which was caught in the thicket by the horns, and was offered in the stead of Isaac. That was the place, and that was what the Lord provided; and Abraham, in so naming the place, referred to his own words addressed to Isaac as they were proceeding to it. As we read: "And Isaac spake to his father Abraham, and said, My father! and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt-offering"."

And so He did. At the last moment, when Abraham's hand was actually raised to slay his son, the Angel called unto him out of Heaven, and spared him that sacrifice, pointing out a ram as a substitute. Isaac's death as a victim seemed inevitable, but the Lord provided for his salvation from that death; and so we say now, "Salvation is of the Lord."

And this event, this issue of the Patria Gen. xxii. 7, 8.

arch's apparently hopeless strait, caused the name that he thereupon gave to the place to pass into a common saying. When men were in perplexity, they used to say, "In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen;" Jehovah-jireh; the Lord will provide. It came to be a common saying; and those who used it, perhaps, knew not its origin, nor the meaning which that origin gave it. It was true enough, and may have been pious enough, on the part of those who used it as a common saying, to express their reliance on God's Almighty providence and infinite mercy to provide for all their wants and difficulties, and give a happy issue out of all their afflictions to those who believed on Him". As a common saying it was true enough and pious. But had it not a special import to those

b Pro eo quod hic habet videt, in Ebræo scriptum est videbit. Hoc autem apud Ebræos exivit in proverbium, ut si quando in angustiâ constituti sunt, et Domini optant auxilio sublevari, dicant, in monte Dominus videbit, hoc est, sicut Abrahæ misertus est, miserebitur et nostri. Hieron. Quæstt. Hebr. in Genes.

who looked for the Salvation of Israel? Has it not to us now a special and most solemn meaning, where it stands in the narrative of the offering of Isaac? It has; for it always has had a reference to the events which we this day commemorate, when the Lord provided for Himself, on Mount Calvary, "the Lamb which taketh away the sins of the world." To us (who look back, in faith, to the record of Abraham's obedience, and on the Sacrifice of the Cross of Christ, made, once for all, as on this day,) this is its meaning; and such, doubtless, it was to the pious Israelites before "the Lamb of God" was offered. "In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." What shall be seen? What the

Lord will provide. What will He provide? "A Lamb for a burnt-offering unto Himself." What is the strait and difficulty from which escape shall be made by means of this Lamb? Sin, and eternal death. What is the Lamb? "Behold the Man!" the Man Christ Jesus! "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world!"

"Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, behind him, a ram caught in the thicket by his horns."

d

Lift we up our eyes unto the hill of Calvary, and behold the Son of God "found in fashion as a man," seized by wicked hands, and nailed unto the Cross. See this upon the Mount of the Lord. See how the Lord hath provided. See how, though He spared Abraham's son Isaac, "He spared not His own Son "," the true Isaac. Behold the Man! They have stripped Him, and He is all naked and bare to the eyes of the scoffers. Thereby reminding us how destitute our nature is through sin, how Satan hath stripped it of original righteousness, and left it, a mockery and a scorn, to the wicked angels, and defenceless against the buffetings of sin, and the stripes due to sin, unless Christ clothe us with His righteousness.

Behold the Lamb of God! Behold the Man! Nails have been hammered through

C

• Philipp. ii. 8.

d Rom. viii. 32.

the palms of His hands and His feet, and though by His Almighty power He could have "come down from the Cross"," yet is He fixed to it, fast bound, immoveable, to shew us how we by nature cannot help ourselves.

Behold the Lamb of God! Behold the Man! From head to foot our plagues are on Him. On His head are fallen the fruits of the curse which Adam brought on the earth for his own punishment. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." The Lamb of God was crowned with thorns. Behold the Man! Our iniquities are gone over His head, our plagues are on Him, the chastisement of our sins. For His spotless body shewed our stripes; hanging as it did all naked, all bruised, and cut, and blood-stained by the scourge. When Pilate "had scourged Jesus, he delivered f Gen. iii. 17, 18.

e Matt. xxvii. 42.