necessary to make temptation, or to make distress in connexion with temptation. Our Lord could suffer being tempted. True, he had nothing corrupt to repress; no strength of evil habits to resist; but he had temptations of gigantic dimensions to overcome, acting on what was innocent and holy in him, and suited to try to the utmost every principle of his soul. The truth is, we do not sympathize with our Lord in what he experienced, and that, from this very corruption of our nature, which some would have exist in him, in order to his better sympathizing with us. We scarcely know, perhaps, what it is to suffer from extreme hunger, and therefore we little think what torment Jesus endured, when, after a fast of forty days and forty nights, his cravings for food must have been incessant. A word could have removed them. Every pang of his suffering body was surely a temptation of dreadful violence, to distrust the providence of God, and take unhallowed means of relief. We know little of the wrath of God. A drop or two of that dreadful storm is the utmost we experience. We as little sympathize with the Saviour, in his endurance of it in all its unmitigated fury, as the disciples did at Gethsemane, when he agonized, and they slept! Yet, surely, the very fact of his sweat of blood bespeaks an agony of mental suffering beyond human conception! And was there not, in the very circumstance of his sinless purity, temptation to question the love of his Father, in this pitiless infliction of his utmost vengeance? Was there no temptation to put forth that power of Deity, that might at once have screened his human nature from horrors, in one sense, so undeserved? And when, on the cross, the sensible presence

of God wholly forsook him, there was surely every conceivable temptation to despair. Were none of these things suggested to him by the powers of darkness, in that hour so peculiarly theirs? and must not the bare suggestion have been harrowing to his soul, just in proportion to its purity? He was brought to the edge of that abyss, into which, before him, the creature, angelic and human, had been plunged; and, though he stood, yet in the conflict with those who put forth all their power to precipitate him into the same ruin, aided, as they were, by the righteous vengeance of God poured upon that devoted head, he learned to sympathize with his tempted people, when they are hard pressed, by corruption within, and enemies without, to the commission of evil.

Still there is a painful feeling in the minds of some, that, after all, when they suffer from inclinations to evil, they are in circumstances in which the Saviour has never been, and therefore he cannot know from experience what they feel. But what is it he cannot know? They certainly do not wish him to have given way to sinful feelings, as they do for then he could be no Saviour: but what other feeling do sinful infirmities occasion in his people, which he has not felt? Is it shame? How often do we read, in Psalms which unquestionably relate to Messiah, (as the 69th,) of shame covering his face: nay, even confessions of sin, to the real disgrace and infamy of which that adorable Saviour, in his unutterable, incomprehensible love, subjected himself for us? Is it sense of danger, conviction of weakness, that makes the prospect before us too terrible to be looked at? We have seen (as far as a poor corrupt

creature of sense can see) the tremendousness of that spiritual conflict in which Jesus was engaged with the powers of darkness, when all hell, yea, all the wrath of heaven, was let loose against him. But it may be a sense of God's displeasure, the hiding of the light of his countenance. And has Jesus never felt the same? And have we the same exquisite sense of pain, under it, that he must have had, who had lien from eternity in the bosom of the Father, when he cried, “ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Only let us sympathize a little with Jesus; let us enter a little more into his conflicts, and these silly conceits of suffering what he cannot enter into will vanish in an instant.

Put together these various considerations, and I think it must be admitted, that the exception of a proneness to evil in our blessed Lord, lessens not, in any degree, his capability of sympathizing with his tempted people. In truth, it is necessary, that he may sympathize. "Perfect purity is, and must be, the essence of true sympathy. It is not to be confined simply to feeling as others do. Hell is full of such feeling; but there is no sympathy there." See Sermon on the Sympathy of Christ, by the late Rev. W. Howels, vol. ii. pp. 281, 282, where this observation is admirably followed out. I would also refer the reader to a valuable sermon on the subject in the Rev. M. Dod's Incarnation of the Eternal Word, to which I am indebted for many of the preceding remarks.

NOTE 9.-p. 81.

Some

The peculiarity of the expression, "after those days," is noticed by Dr. Owen. He observes, "There are various conjectures about the sense of these words, or the determination of the time limited in them. suppose it respects the time of giving the law on Mount Sinai; some think that respect is had to the captivity of Babylon, and the people's return from thence; and some judge they refer to what went immediately before, “ and I regarded them not:" but " after those days," is as much as 66 in those days," an indeterminate season for a certain. So," in that day" is frequently used by the prophets. (Isa. xxiv. 21, 22; Zech. xii. 11.) A time, therefore, certainly future, but not determined, is at least intended. And herewith most expositors are satisfied. Yet is there, as I judge, more in the words. Those days seem to me to comprise the whole time allotted to the economy of the old covenant."

If I understand him rightly in what follows, he seems to mean, that there were successive stages, or degrees of time, during which the old covenant was being removed, and the new gradually taking its place. These he enumerates as follows:

1. The first peculiar entrance into the new covenant, made by John the Baptist, whence his ministry is called, "the beginning of the gospel." (Mark i. 1, 2.)

2. The coming in the flesh, and personal ministry, of our Lord Jesus Christ himself. . . . . Hence, upon his nativity, this covenant was proclaimed from heaven, as

that which was immediately to take place. (Luke ii. 13, 14.)

3. The solemn enactment, and confirmation, of the new covenant, by his death.

4. The complement of its formation and establishment, in the resurrection of Christ.

5 The first solemn promulgation of this new covenant, on the day of Pentecost.

6. The clear discovery that the obligatory force of the old covenant existed no longer. (Acts xv.)

I know not how this may strike the minds of others : it is certainly acute and ingenious. But, I confess, the expression," after those days," appears to me to relate, rather, to what has just preceded. "Behold, the days come, when I will make a new covenant," &c. These days were the first days of the gospel, when this covenant was formally proposed to the Jewish people, and by them rejected. It remains, however, yet to be established with them. "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the Lord," &c.

NOTE 10. p. 99.

It is sometimes objected, that the term, “righteousness of Christ," nowhere occurs in the scripture. Now, even were this the case, yet, when we consider such testimonies as that, " He of God is made unto us righteousness;" or, "This is his name whereby he shall be called, Jehovah, our righteousness,”—the objection