Imatges de pàgina
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XX.

mere mercy, and ever must be so; but that he SERM. should come to call sinners to repentance, that through him they might have entrance into heaven, and be exalted to everlasting life; here is an occasion at least suitable to the goodness and beneficence of God; and the incarnation of his Son is no more a mystery as to the possibility of it, than many other most manifest acts of his gracious providence. Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be "the propitiation for our "sins, and not for our's only, but also for the "sins of the whole world." This is St. John's account of the mission of our Lord. And St. Peter, we know, affirmed before the rulers of the Jews, Acts iv. 12, " that "there is salvation in none other except Jesus

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of Nazareth; for there is none other name

given among men whereby we must be saved.” Now it is often an enquiry made, how are those holy patriarchs and virtuous heathens, who lived before the coming of our blessed Saviour, to receive the benefits of his redemption? There might be some reason in the enquiry, if Christ had been mere man. If he had come merely to set us an example

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SERM. example of a good moral life, or even to XX. satisfy our doubts as to our future resur

rection by his own resurrection from the grave. For how could these benefits be reflected back upon those who had finished their course of life long before his appearance? But when we come to consider that Christ was in existence" before all worlds,” that he was "in the very beginning with "God," that " by him all things were made, "and that without him was not any thing

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made that was made," which is the account the Evangelist St. John further gives us of him, then we may easily conceive that, in fact, all the generations of men that have ever lived on the face of the whole earth, lived subsequently to the great scheme of Christian redemption. That long before Abraham was, Christ existed in the glory of his Father, as he himself intimated in his reply to the Jews, John viii. 58. :-he existed before the tempter through whose seductions our first parents fell. This also, in no obscure terms, he intimates himself; "I bebeld Satan," says he, "as lightning fall from heaven,"

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"heaven," Luke x. 18. He existed before SERM. David, for David himself called him his XX. Lord (See Matth. xxii. 43. 44. 45.) He was before John the Baptist, if we may believe the testimony of the Baptist himself; though, as to his earthly ministry, the latter was emphatically denominated the forerunner of the Messiah; and as to our Lord's actual coming in the flesh, he was not before the Baptist in this instance, nor yet in his character of a Prophet. Here then we get a glorious view of the method of God's dispensations. We know nothing of the bounds and extent of the creation. The globe we dwell upon may perhaps be but one out of millions of millions, all inhabited, for what we know, by beings like ourselves. We must not be too bold in our conjectures; but what a scene does it open to us, if we may but conceive that he who became manifest in the flesh here, may have been the Saviour and Redeemer of all these worlds* ! One mystery

* This notion the author has treated of at large in a separate publication, which appeared in the year 1801, entitled,

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SERM. mystery is no greater than another. That XX. only is a mystery which we have not at

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present powers to penetrate and compre-
hend; but when, with becoming humili-
ty, we are tempted to cry out, "Lord, what
is man,
that thou should'st so regard him,” as
to send thy own Son into the world to re-
deem us from sin and misery? it is well at
least to gather confidence from the dignity
of him who condescended to take our na-
ture upon him. The assumption of the
flesh united the creature with its Creator;
sin was vanquished, and death destroyed;
and if we may at all suppose that the ever-
lasting Son of God has been the Redeemer
of other worlds, the great scheme of re-
demption will appear to have been inti-
mately connected throughout with the
creation of the universe. We know of a
certainty, without any laboured or intri-
cate discussion of the matter, that it has
pleased God to create a race of beings,

entitled, 'Eis tos "Eis Mesims, or, An Attempt to shew how far the Philosophical Notion of a Plurality of Worlds is consistent, or not so, with the Language of the Holy Scriptures,

endowed

XX.

endowed with reason, and, as to all moral SERM. purposes, unquestionably free agents; capable, therefore, of falling; capable of disobedience, sin, transgression. But to have created such a race, without providing in some way for their after recovery, though the power and will of God know no limits, yet we may presume to say, such a dispensation of things would have appeared inconsistent with some of his brightest attributes. The Gospel of our blessed Saviour then seems to set the whole in its proper light. Creation and redemption went hand in hand. He by whom all things were made, the second person of the Godhead, was, in the intentions of Providence, "the Lamb slain from "the foundation of the world." When (as at this time, this solemn season of our commemoration) he really came into the world, was miraculously born of a pure Virgin, and took our nature upon him, then the great act of redemption was visibly accomplished-then "God was manifest in the flesh;" for, as we read elsewhere, God was in Christ, reconciling the "world

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