of the harvest that He will raise up, and ordain, and send forth labourers into His harvest; that He will qualify those whom He has called, or may be about to call, by the richest effusions and gifts of the Holy Ghost; that He will make them able and successful ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit; and that He will continually uphold them by the secret refreshings of His grace, by the kindness and countenance of friends raised up to be fellow-helpers of the truth, and by the seasonable interpositions of a protecting and directing Providence: so that it may be said to each of these servants of God," For my name's sake thou hast laboured, and hast not fainted."* My hearers, do not your hearts at this moment realize your interesting connection with those beloved brethren, the messengers of our churches and the glory of Christ, who are serving the Lord, like Paul, with many tears and temptations, on various foreign shores? And will you not join with me in applying to them, with undissembled fervour, the words of our poet?—

"As faithful stewards of Thy grace,

Well may they fill the' allotted space,
And answer all Thy great design;
Walk in the works by Thee prepared,
And find annex'd the vast reward,

The crown of righteousness Divine.
"When they have lived to Thee alone,

Pronounce the welcome word, 'Well done!'

And let them take their place above;

Enter into their Master's joy,

And all eternity employ

In praise, and ecstasy, and love."

Such petitions, my brethren, we have every encouragement to address to God. For the Spirit that was put upon Christ, as the Father's Servant, was given to Him expressly in order to make full provision for every part of God's service to the end of the world; given to Him for this among other purposes, that it might be in Him a fountain of light and power, of gifts and graces, out of which all His servants should

Revelation ii. 3.

mediatorial work that our Lord is denominated the Father's Servant. To Him an infinitely important commission has been confided: for the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world; and the Son, so sent, sustains the character of a Servant to Him who sent Him. In His Divine nature, as the SON, He possesses, from eternity to eternity, an essential equality with the FATHER. But, for the purpose of recovering our fallen race to holiness and happiness, and of re-establishing that Divine dominion over the apostate creatures which sin had subverted, He laid His glory by. When He took upon Him to deliver man, He did not abhor the virgin's womb. By His incarnation, He "made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." To this obedience He had pledged Himself, when He said, on coming into the world, "Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou prepared me: in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do Thy will, O God." And this pledge He gloriously fulfilled. Though He were a Son, yet, having become, as the Son given, and sent, and incarnate, the Servant of His Father, He learned and practised obedience. He was faithful to Him that appointed Him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house." It was His meat and drink to do the will of the Father, and to make it known to others. In pursuance of this one object, He refused no labours, no sacrifices, no sufferings, but persevered in His course, till, faithful unto death, He made His soul an offering for sin, and was thus authorized to say, in the fullest sense, "I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which. Thou gavest me to do." Nor was it only in His mediatorial humiliation that He acknowledged the Father's authority, and conducted Himself as a Servant. In His mediatorial exaltation, also, now that He has a name above every name, and

Moreover by them is Thy servant warned; and in keeping of them there is great reward." And in a subsequent chapter of Isaiah's prophecy it is written, "Hearken unto me, my people; and give ear unto me, O my nation: for a law shall proceed from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a light of the people." +

Revealed truth and precepts are called "judgment," because they contain not only light, but law; not only a rule, but a decision. They are the standard by which we ought to judge ourselves, and by which we shall infallibly be judged of the Lord. When once brought or published to us, they become ipso facto binding on us, and demand our instant acquiescence and obedience. "They are the judicial sentences of God concerning our state and actions,-the decrees of the Almighty Lawgiver, given forth with authority uncontrollable. A man may appeal from the sentence of men; but this is judgment, as certain as if executed presently." Hence the testimony of the Gospel is not offered to men as matter of opinion and speculation, a subject for ingenious discussion and clever debate. All is already settled, adjudged, and decided by a supreme authority; and our only business with revelation, when once we admit it to be such, and apprehend its fair and obvious meaning, is implicitly to believe and obey it. To hesitate and refuse, in such a case, is to violate the first duty of a creature, and to rebel against the sovereignty of God.

This property of Divine revelation, that it comes to us with the authority and obligation of "judgment," is one of its greatest excellences. It is this which makes it pre-eminently a Gospel for the poor-for the multitude. It does not leave the less cultivated part of mankind to draw doubtful inferences as to their duties from abstract theories of moral fitness and beauty, or of general expediency and convenience,-which the mass of men are utterly unable to comprehend,-about which even the learned in such matters have maintained almost interminable † Isaiah li. 4.

Psalm xix. 9-11.

controversies, and from which different persons have in all ages been found to derive very different practical results, or no practical results at all. Nor has God deemed it necessary or useful to propose the doctrines of the Bible to us in connection with abstruse argumentative demonstrations of their truth, or subtile metaphysical elucidations (so called) of their nature: He has rather revealed them to us as the judgments of infinite wisdom, the oracular declarations of Him who cannot lie. Happy would it be for the church, if its ministers and members would always be contented with the simplicity of holy Scripture; and would not pay such undue and unwarrantable court to the curiosity or the pride of human nature, as to think it needful on every occasion to show cause, as it were, for every rule of God's law, and to prop up, by reasonings often more bewildering than solid, and always of doubtful and uncertain efficacy, truths which are much more safely left to rest on their firmest, original, and proper basis, the sure word and revelation of the Most High.

This view of the authority of Divine revelation involves a powerful rebuke to those who trifle with the Gospel, and halt between two opinions. In questions of human strife and speculation such vacillation may be allowed. But here there is no reasonable doubt, and no plausible pretext for disobedience or delay. It is an adjudged point, that you are sinners, and need salvation; that sin, if not pardoned, will be punished; that, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God; that there is no name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved, but the name of Jesus; that there is a world of righteous retribution, to which you are hastening, in which you must live for ever, and for which it is your first duty and business to prepare. Arise, then; why tarriest thou? wash away thy sins, calling upon the name of the Lord. Make haste, and delay not, to accept God's mercy, and to keep His commandments.

This view of revelation, so admonitory to ourselves, also evinces the propriety of its being communicated to those heathen

these acts depended materially on the spotless purity and infinite dignity of the sacrifice which was to be offered, and of the Priest who was to intercede. When only a typical priesthood was to be instituted, the high priest might properly be taken from among men. The law, therefore, made men high priests, which had infirmity; but the word of the oath (by which the covenant of redemption, as revealed in the Gospel, was established) maketh the Son our High Priest, who alone was fit to be consecrated for evermore. Finally, the government was to be on the shoulders of the Messiah. He was to redeem by power, as well as by price; and to undertake the administration of a spiritual kingdom, which requires, for the proper transaction of its vast and immensely complicated concerns, a wisdom and an energy such as no mere creature can exert. On all these accounts, when the Servant was to be chosen, to whom the business of salvation was to be intrusted, the Elect must needs be the FELLOW OF JEHOVAH. among created beings was found trustworthy in so weighty a concern. "He putteth no trust in His holy ones," or angels.* In His hands alone, who is the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of His person, the honours of God and the interests of mankind were safe.

None

3. The Divine Person thus chosen by the Father, and appointed to save mankind, freely acceded, as we have already seen, to that choice and appointment; undertook the office. assigned to Him; and appeared in the form of a servant, by assuming human nature into an ineffable union with the Divine nature which belonged to Him from eternity. Now, to qualify that human nature, in the person of the Mediator, for the momentous duties which the office involved, it was made the subject of an unexampled and peculiar anointing from the Holy One. To this the text refers when it says, "I have put my Spirit upon Him." To this other passages of Holy Scripture manifestly relate. "There shall come forth a Rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out

* Job xv. 15.