SECTION III.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE PATIENCE AND HOPE OF LOVE IN SUFFERING

AND DEATH.

IVINE Love is the ideal fulfilling, the Divine Christ the real fulfilling of the law. He satisfied it as it is set before sinners, by both

active and passive obedience, by both doing and suffering enough. He fulfilled it, that we, hidden beneath the wings of His perfect righteousness from the condemnation of the law and justified by faith, might have peace with God and (priestly) access to the grace wherein we stand, and might with praise and thanksgiving rejoice in hope of the future glory that God will bestow. And not only so, but we rejoice also in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us (Rom. v. 1-5); and the genuine prayer of patience and hope in us works in the name of the Lord and in the power of His perfect prayer. And what shall separate us from this love of God? Shall tribulation, or dis

1 As the ten commandments are a standard for active, so is the Lord's prayer a standard for suffering obedience, to which also the corresponding tones found in the high-priestly prayer, the prayer in Gethsemane, and the seven words on the cross refer.

tress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written (Ps. xliv.): For thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter; nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. viii. 35-39). Let this apostolic shout of victory go before us in our consideration of the dark valley of suffering and death.

The most holy obedience of our Lord, becoming most holy patience in His suffering, is the all-sufficient sacrifice, which, as Mediator and High Priest of the human race, He offered in perfect fulfilment of the law, to atone for the guilt of its non-fulfilment, to redeem from its curse without destroying it, to pardon all sin without in the slightest degree forfeiting His holiness, but on the contrary maintaining it immutable under the dispensation of grace. If then the law is not

abolished, but re-established by the gospel, if even when its. righteous sentence of condemnation is exchanged for a gracious absolution, this is only done at the price of a perfect satisfaction, is it not evident, that though the law ceases indeed to condemn God's redeemed children, it neither ceases to bind them to the practice of active, nor to the discipline of passive obedience? Not that thereby becoming righteous and the children of God they are thus to obtain justification, which they have already received of grace, but sanctification, of which they are to attain by the growth of regeneration a continual increase, and in which they are to be ever more and more established and strengthened. It is a necessary and beneficial consequence of the inviolable truth of the Divine will and law and of the honour and dignity of the family of God, that the education of His children should be a serious and strict one. And the more so in proportion to

the greatness of the mercy, by which they have been received. into the household of faith. Far be the thought, savouring as it does of the laxity and listlessness of the doctrine of indulgence, that the pardon earned by the sacred blood of Christ should relax the strictness of obligation to active obedience to the commands of the Decalogue, that the favoured condition of adopted children in the house of the eternal Son, who Himself learned obedience by the things which He suffered, should exempt His brethren on earth from the severity of wholesome chastisement (Heb. xii. 6-8), and from the necessity of passive obedience in great patience for their sanctification and perfection. On the contrary, the exceeding greatness of that Love, which atoned for their disobedience by suffering, renews and redoubles the obligation to obedience, which already lay upon them as creatures and servants of God, even according to the old man, and which they now can and ought to render with new love and thankfulness as children. The very greatness of the sufferings which the Beloved Son, who as man was also the Lamb of God, bore for their sins, constrains them to new hatred of the sins whereby they have offended Him, and to willing and patient submission to the sacred and wholesome discipline, whereby they are to be healed and purified from them. It is true that Christ has redeemed us, has released us from the bonds of our ruin, of our debt, but only to bind us the more firmly to Himself, to make us His debtors. For now that we are freed from the service of sin, we are become servants of righteousness, to which we are to yield our members, that they may be holy (Rom. vi. 18 sq.). Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; He leads us to eternal life, to the glorious liberty of the children of God; but they are greatly deceived who would make the way broad and the gate wide, and flatter themselves that they can follow Christ without self-denial and patient bearing of the cross. He endured the cross for us, to reconcile us to God; He did and suffered

all for our salvation, not that we might have no more to do, still less no more to suffer, but that in sacred fellowship with Him we might do the more and suffer the more willingly and patiently. It cannot but be that Christianity, the more it gives in love, the more also it should require in love, that the Christian who receives a new heart, should take upon himself far deeper and greater duties of active suffering and sympathizing love, than the non-Christian who lives only to himself, and would rather spend his days on earth in joy and pleasure, than bow beneath the cross on which is inscribed, love and suffer.1 As love makes a man happy in earthly respects also, although it does not lessen the pain and grief appointed him in his life below, but rather increases them by his sympathy with those of his loved ones, so too does the gospel of the love of God in Christ make us happy, though it bids us enter the kingdom of heaven by following Him through much tribulation. Look to the Virgin, how the sword pierces her heart; stabat mater dolorosa juxta crucem lacrimosa, and yet all generations call her blessed. No Christianity without the cross, no salvation without pain, no comfort without tribulation; in the world ye shall have tribulation, says Christ; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

We must then acknowledge that Christianity does not lessen but increase both the duties and sufferings of its believers on earth, and need not therefore be astonished as at some strange thing (1 Pet. iv. 12), that the godly, who are in this present evil world always in the minority, should have more to suffer in it than the ungodly, though these too have their own troubles here, and will at last have to undergo, and that without grace, the penalty of death. On the other hand, however, Abel, though a man of grace, suffered a violent death. How much too did the holy patriarchs suffer during their earthly pilgrimage; how full of trouble and labour was

1 Comp. Lieben und Leiden der ersten Christen, by Dr. Erdmann, Berlin 1854.

the life of Moses, although he was the friend of God! Into what depths of trouble David was plunged, is witnessed in heart-moving terms in his psalms of lamentation. It often cut him and Job and other prophets (Jer. xii. 1 sqq.) to the heart, that the godly should have so much to suffer. Asaph acknowledges in the beautiful 73rd Psalm how he had wellnigh stumbled in his vexation at the envious, when he saw the prosperity of the wicked in this world, while the godly were plagued every day; and though he acknowledges that the former often suddenly perish and come to a fearful end, it still grieves him at his heart, that his folly cannot understand the dark ways of God. Nevertheless he continually cleaves in faith to Him, who leads him according to His hidden counsel, and joyfully confesses, if I have but Thee there is nothing in heaven or earth that I desire beside Thee. Thou, O God, art the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever (Ps. lxxiii. 25 sq.). Great too was the faith and patience of those Old Testament saints, who during their suffering life of pilgrimage comforted themselves with the promises, although they only saw them afar off (Heb. xi. 13). How much more then should we, who have seen their fulfilment, take to heart as disciples of Christ and in the fellowship of His sufferings, the saying of His apostle (Jas. v. 10 sq.): Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy that endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.

The end of the merciful Lord upon the cross, this most tragical moment of the world's history, in which all human sufferings were concentrated on the head of the God-man, that head so marred and wounded-that end so dreadful yet

'Comp. Hengstenberg on the Book of Job, in the Evang. K. Zeitung, 1856, No. 16 sqq.