Ghost descending from above; thus let us wait upon the Eternal Son of our Eternal Father; thus let us follow him to the habitations of men; thus let us witness his conflict with the powers of darkness; thus let us visit him when bowed down by sorrow and affliction; thus let us be with him in the hour of prayer and supplication; thus let us stand beside his cross of agony; thus let us enter his forsaken sepulchre, and thus let us raise our thoughts to behold him where he sits for ever and ever on the right hand of the Majesty on high. In this spirit and with this celestial guide we may haply arrive at the knowledge of a Gospel which is not the word of men, "but the word of God which effectually worketh also in them that believe;" .* and and may God grant to us, my brethren, thus to become indeed wise unto

salvation.

* 1 Thess. ii. 7.

LECTURE II.

CHRIST RECEIVES

INFLUENCES OF THE SPIRIT.

THE HOLY GHOST.

ROMANS VIII. 9.

But ye are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

IN our endeavour to ascertain the real nature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, however scriptural may be the grounds we have chosen on which to build our inquiries, we shall, I fear, have to encounter many difficulties at the very outset. Thus, in presenting to you the founder of Christianity as an example of one availing himself of every Christian privilege, it may be objected that the Gospel could be no Gospel to him, that to him who was of his own

nature "God from everlasting" there could be no glad tidings of salvation, that on him no privileges could be conferred. This objection can nowhere be more plausibly brought forward, than against the doctrine which we shall attempt to maintain on the present lecture, namely, that as Christ received the Holy Ghost, so his faithful disciples will also be under the influences of the same spirit. If we endeavour to prove that we need the Spirit of God, and that to Christians God will grant it, because he granted it to Christ, we may be told that, however well we may be able to establish the point by other arguments, and by distinct Scriptural authority, yet this argument cannot avail us, for that Christ being himself God, had the Spirit of God necessarily within himself, and of his own proper nature, and therefore, it could not in any sense be said to be given him. Now we maintain, and upon the admission of it all the force of our succeeding reasoning depends, that the human nature of Christ, notwithstanding its intimate union with the divine in the same person, was in all things, sin only excepted, like unto our own, "for verily he took not on him the

nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham, wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren;" that it was sensible of the same infirmities, the same dependence on a higher power, and needed and sought for the same help and assistance, which we are so well aware our own humanity requires. Else, whence the great agony of supplication, that the cup might pass from him, ending with, "yet not my will, but thine be done"? Whence the desponding ejaculation, "my soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death"? Whence the last expiring recognition of God, his hope and trust, "Father into thy hands I commend my spirit"? || "without sin,"

True it is, that he was

and, as being so, needed no Redeemer; but then God" made him to be sin for us;"§ and his mortal nature, weighed down by its burden, stood in need of the propitiation which, in virtue of his Godhead, he was himself able to offer. True it is, that the Divinity within was able to support, without external aid, the

Heb. ii. 16, 17. ↑ Luke xxii. 42. ↑ Matt. xxvi. 38. || Luke xxiii. 46. ¶ Heb. iv. 15. § 2 Cor. v. 21.

inferior compound of soul and body, with which it was so intimately united; but, if notwithstanding this, he still had recourse to that other person of the one indivisible. Deity, to whom he stood in the mysterious relation of Son, what does it prove, but that he was not only willing to take upon him our nature, and in it to avail himself of Gospel privileges, but was also willing to receive them in the same way that we are taught to do, and to leave us an example of the means by which they are to be obtained?*

Having premised thus much, we shall now turn to the immediate object of our present lecture, which is to draw, from the history of Jesus Christ, the doctrine that

It appears to me, that the counsel of Jesus Christ, to support his human nature, not by his own immediate Divinity, but by the same external aid which he taught his disciples to look for, after his own departure, is completely exemplified in John xvii. 19, in the original ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν ἐγὼ αγιάζω éμavrov, for their sakes I make myself holy. Christ was holy, but, being under imputed sin, he added to himself holiness from without, that he might be an example to those under actual sin, and that those, who were his, might be instructed to do the same, and how to do it. He did it for their sake, ἵνα καὶ αὐτοὶ ὦσιν ἡγιασκένοι ἐν ἀληθείᾳ, that they also might be made holy in the truth.