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SERMON XIX.

From that time forth, began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.-MATT. xvi. 21.

THE saying of the prophet, that "the ways and thoughts of God are not like those of men," was never more remarkably verified than in that great event which we this day commemorate, the death and passion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. "Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness!" Wonderful in every part, but chiefly in the last acts of it, was the scheme of man's redemption! That the Author of life should himself be made subject unto death-that the Lord of glory should be clothed with shame-that the Son of God's love should become a curse for sinful man-that his sufferings and humiliation should be made the manifestation of his glory -that by stooping to death he should conquer deaththat the cross should lift him to his throne-that the height of human malice should but accomplish the purposes of God's mercy-that the devil, in the persecutions he raised against our Lord, should be the instrument of his own final ruin,-these were mysteries in the doctrine of the cross, so contrary to the confirmed prejudices of the Jewish people, and so far above the reach of philosophical investigation, that they rendered the preaching of a crucified Saviour" a stumbling-block to the Jews, and to the Greeks foolishness." God, foreseeing how improbable this doctrine would appear to men, was pleased in various ways to typify and predict our Saviour's passion, ages before it happened, that the thing, when it should come to pass, might be known to be his work and counsel; and our Lord himself omitted not, at the proper season, to give his disciples the most explicit warning of it, that an event so contrary to every thing they had expected (for

they were involved in the common error of the Jewish nation concerning the Messiah) might not come upon them by surprise. "From that time forth," saith the evangelist, "began Jesus to show to his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day."

"From that time forth."-The fact last mentioned was that conversation of our Lord with his disciples, in which Peter declared, in the name of all, that while the people in general were in doubt who Jesus might be--whether Elias, or Jeremias, or some other of the ancient prophets revived-they, his constant followers, believed him to be the Christ, the Son of the living God. "From that time forth," it seems, and not before, Jesus began to advertise his disciples of his approaching death. It was a thing not to be disclosed till their faith had attained to some degree of constancy and firmness; but when once it appeared that they not only esteemed and loved their Master as a wise and virtuous man-that they not only revered him as an inspired teacher of righteousness, but that they believed in him as the Christ, the Son of God, the Redeemer of Israel, it then became seasonable to remove the prejudiees in which they had been educated, and to show them plainly what that deliverance was which the promised Messiah was to work,-for whom, and by what means, it was to be effected. It was time to extinguish their hopes of sharing in the splendours of an earthly. kingdom, and to prepare and fortify their minds against all that "contradiction of sinners" which they, with their Master, were in this world destined to endure. Now, therefore, he begins to show them how that he must go to Jerusalem, and, after much malicious persecution from the leaders of the Jewish people, he must be killed. The form of expression here is very remarkable in the original; and it is well preserved in our English translation. He must gohe must suffer he must be killed-he must be raised again on the third day,-all these things were fixed and determined

-must inevitably be-nothing could prevent them; and yet the greater part of them were of a kind that might seem to depend entirely upon man's free agency. To go or not to go to Jerusalem was in his own power; and the persecution he met with there, arising from the folly and the malice of ignorant and wicked men, surely depended upon human will: yet, by the form of the sentence, these things are included under the same necessity of event as that which was evidently an immediate effect of divine power, without the concurrence of any other cause, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The words which in the original express the going-the suffering-the being killed the being raised again--are all equally subject to the verb which answers to the word must of our language, and in its first and proper meaning predicates necessity. As he must be raised on the third day, so he must go, he must suffer, he must be killed. Every one of these events, his going to Jerusalem, his suffering, and his death there-and that these sufferings and that death should be brought about by the malice of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes,-every one of these things is plainly announced, as no less unalterably fixed than the resurrection of our Saviour, or the time of his resurrection -that it was to happen on the third day.

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The previous certainty of things to come is one of those truths which are not easily comprehended. The difficulty seems to arise from a habit that we have of measuring all intellectual powers by the standard of human intellect. There is nothing in the nature of certainty, abstractedly considered, to connect it with past time or with the present, more than with the future; but human knowledge extends in so small a degree to future things, that scarce any thing becomes certain to us till it is come to pass, and therefore we are apt to imagine that things acquire their certainty from their accomplishment. But this is a gross fallacy. The proof of an event to us always depends either upon the testimony of others, or the evidence of our

own senses; but the certainty of events in themselves arises from their natural connexion with their proper causes. Hence, to that great Being who knows things, not by testimony-not by sense, but by their causes, as being himself the First Cause, the source of power and activity to all other causes,-to Him, every thing that shall ever be, is at all times infinitely more certain than any thing either past or present can be to any man, except perhaps the simple fact of his own existence, and some of those necessary truths which are evidenced to every man, not by his bodily senses, but by that internal perception which seems to be the first act of created intellect.

This certainty, however, is to be carefully distinguished from a true necessity inherent in the nature of the thing. A thing is necessary when the idea of existence is included in the idea of the thing as an inseparable part of it. Thus, God is necessary;-the mind cannot think of him at all without thinking of him as existent. The very notion and name of an event excludes this necessity, which belongs only to things uncaused. The events of the created universe are certain, because sufficient causes do, not because they must, act to their production. God knows this certainty, because he knows the action of all these causes, inasmuch as he himself begins it, and perfectly comprehends those mutual connexions between the things he hath created, which render this a cause, and that its effect.

But the mere certainty of things to come, including in it even human actions, is not all that is implied in the terms of our Lord's prediction; which plainly intimate that the actions of men, even their worst actions, are in some measure comprised in the design of Providence, who, although he wills not the evil of any single act, undoubtedly wills the good in which the whole system of created agency shall ultimately terminate.

On these views of things, and in particular on our Saviour's prediction of his sufferings, in which these views are most strongly set forth, the Calvinistic di

vines endeavoured to establish their hard doctrine of arbitrary predestination,-a doctrine to which, whether we consider it in itself, or in its consequences, we may, with good reason, apply the words of the prophet, "It hath truly little form or comeliness-little beauty, that we should desire it." But let us not judge uncharitably of those who maintained it, nor ascribe to a morose severity of temper, much less to spiritual pride, what is easily traced to nobler principles. The Calvinistic predestinarians had found in the Scriptures, both of the Old and of the New Testament, the most explicit assertions of God's omniscience, and of his constant attention to the minutest occurrences both of the natural and of the moral world. These notions they found agreeable, we must not say to philosophy (for of that these pious men had but a scanty portion), but to what in many cases is a better guide to the natural sense and feeling of a virtuous mind. The belief that the world, and they themselves as a part of it, were under the immediate care and protection of the wisest and the best of beings, had taken possession of their honest hearts more firmly than it seems to do of some men's understandings; and they set themselves to combat with the fiercest zeal, and without any scrupulous examination, every doctrine that might seem to contradict it, and threaten to rob them of the holy joy and comfort which flowed from that persuasion. They did not understand that the foreknowledge and providence of the Deity, and that liberty which doth truly belong to man as a moral agent, are things perfectly consistent and naturally connected ;-they did not hesitate a moment to deny the freedom of human actions. But this was a dangerous error; for, in truth, the proof of our liberty is to every individual of the human race the very same, I am persuaded, with the proof of his existence. I feel that I exist, and I feel that I am free; and I may with reason turn a deaf ear upon every argument that can be alledged in either case to disprove my feelings. I feel that I have power to flee the danger that I dread-to pursue

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