Lord covered with stripes and wounds, the same prophet says " We all, like sheep, have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquities of us all." [1] But of the Saviour it is written, " if he will lay down his life for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed." [2] This the apostle expresses in language still stronger when, on the other hand, he wishes to show us how confidently we should trust in the boundless mercy and goodness of God: " He that spared not even his own Son," says the apostle, "but delivered him up for us all, how hath he not also, with him, given us all things?" [3]
The next subject of the pastor's instruction is the bitterness of the Redeemer's passion. If, however, we bear in mind that "his sweat became as drops of blood, trinkling down upon the ground;" [4] and this, at the sole anticipation of the torments and agony which he was soon after to endure, we must, at once, perceive that his sorrows admitted of no increase; for if, and this sweat of blood proclaims it, the very idea of the impending evils was so overwhelming, what are we to suppose their actual endurance to have been?
That our Lord suffered the most excruciating torments of mind and body is but too well ascertained. In the first place, there was no part of his body that did not experience the most agonising torture his hands and feet were fastened with nails to the cross his head was pierced with thorns and smitten with a reed his face was befouled with spittle and buffeted with blows his whole body was covered with stripes Men of all ranks and conditions were also gathered together " against the Lord and against his Christ." [5] Jews and Gentiles were the advisers, the authors, the ministers of his passion Judas betrayed him [6] Peter denied him [7] all the rest deserted him [8] and, whilst he hangs from the instrument of his execution, are we not at a loss which to deplore, his agony or his ignominy or both? Surely no death more shameful, none more cruel could have been devised than that which was the ordinary punishment of guilty and atrocious malefactors only a death the tediousness of which aggravated the protraction of its exquisite pain and excruciating torture! His agony was increased by the very constitution and frame of his body. Formed by the power of the Holy Ghost, it was more perfect and better organised than the bodies of other men can be, and was, therefore, endowed with a superior susceptibility of pain, and a keener sense of the torments which it endured: and as to his interior anguish of mind, that, too, was no doubt extreme; for those amongst the saints who had to endure torments and tortures, were not without consolation from above, which enabled them not only to bear their violence patiently, but, in many instances, to feel, in the very midst of them, elate with interior "joy. "I rejoice," says the apostle, "in my
