very great disgrace was to be put upon a man, to hang his dead body upon a tree. When Joshua gained a victory over the five kings, we read "Joshua smote them, and slew them, and hanged them on five trees: and they were hanging upon the trees until the evening. And it came to pass at the time of the going down of the sun, that Joshua commanded, and they took them down off the trees, and cast them into the cave wherein they had been hid." Why did not Joshua let the dead bodies hang till next day? Because he feared GoD, who had said, "If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree his body shall not remain all night upon the tree: but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day." When the Israelites were in Egypt, in Pharaoh's land, they had left to hang on trees, voured by the birds.

seen dead bodies till they were de

For such was the

custom among the Egyptians and other

heathen nations. You remember what Joseph said in the prison to Pharaoh's chief baker, "yet within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thy head from off thee, and shall hang thee on a tree: and the birds shall eat thy flesh from off thee." You will remember, also, how the Gibeonites, who "were not of the children of Israel," hanged seven men in a hill before the Lord. Two of them were sons of a woman named Rizpah. Her motherly and affectionate conduct towards the dead bodies of her sons is thus spoken of in the second book of Samuel, chapter 21. Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night." Although Rizpah knew how it was written, "he that is hanged is accursed of GOD," yet perhaps she also had grace to know that if

an innocent person was hanged he was not "accursed" by the Lord. And when her two sons were delivered into the hands of the Gibeonites, they were slain and hanged, not because they themselves had deserved it, but that "an atonement" might be made, and that the Lord might turn away a famine which had been now sent upon the Israelites for three years, on account of

Saul and his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites." Therefore although the sons of Rizpah had been treated as if they were accursed, yet they were made a curse for the sake of others and their mother was not ashamed of them. She mourned over their dead bodies as they hanged in the hill. She watched them by night and by day; and while the Gibeonites and others, passing by, might revile her and her sons, she endured the shame, and loved them still, and left them hot until king David had their bones gathered together and buried. It is not

a little which can quench true love. Many waters cannot put out the love which parents feel towards their children, especially when those children are under afflictions, bondage, disgrace, or death.

2. O! how then can we fully understand the love wherewith God hath loved us, and the astonishing way in which He hath declared His love by and through JESUS CHRIST His Son? For it is written: "CHRIST hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." The holy and just Law of GOD saith: "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all the things which are written in the book of the Law to do them." We have not continued in them, to do them. The Law condemns us-kills us. We cannot be justified by its works. No man can: for the Scripture hath "concluded all under sin" that is, hath shut up all

under sin. Such is our lost and deplo rable condition by nature. Shut up under sin!-sold under sin! We must be bought out again by one stronger and better than ourselves. "CHRIST hath redeemed us from the curse of the law." How?"being made a curse for us: being for our sakes treated as if He had been guilty: as if He had committed things worthy of death; as if He had deserved GOD's wrath and curse; as if He had been accursed of GOD for it is written, "cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." But, dear friends, we must never forget that CHRIST was an innocent Man, and that it is we who are guilty. CHRIST never was accursed of GOD, but was from everlasting His blessed Son: and "no man, speaking by the spirit of GoD, calleth JESUS accursed." He was made a curse for us: for our sakes He suffered as if He had been accursed by GoD: but it was we who were really and truly under the curse-it was we who