rest a work of inconceivable greatness upon an Agent of inconceivable might. We tell you that your bodies are the temple of that Spirit, "which spake by the prophets," and dwelt in Jesus; and ye need not our assurance, that in His Almighty strength ye may accomplish "greater things than these." Will you yet recur to the thought how vain the pursuit, how hopeless the attainment? We admit the difficulty in all its strength. And we return you for answer of fact, that Eternity is the space allotted you for the work; and for answer of argument, that your objection infers nothing more, than that the work is fitted for Eternity.

LECTURE III.

1 CORINTHIANS I. 22, 23.

For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified.

THE great doctrine which the Apostle thus propounds in terms of such emphatic brevity, he evidently considers to be a sufficient reply to the demands of both the classes of objectors alluded to. To the one he saith, You require a sign-an evidence of "the power of God." I propose one, which, if you would view it rightly, ought to satisfy your utmost scruples. The sign which I set before you is that of a crucified Saviour, of which your blindness has made a stumblingblock. You feel it impossible to admit such contrarieties of character in the Redeemer to whom ye look. You cannot combine the splendours of an everlasting dominion with the miseries of a depressed and suffering condition. You are unable to discern how the majesty of

a Prince can consist with the meanness of a peasant and the doom of a malefactor. But if this was foretold and has been exactly verified, what surer sign, let me ask, can you require? What more conspicuous evidence of divine power can you imagine, than such an union of inconsistent and improbable conditions in one and the same Messiah? Again, therefore, I repeat, if a sign from Heaven could convince, you have one which leaves you nothing to desire. There can be no plainer manifestation of "the power of God," than the sign of "Christ crucified.” To the same effect we interpret the Apostle's reply to the cavils of the sceptical and self-sufficient Greek. To him he saith, To him he saith, "You seek after wisdom" I submit to your contemplation a scheme of wisdom the most profound. But you cannot receive it, because it accords not with the rules of your so-called philosophy. You spurn remission of sins through the blood of a crucified man. You reject with contempt the idea of a Saviour, who could not save Himself. But wise in your own eyes, the foundations of your wisdom are laid deep in ignorance and error. You would adjust the counsels of the

Allwise to the standard of human systems. You would attempt to fathom the Infinite Mind with the line and plummet of a pigmy Intellect. But the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God;" and that is reason sufficient why the wisdom of God appears as foolishness unto you. But to them who are the called, who view things not in the dimness of a depraved intellect, but by the light of a divine intelligence, to such, I say, the highest wisdom, "the wisdom of God," is "Christ crucified."

Upon the foundation of these two momentous conclusions we build the order of our present discourse, endeavouring to set before you in "Christ crucified," the power of God and also the wisdom of God. The former, we doubt not, will be fully evinced in the sign of a suffering Messiah; and the latter, in the development of that stupendous work, for which a suffering Messiah was ordained. We therefore bespeak your patience while we raise yet further the veil from "the Spirit of prophecy," and again bring the light of Gospel truth to bear upon the dimness of its mysterious oracles. And if, in the far bosom of the prophetic past, we can shew you

Calvary, like another Sinai, towering amid the wide waste of a spiritual wilderness, and if we can trace the faint outline of the hallowed symbol of Salvation, and the form that languishes to death upon it, we shall then trust to have shewn you "a sign from the Lord," a manifestation of "the power of God," even the sign of the crucified Jesus, "an everlasting sign, that shall not be cut off*."

We shall not need to insist much upon the general fact of the death of the Messiah, for that is a point to which the voice of many prophets bore an express and concurrent testimony.

Thus the spirit of David was overruled, when he spake of his great affliction, that his "strength was dried up like a potsherd, his tongue clave to his gums, and he was brought into the dust of death;" and the figurative became the literal suffering of Him, who filled up the woes of the prophetic David. Thus Isaiah, emphatically the prophet of Messiah, foresaw Him, "cut off out of the land of the living; and a voice from the land of captives echoed back the mournful truth, "Messiah shall be cut

*Isaiah LV. 13.

Isaiah Liii. 8.