April 3

Golgotha.—John 19:17.

THE place of Christ's death, was the common scene of the execution of malefactors, and hence it was called Golgotha, the place of skulls. Here lay spread abroad, the remains of those who had forfeited their lives, and died by the hands of the executioner. Golgotha strikingly exhibited the true state of that world, which Jesus came to redeem. Our fallen world is one vast Golgotha, one region of death, one extended burying ground. Divine justice had pronounced the sentence of death against all the human family, and with two exceptions, every child of the myriads of Adam's family, had felt its infliction. To save us from sin and death, was the great object of Christ's visit to our world; the grand design of his sufferings and death. No where could we behold a more striking, affecting view of our world, than in Golgotha. Golgotha was without the gates of the city, and it was thus designed to shew us, that Jesus as the great sacrifice for sin, was not limited to the Jewish nation, but that he was an offering for the whole world. Hence all nations may claim the benefit of his death, who was crucified at Golgotha. In this way too, was Christ's death a public event, an undoubted occurrence; both enemies and friends could thus with certainty attest its reality. Then by dying here, the types and prophecies of the Scriptures were fulfilled, for it was on one of the eminences of this mountain, that Isaac had been typically slain, nearly two thousand years before. And it had also been expressly predicted by Isaiah, that "he should make his grave with the wicked, and be numbered with the transgressors." (liii. 9—12.) Behold then, on this summit of infamy and reproach, the prince of life obtaining for us dignity and joy, Behold the place of skulls, where death seemed to sway his sceptre with bold and unlimited authority, becoming the dying place of him, who is the resurrection and the life, and who shall ultimately prove the destruction of death, and the plague of the grave. Let the subject reconcile all the friends of Jesus, cheerfully to "go forth unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach."