chased act of grace, could bid man live. There must be suffering where there had been sin. Humiliation, shame, buffeting, reviling, must be endured. Amazement of anguish, and agony of sorrow, must wring the soul. Drops of blood must issue from the sweating frame. The cupthe bitter cup-steeped with the poison of the wrath of God, cannot be passed by, but must be drunk. The forsaking of the Father's countenance must be endured, for he cannot look with allowance upon sin. And though the sun should shrink in horror from the sight, though the rocks should rend, and the earth quake, the sentence of condemnation must be fulfilled to the uttermost; for eternal justice can then only be appeased, sustained, and satisfied, when endurance being no longer possible, the voice is heard on the last expiring breath of the victim, "It is finished."

Are we then required to sustain these penalties, before we can be justified and be at peace with God? No, my brethren, we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God has made him who knew no sin, to be a sin-offering for us. We are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish, and without spot. And now we are only required to receive with faith the message of greater mercy, and live to him who died for us, who bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows, and by whose stripes we are healed. As,

then, we have been bought with such a price, let us glorify God in our body, and in our spirit, which are God's. And to this end, let us thankfully embrace every opportunity to show forth our love to him, and gladly resort to those means of grace by which our faith is increased, and in which we receive the assurance of God's love and favour towards us.

Such an opportunity, my brethren, is again presented to us in the approaching sacrament of the Lord's supper, the highest act of our faith, the noblest means of grace, the most certain pledge of our salvation. Let no unworthy excuses keep back from that holy table any who profess and call themselves Christians, or who aspire to the high rewards which Christ has promised to a true and obedient faith. Rather, let gratitude and love, influencing all our desires, and hope, animating all our expectation of immortality, induce us to approach with filial reverence, rejoicing in the merits of that atonement by which sinners may look for pardon and justification, and resolving, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called, and evermore to live to the praise and glory of him who hath washed us from our sins in his own blood, and made us kings and priests unto God.

SERMON III.

For the Communion.

ST. JOHN vi. 67.

Will ye also go away?

THE occasion of this question is given in the preceding part of the chapter. Our Lord had fed a multitude, consisting of about five thousand men, by a supernatural increase of five barley loaves and two small fishes. Delighted by such a proof of miraculous power, and expecting to find in Christ the temporal deliverer for whom their nation looked, the Jews determined to take him by force to make him a king. He perceived their design, and having constrained his disciples to go before to Bethsaida, (because to them the proposal would have been but too acceptable, considering their own secular views at that period,) he sent the multitude away, and he himself departed into a mountain alone to pray. During the night he crossed the sea of Galilee, and being with his disciples on the other side, the people VOL. II.

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pursued him thither, having still in view their former purpose to place him on the throne of Israel. To their first question, "Rabbi, when "camest thou hither?" he only replied by reproving their selfish and temporal views, and instructing them to employ their care and solicitude about their more important and lasting concerns. "Labour not," said he, "for the meat which "perisheth, but for that meat which endureth "unto everlasting life. Then said they unto him, "What shall we do, that we might work the "works of God? Jesus answered and said unto

them, This is the work of God, that ye believe " on him whom he hath sent." To their demand of a sign, like that of the manna which was given from heaven, he replied that he was that true bread which came down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die; that he was the bread of life; that his flesh was that bread which he would give for the life of the world.

"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" was the question by which they testified their surprise at his strange declarations; and this surprise was still more increased, when he said, "Verily,

verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of "the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have "no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and "drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will "raise him up at the last day." Misapprehending his meaning, and applying his language in its

literal sense, they at once pronounced his discourse absurd and unintelligible. "This is an "hard saying; who can hear" or understand "it?" But that the words were figurative, that literally the act of which he spoke was not contemplated, they might have concluded. From the intimation which he gave of his personal ascension into heaven, which alone would render it impossible. And still further to make them perceive that by eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, he intended a spiritual reception of him as the atoning sacrifice for sin, he said to them expressly, "The words that I speak unto you, they "are spirit, and they are life," spiritually to be apprehended in the mind, and life to the soul when so apprehended. Much there necessarily was of mystery in the whole of this conversation, occuring, as it did, before the fact of his crucifixion, and when the object of his coming, to give himself a sacrifice for the sins of the world, was but imperfectly disclosed. Enough of the import of Christ's discourse, however, did the Jews understand, to see that he had no intention to establish a temporal dominion; that their secular views were to be disappointed; that the kingdom of Christ was not of this world; and that their expectations of wealth, and power, and fame, were at an end. From that time, as the narrative unreservedly, and with characteristic sincerity declares, many of "his disciples went back, and