crowned with thorns, stretched on the cross, nailed to it, and pierced with a spear.

The wine, as poured forth, serves to direct our thoughts, especially when they are properly influenced by the Holy Ghost, to recollect with reverence, and contemplate by faith, the inexpressible sorrows, agonies, sufferings, and soultravail of our Lord, when he made his soul an offering for sin. When "the Lord laid on him the iniquities of us all;" when all the iniquities of his people being laid on him, and imputed by Jehovah the Father, with all their guilt and filth to him; the wrath of God, comparable to fire, flamed forth against and lighted upon him. The curse of the law seizing upon, and taking hold of him, put him into an agony, which forced from him a bloody sweat. His soul and body in every part, sense, and faculty, being at this time, the subjects of all those pains, sorrows and sufferings, which were the true and proper desert of sin. The human nature of Christ, though assumed, united, and existing in personal union

with the Son of the living God, was left to feel, endure and sustain those agonies which were of the nature of the torments of hell, and that desertion of God which is the sting of hell. Hence he cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?"

As the Lord's death is shewn forth by solemnly remembering his sorrows and sufferings; so the painfulness of them is livelily deciphered unto us in the symbols and emblems of Christ's broken body and shed blood. Here Christ is set forth as "evidently crucified before our eyes;" and his intention in his sufferings and death is a part of our remembrance here. We commemorate his death as an expiatory sacrifice, by which the sins of the clect are for ever put away out of the sight of law and justice, and we in faith may sing,

My Saviour's obedience and blood

'Hide all my transgressions from view.'

We consider and shew forth the sufficiency and acceptableness of it, confessing our faith in the sacrifice of Christ, as everlastingly sufficient to satisfy God's justice,

and glorify his holiness; contemplating how highly valuable and everlastingly acceptable it was, and ever will be, in the view and remembrance of Jehovah the Father, who was glorified in appointing it, as his Son was glorified in submitting to be a sacrifice.

As we read our text with the words in the margin, “as oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, shew ye the Lord's death;" they imply an exhortation, command, and direction, given forth with, and enforced by apostolic authority.

It is as a direction to us in the discharge of this sacred duty, that we may look well to the ends and designs of this holy institution; we, apprehending how Christ, and what of Christ, is set before us in it, are through the gracious influences of the Holy Spirit, to seek that we may be spiritually engaged in the exercise of every spiritual faculty and grace; in shewing forth the Lord's death, in which all the perfections of Godhead are displayed, all the persons in the Godhead manifested, all the councils, covenant, and purposes of the Eternal Three, ratified and sealed

with the blood of Christ, all which is the object and subject of onr remembrance at this feast, instituted by the Lamb of God, and for the commemoration of the love of God.

As the renowned Charnock expresses it, 'Mercy could not be glorified, unless jus"tice had been satisfied; and justice had 6 not been evident, if the tokens of divine 'wrath had not been upon Christ; grace ' had not sailed to us, but in the streams " of his blood; "without shedding of blood 'there is no remission." Justice had not 'been so fully known in the eternal

groans of a world of creatures, nor 'could sin have appeared so odious to 'the holiness of God by eternal scars 6 upon devils and men, as by the deluge

of blood from the heart of this sa'crifice.

"Wisdom, in the contrivance, had not 'been evident without the execution. 'The glory of the divine perfections had lain in the cabinet of the divine nature, without the discovery of their full 6 beams; and though they were active in designing it, yet they had not been

declared without bringing Christ to the 'altar.

The honour of God the Father, and the glory of the Son, depended upon 'this point, and in this last act threw off 'all their veils. The truth of God was 'glorified in bringing things to a period, and the obedience of his Son was glo'rified in his perseverance to the last act.

• His grace was elevated to the highest ' note in the songs of angels, and an un"searchable depth of manifold wisdom ❝ was unfolded—a depth of wisdom more impossible to be comprehended in our "minds, than the whole globe of heaven ' and earth in our hands; such a wisdom ' of God in the cross, as angels never 'beheld in his face upon his throne.'

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If it be asked, How should believers shew forth and remember this death? the reply is, reverentially; considering how all the glorious emanations of Deity, and the infinite perfections of Godhead, shine forth in their brightest splendour, glory, and majesty, upon us, in the subjectmatter of this ordinance. For here we,