ceased to shine, but that the shadow came between it and the land of Immanuel. It was not that the Father ever looked with anything but the most well-pleased love upon His Incarnate Son: for-" He hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither hath He hid His face from him." But it was that our iniquities, felt as His own, separated between Him and His God; and our sins, taken to Himself, hid His face from Him. The sacrifices of God were here indeed a broken spirit: it was a broken and a contrite heart in Him which God did not despise.

Do we feel it hard to realise this? If so, let us love one another, as He loved us. In proportion as we do so, His actings will shine with clearer light. "We shall be like Him," says the Apostle, " for we shall see Him as He is" the true vision implies the full conformity, for only thus is it possible. It is because our hearts are so cold, that to feel another's sin our own seems unreal. Love obliterates such distinctions. It makes us separate individuals no longer, but members of a body, where if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it. When this is realized, it is easy to follow on, and say, "If all the members suffer, the Head, the Source and Ending and Meeting-point of all, must especially suffer." It was thus that it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. And he who has truly borne, if it be but for a day, the burden of a brother's sin, has learnt more of the Atonement than all the books in the world could teach him.

And remember, that in all this Jesus Christ was revealing the Father. It is not the whole truth, though it is the truth, to say that the Father laid the burden, and the Son bore it. He bore it, as representing man before God, but no less as revealing God towards man. "God

commendeth His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."* "The sufferings of Christ" it has been well said "were not so much the measure of what God can inflict, as the revelation of what God feels." Our God is not like the deities of the heathen, joyous, impassive," careless of mankind." He feels the woe of His creature; though He looks beyond to see all things working together for good. Jesus, risen and glorified, reveals His happiness in man's recovery; and no less Jesus, bruised and agonizing, reveals His pity and sympathy in man's misery. He that saw Him saw the Father on the Cross as in the Passover-chamber.† He feels sin with the heart of God, and He confesses it with the lips of man: and thus God and man are at one in Him, to become at one also in us.

With thoughts such as these let us draw near to-day into the shadow of the Cross, into the presence of the Crucified One. He is so set forth to us, in our pathetic Services, as to draw forth the deepest emotions of love and sympathy. We follow Him from Gethsemane to Calvary, from the bloody sweat to the cry of desolation; passing through the betrayal, the condemnation, the mocking and scourging, the weary journey to without the gate. As we tread this Way of the Cross, let our one thought be of Him Who made it for ever hallowed. Bring together all we know of His Person, of the glory which He had with the Father before the world was; all we know of His character, so holy, harmless, and undefiled; all we know of His atoning Work, that He was bearing our sins in His own Body on the tree. And

out of this our knowledge let the adequate feeling arise. They who mocked Him there had not the knowledge: else they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. His Mother and His beloved disciple, and the faithful women with them, who alone remained beside His cross, had not the knowledge we have. None other then gave Him love and pity, Who was full of love and pity for all. But now surely He may see of the travail of His soul. Among the millions who this day wait before His Cross, and adore Him Who was crucified, He sees His seed. Be we of the number, in the reality of our emotion, in the depth of our contrition. But that we may so be, forget we ourselves, and look only on Him. Before our eyes this day Jesus Christ is evidently set forth, crucified, among us. The preacher has but to direct all eyes to the amazing sight: and then-the fewer words the better.

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Behold, we wait before Thy Cross; we adore Thee, O Thou that wast crucified. Draw us unto Thee, conform us to Thine example, and now and henceforth let us take up our cross and follow Thee in this world, looking for our reward in the regeneration, in the kingdom of Thy glory. Amen."

EASTER EVE.

"He descended into Hell."

THERE are no holy days, save the very greatest, for which such ample provision is made in our Prayer Book as for this Holy Saturday. Let us briefly consider the teaching of its Services.

I. First of all we have a summary statement of the doctrine of that which we commemorate, in the Greek anthem appointed for Forenoon Prayer :

:

"Thou wast present as on this day, O Christ, with Thy body in the tomb; with Thy soul Thou wast in Hades, fulfilling to the thief Thy promise that he should be with Thee in paradise; and on the throne Thou wast abiding with the Father and the Holy Ghost, filling all things, and uncircumscribed of any."

The Eternal Son had taken manhood into God. That manhood was perfect,-of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. While He lived, soul and flesh remained united; when He died, they became separate,the body laid in the tomb, the soul going to Hades, the invisible, the place of the departed. But He, the Eternal Son, was with His separated as with His united manhood, with His flesh in the tomb as with His soul in Hades, for He had taken both into indissoluble union with Himself. At the same time He now, as during His life on earth, abode in the integrity of His Divine Nature with the Father and with the Holy Ghost, manifested in glory

in heaven, and also present everywhere and filling all things. This is a great mystery: but it is no less a certain fact, and we do well to state it with our lips while we bow our heads and adore.

II. Secondly, we are taught certain truths as to the condition in which our Lord's body rested in the tomb and His soul tarried in Hades.

1. Of His body we learn from those words of the 16th Psalm which we are taught by St. Peter to understand of Him :-" My flesh also shall rest in hope: for Thou wilt not suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption." Corruption is that resolution of the body into its component parts, that return of dust to dust, which ensues upon its ceasing to live. Unless prevented by the power of God, this change would have begun in the body of Jesus, as in those of other men, almost immediately upon death. We are assured, however, that His flesh, preserved by that power, experienced no such change. And so it rested in hope. The hope was not in the flesh, but in Him Who was with His flesh, Who, feeling His Father's operation in it in the very darkness of the tomb, knew that He was being treated thereby as His Holy One, and kept in safety till the hour when He should be shewn the path of life, and brought back to His Presence where is fulness of joy, and to His right hand where are pleasures for evermore.

2. Of our Lord's consciousness in His human spirit while this was separate from the body, we have several intimations. That it was "Paradise" to which He went, -whereto He would welcome the penitent thief, not when He came in His kingdom, but on the very day of His death*this shews that it was to the happy side of *Luke xxiii. 42, 43.