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great as it is in certain parts, is not such, upon the whole, as should discourage the Christian laic from the study of them, nor such as will excuse him under the neglect of it. Let him remember, that it is not mine, but the apostle's admonition, who would not enjoin an useless or impracticable task, " to give heed to the prophetic word."

SERMON XIX.

MATTHEW xvi. 21.

From that time forth, began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.

THE saying of the prophet, that "the ways and

thoughts of God are not like those of men," was never more remarkably verified than in that great event which we this day commemorate, the death and passion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. "Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness!" Wonderful in every part, but chiefly in the last acts of it, was the scheme of man's redemption! That the author of life should himself be made subject unto death-that the Lord of glory should be clothed with shame-that the Son of God's love should become a curse for sinful man-that his sufferings and humiliation should be made the manifestation of his glory-that by stooping to death he should conquer death-that the cross should lift him to his throne that the height of human malice should but accomplish the purposes of God's mercy-that the Devil, in the persecutions he raised against our Lord, should be the instrument of his own final ruin,—these were mysteries in the doctrine of the cross, so contrary to the confirmed prejudices of the Jewish people, and so far above the reach of philosophical investigation, that

they rendered the preaching of a crucified Saviour "a stumbling block to the Jews, and to the Greeks foolish. ness." God foreseeing how improbable this doctrine would appear to men, was pleased in various ways to typify and predict our Saviour's passion, ages before it happened, that the thing, when it should come to pass, might be known to be his work and counsel; and our Lord himself omitted not, at the proper season, to give his disciples the most explicit warning of it, that an event so contrary to every thing they had expected (for they were involved in the common error of the Jewish nation concerning the Messiah) might not come upon them by surprise. "From that time forth," saith the evangelist, "Jesus began to show to his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day."

"From that time forth."-The fact last mentioned was that conversation of our Lord with his disciples, in which Peter declared, in the name of all, that while the people in general were in doubt who Jesus might bewhether Elias, or Jeremias, or some other of the ancient prophets revived-they, his constant followers, believed him to be the Christ, the Son of the living God. "From that time forth," it seems, and not before, Jesus began to advertise his disciples of his approaching death. It was a thing not to be disclosed till their faith had at tained to some degree of constancy and firmness; but when once it appeared that they not only esteemed and loved their Master as a wise and virtuous man-that they not only revered him as an inspired teacher of righteousness, but that they believed in him as the Christ, the Son of God, the Redeemer of Israel, it then became seasonable to remove the prejudices in which they had been educated, and to show them plainly what that deliverance was which the promised Messiah was to work,

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-for whom, and by what means, it was to be effected. It was time to extinguish their hopes of sharing in the splendours of an earthly kingdom, and to prepare and fortify their minds against all that "contradiction of sinners" which they, with their Master, were in this world destined to endure. Now, therefore, he begins to show them how that he must go to Jerusalem, and, after much malicious persecution from the leaders of the Jewish people, he must be killed. The form of expression here is very remarkable in the original; and it is well preserved in our English translation. He must go-he must suffer he must be killed-he must be raised again on the third day,-all these things were fixed and determined-must inevitably be-nothing could prevent them; and yet the greater part of them were of a kind that might seem to depend entirely upon man's free agency. To go or not to go to Jerusalem was in his own power; and the persecution he met with there, arising from the folly and the malice of ignorant and wicked men, surely depended upon human will: yet, by the form of the sentence, these things are included under the same necessity of event as that which was evidently an immediate effect of divine power, without the concurrence of any other cause, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The words which in the original express the going-the suffering-the being killed-the being raised again-are all equally subject to the verb which answers to the word must of our language, and in its first and proper meaning predicates necessity. As he must be raised on the third day, so he must go, he must suffer, he must be killed. Every one of these events, his going to Jerusalem, his suffering, and his death there-and that these sufferings and that death should be brought about by the malice of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes,-every one of these things is plainly announced, as no less unalterably fixed than

the resurrection of our Saviour, or the time of his resurrection-that it was to happen on the third day.

The previous certainty of things to come is one of those truths which are not easily comprehended. The difficulty seems to arise from a habit that we have of measuring all intellectual powers by the standard of human intellect. There is nothing in the nature of certainty, abstractedly considered, to connect it with past time or with the present, more than with the future; but human knowledge extends in so small a degree to future things, that scarce any thing becomes certain to us till it is come to pass, and therefore we are apt to imagine that things acquire their certainty from their accomplishment. But this is a gross fallacy. The proof of an event to us always depends either upon the testimony of others or the evidence of our own senses; but the certainty of events in themselves arises from their natural connection with their proper causes. Hence, to that great Being who knows things, not by testimonynot by sense, but by their causes, as being himself the First Cause, the source of power and activity to all other causes,―to Him, every thing that shall ever be, is at all times infinitely more certain than any thing either past or present can be to any man, except perhaps the simple fact of his own existence, and some of those necessary truths which are evidenced to every man, not by his bodily senses, but by that internal perception which seems to be the first act of created intellect.

This certainty, however, is to be carefully distinguished from a true necessity inherent in the nature of the thing. A thing is necessary when the idea of existence is included in the idea of the thing as an inseparable part of it. Thus, God is necessary;-the mind cannot think of him at all without thinking of him as existent. The very notion and name of an event excludes this necessity, which belongs only to things un

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