throng, a glimpse of which he had caught, and whose anthems of praise he had heard from his sea-girt isle, he hailed it with rapture, "Even so, come Lord Jesus." Sealing up the gospel with his last prayer, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all," * he handed the legacy to the church, and was borne away in triumph to repose again in the bosom of his Lord and his God.

"And shall we not aspire,

Like him our course to run?
The crown if we would wear,

The cross must first be borne.
Divinely taught,

He shows the way

First to believe and then obey."

*Rev. xxii. 21.

CHAPTER VII.

Conclusion.

I HAVE Completed the plan described in the commencement of these pages. The various incidents of the trial and crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ, have been woven into a single narrative. Whether a similar attempt with the events of the Resurrection and Ascension of our Saviour shall be made, is left to be decided by circumstances over which I have now no control. I cannot close this probably only access to the reader, without a personal request to ponder prayerfully the great moral truths, as it were incarnated in the closing scenes of the life of our Saviour, and to open your heart to their practical influence.

When we contemplate the tragical events of Gethsemane and Calvary, through which Christ passed out of the world, we cannot too constantly or too vividly recollect that they are portrayed, not for their historic interest, as illustrating the barbarous customs of an

tiquity, but to make a sensible impression in favor of holiness and against sin; to show the impartial justice of God, who will not forgive the sinner without a satisfaction to his violated law; and to show His amazing love in giving His beloved Son and equal to render that satisfaction, by assuming human nature, and, after tasting all the sorrows and temptations of sinners yet without sin, by enduring His wrath against their sins, that God might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. The cross of Christ was erected to make a sensible, impressive exhibition of God's demands and our deserts. And when we gather around this object of universal interest, every event must deepen our impressions of God's inflexible hatred of sin and his unspeakable love of sinners. If we forget this and gaze upon the cross, only with idle curiosity, however deeply our sympathies may be moved for the sufferer, we derive no healing benefit from the sight. There is no effi cacy in the cross of Christ to those who see upon it only a created being, the victim of Jewish rage for teaching doctrines which his ̧ countrymen hated: a martyr simply to the

truth, or dying only that he may prove the truth of a general resurrection. To such it is a stumbling-block and foolishness. It becomes the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation to those only, who see there the Lamb of God, slain, a vicarious sacrifice, for the sins of the world. Those only, who, as it were, lose the material view of the cross, in the spiritual effulgence which beams around the God-man, Mediator, suspended upon it, shall be washed from their sins in His blood.

Let this, the alone soul-healing view, never fade from our eyes, whenever we contemplate Jesus dying a ransom for sinners, that he who repents and believes, may be saved; and while the light of earthly things is withdrawn from the sacrifice, may the illumination of the Holy Spirit fill our spiritual vision; that what is most dark and inexplicable to the eye of sense, may be most luminous and consoling to the eye of faith.

We have traced in an inadequate manner, the history of our Saviour from Gethsemane to Calvary - through the last twenty-four hours of his abode in the flesh. I cannot

leave these deeply affecting scenes without inquiring, What influence have they had upon the reader? Some influence they have had. No one can sit down and read the close of the life of our Lord, or indeed any other part of the scriptures, and rise up exactly the same moral being as he was, no better and no worse. It is one of the most momentous facts in our moral history, that every presentation of the truths of the gospel tells upon our character. Like the invisible dews of the early summer, which cause verdure to spring luxuriantly from the earth, or the unburied seed to rot upon the surface, moral truth proves a savor of life unto life, or of death unto death."

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One of these results has obtained as an effect of the present attempt to sketch the closing events in the life of Christ. Your affections have been more strongly developed and fixed upon the Saviour, and against sin, or you have been made more insensible to the beauty of holiness and the deformity of iniquity. Which has been the result in your own case, is a question, whose answer is an index to your future prospects of happiness or