"The Doctrine that man may have peace with God and not know it, is contrary to Scripture, and is fitted to prove a lying refuge. "Jesus Christ is, in the same sense, and to the same extent, the propitiation for the sins of the whole of mankind. "Hearers of the Gospel, who are finally lost, are condemned for discrediting that which they need no help to believe. "The belief of the Gospel necessarily gives a sense of pardon. "The Holy Spirit alone overcomes man's enmity to the truth of God. "The will of the Holy Spirit is that all men should be saved. "To tell a man to pray for the Holy Spirit, or for anything else, before he believes the Gospel, is to lead him away from salvation. "Do this and live,' expresses the principle of soul-ruining self-righteousness; 'Believe and live,' the principle on which alone man can really be saved. "Christians have the same reason to expect the sanctification of their children that they have to expect their own." It As the lectures were delivered they were published, one by one, in a very humble form, and sold at a very small charge. There was a great demand for them over the country, as well as for the volume which they composed when completed. was entitled, The Way of Life Made Plain. The work has had an immense circulation since these days, for the copy from which we have quoted these headings is marked "forty-first thousand." We always thought the title of the sixth lecture too strongly expressed, for man does need the help of the Spirit to believe, although, by the Grace of God, that help has been freely diffused; and this the author himself admits in the eighth lecture. The handbills and the lectures created a great stir all over Scotland. Many of Mr. Kirk's former friends, especially in the Congregational body, were much displeased by these publications; and ultimately ecclesiastical steps were taken in consequence, which it will be our duty to narrate in subsequent communications. THE STORY OF CHRIST CRUCIFIED. IN the spring time of the year the Son of God voluntarily delivered himself into the hands of sinful men, who tortured him to death. This was eighteen and a half centuries ago. To human thought so long a series dwarfs the individual years, and makes them seem but days in one long year; the months but hours, and the days successive minutes only. So that times and seasons of annual commemoration are really of very little moment to the Christian heart. They are as nothing to the great event itself. In the process of ages they have lost what little significance they may have had in the first years of the Christian era; while the event they feebly seek to commemorate grows in power over the world. We are but beginning to count its unspeakable value. The seed sown on that April morning so long ago has grown a mighty tree, and now it fills the earth with its glowing fruit, and overshadows all the years with the foliage of its healing leaves. Therefore let all Time, to begin with, and after that, all Eternity, be one continuous commemoration of the Death of Christ. Let the various echoes of the circling year be vocal with continual praise of the Lamb that was slain. Do not let our hearts wander from the cross, returning like pilgrims once a year to renew their half effaced impressions. "Here I would for ever stay, This shall be our home. Here our faith shall ever find its strengthening food. Here springs the fountain of our joys, perennial and pure, from a Rock smitten by the wrath of man, but chiefly by the rod of God. But although we dwell for ever within call of the Cross, and look upon it every day, and pray and praise beneath its shadow, and glory in it before men; and although it be thus an object most familiar to us, and a thing of every day life, why should we not, when our hearts may be specially pierced with sympathy for the dear, Divine Sufferer, hang upon the bare rough timber a special garland of love? Why not hang our harps thereon, and let the Spirit blow as it listeth upon them, awaking all their diviner harmonies, while we sit beneath and weep at the memories of sin and sorrow that pierced the dying Saviour through and through? We commemorate infinitely meaner things a hundred times a year. I. Let us think of the dark setting of human sin in which the death of Christ took place. And while we picture the successive scenes of human infamy, the treason of friends and the malice of foes, let us not forget that the depravity of our own hearts is the same in kind. It develops in different scenes, and its outcome of action terminates on different objects, and consequently it takes different forms from those recorded in the story of the Cross. But all the difference we know between us and those frantic Jews howling out, "Away with him," arises from this, that we were not there, and they were. Had we been there we had, in all probability, joined the infernal chorus. Who can lay claim to that superior penetration, that when all others failed to discern the Son of God in that meek sufferer, he could? We dare not. O my soul, see in those crimes that stain the perpetrators of that dark deed what would have been thine, had not God cast thy happier lot in times when the Saviour is not seen of men, but only remembered! It is midnight: the moon shines down upon Jerusalem and the slopes of Olivet, throwing every object into sharp outline of light and shade. A group of men emerge from the shadows of an olive garden, and at the same moment the stillness of night is rudely invaded by a motley crowd with torches issuing from the city gate. They descend the ravine of Kedron and ascend the opposite slope, approaching the silent group that stand expectant at the edge of the garden's shadow. One steps a little in advance to meet the approaching rabble. It is Jesus. Another separates himself from the crowd; advances swiftly, and embraces the Lord; cries, "Hail, Master," and kisses him. It is Judas Iscariot. He has earned his thirty shillings, which will pay his fare, express, to perdition. The crowd make to rush upon Jesus, but they stagger back, then stand still, spell bound, till he liberates them and permits himself to be taken captive. Then his companions, seized with sudden panic, forsake him and flee for their lives. Betrayed, forsaken by his most familiar friends, at the most awful crisis of his awful mission! Well might he pray in the garden, being in agony, "O my Father, let this cup pass from me." These were no necessary elements of his propitiatory sacrifice. Human covetousness and cowardice laid this additional burden on him, so heavily burdened already. It is the hall of the Sanhedrim that is lighted up so brilliantly on these first hours of the morning, and presents so animated a scene. At that unwonted hour "the rulers take council together against Jehovah and against his Anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us." Priests are hurrying out and in, bribing false witnesses in vain; and hangers-on wait in the vestibule, eagerly gossiping over the prisoner's chances. Who is it that enters unnoticed, and as he enters, glances furtively around? Now he assumes a careless air, and joins that group talking round the fire. In his heart Peter loves his old master, and wishes to gather from the desultory talk that flows so freely the fate of him he vowed never to forsake. Still, he hopes not to be identified. But he hopes in vain. First, one woman's keen perception and retentive memory, then another's, detects the most prominent disciple of the prisoner, and they do not scruple to report him. Again the old panic seizes him, and he denies the charge repeatedly. But he has become a marked man. One after another remembers him. At last the crowd surrounds him, and many voices testify that he is a follower of the Nazarene. Thy speech betrayeth thee!" And now his heart and brain are caught in a flaming whirlwind of passionate fear. He curses and swears, vapours and denies. Christ hears the commotion and looks round. Through the open hangings at the door, he sees it all. Was it a mere coincidence which turned Peter's eyes inwards to his at the same moment? What a look was that! Et tu? Brute! You too? O Peter! Might not thy suffering Saviour have been spared so deep a stab? "It was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it." The ribald jests, the scorn, the humiliating buffetings, the hateful spittings, the implacable hostility of his persecutors, he could bear in silence, though all needless aggravations of the unfathomable sorrows of his spirit; but why must the Son of Man have the bitterest cup ever mixed by God's justice, embittered still more by such a wanton outrage from one he had honoured so highly, and with whom, only a few hours before, at the Paschal Supper, he had taken sweetest_counsel ? That could be no essential part of his atoning work; but a gratuitous aggravation springing from the depths of human depravity. The dawn is breaking on that fresh April morning over the distant hills of Gilead, and now the Suffering One is transferred to a heathen tribunal that the sentence of death already passed may be ratified and carried into execution. The representative of Cæsar asks them, Why? "He knew that for envy they had delivered him up." And although they had condemned him upon a false charge of blasphemy, they were now constrained to trump up a new charge of treason to the emperor. Strange charge for Jews to make, who were continually plotting against the Roman power, and who would have gathered in thousands round the standard of Jesus of Nazareth if he had only made it one of revolt from the yoke of the Cæsars. Why, the double distilled hatred and virulent malevolence that at this moment were concentrating their streaming torrents on the head of Christ resulted from his refusal to descend from the lofty role of a king whose kingdom was not of this world, to the mean drudgery of quarrelling with earth's potentates, that he might feed the pride of Jews. And there they were, enslaving themselves for ever that they might compass the judicial murder of him who refused thus to prostitute Divine power. "If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar's friend.” He forbids to give tribute to Cæsar, saying he himself is Christ a king." "Whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Cæsar." "We have no king but Cæsar!" "His blood be on us and on our children!" Even so. It would be difficult to find in the whole history of mobocracy a more methodical concentration and persistency of mad meaning than that which inspired the rabble that congregated that morning round the Prætorium. The people who composed it were mostly foreign Jews who were gathering "out of every nation under heaven" to observe the Passover, and therefore comparatively ignorant of the character and pretensions of Christ. Such materials were inflammable enough, and there was little wonder that they burst into sudden, fierce conflagration, when instigated by the furious malice of priests for whom they had unbounded reverence, by the cunning spite of Pharisees whom they regarded as the very flower of Jewish holiness, and especially when unhesitatingly and openly led on by the venerable elders who ruled the nation, with Annas and Caiaphas at their head. It was they, mixing freely with the mob, who were the inspiration of the bloodthirsty clamour that assailed the ears of the unscrupulous but perplexed Pilate. "Away with him!". "Crucify him!" Save him? No! Not this man, but Barabbas!" But, behold the man!. No threatening, no complaint, no sign of impatience passes from his lips or lurks in his slightest movement. Calm in the imperturbable majesty of his native heaven, he sees, he hears, he feels it all, and waits. What capacity for suffering is there! Like the lofty crest of some mountain all undefiled by human foot, round which the tempest rages, the winds howl, the waters from the murky sky pour down their floods, the lightnings shoot their forked tongues like fiery flying serpents, and the thunders roll their angry voices everywhere; yet, silent and unmoved, in patient majesty the mountain stands till the storm is past, though huge rocks are riven in its sides—so Jesus stood before the princes of this world when Herod with his men of war set him at naught and mocked him, and when the infernal furies slipped their leashes and sprang upon him with all imaginable forms of brutal treatment. So he stood while the tragedy darkened and thickened about him in the lurid fires of diabolical and human passions. In the majesty of non-resistance he wears the crown of thorns that mocks his royal claims; the reed that satirizes his sovereign, universal sway; the faded, cast off rags of Herod that travesty his kingly glory, and receives the mock homage, accompanied with abominable spittings, instead of the reverential kiss that kings receive upon the proffered hand. Thus man, wantonly and cruelly, with hellish ingenuity, intensified the sorrows of the Man of Sorrows, and added to the inner unknown agony he was appointed to endure as the sinner's substitute. But these were wounds which, instead of contributing to the grand sum total of the ransom price that |