him as Christ, as anointed mediator, without looking at this. It was not merely God coming down to man: this he did in paradise. It was not merely God anointing man: this he did in the prophets. It was not merely God indwelling this he did in the holy of holies. But it was God becoming man. It was divinity incarnate. If there is a sentence worthy of being sounded with all the harmonies of earth and all the music of the heavens, and of being sweetly and sublimely chanted, with all the pathos and all the triumph of celestial voices, it is that sentence, The Word was made Flesh!

He dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. Herein is the love of God manifested, that he sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. For our sakes indeed it pleased the Lord to bruise him, and to put him to shame, and to accumulate our guilt, and to lay our chastisement and curse: yet never was he more pleasing unto God, than when he was obeying unto death. And at that moment, when the earth trembled and the heavens moaned, and the Son of the Highest, having undergone hours of ignominy and torture, was hanging between heaven and earth, a ghastly, bloody corpse, the depth of humiliation and the extreme of curse, at that moment (if ever) might the word be taken up in heaven, and carried from chorus to chorus of all the angelic people, Christ is God's!

But death could not hold him. Heaven was longing for him. He burst the stony obstacles of the sepulchre. He ascended on high, leading captivity captive. "God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet; sing praises to God, sing praises." "The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them as in Sinai, in the holy place." The gates, the everlasting doors, have lifted up their heads, and the king of glory hath gone in. He sitteth at the right hand of God; he ever liveth to make intercession for us. God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name above every name. There he sits, expecting till all his enemies be made his footstool. It is Messiah, it is Christ, it is our Redeemer that there sits. And what he asks, he hath. He cannot ask amiss, he cannot ask in vain. His lightest wish were enough to rend the universe. His breath of intercession is mighty as that which formed all worlds. From that right hand of majesty, he says, as he extends the golden sceptre, "Believe me, that I am in the Father and the Father in me." "And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." If on earth, then surely in heaven, he may say, "I know that thou hearest me always." Thus contemplating the first link of this connexion we may say with Paul, Christ is God's. The great problem which vexes man, is,

how to approach God. ception of such love,

union.

Now it is solved.

We have no con

but it has accomplished this ineffable

As near as God

We shall know

Ye are

II. Ye are Christ's. This is the second particular in the golden chain that binds us to God. You have seen what God is to Christ; now see what Christ is to you. is to Christ, so near is Christ to his people. this better one day; as he has said, "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." Ye are Christ's! This is enough, if you fully reach its meaning, and comprehend who and what Christ is. his, because God made you over unto him, in a covenant before all worlds. The record of your names is in the book of life; and it is called His book, and it is the Lamb's "book of life from the foundation of the world." "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me :" "of all that he hath given me shall I lose nothing." If you have in you the marks of his people, then were you his before you were in being; as contemplated in the everlasting covenant. Nay, not one step could be taken towards the restoration of sinners, until they were contemplated in Christ as their covenanting-head and surety and representative.

Ye are not

Ye are Christ's because he has purchased you. your own, ye are bought with a price; and what a price! the sufferings and blood and sin-bearing of a Divine Mediator. If any thing can, this makes you his property. Every drop from those sacred veins marks you out as belonging to him forever. Every commemoration of it, at the Lord's table, renews your sense of the glorious connexion. We love that which has cost us much; we are most tenderly attached to those for whom we have suffered, and Christ never looks on his people without the remembrance that he has died for them. What can be a better foundation of a claim to property in any, than dying for them? Ye are Christ's, then, by the depth of his agonies, and the price of his atonement. And since He remembers it, for your sake, O be persuaded, on your part, to remember it for his sake. Say therefore, "the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."

Ye are Christ's, because he has taken you into union with himself. This is not a fabulous or a metaphorical union. "We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." What the head and the heart is to the body, that is Christ to you. The trunk of the vine is not more united to the branches, nor the root and fatness of the olive tree to the leaves and fruit, than Christ is to you. Your nature is now made to partake of his nature; your life is a product of his

life. Your life is hid with Christ in God.

You are crucified with Christ, nevertheless you live, yet not ye, but Christ liveth in you. All this is true, just so surely as you have believed. Faith opens the vital communication, and provides the channel, whereby the life of Christ flows into and merges one life, just as the juices of the graft and the stock become inseparably mingled. This union is maintained by the Holy Spirit, who dwells in believers, as the Spirit of Christ; and it is often delightfully felt by believers, when the soul is graciously persuaded that it is Christ's; saying "My Beloved is mine, and I am his."

The problem, (we may say again) is now solved: we have learnt how man may approach unto God. Christ is God's, and we are Christ's; we are therefore not only Christ's but God's; dear not only to the intercessor, but to the Majesty with whom he intercedes. The bond that ties us to the Cross, ties us to the throne. Yes, beloved, Christ's people are God's people. "He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father." "If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.” You are now brought nigh to God, even by his well-beloved Son, who introduces you as his own. Hear how he prays, just after the first Eucharist, and just before his last suffering: hear, and understand that ve are Christ's John xvii. 10, "They are thine, and all thine are mine." "Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are." Do you doubt whether you are included in that ancient prayer? listen again: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou Father art in me. and I in thee, that they also may be one in us."

If then ye are Christ's, what may you not expect? Standing in this relation to God, and through the intervention of one thus dear to him, you have a foundation for the widest hopes. The Church is safe, and it is sure of unspeakable blessings. Ye are of Christ's own body. Trembling soul' downcast unclean, self-condemned publican! look up to that face that was marred for thee, and believe its glance of unutterable benignity and compassion!

III. All things are yours. This seems vast-almost incredi ble; but what could we expect less? He who has Christ. has all. It is a universe of privilege. If He who gives the greater will give the less, and if he who gives the whole will surely give the part, then He who gives the infinite, will most surely give the subordinate and temporary, yea all things. The argument is one which you may apply to ten thousand

cases of varied want and desire and fear.

"He that spared

not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how sl all he not with him, also freely give us all things!"

The apostle begins with the ministry; not because it is the greatest of these good things, but because he happened to be speaking of ministers, and because he was grieved at their overweening and injurious admiration of the earthen vessel, and their jealous contentions for one servant above another. "Do you glory in men ?" says he. O astonishing perverseness of folly! What! know you not that the greatest of teachers and apostles are but a part of your inheritance? Name no longer Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas; it is a grief to us, and a disparagement to Christ. Did I ever baptize any of you into my own name; nay, except one family, did I baptize at all?" for Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel." And that gospel makes over to you all things, the ministry included. "Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man." The truth, therefore, which he presses, is this. The ministry is all for your sakes, and a part of that boundless wealth which is included in the covenant between God and your Surety, Christ Jesus the Lord. It is hardly necessary to add, that the very same argument applies to all the means of grace, and all the arrangements of the church. The constitution of God's house, with all its officers; the holy Scriptures, and all that illustrates and applies them; the preaching of the Gospel, the Sabbath, the sanctuary, the throne of grace, the water of baptism, the table of the Lord; they are yours, for Christ's sake, and because ye are his.

But holy Paul could not rest here; having opened such a vista of blessings, he must expatiate; it is characteristic of his manner. Despising petty rules of unity, he never comes in sight of the great ocean of grace, that he does not launch upon it. Not content to say, ministers are yours, I am vours,' he adds, and far more also-the world, the world is yours! It is a great name; to the worldling it is everything, it is his universe; to you, it is but part. As unsanctified and abused, it is under a curse, it is a temptation and a snare, and he who loves it is the enemy of God; but to you who are Christ's, the world is subjected, and all its stings are taken away. Your Redeemer did not pray that you should be taken out of the world, but that you should be kept from the evil that is in the world. And more than this, it is yours because it only stands until God's purposes concerning you shall be accomplished. As the theatre of Satan's seeming conquest, it might have sunk down into perdition at the fall; but it was reserved to be the theatre of the great restoring action; to be

sanctified by the incarnation, to be trodden by the blessed feet of Jesus, to be bedewed by divine blood, to entomb in its embrace the body which never saw corruption, and to witness the triumphs of the latter glory. It is yours, with all it contains, its treasures, realms, dominions, monarchies and resources; the world is yours.

But he rises; there is yet more life and death! words of great import; they are yours. Whether you live, you live unto the Lord, and whether you die, you die unto the Lord; living and dying ye are the Lord's, are Christ's, and Christ is God's. All the powers of life-your birth, progress, and term of continuance-all the acts and events of this pilgrimage are included in the gracious plan. And even Death, which you so much dread, instead of being excepted, is expressly named and included; it shall come as God chooses, and when he chooses; it shall come as a friend; it shall come as a deliverer, to unlock your prison, and restore the keys to him who governs death and the unseen world. It is included in the covenant arrangement, and carries not one legitimate terror to such as are Christ's; for he hath destroyed death, and him that had the power of death, that is the devil. and hath delivered them who were all their life-time subject to bondage through fear of death. By naming at one and the same utterance, both life and death, the apostle teaches us to regard them with a holy indifference, himself setting us the example when he says, "Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain; what to choose I wot not. I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better." Observe how the name of Christ sweetens every successive mention of dying, to one who is Christ's ! Yea, death itself is yours!

6

What is it possible for an apostle to add to the inventory of covenant blessings, after this exhaustive statement? To cut off all misgiving, and cause the cup of salvation to run over the brim, he adds one comprehensive and concluding phrase, or things present, or things to come." This life and the other. Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. The present life is yours, because it is Christ's, and he gives it to All that can be gained and enjoyed of real good in this life, is yours. All things work together for good to them that love God. Your very pains, wants, vexations, weaknesses. fears, temptations, enemies-all are yours. Can you dare to be discontented or disheartened under such a grant? It must be because you do not understand the covenant. If God be for us, who can be against us! Are you poor? I tell you,

you.