Observe, however, the suffering of Christ was not the same suffering as that from which He saved us. The suffering of Christ was death. But the suffering from which He redeemed us by death was more terrible than death. The pit into which He descended was the grave. But the pit in which we should have been lost forever was the pit of selfishness and despair.

Therefore St. Paul affirms, "If Christ be not risen, ye are yet in your sins." If Christ's resurrection be a dream, and He be not risen from the grave of death, you are yet in the grave of guilt. He bore suffering to free us from what is worse than suffering sin; temporal death, to save us from death everlasting; His life given as an offering for sin to save the soul's eternal life.

Now, in the text this sacrificing love of Christ is par alleled by the love of the Father to the Son. As He loved the sheep, so the Father had loved Him. There fore, the sacrifice of Christ is but a mirror of the love of God. The love of the Father to the Son is selfsacrificing Love.

You know that shallow men make themselves merry with this doctrine. The sacrifice of God, they say, is a figment, and an impossibility. Nevertheless, this paral lel tells us that it is one of the deepest truths of all the universe. It is the profound truth which the ancient fathers endeavored to express in the doctrine of the Trinity. For what is the love of the Father to the Son -Himself yet not Himself - but the grand truth of Eternal Love losing itself and finding itself again in the being of another? What is it but the sublime expression of the unselfishness of God?

It is a profound, glorious truth; I wish I knew how to put it in intelligible words. But, if these words of

Christ do not make it intelligible to the heart, how can any words of mine? The life of blessedness, the life of love, the life of sacrifice, the life of God, are iden-. tical. All love is sacrifice the giving of life and self for others. God's life is sacrifice; for the Father loves the Son as the Son loves the sheep for whom He gave His life.

Whoever will humbly ponder upon this will, I think, understand the Atonement better than all theology can teach him. O, my brethren, leave men to quarrel as they will about the theology of the Atonement; here in these words is the religion of it, the blessed, allsatisfying religion for our hearts. The self-sacrifice of Christ was the satisfaction to the Father.

How could the Father be satisfied with the death of Christ, unless He saw in the sacrifice mirrored His own love?- for God can be satisfied only with that which is perfect as Himself. Agony does not satisfy God,agony only satisfied Moloch. Nothing satisfies God but the voluntary sacrifice of Love.

The pain of Christ gave God no pleasure: only the love that was tested by pain,-the love of he obedient. He was obedient unto death.

JOHN XX. 29.

XXI.

Preached Easter-day, March 27, 1853.]

THE DOUBT OF THOMAS.

"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

THE day on which these words were spoken was the first day of the week. On that day Thomas received demonstration that his Lord was risen from the dead. On that same day, a week before, Thomas had declared that no testimony of others, no eyesight of his own, nothing short of touching with his hands the crucifixion marks in his Master's body, should induce him to believe a fact so unnatural as the resurrection of a

human being from the grave. Those seven days between must, therefore, have been spent in a state of miserable uncertainty. How miserable, and how restless, none can understand but those who have felt the wretchedness of earnest doubt.

Doubt, moreover, observe, respecting all that is dear to a Christian's hopes. For if Christ were not risen, Christianity was false, and every high aspiration which it promised to gratify was thrown back on the disappointed heart.

Let us try to understand the doubt of Thomas.

There are some men whose affections are stronger than their understandings; they feel more than they think. They are simple, trustful, able to repose implicitly on what is told them,-liable sometimes to verge upon credulity and superstition, but, take them all in all, perhaps the happiest class of minds; for it is happy to be without misgivings about the love of God and our own eternal rest in Him. "Blessed," said Christ to Thomas, "are they that have believed."

There is another class of men whose reflective powers are stronger than their susceptible; they think out truth, they do not feel it out. Often highly gifted and powerful minds, they cannot rest till they have made all their ground certain; they do not feel safe as long as there is one possibility of delusion left; they prove all things. Such a man was Thomas. He has well been called the rationalist among the apostles. Happy such men cannot be. An anxious and inquir ing mind dooms its possessor to unrest. But men of generous spirit, manly and affectionate, they may be; Thomas was. When Christ was bent on going to Jerusalem, to certain death, Thomas said, "Let us go up, too, that we may die with Him." And men of mighty faith they may become, if they are true to themselves and their convictions. Thomas did. When such men do believe, it is a belief with all the heart and soul for life. When a subject has been once thoroughly and suspiciously investigated, and settled once for all, the adherence of the whole reasoning man, if given in at all, is given frankly and heartily, as Thomas gave it," My Lord, and my God."

Now, this question of a resurrection, which made Thomas restless, is the most anxious that can agitate

the mind of man. So awful in its importance, and out of Christ so almost desperately dark in its uncertainty, who shall blame an earnest man severely if he crave the most indisputable proofs ?

Thomas asked of

Very clearly Christ did not. Christ a sign; he must put his own hands into the prints. His Master gave him that sign or proof. He said, "Reach hither thy hand." He gave it, it is true, with a gentle and delicate reproof,- but He did give it. Now, from that condescension, we are reminded of the darkness that hangs round the question of a resurrection, and how excusable it is for a man to question earnestly until he has got proof to stand on. For, if it were not excusable to crave a proof, our Master never would have granted one. Resurrection is not one of those questions on which you can afford to wait; it is the question of life and death. There are times when it does not weigh heavily. When we have some keen pursuit before us, when we are young enough to be satisfied to enjoy ourselves, the problem does not press itself. We are too laden with the pressure of the present, to care to ask what is coming. But at last a time comes when we feel it will be all over soon, that much of our time is gone, and the rest swiftly going. And let a man be as frivolous as he will at heart, it is a question too solemn to be put aside, - Whether he is going down into extinction and the blank of everlasting silence, or not. Whether, in those far ages, when the very oak which is to form his coffin shall have become. fibres of black mould, and the church-yard in which he is to lie shall have become, perhaps, unconsecrated ground, and the spades of a generation yet unborn shall have exposed his bones,