should undergo the strictest examination. Accordingly the -severest scrutiny was instituted, and the result of every fresh examination was a stronger attestation of his innocence. But here we see him put into the hottest furnace, which must infal- libly discover the alloy or dross, if any such were found in him. The most eminent of mankind had been subjected to far less trials, and had discovered that they were but men, weak, sin- ful, and corrupt. Moses had " spoken unadvisedly with his lips ;" Job had " cursed the day of his nativity ;" and Paul had *' reviled the Ruler of God's people." But in Jesus there was not the smallest error or imperfection. Such was his ^ja^/e?/C6?, that "when he was reviled, he reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not ; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously." He complains indeed by the prophet, " Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness;" yet, as another prophet testifies, " He was altogether like a lamb led to the slaughter, and, like a sheep before her shearers, dumb." Such was his forbearance too, that when he might justly have called fire from heaven to consume his enemies, as Elijah did, or caused the earth to open and swallow them up, as it did those who had rebelled against his servant Moses, he would not do it. Nor, on the other hand, would he, as well he might liave done, accept their challenge, and prove his almighty j)()wer by descending from the cross. He knew that this would not convince them, even if he should do it : lie intended also shortly to give them an infinitely stronger evidence of his Messiahship, (even that which he had so often promised them,) by rising from the dead ; and he was determined that nothing should divert him from the work which he had undertaken to perform. He might well have said, " Seeing ye put me from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life," I relinquish my work, and leave you to the judgments which you have so richly merited^. But he would not save himself, because he was bent on saving us ; and " for the joy that was set before him," of delivering a ruined world, " he endured the cross, and despised the shame," till he could sav, respecting the whole of his work, " It is finished."
Here then we have ample proof of his sinless character, and that he truly was, what it behoved him to be, " a Lamb without blemish and without spot."]
There yet remains one other view in which their treatment of him is instructive ; namely,
III. As a proof of his Messiahship —
[The circumstance of his being crucified between two malefactors is declared by the Evangelist to have been an
» Acts xiii. 46.