LETTERS, PRACTICAL AND CONSOLATORY. LETTER I. ON THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. General observations on the sufferings of Christ-They continued through his life-The nature of those he endured in Gethsemane and on the Cross-Their expiatory design-Were inflicted by God, as the lawgiver-Flowed from a sense of the evil of sin and of the Divine displeasure, and from the desertion of his Father-This typified under the law-Were endured in circumstances of shame-Were increased by the powers of darkness, and by many other secondary causes; and terminated in death. MY DEAR FRIEND, THE sufferings of Christ constitute so important a part of Christianity, and are so pre-eminently exhibited in Scripture, that our comfort and deportment in religion must be much influenced by our views of their nature and design. To this subject, allow me to direct your attention in the present letter. I begin with observing, that, it appears from Scripture, the sufferings of our Lord continued through life; and that his one righteousness includes the whole of his obedience and his death. It is wrong to confine his righteousness to any one part of his humiliation and woe. The Scriptures represent it as including all that he did; in taking upon him our nature; in perfectly obeying the Divine law; in submitting to the pains, A sorrows, and sufferings which so grievously afflicted him; and in giving himself an offering and a sacrifice unto God. These all form that one work, by which the glory of the Divine character is vindicated and illustrated; the law magnified and made honourable; and a way opened through which God appears the just God, and yet the Saviour. But though his sufferings continued through life, they were not at all times equally severe. There were times in which he enjoyed comparative ease, and there were seasons of gladness which occasionally brightened the dark and dreary path of his humiliation. He rejoiced in spirit when he saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven; and when the Samaritans were about to acknowledge him, he said to his disciples, that he had meat to eat that they knew not of. As he stood in the room of sinners, it behoved him to suffer all those miseries to which they are obnoxious through life; while, at the same time, as God exercises much longsuffering and forbearance towards them, and mode-` rates the evils of life, by many instances of kindness; so, in like manner, the Saviour when on earth had not always the same sense of the painful effects of our sins, but sometimes enjoyed a measure of gladness, till the hour and power of darkness came, when the unmixed curse of the violated law of Heaven fell upon his devoted head. How comfortable is it to us, that his joy arose from the conversion of sinners; that his intervals of gladness were seasons in which the salvation of the guilty was contemplated as the certain and blissful result of his work! But as he had seasons of gladness, so he had also many seasons of extreme distress in the course of his life. Gethsemane and Calvary were not the only scenes of his sorrow. Before the last and awful conflict in the garden and on the cross, he exclaimed, "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say ?” This marks the deep and distressful agitation of his spirit, and must be viewed as similar to what he endured in the night on which he was betrayed. "In the days of his flesh, he offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears." "The days of his flesh" include more than the hour of his agony in Gethsemane, and his distressing hours upon the cross-they must include the entire period of his humiliation, and particularly that of his public ministry. We accordingly find, from the history of these days, that he dismissed the multitude and his disciples, and then retired, not to repose himself, but to pray*; that rising at a very early hour, he went to a solitary place, and there prayed†; that he went to a mountain to pray, and continued in that exercise the whole of the night; and that, when he went to the Mount of Olives, after the observance of the passover, it was as he was wont §. Compare all this with what is said of the nature of those prayers, and of the circumstances in which they were offered, in those psalms in which he is the speaker. His language in Psalm xxii. 2. cannot refer merely to what took place in his Matt. xiv. 23, 25. † Mark i. 35. Luke vi. 12. § Luke xxii, 39 last agony in the garden, for that took place about midnight: and here he says, "O my God, I cry in the day-time, but thou hearest not;" neither can it refer merely to what took place on the cross, because that happened during the day: and here he says, that he cried unto God in "the night season." Nor is this all. The words cannot be confined to any one particular night and day, but are clearly expressive of daily and nightly, continual sorrow, as is confirmed by the expression which follows: "And am not silent;" or, as in the margin, there is no silence to me. This mode of speaking leads at once to the passages I have quoted respecting his prayers-his continuing in them all night-his doing so on mountains, and in solitary places—and of this being his usual custom. It ought likewise to be observed, that as the second verse of this psalm cannot be confined to the scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary, so neither can the first; for these two verses are evidently connected, and form one complaint. He had often then, by night and by day, thus cried unto God, and had frequently expressed himself in the doleful language which he at last uttered publicly on Calvary. In the instance already mentioned, which is recorded in John xii. 27. there is the same state of anguish which is exhibited on the cross, though less in degree. This illustrates his complaint, that he had "been afflicted and ready to die from his youth up." It accords with what David says, as his * Psalm lxxxviii. 15. type, "My life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing"*; and shews the importance of such of the psalms as contain the substance of the prayers offered up by him on earth. We are in these psalms brought as it were into his closet, are made the witnesses of his secret devotions, and are enabled to see even the inward workings of his heart. It is affecting thus to contemplate his feelings, and the exercise of his high and hallowed principles, in the presence of his Father. The Scriptures, however, do certainly direct us in a particular manner to the last scene of his work and of his woes; because it was the grand completion of his sufferings and undertaking in the room of sinners. The Evangelists have spoken fully of what he endured during the night on which he was betrayed. The seat of his sufferings at that time was his soul, for no human hand had as yet touched him. His body, it is true, was greatly affected, but this was occasioned by the distress and anguish of his mind. He was overwhelmed with sorrow of the most excruciating nature, which made him exclaim, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death+." Sorrow is the very essence of the curse denounced against sin‡, and he who was made "a curse for us" endured it to the utmost. The sorrows of death compassed him, and the pains of the invisible world got hold upon him f. He felt as if besieged with sorrow; so that to whatever quarter he turned, the bitter cup of anguish pre * Psalm xxxi. 10. Matt. xxvi. 38. Gen. iii. 17. Matt. viii, 12. |