God's estimate of sin. Who is "the Man" to whom this Roman functionary points? and what has He done to lead to this hour of peril? One of His followers has sold Him, for the price of the meanest slave, to the heads of His Father's temple; and they have handed Him over, with words of abhorrence and execration, to the local executive of the hated foreign Power then dominating their country; with the request that He may be slain in the manner appointed for the worst Gentile criminals. But He has not sinned either against God or Cæsar. He is not a blasphemer, not a rebel, not the slightest injury has any human being ever received at His hands. On the contrary, His life, brief as it was, has been one of unparalleled blessing to multitudes. The world's history can show no such glorious page of beneficence as those three and a half years of the public career of Jesus of Nazareth. Every possible grace and virtue met in Him. He was the only perfect man that ever walked the earth. No eulogium equals His merits. Neither poet nor artist ever drew His likeness. The loftiest flights of sanctified eloquence cannot reach the sublime height of His character. Prophets were filled with the light of a holy enthusiasm when they saw Him in the far distance coming to our earth, and called Him the Wonderful; apostles call Him the Word of God, the Light of the world, the Unspeakable, and the Mystery of godliness; and once and again the Father breaks the silence of the heavens, by saying, "This is My beloved Son!"

And will God in very deed permit wicked hands to seize, torture, and slay this peerless One? Yes! Look; there in that pale, blood-stained, silent sufferer, forsaken by His poor disciples, hated by priest and Pharisee, and handed over to a horrible death by the person whom the emperor has sent to the province to administer justice-there, I say, in that silent sufferer, you behold the protest of the eternal God against the sin which has cursed and ruined His world. O, it throbs and pains His heart distressingly; but sin must be put away, and everlasting righteousness must be brought in, and His own beloved Son, in whom He delights exceedingly, will do both; otherwise the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air, will gain the victory, and evil will prove a thing of eternal duration, as a defective theology even to this day affirms, notwithstanding the gracious issues of the death of Christ during the ages that are past, and its glorious issues in the ages to come. The prohibitions of law, the threatenings of penalty, even the dread penalty of eternal death for sin-the capital punishment awarded by the righteous throne-do not, cannot, give us so impressive an idea of God's estimate of moral evil as we see in the sufferings and death of Christ. Cautions, warnings, appeals, terrible pictures of judgment, have usually but little effect; but let a man's eyes gaze intelligently on the marvellous story under notice, and he will get such an idea of God's infinite abhorrence of sin, that he, too, will abhor it, and flee from it to the adorable

Redeemer, who so loved us as to become a curse for us! God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and condemned sin in the flesh; there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. This is the essence of the Divine purpose in the incarnation of the Son of God. Deeds have an eloquent force which words have not; and when we see God giving up the Son of His heart, that He might press us to His heart as His dear children, we are melted, conquered, won, saved! It must be so; it is so!

2. Behold the Man as the Exemplar of the Redeemed. We are to follow, imitate, copy Him. He hath set us an example that we should follow His steps. The design of the incarnation embraced this among other points of supreme importance, that the Deliverer from death should be the model for life. "Alive unto God in Jesus Christ," is the motto and practical impulse of the Christian. He is bought, redeemed, ransomed; and, therefore, belongs to the Ransomer. He is his Lord's free man for willing service, and the very soul of that service is imitation of Him who delighted to do the will of His Father. "I have meat to eat that ye know not of. . . . My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work. . . . I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. . . I delight to do Thy will, O My God; yea, Thy law is within My heart." We read these, and statements of similar import, with much thankfulness, as characteristic of Him whose name we bear; but we must not forget that God has declared His purpose that the justified are to be" conformed to the image of His Son."

The standard is thus placed before us, not for our admiration only, but also for our imitation. He was obedient in all things; we are to be "obedient children." Translation from darkness to light is a supreme privilege, but. transformation of character must be its sequel and its proof. Sons of light must walk in the light, and must hold forth the light as the Divinely constituted lightbearers in a world over which the prince of darkness has thrown his blinding shadow. Living branches of the True Vine must bear fruit to the glory of the great Husbandman. "Practical Christianity "a phrase which never would have been invented but for the usurpation by dead creeds of the throne of the living Christpractical Christianity is Christ living in His people, and honouring God through them. We must show our faith by our works, our citizenship by our lives, our love by our loyalty, our consecration to Christ by unflagging zeal in His holy service.

If we thus "Behold the Man" as the model Man of the new creation, the higher Adam of a higher race than that which comes from the man of Eden, we are sure to appreciate the precepts of the apostolic Epistles, which are all, of course, addressed to Christians, or men of Christ. Those who are asked to walk in newness of life, are only those who have passed from death unto life. The slaves

of Satan are never asked to do the work of God. If they wish a better service, they must change masters. If they wish to be among the citizens, they must cease to be aliens. And if they desire to be counted with the flock, they must come to the good Shepherd, who gave His life for the sheep, and who has given His word that they shall never perish, but shall have eternal life.

Eternal life! What is that? Let us pause and ask ourselves if we understand it. What idea shapes itself on our minds, as we meet these two words in conjunction, as adjective and noun ? That they had a meaning, certain, definite, and clear, in the mind of our Lord, must be accepted as beyond doubt. He used no words without meaning, and gave no promise which He is unable to redeem. He held out no boon in the distance, drawn upon imaginary resources, which might never be within His reach, for the purpose of captivating His hearers and enlisting them in His cause. Impostors, for selfish ends, often by good words and fair speeches, deceive the hearts of the simple; but our Master is faithful and true, and what He has promised He will perform. And Paul's malignant foes, who were utterly incapable of taking the measure of that splendid man, said that, being crafty, he caught the money of the Corinthians with guile; a libel which he repudiates with noble indignation. Deception, disguise, religious falsehood, pious frauds, the hideous doctrine that the end sanctifies the means, came in a later age, when the Church had fallen fearfully, the age which witnessed the organised system of hypocrisy which blasphemed the name of our Lord by incorporating it in the word "Jesuitism."

With the words "eternal life" we are all familiar; and, perhaps, this is the reason why their astonishing meaning is not seen, for astonishing it is, if you will but think. What are we but dream-like phantoms, passing our few years of toil and care upon the surface of the earth, with the stamp of mortality upon us, whilst a few feet under its surface is our goal! This needs no proof, because the proof is simply the story of man. "Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever?" Weary and footsore, all the generations have closed their pilgrimage in the dust. Eternal life most assuredly belongs not to man, as such. The guess of Plato-for it was nothing more-that man has somewhere within him an immaterial entity upon which the dissolving chemistry of death cannot take effect, a life that cannot die, may have been adopted in the dark ages by theologians who wished to gain their pagan neighbours; and the phrase, "immortal soul," may have come down through the ages, and been embodied in song and sermon, book and homily, catechism and creed; but the thing is only fiction; it has no foundation in fact, in reason, or in Scripture. Alas! however, it belongs not to the list of harmless fictions. On the contrary, it has produced disastrous effects in relation at once to the nature of man, the meaning of redemption,

and the character of God. But is the idea of immortality, therefore, altogether a mistake? We praise God; far, far from it.

3. Behold the Man as the Eternal Life.

This is no inference or induction from the collation of many Scriptures. It is the very words of an inspired apostle.

In the opening of his first epistle, the mind of the Apostle John is burdened with a great thought which human language is unable fully to express. Yet, as he knows its immense value to the whole body of Divine truth, as the sun to the world he enlightens, essential to its very existence, he is anxious so to present it that no one may mistake his meaning. The human mind may not comprehend its breadth, and length, and depth, and height, yet it may be correctly realised as far as the mind is able. We may see that it means something of transcendent importance, though all that it means we may not grasp now, nor perhaps in the ages to come. Accordingly, he arrests attention by an emphatic assurance, as an honest and truthful witness, that he had heard, seen, steadily looked upon, and touched the Word of Life, the same blessed One whose eternity and Deity he declares in the opening of his gospel; and then, before he proceeds with his letter, penned this grand parenthesis: "For the Life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that Eternal Life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us."

Is there anything in the Bible more striking and important than this? There is apparent repetition in John's introductory words, but it is language trembling under the weight of its burden; it is the loving heart lingering on a theme of surpassing interest; it is the facets of a great brilliant throwing light in every direction; and the strength of the revelation is condensed in the parenthesis. The apostle sees around him a world of mortals: the failure of the first man was, of course, the failure of all men to rise above the state of mortality; the possible prize of Eden has been lost; and corruption, sin, and death are co-extensive with the human race. Yet there is no tone of disappointment in his words, as if a man's highest conception, that of immortality, were altogether a delusion. No; so far from that, his heart is bounding at the very thought, and he says, "I write this unto you that your joy may be full." The possibility of immortality is not a mistake, only you are to look for it far above and beyond the human race; not in Eden, but in Heaven; not in man, but in Christ; for "the Eternal Life was with the Father," away back, far, far back, long before months and years began to be, or the measuring line of time was put into the hands of mortals. But the period determined by perfect wisdom has come, the fulness of time for the incarnation of the Logos; and the Eternal Life which was with the Father has been manifested unto us. The Word, the Life, the Eternal Life, has come from the Father to give sonship and life everlasting to as many as receive Him; and we declare this unto you that ye also may have fel

lowship, communion, participation, with us in this Divine and permanent life; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

But in reality this truth, of eternal life the gift of God in Christ to the believer, sparkles like a constellation of stars of the first magnitude, or rather like a cloudless meridian sun, upon the pages of the Bible; which is emphatically, therefore, the Book of Life to all who receive the record." Just a few passages, out of multitudes, in proof:

"Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses" (1 Tim. vi. 12).

"In hope of eternal life which God that cannot lie promised before the world began " (Titus i. 2).

"That being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life" (Titus iii. 7).

"This is the promise that He hath promised us, even eternal life" (1 John ii. 25).

"And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life. These things have I written unto you that believe in the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life"

(1 John v. 11-13, 20). .

"Your life is hid with Christ in God. . . . Christ our life" (Col. iii. 3, 4).

"Because I live, ye shall live also " (John xiv. 19). 4. Behold the man as "the Resurrection."

It is mournful to think for any length of time over what men have lost in Christian truth by setting aside the resurrection as not needed. Any scheme of doctrine that dispenses with this, must be defective. The ghost-worlds of paganism and paganised theology are miserable substitutes for the resurrection. The Lord's grand purpose is to raise His people from among the dead at His coming, and to clothe them with incorruptibility. The majestic words of "the Prince of Life" at the grave of Lazarus, "I am the Resurrection and the Life," have not only been shorn of their Divine splendour by the doctrine that "the souls of believers, perfected at death, immediately pass into glory," but they have really been sent to the region of forgetfulness, as if they formed no part of revelation. The Church is being plundered of her jewels by the robber Rationalism; and, alas! many of those whom she has appointed as watchmen are either asleep, or in sympathy with the robber. It is exceedingly painful to me to speak thus, not only