candidates for mercy, candidates for forgiveness, candidates to be ourselves saved.

But once more in the history of Christ we see the distinct humanity: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (Matt. xxvii. 46.) The blackness of hell had gathered about His soul, the cloud of condemnation rested there; and Satan may have shot the sharp arrow of despair. "This is your hour, and the power of darkness;" but "His soul was not left in hell." Two more cries from the cross, and the scene was over "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit" (Luke xiii. 46). "It is finished" (John xix. 30).

This last voice was the voice of the Eternal God, His dying testimony to the world of its redemption. But what was it that was then finished? The work divinely decreed to be done before the foundation of the world; the work that we have seen to be the burden of the Divine mind during four thousand years. None but He who purposed that work could accomplish it. "The Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood" (Acts xx. 28).

Thus we have seen the complex Being, God-man, complex, and yet distinct by the power of Almighty God; both sustained by Him, and yet both inherently self-sustained, because the One Being was the selfexistent JEHOVAH. Inferior to God as touching the manhood; equal, and coeval with God as touching the Godhead. I was thus obliged to glance at this doctrine before proceeding, because it meets us at every turn in the New Testament (Col. ii. 9; 1 Cor, xvi. 28).

I must now for a moment return to the incarnation of our Lord, before showing His ever ready response to the name JEHOVAH. We have before traced this Being JEHOVAH down the course of time, through every page of the Bible, unless some change of circumstance explains the omission. He called Shem; made the covenant with Abraham; raised up Moses; ordained Joshua; called Samuel; dictated His word to all the prophets; and now what I want my reader to see is, that Christ was the exemplification of the Old Testament; the attested Antitype of all type; the embodiment of Eternal Truth. And hence His name, "the Word." The Old Testament is the word of JEHOVAH. And JEHOVAH was the Word. Then logically, and absolutely it was JEHOVAH who became Incarnate; the Lord of heaven and earth, the Almighty God; He who had ruled, reigned, and performed all the miracles and mighty wonders throughout four thousand years. The Divine Being who performed the miracles recorded in the Old Testament was the same who performed the miracles and wrought all the wonders recorded in the New Testament. And we can have no greater proof than this of the Divinity of Christ. I have said, let us watch steadily the transit of the heavenly Body: then let us do so.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God"-one in the covenant name-" and the Word was God." The Word here is made a Personality, the Second Person in the Holy Trinity; but it was the JEHOVAH of the Old Testament, who gave the Word, who was referred to. We have seen

the JEHOVAH, the Spokesman, the Dictator of the Old Testament, from the beginning to the end. "The word of the JEHOVAH came" to every writer; He was essentially "the Word." And before the foundation of the world, before creation had place, He was "the Word," in covenant with the creature to save. "The same was in the beginning with God.

"All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.

"In Him was life; and the life was the light of

men.

"And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.

"That was the true Light, that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Our Bible is our only tangible light, and Christ is the Sun of that firmament.

"He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.

"And the Word "-the JEHOVAH who spake the word "was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

Was not this the incarnation of the Supreme Being of the Old Testament? Or, as St. Matthew has it more strongly, "EMMANUEL, God with us ?" It is true we might antedate this expression in the beginning of St. John's Gospel, and say it related to a period far anterior to the covenant age with man. did do so, to the Divine decree in the council of a past eternity. "The precious blood of Christ, . who verily was foreordained before the foundation of

It

the world, but was manifest in these last times for

you" (1 Pet. i. 20). The Word was and is Eternal. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My word shall not pass away." Whether this pre-existence of the Word was by the omniscience and prescience of God, or whether by an actual necessity then existing, we do not know; but it has always been my opinion that the evil spirit was coeval with God, and did nowhere arise in the realm of His immaculate existence. But it has been said in objection to this: "Then there must be two eternals." Not at all. The eternity of God is without beginning and without end; that which is eternal is without beginning and without end; but this tremendous spiritual conflict, in which man takes his part, was instituted for the destruction of the evil spirit. God is eternal, but His mandate is, "Destroy" (Deut. xxxiii. 27; Psa. xc. 2-4; Isa. xli. 4). "That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil" (Heb. ii. 14). This passage in Isaiah is remarkable: "Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the JEHOVAH, the first, and with the last." We are here but as emmets upon a mole-hill in comparison of the universe of systems by which we are surrounded, and in which we move; and yet God has given to us this being; called the generations of our race to work for Him in the destruction or recovery of the wicked one-for they are synonymous termsand we must do it, for ourselves and for others, or we cannot reign with Him in glory. This inspiriting chapter should be read here, attentively and thoughtfully. The evil in ourselves is not eternal; we feel it

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waning. "The old man" in ourselves is not eternal (Eph. iv. 22-24). Our old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed " (Rom. vi. 6). Then how can Satan be eternal?

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But it may be asked here, if that Almighty Being, the Creator, God, was in Christ, why have we-I will not say the hazy revelation we possess it is lucid enough; nor would I say intricate, complicated, or involved, but revelation arranged as it is? Why did not Christ proclaim, I am God, come to redeem and to regenerate the world? Why should eternal truth be enshrined at all in any form of earth? "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." He has told us why it was thus enwrapped in metaphor. "A great red dragon stood before the woman that was ready to be delivered, to devour her child as soon as it was born " (Rev. xii. 3, 4). There was the 'man of sin," in the Roman power; in the body of the Jews that rejected Christ, ready to kill the Christ as soon as He was born. "Ye are of your father the devil. He was a murderer from the beginning" (John viii. 44). In Cain he was that murderer. "The angel of the JEHOVAH appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young Child and His mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there till I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him." One would have thought fleeing from a lion, a bear would meet the young child. We have not forgotten the ark of bulrushes on the banks of the Nile; nor "leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent," hidden in its waters.