my Redeemer! the Sanctifier that dwelleth within me by his Spirit! and so knitleth me to Him by faith, that I am one with Him, and He one with me! O Lord, if thou wast not infinite love, I should die for fear of thee! And yet, if thou wast not so awful and glorious, I might not reverence thee enough! Make me to love thee, O Lord, and fear thee with a gentle and holy fear!”

Finally, at that great day, that day of Christ's triumph, will shine forth, as at the beginning, the most glorious and inconceivable attribute of the Highest,-the power of creation! He made all things at the beginning, visible and invisible, and without Him was not anything made that was made! Soul and body, man and spirits, al was the work of his hands,-of the Word who hath become flesh, the eternal Son of God! So shall it be then! At his word the bodies of the saints, and of the wicked, shall be made anew,-unchangeable and incorruptible! At his

word shall be made, according to his eternal counsel, fitted up for woe and the everlasting torment, the hell which shall receive for evermore the devil and his angels, and them whom they have deceived. At his word, shall spring forth in the abyss the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, out of the ashes of the present elements and the firmament that shall pass away! Every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord and God, to the glory of God the Father! "And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride for her husband! And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God! Amen."

395

SERMON XVI.

MATT. xxviii. 18.-" All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth; Go ye therefore, and teach all nations."

WE can conceive of nothing at once more simple and more comprehensive than these few words. The claim of authority which they contain spans the world. All power, in heaven and in earth. We can find nothing more express and clear than the inference; the sceptre of omnipotence is passed into my hands, and therefore go ye!

And these are the words of the Lamb that was slain, of Him that died, and yet liveth evermore! of Him who, a few short

days before was the despised and rejected of men, who had not where to lay his head, and who hung, the laughing-stock of evil spirits and evil men, on the accursed tree. From Calvary to the tomb in the garden, and from the tomb to the more than regal or angelic dominion that compasses all things, visible and invisible, is a step mysterious and wonderful indeed!

Yet such had been the plan conceived by God before the foundations of the earth were laid. Such, however ill-understood, had been the order announced in the declarations of the prophets and inspired teachers of the Jewish Church. It was necessary that Christ should suffer, and so, enter into his glory! In the scheme of the Almighty all the work of redemption, and the rescuing individually, as a consequence of it, out of a world in all its generations corrupt and perishing, of a peculiar people, the sons of grace and heirs of immortality, was to be wrought out by the hands of the Mediator. Not only the un

utterable sacrifice, and the blood-shedding which was to wash away the sins of the nations, was his; but the actual progress and building up a kingdom on this foundation, and by a continual guardianship, the upholding of it to the end of the world! It was his to complete what He had begun, and to exercise the rights which resulted from his atonement, till death should be swallowed up in victory. All this, was to be the Messiah's office. God, in short, save through his adorable Son, who is the effulgence of his glory and the express image of his person, is impenetrable and unapproachable by man! He has retired, as it were, into the very inmost depths of his infinite and inscrutable essence, and, save from the glimpses of glory that shine from the face of Jesus, dark waters, and blackness, and thick clouds of the skies roll round his throne.

But there is something more even than this. For the providential ordering of events, the exercise of that inalienable and