to call God brother, would be most degrading and impious. Our Lord, therefore, in thus characterizing himself, assures us, that he was the furthest possible from the thought of assuming to himself to be God, or to be any other than one of the human race, high in the favour of God, and beloved by him!

III.

What a mighty honour is this that is done to us; that our great Lord after his resurrection, and consequently now he is in heaven, should own himself of our nature, once a partaker of flesh and blood, as we are; should acknowledge us as his nearest kindred ; and this with a kind view, that, by following him in virtue and holiness, we may become partakers of that immortal nature and happiness to which he is now raised!

There is but one road to this, without which our earthly relation to him will be of no service, and which he once, on a certain occasion, pointed at in a beautiful manner; (Matth. xii. 50.) "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother."

To be thus doubly related to Christ is an

honour

honour and advantage infinitely superior to all that the wealth, and rank, and titles of this world can bestow; those shadowy short-lived distinctions, too often only a cover to the want of real worth and virtue, which men not seldom sacrifice to obtain them. Under

the pressure of any real distress or calamity they can afford little relief, and must all be dropped at the grave, when we return to our mother earth, from whence we were taken. But this relation and kindred to Christ, founded on real virtue and obedience to the divine will, shall outlive the grave, and qualify its wearer for an endless felicity with him and with all good beings,

IV.

!

Our Lord's message to his disciples is this "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God."

These words of our heavenly teacher and master, Jesus, are so plain that no explication can add to them.

He therein declares that he had the same God and Father that his apostles had, and, consequently, that there is but one God, who 2G 2

is

is the common God and Father of him, and of us all.

All reflections upon this I would leave to yourselves; but would only add, that hence we may gather, that if there be any passage of scripture in which Christ is supposed to be called Almighty God, it must be misunderstood; because Christ declares there is but one God, and that this God is his God and Father no less than ours.

And therefore when soon after, in this very chapter, the apostle Thomas, after touching Christ's body and being convinced thereby that he was alive again, immediately said, "My Lord, and my God;" he did not intend thereby to address Christ, for his being raised to life was not a proof of his being God; but it was an expression of his wonder and devout adoration of God, who had brought his Lord and Master, Jesus, to life again.

The more our holy religion approaches the purity of its first institution, and the more exactly we follow the directions and example of the blessed Jesus in the worship of God, the more worthy of acceptance will the gospel appear.

And

And whilst every one must take care not to hold the truth in unrighteousness and deceit, and to worship HIM alone whom he believes to be God, and able to hear and to help him,

We should all remember, that religion is not nice and accurate speculation and opinion, but, according to the wise and brief summary of the apostle James, (i. 27.) "Pure religion, and undefiled before God, even the Father, is this; To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

V.

It would be blameable and contrary to our duty and custom, which is, to hold up what is excellent to view and imitation, to pass by here without notice the piety and fortitude which Mary Magdalene, and the other women that accompanied her, showed upon the occasion of our Lord's death.

Their attachment and veneration for him, who was so holy, and so good to them and to all, led them forth ere it was light to visit his sepulchre, and pay their last melancholy duty to his dead corpse, whom they never more ex

pected

pected to see in this world; quite regardless of what might happen to themselves in that hour of danger to Christ's disciples, 'and when his affrighted apostles hardly durst show themselves.

If women now fall short in any real excellence, if they are not eminent in virtue and whatever can recommend them to God, it is not for lack of encouragement and better examples in the sacred writings, and also in the trying times of persecution for the truth at the first propagation of the gospel among the heathens, and the no less cruel rage since of christians in power against other christians, on account of their diversity of religious opinions. Let this be said, as it may be justly said, to take off that undue partiality which men in general are wont to show towards themselves, as if they only were capable of great achievements and of attaining to excellence; a partiality which they have not learned from the gospel.

But, alas! many women are but too ready to give up their claim to excel in virtue and things praise-worthy, content to sit down with lesser attainments, with being wholly insignificant and useless in a moral view.

But