for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

A blissful and heart-cheering mystery is here presented before us. If I possess saving faith, I find myself in a peculiar relation to the sufferer at Gethsemane. For know that the horrors he there experienced are not his curse but mine. The Holy and the Just submits himself, representatively, to the fate of the guilty and the damnable; while the latter are forever liberated, and inherit the lot of the holy Son of God. Wonderful and incomparably blissful truth! Our only shield and comfort in

life and death!

O ye blessed, who belong to Christ, who can worthily describe the glory of your state! We hail the wondrous exchange which the eternal Son of God has made with you. We glorify the Surety and the Liquidator of your debts. Never forget the nocturnal arrest of your High Priest. Paint it, in bright and vivid colors, on the walls of your chambers. If you are again reminded of the curse which your sins had brought upon you, accustom yourselves to regard it only in this sacred picture, where you no longer behold it lying upon you, but upon him, in whose agonies it eternally perished.

Therefore, let not shadows any longer disturb you. There will never be a period in eternity when you will be compelled to say to your enemies and accusers, "Now is your hour and the power of darkness." Your representative uttered it, once for all, for you; and henceforward only the hour of triumph and delight, which shall never end, awaits you. Peace be with you, therefore, ye who are justified by his righteousness, and forever perfected by his one offering! No longer dream of imaginary burdens, but know and never forget that your suit is gained to all eternity. Behold Christ yonder bears your fetters; and nothing more is required of you than to love him with all your heart, and embrace him more and more closely who took your entire anathema upon himself, that you might be able eternally to rejoice and exclaim, "Jehovah Zidkenu-the Lord our Righteousness."

XVIII.

CHRIST BEFORE ANNAS.

THE armed band have executed their object, with regard to Christ, and the Eleven, perceiving it, have fled to the right and left. A young man who also belonged to the little flock, and resided near, having heard the tumult, in holy indignation against the banditti, had hastened from his couch to the revolting scene, in his night-dress. But no sooner was he observed by the mercenaries, than he was laid hold of, and only escaped from bonds and probably even death, by leaving in their hands his linen covering, and fleeing away naked. This little circumstance is related by one of the Evangelists, doubtless in order to point out and excuse the flight of the disciples, as rendered imperative by the most imminent danger.

Surrounded by a bristling forest of swords and spears, the Lord Jesus suffered his hands to be bound, like a captive robber, by a troop of rude mercenaries, in the name of public justice. Think of those hands being bound which were never extended except to heal and aid, to benefit and save, and never to injure, except it be considered as a crime to uncover to mankind their wounds, in order to heal and bind them up; to destroy the Babels of delusion, and in their place to erect the temple of truth; and to pull down the altars of false gods, in order to make room for that of the only true God.

Jesus bound! What a spectacle! How many a prophetic type of the Old Testament finds its fulfillment in this fact! If you inquire for the antitype of Isaac, when bound by his father as a lamb for a burnt offering; or for that of the ram on Mount Moriah, which was caught in the thicket because God had destined it for the sacrifice; or of the sacred ark of the covenant, when it had fallen into the hands of the Philistines, only, however, to cast down the idols of the latter; or of that of Jacob's son, arrested and imprisoned in Egypt, whose path lay

through the company of criminals, to almost regal dignity and crowns of honor; or for that of the paschal lambs, which, before being slaughtered for the sins of the people, were wont to be tied up to the threshold of the temple; or finally, for that of the captive Samson, who derided Delilah's band, and came forth victoriously from the conflict with the Philistines-all these types and shadows found their entire fulfillment in Jesus, thus bound, as their embodied original and antitype.

Jesus bound! Can we trust our eyes? Omnipotence in fetters, the Creator bound by the creature; the Lord of the world, the captive of his mortal subjects! How much easier would it have been for him to have burst those bonds than Manoah's son of old! However, he rends them not; but yields himself up to them as one who is powerless and overcome. This his passive deportment must have for its basis a great and sublime intention. And such is really the case, as we have already seen.

Behold them marching off in triumph with their captive. They conduct him first to Annas, the previous high priest, the father-in-law of Caiaphas, a sinner of a hundred years old. But why first to him? Perhaps out of compliment to the old man, who probably wished to see the fanatic of Nazareth. His being brought before him, however, seems to have been the result of a secret arrangement between him and his son-in-law; and he, the old Sadducee, was perhaps more deeply interested in the whole affair with Jesus than outwardly appears to be the case. The preliminary hearing, which now commenced, was doubtless instituted by him, and not by Caiaphas. Even the irregular course which it takes, places this beyond a doubt. What appears in the Gospels to contradict this assumption, loses all its importance, as soon as we suppose-for which there is sufficient reason that Annas was residing in the high-priestly palace with his son-in-law.

Thus, the Lord stands at the bar of his first judge—one of those miserable men, of whom, alas! not a few are to be found among us, and who, "twice dead," estranged from the truth of God, and satisfied with the most common-place occurrences of life, think of nothing better, but treat the most sublime things

at least only as a spectacle; and in their perfect unsusceptibility for every thing that is divine, visibly bear on their foreheads the brandmark of the curse. Certainly, it was not one of the least of the sufferings of the Holy One of Israel to see himself delivered into the hands of such a man, so destitute of every noble feeling. And only look how the hoaryheaded sinner domineers over and puffs himself up against the Lord of Glory, although he is not even the actual high priest, and while he was so, presented only an airy shadow of the true High Priest, who, Priest and King at the same time, stands now before him, in the person of the captive Nazarene! Jesus, however, endures with resignation all the indignities to which he is subjected, and we know for what reason he does so. We are acquainted with the mysterious position he occupies, in which, he not only shows us, by his own example, that his kingdom is not of this world, and that honor is something different from what the world is wont to characterize by that name, but also that he fills it as our Surety, whom it became to present, to the Eternal Father, the sublime virtues of a perfect self-denial and resignation in our stead, and in opposition to our ungodly self-exaltation.

Annas proceeds with the hearing of the case, and interrogates our Lord respecting his disciples and his doctrine. He hopes that the statements of Jesus may enable him to bring an accusation against the former as a politically dangerous association, and against the latter as being a wicked and blasphemous heresy. In his questions, he is presumptuous enough to treat our Lord as the disguised head of a party, and a secret plotter, notwithstanding that he brought forward his cause in the most public manner, and walked every where in broad daylight. But the world still acts like Annas. Because it will not acknowledge that we possess the real and eternal truth of God: it stamps the latter as neretical, and brands us as a sect. The world can not bear that believers should call themselves "true Christians," and never fails to attach some opprobrious epithet to them. However boldly we may preach our doctrine, and however completely we may prove that we confess and believe nothing else than what the whole Christian Church has believed

and professed before us, and for which the noblest and most excellent of men in every age have blissfully lived and died— yet the world persists in mantaining that our faith is only the religion of conventicles, and we ourselves only narrow-minded fanatics. It strives, by these artful suspicions, to keep the truth, with its goads and nails, far from it, and thus to give its ungodly and carnal proceedings at least a semblance of

correctness.

The Lord answers the old priest's questions regarding his doctrine; for it was less requisite here to defend the honor of his person than that of his cause, which was, at the same time, the cause of God, and which he, therefore, felt called upon to vindicate. He also wished to make it clearly known throughout all ages, that he was condemned and crucified solely because of his asserting his Divine Sonship. 'I spake," says he, "openly to the world"—that is, "I opened my mouth boldly." Yes, in all that he spoke, the profound assurance and powerful conviction of being the Lord from heaven, who revealed that which he had himself seen and handled, was perceptible; not like the wise men after the flesh, who defend their propositions with many proofs and arguments against possible objections; but as knowing that he that was of the truth would hear his voice, and acknowledge his word to be the word of the living God. Nor did he deceive himself with reference to this. To this day, when any one is delivered from the snare of the devil, and attains to the knowledge of his necessities, he needs no other proof of the truth of the words of Jesus; since his heart hears them as if spoken direct from heaven, and discovers between the language of Jesus and the most intellectual discourses of mere mortals, a gulf of difference so immense, that it is incomprehensible to him that he did not long before perceive it.

The Lord Jesus continues: "I ever taught in the synagogue and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort." He had done so, and no one had ever been able to prove that he had taught any thing which was not in strict accordance with the Old Testament Scriptures, and did not most beautifully harmonize with the nature and being of a holy God. The Masters in Israel were compelled, by his discourses, mutely to lay down their