like as we are, yet without sin; for He sought not His own will, but the will of His Father which sent Him (John v. 30). He pleased not Himself, but denying the natural desires and inclinations of His flesh when they were opposed to the will of God, He throughout His life 'died unto sin.'

But there is a yet more terrible form of that death unto sin, when the alternative to sin is not merely the subjugation of the desires and inclinations of the flesh, but the surrender of life itself. Men will risk their lives. supported by the admiration of others, and because they

have hope of escape. Fanatics, whose minds have generally lost their balance, have been found who will voluntarily die, upheld by an overweening pride and the praise of men. In fact, pride, the love of praise and notoriety, the sympathy of others, and often the want of realization of death itself, may enable men to face the dread ordeal; but to a meek-spirited person, unsupported by such things, death is horrible, and no one could be found to voluntarily undergo it, if utterly without the approval of others to support his resolution.

The Christian martyrs have never been wholly without human sympathy, and have often had no option but to undergo death by the time they came face to face with it. Christ's death was indeed similar to that of a martyr, or witness to the truth, in that He was put to death because He witnessed to the truth,* but it was a death wholly unsupported by pride in Himself, or sympathy from others; for even His few disciples forsook Him, offended at seeing Him, whom they thought was to redeem Israel, a captive in the hands of men thirsting for His blood. But in addition to this, it was a wholly voluntary death, i.e., a death from which He could have escaped at any moment by praying to His Father. 'No

* 'Jesus Christ the faithful and true martyr' (witness); Rev. i. 5, iii. 14.

man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself' (John x. 18). And thus He underwent an unceasing struggle between obedience to the will of His Father on the one hand, and on the other hand the natural shrinking, intensified by a clear realization and anticipation of a cruel and lingering death, unsupported by human approval. Father,' He cried, 'save Me from this hour, but for this cause came I to this hour.' And again, in the garden of Gethsemane He prayed, 'Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done.' He knew that it was the will of the Father that He should die, yet His own natural will or inclination was as opposed to death as that of any other man's would have been, but because to have yielded to it would have been disobedience to the will of God, and therefore sin, He bowed to that will and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,' and in so doing put the crowning act on his life of death unto sin.'

Here, again, it was faith which enabled Him to triumph, faith in a righteous though unseen God, who recognised and approved of Hisobedience unto death,' faith in the Word which revealed the necessity of that death, and the glorious consequences which would arise from it; for it was for the sake of the 'joy set before Him' that He endured the cross, despising the shame' (Heb. xii. 2). Just as a similar faith had enabled other men to endure death and torture, 'not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection' (Heb. xi. 35, 40). Thus the crowning act of His death unto sin was the crowning act of His life of faith.

But there was an element of agony in this death which constituted its distinguishing feature, and which requires separate consideration.

CHAPTER II.

CHRIST'S BURDEN OF SIN.

THE Christian martyr, strengthened by the approval of conscience and the sympathy of fellow-Christians, and supported by the consciousness of the favour of God, has gone even joyfully to the stake; and in addition to these sources of strength he has the mighty cordial of the sympathy and example-not of man, but of the Lord of Hosts Himself; so that spiritually, with Him in the flames, walks the form of one like unto the Son of God' (Dan. iii. 25). And this has probably been to many a source of strength and support, the full influence of which, through faith, it is perhaps hardly possible for us to realize.

But Christ, in His death, was absolutely without any support whatever from these sources of strength, and died under the sense of a burden of sin, and of being forsaken by God; and here we come to that remarkable, and apparently mysterious feature in His death, involved in the statement that He bore our sins in His own body on the tree' (1 Pet. ii. 24).

He was made sin for us' in having a body of sin, which is called in the Christian a vile body* (Phil. iii. 21), which it was necessary that He should put off before He could enter into His glory. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, neither can corruption.

Body of Humiliation.

inherit incorruption.' It was necessary for Christ, as for other men, to die. 'Ought not Christ,' He said of Himself, to have suffered and to have entered into glory?' (Luke xxiv. 26). But it was not necessary, on His own account, that the death He suffered should have been one of agony, and still less that He should have borne the weight of human iniquity.

Now, Christ, as we have seen, 'suffered being tempted' throughout His life, and that body of sin, through which He was tempted, must have been as much a burden to Him as it is to the Christian. Under the sense of the burden of this sinful nature, to which He was yet wholly opposed in the spirit of His mind, the Apostle Paul exclaims O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death;' and in speaking of Christians generally he says: We which are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened' (2 Cor. v. 4). For the knowledge of possessing a body of sin which is evil and opposed to God, and which, unless he is upheld by God, may yet destroy his soul, cannot but be in itself a burden; and it is this very burden under which he groans, which causes the Christian to look forward to the future, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body' (Rom. viii. 32). Moreover, just in proportion as he most clearly recognises the holiness of God, so does he most clearly see the evil of his own nature, as was the case with Isaiah and Job (Isa. vi. 5; Job xlii. 5, 6); for it is only when the spirit of God dwells in a man that he fully realizes the evil of sin (Isa. lvii. 15).

In this sense, therefore, Christ, like the Christian, may be said to have borne the burden of sin, and that, being tempted in all points like as we are,' the Lord 'laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.' But temptation is not sin, and although the Christian, when subjected to manifold temptations, and often overthrown, will of

necessity be in heaviness and burdened, this would not be the case with one who always completely resisted them, and who had perfect confidence towards God' because his heart condemned him not' (1 John iii. 21). It is evident, therefore, that Christ's burden of sin, when the Lord laid upon Him the iniquity of us all,' and He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, was something very different to this, and that the agony in Gethsemane, when He prayed, 'If it be possible let this cup pass from Me;' and when on the cross He cried, 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'-are significant of a soul conflict of a far deeper and more mysterious character. Is it, then, a mystery which is beyond the power of men to understand, or is it something which it is right to try and understand?

In the first place, the Apostles do not refer to it as a mystery. They state the fact, but do not seem to anticipate that the statement should be regarded as inexplicable by their converts. Secondly, Christ has said that except His flesh and blood are eaten and drunken, men can have no life in them (John vi. 53). Now, just as the features, the bodily shape, the words and actions of a man, or all those characteristics which may be summed up in the word flesh (as distinct from the spirit, of which it is the clothing), manifest that man's natural character and mind, so the whole life, the words, and actions of Christ were the manifestation of the Spirit of God within Him. The blood also being the life of the body, to shed blood is to take away life, and blood is therefore used throughout Scripture as the common expression for death. Thus the flesh and blood of Christ are metaphors for the whole spiritual meaning of His life and death. Now, as these are to be eaten spiritually, that is, by the mind and affections of men, it must be of the very highest importance to understand all that is possible of the meaning and