suffering death in the execution of his commission, but this would not have declared God's willingness to die for every man. This love could not have been declared, except by a personal sacrifice on the part of God. It could not have been declared except by God actually becoming man, and dying for every man. It could not avail itself of omnipotence, and God's love did not draw back from the proof. Jesus was God, and he declared this love by descending and condescending into the human nature, and in that nature tasting death for every man. The Father's love rejoiced in its full manifestation. He was well pleased in the only begotten Son. He

saw His own perfect image, and He saw it in that very nature which had revolted-He saw it, and was well pleased. Thus only could God's love have been truly declared.

The world has various imaginations about God's love, but in this act the true love is declared. Some think that it is mere approbation, so that those only can be loved, who deserve it. And some think that it is connivance, under the shelter of which they may sin without danger. Whilst others, more versed in the divine character, think it a holy benevolence, in the spirit of which God grieves over sin, and desires the righteousness and happiness of men, and would find His own full satisfaction in seeing them thus restored. But this is not love. God is all this,-He is holy and He desires the holiness of his creatures. But He is something more than this. God is love, and love desires to be loved; love demands fellowship, a communion of happiness, and can be satisfied with nothing short of it.

A holy benevolence could have been declared through a proxy, love could not. God has a personal

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tender affection for every man, so that He desires union and fellowship with every man. Now the Son declared his love of the Father, by coming into the root of the n. re, that part which Adam occupied, and remember that there is a fibre of the root in every branch, in every twig of the tree. This is the meaning of Christ being called "the second Adam." And this is the meaning of that word also, "the head of every man is Christ." And this is that gospel which Paul was commissioned to preach amongst the Gentiles," Christ in you, (yea in every man,) the hope of glory." "* Reader do you understand this. It is eternal life. Well it is this movement of the Son, to declare the love of God in the fallen nature, and to the fallen children of men, and through them to all the creation, which must be recognised in every action and suffering of Christ, before we can understand what that element in them is, which gave them, and gives them, their infinitely meritorious value in the Father's eyes. It is this movement which He speaks of when he says, " I come to do thy will." And it is by this will, says the apostle, that we are sanctified, that is, qualified to enter into the presence of God, freed from the imputatation of sin. I may add, that this same movement must be recognised by us in every event of providence, before we can fully understand the blessedness of the mediatorial dispensation. Every event comes to us in the spirit of that first movement. For every thing comes to us from the hand of Jesus, and that movement was the origin of His mediatorship.

Thus was there a great glory given to the character of God, by the condescending of the Son into the fallen

* 1 Cor. xi. 3. ; xv.; Rom. v.; Col. i. 27.

ature of man, a glory which none but God in the flesh ould have given to it. Because love questioned cannot be justified by any form of words, or any messenger, t can only be justified by the personal act of Hims who loves. And, therefore, it required the personal act of Him who was God to justify the questioned love of God. And behold how He justified it.

This condescension of the Word into the fallen hature is the chief element in the atonement. This is the grand declaration of God to the creature. And t is of this act that I spoke, when I said that Christ did a work, which it is impious in man either to attempt to do, or to attempt to add to. The next thing which he accomplished was, in the power of the Spirit received by faith, to realize and manifest the character of God in the fallen human nature, in spite of its opposite tendencies. Now it is in this path that He calls on men to follow Him.

He came to declare the truth of God's character, and to put truth into the fallen nature, by entering it Himself, so that now that love of God which rejoiceth only with the truth, might again rejoice with man, and that form of love which alone is life, might again become our surrounding element, even the form of favour, for in God's favour is life.

Holy love is the only truth, and, therefore, it is, that love rejoiceth with the truth, for love rejoiceth with love. And O what a conflict had that truth to wage with the nature into which it had entered. That fair and glorious and holy thing had come into a horrible pit, into a miry clay, into a cage of unclean birds, into a den of thieves.

1 For what were all the sufferings of Christ in the flesh out the actings of holy love, in contact with and op

position to unholiness and hatred? And therefore i was that the Father was pleased with them. He loved the Father, and he loved the truth, and he loved man, and wherever he was he saw God dishonoured, the truth despised, and man destroying himself. He saw nothing in the world but sin and misery and a headlong rushing to ruin, and his love mourned over these things, and his holy nature was revolted by them, and so he says, "Horror hath taken hold of me, because men keep not thy law ;" and thus he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefs, and every grief and every sorrow was an acting of holy love, well pleasing and glorifying to God. Even had he been merely a dumb spectator of the world's course, he could not have escaped being a man of sorrows and of griefs, but he was not a dumb spectator,—he was the faithful witness, he could not keep silence,-the fire of holy love burned within him, and he spake with his tongue, he testified for God and the truth, and he testified against the world that its deeds were evil. He testified against the rebellion of man, and claimed for God that which was due to him. And he spoke not with his tongue only, he was the life of God made manifest in the flesh,-he was the life made light, and he walked up and down in that living light, and as it was in a world of spiritual death and darkness that he thus walked, the light in him continually condemned the death, and the light the darkness. And though this living light was love, and a love to every man, for it was the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world; and though he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, yet he drew upon himself the hatred of all men, and this just because he was the very character of God, and he was

shining and acting among the poisoned posterity of that fool who had first said in his heart, " no God." At last they cast him out of the vineyard and slew him, they crucified him who had come from the throne of glory and the bosom of the Father to save them, by lovingly submitting to all this for them. They killed Him, but they could not kill His love; that was stronger than death, and stronger than hatred. Blessed be His name; His love conquered. Every action of his being was a part of that warfare of love against hatred, and of righteousness against unrighteousness, which he with perfect success, but with uninterrupted sorrow, waged through his life. That warfare could not be carried on without sorrow, it was a continual grieving over sin and ruin, and a continual condemnation of those whom he loved unto the death. For he was every man's brother, and his condemnation was not the condemnation of a stranger, but of a brother.

He thus glorified the Father by his sorrow unto death, and the Father was well pleased. He manifested the glorious brightness of God's love in the face of. man's hatred and pollution, and he did this in the flesh, in that nature by which God had been dishonoured. He did it too in the root of the flesh which had in the person of its first root, said, "No God." And thus out of that very field in which Satan had appeared to have gained a victory over God, he brought forth much glory to God, by showing, not only that his love was stronger than hatred, and his good stronger than evil, and that where sin had abounded, there grace had: much more abounded, but by showing that God could force the wrath of man and devils to praise him, and that he could make hatred subserve the purposes

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