commission from the eternal Godhead to reveal the Divine glory in the salvation of sinners, and the prophets were but undercommissioners, to speak for Him before the time of His personal appearing. Their inspired word had authority only because it was His word. When He came into the world, the powerful formula" Thus saith the Lord of hosts"-that gave such weight to their words, and constituted such an influential claim upon human attention, obedience, and faith, became on His lips the more direct and august,-" Verily, verily, I say unto you," because He was the Lord of hosts Himself. A Divine authority is found running through all His teaching in its very tone, not only because He is the Christ of God, but because He is over all, God blessed for ever. And this uniform tone of authority oftentimes finds articulate expression in the most emphatic forms. He said to Pilate—“Thou sayest that I am King," thus asserting His authority implicitly over the unjust judge at whose bar He stood. He said to His disciples, "Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am." He claimed as an unquestionable right 'that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father." And among His last words are these: "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, . . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you."

If many who are in these days professing loudly and constantly their admiration for the Man Christ Jesus, would only act consistently with that admiration and accept the doctrine of His authority, we should soon see and hear the last of that rationalism which now lifts its unreasoning head so high. His claim to admiration on the ground of personal excellence and wisdom, and His claim to authority, stand or fall together; found in the same records, authenticated in the same way, and coming down as equally valid claims from the times of His own ministry, when men, without rebuke from Himself, worshipped Him as God, and on through all the admiration and worship of the true Church of God to the present time, there is no admissible ground of reason on which we can concede the one if we reject the other. Indeed, it may be safely asserted, that if all His teaching which is distinctively authoritative in expression, tone, or associations, were taken out of the Gospel records, there would be nothing left for the spiritually jejune admiration of the rationalist to eulogise.

2. The testimony of Christ to the truth was, also, faithful and uncompromising. He proved Himself worthy to be called, by

way of eminence, "the Second Man," being true at every point to the gracious engagements into which He entered before the world was. When He moved among men as the Son of Man, the whole spirit and tone of His life, as a constant witness to truth showed that He was above them, and that He was infinitely beyond the influence of those selfish motives that have made such havoc with truth and honour and integrity in the world. When He proclaimed Himself "the Faithful and True Witness He gave the broadest invitation to His friends, and the most defiant challenge to His foes, to investigate His claims to absolute truthfulness in word and deed. He came to reveal the will of God; and the revelation was made, in despite alike of the fear and the favour of man. No truth was concealed to serve an ignoble purpose. No affectation of excessive love betrayed Him into charity for error. While the whole truth was uncompromisingly told, all error was as sternly discountenanced and denounced. As we follow him through scene after scene of His contact with erring men, as the great Prophet and Witness of the Church, we see established, upon ever-accumulating evidence, His title to that name by which He has brought light and life and salvation into the world-" the WORD OF GOD."

Hear His pointed rebuke to the multitude who followed Him so eagerly after eating of the loaves, when He might have sought to conciliate their favour and good wishes, so as to use them for the ends of earthly ambition, "Ye seek Me because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled;" hear His stern denunciations of the Scribes and Pharisees, His scorching exposure of their hollow formalism and heartless immorality, in making long prayers and yet devouring widows' houses, His fearless "Woe unto you!" when worldly prudence would have suggested that it would be wiser not to offend the great men ;-hear His settlement of one of the controversies of the time,-revived in the present time by the profoundly "spiritual” rationalist,—when the Sadducees came to puzzle Him about the resurrection, "Ye therefore do greatly err," "not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God;"-hear Him in His conversation with the Samaritan woman, first making the very exposure of her own sins the means of bringing her to his feet, when policy would have suggested that it would drive her away, and then exposing the sin of Samaria in the controversy about the place of divine worship that divided the two peoples, "Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews;"-hear

Him in His conversation with Nicodemus, passing by what was apparently meant as an honest compliment, "We know that Thou art a Teacher come from God," and virtually telling that member of a proud and self-satisfied order that he could "know" nothing without being" born again,"-and in all you hear the voice of One who was too faithful to truth to keep back an unpopular doctrine or fact for fear of giving offence, too mercifully faithful to His commission as the Saviour, to flatter the sinner to his ruin, In uncompromising fidelity to the cause of God and man, He stands alone as the perfect model for all men and for all time.

Other points in the MANNER of the Saviour's testimony, on which space forbids us to enter, are His matchless tenderness and forbearance with the truly humble sinner, His readiness to impart instruction, the absence of all false sentiment on the one hand, and of all bigotry on the other, and His marvellous skill in adapting Himself to different persons, places, and circumstances. In short, so consistent is He with Himself, with the truth, with His commission, with the claims of God, and with the needs of man, that no humble student of His True and Faithful Word can wonder to hear the acknowledgment wrung even from His enemies now, as of old, "Never man spake like this Man."

III. The question then arises, WHAT IS THE DUTY OF THOSE WHO ARE FAVOURED WITH ACCESS, EXTERNALLY, TO THE TRUTH HE HAS REVEALED ?

1. Their duty, obviously, is to receive His testimony. The argument that lies nearest to us to enforce this duty, is that of self-interest. Believing the record is the only way to life. We have spoken of a cloud of condemnation resting upon the entire family of the fallen. There is but one break in the cloud, and that is where the Divine Substitute stood beneath it, till it descended and spent its force upon Him at Gethsemane and Calvary. And from that moment till now, the sun of God's favour has been shining upon the consecrated ground of Emmanuel's Mediation. But upon no other point in the dark desolation of humanity, does there fall a single ray of hope. Hence we must flee from the darkness of merited condemnation, to the light in which the Second Man stands as the accepted Mediator, or perish by our refusal. "See," saith the Spirit," that ye refuse not Him that speaketh."

But the claims of the Divine glory, suggesting the great end

of our being, form by far the most powerful argument. In the testimony of Christ's words and deeds, God has made truth to meet with mercy, and righteousness and peace to kiss each other. The peculiar glory of the Divine character is, therefore, revealed in all its splendour in Christ, in salvation by grace. And when He who is the brightness of God's glory, and the express image of His Person says, "Incline your ear and come unto Me, hear and your soul shall live," the glory of free grace demands our hearty acquiescence in His testimony, and our hearty trust in Himself as our Righteousness and Life. And if we find our hearts unmoved by such a claim, and think it hard to admit our ruin by sin, and our dependence on a sovereign will for salvation, our sole resource against hard hearts is the cry of the helpless and guilty to the merciful Sovereign for the quickening grace of the Holy Ghost, as we cast ourselves down at Jesus' feet, saying, each one, "Lord I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.

2. It is the duty of true believers to imitate Christ in uncompromising attachment, before the world, to the truth that has brought life and peace into their own souls. The very receiving of Christ for salvation implies and requires their life-long identification with His testimony. And besides, they receive from Him their formal appointment as witnesses-joint-witnesses with Himself to eternal truth. They thus become, in an important sense, Christ's representatives in the world. It is distinctively His truth, revealed with all the sanctions of Divine authority, as the best method of serving the Divine purposes, with which they are entrusted. As true witnesses, like their Lord and Master, they must confess it, and confess it all, and confess it alone, without increase or diminution or alteration of any kind. Whatsoever He has thought it necessary to His purpose to reveal, they must think it necessary to profess and maintain. His absolute authority in revealing, being the formal reason for their submissive acceptance of any truth, must be an equally cogent reason for their acceptance of all truth.

As Christ's witnesses humbly accept and openly profess all ascertained Divine truth, their confession has a two-fold glory: first, it is the soul's faithful echo of the truth back to the Great Revealer, as a tribute of gratitude to abounding grace, and the expression of our perfect acquiescence, not only in God's great end in sending His Son, but also in the whole plan and method of His revealed salvation; and secondly, it is the sympathetic and compassionate effort, in the midst of the world's woe, to

make known, now and henceforth, in all its Divine fulness, purity, and adaptation," the record that God gave of His Son." For this broad, and generous, and self-denying confession of Christ, substitute either the easy selfish indifference of the worldly professor of religion about all questions of Divine truth, or the false charity that can look more indulgently and complacently upon error than upon conscientious fidelity, or the "cultured rationalism that abjures all "dogma," and all authority, even that of God Himself, and the glory is departed. It is no insignificant part of the glory of Christ, that while infinitely charitable, He was sternly intolerant of error, and that His method of liberating the human spirit from bondage was the establishment of an infinitely holy authority to which it is man's true liberty to bow. It is the part of the true witness now to resemble Him. It is the glory of a witness, as such, to speak the truth. And as the truth of God in Christ is the authoritative revelation of boundless love, it is the distinctive glory of the Christian witness, while proclaiming the Divine intrinsic authority of the revelation, to "speak the truth" also " in love," and so "grow up in all things into Him which is the Head, even Christ." And when the testimony is finished, the gates of glory, honour, and immortality, shall open before the Head and the members, "that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.'