercy must never reach, and then looking upon the worms on whom mercy was resting, mercy which gleamed upon them from the sufferings of Jesus, on their behalf, as the rainbow throws its brightest colours on the darkest sky, when the rain falls, and the sun shines upon it; they must have been amazed, with the astonishment of adoring rapture. They never could have thought the wellhead of God's love to that sinful race, so deep, so mysterious, so copious, as when they saw a thirsting Saviour, and God the Father giving Him only the vials of wrath, and making the draught as bitter, as the thirst itself.

As there is one point, from which the beauties of a picture are most clearly seen, so is there one point and post of spiritual observation, from which the goodness of our God to sinners is most effectually beheld and that point is the foot of the cross.

Be often there, and may God the Holy Ghost fill your souls with all the blessedness of the view, and of your personal, and everlasting interest in it.

1. And now, dear friends, did Jesus Christ thirst for the salvation of those, who without that agony of his soul must have been for ever widowed of happiness and hope, by the just and holy displeasure of God? What then, should be the language of each of those, who hope that He is theirs, and they are his eternally?

Surely that of holy David-" My soul is athirst for God, yea even for the living God: when shall I come to appear before God?" "As the hart panteth for the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Shall He thirst, beloved friends, for your souls, and ye but faintly desire Him? Will ye be contented in his service, with a lukewarmness, which He abhors: and shall all the recollections of his incomparable love be traced upon your hearts, like characters in the sand, to be oblitera

ted, or at least covered, by every new seduction, as those characters would be covered by the returning tide? Shall you think coldly of Him, who gave not only his body to crucifixion, but his soul to the most dreadful anguish for you? If that charity, which can only make a few objects happy, and which performs its ministrations. with little personal toil and suffering, is yet able to gather around it the admiration of men; what shall you think of Him, whose love aimed at the salvation of millions, and led Him through the pangs of death, to save you? Shall your love to such a Saviour be cold and feeble? O, may the Spirit of God give you a spark of the love that glowed in his soul, that it may consume the selfishness of the evil heart within you; and make you, in deed, and in truth, give all your affections supremely to Him, who ought to be accounted by each of you as" the chiefest among ten thousands, and altogether lovely.'

2. Did Jesus Christ thirst, under the influ