assumed the character of a stern herald of wrath. And I know not that there is any where to be found such a specimen of lofty and withering eloquence. You cannot read it without emotions of awe, and almost of fear. Confronted by those who, he knew, thirsted for his blood, Christ intrepidly charged them with their crimes, and predicted their punishment. Had he been invested with all human authority, in place of standing as a defenceless and despised individual, he could not have uttered a sterner and more heartsearching invective. The marvel is, that his enemies should have allowed him to pour forth his tremendous oratory, that they did not fall upon him, without regard to the sacredness of the place, and take a fierce and summary revenge. "Wo unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites!" is the burden of his address: he reiterates the wo, till the temple walls must have rung with the ominous syllables. And then he bids the nation fill up the measure of their fathers. Their fathers had slain the prophets, and made great advances towards that ripeness of iniquity which was to mark the land out as ready for vengeance. But the national guilt was not yet complete. There was a crime by which the children were to outdo, and, at the same time, consummate the sinfulness of their fathers. And Christ calls them to the perpetration of this crime. They were bent on accomplishing his death-let them nail him to the cross, and then would their guiltiness reach its height, and the accumulated vengeance descend with a wild and overwhelming might. "That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation."

And here the Savior might be said to have exhausted threatening; for what denunciation could be more tremendous, or more comprehensive? We may picture him to ourselves, launch ing this terrible sentence, a more than human fire in his eye, and a voice more deep-toned and thrilling than ever is sued from mortal lips. I know of nothing that would be more sublime and

commanding in representation, if there could be transferred to the canvass the vivid delineations of thought, than the scene thus enacted in the temple. We figure the Redeemer undaunted by the menacing looks and half-suppressed murmurs of the fierce throng by which he was surrounded. He becomes more and more impassioned in his eloquence, rising from one bold rebuke to another, and throwing into his language a greater and greater measure of reproachfulness and defiance. And when he has compelled his hearers to shrink before the rush of his invective, he assumes the prophetic office, and, as though armed with all the thunders of divine wrath, announces authoritatively the approach of unparalleled desolation. This is the moment we would seize for delineation-though what pencil can think to portray the lofty bearing, the pre-eminent dignity, the awful glance, the terribleness, yet magnificence, of gesture, which must have characterized the Mediator, when, wrought up into all the ardency of superhuman zeal, he brake into the overwhelming malediction, "Verily I say nnto you, all these things shall come upon this ge. neration ?"

But if the scene of this moment defy the painter's art, what shall we say of that of the succeeding? No sooner had Christ reached that height of intrepid vehemence at which we have just beheld him, than he gave way to a burst of tenderness, and changed the language of invective for that of lamentation. At one moment he is dealing out the arrows of a stern and lacerating oratory, and the next, he is melted into tears, and can find no words but those of anguish and regret. Indeed it is a transition more exquisitely beautiful than can be found in the most admired specimens of human eloquence; and we feel that there must have passed a change over the countenance, and the whole bearing of the Savior, which imagination cannot catch, and which, if it could, the painter could not fix. There must have risen before him the imagery of a wrath and a wretchedness, such as had never yet overtaken any nation of the earth. And the people that should be thus signalled out were his countrymen, his kinsmen after the flesh, over whom his

heart yearned, and whom he had affectionately labored to convince of dan ger, and conduct to safety. He felt therefore, we may believe, a sudden and excruciating sorrow, so that the judgments which he foretold pressed on his own spirit, and caused him great agony. He was too pure a being, and he loved with too abiding and disinterested a love, to harbor any feeling allied with revenge; and, therefore, though it was for rejecting himself that those whom he addressed were about to be punished, he could not contemplate the punishment but with bitterness and anguish.

And hence the rapid and thrilling change from the preacher of wrath to the mourner over suffering. Hence the sudden laying aside of all his awful vehemence, and the breaking into pathetic and heart-touching expressions. Oh, you feel that the Redeemer must have been subdued, as it were, and mastered, by the view of the misery which he saw coming on Judea, and by the remembrance of all he had done to avert it from the land, ere he could have passed thus instantaneously from indignant rebuke to exquisite tenderness. And it cannot, we think, be without mingled emotions of awe and delight, that you mark the transition from the herald of vengeance to the sympathizer with the wretched. Just as you are shrinking from the fierce and withering denunciations, almost scathed by the fiery eloquence which glares and flashes with the anger of the Lord -just as you are expecting a new burst of threatening, a further and wilder malediction from the voice which seems to shake the magnificent temple-there is heard the sound as of one who is struggling with sorrow; and in a tone of rich plaintiveness, in accents musical in their sadness, and betraying the agony of a stricken spirit, there fall upon you these touching and penetrating words, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not."

But there is so much of important matter in this and the following verses, that it is time that we confine our selves to considering the statements here made by Christ. We may arrange

these statements under three divisions. Under the first, we shall have to consider what had been done for Jerusalem; under the second, the consequences to the Jews of their rejecting the Christ; and, under the third, the future conversion of this unbelieving people.

Now you must be quite prepared for our regarding the Jews as a typical nation, so that, in God's dealings with them, we may read, as in a glass, his dealings with his church, whether collectively or individually. You must be aware that the history of the Israelites is full of symbolic occurrence; and that, without drawing any forced parallel, the narrative may be transferred in various of its parts, to our own day and generation, and be used as descriptive of what occurs among christians. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if we consider Christ's remonstrance with Jerusalem as every way applicable to the impenitent of later times, and as affirming nothing in regard of the Jews which may not be affirmed, with equal truth, of many amongst ourselves. There had been much done for Jerusalem; and it is in exquisitely moving terms that Christ states his own willingness to have sheltered that city. But herein, we are assured, Jerusalem was but the representative of individual transgressors, so that the very same words might be addressed to any amongst us who have obstinately withstood the motions of God's Spirit and the invitations of his Gospel. We cannot indeed be said to have killed the prophets, and stoned them that were sent unto us. But if we have resisted the engines, whatever they may have been, through which God has carried on the moral attack; if we have turned a deaf ear to the prophet and the messenger, and thus done our part towards frustrating their mission; then we are virtually in the same position as Jerusalem, and may regard ourselves as addressed in the language of our text.

And when the verse is thus withdrawn from its merely national application, and we consider it as capable of being exemplified in the history of our own lives, it presents such an account of God's dealings with the impenitent, as yields to none in importance and interest. We observe first,

that however unable we may be to reconcile the certainty of a foreknown destruction with the possibility of avoiding it, we are bound to believe, on the testimony of our text, that no man's doom is so fixed that it may not be averted by repentance. It may appear to us, that, all along, the destruction of Jerusalem had been a settled thing in the purposes of the Almighty; and that God's plans were so arranged on the supposition of the final infidelity of the Jews, that they could not have allowed a final belief in the Christ. Yet Christ declares of Jerusalem, that he would often have gathered her children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings; and that only their own wilful infidelity had prevented his sheltering them from every outbreak of wrath. We cannot, therefore, doubt that it was quite within the power of the Jews to have repented; and that, had they hearkened to the voice of the Savior, they would have escaped all that punishment which appears so predetermined, that, to suppose it remitted, is to suppose God's plans thwarted. We finally admit that the Savior must have known that those whom he called would not obey. But there is all the difference between saying that they could not obey, and that they would not obey. In saying that they could not obey, we make them the subjects of some hidden decree, which placed an impassable barrier between them selves and repentance, and which therefore rendered nugatory, yea, reduced into mere mockery, the warnings and invitations with which they were plied. But in saying that they would not obey, we charge the whole blame on the perverseness of the human will, and suppose a clear space left, notwithstanding the foreknown infidelity, for those remonstrances and persuasions which are wholly out of place where there is no power of hearkening to the call.

And what we thus hold in regard of Jerusalem, must be equally held in regard of every individual amongst ourselves. We cannot doubt that there is not one in this assembly whose eternal condition is not as well known to the Almighty as though it were fixed by an absolute decree. But then it should be carefully observed, that this foreknowledge of God puts no restraint

upon man, obliges him not to one course rather than to another, but leaves him as free to choose between life and death, as though the choice must be made before it could be conjectured. The clouds of vengeance were just ready to burst upon Jerusalem; but the only reason why her children were not sheltered, was that "they would not." Thus with ourselves-God may be as certain of our going down finally into the pit, as though we had already been thrown to destruction; but the single reason, given at the last, why we have not escaped, will be our own rejection of a proffered deliverance. There is no mystery in this, nothing inscrutable. There is no room for pleading that a divine decree was against us, and that, therefore, salvation, if nominally offered, was virtually out of reach. It was not out of the reach of Jerusalem, though her grasping it would have apparently deranged the whole scheme of redemption. And it is not out of the reach of any one of us, however the final impenitence of this or that individual may be fully ascertained by the foreknowledge of God. It is nothing to say that it is impossible for me to do what God knows I shall not do. It is not God's foreknowledge, it is only my own wilfulness, which makes the impossibility. I am not hampered, I am not shackled by God's foreknowledge: I am every jot as free as though there were no foreknowledge. And thus, without searching into secret things which belong only to God, and yet maintaining in all their integrity the divine attributes, we can apply to every one who goes on in impenitence, the touching remonstrance of Christ in our text. If such a man reach that moment, which had been reached by Jerusalem, the moment when the day of grace terminates, and the overtures of mercy are brought to a close, the Savior may say to him, "How often would I have gathered thee under my wings, and thou wouldest not!"

How often! Who is there amongst us unto whom have not been vouchsafed repeated opportunities of knowing the things which belong unto peace? Who, that has not been frequently moved, by the expostulations of conscience and the suggestions of God's Spirit, to flee the wrath to come? Who, upon