ficulties; for when he had spoken these words, and seemed as if he was about to leave them, though they knew not who he was, they liked his discourse, and were very unwilling to part with him. They constrained him, were very urgent and importunate with him, to go into the house, and abide with them that night; and when their eyes were opened to know him, upon his taking bread, blessing, breaking, and giving it to them, and he had vanished out of their sight," they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures?" (ver. 32.) My brethren, we by the mercy of God have not only the very same Scriptures of the Old Testament still in our hands, but those of the New added to them, for our instruction, assurance, and comfort: and if you should say, we have not Christ to open them to us, as the two disciples had, let me desire you not to entertain any such mistake. For he hath promised to be 'with us alway even unto the end of the world;" Matt. xxviii. 20. He is therefore always present and ready in the power of his Spirit to expound them to every willing soul, and it is our own fault if our hearts do not burn within us at the reading of them. Your diligent study of them will be attended with a blessing; they will be opened to your prayers; you will be made to rejoice in them, and praise God for them. I will be bold to say that Christ is among us this day, with the same love which brought him down from heaven to die for us, to seal the words of the text in all their saving import to every man and woman that is here ready to receive them. Lord Jesus, take the veil from every heart; that we may say from our own experience, with full belief, and many thanksgivings to God for the unspeakable mercy of thy birth, death, and resurrection, Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?"

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The words, you see, consist of two parts, the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow; and the opening of them will afford suitable matter for our meditations on this day and Easter Sunday.

I. The first is the sufferings of Christ, and the necessity of them, strongly expressed in the question, “Ought not Christ to have suffered ?" He ought, he did — to fulfil the prophecies concerning him-to redeem us from the death of our souls and bodies to leave us an example of patience, meekness, humility, and all other divine graces and holy tempers-to turn us from sin to God, from earth to heaven, and fix us in a state of pure obedience from a root of love.

1. That Christ should suffer, was according to prophecy. It was written of him in the first book of Moses, Gen. iii. 15. that though he should "bruise the serpent's head," or destroy the devil's power, which he is always doing, and will do more signally before the end of the world, yet the serpent should "bruise his heel," which was chiefly verified by his death. In the same book it is recorded that his death was revealed to Abraham, who saw it in the command to offer up his son Isaac, the child of promise, and which therefore is appointed to be read for the first morning lesson of this day: and the sacrifices. in the law of Moses were so many figures or standing prophecies of the Lamb of God, the one great sacrifice for the sin of the world. The Psalms of David, and those in particular for this day's service, are full in the point. The prophet Daniel says expressly, that "Messiah the Prince should be cut off;" ix. 26; and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, the first evening lesson, is as plain a description of Christ's sufferings, as if he had been present at the time, and seen them with his eyes. It was therefore necessary, in order to fulfil the truth of

God declared in the prophecies, of which those I have mentioned are but a very small portion, that Christ should suffer. And as it was also necessary in itself, for reasons to be presently insisted on, so, the many prophecies of it having been delivered many ages before, the first of them from the beginning of the world, and continued to the prophet Malachi, about four hundred years before his coming, are not only a full confirmation of the truth of all Scripture, but of great use to reconcile mankind to the belief of a dying Saviour. The thing is strange in itself to the apprehensions of mankind; and the enemies of our faith are always ready with this objection, put into their mouths by the Jews, How can he save others, who could not save himself from the ignominious death of the cross? But you will observe, that the prophecies going before of this matter are a most surprising evidence in the case; and accordingly when our Lord opened the understanding of his disciples to understand the Scriptures, he said unto them, "Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer;" ver. 45, 46. And the apostles themselves likewise knew very well what advantage to make of this convincing argument in their reasonings with the unbelieving Jews, " opening and alleging," from their own Scriptures, "that Christ .must needs have suffered;" Acts, xvii. 3. It was necessary in itself, and therefore to meet with the cavils and stop the mouths of unbelievers, it was foretold in a great variety of Scriptures, and as it was foretold by God himself, must be fulfilled.

2. And I am now to show why it was necessary in itself, and in the eternal purpose and decree of God, that Christ should suffer; namely, because there was no other way or means for the redemption of lost mankind.

One of the first things we meet with in the Bible, is the fall of man from that happy state of innocence and

perfection in which he was created, when "God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very

good;" Gen. i. 31. By breaking the law which had been given him by his Maker, he fell under the curse and penalty of disobedience. The word was gone out from the mouth of God, and must of all necessity take place in case of transgression; for the purpose of God is unchangeable; and "he is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent;" 1 Sam. xv. 29. He therefore died the worst of all deaths in the very day of his sin; he lost the life and image of God in his soul, forfeited all right to his favour, and became a suffering creature in a world cursed for his sake, with the sentence of death in his body, "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return;" Gen. iii. 19. "So sin entered into the world, and death by sin," Rom. v. 12; death spiritual, temporal, and eternal; and every child of Adam is born in his sinful likeness, of the same kind and nature with the stock it springs from, corrupt and weak as he was after his transgression, and comes into the world under the same sentence of death. This is the Scripture account of our condition under the fall. As to the death of our bodies, we need no proof of it, and are convinced by woful experience that it is the doom of all mankind. But the death of our souls in the loss of God's image, manifested in the alienation of our hearts from him, the stubborn spirit of disobedience and rebellion which cleaves to our natures, the darkness of our understandings, the corruption of our wills, the prevailing sensuality and earthliness of our affections, we are willingly ignorant of; though such a state, which in Scripture account is the death of the soul, is much more to be dreaded than the death of our bodies; and if we are not recovered from it in the time allotted us for working out our salvation, will give us up to "the second death in the lake which

burneth with fire and brimstone," Rev. xxi. 8. "where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched;" as our Lord himself tells us three times over, that we may take the more notice of it; Mark, ix.

The Scripture is the only book which acquaints us with our danger and misery in sin, the manner of its entrance into the world, the curse which followed upon it, God's hatred of it, and terrible justice in its punishment. And I beseech you not to pass this part of it lightly over in your minds, for it is a most concerning point of knowledge, and, if we will make the proper use of it, gives us a clear insight into the nature of God, the nature of sin, and our condition under it; and from hence likewise it is that we must be furnished with an answer to the question in the text, "Ought not Christ to have suffered?" Man was lost, and could not help and redeem himself. He must have lain for ever under the curse and punishment of sin, if Christ had not taken it upon himself, and delivered him from all the fatal consequences of it, by offering his own spotless soul and body to the stroke of divine justice in our stead. This he did, by the appointment of God, and his own voluntary oblation of himself; for a world perishing in sin was a melancholy spectacle in the eyes of God, and his bowels were moved for us. So Christ satisfied all the demands of law and justice, and undid all the unhappy effects of sin; so he fulfilled the promise made to Adam, of bruising the serpent's head; so he released him and his posterity from the condemnation they were under, and "through death destroyed him that had the power of death, the devil," who had subjected mankind to it; Heb. ii. 14. His sufferings were ours, his death was our death, his life our life, his resurrection our resurrection. He took our nature upon him, that he might sanctify and redeem it to God; and when he gave up his breath in these