Thus are the power, the objects, and the means of the Church, Catholic or Universal in respect of jurisdiction; universal in respect to the number to be affected; and universal with respect to the power of the instruments at its disposal; for it has within it, flowing in fixed courses and channels, all the power of God.

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A

IV.-APOSTOLIC.

LL persons who have attentively studied the

holy Scriptures have been struck by the perpetual recurrence of certain numbers, such as 5, 7, 10, 12, 40, 1000, &c. the reasons for, and symbolical meaning of some of which it has not been difficult to discover. The twelve nations of the earth into which all mankind are said to be divided, are not clearly defined in modern ethnology. The twelve tribes of Israel are become now so confounded together that the Jews themselves have but feeble light concerning their separate genealogies. Many attempts have been made to connect these divisions of men with the signs of the solar system; and there is probably some relationship between them, into which it is not our purpose now to enter. It is sufficient, on the present occasion, to remember, as a fact, that the Lord chose twelve men to be the means by which He would instruct others in the nature of His kingdom, of its laws, of its form, and of its object. For three years and a half, which was the whole period of His ministry, He was unceasing in His labours at teaching them both directly and indirectly; and at the close of that period they seem not to have been able to acquire the smallest insight into its nature,

since it is repeatedly mentioned that they "understood not what He said." Subsequent, however, to His resurrection from the dead, and previous to His ascension to His Father, He spent other forty days. with the same object, and with better success. The difficulty which they could never get over arose from their notion that Messiah was to be a prince, just like such princes as the Emperors of Rome, and the Kings of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, and that He was to deliver them in the same way, and by the same means, as had been used to oppress them. When once, however, they perceived, through the death and resurrection of the Holy Jesus, that it was a deliverance from sin that Messiah was first to accomplish, that He was the paschal Lamb, the scape-goat, the peace-offering, the sin-offering, the pure sacrifice, their Scriptures became more opened to them, and they discovered how much they had misunderstood the words of their prophets, and the purport of the rites which they had been celebrating. With this key, however, the principal treasure in the Sacred Record was found, and great part of revealed truth became plain to their understanding.

The first office of the twelve was to bear witness to certain facts. These were, that they had seen and known a particular individual; that they had seen Him put to death publicly; and that they had

seen Him alive again. The value of the fact consisted in this, namely, that this Man had constantly declared that He was God; that the legitimate heads of the Church had charged Him with blasphemy for so saying; that He vindicated Himself from this charge, and reiterated the assertion; that He healed lepers, restored the limbs of maimed persons; that He raised dead men and women to life: which acts

all believed to be impossible for any one, except God Himself, to do. These acts, however, might be performed by delegated authority; but He declared Himself to be one with the Invisible God, who He also said was His Father, He "dwelling in the Father, "and the Father in Him." The question still remained, after His death, whether His assertion were true or not; but when God raised Him from the dead, then did God by that act affirm also that what Jesus of Nazareth had said was true, and that He, God, was His Father. In bearing witness, therefore, to the facts of His life, His death, and His resurrection, they bore witness also to the fact that he was God and Man in one person; so that, as He said, "whosoever "had known Him had known the Father also;" that, although it is essentially impossible for a creature to see the Creator, yet whosoever had seen Jesus had seen God; whosoever had touched and handled Jesus had touched and handled God. (1 John i. 1; John xiv. 9.)

These facts once believed, it was obvious that the sacrifices of the law could be nothing more than types or figures of that true sacrifice which had been made upon the Cross as the real atonement for sin : and the preaching of this is that proclamation of glad tidings which is evangelical religion, and which it is the business of all, and particularly of all ministers in the Church, to declare to all wicked and abandoned people. But the commission given to the twelve Apostles was not merely to preach evangelical religion: they were to teach the kingdom of Heaven; the nature of the government of the world to come; the organization of the body of Christ: and this they could not do until the Holy Ghost was given to men, whose operations in them would effect that organization. Plurality of persons in the Godhead had been proved by the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth; yet He was but one person, though composed of two natures. He was ascended to the right hand of the Father, and is there to remain until His second coming, when His kingdom is ready for Him, having been made so by the preaching of the twelve whom He had sent to prepare it. On a certain day the Holy Ghost appeared on the twelve, shewing Himself to be also God by divers signs. They who believed what was told them were baptized into the name of Jesus, and received the Holy Ghost; and