men.

And "when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory," the test of character on which their final destiny will turn, will be their sympathy, or want of sympathy, with him in love and charity to their brethren, especially to the poor and needy, the sick and afflicted, of the children of "Inasmuch as ye did, or ye did it not, unto one of the least of these my brethren ye did, or ye did it not, unto me." Then woe to all the uncharitable and the misanthropic, the haters and oppressors of their race. Yea, woe to all who turn a deaf car to the cry of the afflicted and the oppressed when he pleads, "Am I not a man and a brother"; but pleads in vain. But blessed are they who have visited the sick and the prisoners; who have knocked off the chains of the slave; who have given a cup of cold water to a brother of Jesus; who have been followers of him who was anointed to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. The Son of Man will stretch out his hands towards them, in the sight of an assembled universe, and say: "Behold my family. Behold my mother and my brethren."

The person of Christ is a mine of wealth, in which the church has been digging ever since the opening of the Christian era, and yet she has only just begun to discover its treasures. The truths which are directly involved in this one title, the Son of Man, we cannot but see, are surpassingly rich. The lessons of practical wisdom suggested by our discussion are scarcely less precious. They are too numerous and copious to be developed in this Article; but we cannot refrain from a brief statement of a few of them.

1. The view which we have taken of Christ as the Son of Man may shed light on the interpretation of many passages of scripture, especially on the prophecies of the Old Testament as interpreted in the New. Not a few of the passages which are quoted in the Gospels and the Epistles as prophecies of Christ, when examined in their connection,

appear to have had quite another original meaning and application. Hence has arisen that anomaly in the interpretation of the scriptures, the doctrine of a double sense. which has been carried to such extravagant lengths by many well-meaning commentators, and which has brought so much scandal on the sacred writings. Does not our view of Christ as the Son of Man establish a rational foundation for a twofold application of many scriptures which is not at all arbitrary, but grounded in the very nature of the case.

Take, for example, that earliest and most comprehensivo of prophecies contained in the third chapter of Genesis "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." The enmity between the serpent and the whole race, who are the offspring of our first parents-in other words, between mankind and satan, who was a manslayer from the beginning-is the most obvious reference of this scripture. But Christ is still more truly and emphatically the seed of the woman, the "man from the Lord," to whom so many godly women, from Eve to the Virgin Mary, hoped to give birth; and in his conflict with and triumph over satan, the race wins its only real victory over its great adversary. In him, and him only, the seed of the woman effectually bruises the serpent's head.

So Christ was emphatically the seed of Abraham and the son of David- the noblest offspring of the patriarchs and kings of Israel; the richest product of the Jewish nation, in whom all other nations were indeed blessed, - nay, the embodiment, in one person, of all the truths and all the blessings which the posterity of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the offspring of David were designed to convey to mankind.

Again, look at the eighth Psalm, and its interpretation in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained: What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest

him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands." Nothing can be more obvious than that the primary appli cation of this Psalm is to the rank of man, that is, the human race, in the creation, and the Creator's intention that he should have dominion over the inferior creatures in this lower world; yet the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews applies the passage to Christ. And in the light of this discussion, and only in that light, we see that the application is not forced, not arbitrary. Christ is the Son of Man in the fullest sense. Christ is man in the largest sense-the representative of the race; nay, its impersonation and embodiment. The rank in which man was created a little lower than the angels-involved the condition to which the Son of Man, the representative of the race, must needs humble himself, that he might bear their sins and be made in all respects like unto his brethren. On the other hand, the glory and honor with which Christ is crowned as the risen and ascended Saviour, is the exaltation of the race of which he is the natural and the official representative. And, what is perhaps the chief significance both of the Psalm and the Epistle, the human race can attain to its proper manhood, and its full dominion over the material creation, only in and through Christ. When, under the transforming power of the gospel of Christ, man is regenerated, redeemed, disenthralled, transfigured after his likeness, and earth is subdued, purified, beautified, glorified into an image of heaven, then, in the latter days, the glories of God's condescending love to the children of men will be seen as they never were before, and then that Psalm will be sung with some just understanding and appreciation of the opening and closing verse which constitutes its key-note: "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth."

On the same principle, how natural and beautiful is the application to Christ of not a few scriptures of the Old Tes tament which originally had reference to David and Solo

mon and the line of Jewish kings and captains, to the patriarchs, priests, and prophets, also, in their long succession.1 In his very constitution as the Son of Man, as well as in his official relation to the race, Christ is patriarch, prophet, priest, and king of humanity; and all that is truc and good in any of the great and good men, especially of the chosen people, is only a fragment, only a type and shadow, of perfect truth and goodness in him, the great antitype; all that is valuable and enduring in the history of mankind before the coming of Christ foreshadowed him, and he is the substance of all that is permanent and truly excellent in the history of the nations that have lived, or are yet to live, under the Christian era. Educated men, scientific men, should be the last to harbor a prejudice against types. The material world is full of them. The pre-Adamic earth foreshadows in every stratum of its rocky surface, prophesies on every page of its great volume, the coming of man to possess it and to rule over it. Every inferior animal that has ever lived on our globe contained in its bodily structure the type and prophecy of man. And human nature, human history, is all one great type, shadow, prophecy, promise of the Son of Man, who is at the same time the Son of God, and God's anointed king over the world. Why then should it be thought strange that the Bible and the spiritual world are full of types and prophecies of him who is the representative of humanity, and "head over all things to the church?"

2. Our subject suggests the inquiry whether we are not in danger of undervaluing and neglecting the human, or, which is only another form of the same word and another aspect of the same thing, the humane side of our religion. This side was made very prominent in the teaching of our Lord; and what is more, it was pre-eminently exemplified in

1 For example, the promise (Deut. xviii. 13): "I will raise them up a prophet," ctc., was falfilled in Joshua first, then in the whole line of the prophets and leaders of Israel, but most emphatically fulfilled in the Great Prophet and Captain of our Salvation.

his life, and especially symbolized in his person. He distinctly declared in his first sermon, the sermon on the mount, that no service to God was acceptable in his sight, while the offerer was at enmity with any of his fellow men: "First go and be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." And he repeated the lesson—a lesson taught also in the Old Testament, with all its pomp of outward ceremonials-over and over again, by his words and by his actions. "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice." "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Man is more sacred, more precious, than the Sabbath. "Therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath." With this agree also the writings of the Apostles: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father," says James, "is this to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." "If a man say I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar," says John; "for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not scen." And even Paul, the most strenuous advocate of justification by faith, declares that knowledge and faith without charity are nothing. That splendid culogium on love as the chief of the graces is not from John, the apostle of love, but from Paul, the apostle of faith, and the logical and eloquent expounder of Christian theology.

While the word of God thus magnifies the duties of humanity and charity, he is now forcing the subject upon the attention of the people of this land by his fearful judgments and his wonder-working providence. The salvation of our country in this solemn crisis of American history is probably suspended on the question whether the American people, and even the American churches, are willing to recognize in every one of those lowly and oppressed human beings, who have been so long crying in vain for deliverance, a man and a brother. They are men. They are our brethren. They are the brethren of the Lord Jesus Christ. Will we as a nation, will we as Christian churches, own and treat