at the same time,
any outflashing against Him of the reverse side of the Divine
nature--the lightning of the Divine wrath? Calvary was an awful
revelation of the human heart, whose enmity was directed straight
against the perfect revelation of the love of God in Christ. There the
sin of man reached its climax and did its worst. What was done there
against Christ, and against God in Him, was a kind of embodiment and
quintessence of the sin of the whole world. And undoubtedly it was
this which was pressing on Jesus; this was "the travail of His soul."
He was looking close at sin's utmost hideousness; He was sickened with
its contact; He was crushed with its brutality--crushed to death. Yet
this human nature was His own; He was identified with it--bone of its
bone, flesh of its flesh; and, as in a reprobate family an exquisitely
delicate and refined sister may feel the whole weight of the debt and
shame of the household to lie on herself, so He felt the unworthiness
and hopelessness of the race as if they were His own; and, like the
scapegoat on whose head the sins of the community were laid in the old
dispensation, He went out into the land of forsakenness.

Thus far we may proceed, feeling that we have solid ground beneath our
feet. But many have ventured farther. Even Luther and Calvin allowed
themselves to say that in the hours which preceded this cry our Lord
endured the torments of the damned. And Rambach, whose _Meditations on
the Sufferings of Christ_ have fed the piety of Germany for a hundred
years, says: "God was now dealing with Him not as a loving and merciful
father with his child, but as an offended and righteous judge with an
evildoer. The heavenly Father now regards His Son as the greatest
sinner to be found beneath the sun, and discharges on Him the whole
weight of His wrath." But, if we were to make use of such language, we
should be venturing beyond our depth. Much to be preferred is the
modest comment of the holy and learned Bengel on our text: "In this
fourth word from the cross our Saviour not only says that He has been
delivered up into the hands of men, but that He has suffered at the
hands of God something unutterable." Certainly there is here something
unutterable. We have ventured into the mystery as far as we are able;
but we know that we are yet only in the shallows near the shore; the
unplumbed ocean lies beyond.

III.

It may appear an affectation to speak of this as in any