and even in the most common processes of life, one becomes a minister to others. Now a fact analogous to these, but of a far higher order of influence, is found in the mediation of Jesus Christ,―a mediation peculiar, distinct, and divine in its character, a channel for the conveyance of that holy power, by which the soul is saved from spiritual death, and brought into spiritual life. Christianity was, I conceive, in the true sense of the expression, a supernatural movement in God's moral government for the rescue of man from darkness and sin. The mission of Jesus was stamped with a divine authority by those miraculous works, which no man could do except God were with him, illustrated as they are by the light reflected from those other tokens of God's peculiar presence in him, which shine with a significance not to be mistaken. I see not how, upon principles of just reasoning, the miraculous parts of the history of Jesus can be separated from the other parts. To me they seem woven together in one beautiful whole, wherein appears the broad impress of the hand of God. In those supernatural works wrought in wisdom and love, combined with the other evidences that the spirit was given without measure unto Jesus, and taken in connexion with that divine Life whose strange beauty still shines upon us "like a star that dwells apart," we have the proof that he spoke and acted under the guidance and by the authority of God. Here appeared among men one, who dwelt in union with the Father, one into whom the spirit of wisdom, love, and truth came from the Fountain of Inspiration, one who in the still and stainless depths of his inner being, saw that which eye had not seen, and heard that which ear had not heard, a spirit of heavenly mould who took patiently the cross which was his reward from an unbelieving world, and poured out that blood which became the seed of the world; salvation,- from whose life-giving word sprung a Church, against which the gates of hell have not prevailed, a Church with those beautiful and hallowed ordinances, which, as symbols and memorials, have cherished the piety of the good for so many ages, and of which, it seems to me, no one who looks at them from the true point of view can speak with disparagement, still less with contempt,- a Church, which has done the greatest work recorded in history for those portions of the globe, where knowledge and refinement have thrown their fairest, broadest light. Now take this train of connected facts, which cluster around the name of Jesus, and say, among all the mediations, of which the world is full, what one shall be mentioned in comparison with this mediation? What name is woven through and through the history of man's redemption into spiritual life, like the name of him who came "to seek and to save that which was lost"? But, still, for us individually, the question ever returns, how shall this mediation of the Son of God, this blood of the Redeemer, bring us nigh, when we are far-off? And the answer ever is, that the ministry of Jesus can serve us only by kindling the life of God in our souls, only by rousing us from the death-slumbers of sin to a quickening sense of our eternal relations, only by imparting the energy which regenerates and sanctifies, which makes the word of God quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword. The truth and the life of a good man, if we will open our hearts to the spirit flowing from them, always do something to bring us nigh unto God,— such is its unquenchable power even in its less perfect forms. How much more, then, may we expect from the ministry of one, who said with such entire truth," my doctrine is not mine, but His who sent me," thereby referring the authority of his word to the One Source of all truth! What a saving power shall come from him, whose spirit, wherever it is received, allays the enmity of the depraved will, and preaches peace to them who are afar off and to them who are nigh! Was not Paul right in saying, that by such a one we may "have access by one spirit unto the Father," and that where that corner stone is laid, "all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord?" But all this, we are to remember, comes not from traditional faith in names or creeds as such, not from conformity to Christianity as the religious mode of our form of society, but from the living reception of that living truth, which gave to the ministry of Jesus its renewing and redeeming power. I have exhibited the two sides of the contrast spoken of by Paul, both with reference to the Ephesians of old, and to us of this day. This it is to be far off; and this it is to be made nigh by the ministry and the blood of Jesus. I will only add, if it be indeed a sad and miserable thing to "have no hope," and to be "without God in the world," the saddest and most miserable which thought can conceive, then we should remember what gratitude we owe for that mediation, which is the mightiest agency for redeeming the soul from that state. If by the blessing of God we have been brought nigh to Jesus, let us not again, like the prodigal son, wander into a far off country and famish on husks, while we may, if we will, be fed at our Father's house with that bread of life, which whoso receiveth shall hunger no more. - |