the very last, in reliance upon this example of the sovereignty of mercy, whereby God signally glorified the death of his dear Son, turns that to his poison, which God intended for the immediate food of his soul, unto its immediate salvation. He acts just as a man would act, who should forsake the bridge, that would carry him over Jordan, and go through its depths to his drowning; expecting a miracle to dry it up, because it was once dried up, before the children of Israel, at God's command, and by a manifestation of God's love and power to his ancient people.

SERMON V.

JESUS LIFTING UP HIS SOUL IN PRAYER

TO A WITHDRAWING GOD.

MATTHEW XXVII. 46.

AND ABOUT THE NINTH HOUR, JESUS CRIED WITH A LOUD VOICE, SAYING, ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI? THAT IS TO SAY, MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?

"ALL Scripture is given by inspiration of God:" but the Holy Ghost seems, in an especial manner, to have directed the attention of the Christian world to this awful cry, the fourth which the Lord of glory uttered on the cross, by recording it in that mixture of Hebrew and Syriac, in which it was spoken; that so, the very words which fell from the lips of Christ,

might be preserved, to show the deep and dreadful agony of soul, whereby they must have been forced from Him. And most assuredly we take a very erroneous, a very imperfect, and a very unworthy view of the vicarious agony of the Lamb of God, in offering Himself to the Father, if we consider them to have consisted, either merely, or mainly, in an outward and bodily passion. "The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear?" The intensity of our Lord's agony on the cross, as well as in Gethsemane, arose from the oppressive and overpowering sense of the justice of Almighty God, against those iniquities, of which He bare the atonement, in his own body, on the tree and they were such, as nothing could have rendered tolerable, except that infinite sufficiency, whether for acting or suffering, which the perfect union of the Godhead with his humanity provided. Divine desertion, generally considered, is God withdrawing Himself, not

as to his essence, which fills, and must for ever fill, the universe, which He hath made and upholds; but the removal of his favour, which may be eternal; as from the fallen angels, who were once high in his love, and in the glory that resulted from it, but who are now finally and hopelessly abandoned or temporary; as He sometimes removes the sense and manifestation of his favour; and seems to look upon the objects of his dearest love, as if they were strangers, although his affection towards them is, like his own nature, unchangeably the same.1

It has been observed, that this latter desertion is justly distinguished, from its various ends and designs, into probationary, cautionary, chastening, and penal. Probationary desertions happen for proof and trial of the sincerity of grace, within the soul of a child of God. Cautionary desertions are meant to render sin an object

1 Flavel.

of terror and hatred, when the mind may have begun to look towards it, and to dwell upon its commission without horror, perhaps with even some degree of complacency, (as the Israelites turned back in their hearts towards Egypt;) by shewing the darkness and misery that will beset the Christian, if he follow the leadings of that "evil heart of unbelief which departeth from the living God." Chastening desertions are the rods, wherewith our heavenly Father scourges the wandering members of his household, to shew them,- (and they who have felt such removals of the light of his countenance have sadly learned the lesson, and mourned over the instruction in dust and ashes,) "that it is an evil and a bitter thing to forsake the Lord." Penal desertions are those inflicted, as the just reward of sin. Of this sort was the desertion of Christ;-a part, and an especial part, of that curse which God had pronounced against iniquity; and which, in the counsels of eternal love for man's

I