and all your anxieties, which are not sent in anger, but for the sake of purifying you, and preparing you for your eternal inheritance? Bear this in mind. Be earnest in your prayers for your children's sake. Do all that you can for them: first, that they may be religious; secondly, that they may be happy.

But, as to all the rest, consider, and rejoice in considering, that you are in the hands of a merciful Father which is in heaven, and who will not lay upon you more than you can bear. He it is who sends every affliction for your good, to the end that no blessing may seem to you perfect in this world. On Him, then, let your soul rest. Look forward towards that world to come, in which your true treasure lies. And, above your children, love your Saviour here, that with them you may be partaker of His glory hereafter.

SERMON IX.

CHRIST UNCHANGEABLE.

ON THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR.

HEBREWS xiii. 8.

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." FROM these words we learn a truth which is well worthy at all times of our serious consideration, namely, that while every created thing alters from time to time, on the other hand, Jesus Christ, the uncreated, only-begotten Son of the Father, changes not. Howsoever we may alter, He continues the same. He is in His own nature unalterable, unchangeable; and for this reason, because He is not only man, but God. Were He any thing less than God, He must needs be subject to change; for any thing less than God is a creature; and every creature is more or less subject to time; and every thing subject to time is subject to change. God only inhabiteth eternity; God only is not subject to time; God only, therefore, is not subject to change.

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This title of unchangeable is what in the Old Testament God claims for Himself. Thus, in the book of the Prophet Malachi, "I am the Lord," He says, "I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." Speaking also of His eternal purpose concerning the redemption of man, He declares, by the Psalmist, that it alters not. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips. I have sworn once by My holiness, that I will not fail David. His seed shall endure for ever, and his seat is like as the sun before Me." Again, in the book of Numbers, we read, God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent. Hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?" And in like manner St. James says, Every good and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

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For

This also even by nature alone we seem to understand: I mean, nature itself teaches us that the Eternal God must be unchangeable. whatever is changeable we feel to be perishable, and naturally fear to depend upon. Accordingly we value persons whose characters are not inclined to change, feeling that we can depend upon such. But those persons who often change, we never put

1 Mal. iii. 6.

3 Numb. xxiii. 19.

2 Ps. lxxxix. 34.

James i. 17.

trust in. Now, we have an instinctive feeling that God must needs be a Being that may be absolutely depended upon. Needs must He therefore be of an absolutely unchanging nature.

The same unchanging character is attributed in Scripture not only to the Father, but also to the Son. Thus the Psalmist says of the Son: "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail." And in the book of Revelation Jesus Christ thus declares concerning Himself: "I am the first and the last, the beginning and the end." And again, in our text, we read, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever."

We must, then, receive it as an eternal truth, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the Son of the Virgin Mary, God and man in one Person by taking of the manhood into God, is an unalterable, unchangeable Being; that what He was when He ascended into heaven, the same He is now, the same He will be for ever; that the time will never arrive when the two natures of God and Man will in Him be separated. Of His kingdom, and of Himself as King, there shall 2 Rev. xxii. 13.

1 Ps. cii. 25.

be no end.

Having once taken upon Himself our flesh, as second Person of the blessed Trinity, receiving the temporal into the Eternal, in that flesh will He perpetually endure. In the language of the second article, "The Son, which is the Word of the Father, the very and eternal God, took man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect natures-that is to say, the Godhead and manhood-were joined together in one Person, never to be divided."

This truth, I say, every Christian must hold fast as a most glorious and consoling belief, that, however much he himself may change, Jesus Christ, not only in His divine but in His human nature, is "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." So that when the world, and the stars, and all other created things, come to an end, He will then be the same as He is now; and He is now the same as He was at that moment when, ascending into heaven, He sat down in our nature at the right hand of God. So that, looking forward even to the utmost reach of eternity, no Christian need fear that in the most distant conceivable ages he will be left without that same Christ to depend upon on whom he now depends-united with whom, through His manhood, then as now, he will be able for ever to draw nigh unto God, whom to approach otherwise would be to perish.

This, then, being our most consoling and as