His fall. But we are also told, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive;" and the same Law of God's Providence is maintained in both cases. Adam spreads poison; Christ diffuses life eternal. Christ communicates life to us, one by one, by means of that holy and incorrupt nature which He assumed for our redemption; how, we know not, still, though by an unseen, surely by a real com. munication of Himself. Therefore St. Paul says, that "the last Adam was made" not merely "a living soul," but " a quickening" or life-giving "Spirit," as being "the Lord from Heaven."* Again, in his own gracious words, He is "the Bread of life." "The Bread of God is He which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world;" or, as He says more plainly, "I am the Bread which came down from Heaven;" "I am that Bread of life;" "I am the living Bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever, and the Bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." And again, still more clearly, "Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." Why should this communion with Him be thought incredible, mysterious and sacred as it is, when we know from the Gospels how marvellously He wrought, in the days of His humiliation, towards those who approached Him? We are told on one occasion; "The whole multitude sought to touch Him; for there went virtue out of Him, and healed them all." Again, when the woman, with the issue of blood, touched Him, He "immediately knew that virtue had gone out of Him."‡ Such grace was invisible, known only by the cure it effected, as in the case of the woman. Let us not doubt, though we do not sensibly approach Him, that He can still give us the virtue of His purity and incorruption, as He has promised, and in a more heavenly and spiritual manner, than "in the days of His flesh;" in a way, which does not remove the mere ailments of this temporal state, but sows the seed of eternal life in body and soul. Let us not deny Him the glory of His life-giving holiness, that diffusive grace which is the renovation of our whole race, a spirit quick and powerful and piercing, so as to leaven the whole mass of human corruption, and make it live. He is the first fruits of the Resurrection; we follow Him each in his own order, as we are hallowed by His inward presence. And in this sense among others, Christ, in the Scripture phrase, is "formed in us ;" that is, the communication is made to us of His new nature, which sanctifies the soul, and makes the body immortal. In like manner we pray in the

* Gen. ii. 17. Luke vi. 19.

Mark v. 30. Vide Knox on the Eucharist. Remains, vol. ii.

-Service of the Communion, that "our sinful bodies may be made clean by His body, and our souls washed through His most precious blood; and that we may evermore dwell in Him, and He in us.'

Such then is our risen Saviour in Himself and towards us :-conceived by the Holy Ghost; holy from the womb; dying, but abhorring corruption; rising again the third day by His own inherent life; exalted as the Son of God and Son of man, to raise us after Him; and filling us incomprehensibly with His immortal nature, till we become like Him, filling us with a spiritual life which may expel the poison of the tree of knowledge, and restore us to God. How wonderful a work of grace! Strange it was that Adam should be our death; but stranger still, and very gracious, that God himself should be our life, by means of that human tabernacle which He has taken on Himself.

O blessed day of the Resurrection, which of old time was called the Queen of Festivals, and raised among Christians an anxious, nay contentious diligence duly to honour it! Blessed day, once only passed in sorrow, when the Lord actually rose, and the Disciples believed not; but ever since a day of joy to the faith and love of the Church! In ancient times Christians all over the world began it with a morning salutation. Each man said to his neighbour, " Christ is risen," and his neighbour answered him; "Christ is risen indeed, and hath appeared unto Simon." Even to Simon, the coward disciple who denied Him thrice, Christ is risen; even to us, who long ago vowed to obey Him, and have yet so often denied Him before men, so often taken part with sin, and followed the world, when Christ called us another way.— "Christ is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon !" to Simon Peter, the favoured Apostle, on whom the Church is built, Christ has appeared. He has appeared to His Holy Church first of all, and in the Church He dispenses blessings, such as the world knows not of. Blessed are they if they knew their blessedness, who are allowed, as we are, week after week, and Festival after Festival, to seek and find in that Holy Church the Saviour of their souls! Blessed are they beyond language or thought, to whom it is vouchsafed to receive those tokens of His love, which cannot otherwise be gained by man, the pledges and means of His special presence, in the Sacrament of His Supper; who are allowed to eat and drink the food of immortality, and receive life from the bleeding side of the Son of God! Alas! by what strange coldness of heart, or perverse superstition is it, that any one called Christian, keeps away from that heavenly ordinance? Is it not very grievous that there should be any one who fears to share in the greatest conceivable

* Vide note at the end of this [second Vol. Eng. Ed.] volume.

blessing which could come upon sinful men? What in truth is that fear, but unbelief, a slavish, sin-loving obstinacy, if it leads a man to go year after year without the spiritual sustenance which God has pro-vided for him? Is it wonderful that, as time goes on, he should learn deliberately to doubt of the grace therein given? that he should no longer look upon the Lord's Supper as a heavenly feast, or the Lord's Minister who consecrates it, as a chosen vessel, or that Holy Church in which he ministers as a Divine Ordinance, to be cherished as the parting legacy of Christ to a sinful world? Is it wonderful that seeing he sces not, and hearing he hears not; and that, lightly regarding all the gifts of Christ, he feels no reverence for the treasure-house wherein they are stored?

But we, who trust that so far we are doing God's will inasmuch as we are keeping to those ordinances and rules, which His Son has left us, we may humbly rejoice in this day, with a joy the world cannot take away, any more than it can understand. Truly, in this time of rebuke and blasphemy, we cannot but be sober and subdued in our rejoicing; yet our peace and joy may be deeper and fuller even for that very seriousness. For nothing can harm those who bear Christ within them. Trial or temptation, time of tribulation, time of wealth, pain, bereavement, anxiety, sorrow, the insults of the enemy, the loss of worldly goods, nothing can "separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."* This the Apostle told us long since; but we, in this age of the world, over and above his word have the experience of many centuries for our comfort. We have his own history to show us how Christ within us is stronger than the world around us, and will prevail. We have the history of all his fellow-sufferers, of all the Confessors and Martyrs of early times, and since, to show us that Christ's arm "is not shortened, that it cannot save;" that faith and love have a real abiding place on earth; that, come what will, His grace is sufficient for His Church, and His strength made perfect in weakness; that, "even to old age, and to hoar hairs, He will carry and deliver" her; that, in whatever time the powers of evil give challenge, Martyrs and Saints will start forth again, and rise from the dead, as plentiful as though they had never been before, even "the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands."†

Meantime, while Satan only threatens, let us possess our hearts in patience; try to keep quiet; aim at obeying God, in all things, little

as well as great; do the duties of our calling which lie before us, day by day; and "take no thought for the morrow, for sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”*

SERMON XIV.

MONDAY IN EASTER WEEK.

SAVING KNOWLEDGE.

1 JOIN ii. 3.

Hereby do we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.

To know God and Christ, in Scripture language, seems to mean, to live under the conviction of His presence, who is to our bodily eyes unseen. It is, in fact, to have faith, according to St. Paul's account of faith, as the substance and evidence of what is invisible. It is faith, but not faith such as a Heathen might have, but Gospel faith; for only in the Gospel has God so revealed Himself, as to allow of that kind of faith which may be called, in a special manner, knowledge. The faith of Heathens was blind; it was more or less a moving forward in the darkness with hand and foot ;-therefore the Apostle says, "if haply they might feel after Him." But the Gospel is a manifestation, and therefore addressed to the eyes of our mind. Faith is the same principle as before, but with the opportunity of acting through a more certain and satisfactory sense. We recognize objects by the eye at once; but not by the touch. We know them when we see them, but scarcely till then. Hence it is, that the New Tastament says so much on the subject of spiritual knowledge. For instance, St. Paul prays that the Ephesians may receive "the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, the eyes of their understanding being enlightened;" and he says, that the Colossians had "put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him that created him." St. Peter, in like manner, addresses his brethren with the salutation of

"Grace and peace, through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord;" according to the declaration of our Lord Himself, "This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."* Not of course as if Christian faith had not still abundant exercise for the other senses (so to call them) of the soul; but that the eye is its peculiar sense, by which it is distinguished from the faith of Heathens, nay, I may add, of Jews.

It is plain what is the Object of spiritual sight which is vouchsafed us in the Gospel,-" God manifest in the Flesh." He who was before unseen has shown himself in Christ; not merely displayed His glory, as (for instance) in what is called a providence, or visitation, or in miracles, or in the actions and character of inspired men, but really He Himself has come upon earth, and has been seen of men in human form. In the same kind of sense, in which we should say we saw a servant of His, Apostle or prophet, though we could not see his soul, so man has seen the Invisible God; and we have the history of His sojourn among His creatures in the Gospels.

To know God is life eternal, and to believe in the Gospel manifestation of Him is to know Him; but how are we to "know that we know Him? How are we to be sure that we are not mistaking some dream of our own for the true and clear Vision? How can we tell we are not like gazers upon a distant prospect through a misty atmos. phere, who mistake one object for another? The text answers us clearly and intelligibly; though some Christians have recourse to other proofs of it, or will not have patience to ask themselves the question. They say they are quite certain that they have true faith; for faith carries with it its own evidence, and admits of no mistaking, the true spiritual conviction being unlike all others. On the other hand, St. John says, "Hereby do we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments." Obedience is the test of Faith.

Thus the whole duty and work of a Christian is made up of these two parts, Faith and Obedience; "looking unto Jesus," the Divine Object as well as Author of our faith, and acting acccording to His will. Not as if a certain frame of mind, certain notions, affections, feelings, and states, were not a necessary condition of a saving state; but so it is, the Apostle does not insist upon it, as if it were sure to follow, if our hearts do but grow into these two chief contemplations, the view of God in Christ, and the diligent aim to obey Him in our conduct.

I conceive that we are in danger, in this day, of insisting on neither

* Eph.i. 17, 18. Col. iii. 10. 2 Pet. i. 2. John xvii. 3.