flowing from the wounds made by the nails and by the scourging; sometimes the unfortunate sufferers would live long enough on the cross to die by hunger and thirst, or to be devoured by birds or beasts, and sometimes they were killed by being pierced with a sword or a spear, and sometimes burned with fire. Instances of all these kinds are easily found in history. The Evangelists tell us that the legs of the thieves were broken, and Christ's body was pierced. All the particulars required in the Roman crucifixion are found in the history of our Lord's death. He was beaten, made to carry his cross without the gates, and was stripped of his clothing. He was lifted up on the cross, and subjected to the bitter revilings of Jews and Gentiles, and the soldiers mocked him, coming to him and offering him vinegar, and the customary guard was also there,-"the soldiers sitting watched him there."

DEATH on the cross was distinguished as the most painful and the most ignominious kind of punishment. Anciently, it was only the meanest and the most abandoned persons that were condemned to die on the cross. Robbers, assassins, and slaves guilty of the worst offences"monsters in human shape," as Witsius says, "only were candidates for the detested cross." Before a Roman citizen could be subjected to this punishment, he had to be degraded by servile stripes and deprived of the rights of a freeman, just as a priest or ecclesiastic in Papal countries must be unfrocked before the civil law can punish him. Crucifying was synonymous with the severest suffering our word excruciating is derived from it. And Cicero in his impeachment of Verres, who had crucified a Roman citizen, says that "crucifixion was the most cruel and terrible of all punishments, such as no man should ever see, or hear, or think of." And

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Horace more than once speaks of the severity of the punishment of whipping and scourging among the Romans: "To be cut by the terrible whip and to be whipped to death." And when we apprehend the fact that there are many nerves and tendons in the hands and feet, and consider that the wounds from the scourging were left open, and the action of the air, wind, and sunshine on such fresh open wounds, and then remember the transfixing of the feet and the nailing of the hands with rugged spikes, and that the weight of the body was chiefly sustained on these open and distended wounds in the expanded limbs, and, still more, that the blood under such circumstances was forced in an unnatural quantity on the brain and stomach, then we may perhaps begin to have some idea of the painfulness, the awful painfulness of death by crucifixion.

Even in the law of Moses it is said: He that is hanged is accursed, a curse of God, which St. Paul applies to Jesus. Deut. xxi. 22, 23, quoted Gal. iii. 13. Here it may be proper to remark, that although crucifixion was not a Jewish mode of punishment, yet the Jews were in the habit of hanging the dead body on a gibbet or gallows. This I illustrated to some length in my Lectures on Esther, in the death and disgrace of Haman. Ordinarily the Jews put to death either by stoning, burning, or strangling, or with the sword or battle-axe. And after death, in order to let the people see that the offender was really dead, his body was exposed by hanging on a gallows. Why, then, was peculiar infamy attached to hanging on the cross? May we say with Witsius that God was pleased thus to brand this kind of punishment with peculiar infamy, because the sin of our first parents had relation to a tree? Is every one hanged a curse, accursed of God, to remind us of the fatal tree where the Divine

wrath was first kindled against our race? And is it for this reason that the Cross has become the symbol of our deliverance from the curse? Moses' law did not mean that the simple hanging on the cross of the body of a person, guilty or innocent, penitent or impenitent, necessarily excluded him altogether from the mercy of God, but it did signify, and was a memorial of the fact, that the only hope of mankind escaping from the curse of the sin that was committed by disobedience in eating of the forbidden fruit of a tree, rested in the sufferings of God's own Son on the Cross, who would come and die in the fulness of time to redeem us from the curse of the law. "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."-St. Paul. To hang on a tree among the Jews was literal, as it is now in rude and lawless districts, as the branches of trees were used for gibbets or a gallows; and as wood is part of a tree, so the beams or stake used for crucifying was also called a tree.

The curse of hanging on the tree, in Paul's mind, was emphatic, for it was a painful death, a shameful death, a lingering death, amid the jibes and scoffs of the profane, and such a death as only the lowest and the vilest could suffer among the Romans.

I believe that Jesus Christ, God's only Son, was crucified and dead, because this is implied in all the types that speak of Him as a sacrifice. It was thus He finished the work committed to him. He laid down his life for his sheep. He laid it down voluntarily, and he did it piously, offering up prayers and supplications, and with perfect peace and composure committing his soul to his Father. "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.' The Paschal Lamb, Isaac, and the Jewish altars, all

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preached this doctrine. The reasons, then, why our Lord was put to death on the cross, may be stated in this way :

1. It was predicted the Messiah should so suffer; the types proclaimed the same thing; He himself foretold his own sufferings, including crucifixion.

2. Man's first disobedience, "that brought death into the world and all our woe," was about a tree. And it pleased God that the atonement by which pardoned sinners may regain Paradise should be finished on a tree.

3. As Jesus was the Mediator, the Messiah for Gentiles as well as for Jews, so it was requisite He should die under Jewish as well as Gentile law. But how could this be brought about? There were only four methods known to the Mosaic law for capital punishment, namely : first, slaying with the sword, but this involved no disgrace; secondly, stoning, but this would break his bones, which was not to be done to the Messiah; thirdly, burning, but this could not be done, for then the flesh of the great Paschal Lamb would not have remained to be the food of his people; fourthly, strangulation, but then this would have rendered his flesh unclean. How, then, was Jesus to die? The accusation against him under the Jewish law was blasphemy, because He made himself equal to God by calling himself the Son of God. The punishment for this was death by stoning. But they had not the power to put any one to death according to Jewish law. This indictment, therefore, fails, and the offence made available was a political one, that he claimed to be a king, and was therefore Cæsar's enemy and rival. The superscription over his head on the cross proves that the procuring cause of his death, according to the judgment rendered against him, was that he claimed to be the king

of the Jews. On this charge he was condemned to suffer Roman punishment, which was to be crucified. And this kind of a death meets all the prophecies concerning the sufferings of the Messiah. It was necessary He should die from the shedding of his blood, and that He should die in a conspicuous and open manner; and that his sufferings should be with such agony, and under such shame as would properly express the wrath of God against sin; and that He should die on a tree, as one under the curse of God. All these requisites are found in his crucifixion, and found only there.

In bringing this discourse to a conclusion, I wish, my dear hearers, to say:

;

I. I have not, and do not consider it important to dwell on the explanation and proofs of this article of our holy religion, because I suppose that any of you are in danger of believing Sabellius, the Egyptian philosopher of the third century, or of following Basilides, the disciple of Simon Magus, or that you are about to adopt the Koran but I am aware that while the forms of error are changed, that their restatements are quite as dangerous as the old ones, and often much more so, because the restatement embodies all the essential error of the old one, but in a more subtle and plausible form. I believe that the Son of God, having taken man's nature, "truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men.' Here is a great vital purpose in view. I do not see any way to be saved unless this Article is true. I know the Deist, the Socinian, and all who deny the Divinity of our Lord, think but little of this Article. Those who deny that there is any necessity for a propitiatory sacrifice, or that God had need to be reconciled to man, may adopt the opinions of the Doceta or of the