Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

obey? Before whom do the devils tremble? Who is qualified to redeem millions of sinners from the wrath to come, and preserve them, by his grace, to his everlasting kingdom? Who raiseth the dead, having life in himself, to quicken whom he will, so that at his voice, all who are in their graves shall come forth;-and death and hell surrender their numerous and forgotten captives? Who shall weigh, in the balance of judgment, the destinies of angels and men? dispose of the thrones of paradise? and bestow eternal life? Shall I submit to the decision of reason? Shall I ask a response from heaven? Shall I summon the devils from their chains of darkness? The response from heaven sounds in my ears; reason approves, and the devils confess-This, O Christians, is none other than the GREAT GOD OUR SAVIOUR!

Indeed, my brethren, the doctrine of our Lord's divinity is not, as a fact, more interesting to our faith, than, as a principle, it is essential to our hope. If he were not the true God. he could not be eternal life. When pressed down by guilt and languishing for happiness, I look around for a deliverer such as my conscience and my heart and the word of God assure me I need, insult not my agony, by directing me to a creature-to a man, a mere

man like myself! A creature! a man! My Redeemer owns my person. My immortal spirit is his property. When I come to die, I must commit it into his hands. My soul! my infinitely precious soul committed to a mere man! become the property of a mere man! I would not, thus, intrust my body, to the highest angel who burns in the temple above. It is only the Father of spirits, that can have property in spirits, and be their refuge in the hour of transition from the present to the approaching world. In short, my brethren, the divinity of Jesus is, in the system of grace, the sun to which all its parts are subordinate, and all their stations refer--which binds them in sacred concord; and imparts to them their radiance, and life, and vigor. Take from it this central luminary, and the glory is departed--Its holy harmonies are broken-The elements rush to chaos The light of salvation is extinguished forever!

But it is not the deity of the Son, simply considered, to which the text confines our attention. We are in the

Second place to contemplate it as subsisting in a personal union with the human nature.

Long before this epistle was written had he by himself purged our sins, and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. It is,

therefore, as God manifested in the flesh; as my own brother, while he is the express image of the Father's person, as the Mediator of the new covenant, that he is seated on the throne. Of this throne, to which the pretensions of a creature were mad and blasphemous, the majesty is, indeed maintained by his divine power; but the foundation is laid in his mediatorial character. I need not prove to this audience, that all his gracious offices and all his redeeming work originated in the love and the election of his Father. Obedient to that will, which fully accorded with his own, he came down from heaven; tabernacled in our clay; was a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefs; submitted to the contradictions of sinners, the temptations of the old serpent, and the wrath of an avenging God. In the merit of his obedience which threw a lustre round the divine law; and in the atonement of his death by which he offered himself a sacrifice without spot unto God, repairing the injuries of man's rebellion, expiating sin through the blood of his cross; and conciliating its pardon with infinite purity, and unalterable truth; summarily, in his performing those conditions on which was suspended all God's mercy to man, and all man's enjoyment of God, in these stupendous works of righteousness are we to

look for the cause of his present glory. He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God, the Father. Exalted thus, to be a Prince and a Saviour, he fills heaven with his beauty, and obtains from its blest inhabitants, the purest and most reverential praise. Worthy, cry the mingled voices of his angels and his redeemed, worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. Worthy, again cry his redeemed, in a song which belongs not to the angels, but in which with holy ectasy, we will join, worthy art thou, for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.

Delightful, brethren, transcendently delightful were it to dwell upon this theme. But we must refrain; and having taken a transient glance at our Redeemer's personal glory, let us turn to the

II. View which the text exhibits-the view of his sovereign rule- -Thy THRONE, O God, is forever and ever.

The mediatorial kingdom of Christ Jesus, directed and upheld by his divinity, is now the object of our contemplation. To advance Jehovah's glory in the salvation of men, is the purpose of its erection. Though earth is the scene and human life the limit, of those great operations by which they are interested in its mercies, and prepared for its consumation; its principles, its provisions, its issues, are eternal. When it rises up before us in all its grandeur of design, collecting and conducting to the heavens of God millions of immortals, in comparison with the least of whom the destruction of the material universe were a thing of naught, whatever the carnal mind calls vast and magnificent shrinks away into nothing.

But it is not so much the nature of Messiah's kingdom on which I am to insist, as its stability, its administration, and the prospects which they open to the church of God.

Messiah's throne is not one of those airy fabries which are reared by vanity and overthrown by time: it is fixed of old: it is stable and cannot be shaken, for

(1.) It is the throne of GOD. He who sitteth on it is the Omnipotent. Universal being is in his hand. Revolution, force, fear, as applied to his kingdom, are words without meaning. Rise up in rebellion, if thou hast courage.

« FöregåendeFortsätt »