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DISCOURSE VIII.

EMIL W. KRUMMACHER, D.D.

THIS divine, though little known in America, holds a high place in Germany, and is acting an influential part in ecclesiastical affairs. He is a younger brother of the celebrated court preacher, toward whom he bears, in some respects, a striking resemblance. For a number of years he was stationed at Longeburg; but has now been for some time the acceptable and useful pastor of the German Reformed Church at Duisburg, on the Rhine. He writes with a vigorous pen, and frequently takes part in the prevailing theological discussions through the press, and is the author of several works. In the matter of eloquence, he is not equal to his elder brother, Frederic William (as, indeed, very few are), but he is, nevertheless, a man of decided ability and far more than ordinary pulpit power. There are passages in the following sermon which would be creditable to the chaplain at the Prussian court. Indeed, one may almost imagine while reading it, that he is delightfully following some pathetic and glowing chapter in "The Suffering Saviour." Its perusal can not but awaken a desire for a further acquaintance with the productions of this gifted mind.

THE ABANDONMENT OF CHRIST ON THE CROSS.

"Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land, unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"-MATTHEW, xxvii. 45, 46.

SEVERAL times already had the great High Priest opened his mouth upon the cross. First had he turned the eye of his mercy upon those cruel mockers and tormenters, who, in that hour of agony, encompassed him as ravening and roaring lions, and asked for them mercy and forgiveness: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." O! what a glimpse do these words give us into the inconceivable love which glowed in his heart! The next word he addressed to that dying penitent on his right hand, and it was a word of sweetest promise; a word of unutterable consolation: "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." And then he turned to his mother and to the disciple whom he loved, who lay in his bosom at the last supper, and bound them both in the

bonds of filial and maternal love. And now was it the sixth hour. It was mid-day, but behold! "there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour." For three whole hours the anointed hung upon the cross in unbroken silence; wrapped in darkness, without one single ray of light and peace. The bleeding Creator of the sun itself sees no light; the helper of all must weep without help; but his cry of anguish arrests the course of nature! Surely here is a deep, an unfathomable mystery. Yes, these terrors of Christ loudly declare that here is holy ground. Only in deepest adoration, only in the abasement of self-condemnation, can we venture to approach and gaze. Praying and trembling, we enter this holy of holies; in deepest reverence, supplicating for grace, we contemplate,

I. In the first place; The forsaken One himself.

II. In the second place; The end of his being thus forsaken.
III. And finally; The fruit of this abandonment.

I. Who is this forsaken One? Behold him, as he hangs upon the ignominious tree! Blood is flowing from his wounds-from his opened veins. The crimson stream flows down from his head, his hands, his feet, his sides. His face is marred more than any man's, and there is none to comfort, none to pity. A great multitude stand around the cross; among them are found the respected, the learned, the noble: chief priests, scribes, and elders; but their lips are like the lips of the rabble, full of bitter mockery and scorn-full of malice and blasphemy. Their cruel hands, indeed, can no longer reach the man of sorrows; but the tongue knows well how to twist the knotted scourge, to send forth the spear and the sharp arrow. One poisoned cup of mockery after another is presented. Unceasing are the torments of his body-inconceivable the agonies of his soul. Forsaken by the whole world-this he might have borne. Deserted by the little band that had "continued with him in his temptation"—this was hard to bear. Alas! what pain even to us, faithless sinners, as we are, when, in the day of need, and of adversity, the friends whom we had fondly deemed true, turn from us coldly and faithlessly! And yet even this sorrow might be endured. But what is told us here? God himself, that God who is love, who said, "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased;" that God who has promised to those that keep his covenant, that he will never leave them nor forsake them; the God of all grace and mercy, forsakes his Son! His Son? His only Son ? Him whom he loves? Is it possible? Should not we rather say, that this bleeding one, hanging upon the accursed tree, and crying amid the darkness, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me," must be the vilest wretch that ever trod this earth? Is this the last end of the righteous? Is this the reward of innocence and spotless purity? Is this dealing justly to suffer the holy One to die as a felon? The martyrs

counted not their lives to be dear unto them; for the sake of Jesus they joyfully exposed themselves to the most dreadful tortures, and were led to the stake and the pile of burning, rejoicing that they were thought worthy to suffer for his name; and, meek as the lamb before its slayer, they poured out their life-blood under the knife of their enemies. But they were not forsaken of God. We hear them praising him amid the flames. The Father-heart of God is open to them; the everlasting arm of the great Deliverer is beneath them; the Son of God walks with them, even as of old with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, in the fiery furnace; and though "their heart and their flesh failed them, yet God was the strength of their heart and their portion forever." But here all sources of comfort are dried up; here Satan, the power of darkness, seemed to have free course, and the life of this forsaken One is as the life of those that go down into the pit of inconceivable torment. Is this the fruit of his transgressions? The due reward of his misdeeds? Is the accusation brought against him just? Was he indeed a blasphemer? Was he guilty of death? Was the rod justly broken upon him?

But no! this be far from him. แ "He knew no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. He "was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners." He glorified his Father; he was always about his Father's business; it was his meat and drink to do the will of his Father; he was in the Father, and the Father in him. His whole life was a life of holiness; never had he, even in thought, transgressed the law of God; "he was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Zeal for the house of the Lord consumed him; he went about doing good; to save, to help, to bless, was the element of his whole earthly life. Perfect was he, and perfect he remained, even as his Father in heaven is perfect.

Such was he; and yet he exclaims in unutterable anguish: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" O, then, wonder not if I shrink in trembling awe from this abandonment by the Father! Blame me not if I own that here is an event which seems to involve in impenetrable obscurity all the attributes and all the dealings of God. Can the God of love thus forsake the Son of his love? Can almighty Justice thus deal with innocence? Does the omnipresent thus depart from him who is faithful even unto death? Is it thus that the covenant-keeping God fulfills his own promise: "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flames kindle upon thee?" Is this his faithfulness, that he yields up the faithful in all things, yea, the only faithful, a prey to the most fearful pains of the most painful death, and wholly withdraws from him his presence, his consolation, the consciousness of his love and his favor? Is not godliness itself a mere dream, when the holy One is thus forsaken? Is not all trust in the covenantkeeping faithfulness of Jehovah a mere delusion, when God withdraws

from his Son his love and his grace? Is not the question, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" a question which, from everlasting to everlasting, must remain an unsolved mystery?

II. No, my beloved; through the mercy of God we have had this mystery revealed to us. In the painful judgment of self-condemnation, the wondrous enigma is solved. When once the blind eye of our spirit is opened, we discern, in the light of grace, the lofty end of the abandonment of the Son of God.

Wherefore, then, was the innocent Lamb of God thus utterly forsaken of God? Wherefore did his heavenly Father hide his face from him? Wherefore must the almighty Jesus be so weak, the visage of the spotless One so marred, the Helper so helpless? Because he, as all the prophets of the old covenant and all the apostles of the new testify, was delivered up for our transgression; because he, constrained by the compassion of his loving heart, suffered in our stead, and bore the punishment our sins deserved in his own body on the tree. And who are we? Are we not all universally rebellious children—“ children that are corrupted" -that have forsaken the Lord, the God and Creator of their lives, the supreme good-the only good? O yes! when sin allures, when gold and gain are to be won, when fleshly lusts are to be gratified, and earthly honors to be obtained, then do we eagerly go forward; then is there no road too long, no way too toilsome, no sacrifice too painful; but we inquire not after God: he is not in all our thoughts. Thus we go on in our natural state-God-denying, God-forgetting men-following the dictates of a depraved will, following the counsel of a darkened understanding, speaking our own sinful words, and working our own works of darkness; and we think not that the holy presence of God is, as the air, around us and about us; and we glorify not the God "in whose hand our breath is, and whose are all our ways." Far from our Father's house, cut off from communion with him, excluded from his grace, we are still at ease, and tremble not even for an instant before his awful majesty. Our idols, "the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life," are sufficient for us; we feel no need of reconciliation with God-of reunion with God. Alas! there is not one among us all who has not, like the prodigal son, forsaken his God. Every sin which we commit, is an abandonment of God; and as oft as we have thought, or spoken, or acted, without reference to him, and fellowship with him, so oft have we forsaken him. And even those among us who, through the grace of God, have been born again, created anew in Jesus Christ, even they must acknowledge, in deep self-abasement, that ever since their conversion, they also have, daily and hourly, shamefully forsaken the Lord their God. And this desertion is a transgression that reaches unto the heavens—a sin of deepest dye, that calls for vengeance-an ingratitude so vile, that by it alone we have a thousand times deserved inexorable and everlasting banish

ment from the presence of the Lord. Is not this forsaking of our God the fruitful parent of all our countless transgressions?

When, therefore, the Son of God, as our surety, exposed himself for us to bear the penalty of God's violated law, he must, when wrestling with death, be forsaken of God. Standing in our stead, he must feel the whole weight of the wrath of God, and in the judgment of God be regarded as one who has departed from God. He that defies the omnipotent God-that will not hear the all-wise God, that cares not for the omnipotent God, that makes the God of truth a liar, "despising the riches of his goodness and mercy," and repaying his love with base ingratitude surely he well deserves to be forsaken of the everlasting God -to be overwhelmed by the weight of the wrath of God, who "is not mocked." And, as such, did our Lord Jesus Christ, as our representative, stand before God, and therefore was he forsaken of God.

We can not comprehend this desertion by God; it is beyond our every faculty, and every conception. Suffice it to say that the Son of God feels here the enormous weight of all that our sins deserved; the mercy of God is hidden from him; he feels only his wrath, and naught of his grace and loving kindness. Though we comprehend not how it was possible for the holy, undefiled Son of God, thus to be loaded with that abominable sin which he hated, and thus to pay its full penalty, it is yet certain that he was here "made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him;" that "the deep waters" of the terrors of God went even over his soul; that the thick clouds of deepest anguish were heaped up, one above another, till at last all the terrors of eternity, all the pains of hell, all the wrath of divine justice, were concentrated in the agony that forced from him the cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

Come hither, then, ye sinners, who would make of the living God a weak Eli, winking at the transgressions of his rebellious children! Come hither, ye impenitent sinners, who, with a few prayers and a little almsgiving, would purchase heaven!-come hither, and learn in the abandonment by his Father of Christ on the cross, that the wrath of God, that his holy indignation against sin, is no empty threat! If the great God spared not his own Son, but suffered him to feel the unutterable pangs of his avenging justice, how shall ye escape the threatened damnation of hell?

But come hither, also, ye despisers of God and of his word, who have turned from his ways to walk in your own way-that way whose end is death; come hither and see how ardently the loving heart of God desires the redemption of the most sinful, the most wretched. Behold in the hiding of his face from his beloved, a manifest proof that he is ready to lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and to blot out your unnumbered sins. Does he provide such a sin-offering as abundantly satisfies his justice? O doubt not then his perfect willingness to receive you into the bosom of his compassionate love! Here, in this desertion by

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