friends, so true as this fact, that habit accustoms us to every thing. Persons who have been ill for twenty years, sometimes become so accustomed to pain as to grow almost insensible to it. Persons may get so accustomed to darkness, that they do not feel their bereavement. While most men, if placed beside a waterfall, would be kept awake all night, those that have slept beside it for years will sleep sweetly all night long. And many sit under the gospel, and hear great and all-important and eternal truths, and will go away, just as many of you will go away tonight, criticising the sermon, commending or caricaturing the preacher, but untouched, unmoved by truths that, however simply expressed, ought to electrify their very natures, and make men's hearts thrill alternately with fear, and joy, and hope.

Let me tell you, that when this book of the gospel is opened, it will remind many-alas! too many-of lost opportunities, of despised mercies; and that terrible word, "Ye will not," shall be heard and re-echoed for ever. Every wicked act that a wicked man does, projects a shadow that extends into an eternal hell. Hell will be like the whispering-gallery of eternity: words of wickedness and deeds of darkness said and done here, shall be echoed and re-echoed in crashes of thunder for ever. I need not a material fire, or a living worm, to be the misery of the lost. Guilt, left alone, would people infinitude with spectres, and create endless torment. Solitary punishment in this world is found to prove to the criminal an intolerable punishment: it has been known to deprive him of mind, and leave him a piteous maniac. Try, if possible, to conceive what that tremendous solitude must be, where the soul shall be turned in upon itself, to recollect nothing but its sins, and to have nothing before it but despair, with no sound of mercy to break upon it, no rainbow of coming escape to girdle it with glorious hope.

But, my dear friends, I forget we are not now before the great white throne: we are here at the foot of God's throne of grace. Come, then, and let us "go boldly to the throne of the heavenly grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."

And this leads me to notice that there is another book opened there the book of Life. Now, this might seem at first to imply,

that God's people will be there, and not the guilty only; but if we look at what is said of it, we shall see that they will not be there. This book was opened, not to ascertain the names of those that were in it, but the names of those who were not in it; for it is not said, "Whosoever was found written in it was saved," but "Whosoever was not found written in the book of life was lost;" they shall be excluded, because they have unfitted themselves for its eternal and glorious reward.

And we read that at that day "the sea shall give up the dead that are in it." I think it is a fact known to every classic scholar, that the ancient Greeks and Romans looked upon drowning as the most awful of all deaths: we notice in Horace, and many of the Latin poets, reference to drowned men, and they always speak of them as of men who had no hope of ever being admitted to the Elysian plains. They believed that drowning was a special judgment of God, and that those who were drowned would never rise again or live again. Here it is stated, that "the sea gave up the dead that were in it." They that were a thousand fathoms deep shall hear amid the chimes of the ocean's waves this voice, "Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment." They whose requiem has been the sound of the sea waves-they whose bodies have been devoured by its fierce and untamed tenantry shall rise again, and particle shall come to particle, and limb to limb, and the body that sank shall be the very body that shall rise and join the soul, and stand before that throne.

"And death and hell gave up the dead that were in them." Death is represented as the keeper of his prisoners: hell is a wrong translation: the word is Hades; which means separation from the body, when the Spirit of God does not state whether the separated soul has gone to heaven or hell; i. e. it remains, in happiness or misery, separate from the body, waiting for its full happiness or its full misery, when it shall be rejoined to the body. It says that death gave up his dead; and so Hades, or the place of separate spirits (not a third place, but heaven or hell, where souls are without the body,) gave up the dead that were in it; and when this was done, Hades, or the state of separation of soul and body, is extinguished for ever, and death, the last enemy, is cast into Gehenna, or the lake of fire.

Thus earth shall close, as earth began-with paradise; thus man shall be cherished of God at the close, as he was cherished of God at the beginning; thus man shall have dominion over all, for Christ shall reign until he has put all things under his footstool; and the end cometh, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God and the Father, and absolute Deity, as distinguished from Christ, shall be all in all.

My dear friend, will you be at the first judgment, to receive the reward of the righteous, or at the last, to hear the curse of the lost? I say it solemnly-I say it with every recollection of the sovereignty of God and the helplessness of man-it rests with you. True, you cannot change your heart-true, you cannot grasp the Saviour in your own strength; but this you can do-you can pray to the Saviour-you can appeal to him. "Fear not him that can kill the body, but fear him that can kill both body and soul in hell." But I will not appeal to you on such motives. Let me tell you, the great God has suffered that we might be saved; he hung upon a cross and bled for us that we might not die. Can you fail to love him who so loved you? Are you not prepared to say-not from the fear of the penalties of the damned, nor from the prospects of the joys of the blessed, but because God so loved me that he retrieved me from my sin, snatched me as a brand from the burning, and made me a son and a joint-heir with Christ-I do feel, and I will feel, and, by the grace of God, I will show, that I cannot but love him who so loved me, and that no sacrifice can be too great to testify my loyalty, devotedness, and love to him who is all my righteousness, my salvation, and all my desire.

302

LECTURE XXIV.

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.

"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." -Revelation xxii. 13.

I HAVE only one object in selecting this text as the subject of discourse, and that is to show Christians the reason on which they conclude that He who assumes these attributes is God; and to lead those, if any such should be present, who do not see that it is so, at least to pause-and if to pause, it may be to come to a better and a truer conclusion. I hold that the words here used, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last," are an assumption of deity; and it seems to me plain that He who said so, either rightfully claims the attributes of God, or was guilty of blasphemy. In taking this, I shall have little in the way of argument to adduce; it will be simply texts. I do not suppose that Christians need to be convinced; they feel that Christ is God; but they will need to be reminded of the grounds on which so important a truth in our creed reposes. "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end;" that is, "I am God over all, blessed for evermore." Let me now ask your attention, then, to the following simple statement and comparison of texts, and see if our blessed Lord be not distinctly declared in Scripture to be, what we believe him to be, "God over all, blessed for evermore." We read in Isaiah xl. 3, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord." The word "Lord," there, is Jehovah; in the corresponding passage in the Gospel of Matthew, (iii. 3,) it is said of St. John Baptist, "This is he of whom it was spoken by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." Now, recollect that the being of whom it is predicted in the prophesy

that he should have his way prepared is called Jehovah; the whole passage, the relative position, and name and personal dignity, are ascribed and applied to Christ in the Gospel. Either the evangelist misquoted and misinterpreted the prophecy, which we cannot admit, or he believed, what Isaiah proclaims, that Jesus Christ is Jehovah the Lord of hosts.

Again, in Ps. xxiv. 10: "Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory." Compare with this

1 Cor. iii. 9: "They crucified the Lord of glory." In the Psalm we have the distinct statement, that the Lord of hosts, i. e. Jehovah, the name that a Jew would give to none but to essential godhead, is the King of glory; and in the Epistle to the Corinthians we have the apostle expressly declaring that this King of glory, or Jehovah, is the Lord Jesus Christ. In Isaiah xliv. 6: "Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God." Then read the words of my text perfectly parallel to it, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." We thus see the Lord Jesus Christ in the Apocalypse assuming that he is the same as the Lord of hosts, the same attributes, the same dignity, the same glory, are His; I must, therefore, conclude, either that Jesus assumed to be what he was not—and if so, all Christianity falls to pieces like a rope of sand, without cohesion or consistency-or else that he is the Lord of hosts, and that he proclaimed himself rightfully, and, to us, most preciously to be so.

Malachi iii. 1: "Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me and the Lord, whom ye seck, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in." Luke ii. 27: "Christ came by the Spirit," who inspired the prophecy, "into the temple:" "the Lord whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple ;" and Simeon, who was waiting for the consolation of Israel, i.e. looking for it according to the prophecy, said, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." Simeon and Anna had read the promise in Malachi; they believed and knew, as every Jew knew, that that promise referred to deity; they took that promise, turned it into