beyond them; titles which, after exhausting every form of unqualified pre-eminence, at length rise to designating Him "Prince of the kings of the earth," "Lord of lords and King of kings." That this regal state was given to Christ, and given on account of His participation in the human nature, is unquestionable, for Christ Himself amply attests it. "The Father hath given Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of man." But, consistently with the principle just laid down, I now ask, could this dignity and its appendages have ever been consigned to any being not essentially divine?

Religion being mainly a practical matter, our true devotion is not where our words, but where our hearts place it. I have already said that this principle is abundantly testified by revelation; I now add, that it is so obvious to reason as to need no detailed proof. That which is the final object of the thoughts and affections, is to every man practically his God. Now the aim of the revelation of God's will being (as all admit) to direct the heart to Him, the object most prominent in revelation will unquestionably be that God himself; and on Him alone, with scrupulous jealousy, will the entire devotion of the soul be centred. If earthly power be recognised as venerable, it will be venerable only, or chiefly, as "ordained of God;" and the same oracle that bids us render unto the earthly monarch (and, by parity of reason, to the highest conceivable created power) "the things that are his," will be sure to reserve for God "the things that are God's." At all times the ultimate tendency of the soul will be His "by whom" alone "kings reign;" the loyalty that guards the throne itself has its limits when it jars with His; the body, soul, and spirit are God's, by a right ancient as creation, with which nothing can interfere and nothing participate.

Now, it is perfectly certain that the same divine Being, who thus, by the voice of His Scriptures, demands our whole wealth of affections, has also, in the very same Scriptures, exhibited to us a personage, distinct from the simple and unmingled Godhead, who makes, and is everywhere countenanced in making, the very same demand. We find that God's dispensation, appointing in its wisdom a "Lord of lords" over the earth, has

66

been such, that the highest conceivable attributes of supremacy are combined in this Being, so as to demand our absolute submission as a right. We find that our whole spiritual life and eternal fortunes are suspended upon Him who "quickeneth whom He will," so as to demand it as our interest. We find that every glory imaginable by man, and more than he can ever imagine, is lavished upon this great personage, so as to obtain it from our admiration. Yet were this all, we might still, perhaps, by resolute effort, contrive to save a thought for God from His too attractive messenger. But this is not all! Ties more potent, more holy still, bind us to the Mediator, and charm us, by the very necessity of our nature, from the cold majesty of a distant and invisible God, and these ties (strange to say!) are found to compose the whole habit of religion! He redeemed us, and we love Him; He offered us salvation, and we believe on Him; He is to receive us into glory, and we hope in Him; He is our strength and life, and we rejoice in Him; He is proclaimed our " King," our "Head,” the vine in which we are grafted, the foundation on which we are built, and we adore Him! He who framed the human heart, and knows His own work, knows we cannot enter the portals of this "kingdom" of the Mediator, and not forget all in the monarch who reigns there! If we are the unwarranted worshippers of a creature, God Himself has raised up His own rival, and unveiled the image to our adoration, and, in investing that image with all the perfections of deity, has betrayed us by our own best emotions. But no; the monarch of this kingdom is such as, in Himself, to accomplish all and to reconcile all; the commissioned sovereign and the eternal sovereign are one, man incorporated with God; this "King on Zion" bears that within Him which can stand the whole weight of our adoration:-we need not dread, in our hours of deepest devotion, in all the prostration of the heart before its Lord, that we are defrauding the God when we worship Him who is also "the man Christ Jesus." God has not placed between us and Himself a Being who must inevitably arrest the affections, as they struggle to their Creator; He has not condemned us to hover, in unhappy indecision, between the restrictions of the reason, forbidding the worship of the creature, and the impulse of the heart to see its God in Him,

in whom it sees unbounded majesty softened to unbounded love.

We have thus seen (and I have given you but the fragments of a wider argument) that though the Scriptures had never expressly ascribed to Christ absolute and essential deity, as an element in His mediatorial person and capacity, the reason, dwelling on the objects, execution, and consequences of His work, might, with no timid voice, affirm that God alone was competent to every office it involved.

To you who now have beheld, in the incarnate God, your Priest, your Prophet, and your King, may He give the will and power to adore Him as he deserves! This, which is a theme of grace and peace, is too truly a theme of terror too. Christ the divine Saviour is one with Christ the divine Judge; nor is there any consideration more appalling to conscious guilt and conscious neglect than this, that it is none other than the Shepherd who yielded life itself for the sheep, that is yet to sit in judgment, on that day when mercy once more shall disappear into the depths of the divine essence, and justice alone be visible upon the throne of God! Had there been one effort unmade, one instance of love unexemplified, one form or shape of mercy untried to save us, we might have a hope to bend the Sovereign Judge to pity; we might plead that every chance had not yet been exhausted, and trust our misery might move Him to respite the evil day, till the one omitted remedy were tried! But the Judge comes into court with all the insignia of agony and sacrifice! He has already proved to what depths almighty love could go! There is nothing we can propose which He has not already anticipated! The treasury of heaven is exhausted, the possibilities of mercy are run out! Pondering these things, let us work while it is yet day, "for the night cometh when no man can work." So shall that "night" be to us but the dawning of a better day; and we who have trusted in Him as our Priest, and followed Him as our Prophet, shall glory in Him as our King, when that brightest manifestation of His power shall arrive, which inspired lips have termed "the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ!"

SERMON XIX.

THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST'S INVISIBILITY.

PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN,

JOHN, xvi. 7.

It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.

UR Lord Jesus Christ sets before us, in these words, one

of the great mysteries of His government. You are all familiar with the context. It was the night of the betrayal. He that had "received the sop" had already gone out, to the last an hypocrite; for even then the disciples thought the "See thou do it quickly" to be, not the sufferance of treachery, but the injunction of charity. He had "gone out;"" and it was night," adds the Evangelist,-night, that faintly imaged the gloom of the traitor's own perturbed spirit. He had "gone out," and was already in communication with the murderers, for it was at length" their hour and the power of darkness." But if there was "thick darkness" that hour "in all the land," surely "the children of Israel had light in their dwelling." That lonely "upper room" held within it the living "Light of the world," and, may we not say, held Him at His loveliest hour; or do I err when, in the calm setting of this Sun of Righteousness, I seem to perceive a radiance more tenderly beautiful than it ever diffused before,-a glory we no longer admire with shaded and fearful eyes, but fondly gaze on through unconscious tears? He was subject to all the guiltless laws of human nature; and we know that grief has a power to call out forms of spiritual beauty more thrilling than its ordinary manifesta

S

tions. However it be, we seem to see farther into the very heart of Jesus in the mild majesty of that evening's discourse, to discover a depth of divine peace more central, to feel the heavenly element more thoroughly transfused into the earthly, to see Him more truly (in the fashion we are promised to behold Him hereafter)" as He is." Peter, and James, and John, adored an outward change on Thabor; this seems a kind of spiritual transfiguration. It is far from being explained, but it, of course, is felt more deeply, from the contrast of the contemporary incidents. The murderers are already on their way, led by an elect disciple; and He, who saw Nathanael under the fig-tree, saw them even as He spoke; and while His words breathe the tranquillity of Paradise, there is only "the brook Cedron" between Him and Gethsemane.

It is one peculiarly touching trait in the sorrows of Jesus, that, to a great degree, He was necessarily alone in these sorrows! The poor and illiterate men who heard Him could not yet accompany Him into those abysses of woe which He was treading and to tread. Far from comforting, they could scarcely understand Him. He had to sustain them and Himself; instead of diminishing, they but multiplied his grief. A man will endure much if he feels that his endurance is appreciated; but these men had been taught no philosophic admiration for heroic virtue, they were no refined enthusiasts of the moral sublime. They loved Him, indeed; but it is not the unintelligent affection of instinct or habit that can console in a crisis like this; and events proved how infirm and wavering was even that habitual loyalty. "Ye shall leave me alone." Alas! had He ever been but alone?

Themselves helpless, unable then to help, they hang upon their betrayed Master; but He considers not what they can return, but what they need. He predicts their future sufferings, that these may not come unexpected, and, therefore, more overwhelming; and that the remembrance of the prediction may assure them of the abiding presence of the Divine Predictor. "These things have I told you that when the time shall come ye may remember that I told you of them.' I did not," He continues (ver. iv.), "fully reveal to you these tidings of