Is it allowed you to scourge a man [av@pwmov], a Roman and unjudged? 26. And the centurion having heard, coming near announced to the præfect, saying, What art thou about to do? for this man is a Roman. 27. Then the profect coming near said to him, Tell me, art thou [emphatic] a Roman? He said, Yea. 28. And the præfect answered, I [emphatic] for a great sum got this citizenship. And Paul said, But I [emphatic] am even [free] born. 29. Straightway then stood away from him they that were going to rack him. And the præfect feared having come to know that he was a Roman, and because he had bound him. 30. And on the morrow, purposing to know the certainty about what he was accused by the Jews, he loosed him, and commanded the chief priests and all the council to come together: and bringing Paul down, set him among them. The Preacher's Finger-Post. VICARIOUSNESS OF GOSPEL PHILANTHROPY. "For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh."-Rom. ix. 3. school, including Dean Alford, Dr. Wordsworth, and Mr. Jowett, are agreed, says Professor Plumptre, "that the words can mean nothing else than this: That for his brethren's sake, his kinsmen according to the flesh, St. Paul was willing to accept all that is involved in the thought of everlasting condemnation, eternal separation from his Lord; yea, craved with a passionate earnestness that it might be so." We take the words as expressing in the strongest way the vicariousness of Gospel phi lanthropy, and they suggest three ideas concerning it I. ITS STRONG SUBSTITUTIONARY CRAVING. Paul wishes here to suffer for the sake of his brethren. All love is in a sense substitutionary. It suffers for others. It puts the soul of its possessor in the place of the loved sufferer, and makes it a conscious participator in the agony. The more love a being has in a world of suffering, the more vicarious agony he must endure. Love loads us with the infirmities and sorrows of all around. All loving and sympathetic natures are bearing about with them the griefs and sorrows of others; they weep with those that weep. Christ came here with an infinite love for the whole world; and by an eternal law of sympathy He suffered for the world. But there is, moreover, a craving in love to suffer instead of its object. Does not the mother desire to suffer instead of the babe that lies on the bed of anguish? Substitution of this kind is the law of love. II. ITS SELF - SACRIFICING POWER. The Apostle not only desired to suffer instead of his brethren, but to suffer the greatest evil, to sacrifice his all for them. He desired to be Anathema from Christ. What does this involve? "Terrible enough," says the eloquent author already quoted, "would have been that word Anathema, 'accursed from Christ,' if it had brought with it only the thoughts which a Jewish reader would have associated with it. To come under all the curses, dark and dread, which were written in the Book of the Law; to be cursed in waking and sleeping, going out and coming in, in buying and selling, in the city and in the field; to be shunned, hated as a Samaritan was hated, shut out from fellowship with all human society that had been most prized; from all kindly greeting of friends and neighbours. This was what he would have connected with the words as their least and lowest meaning. The Christian reader, possibly the Jewish also, would have gone yet further. The apostle's own words would have taught him to see more. To be 'delivered unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh;' to come under sharp pain of body, supernaturally inflicted, and to feel that that excruciating agony or loathsome plague, was the deserved chastisement of a sin against truth and light, and to be shut out from all visible fellowship with the body of Christ, aud therefore from all communion with Christ himself; to be as in the outer darkness, while the guests were feasting in the illumined chamber, here too to be shunned by those who had been friends and brothers. This save their souls. It counts no perils too great, no sufferings too distressing, no sacrifices too exacting, in order to redeem immortal spirits from ignorance, selfishness, world THE PLACE WHERE GOD IS "God is not in all his thoughts." -Psa. x. 4. would have been the Chris-liness, guilt, misery, hell. tian's thoughts as to excommunication in the apostolic age. But beyond all this, the Apostle found a deeper gulf and a more terrible sentence. To be anathema from Christ, cut off for ever from that eternal life which he had known as the truest and highest blessedness, sentenced for ever to that outer darkness, the wailing and gnashing of teeth this was what he prayed for, if it might have for its result the salvation of his brethren." Gospel love involves selfabnegation. Self sinks as love rises. Christ is the highest example. He loved us, and He gave Himself for us. Here is the cause and the effect. Love is the high priest of the soul; it offers the whole self. III. ITS SOUL-SAVING AIM. Why did Paul wish to sacrifice himself? What was the grand object he had had in view? The spiritual salvation of his countrymen. The vicarious love of the Gospel endures and craves sufferings, not merely or mainly to serve men materially and temporarily, but chiefly spiritually and eternally; to GOD is everywhere. Heaven and earth are full of his presence. (Psa. cxxxix.) His presence suns immensity. And yet the text tells us where He is not, and that is in the thoughts of wicked men. "God is not in all their thoughts." (1.) This is a patent fact. The millions live from day to day, and year to year, and scarcely think of God. (2.) This is an astounding fact. It is unnatural, impious, and calamitous. Let us inquire for a moment into the reason. Why is God not in the thoughts of men? I. NEGATIVELY. (1.) It is not because there can be any doubt in the human mind as to the importance of thinking about the Creator. All men must feel that the greatest Being ought to be thought upon most. There is no subject of thought so quickening, spiritualising, ennobling, and beatifying as God. (2.) It is not because there is any want of the means of reminding men of God. All life is full of mementoes. All that is seen, or heard, or felt, is full of Him. (3.) It is not because of the unbroken regularity of the material world. It is true that Nature proceeds on her march without any deviation from her wonted path. "All things continue as they were from the beginning," &c. But this cannot be pleaded as a sufficient cause. Nature in heaven has an unbroken uniformity. Yet all minds there are full of God. Nature to the Jews in the desert, under Moses, and to the Jews in Palestine, under Christ, had striking miraculous interpositions, and yet the millions there did not think of God. (4.) Not because man has no consciousness of restraint in action. Man has the power of selfmotion. He moves whensoever and whithersoever he pleases, without any feeling of pressure from God. He does not feel the Divine finger checking or propelling him. But this is no just cause, for all holy souls are equally free from any consciousness of Divine pressure. II. POSITIVELY. Why, then, do men exclude God from their thoughts? Here is the answer. They do "not like to retain God in their know ledge." The cause is in the heart. There are two things in the heart that exclude thoughts of Him. (1.) Fear. The guilty conscience assures the transgressor that he has offended his Maker, and that he justly deserves his everlasting displeasure. Thought recoils from the terrible. Fear repels thought. (2.) Dislike. If we fear a being we are sure to dislike him. Our imaginations invest him with unloveable and hideous attributes. Those whom we dislike we exclude as much as possible from our thoughts. The subject teaches us First: The appalling wickedness of men. What can give us a more astonishing view of man's depravity than the fact that he excludes from his thoughts his Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer, the greatest, best, and the most loving of beings? The only place from which man can exclude his Maker is his thought; and he avails himself of this terrible power. If he could banish the Eternal from his universe he would. Learn Secondly: The necessity of Christianity. What system can bring God into the world's thoughts? No system that does not remove from the human breast all dread and dislike of the Eternal. Christianity is the only system on MAN'S PLACE IN CHRISTIANITY. "For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire," &c. &c. But ye are come to Mount Sion," &c. &c.-Heb. xii. 18-24. Of all the facts in the history of man, none so important as that which concerns his spiritual locus standi. His physical standing-his relation to the material world-is important. His social standing -his relation to his fellow men-is more so. His intellectual standing-his relation to the great world of truthis perhaps more so. But his spiritual standing-his relation to God and the spiritual universe is infinitely more important than all. If his standing place is wrong here, he is wrong everywhere. If a planet is right in relation to the sun, it will be right in relation to the whole system, and the reverse. We infer from this passage I. THAT MAN'S PLACE IN CHRISTIANITY IS RELATED not come unto the mount that might be touched." Sinai, a rugged, palpable mountain, was the emblem of that religion to which the Jew was brought. Judaism was a religion as palpable by its many ceremonies as was Sinai. But that to which we are 'come" in Christianity, is something that "cannot be touched" the impalpable, the spiritual, the eternal. "Ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." Christian men have to do with things unseen, not with things that are seen, &c. II. THAT MAN'S PLACE IN CHRISTIANITY IS RELATED TO THE ATTRACTIVE RATHER THAN THE TERRIBLE. Mount Sinai is here described as a terrible thing. It burned with fire; there was blackness, and darkness, and tempest; there were trumpets and voices that echoed wrath. No beast could touch it without instant death, and so terrible was the sight that Moses said, "I exceedingly fear and quake." The religion of the Jews was a terrible religion; it was full of maledictions and judgments-not so the Christian religion. Mount Sion and the city of the living God are free from clouds and thunders. They are invested in charms, and inspire hope, |