good Christ's headship of the church; and this was enough for the labours of one generation, who expected from their successors a continuance and enlargement of the work. But, alas! their successors converted the work which had been done into an idol, and worshipped it. The landmarks of doctrine which the Reformers drew, to mark off the clear ground which they had won from the abyss of Papal error, they expected that their posterity would have extended more and more into the waste, until they had reclaimed the whole sum and substance of Christian truth. But, alas! how otherwise hath it been! Not only hath no further encroachments been made upon the realms of the old anarch, but even that truth which we had attained to, hath been almost reft away from us, by Arminian errors, or by a system of fatalism and necessity, a doctrine of right and property, of selfishness and personal safety, falsely called Calvinistic, but of which Calvin is one of the ablest confuters. We have lost the idea of the church, we have lost the idea of the sacraments, we have lost the idea of a redemption of love, as a basis of an election of grace; a common redemption, as the basis of a particular election; and, in a word, we are fallen as far beneath the Reformers, as they were beneath the primitive church in every thing except the doctrine of justification by faith. There, I may say, the Reformers were on a level with the primitive church. But this precious jewel of the Reformation hath almost perished in our hands; so that, in my judgment, the Evangelical method of preaching justification by faith, is a more subtile form of error than the high-church method of preaching justification by works of morality; or the Papal method of preaching justification by merits of saints, and pilgrimages, and severities, and other self-inflicted acts of the will. But into these things I enter not, nor would have named them, save to express my conviction that something must be done, or else the church, and the faith also, of which it is the pillar, will go to wreck. And I believe that something is, the exposition of Christ's person and offices and coming, which are all-inclusive and all-comprehensive. He is the Applier of his own sacrifice; he is the Head of the church; he is the Prince of the kings of the earth; he is the Contender against the apostasy, he is the Destroyer of it; he is the bringer in of the Millennium, and he is the Upholder of it. Here is a theme, large as human knowledge; not the doctrine of his sacrifice merely, by which the Reformers did so much, but the doctrine of his complete living person, and of his complete and perfect work. And where is this set out? In that book whose name is, Discovery of Jesus Christ; a book which, being looked upon in respect to his person and dignity, I will say, he that runneth may read; once possess yourself with the idea contained in its name, that it is Jesus Christ revealed or discovered, and read it for the purpose of knowing the truth made known concerning him, and you shall, in one reading of it, have more distinct apprehensions of his personal glories than from reading any, or I will say all, the Scriptures besides. It is the shutting of this book, which hath made Christ's glory to be so little known, and so little discoursed of. Indeed, and in truth, I may say, that Christ's glory in his manhood is hardly believed at all. The church, when she contemplates Christ glorious, is wont to have her mind directed to the period which preceded, and not to the period which followeth, the Incarnation. Now that glory which he had with his Father before the world was, is a glory of the infinite and incomprehensible Godhead, which cometh not within the scope of man's understanding, and indeed which, save for worship, entereth not within the region of man's concerns. But the glory to which he attained in his manhood, in which he now subsisteth in redeemed flesh of man, and which he now putteth forth, by and in humanity's form, holding with an arm of flesh and guiding with faculties of reason, the sceptre of God,-this is a thing wholly cognoscible by man, and to that end brought to pass that the creature might know it, and in knowing it be blessed. And seeing that God hath given us a book, designed for nothing less than the unfolding to human knowledge of that glory to which his Son is advanced, and of that glory in which he is yet to be revealed, how diligent ought we to be, who have fellow-feeling and co-heirship in it all, to discover the might, the fulness, the beauty, of that Person in whom we have believed, and who hath promised to enrich us with the same endowments, and to fill us with the same fulness! And how diligent should pastors and ministers of the church whom he gave and continueth unto his church for the very end of conveying to her the gifts which he received when he ascended up on high; how diligent, I say, ought we to be in meditating this book, which professeth to reveal Jesus Christ, which Jesus Christ received as a gift from his Father, and which he sent straightway unto his servant John, that through him it might be shewn unto all believers! Be it understood, therefore, by you all, that I have so much faith in God's faithful word, that I will never suffer this book, in my presence, to be treated lightly; that I will never shrink as a divine to draw from it my chief illustrations of the glories of Christ, of his rights and prerogatives in the day of his absence, and of his performances and possessions when he shall come again. I will resist unto blood those who say that another than He is head of the church; those who say that a magistrate or king may govern well, with an eye only to the people's well-being, and with no respect to Christ the Priestly King; and those who say that there is to be a millennial kingdom without his presence, and a destruction of Antichrist without his power. I am resolved by the grace of God to make a stand for the revival of this book from among the rust of obsolete interpretation and the dust of neglect. I feel that I can do little in such a work as the evolution of the glories of Christ, written in the history of the church, and of the world. But we must be faithful in the least, as well as in the greatest. The Lord will raise up better and wiser servants in our room, whereat we shall much rejoice. We must be up and doing, for the time is at hand: "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." May the Lord set forth in an earthen vessel the preciousness of this his treasure; may the Lord prosper the undertaking of his servant; may the Lord bless it to his native land, and to his mother-church! God hear this prayer, and answer it for his glorious Name's sake. THE THANKSGIVING. I THANK thee, LORD, that thou hast taught my soul, Low lying at thy feet, to rise again In majesty of truth. Her nakedness Thou hast adorn'd with robes of heavenly light; Her blear-eyed, sickly vision purged with salve, My lips from serving Thee, my King, my God! 29.536.4 |