In the sacred history of that mysterious death, we read His bitter cry: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ This cry it is utterly impossible to explain on any other principle than the imputation of sin. I am not one of those that would dare to speak of impossibilities with God. But when I think of the eternal and spotless holiness of the Lord Jesus, of His perfect purity and His blameless life, I find it utterly impossible to myself to imagine on what principle He could have been forsaken at such a moment by one with whom he had been one for eternity, if it had not been that sin, not His own, was imputed to Him; or in the words of Sacred Scripture, that ‘The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’ And then, when I turn to the dying cry, ‘It is finished,’ I see the completion of the work. What He had undertaken He had borne: what He covenanted to do was done. The covenanted ransom was paid; the covenanted sacrifice offered; the covenanted life given; and then, the burden being gone, He yielded up His soul into the Father’s hands, and said, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.’ This explains what we mean by the power of the cleansing blood. We mean the full and perfect freedom given to all those who are in Christ Jesus; because He, as their Head, has paid their penalty. We look on Him forsaken, and believe that we shall never be. We look on Him bearing the full penalty of the law, and we know that because He has borne it, the awful curse will never rest on us. We listen to Him crying, ‘It is finished,’ and we know that nothing more can be needed in sacrifice; that the whole redemption as planned in God’s eternal purpose is complete; and that therefore, as He did, so may we commend into a loving Father’s hand all we are, and all we care for, saying, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit, for Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.’ We need no priest’s absolution; and we cannot endure the thought of any continuation, or repetition, or any thing approaching to propitiatory sacrifice. We believe that the whole work is finished according to the purpose of God Himself, and that ‘the blood of Jesus Christ his Son,’ without any addition of any kind whatever,—simply and alone,—‘cleanseth from all sin.’ Thus we agree, heart and soul, with the grand old words of HOOKER: ‘Let it be counted folly, or frenzy, or fury, whatsoever, it is our comfort, our wisdom; we care for no knowledge in the world but this,—that man hath sinned, and God hath suffered; that God hath made Himself the Son of Man, and that men are made the righteousness of God.’ PERSONAL HOLINESS. THE SANCTIFIED. ‘Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both their’s and our’s.’—1 COR. i. 2.