things, moral purity, and then as great intellectual power as can be found joined with it, we require, first, mental distinction, and if we happen to have virtue also, it is well; but if not, we have secured our main object, and the people are content.

Christ is not made our head in society. 'Why," asked one of me a few days since, "if this man is so good as you maintain, is he not more noticed in society?" "Because I answered, "it is not moral excellence which excites the admiration of our community."

We are not yet so Christianized as to place character where Christ has placed it. A thoroughly good man is a rare spectacle; and were the world elevated enough, its highest honors would be bestowed far otherwise than they now are. The mitre would no longer shield a bad man. The vicious monarch, instead of having his vices palliated and almost sanctified, because nature made him heir to a crown, would be reprobated by one universal voice, as a dishonor to his station.

The false standards of society may be attributed, in á degree at least, to the false doctrines of theology. Jesus Christ teaches, and his own character confirms the truth of his instructions, that nothing else may be compared with spiritual and moral greatness. God set him up, like the ladder of Jacob, to connect earth with heaven. He took on him the seed of Abraham, our common nature, and planted himself in our common world, that henceforth no man might call that unclean which God had cleansed. He made daily goodness in this our daily life the highest possible excellence. The Jew thought Christ must ascend a throne to be Christ; and so it hath been down to this hour. The world cannot see its Saviour in

that man whom God ordained to walk among his brethren, and by a sinless life to sanctify our humanity. A crown, a station, a rank, an age, something outward, these and not an unapproached piety and a stainless virtue, an union of the human and the divine lives in himself, are what they demand in their Saviour. It is not enough that in him God dwelt, and through him beamed on our race; he must be God himself; his person must be thus or thus; his character will not suffice. This outward Christ is a mournful degradation of that Godlike being, the Christ of the Gospel.

The popular theology tells us that Jesus Christ is "both God and man; "that he has accordingly ❝ two distinct natures." In one aspect this representation is correct. It is true that two natures, a human and a divine, met in our Saviour. But it is not true that they constituted one being. Christ, the man, was not united with a Christ who is God, but with God, a separate, independent being, one who, unlike himself, is eternal, omniscient and almighty. He was in God, and God was in him. The Apostle Paul incites the Christian to become a partaker of the divine nature. Christ, in this sense, did partake the divine nature. God was manifested in him; he was gifted with his Spirit without measure; it is his connection with God that makes him our Saviour; destroy that, and we have no Saviour left. So is it that two natures met in Christ.

If you contend for any other elevation of Jesus except this, if you say he was united with God physically or metaphysically, you claim for him more than he claims for himself. The Father possesses all power in and of himself; but the Son says expressly, "I can of mine

own self do nothing. All power is given me from above." God is omniscient; Christ affirms himself not so. “Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, not the angels, neither the Son, but the Father." God is omnipresent; but Christ never appeared, when on earth, but in one place at a time. He dwelt, the whole of him, so far as we know, in the flesh; and the body is never omnipresent. Neither was Christ metaphysically one with God. His mind, heart, and will were his own. "I came," said he, "not to do mine own will, but the will of the Father." His character, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, was his own; so that in essence, or substance," he was an individual, as distinct from every other being as the Father himself.

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Still it was true that, in a most important sense, Christ and the Father were one. There was a spiritual unity, a oneness of will, heart, love, and life, by which they were joined as no other beings ever have been. The voice of God was uttered through Christ; he was not, like us, an adopted child, but he was the miraculously born Son of God; he was the only begotten, the well-beloved, and rightfully the moral favorite of the Father. He was the only child of the mighty family, that always obeyed our Divine Parent. He trod the high path of duty alone; up craggy steeps, and on to unapproached heights; he dwelt always in the mount of God. Yes, for here, in the market-place, and amid the conflicts of humanity, no less than there, in his midnight devotions, his serene eye gazed always on the Father. All that he said or did, nay, greater and better than these, whatsoever in the hallowed recesses of his inner and unexpressed being, he was, the same bound and blended him in an indissoluble fellowship with the Immaculate One.

From the Christ on this lofty eminence, we look down on him whom the world worship, and how inferior does he appear. They strive to honor him by doctrines, touching his essence and his person. They bestow on him an outward rank, one depending on times and places. They think to exalt him by high-sounding names, by a worship of words. How do they degrade him. The meek Jesus places all his merits to the credit of the Father; he never demands any honor whatsoever on his own acThe claim he puts in always runs thus: "He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father who hath sent him." It is the Sender, whose glory he seeks; never is it his own glory, apart from the Father.

count.

If Christ be the head of every man, in the manner and sense which I have described, we may see how he is the head of Christianity. In the moral world, he is the creator of all things; but made so by the Father. As the Apostle affirms, "The head of Christ is God." This gives us the true basis of the authority of our religion Bishop Watson, an English Trinitarian, has well said, that, "The Gospel of Christ, whatsoever you may determine concerning the person of Christ, is certainly sealed with the finger of God. His authority as a Teacher is the same, whether you suppose him to have been the Eternal God, or a being inferior to Him, but commissioned by Him." That is, the truth of Christianity does not depend upon the rank of Christ; it is not bound up with the personal claims of the messenger who brought it to man. The Father, that Being who sent the messenger, is our confidence, our warrant for the truths he delivered. They who stop to settle the precise rank of him who was sent, before they accept and

obey the message, discredit its Author. They divert our thoughts and affections from the Father; they come short of that homage, which the Son always turns away from himself, and directs to a still higher object. Disobeying thus the injunction of Christ, instead of exalting, they do in effect, although of course unintentionally, degrade him.

Would we truly honor our Saviour, we must do it, not most by our lips, not so much by our words, as by our lives. We must coöperate with him in the great work he came on earth to perform. Christ is our head; the members must be like the head; there must be a strict unity between the members and the head, or the body will be dishonored. What then was Christ? He was a sinless being; and we, if we would honor him, must be redeemed by him from sin. By cultivating holy tempers, by leading heavenly lives, by resisting evil, by drinking calmly the cup of his sorrows, we shall become members of his body. Then are we made joint-heirs with him of a divine patrimony; we have then his promise for ourselves, that we shall have that glory which the Father hath given him.

We would honor Christ; to this end, we must become one with him, as he was one with the Father.

Christ is our head, when we are one in purpose with him. Our will must be right, the force of self broken, and the pleasure of God our pleasure. There is a symmetry throughout the spiritual frame only, when, like Jesus, we form such resolutions as, if carried into execution, will deliver us from all evil. We are now servants to wrong; passion subjugates our spirits; envy, alienation, and strife, it may be, have built up a wall between