our own race.

But then, nearly two thousand years after that first promise was given, God gave another promise, in which he said to Abraham,"And in thy seed, shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." Genesis xxii: 18. And this taught us that the promised helper was not only to be a man-"the seed of the woman"-but that he was also to be"the seed of Abraham"-or one of his descendants.

But Abraham was the head, or the founder of the Jewish nation. And so while the first promise taught us that our helper was to be a man, this second promise showed that he was to be one of the children of Abraham, or to be born of the Jewish nation. And we know that Jesus, our blessed Saviour, was a Jew. He was to be born in Bethlehem, a town belonging to the Jews. And there he was born. When the wise men from the east came to Jerusalem seeking him, they asked, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews?" And when he hung upon the cross, the writing which Pilate placed over his head was—“ “Jesus of Nazareth-the King of the Jews."

And the great thing which this second promise teaches is, that Jesus was to bless the world. God said to Abraham,-"In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." In another place we are told that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in him." Gen. xii: 3. Again this blessing is promised to individual men;—(Ps. lxxii: 17)—and in still another place we are told that this blessing brought by Jesus was intended for "every one of us." Acts iii: 26. When Jesus was on earth he said,— "I am the light of the world." John viii: 12. He might have said, just as truly, "I am the blessing of the world." This we see was what was said of him long before he came into the world. was to bless all the nations of the world-all the families of the world— and all the men, or the people of the world, then we may well say that the blessing of the world was wrapped up in Jesus. When the promise of his coming was given us, it was a promise of blessing. When he came, he came to bless. When he began his ministry the very first thing he spoke of was the blessings he had brought to men. There he is on the top of the mountain where he preached his first sermon. Notice how that sermon begins. We read,—“And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain; and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: and he opened his

And if it be true that Jesus

mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed-blessed-blessed, &c." Matt. V: I-4. He opens that sermon with a bundle of blessings. It seems as if he were so burdened with the many blessings he had brought, that he could speak of nothing else till he had spoken of them.

And as Jesus began his ministry with talking about blessings, so he continued it with scattering blessings around wherever he went. What a beautiful sketch of his life the apostle Peter gives us when he says that he "went about doing good." And see what an illustration we have of this in the short sketch in Matt. iv: 23, 24. Here we are told that "Jesus went

about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of diseases among the people. And they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases, and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy, and he healed them." How well it might be said of the people whom Jesus thus healed, they were "blessed in him!" And as Jesus began his ministry in our world in blessing, and continued it in blessing, so he ended it in blessing. When his work on earth was finished, and the time had come for him to return to heaven, we read-Luke xxiv: 50, 51-how he led his disciples out to Bethany, on the top of the Mount of Olives, "and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven." What a beautiful close this was to a life that was intended to be a life of blessing!

And Jesus did not cease blessing people when he went to heaven. The apostle Peter said to the Jews at Jerusalem,-"God having raised up his son Jesus sent him to bless you." Acts iii: 26. The mission of Jesus is to bless. As he sits at the right hand of the throne of God in heaven the great business in which he is engaged is the work of blessing men.

And if you ask how he does this, I know no better way in which to answer the question, than in the words spoken by the prophet Isaiah, when he was telling about Christ, more than seven hundred years before he was born into our world. We find these words in Isaiah lxi: 1. Our Saviour applied them to himself at the beginning of his ministry, when he was preaching at Nazareth. He read this passage from Isaiah, in which it is written:—

"The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind." And when he had closed the book, he said,—“This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." And when he had said this it was precisely as if he had said “This prophecy refers to me. I am the person of whom Isaiah was speaking when he used these words."

Here we have clearly pointed out to us the way in which Jesus was sent to bless men. He blessed them thus, by his personal ministry while