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SERMON VI.

JESUS THIRSTING

UNDER THE AGONIES

OF THE CROSS.

JOHN XIX. 28, 29.

AFTER THIS, JESUS, KNOWING THAT ALL THINGS WERE NOW ACCOMPLISHED, THAT THE SCRIPTURE MIGHT BE FULFILLED, SAITH, I THIRST. NOW THERE WAS SET A VESSEL FULL OF VINEGAR: AND THEY FILLED A SPUNGE WITH VINEGAR, AND PUT IT UPON HYSSOP, AND PUT IT TO HIS MOUTH.

THEY who are conversant with dying beds, must have noticed, in proportion as the Holy Ghost gave them spiritual perceptions, the jealousy and unwillingness, with which the children of God, just about to fall asleep in Jesus, and waiting in faith and hope, until He should receive their spirits, and finish the work of redeeming love, in

their everlasting blessedness, have received any medicine, which, while it might assuage their bodily pain, would in the same degree stupify their minds, and make them incapable of enjoying communion with their Saviour, as He manifested Himself, in the fulness of his presence and his grace to their souls. And herein they followed, according to their measure, the blessed footsteps of his own holy walk and example. When his enemies, in their last act of malice against his life, had led Him to Golgotha, some among them, more compassionate than the rest, gave Him vinegar, or sour wine, mingled with gall; or according to St. Mark, with myrrh. Their design in thus dealing with our Lord, was probably to stupify his sense of pain with this medicated drink, and to make Him less sensible of the agony which He had yet to undergo. But when he had tasted thereof, and knew the purpose with which it was set before Him, He would not drink; because He would not swerve from one pang,

which infinite justice was about to lay upon Him, as the representative of sinners ;because He would not avoid one jot or tittle of those sufferings, which were to befall Him, when the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. But when He hung upon the cross indeed, and was tasting the bitterness of death, He voluntarily exclaimed, as the fifth of his last memorable sayings on the cross, "I thirst;"—and this He said not, until He saw that all other points of duty were accomplished, or on the point of receiving their accomplishment; and only the expression of this infirmity was needed, to complete all things that were written in the law and the prophets, concerning Him. The great act of his High Priesthood being then consummated, and the time between the two evenings arrived, there remained only, that He should bow that blessed head which was anointed by the love of God, though crowned with thorns by the hatred of man, and give up the ghost.

I am sure, that the matter and purport of this cry of the expiring Saviour will appear of high and solemn moment to the spiritual members of his Church, if rightly explained, applied and understood. The fault will be in my feeble statement, or your dim apprehension, or both together, as the Holy Spirit's influences may not descend upon us,―(because perhaps we restrain the prayer that should seek them,) if we do not find enough in it, to awaken our hearts into a holy love of Him who loved us, and gave Himself for us. I observe therefore, that when Jesus said, "I thirst," his want, and the exclamation, which it urged, proved,

I. THE PROPER HUMANITY OF THAT NATURE WHICH ASSUMED THE LIKENESS OF SINFUL FLESH, TO CONDEMN SIN IN THE FLESH, THAT THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE LAW MIGHT BE FULFILLED IN

THEM, WHO WALK NOT AFTER THE flesh, BUT AFTER THE SPIRIT.

They who have known the most of this

world's convenience, and the least of its outward bodily trials, have probably experienced, in some degree, the irksomeness, if not the painfulness of thirst. When the body is parched with fever, full of tossings to and fro,-when the blood is hot with inflammation, and all moisture drunk up from the surface of the body, burned with inward fire, the sense of thirst is most oppressive; and the restlessness which it induces, and which also in turn re-acts upon it, to increase it, forms a sad feature in the disease. But when the climate, in which the sufferer's lot is cast, is that of parching heat; when his anguish is laid upon him, as a burden, in the sultry time of day; and when his pain is not the throb of natural disease, but the rackings and torture of a lingering death, by which his soul is violently rent, as it were, from his body, then the thirst produced must be a cause of agony, which only the sufferer can appreciate. Such was the case with Jesus, when He cried from the cross, "I thirst."

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