weighs in the balances of eternity the worth of immortal souls, every minister of the Gospel must commence, must carry on his ministry. Although Paul himself preach, and, with all the authority and all the faithfulness of a heaven-inspired ambassador of the cross, commend himself, by manifestation of the Gospel truth, to every man's conscience in the sight of God, (verse 2,) that Gospel which he preaches will to some be hid, and the consequence to these is inevitable perdition. The thought is enough to stagger and appal the most resolute heart; for who that has the heart of a Christian minister can look abroad on the congregation and people committed to his charge, and become accustomed to see them from sabbath to sabbath in the House of God, and during the week familiar with their faces and their families as a father and a friend, till the name of each, from the infant that was born yesterday to the man of grey hairs that is tottering over the grave, is learned and comes without an effort to his lips, and the welfare of each, from the highest to the lowest of his charge, is the object ever present, ever uppermost in his soul, the subject of his perpetual prayer, and the task for accomplishing which he rejoices to spend his strength, yet sit down at last with the conviction, with the certainty, of damnation being the portion of one of his immortal flock? One of those among whom he has gone in and out-one whose name he knows-one to whom he has proclaimed the great salvation-whom he has warned, exhorted, entreated by the blood of Christ, by the grace of God, by the nearness and glory of the kingdom of heaven-shut out, eternally cast out from heaven, and, with the devil and the reprobate, cast eternally into hell What a consideration, although there were but one One Judas methinks would be enough to make the minister like his Master, a man of sorrows. But oh "Oh it is not over one that he is called to weep. Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" was the lamentation of the Saviour. Multitudes-the multitude of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, were those to whom, seeing the end from the beginning, he said, "If thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. Behold your house is left unto you desolate." Whether the minister who has the mind of Christ, and surveys with the same eye of commiseration the lost and wandering sheep who refuse to return to the fold, will have cause to take up the same lamentation over his flock, when he reads the future condition of the people of his charge in the present character which they exhibit to the world; and whether the lost who would not be saved, be now, as in the Saviour's day, and under the Saviour's ministry, the multitude, or be the few, while the many are now heirs of salvation, let the text determine. From this you learn, and shall, I trust, this day, by the demonstration of the Spirit, learn— 1st, That the Gospel of Christ is light and glory, which, revealing Christ as the image of God, shines, where it is effectual to salvation, into the heart, and, transforming the soul into the image of God, makes the carnal man spiritual, and the sinner a saint. The Gospel is the revelation of God, or of the glory of God, to fallen man. Addressed to sinners it brings, it is glad tidings of great joy, because it announces the glorious fact, that love to sinners is the glory of God, and that it is by the manifestation of this love on his part, and by the belief of this manifested love on the sinner's part, that God, in the character of Saviour, is glorified. In the Gospel we see the invisible God. He appears there, and perhaps there alone, as He is, in the full blaze of unclouded perfection, "light in which there is no darkness at all;" so that the principalities and powers of heaven, the seraphim that stand nearest to the eternal throne, when they would discover the manifold wisdom and other infinite excellencies of him whom they delight to serve, stoop, we are assured, from their thrones on high, and desire to look into the things respecting Christ which are now revealed by the Spirit to the Church on earth. The mystery of godliness, God manifest in flesh, is, not only to sinners on earth, but to the saints and seraphim and general assembly of the Church in heaven, the brightest display of Deity. What is the work of creation to the work of redemption, when the Creator stoops to become the Redeemer! Creation in all its infinite range, magnificent as are its forms, and splendid the testimony which through these it silently raises to the majesty and might of the Author of the universe, is but the stupendous theatre which the word of the Almighty has framed, for displaying in another more glorious work, the incarnation, the humiliation, the glorification of his only-begotten Son, the still more stupendous mystery of redeeming love. Love, redeeming love, holy love, is that in which he will be glorified; and therefore all that magnifies the thunder of his power, or manifests the length and breadth of his wisdom, his justice, his holiness, or his perfection in other respects, whether in creation or the administration of Providence, must, as subordinate and subservient, give place to that which makes known the love that passeth knowledge, in all its length, and breadth, and depth, and height. That manifestation of the love of God is made in Christ the Saviour. Christ is the image of the invisible God. Christ manifest in the flesh is the manifestation of God in his glory to the world; and in Christ as he lived, and Christ as he died and rose again from the dead, in the life and death and resurrection of Christ, we behold a perfect revelation of God- we see unfolded that which it concerns us most as accountable immortals to know the disposition with which in the Gospel we, although hell-deserving sinners, are regarded by the God with whom, as helldeserving sinners, we have all to do. The mind of Christ is the revelation of the mind of God. The work of Christ in all its parts is the revelation of the mind of God; and every part of that work, from the cradle to the cross, is, according as the mind of Christ was therein developed, a new and constantly increasing development of love that passeth knowledge to the souls of sinful men. It was to sinners, not to the righteous, that He came. It was to those who were burdened with the direful consequences of sin, the - blind, the lame, the withered, the leprous, and the dead that He ministered, and in behalf of such that He exerted his divine power in performing miracles; it was to the lost, whom He came to seek and to save, that He preached the Gospel of the kingdom of heaven; and there was not one-not one-of the inhabitants of Judea and Galilee among whom He went about doing good whom He did not invite, command, and intreat to enter into that kingdom which He proclaimed thrown open in the Gospel to all. Look, then, at Jesus going about doing good and healing all that were possessed of the devil, if you would see the disposition of the God and Father of Christ towards those who, as sinners, are under the devil's power. That love which He manifested to every child of affliction, that willingness, that readiness, that eagerness which He displayed to remove every disease from every sufferer who solicited his aid, that no respect of persons and of characters which He showed, whether the suppliant was a nobleman or a beggar by the way, a publican or a harlot, a pharisee or a sadducee, that rejection of none, not one, who came to be healed, was but an indication of that love which He bears to every soul that is under the dominion of sin, of that willingness, that readiness, that eagerness which He proclaims to remove from every sinner the plague of his heart, and of that freeness of grace which, without respect of persons or qualifications, is published as alike extended to all, whatever be the name or the character which they bear, since all, as lost, have alike need to become partakers of the great salvation. That work, from beginning to end, is |