tiers, looking in one direction, beholding the Lamb of God, and so at one with each other in true unity.

To behold the Lamb of God is the way to greater holiness. "We shall be like him," says John, "for we shall see him as he is." The more we look at Christ, the more like him we become. "Beholding, as in a glass," says Paul, "the glory of the Lord, we are changed from glory to glory, as by the Sprit of the Lord."

In this prescription we have safety from all apostasy and error. For what is the secret of all apostasies? It is giving to something else a prominence that belongs only to the Lord. If you put a sacrament in Christ's stead, you raise up in the Church of Christ an idol. If you divorce a sacrament from Christ, you empty it of all its virtue and preciousness.

We have here the subject of all ministerial preaching. "We preach not ourselves," says an apostle, "but Christ Jesus, and ourselves your servants for his sake." Wherever the language of the minister is, "Behold not the church, the priest, the sacrament, but behold the Lamb of God," there he is most respected; as if God would show in history, "Them that honour me I will honour."

15*

IV.

Christ Crucified, or Christianity.

So

I Now proceed, in connexion with the thoughts which have been submitted to our minds in previous chapters, to show what use the Apostles made of the great facts we have been thinking over, the Atonement on the Cross, and the resurrection from the dead. prominent were these facts in Paul's mind, so near were they to his heart, that he exclaims, in language that does not exceed the impression on his own soul, "I determined after reading the tidings of his cross, after hearing the triumphs of his resurrection, not even to know, as a preacher and minister of Christ one subject subordinate or collateral, but only Christ, and him crucified."

This language of the Apostle is most remarkable. It is a precedent for all who have his true doctrinal succession in every age and century of the Christian Church. He did not say, "I determined to preach myself;" but lest that impression should be gathered from anything he did, he said, "We preach, not ourselves, but Jesus Christ, and ourselves your servants for Christ's sake." To preach himself is to make man the minion of the priest, not to make him a son of God. For the priest or minister to preach himself, is

to degrade his hearers into slaves, and to conceal from them the dignity of God's freemen, and the relationship of God's sons. To degrade man is not to humble him. The humblest man may be the most elevated and noble. Preach man, and you degrade man; preach Christ, and you humble but do not degrade the sinner.

The Apostle did not say, "I determined to preach nothing but the Church to which I belong." Alas! is it not the text of too many, "The temple of the Lord are we?" but is it not equally true that to preach any Church is the very way to paralyse it? If I were to say from morn to night, "I am a Christian," that would not make people believe it; but if I should live from morn to night like a Christian, no one could help believing it. The Church is known by its actions, the Christian by his life; and that is the best Church, which best does the Church's great and holy work.

The Apostle did not say that he would preach philosophy, science, or literature. These have all their value; true religion does not frown upon these, but on the contrary, would be their nursing mother; but when one is consecrated to the great work of being a minister of Christ, it is not to preach science, or literature, or the arts, but Christ, and him crucified. Athens was illustrious for its sculpture, unrivalled for its paintings. The very remains of Greek architecture, and of Greek poetry, command the admiration of cultivated minds in every land; but what did they do for it? The arts and the sciences flourished amid a morally degraded, though an intellectually elevated people; and we know that even Marathon and Thermopyla were fought by slaves let loose from the bondage of their masters, degraded and despised; and the

whom, though we see him not with the outer eye, yet believing, which is far better, we rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory."

Now let us inquire, next, what there is in Christ that should induce me and every minister of the Gospel to press the prescription of the Baptist, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." I answer, first, God is to be seen in Him. The yearning desire of patriarchs of old, the deep aspirations of human nature in its purest and loftiest communing, that which the nations thirsted to see, and were not permitted, we see in Christ; for he is God come so near to me, that I can see and hear him; and yet he remains so perfect an exponent of God, that in his tears I can see glistening the mercy of the sin-forgiving God; in his compassions I can see God's love, in his miracles God's power; in Jesus, God manifest in the flesh. I can see a glimpse of God's majesty in creation; I can see the consuming fire gleam from the crags and heights of Sinai; but in Jesus I can see God my Father, no longer shrouded in impenetrable darkness, no longer the consuming fire, but God loving me, hanging over me with all the yearnings of parental love, and longing that I, the lost prodigal, should return to my Father's bosom, and to my Father's home, and find in Christ the meeting-place for the rejoicing Father and the reclaimed prodigal, and so be at peace.

I can see in Christ, not only God, but God's love. I can read in all nature that God has loved, but in Christ I see that God is love. God so loved us, that he gave Christ as the expression of that love. What a blessed thought is this, and how corrective of a popular misapprehension! God does not love me because Christ

died for me; but Christ died for me, because God loved me. In other words, Christ is not the cause of a love in God that was not, but he is the evidence of a love that we did not otherwise know, and the channel of a love that could not otherwise reach and reclaim us. And therefore, I see in Christ, not only that God loves me, but I see how that love can come down to me, and transform me from a slave into a son; and yet, justice, holiness, and truth, instead of protesting, stand by and add their consentaneous and joyful assent. In creation, I can see some solitary springs of ancient divine love, like the springs in our mountains and hills, so deep, that they cannot be frozen by the frosts of winter, and so overlapped by the everlasting hills, that they cannot be evaporated by the heats of summer. In providence, I can see God's love in successive waves that touch the shores of earth, and make music on the sands of time; but in Christ I can see, not, as in creation, the sequestered spring, not, as in providence, the successive waves, but the great ocean fulness, the mighty and inexhaustible fountain, from which all are fed, and feel in all its magnificence and comfort, when I gaze on that countenance that was more marred than any man's, this grand and consolatory truth- God in Christ is love.

I can see also in Christ God's wisdom. There is much of God's wisdom in many things in this world. The structure of an insect's wing is a proof of God's wisdom. A bee's cell is a proof of wonderful wisdom; and many other things that God has made show that in wisdom he has made them all. But in Christ are treasures of wisdom; for there I see that wisdom that devised what all the wisdom of man never dreamed of,