XVIIT. THE BUFFET-GAME. 329 



men and women, who have laid aside childish things, 

 think of the share that we ourselves have had in the 

 awful game. We too have mocked at sin and have set 

 the Saviour at naught. We see in our own bosoms the 

 counterpart and likeness of the crime of the Jews. Our 

 own personal guilt in connection with our Lord's humili- 

 ation and death is the great truth which the gospel strives 

 to bring home to our hearts and consciences, but which 

 we are so apt to repudiate. And it is from this great 

 cardinal fact that our salvation springs. It was because 

 Jesus was despised and rejected, not by the Jewish 

 rulers or the Roman soldiers only, but by every sinner 

 of mankind, that there is hope in His work of expiation 

 for all. It is only when we realize our guilt in mocking 

 Him that we can enjoy the blessings of His exaltation 

 at the right hand of God, to which the ignominy of 

 earth was the hard pathway. When the Spirit opens the 

 eyes that Satan has blindfolded, and we recognize in the 

 victim of our lawlessness the Saviour who loved us and 

 gave Himself for us, then life ceases to be a dreary 

 pastime in which the most sacred things are made light 

 of, and becomes a glorious reality in which the things 

 unseen and eternal are objects of our earnest desire and 

 pursuit. 



