If anything can awake astonishment, and inflame our gratitude, it must be that mystery of love, God manifested in our nature, and made man, to bleed and die for our salvation. That He should condescend to be sold for thirty shekels of silver, that is, for three pounds fifteen shillings of our money; to be apprehended and condemned as a malefactor; to be crowned with piercing thorns; to be scourged at the bloody pillar; to bear His cross; to be numbered with transgressors; to be reviled by rufianly soldiers, and a merciless populace; to be torn with tormenting nails; and pierced with a hostile spear; and suspended on the ignominious tree, between heaven and earth, as unworthy of either, though He was the maker and preserver of both. What thought can reach, what tongue can tell, the infinite riches of His love to man, that induced Him freely to undergo all this, only to make him happy! Nay, He not only freely underwent it, but even longed for the time of His crucifixion to come - "I have a baptism, says He, a baptism of sufferings to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished?" (Luke 12:50)