teachers who had seen the Savior in the flesh. Yet as soon as testimony ceases to be the testimony of senses, and becomes that of witnesses, there is an identification of the circumstances of men of former times, and of latter. Whether the testimony be transmitted through one, or through many; whether we receive it from those who themselves saw the Savior, or from those who have taken the facts on the witness of others; there is the same distinction between such testimony, and that resulting from being actual spectators, or actual auditors; and it might, therefore, be said to us, as well as to the Ephesians, ye have heard Christ, and ye have been taught by Christ.

But the portion of our text on which we would fix mainly your attention is the description of truth as made known by revelation. The teaching whereof the Ephesians had been the subjects, and which, therefore, we are bound to consider imparted to ourselves, is expressly stated to be "as the truth is in Jesus." Now this is a singular definition of truth, and well worth your closest attention. We hold it unquestionable, that, long ere Christ came into the world, much of truth, yea, of solid and illustrious truth, had been detected by the unaided searchings of mankind. We should not think that any advantage were gained to the cause of revelation, if we succeeded in demonstrating, that, over the whole face of our planet, with the lonely exception of the narrow province of Judea, there had rested, previously to the birth of the Redeemer, a darkness altogether impenetrable. We are quite ready to allow, that, where the full blaze was not made visible, glimmerings and sparklings were caught; so that, if upon no point, connected with futurity, perfect information were obtained, upon many points a degree of intelligence was reached which should not be overlooked in our estimate of heathenism. We think it right to assert, under certain limitations, that man, whilst left to himself, dug fragments of truth from the mighty quarry; though we know that he possessed not the ability of fashioning completely the statue, nor even of combining into symmetry the detached portions brought up by his oft-renewed strivings. We do not,

therefore, suppose it implied in the expression of our text, that truth was unknown amongst men until, having been taught by the Redeemer, it might be designated "truth as it is in Jesus." On the contrary, we are persuaded that the Ephesians, however shut out from the advantages of previous revelations, possessed many elements of moral truth before Christ's apostles appeared in their city. Hence the definition of our text implies not, that, out of Jesus. there were no discoverable manifestations of truth; but rather, that truth, when seen in and through Jesus, assumes new and distinguishing features. And it is upon this fact we desire, on the present occasion, to turn the main of your attention. We admit that certain portions of Christ's teaching related to truths which were not then, for the first time, made known to mankind. Other portions either involved new disclosures, or brought facts into notice which had been strangely and fatally overlooked. But whether the truth were new or old, the circumstance of its being truth as it is in Jesus," gave it an aspect, and a character, which it would never have assumed, if communicated through another channel than the Mediator. Such we hold to be the drift of the expression. It becomes, then, our business to endeavor to prove, that "truth, as it is in Jesus," puts on a clothing, or a coloring, derived from the Redeemer; so that if you separate truth from him who is "the way, the truth, and the life," John, 14: 6, it shall seem practically a different thing from itself when connected with this glorious personage.

Now we shall take truth under two principal divisions, and compare it as it is in Jesus" with what it is out of Jesus. We shall refer, first, to those truths which have to do with God's nature and character; secondly, to those which have to do with man's condition. There may be, indeed, many minor departments of moral truth. But we think that these two great divisions include most, if not all, of the lesser.

We turn then, first, to the truths which have to do with the nature and character of God. We begin with the lowest element of truth; namely, that there is a great first cause, through whose agency hath arisen the fair and

costly fabric of the visible universe. We have here a truth, which, under some shape or another, has been recognized and held in every age, and by every nation. Barbarism and civilization have had to do with peculiar forms and modifications of this truth. But neither the rude processes of the one, nor the attenuating of the other, have availed to produce its utter banishment from the earth. However various the tribes into which the human race hath been broken, the phenomenon has never existed of a nation of atheists. The voyagers who have passed over waters which had never been ploughed by the seaman, and lighted upon islands whose loneliness had shut them out from the knowledge and companionship of other districts of the globe, have found always, amid the savage and secluded inhabitants, the notion of some invisible being, great in his power, and awful in his vengeance. We cannot, therefore, in any sense maintain, that the truth of the existence of a God was undiscovered truth, so long as it was not truth as it is in Jesus." Christ came not to teach what natural, or rather traditional, religion was capable of teaching; though he gave sanctions to its lessons, of which, heretofore, they had been altogether destitute. But take the truth of the existence of a God as it is out of Jesus, and then take that truth as it is in Jesus, and let us see whether, in the two cases, the same truth will not bear a very different aspect.

JJ

We know it to be said of Christ by St. Paul, that he was the image of the invisible God." Colos. 1: 15. It seems to us that the sense, in which Christ is the image, is akin to that in which he is the word of the Almighty. What speech is to thought, that is the incarnate Son to the invisible Father. Thought is a viewless thing. It can traverse space, and run to and fro through creation, and pass instantaneously from one extreme of the scale of being to the other; and, all the while, there is no power in my fellow-men to discern the careerings of this mysterious agent. But speech is manifested thought. It is thought embodied; made sensible, and palpable, to those who could not apprehend it in its secret and silent expatiations. And precisely what speech thus effects in regard to thought,

the incarnate Son effected in regard to the invisible Father. The Son is the manifested Father, and, therefore, fitly termed "the Word:" the relation between the incarnate Son and the Father being accurately that between speech and thought; the one exhibiting and setting forth the other. It is in somewhat of a similar sense that Christ may be termed "the image of the invisible God." "God is a Spirit." John, 4: 24. Of this spirit the creation is every where full, and the loneliest and most secluded spot is occupied by its presence. Nevertheless, we can discern little of the universal goings forth of this Deity. There are works above us, and around us, which present tokens of his wisdom and supremacy. But these, after all, are only feeble manifestations of his more illustrious attributes. Nay, they leave those attributes well-nigh wholly unrevealed. I cannot learn God's holiness from the stars or the mountains. I cannot read his faithfulness in the ocean or the cataract. Even his wisdom, and power, and love, are but faintly portrayed in the torn and disjointed fragments of this fallen creation. And seeing, therefore, that Deity, invisible as to his essence, can become visible as to his attributes, only through some direct manifestation not found in his material workmanship, God sent his well-beloved Son to assume our flesh; and this Son, exhibiting in and through his humanity as much of his divine properties as creatureship could admit, became unto mankind the image of the invisible God." He did not, in strict matter-of-fact, reveal to mankind that there is a God. But he made known to them, most powerfully, and most abundantly, the nature and attributes of God. The beams of divinity, passing through his humanity as through a softening medium, shone upon the earth with a lustre sufficiently tempered to allow of their irradiating, without scorching and consuming. And they who gazed on this mysterious person, moving in his purity, and his benevolence, through the lines of a depraved and scornful population, saw not indeed God-" for no man hath seen God at any time," 1 John, 4: 12, and spirit must necessarily evade the searchings of sense-but they saw God imaged with the most thorough fideli

that suns, and planets, and angels, and men, the material creation with its walls, and domes, and columns, and the immaterial with its train upon train of lofty spirits-all these constitute one vast apparatus for effecting a mighty enthronement of Jesus of Nazareth. And if you recur to the work of contrast in which we are engaged; if you compare the truth of creation as it is out of Jesus with that same truth as it is in Jesus; then, when you observe that, in the one case, the mind has nothing of a resting-place-that it can only wander over the fields which God hath strewed with his wonders, confounded by the lustre without divining the intention-whereas, in the other, each star, each system, each human, each celestial being, fills some place in a mechanism which is working out the noble result of the coronation of Christ as Lord of all; why, we feel that the assent of every one in this assembly must be won to the position, that old truth becomes wellnigh new truth by being truth" as it is in Jesus."

But we wish to set before you yet simpler illustrations of the matter which we are engaged in demonstrating. The point we have in hand is the showing that truths, which refer to God's character, must be viewed in connection with Jesus, in order to their being rightly understood, or justly appreciated. We have endeavored to substantiate this, so far as the nature and works of the Almighty are concerned. Let us turn, however, for a few moments, to his attributes, and we shall find our position greatly corroborated.

We take, for example, the justice of God. We might obtain, independently on the scheme of redemption, a definite and firm-built persuasion, that God is a just God, taking cognizance of the transgressions of his creatures. We do not, then, so refer to the sacrifice of Christ for proof of God's justice, as though no proof could be elsewhere obtained. The God of natural religion must be a God to whom sundry perfections are ascribed; and amongst such perfections justice will find, necessarily, a place. But we argue that the demonstration of theory will never commend itself to men's minds like the demonstration of practice. There might have come to us a revelation from hea

ven, ushered in with incontrovertible witness; and this revelation might have stated, in language the boldest and most unqualified, that God's justice could overlook no iota of offence, and dispense with no tittle of punishment. But, had we been left without a vivid exhibition of the workings of this justice, we should perpetually have softened down the statements of the word, and argued that, in all probability, far more was said than ever would be done. We should have reasoned up from human enactments to divine; and, finding that the former are oftentimes far larger in the threatening than in the exaction, have concluded that the latter might, at last, exhibit the like inequality.

Now if we would deliver the truth of God's justice from these misapprehensions, whether wilful or accidental, what process, we ask of you, lies at our disposal? It is quite useless to try abstract reasoning. The mind can evade it, and the heart has no concern with it. It will avail nothing to insist on the literal force of expressions. The whole mischief lies in the questioning the thorough putting into effect; in the doubting whether what is denounced shall be point by point inflicted. What then shall we do with this truth of God's justice? We reply, we must make it truth "as it is in Jesus." We send a man at once to the cross of Christ. We bid him gaze on the illustrious and mysterious victim, stooping beneath the amazing burden of human transgression. We ask him whether he think there was remission of penalty on behalf of Him, who, though clothed in humanity, was one with Deity; or that the vials of wrath were spoiled of any of their scalding drops, ere emptied on the surety of our alienated tribes? We ask him whether the agonies of the garden, and the terrors of the crucifixion, furnish not a sufficient and thrilling demonstration, that God's justice, when it takes in hand the exaction of punishment, does the work thoroughly; so that no bolt is too ponderous to be driven into the soul, no offence too minute to be set down in the reckoning? And if, when the sword of justice awoke against the fellow of the Almighty, it returned not to the scabbard till bathed in the anguish of the