and fins, and the world in which we live is LECT. dead unto God. Now as Jefus Chrift came to restore us from this state of disease and death into which we are fallen, all his mighty works prefent him to us as a deliverer from these evils; and therefore while his miracles. were evidences of his own divine mission, they were figns of our falvation. They all spake the fame fenfe; and our Saviour himself hath given us a key to the right interpretation of them all: who, when he was about to give fight to a man born blind, did not proceed to the cure, till he had inftructed his disciples in the sense of it, in fuch terms, as could not be applied to it as a bodily cure. "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world," as if he had faid, "I give light to this man born in darkness, as a fign that I give light. to mankind, who are all born in the like ftate. This man is but an individual; and all the perfons to whom I fhall restore their bodily fight are but few: but a spiritual difcernment in the eyes of the mind is neceffary S X. LECT. neceffary to all mankind; therefore I whe give it am a light to the whole world, and I give fight to this man as a fign of it." X. That the miracle might be more inftructive, a very peculiar form was given to it. He moulded the duft of the ground into clay, and having fpread it upon the eyes of the man, he commanded him to go and wash off this dirt in the pool of Siloam. Here the reason of the thing speaks for itfelf. What is this mire and clay upon the eyes, but the power this world has over us in fhutting out the truth? Who are the people unto whom the glorious light of the gospel of Chrift cannot fine, but they whose minds the God of this world hath blinded? So long as this world retains its influence, the gospel is hidden from the eyes of men; they are in a loft condition; and nothing can clear them of this defilement, but the water of the divine Spirit Sent from above to wash it away. This feems to be the moral fense of the miracle: and a miracle thus understood becomes a fermon, than which none in the world can be X. be more edifying. Our Saviour himself LECT. preached in the fame way to his difciples, to instruct them in the nature of his miffion, and of their own falvation. In fhort the gospel is fealed up, and a man may as well read a modern fyftem of morality, unless he sees that Jefus Chrift is the physician of human nature, and that a miferable and fickly world is in daily want of his healing power. 1 The same spiritual turn is given to the miraculous diftribution of bread in the wilderness. Chrift informed the people, that if they followed him only to eat of this bread, for the feeding of their bodies, they mistook the nature of the miracle. Ye Jeek me because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled. Labour not for the meat that perifheth, but for that unto everlasting life, which the Son of man fhall give unto you. The meat he then gave was only a figure of that which he gives in a higher sense to all that believe on him, and which is meat indeed; no other in comparison of this being worthy of the $ 2 meat which endureth name. LECT. name. By bread our Saviour fometimes X. means the doctrine of the gospel, which nourishes the mind; and fometimes his own body spiritually taken in the eucharist: but whether we here understand the bread of the Lord's fupper, or the preaching of the word; both are diftributed to the hungry multitude of mankind in the midst of this defert and a fort of food this is, which, like the manna laid up in the tabernacle (called the hidden manna *) never perisheth, but nourisheth the foul to life eternal. From the curing of the blind and the feeding of the hungry, let us proceed to the raifing of the dead. It appears to us as a most wonderful thing, that a dead man fhould hear the voice of Jefus Christ and return to life: but it is more wonderful that the grace of God and the calling of his gofpel fhould revive a man dead in fin; becaufe, to speak after the manner of men, it feems harder to revive a dead foul than to raise a dead body. And now observe The first tranfgref *Revelation ii. 17. fion X. fion brought with it a prefent death to the LECT. fpirit of man, and a future death to his body. The power of the gofpel brings a present life to the fpirit, and a future life to the body; and as the renovation of the fpirit is the greater in effect, and most neceffary to be understood, the restoration. of a dead body, which is more striking to the fenfes, is exhibited as a visible sign of it. The fcripture therefore in many places fpeaks of the converfion of the foul to a life of righteousness as a rifing from the dead as in Eph. v. 14, where the apostle paraphrases these words of the prophet Isaiah, arife, fine, for thy light is come, and gives their full meaning to them; awake thou that fleepest, and arise from the dead, and Chrift fhall give thee light. Here the dead ; * This is delivered as the sense of the prophet, because it is ushered in as a quotation, wherefore he faith or it (that is, the fcripture) faith. The language of the prophet is an allufion to the rifing of mankind from fleep when the fun rifes upon them in the morning; but as the prophet doth not speak according to the letter, the light is the true light of the world, and the fleep is the fleep of death, either natural or spiritual: and fo the apostle hath only translated the words of the prophet from the letter into the fpirit, and given them their true meaning. |