THE FAITHFUL SAYING.

BY

WILLIS LORD, D. D.

PROFESSOR IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, CINCINNATI, OHIO.

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.-1 TI. i. 15.

LET us analyze this saying. Let us separate its ideas, that we may give to each a distinct, though brief, consideration. Let us seriously mark their aspect and bearing with reference to our own character, course and destiny.

I. "Christ Jesus came." We bid you notice this fact as essential to the power and glory of the evangelic doctrine. The grandeur of the person gives grandeur to the truth affirmed concerning him.

For whom do the words "Christ Jesus" designate? Beyond question, the Son of God. They do indeed express only the name he bore after the incarnation; but by constant usage of the scriptures, they then denote the person who became incarnate. Differing modes of existence and manifestation did not destroy the divine and eternal personality. The Word was made flesh, but in the flesh thus made he was still the word.

The affirmation, then, is of a divine person-the Son of God-second in the mysterious subsistence

of the infinite three. He came. Not an angel of light; not a saint in glory; not Gabriel, who ministered peradventure nearest the burning throne; not Moses or Isaiah, most exalted perhaps among the redeemed. No-not they; but He came by whose power Gabriel and his angelic associates were created, and by whose blood the lawgiver and the prophet alike were saved. At that sublime moment, when the eternal counsels were about to be expressed in the great acts of redemption, and because the exigencies of lost men transcended the wisdom and power of all creatures, it was the voice of Christ Jesus which broke upon the silence of heaven— "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God!"

The fact is incontestable-its importance and grandeur infinite. For how can the purpose and endeavours of such an one fail? What possible contingencies can arise, not foreseen by his omniscience? What combination of difficulties so great, that they must not vanish before his wisdom and power?. If God undertake for the lost, no matter how extreme and appalling their state, they will be rescued.

This truth, we repeat, is essential. It is the foundation of the Christian system. If the victim on Calvary was not the incarnate Word-God though man, and man though God-the hope of salvation, by his obedience and death, is a dream. It may be thought by some consoling, inspiring, joyous, but it is a dream, to be dissipated for ever when we enter the grave. There never was a more absurd notion, than that salvation can be achieved for sinners by a creature.

Show me that Christ Jesus

was not truly divine, and, by the same argument, I will show you that he cannot be a Saviour. And if he be not, who is? What shall dying men do, if they may not rest their souls on Christ, as the Son of God-the brightness of the divine glory, and the express image of the divine person? What can they do, but die without hope-yea, die for ever!

II. This divine Being came, continues the text, into the world; i. e. into this world.

Very many worlds God has made, of still greater extent and magnificence than this, to circle with it, in its majestic course around the centre of the system; but in no other have been enacted the scenes of redemption. It is an exclusive distinction of this world, that by the Church redeemed and existing on its bosom, is made known unto principalities and powers in heavenly places, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose, which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Bethlehem and Calvary are here. The garden of that untold agony -the sepulchre, hewn out in the rock, where the Prince of life lay in the embrace of death-the Mount of Olives, whence he ascended, leading captivity captive-all these are here.

The influences of the cross doubtless, indeed, reach to the outmost limits of God's vast creation,. making manifest, as could have been done by nothing else, the wisdom, love, power and glory of Jehovah. But here the cross was reared. Its base was imbedded in the soil of earth; its top was fanned by the air and bathed in the light which fall upon us. Christ Jesus came into this world!

How did he come?

Not merely, does the apostle mean to say, in his essential and universal presence, as God. In this sense our world has been his dwelling-place from the morning of creation. His arm has upheld the stupendous structure. His power has constantly renewed the face of the earth, and carried forward all the processes and operations of nature. For as he created, so does he sustain all things by the word of his power; by him all things consist.

Nor did he come, does the apostle mean to say, in the form and presence, which anciently he so often assumed, as the angel of the covenant. It was thus he appeared to the patriarchs and saints of former dispensations. It was thus he was present with Abraham at that strange sacrifice on Moriah, and the day before the fiery overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. It was thus he revealed himself to Jacob at Peniel, in that wondrous conflict wherein the patriarch prevailed with God. It was thus he went before his people in the wilderness, when he said, Surely they are my people, they will not lie; so he was their Saviour. In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them, and he bore them, and carried them all the days of old.

It was another and more marvellous presence of the Son of God the apostle contemplates-his presence by incarnation in the son of Mary, in reference to which the angel said to the shepherds, "Unto you is born this day a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." "Who being in the form of God, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God, made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the

form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men." For "forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same." And so "the Word which was in the beginning with God, the Word which was God, by whom all things were made, and without whom was nothing made which was made; the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

In this manner "Christ Jesus came into the world." It is a stupendous truth. It would exceed belief, as it does comprehension, did it not rest on the testimony of God; and if, furthermore, immeasurably vast and mysterious as it is, we could not see its divine adaptation and imperative necessity in reference to us as sinners. We have been startled, my brethren, at recent and passing political events. They seem to us great-momentous. To see kings abdicating; thrones and princedoms falling; the masses, so long trampled beneath the hoofs of power, rising; and then the re-action, the crushing again of hope, the re-ascendance of despotism, and the suppressed heavings of outraged humanity, while the whole aspect of human things becomes dark and perilous-oh, how all this engrosses the minds of thoughtful men! And yet inexpressibly tame, trivial, empty, are these things, in comparison with the unique, unparalleled, infinite truth, that "Christ Jesus came into the world;" that being God, he was found in fashion as a man; that occupying the throne, and receiving the adorations of the universe, he came down to the dependance of a creature and