came man.

The Lord of glory did not empty himself, did not veil the rays of ineffable majesty, to become one of the cherubim or seraphim, or a companion with the highest orders of angelic hosts in their government of worlds-not to be born a monarch, and sit on a throne, but to be born of a woman in a stable-born to suffer and to die, that we might live. "In all things he was made like unto us, that he might be a merciful and faithful High Priest, in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people."

III. Forget not, dear brethren, one thing more: He who was conceived of the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary must be formed in our hearts, the hope of glory. He must live in our hearts, and be nourished there, and grow up there, until by His dwelling in us, we attain unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. We are not Christ's unless we have His spirit. Are we Christ's? Do we really belong to him? Angels, you know, announced his birth, saying: "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good-will toward men." Have we peace with God? Can we and do we truly say: We adore Thee—we worship Thee—we acknowledge Thee as our God and Saviour-we expect salvation from Thee? May the whole world unite with us in knowing, acknowledging, and praising Thee, to whom be glory, with the Father and the Eternal Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

PILATE THE HEATHEN JUDGE.

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V.

CHRIST "SUFFERED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE.·

"Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer."-LUKE xxiv. 46. "But those things, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled."-ACTs iii. 18, together with chapter liii. of ISAIAH.

I HAVE not time this evening, nor do I consider it at all necessary, in such a presence as this, to analyze or to present a synopsis of the texts of Holy Scripture read in order to show that they teach that Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, nor is it my purpose now to speak of the application of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah to the Messiah. It is confessed by the most ancient Jewish authorities that this prophecy does relate to the Messiah. And so plainly does it suit the character of Jesus, that it has long been contended by some Jewish Rabbis that two Messiahs are promised in their sacred books, one to redeem and suffer, and another to reign as a glorious Prince. A sufficient answer to this is, that such an interpretation of the old Hebrew Scriptures is clearly an invention, for the purpose of getting rid of the testimony of the sacred writers to Jesus as the promised Messiah. We are not able to find a syllable in support of it from the beginning of Genesis to the end of the book of Revela

tion. Moses and the Prophets, and the Psalms, know nothing of two Messiahs, but they do speak of one Messiah who was both to suffer and die and to triumph, to be humbled and to be exalted, to be clothed with humanity, and yet to wear the robe of immortality and of ineffable majesty. There is no trace of any expectation of two Messiahs among the Jews before the coming of Christ. This interpretation was not thought of until it became a necessary invention to weaken or destroy the proof that Jesus was the Messiah, by showing that all the requirements of the old Jewish Church were fulfilled in Him.

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The fourth Article of the Apostles' Creed is: "Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried." We do not find both expressions, "suffered" and was crucified," in some of the old Creeds, but only was crucified under Pontius Pilate. The sense is not changed by the omission, but I prefer both expressions just as we have them, and, by divine assistance, I hope to show that both are true, and that both are important terms in our holy religion. I confine myself, for the present, to the first clause: "Suffered under Pontius Pilate." Common ecclesiastical usage appropriates the word Passion to the sufferings of our Lord at and during his crucifixion, as in Acts i. 3: "To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion"-his suffering-preeminently, his sufferings at the close of his life.

I. Then let us look a little at the heathen judge under whom our Lord suffered.

First. PONTIUS PILATE is named in this Article of the Creed, not because he was in any way able to impart value to our Lord's sufferings; but it was well to identify historically the period of our Lord's sufferings and death. The Evangelists had told us of the epoch of his

PILATE FULFILLING PROPHECY.

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birth, so also it was desirable to fix that of his death. There are historic periods connected with historic names in the Roman Empire. And such simple references to easily identified persons are strong collateral proof of the truthfulness and authority of our sacred writers. If they had not been honest, straightforward men, never suspecting that any one would ever doubt their veracity, we cannot think they would have dared to commit themselves to dates, names, and events, as they have done.

The CREED, in saying that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, fixes the date of his crucifixion, and enables us to examine the events of the Gospel by the light of the profane history of the same times, in the same century. Luke tells us that Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea when John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness, and we know from Roman history that this was true; and we know also that Pilate was removed from office just before the death of the Emperor Tiberius, and after he had held his government ten years. And it is also in evidence that it was the custom for all Roman governors to make reports from their government to the Emperor, and for these reports to be kept on file at Rome. And no doubt Pilate made a report to his imperial master at Rome concerning the life and trial and death of Jesus of Nazareth, and accordingly Justin Martyr, in his defence of Christianity, or Apology, as it was called in his day, written in the early part of the second century, boldly appeals to the "Record of the Acts of Pontius Pilate," on file in Rome, for the truth of the facts concerning Jesus as given by our Evangelists. Tertullian also, from the early age of the Church, and in fact, I believe, the volume of evidence from the Fathers and the first ages of the Church, is decidedly in favor of the Acts of Pilate as a

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well-known and existing record, on file in Rome, of Pilate's government in the second century.

And you are all aware, I presume, that there is a passage in Josephus that speaks of Christ as an extraordinary person who appeared at this time in Judea; but as it is alleged that this passage is an interpolation, and does not belong to the original text, I do not insist upon it. I am not willing to decide dogmatically that the passage in Josephus is spurious, but we do not need any doubtful authority. We have direct testimony from the "Annals of Tacitus," which cannot be impeached, that "Nero persecuted with exquisite torments a sect of men commonly called Christians,-so called from CHRISTUS, who in the reign of Tiberius was executed under Pontius Pilate, the Procurator of Judea." Testimony of this sort might be greatly multiplied, but it cannot be necessary.

Secondly. It is a fact, then, in the next place, that Roman history acquaints us with the state of Judea as a Roman province under just such a government as is implied in our narrative. The Jews were then under the Roman yoke, a foreign, heathen, hated government. Pontius Pilate was a Roman knight, and the Roman governor of Judea under the Emperor Tiberius. The sceptre had actually departed from Judah. The appointed time for Messiah's advent had expired. The Jews themselves bore witness to their own degradation, when they said to Pilate, "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death;" and confirmed it by saying: "We have no king but Cæsar." It is not material to determine how the Jews had lost this power of life and death. It is sufficient to prove that such was the fact at this time, and that it was also a fact that the Procurators had the power of life and death, which is well attested by the history of the administrations of the provinces of the Roman empire, that of Judea