became a source of still more aggravated woe. Pilate hoped, that, by scourging him, he should pacify those who sought his life : and, the order being given, " the ploughers ploughed upon his back and made long their furrows^ :" but " the whole mul- titude with insatiate fury cried out, Crucify him, crucify him M" and demanded that Barabbas, who was a robber and a mur- derer, should be preferred before him. Thus was the imma- culate Lamb of God condemned to suffer the most cruel and ignomimous of all deaths, even the accursed death of the cross.]
3. Those which were consummated in his death — [From Pilate's bar he was dragged away to execution. Laden with the cross to which he was to be affixed, he sank under the load, which therefore another was compelled to bear to the place of execution. To this he was fastened with nails through his hands and feet ; and then was he raised a naked bloody spectacle to all his enemies. Ah ! with what taunts was he then assailed, assailed even by the thieves, who on either side of him were suiFering the same punishment ! One would have thought that in such a situation at least he might become an object of pity : but no pity was found in the hearts of his blood-thirsty enemies : and their professed readiness to assuage his anguish, was only an impious mockery, and a cruel insult : they gave him " gall and vinegar to drink ^." But the heaviest load which he had to sustain was laid upon him by other hands than those of man, even by the hands of his heavenly Father. Man could only touch his body : the wounds inflicted on his soul proceeded immediately from God, who then " was pleased to bruise him," and to punish in him the iniquities of a ruined world. All his other sufferings he endm-ed with lamb-like silence : but this forced from him that heart-rending complaint, "My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" The darkness which at mid-day, for the space of three hours, veiled the whole land, was a sad emblem of his state, under the agonies of expiring nature, and the wrath of a sin-avenging God. At last, having drunk the very last dregs of that cup which had been put into his hands, he bows his head, and gives up the ghost. " Was ever sorrow like unto his sorrow^? "]
After this slight sketch of our Redeemer's suffer- ings, let us proceed to consider, n. Their vicarious use —
It might be said of David under many of his per- secutions, that " he restored that which he took not away :" for certainly he exercised forbearance, and forgiveness, and a returning of good to a very extra-
y Ps. cxxix. 3. ^ See ver. 4. a yer. 21. "^ Lam. i. 12.