have perceived it. The happiness of the person of Christ, subject to his human suffering, must have been incalculably greater even at Gethsemane and Calvary, if the God suffered not in his ethereal essence, than the happiness of any other person who ever dwelt in this lower world, including the days of Eden. It must have surpassed the felicity of any other being in the universe, save that of the Father and the Holy Ghost. The minute atom of his human suffering, compared with the mighty totality of his divine beatitude, was less than the scarcely perceptible speck that often passes over without obscuring the orb of day.

Yet the Bible everywhere darkly shadows forth the sufferings of Christ, or, if our opponents prefer the phrase, the sufferings of the person of Christ, as having been too intense and vast for even inspiration intelligibly to express in mortal language. The dimly portrayed sufferings darkened the face of day; they convulsed the earth; they must have wrung tears from heavenly eyes; they shook, wellnigh to dissolution, the person of the incarnate God. And was it, indeed, the mere finite suffering of Christ's humanity, bearing a less proportion to the totality of his infinite bliss than the glowworm bears to the luminary of our system, that the Bible thus labours, and labours, as it were, in vain, adequately to express to mortal ears? No!

The sufferings, in the delineation of which even inspiration seems to falter, were not limited to the finite, but pervaded also the most sacred recesses of that infinite essence which went to constitute the holy union, styled by our opponents the person of Christ. The sufferings of the man lay within the limits of scriptural delineation. The agonies of the God none but a God could conceive. Perhaps even Omnipotence could not make them intelligible to creature apprehension.

The theory which holds that the suffering element in the person of Christ was only the little speck of his humanity, with the inference to which it inevitably leads of the minuteness of the subtraction from the bliss of his united person caused by the suffering of that human speck, cannot but detract immeasurably from the dignity and glory of the atonement. It sinks the expiatory sufferings of the person of Christ from their scriptural infinitude down to a point too small for mortal, doubtless too small for angelic vision.

The position that, of the two natures united in the person of Christ, the one suffered and the other never tasted of suffering; that the one was filled to overflowing with unutterable anguish, and the other with inconceivable joy; that the one drank to its dregs "the cup of trembling,” while the oth

er was quaffing the ocean of more than seraphic beatitude, can derive no support from human reason. Such a theory, tending, as it does in no small degree, to augment "the mystery of Godliness," required plenary scriptural proof for its support. Its advocates have not furnished such proof. In the face of the Christian world, we affectionately, yet solemnly invoke its production, if to be found in the Word of God.

CHAPTER VII.

Natures of Christ concurred and participated in all his Sayings and Doings-So in Heaven and on Earth-All his Sayings and Doings were in his Mediatorial Character, requiring Concurrence and Participation of United Natures-No Exception in Article of Suffering-Examples of Concurrence and Participation-Farther Examples, in case of Miracles-Moanings on Cross in United NaturesMediation a Suffering Mediation-Eternal Son "emptied himself" of his Beatitude as well as Glory on becoming incarnate.

THE Concurrence and participation of the divine and human natures of Christ, according to the measure of their respective capacities, in all his sayings and doings, is a doctrine fairly deducible from the Word of God. The elucidation of this great truth will be the object of the present chapter.

The concurrence and participation of the two natures of Christ in all his sayings and doings subsequent to his resurrection and ascension will not be disputed. The man ascended with the God to heaven; he is seated with the God at the right hand of the Highest; he will come with the God, in the clouds of heaven, to judge the world in righteousness. The stupendous words closing the mediatorial drama, "Come, ye blessed," and 'Depart from me, ye cursed," will be pronounced by those very lips from whence proceeded that

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never-to-be-forgotten sermon on the mount, so fraught with fearful truths, so abounding in gracious benedictions. It would have seemed a strange anomaly, if there had not existed the like concurrence and participation of the divine and human natures of the incarnate God in all the sayings and doings of his earthly pilgrimage.

No such anomaly is indicated by the Word of God. On the contrary, it is a clear inference from holy writ that the two natures of Christ concurred and participated, according to the measure of their respective capacities, in all his sayings and doings, from his birth in the manger until the "cloud received him" out of the sight of his steadfastly-gazing disciples.

The terrestrial sojourn of the second person of the Trinity, clothed in flesh, was wholly mediatorial. It was the discharge of the arduous duties of his mediatorial office that called him down to earth and detained him there. When its terrestrial duties were done he re-ascended to his native heavens. In the structure of the mediatorial office, the constituent elements were divinity and manhood. The concurrence and participation of both these elements were indispensable. Had the Godhead withdrawn its full concurrence and participation, the mediatorial work must have stood still, as did