may be stated to be these:-First, the teaching of men the true doctrine on the subject of God, and Providence, and duty, and a future state; second, the introduction of a pure and spiritual worship, consistent with the doctrine taught of the spirituality and purity of the Divine nature; third, the confirmation of the doctrine of immortality, by Christ's own resurrection from the dead; and fourth, the exhibition of a perfect moral example in the view of mankind. Now all of these purposes were assuredly contemplated by God in that mission of his Son by which they have been effected. All of them, likewise, were most worthy of the Divine benevolence to propose, as they all bore directly and extensively on human happiness. To all of them, moreover, more or less immediately, the mean and suffering condition in which Christ appeared, did most essentially contribute ;-opening to the humble Teacher of divine truth that familiar access to, and intercourse with men, from which the kingly preacher would have been excluded-while, at the same time, it encouraged the lowliest born and poorest of the people to come without constraint or awe to judge of his pretensions and learn of his doctrine ;-giving to the teacher of a new religion and a pure worship that moral testimony to his honesty and sincerity, which, with some minds outweighs the evidence even of miracles, and the force of which all minds feel, when a moral teacher is beheld persisting in his doctrine in the face of persecution, sufferings and death;-leading down the preacher of immortality to that public death which required to precede a rising from the grave, that was to be a demonstration to all of the fact of another state of exist

ence; and supplying to the great Exemplar the occasion of exemplifying those most difficult and most important graces and virtues of character, which have to do with poverty, provocation, pain, and mortal agony. But notwithstanding all this, we confidently put it to yourselves, whether, looking at the stupendous nature of the means by which these ends are effected—as we have endeavoured to open up a view of their magnificence-you can, however, admit any one of these ends to the acknowledged rank of a suitable and fitting purpose for such a high instrumentality;-whether you do not feel at once compelled to assign to them all but a subordinate place among the purposes of God in appointing that instrumentality;-whether you do not feel constrained to hold the divine wisdom to your view implicated, should no grander purpose still be found to have been in the contemplation of Heaven?

One or other of these two objections seems to apply to all the several ends mentioned, and to decide against their claim to be regarded as the great chief purpose of the manifestation of Christ: namely, either that they do not require the introduction of such a person as Jesus Christ in his proper nature was, in order to their accomplishment, or that they leave unnecessary and unjustified the most important of his sufferings, the most remarkable passages of his humiliation. Take, for example, the publishing of a new revelation to the world, and the instituting of a new and pure worship. Is it not felt immediately, that, humanly judging, there was nothing here for which one like unto Moses or St. Paul, in very truth of nature, might not have sufficed-seeing that what was wanted in the teacher

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of a new religion was infallibility, as the organ of divine truth, and a manifest commission from God— the one of which inspiration could supply, and the other, the power of working miracles? Assuredly there seems in this end, all important as it is, no object imperatively demanding the incarnation of the only begotten of the Father.—Or take now, the confirming of our hope of immortality by the personal resurrection from the dead of the authorised Teacher of it. it not even appear that, as respects this object, it would have been accomplished in a way more thoroughly satisfying to human feeling and conviction, had He who rose from the grave been altogether such as we— possessor simply of our humanity—of a nature unassociated with that divine nature, to which dissolution is wholly foreign, and life is a necessity?—Or take lastly, the exhibiting of a perfect moral example in the view of mankind; not to say that neither here is there a purpose absolutely requiring an incarnation of Deity, seeing that even a frail and sinful child of dust was capable of being rendered competent to it through the upholding and sanctifying grace of God-while the example of such an one were even the more commended to us by the assurance we should have of there being no inherent power present which we did not ourselves possess, nor no imparted ability which might not also be given unto us;-passing by this, do we not feel, that while the object of presenting to men a perfect moral example does most certainly justify and demand in Christ all such suffering and affliction as mortal flesh ever experiences under the dispensations of Providence, it yet leaves wholly without a justifying rea

son, without an evident necessity, all that mysterious and incomprehensible woe of soul, which was peculiar and solitary in the experience of the Man of Sorrows?

Altogether, we are confident of being borne out by the feelings and convictions of every reflecting mind when we say, that, exclusive of the one purpose of effecting an eternal salvation for men,-there is not one among the ends actually served by the advent of Christ in the flesh, which the Godhead of him who came in so mean a guise, and unto a life of such humiliation and suffering, does not at once pronounce as unfitting to be received as the grand purpose of heaven in that high ordination-not one which we are free to think would have called the only begotten of the Father to become a sojourner in our humanity, had it alone been in the view of infinite wisdom.

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III. But does, then, the purpose of effecting an eternal salvation for men so thoroughly approve itself fit and worthy to be held as the grand prime purpose of God, in the mission of his Son into suffering humanity? Oh! that it were given me to make manifest to you thoroughly it does-to unfold before the full magnificence of this great purpose of a merciful God, and thus to exhibit its entire correspondence in dignity and importance to the magnificent instrumentality by which it has been accomplished? But the theme of man's salvation is one which employs to the full the powers of angels-for which we have here no faculties adequate — which will supply subject of praise and wonder to the redeemed throughout eternity. When the grandeur of the Christian salvation is our subject of contemplation, then it is, then if ever, that we feel, in

our feebleness of intellectual grasp, as one standing on the shore looking forth upon the ocean. Only a short way do we see forward. Only a few points in the mighty theme come within our range; and even these serve to overpower the mind by the immensity of the field they indicate for the application of the salvation, and the vastness of the interests seen to be involved. Under their light, earth loses its insignificance in the mighty system of creation, and assumes the importance of being the selected theatre of events deeply affecting the interests and happiness of the moral universe.

Think, my brethren, of the native worth of that which was to be saved:-THE SOUL OF MAN-that undying spirit which he received directly from the inspiration of the Almighty-which alone gives nobility to the frame of dust wherein it dwells, and whose abandonment of that earthy tabernacle, is the signal for its breaking down into a mass of corruptionwhich the Creator has dignified with powers of intelligence so vast, and imbued with aspirations after knowledge and perfection so unbounded-which, exclusively of all his works below, bears, or can bear, the image of God-to which, He gave a value, a grandeur, and a glory, surpassing those of all material things, in conferring upon it that immortality which mocks at the stroke of death, and enables it to behold the sun, and moon, and stars as they shine, and to say, "I shall outlive you all."

Consider the salvation itself, which was to be effected. No mere temporal deliverance was it, affecting alone our present happiness and condition. The evils it contemplated, were nothing less than the ever