witnessed a good confession, as thousands of men had done before the Advent, and thousands have done since, why this stress upon the death of Christ as the great argument by which we should be constrained to respect the conscience of another, and not unnecessarily endanger his moral welfare? Suppose we were to say that we should be very tender in our treatment of the weak, and be careful what stumbling-blocks we put in their way, because John the Baptist died rather than be faithless, or because the Apostle Paul suffered death on account of his Christian faith and profession?

48. (1 Cor. x. 16.) 'The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of (or participation in) the blood of Christ?' The bread which we break, is it not a communion of (or participation in) the body of Christ?' No doubt among the heathen there were commemorative feasts, having reference to their 'lords many and gods many.' But it has often struck me that if the belief of the early Church and all subsequent Christian belief had been in the simple humanity of Christ, what we now call 'Holy Communion' would long ago have died out, and certainly would never have gathered around it associations so unutterably sacred and divine; while it is a manifest fact that in the Unitarian churches of to-day, where the humanity of Christ, pure and simple, is persistently urged, the observance of 'the Sacrament' is becoming 'small by degrees and beautifully less;' and that suggestions have been made from time to time among certain portions of the Unitarian body that 'the Sacrament' may very well be dispensed with, as no longer having a meaning in it which it once possessed. For myself, I do not profess to see why the observance of the Lord's Supper should be continued from time to time, if it is a mere commemoration of mere human virtue, even though it proved its fidelity even unto the death. 49. (1 Cor. xv. 3.) 'For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.' If Jesus Christ was only a man, in what efficient way was His death connected with our sins? The death of no other man establishes any such connection: why,

therefore, does it exist in the case of Christ, but that Christ was more than a man, was, in fact, the objective self-sacrifice of God?

50. (1 Cor. xv. 55-57.) O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law: but thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.' How can a man give his fellow-men victory over death, with all that death includes ? He himself will need that some one shall give him the victory over death. It is nowhere said that we should be thankful to God who gives us the victory through Peter, or Paul, or John, or any other great Christian saint.

51. (1 Cor. xvi. 22.) 'If any man loveth not the Lord Jesus, let him be Anathema Maran-atha.' Would you think it a fitting thing to use such words as these in reference to any mere man? Human presumption could scarcely go farther.

52. (1 Gal. iv.) 'Our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.' There is no doubt a clear distinction here drawn between Christ and God, while I think the ascription with which the verse ends refers to God. But if our Lord Jesus Christ were only a man, what propriety is there in speaking of Him as one 'who gave Himself for our sins'? Who then gave Himself for His sins? Deliverance from the love, and therefore the power of sin, and the forgiveness of sin, are all bound up in the New Testament with Jesus Christ; yet I cannot perceive upon what principle they are so if Jesus Christ were a simple man.

53. (Gal. i. 11, 12.) 'For I make known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not from man. For neither did I receive it from man (or a man), nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ.' Here the antithesis is clearly between 'man, or a man,' and Jesus Christ, and would have no force if Jesus Christ were Himself a 'man.'

54. (Gal. ii. 20.) 'I have been crucified with Christ, yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me; and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.' This is not the language of cold logic, but of passionate emotion. Christ is to the Apostle Paul a kind of second personality, who not only inspires him, but fills his whole being, satisfies him, is the life of his life. Of course there are cases in human life, in the experience of human beings, where in a measure such an experience is realized; but I think no person, however deep the human love may be, would, in sober moments, adopt such language as St. Paul here uses, and say that it did no more than express the facts with respect to himself. In what way, too, did Jesus Christ show that He loved Paul, and gave Himself up for Paul? Is this the language of one man respecting another man? is it not rather the language of a sinner saved, with respect to his Saviour, and that Saviour a divine one?

55. (Gal. iii. 13.) 'Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.' Whether the 'law' here referred to is the moral law, or, as I think, the Jewish law of ritual, one thing is perfectly clear, that Christ, according to the flesh,' was 'born under the law,' the law of Moses, and amenable to it; and one fails to see in what way He redeemed us from that law unless He were superior to it. A subject, as such, does not repeal a statute; it must be repealed by an authority above the subject. If Christ were merely an unusually good man, a transcendent Jew, nothing He could have done or suffered could have relieved Him, or any one else, from the obligation of the Jewish law.

56. (Gal. iv. 4, 5.) 'But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that He might redeem them who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.' Let me just say, en passant, that there is an extremely able and suggestive sermon on the phrase, 'born of a woman,' by Canon Liddon, in No. 531 of the

This is Some one

Christian World Pulpit, which can be got for a penny. how the matter shapes itself to me. Who was sent? whom St. Paul calls His Son,' God's Son; of whom we know, by other passages in the Scriptures, that He was sinless, the only Being in the world of whom that has ever been predicated. How did this Being come? He was born of a woman, born under the law.' What we call, what, as I think, the New Testament calls, His humanity, was real, for the Lord had a body; He ate and drank, He slept, He was hungry and thirsty, He was weary, and at last was crucified. But this humanity was an assumed one, as is evident from Rom. viii. 3, Phil. ii. 7, 8, Heb. ii. 14, and the stress which the New Testament writers lay upon the fact that Jesus Christ was a man. Of course this humanity was a needful thing, not only for the reason assigned in Heb. ii. 17, but because the Lord came to reveal God personally, focally, and attractively, besides the work of giving to man the true ideal of human life. When did God's Son come? When the fulness of the time came.' There is such a law as the law of evolution, and which operated in the case of the Lord's Advent. Why did God's Son come? 'That He might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.' That is to say, to redeem Jews, but Gentiles also; to redeem them both from law as such; and to reproduce in them the likeness of God; that the Gentiles, equally with the Jews, might know that God was their Father, even as He was the Father of the Jew, and that they were His children. I find myself unable to believe that these words were ever intended by their writer to refer to a simple man, 'born in honest wedlock.'

57. (Gal. vi. 14.) 'But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which (or whom) the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world.' That St. Paul was always ashamed of those who were ashamed of the cross of Christ, and that he himself gloried in that cross, are self-evident facts. But if Christ was a man only, a martyr, one who died rather than be faithless, was He the first of the race who had ever been found 'faithful unto death'? What was there

in Jesus of Nazareth dying on the cross, that should raise the enthusiasm of Paul, that even in Paul's days should have made the cross the most sacred of all symbols? I cannot understand why the cross should be so specially sacred, if, in dying upon the cross, Christ's death was the mere death of a mere human martyr.

The next Epistle of St. Paul, following the one to the Galatians, is his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, with which I shall now

deal.

:

58. (2 Cor. ii. 10.) But to whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also for what I also have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, for your sakes have I forgiven it in the person (or presence) of Christ.' The case here referred to is named in the fifth chapter of St. Paul's first Epistle to this Church. It is not at all necessary that I should deal with the many points, interesting as they are, to which it gives rise. The one remark I wish to make is, that St. Paul is pronouncing his forgiveness of the offender, who has become penitent, 'in the person or presence of Christ.' Would an American forgive another 'in the person or presence' of Washington? Would an Englishman forgive another in the person or presence' of the greatest of all the Englishmen of whom he knows, and who has passed away? The language would seem to be inflated, unless Christ held a special relation to Paul, and to this penitent also, and was the very vital power of the forgiveness pronounced by Paul, which He could not be on the assumption that He was simply a Jew, however highly endowed, who had died in the ordinary course of things, as the rest of his fellow-creatures had done.

59. (2 Cor. iii. 17, 18.) 'Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror (or beholding as in a mirror) the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit (or the Spirit which is the Lord).' There are parallels and contrasts drawn in this chapter between Judaism and Christianity. Both were ministries, and both glorious; but the one was a letter, the other