never-ending eternity in "weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth." In a word, the curse of the law", " the wrath of God," and " the damnation of hell," which are the bitter ingredients of " the second death," are the sinner's doom.]
Now these, as far as was necessary for our redemp- tion, he bore for us —
[As for the idea of every individual part of his sufferings making an atonement for every corresponding circumstance in our sins, I look upon it as altogether fanciful and absurd. But the great leading points of his sufferings and of our deserts do fully correspond with each other. Every mark of ignominy was shewn him, both in these his preparatory sufferings, and in his death itself, which was inflicted only on slaves, and which was declared by the Jewish law accursed. And " who ever beheld sorrow like unto his sorrow"?" Truly beyond any other person that ever existed upon earth was he despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief P;" " the whole nation despised and abhorred himi;" and " his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men"^." Finally, in his death, " he became a curse for us, that he might deliver us from the curse" to which we were doomed ^" Thus did he not merely die in our stead, *' the just for the unjust*," as a common victim in the place of the offender, but he fully discharged our debt in every par- ticular ; so that neither law nor justice can demand any thing further at our hands. Methinks we were lying, like Isaac, bound upon the altar, the knife being lifted up to inflict the deadly stroke, and the wood and fire prepared ready to consume us ; but Jesus, as the ram caught in the thicket, undergoes the whole for us, and restores us to the bosom of our Father and our God. " By his stripes we are healed";" and by his death we live for ever'^.]
Once more we may, in the midst of these sufferings, contemplate him, III. As our great example —
What he endured shews us what we also shall have to bear —
[" God has predestinated us to be conformed to the image of his Son^:" and our blessed Lord has told us, that, as men hated and " persecuted him, so they will hate and
" Deut. xxi. 23. ° Lam. i. 12. p Isai. liii. 3.
q Isai. xlix. 7. "^ Isai. lii. 14. ^ Gal. iii. 13.
t 1 Pet. iii. 18. "1 Pet. ii. 24. ^ 1 Thess. v. 10. > Rom. viii. 29.