to preach for you? And if you feel this way so precious to yourselves, and hold it so dutiful to make it known to others, how should you value that Word which is the map on which you can trace it --that ministry, wherever it be, that faithfully and fully delineates and describes it! and how earnestly should you seek in the way to let your light so shine, that others seeing your good works may glorify your Father who is in heaven!

Christ the rath.

John xiv. 6.

ET us now notice the second epithet our Lord assumes for Himself; "I am not only the way, but the truth." All the three epithets are connected with each other. A way would be useless if it were so dark that we could not see to

walk in it; therefore He is the Truth; and a way illuminated by all the splendours of a thousand suns would be utterly useless, if we had no strength to walk in it, and therefore He is the Life ;-the way in which we walk to heaven, the truth that illuminates every footstep, and the life that inspires our exhausted spirits, and enables us to go on from strength to strength, and from grace to grace, till at last we appear before God in Zion. In one word, we are complete in Christ, the complete Saviour; having in Him, from Him, and by Him, all we need to know of what God is, all we need to learn of what we are, and all that can be revealed of the way that leads from the lowest level in which sin has left us, to the loftiest platform in heaven to which grace can possibly elevate us.

What is meant by this expression or epithet, "the truth"? Jesus says, "I am not only the true Messiah, but the Truth, from whom all the rays of truth radiate, to whom all truths return, in whom all truths have their harmony; out of whom science is confusion, philosophy is chaos, and the world and mankind an inexplicable labyrinth; I am the Truth." And if so, then He is the truth, in contradistinction and in opposition to all the erroneous systems and false pretenders that preceded his advent, and assumed to be the guides, the saviours, or the directors of erring mankind. Contrasted with every system that claims to be from God, Christianity is true; in opposition to every one that assumes to be a Messiah, Christ is the truth. In opposition to all human systems of religion, Christ is the truth; and in proportion as Christianity prevails, these systems must die. Our religion is not Christianity so much as Christ; we preach not a creed, but Christ. Our Gospel is the knowledge, not of a system, but the saving knowledge of a personal Saviour. Hence the answer to the question, "What must I do to be saved?" is not, "Subscribe this creed; believe in that dogma; accept justification by faith;" but, "Believe in Christ, the way, the truth, and the life."

Christ is the truth and fulfilment of all ancient prophecy. Take the first prophecy pronounced amid the wrecks of Eden onwards to the last proclaimed by Malachi, when he saw the first beams of the rising Sun kindling the distant mountain crags; and you find in Christ the truth, the complement, the fulfilment of them all. These predictions grew in brightness till Christ came ; they are inexplicable except in his light. It is impossible to harmonize Isaiah with himself, or Isaiah with Daniel, unless we look at both shining in the light, and covered with the lustre of Christ, the way, the truth, and the life. If Christ be mere man, if Christ be not the Saviour, if He be not the truth of these, holy men of old did not write as they were moved by the Holy Spirit of God. But the moment that all the prophets gather round

the cross, and bear their testimony to Jesus, as He uttered those accents of mingled agony and victory, "It is finished!" a new light is cast upon them all; each recognizes in Christ the burden of his prophecy; and all behold the Lamb of God as the end of their predictions, the object of their hopes, the all and in all of ancient prophets, and of living and of modern saints; so that, reading the prophecies in the light of Christ, you see not only that Christ is the Messiah, or the truth of them, but that their hearts were inspired by Him to whom the future and the past are equally and perfectly luminous.

Christ is the truth not only of all the ancient prophecies, but of all the ancient types. Prophecies and promises were, God audibly promising Christ; and shadows were the footprints of Christ upon the sands of time, as He came to seek and to save sinners that were lost. Cut off the New Testament from the Old, and Leviticus is inexplicable. Refer back to those ancient types, and see how beautifully and clearly they point to Christ as the truth. The paschal lamb tells of his atonement; the rock in the desert speaks of the refreshing streams that flow from Him; the manna that fell like the dew from the skies is the symbol of the bread of life; the high priest in the holy of holies is the prefiguration of our great High Priest; the holy of holies is the picture of the chancel of the universe, where Christ now is pleading and interceding for us; the morning and the evening sacrifice is the true Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. All these ancient and beautiful prefigurations, like dim and misty shadows in the moonlight of ages that have passed away, were meant to teach the Jew that the substance was yet to come, and to lift his heart from his burdensome ceremonial to that blessed day when neither on this mountain, nor on that, should men worship the Father, but all should recognize Him in Christ as a Spirit, whom all should worship in spirit and

in truth.