SERMON XX. THE SAVIOUR'S LAST WORDS. JOHN vii. 46. "Never man spake like this man." THIS is one of those truths which, as Christians, we never doubt; and yet it is quite possible to get our impression of it deepened and strengthened by a collection of some of the memorable sayings which are scattered through the Gospels. If we follow the course of the sacred narrative, we shall find at every step, not only that the Saviour's lips were well guarded like those of holy men, but that they were an ever-flowing fountain of words stamped with divine wisdom and love and purity. To-day, however, we must stand by the Cross, and there behold "the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world,”—trying meanwhile to fathom the depths of His mysterious sorrow, and to get our hearts suitably affected with the tale which has in it so much to solemnize our thoughts, and touch our hearts. But even then we may listen to some of His words, and lay them up in our memories as precious treasures. For He who was lifted up on the Cross spoke from the Cross what was heard by friends and foes; and if we gather up these pregnant sentences, and meditate for a while upon them, we shall find that in the last trying scene, as in all that went before it, Jesus spake not like other men, but with a wisdom beyond what men can learn or teach, and with a power which has bowed down millions of consenting hearts in a hundred different lands. We might have expected that when our Lord's sacrificing work began, His Prophet's work would be ended, that, if He taught any thing after He was nailed to the Cross, it would be by bearing in meekness and in silence all that was heaped upon Him of suffering and reproach, and pursuing His appointed task with unquenchable zeal and love till all was finished. But it pleased Him, after giving the world so much, to bequeath to it yet more. While life remained, and his mouth, dried up as it was with torturing thirst, could drop a few more weighty words, He did not grudge the effort. His own pains did not engross Him; man's perverseness had not yet tired out His patience; and so we find written in these concluding Chapters of the Gospels what we feel we could ill spare, and what has helped to instruct fifty generations of disciples since the day that it was first spoken on Calvary. We will just notice that the sayings we speak of, those which were addressed by our Lord to His heavenly Father, or to some of those who looked on and saw Him die, amount to seven. We get the whole number by contributions from the several Gospels. St. Matthew and St. Mark, each of them, give us one,-the same as it happens,-that which describes the bitterness of the Saviour's hour of desertion. St. Luke has three, not mentioned by the others, the prayer put up by our Lord for His murderers, the promise to the dying thief,— and that which seems to be the last in order of time, the address which commends His departing spirit into His Father's hands. The other three, one of them relating personally to himself, are peculiar to St. John. We will consider, first, those in which man has a part, showing how our Lord felt, or how He acted, towards some of the persons whom He saw collected around Him; and then we will touch upon the few brief expressive sentences which describe His own services, or give us a glimpse of the triumphant joy which followed, when the darkness had passed away, and the Sun of Earth, and the Sun of Heaven, shone out again in brightness. I. "FATHER, FORGIVE THEM, FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO," is the memorable prayer which tells us how the Saviour regarded His enemies of every name and degree. They were many in number, and their guilt was of various sorts. Very different motives were at work in different classes; but all were embraced, we are sure, in that comprehensive petition. Caiaphas and Pilate, the soldiers who pierced His hands and His feet, the ruffians in the crowd who mocked Him in His agony, with the large number who had deliberately taken their place among His slayers by the cry of rejection with which Jerusalem rang on that day, and which has been echoed wherever Jews have wandered, like outcasts, since,-all these were full in the Saviour's view when those loving words were spoken; and remembering what His wrongs were, and how provoked,-looking, on the one hand, at His life of active benevolence, and His words of heavenly wisdom, and, on the other hand, at all that was base and cruel and malignant, all that was selfish and hollow-hearted and hypocritical in the plot and sentence and execution,— we are compelled to say that as no deed of human guilt ever looked so black, so the act of forgiveness, as declared by those supplicatory words, has a beauty and glory of its own. Insult heaped on insult, wrongs aggravated by foul ingratitude,—all that we know of that unpitying crowd, and their more wicked prompters, and all that He knew besides who saw into the hearts of every one of them,--left Him free as a simple, unsuspecting child from any thought of resentment. And then mark the extenuating clause besides; • not "Father, forgive them," merely; but the best made of their case; "their guilt is hidden from them; ignorance and prejudice have blinded their eyes so that they cannot see what they are really doing. Let this plea be heard and weighed before sentence is given." And yet they might have known, surely, if they would. Ignorance in men, taught as they had been, was itself a heinous fault. Not in a corner had the deeds been done which proved the Saviour's mission from above. Not once only, in some secluded place, was the doctrine preached which savoured of heaven in every part of it; but often to collected multitudes, who went away and spread abroad His fame. "Now we believe, for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world," was the frank confession of many in a village of Samaria where He abode two days; and why should the men of Galilee or Jerusalem be unconvinced after months of patient teaching, and miracles wrought by the hundred on the sick and suffering? Truly, it is not hard for us to find what shall prove them guilty; but better will it be for us to listen to Him whose words were true, and whose forbearance we should try to imitate. All that they were doing they did not know, and could not know. Sin clouds the mind, and leads daring or obstinate men to rush blindly on their ruin. The .worst, it seems, may have our pity, even while we warn and censure them; and it is one of the |