did not, for it could not, shine in the face of a Son of Man. It is humility to say that we cannot now reach the perfect standard of our Lord,-that, whatever far-off heights the Grace of God may enable us slowly to ascend, as yet we are not able to attain; but it would not be humility, it would be unspeakable presumption, and only betray our want of faith in God, if we were to say that we were the limit of our Nature, that by no favouring help of God and consenting effort of its own Will could Humanity ever be enabled to reach that standard and to walk those heights, and that Christ therefore is a standard to which we can never be amenable at all. It may be humility to know that we fall, and at present cannot but fall, below our standard: it will not feed humility, but something far different, if we maintain that the Standard is not applicable to our Nature. Humility does not consist in thinking poorly of our Nature, in thinking meanly of the spirit that God has given us, -but in so lifting our eyes to God and to the heights of our Nature that we think truly of ourselves. The doctrine of the Humanity of Christ is contained in these three statements: first, That obedience and not sin, that faith and not distrust, are according to the law of our Nature, according to the working of God's Spirit in Man: secondly,-That the Father did once, for the purposes of his grace to us men, so communicate himself to a Human Soul, and that Human Soul was so led to consent to the Father's purpose, to surrender itself to the Father's Will, that

in that Human Being the law of his Nature was kept, and the development of his Father's Spirit in him unbroken by disobedience: and thirdly,-That the Character which then was manifested is the real Standard of Human Nature, the living root and living outline of its spiritual symmetry, the will and spirit of God reflected in the will and spirit of Man, the containing principle and essence of all the beauty and perfectness of being that can be unfolded out of Man through the progressions of the earthly ages.

This is not to say that Christ, being a Man, was the product of his Age: it is to say that he was a foreshowing by God of a Son of Man, of the filial perfectness that is in Man, that we may have our eyes for ever fixed upon our goal. For any one to say that God cannot thus forestall the natural development of our Nature, and shew it in its final beauty to help the ages forwards, is simple presumption and infidelity. For a Christian to say that He has not done so, is to convert the plain language of Scripture into an enigma, and to resort to a mere scenical theory of Revelation. This is not to say that the fulness of the stature of our Lord is to-day within the reach of any one of us: it is to say that it is the goal of our Humanity which, to direct our souls aright, that we may see to what end we are created, the Father shewed us out of time. And it is to say that the germs of Christ's perfectness are in every child of God: it is to say that only in Christ

can we know what Human Nature is it is to say that to grow like to him is our true and natural Life, -and that there is no limit to the degree in which the grace of God will lend his mighty help in the proportion of our effort and our need, as we rise higher and higher towards the faithfulness of Christ, or rest more and more in the submissions of his trust. And has any one of us from his youth upwards so obeyed the commandments of God, so done what he knows he might have done, so abstained as he knows he might have abstained, so prayed as he knows he might have prayed, that he holds himself authorized to say what are limits of the grace and help of God, and of his glorious developments in the soul, to such a one even as we are?

What, then, are the Things that are revealed? What read we in the face of Christ? If our Lord was Son of Man, representative Man, what did he represent? The inmost relations of Man to God, and of Man to the family of Man: the normal spiritual development of Man and the divinely ordered history of Man, mortal and immortal, till he stands within the heavenly life. Bethlehem gives us the Child Jesus: the Ascension the risen Lord within the eternal Courts: and all that lies between is the natural history, as God would have it to be, the divinely ordered growth of a Human Soul when the Father's Spirit in it meets with no resistance. These are the Christian verities: these are the represented and the representative facts. As Image

of God, we have in Christ the Character of God, the filial imprint of the Father's Spirit: we know the Mind of God, and the harmony of his Nature, when we understand 'the mind of Christ.' As Son of Man, we have in Christ the Life of God in the Soul of Man,' the life of God unfolded, so far as here it can be unfolded, within the Nature of Man. God, when the fulness of time was come, when he had prepared the world to receive so much, to value at least and preserve its record, in one consenting and co-operating Spirit of Man shewed us the glory of our Nature, the Image of himself, and Immortality begun. In this Revelation that is given us of the development of the Human Spirit according to the will and intention of God, the order of the divine appointments is disclosed: we see him first 'waxing strong in Spirit,' 'increasing in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and Man'; we see him last on the threshold of his Father's House ;the vision closes as he passes in. All that we should be towards God and our Brother: all that God is, and wills to do, towards us: all that God is in the character of a Father, that is the Revelation.

In the face of these revealed Things, which I believe will not be rejected by any Christian Church, I confess myself appalled that the world can talk as it does, that so many of us can talk as we do, about the Gospel of the Kingdom. In the nineteenth century of Christianity, the Christian world is still unfitted with a Religion. Is not a Religion the

intercourse of God with a Human Soul?

Tell me, would there be any difficulty but the difficulty of obedience, would not the difficulty be transferred from the cobwebs, the fine-spinning of the brain to the devotion of the spirit and the surrender of the will, if we took it for our Religion to have Christ formed within us, to stand more and more in his relations to the Father, receptive and consenting, -to weave into the inmost frame of our being those lineaments of God,—to have for our central life, the germinal parts of us, the roots of Love from which that Image grows? Is it not the Religion of Christ, to have with us God's strength when we are tempted, God's gentleness when we are provoked, God's forgivingness when we are injured, God's peace, the quiet and elevation of his child, the essential glory of his love and righteousness, when we are humiliated, -his grace at all times, and his mighty help in the hours of our need? Is it not the faith of Christ, to know that we are the heirs of all our Father has, and that he knows the ways by which he can best prepare us to receive, and open to us the inexhaustible inheritance? 'Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.' Are we never to be free of doubtful questions of Theology, as though our salvation was involved in them? I am not deprecating Theology, I contend not against the universal tendency of deep souls and lofty minds, the Thought of Man must grapple with its highest theme: but our first task is to fix the spiritual facts-and this