cruelty which a wife might suffer, if she were bound indissolubly to a brutal husband. But now that the barbarism of that age was past, Christ restricted the license of divorce to a single cause.

Aware that his kingdom was to be spiritual, and his dominion that of the truth, he proceeded to organize it accordingly. He chose twelve disciples, whom he denominated Apostles, to be his constant companions, to listen to his discourses, and to be transformed into his moral image, that, when he should be removed from the earth, they might take up the work where he laid it down, and perpetuate his religion to the remotest times.

In making them his Apostles and ministers, he explicitly told them that they had nothing earthly to expect from their connection with him, or their labors in his cause. "Whosoever cometh after me," said he, "let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." "Behold, I send you forth as sheep among wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." "My kingdom is not of this world, else would my servants fight."

Before his ascension, he formally commissioned his disciples to spread his religion over the world. "Go," said he, "and teach all nations." "Go, preach the Gospel to every creature." He prescribed and limited the rites of his new religion, Baptism and the Supper. "Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." "This do," said he of the Supper, "in remembrance of me." "Thus," says Paul, "do ye show forth the Lord's death until he come." His relation to his followers was not to cease when he left the world.

His name was to be associated with that of God in the form of baptism, and that formula was for ever to claim for him the divine authority by which he professed to act while here on earth.

Thus was the ministry of Christ a perfect whole, its plan from the first comprehended and declared, its purpose announced, its progress and termination foreshown, and the fate and progress of his religion in after ages predicted. It is not the shapeless and casual production of accident, which unforeseen events moulded into form and symmetry, and concurring minds helped to develop. It was perfect at first in the mind of its Founder, and went forth, not to be the sport of chance, but to shape the course of events, and create the world anew.

Christ claimed to have a connection with his disciples, which was not to cease when he was removed from the earth. Just before his ascension, he promised: "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." The precise sense in which this is to be interpreted, perhaps, we do not know, but we have very remarkable facts which answer to this promise. We have the miraculous events which helped the Apostles to establish his religion in the earth. We have the frequent personal appearance of Christ to Paul, and those supernatural interpositions which informed the Church that Christianity was to be extended to the Gentiles. We have the preservation of the Christian Church through ages of ignorance, barbarism, and violence, when every other institution was wrecked and obliterated from the face of the earth. The Church survives, and is more powerful, extensive, and vigorous than ever. Such

a preservation certainly argues an especial and continual interposition of Providence. Whether this is all that is meant by Christ, we perhaps have no means of determining.

Finally, Jesus claimed a relation to his followers which was to be renewed in another life. He was to recognize them as having been his disciples, in the presence of that God who sent him to teach and save mankind. "Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. And whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven." He represents himself likewise as judging the nations. "When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations, and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats."

But the boldness of Oriental figure and of prophetic representation permits us to interpret all this, not of Christ's person, but of his doctrines. "If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him : the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him at the last day." How far he is personally concerned in this may be inferred from his language in relation to Moses. Father.

"Do not think that I will accuse you to the

There is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust."

This would indicate, that those who enjoy the light

of the Gospel are not to be judged personally by Christ, but by the principles of his religion; or, in other words, all men must be judged by the light of that religion which they possess; and nothing can be more just, and nothing more true. But, in saying this, Christ makes the highest possible claim of divine authority. He makes his doctrine nothing less than the word of God, and the law of the universe.

DISCOURSE VI.

CHRIST WITHOUT SIN.

WHO DID NO SIN, NEITHER WAS GUILE FOUND IN HIS MOUTH. 1 Peter ii. 22.

If we may believe the Apostles and Evangelists, there appeared in Judæa, somewhat more than eighteen centuries ago, a moral prodigy, a man, or at least one in human form, and born of woman, who never sinned, who was absolutely perfect, was never chargeable with error in judgment or delinquency in action, never failed to do anything that he ought to do, or did anything that was wrong, was subjected to all the trials which are incident to our common humanity, besides many and great temptations which were peculiar to himself, and yet never did amiss, in the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "was tempted in all points like as we are, and yet without sin."

That such was the fact we have the testimony of both friends and enemies. I have just read I have just read you that of Peter, and he was one of the three most intimate and most trusted of his disciples. The charges preferred against him at his trial were of the most frivo