both of matter and mind; so that we thus declare Him the maker, not merely of the place where his glory is displayed, and of the worlds of the firmament, as well as of this our dwelling place, but of every shape of existence through the range of space and eternity.

The Christian then proceeds thus to declare his faith in the second person of the Godhead. "And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead, he ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead." I have recited these words to you, familiar though they are to your ears, that you may have at once more clearly in your minds, that they altogether form but one single sentence, in the first member of which are mentioned the name, and great points of the nature, of Him to whom the whole belongs, and in the remainder is a string of further particulars. As my remarks will be confined to what seems to me likely to require explanation to the minds of some of you, they may appear wanting in connexion and impressiveness, but be patient

with me, I beseech you, if there be a hope that from what I may say, any of you may in the end repeat with better understanding and truer feeling, this daily profession of your faith.

The Son, inasmuch as he is God, is the eternal Jehovah; but to us, he has made himself specially known as the man Jesus Christ, Jesus the Saviour, Christ the anointed, or, what has the same meaning as anointed, the Messiah of God, the great prophet, priest, and king. He is our Lord, for so he came to be. He found us when we had separated ourselves from our maker, and had ceased to be his possession, further than that we were abandoned to the consequences of his wrath. By reason of our sins, the claim over us had passed into other hands, and only by atonement for sin was there for us a way of salvation. Jesus paid the price for us, even the sacrifice of his own blood, and thus acquired us to himself as a peculiar possession, so that thenceforth we might belong, not to ourselves, but to the Lord who bought us.

There is no need here to dwell on his miraculous conception and birth, which are so plainly and decidedly set forth in his gospels, by his Apostle St. Matthew, and his Evangelist St. Luke, but as to his sufferings, though as intelligible and recorded facts, they be still clearer to our comprehension,

and as it should seem, beyond dispute, let us reflect a moment on one of the points which is here inserted regarding them. Why then is it stated that they took place under Pontius Pilate? The answer is, that in this manner is fixed the certainty of their record as an historical event in the affairs of the world. Jesus was crucified, and the Creed was composed, while the Romans of old were masters of the nations. When they kept accounts of actions that had taken place, they preserved notes of the time, by putting into the record the names of the chief magistrates and rulers who were then in office, and so the date of every transaction became determined and known. This method the early Christians, who were Roman subjects, adopted for recording the sufferings of their Lord.

We particularly state that "He was crucified, dead, and buried," and that "He descended into hell." Now of these matters, it might seem sufficient to say, that they obtain a place here, because they naturally serve to precede and bring in the assertion of the great article of his resurrection, but moreover they make sure the fulfilment of every step in his work as he had ordained it for himself, and by standing in the Creed, they also serve a very considerable further purpose, in learning which you may become practically sensible of

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that which I have already said, namely, that Creeds and Confessions of Faith were composed and brought into use, to guard against actual errors, and should be kept up to prevent the same from coming again. It entered into the fancies of some vain and mistaken persons, that Jesus did not take on himself the real nature of man, but only the human appearance, and so that his sufferings, death, and burial, were only a show that passed before the eyes, and misled the minds, of his followers. Such monstrous imaginations were against the whole doctrine of his work in procuring our salvation, and so these articles now before us were insisted on, in order to confute those who dared to say that Jesus Christ was not come in the flesh. This observation appears to me, particularly to apply to the declaration that "He descended into hell," which also may need some explanation, and therefore it may not be unprofitable to give it a somewhat attentive notice. One of the mistaken fancies just spoken of was, that` even if Jesus were a real man, his death was only in appearance, without the ordinary separation of the soul and body. Now in the opinions and language of the ancients, both Heathens and Jews, there was an invisible world, a place to which all departed spirits were summoned immediately on

their separation from the body, there to await the further disposal of their judge. There are passages both in the Old and New Testament, I will not now say, establishing this supposition, but at any rate expressed so that they agree with the public belief in it. In the tongue of these writers, the name of this place is Hades, which means out of sight or invisible, so they used to say of a deceased person, that he was gone to Hades, just as we say, that he is gone to the other world. Now the word hell in older English, once did not necessarily mean more than "the hollow place out of sight," much the same as the meaning of Hades; --though now its foremost meaning is the place of punishment for wicked spirits. Hades never gained this latter meaning, and that is the word which answers to our word hell in the Creed, so that "He descended into hell" has the same sense as-his spirit left his body and went to the invisible world-another mode of expressing that his death was as complete in all its circumstances as that of any human being whatever. Scripture implies this when it says that his soul was not left in hell, for surely he entered into that where he was not left. Here then is an instance of an article of faith, made so, because it is a truth which had been denied, and which having thus been with