SERMON I.

THE THREE APOSTLES.

MARK IX. 2.

Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth

them up into an high mountain apart by themselves.

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No one can doubt that in order to have the key of SERM. the whole revelation of God, we must turn to the Life, the Teaching, the Person of Jesus Christ. There alone is contained that knowledge which He Himself has told us is no less than life eternal. There alone are to be found the facts, on which, however variously explained, Christianity is founded. There is the original outline of God's will respecting us, which fully to unfold, explain, and apply, is the highest task to which any teacher or student of theology can aspire.

But without touching on this higher question, there is another, which, though subordinate, is closely allied with it, and which, arising as it does out of the very structure of the Christian Scriptures, is not, I trust, unsuited to the present time or place: viz. What were the human media through which that Divine life, and those Divine truths, were in the first instance communicated to man? Is the intervening atmosphere, as some would tell us, an indistinct haze, in which all particular shapes are

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SERM. wholly lost to us? or can we, through the mist

I. of ages-can we, through the drifting clouds of

Jewish or Gentile opinion-can we, through the brightness which surrounds Him who was the express Image of God, discern any distinction

of individual form and feature to tell us what were the human influences which first intercepted the rays of that Divine glory-what the human characters which received themselves, or caught for others, the first impression of that Divine countenance? It surely is not presumptuous to say that we can. It was, we may well believe, not without meaning, that as the Twelve were separated from the multitude, so the Three were separated from the Twelve, to be with their Master

apart by themselves," on the mount and in the garden, in His glory and in His suffering: "Simon", whom He surnamed the Rock, and James and John, whom He surnamed the Sons of Thunder." Of these, one, indeed, is presented to our view to be almost immediately withdrawn from it. Of James we know hardly any thing, save his sudden and early removal by the sword of Herod's executioner. But in his place, whether we ascribe it to change or design in the providential laws of the world, there arose one, who, though not of the original Twelve, was "yet not behind the very chiefest of the Apostles" in labours, in miracles, or in the closest communion with his risen Lord. To James succeeded Paul, and from that time no less surely a Mark iii. 16, 17.

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than the earliest disciples waited on the lips of the SERM first Three as they descended from the holy mount, may we fix our gaze on the Three of the later period -PETER, PAUL, and JOHN.

It is, indeed, no passing fancy which rises before us in the image of that scene, which, even in its outward form, has been so indelibly impressed upon our minds by that well-known representation of it, with which Christian art has made us familiar. To that Divine teaching, which, as I have said before, is truly the essence of revelation, far removed above all earthly influences whatsoever—to that Divine Form "whose face did shine as the sun, and whose raiment was exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller on earth can white them". we may still, each one for ourselves, recur, without any human interposition, to know the one original object of our Christian faith. But in tracing its gradual descent into that world of sin and misery below, where the disciples are evermore vainly striving to cast out the evil spirit which vexes and destroys the children of men-in investigating its actual historical application to the existing circumstances of the world, it is something to remember that these Three, and these alone, exhaust all the influences which were at work in the intermediate conflict of the apostolical age; that these Three, and these alone, intervene between us and Christ.

If the various forms of evil, which throw their shadows over the Gospel history, are marked out

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SERM. by the mere fact of their contact with Jesus the Christ, for our especial warning, it is no less true that in those who were the especial instruments of His purposes we may see the various forms of goodness which God has marked out for our especial imitation. If even in common history a thousand men are truly said to die to make up one hero-if in every part of Scripture it is clear that the prominent characters represent to us vast classes of human thought which without them would have no expression-then most emphatically is this the case with the three great Fathers of the whole Christian world. If, in short, it may be said, without irreverence, that the character and life of our Lord Himself determined once for all the whole character of Christianity for all future ages-then, although in a far lower degree, it may be said that the several forms and stages through which Christianity has passed, have been exemplified to us in the characters of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John.

Each of the Three has his distinct place in the first formation of the early Church. Peter is the Founder, Paul the Propagator, John the FinisherPeter the Apostle of the rising dawn, Paul of the noon in its heat and in its clearness, John the sunset-first in the stormy sunset of the Apocalypse, then in the calm brightness of the Gospel and Epistles of his old age. Each is the centre round which the floating elements of thought and action-the scattered writings of the sacred canonthe wild distortions of them in the heretical sects