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unto salvation.”*

If the complete and final success of our aims to glorify God is thus ascertained, our minds may look with enlivened hopes upon all the intermediate steps of that path which leads us to so happy an end. If we are thus to calculate upon "appearing in Zion before God," we may assuredly also expect to "go from strength to strength." If we may look forward to maturity, we certainly may anticipate growth. And it is surely no unhallowed or mischievous consolation, to be assured that our habits of glorifying God are to continue, to increase, and to be perfected.

* 1 Peter i. 5.

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265

CHAP. XI.

EXAMPLES OF DOING ALL THINGS TO THE GLORY OF GOD.

It is in religion, as in other departments of science, desirable to supply facts, experiments and instances, for the purposes of elucidation, and of proof, as well as of practical and useful application. We can hardly persuade ourselves that our view of the great subject we now discuss, would be complete, unless we took in some appropriate examples drawn from the Scriptures and from the general history of piety. It is desirable to see this matter not in theory, in argument, in doctrine only; but in process, in action, in exemplification. Well-selected examples will instruct us by the varied illustrations they afford us of the principle. They will convince us by the real and living proof they exhibit. They will encourage us by the evidence they supply of the practicability and attainableness of this divine temper and exalted course. They will invite and attract us by the features of loveliness which they present; whilst they will shame, humble and stimulate us by the demonstration, which, through their own near approach to the standard, they give of our distance and deficiency.

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According to the more usual, and in many respects more proper and natural method, we ought to begin with the less complete specimens, and ascend by regular gradations to the more perfect. But in the present instance we prefer reversing this order. We shall commence with the perfect, and coming down the scale, shall close with the examples which do not discourage by their unapproachable elevation-which lie nearer and appear more within our reach. begin therefore with

66

We

I. CHRIST an example of doing all to the glory of God. As he was to restore men to a disposition and habit of glorifying God, so was he to be the GREAT PATTERN of this excellence. Prophecy foretold that this should form the leading aim of Christ. Lo I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, I come to do thy will, O God."* And when he came, he avowed this as his great aim. "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." I "The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up."§ "He that speaketh of himself, seeketh his own glory: but he that SEEKETH HIS GLORY that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him." || Christ anticipated the mutual glory of the Father and himself. 66 'Now is the Son of man glorified, and GOD IS GLORIFIED IN HIM. If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him." He asks to be glorified,

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but it is in subserviency to the glory of the Father. "These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father the hour is come: glorify thy Son, THAT THY SON ALSO MAY GLORIFY THEE. Such too are the terms in which in so

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lemn appeal to the Father, he describes and characterizes his whole mission. "I HAVE GLORIFIED

THEE on earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." He looked to this also, not only as the scope of his work on earth, but the end to be attained by his mediatorial engagements in heaven: “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, THAT THE FATHER MAY BE GLORIFIED IN THE SON." When we sit down calmly and seriously to study the life of Christ, we feel that we are upon ground altogether peculiar-that the character we contemplate stands alone-that it is an entire exception-that it has a majesty and loveliness all its own-that we know not which is the more wonderful and affecting, its awful purity or its touching benevolence. A crowd of questions rush upon the mind respecting this extraordinary personage. Who is he? Whence came he? What is his business with man? What brought him to this uncongenial world? What are his claims? What communication does he make? What does he effect? What does he demand? What reception does he meet with? How far is his object accomplished? What concern have we in his coming? And what was the great ruling aim which formed so glorious a character and sustained so wonderful a life of goodness? We have heard the Saviour's own answer to the last question. We

* John xvii. 1.

† xvii. 4.

xiv. 13.

have listened to him as he avowed to his enemies, explained to his friends, and appealed to his Father, THAT IT WAS The glory of God, which governed him. And when we look into his history, we perceive that this was indeed his governing motive. The avowal of Christ is borne out. The deeper we examine, the clearer it becomes. whole life of Christ is the worldly, the carnal, the selfish point? Malicious foes, jealous rivals, malignant devils, could not detect it. The total absence of the ordinary motives of human conduct, perfectly baffled and confounded his enemies. It was a mys

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tery which mocked their malicious subtlety, inge. nuity, and vigilance. And what so perplexed and exasperated them, may well instruct, console, and encourage us. And what could not be discovered then, no one has been able to detect since. Four men wrote histories of Christ; and yet we cannot spy out a wrong or a questionable motive in his entire life. But though unmoved by the low, earthly, narrow inducements which commonly control men; yet he was not without motive. He had an end in view, though not those which are common to men. He proclaims that end. He often shewed forth its glory, and not seldom in circumstances, where its reality and power are best proved..... What end moreover sought he in his preaching ?—in his profound, awful, and searching expositions of his Father's righteous law?-in his full and fearless exposures of the human heart?-in his stern demands of spiritual worship, of holy life, of cordial piety, of self-denying godliness?-in his alarming descriptions of the wrath of God; of" the worm that never dieth, and the fire that is never quenched?"—and when, all this he

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