whole heaven, with more than mortal music burdening every breezewith crowns and plumes, and the intense gleams of immortal panoply, kindling on every cloud, and illuminating every mountain and valley. Well might the seer, who, for gold, sought out a curse for Jacob, say: How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!

This was a prospective view-only lifting up a little the curtain which hung over the future prospects of the church. The same thought is amplified, if not adorned, by Pollock, the pious poet, who sung his soul to sleep with such strains as these :—

"How fair the daughter of Jerusalem, then!
How gloriously from Zion's hill she looked!
Cloth'd with the sun; and in her train the moon ;
And on her head a coronet of stars;

And girding round her waist, with heavenly grace,
The bow of mercy bright; and in her hand
Immanuel's cross-her sceptre and her hope."

But these views, rich as they are with unspeakable blessings, are taken from the earth. The church now is seen going further on to the very place which God has prepared for her. Change and vicissitude and death invaded the territories of Jacob below; but he has a place now prepared for him; a kingdom, not to be measured by human meters, nor invaded by earthly woes, or battle, or change. Countless angels are throwing open the gates to this region, as immeasurably wide as it is beautiful, beyond the power of language to paint; and trumpets and harps pouring forth the volumes of song such as earth never heard, summon the redeemed to their last, joyful resting place.

Death is now no more. Sin is shut out forever. Heaven burns with its accumulated bliss. It has now reaped the great harvest of the earth. It now, to its other songs hath added the greater one of redeeming love. And now beyond this point, it is not permitted to penetrate further. Here this blessed interdiction begins-eye hath not seen-ear hath not heard-heart hath not conceived. All beyond is glory unsufferably bright.

SERMON VIII.

BY REV. JOHN N. MAFFITT,

Portsmouth, N. H.

THE FAITHFUL SAYING.

1 TIMOTHY, 1. 15.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Christ Jesus came into the world.

From that hour, when the promise of a Saviour broke the fearful gloom that had spread its dark curtains over paradise, down to the auspicious moment when celestial choirs poured upon the ears of wondering shepherds the new and ravishing song of deliverance and peace, the world had been gradually preparing for his appearance. The children of men, those more especially to whom appertained the covenant and promise, were taught to expect some great personage, clothed with divine authority and unlimited power. At length, in the fulness of time, after a variety of strange phenomena, operating alike on the heathen and Jewish world, presenting signal omens, portentous and overwhelming, the star of the promised Prince ushered in his glorious reign, and Christ was worshipped by the Eastern magi, while yet an infant, under the significant title of King of the Jews. The coming of the Messiah had been described by saint and seer, patriarch and king, with the pomp of oratory, and the eloquence of song. The circumstance and stateliness of kingly dominion and magnificent display, portrayed in the Jewish writings, tended to give importance and grandeur to his expected appearance and reign. But notwithstanding the picture was highly coloured, the outline vast and imposing, it was not to be understood literally. The glory and the beauty, the magnitude and the display, were to be spiritually discerned; and therefore, none but spiritual minds could comprehend the connexion between the lowliness of the Redeemer's person and appearance, and the lofty annunciations of the prophet's harp. The Jews were wholly absorbed in the letter, and they were thus unprepared or unwilling to pierce the veil of flesh, and poverty of circumstance, which flung a cloud over the ascending Sun. The prophet sang in vain, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! shout,

O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, thy King cometh unto thee!" The Jews believed the record, but they rejoiced not in the coming of Christ. The daughters of Jerusalem shouted not at the birth of their King. But though they gave no welcome to their long expected one, dazzling squadrons from the high empyrean, were not unmindful of the great event. If man sang no glad song, tuned no golden lyre, multitudes of the heavenly hosts hymned his praise, and celebrated his birth in lofty strains of angelic music.

"In heaven, the rapturous song began,

And sweet, seraphic fire

Through all the shining regions ran,

And strung, and tuned the lyre."

And though no light flashed up from earth, "to bid the brightest and best of the morning" welcome to our sin-stained soil, a new and brilliant star glittered in the dome of heaven, the precursor of his glorious reign.

He was the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person; yet, "Hear, O heavens! and be astonished, O earth!" he became man! He was in the form of God, and counted it not robbery to be equal with God; yet, he descended from his royal throne, clothed himself with the dust of his footstool, and became bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh! In the ignoble garb of a servant of servants, he entered the sinful and troubled abodes of mortality, to be our partner in suffering and sorrow, that he might be deeply imbued with the finest sensitive feelings of poor human nature.

"Touch'd with a sympathy within,

He knows our feeble frame;

He knows what sore temptations mean,
For he hath felt the same."

He came to his own, and his own received him not. He was despised and rejected by the very beings, for whose salvation and happiness he had left the glory he had with the Father before the world was, and from whom he had a right to expect the most profound reverence, and demonstrations of the highest joy. No sooner was it noised abroad that the Christ was born in Bethlehem, according to the prophets, than Herod was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. A base and bloody order was issued by the pusillanimous monarch, who felt conscious of the insecurity of his throne, and trembled, lest the new born Prince was destined to wrench the sceptre from his impious grasp. Nor did their malicious and blood-thirsty designs against his person, his character, and ministry, abate, till the insulting, barbarous, and tragic scenes of the garden, the judgment hall, the pillar, and the cross, consummated their diabolical purposes.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Man is guilty, weighed down under the curse of a law he has wilfully and wickedly broken. Having thus ruined himself, he is unable to meet the perfect obedience required by the divine statute, and has thus sunk into deep and irremediable condemnation, exposed to wrath and punishment, without any dawning of hope, or any intercessions of mercy. In this sense, men are sinners-all men. There is no exception; for in Adam all die. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The whole world lieth in wickedness. There is none that doeth righteousness, no, not one.

This

Man is unholy. Unholiness is guilt. The unholy and sinful dispositions of the human heart, are exhibited in the pages of man's history, with more or less enormity; but they have invariably the same crimson type from Adam down to the present hour. truth is established in every stage of his brief existence, in every country, and through all orders and grades of society. The whole family of man, being thus tainted with this great moral pollution, are thus separated from all friendly intercourse or communion with the pure Being against whom they have rebelled, and whose government and laws they have slighted and trampled under foot. This separation from God deepens the pit into which they are plunged, rendering their case hopeless in this life, exposing them to the thunderbolts of the next, and to the eternal horrors of a terrible and irrevocable perdition.

"How sad our state by nature is!

Our sin, how deep its stains!"

To save man from his sins, and to shield him from the impending ruin that thundered on his path, the Lord Jesus came into the world. 'He shall save his people from their sins,' is the signification of his name. His own words confirm this truth, the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.' 'I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.' This benevolent and godlike purpose engaged his attention during the whole course of his ministry and life, nor did his sufferings, or the cruelties that he endured, even in their extreme and bitterest agonies, absorb this great leading feature of his charac

ter.

The manner in which he accomplished this great design, and prepared the way for the sinner's recovery, salvation, and happiness, is in perfect accordance with the claims of justice and the criminality of the offender. Man is guilty before God, condemned, and awaiting the sentence of death, unable to yield a perfect obedience to the divine precept; without hope, having no plea, and totally ruined and undone. In this trying juncture, Christ offers himself as his substitute,

places himself at the bar of justice, receives the blow intended for the criminal, obeys the law in all its minutiæ and extent, satisfying its most rigorous demands, and making it possible for the guilty and condemned wretch to be released from the bondage of sin, restored to the Divine favor and image; at the same time, guarding every infringement upon the justice of the Lawgiver, so that God can now be just, and the justifier of all them who sincerely repent and unfeignedly believe in his Son Jesus Christ, the slain Lamb, who is the propitiation for our sins, and not ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. There is no remission of sins without the shedding of blood.

"To man, the bleeding cross has promised all :
The bleeding cross has sworn eternal grace."

See the consummation of the promise given to Adam in the hour of his depression, and in the night of his guilt, in the sufferings and death of Jesus! Behold the foot of the promised seed bruising the head of the great serpent, and from the bloody brow of Calvary triumphing over principalities and powers, and making a show of them openly, strewing their honors in the dust, and withering the strength of the mighty and the renowned! Behold the Son of the eternal God, clothed in the robes of his priesthood, dyed with the blood of the grape, alone and single-handed, treading the wine press of the wrath of God! See him coming out of Bozrah, travelling in the greatness of his strength, crushing down the walls of our prison house, entering the lists with all our enemies, disarming death of its terrors, the grave of its boasted triumphs, bursting the barriers of the tomb, and binding, with the golden chain of his atonement, earth to heaven, man to God; lifting the everlasting gates, and pointing far, far away, up into the highest heavens, to the mansions of everlasting blessedness and peace, prepared for the faithful from the foundations of the world.

Who is the King of glory, who?

The Lord that all our foes o'ercame,
The world, and sin, and hell o'erthrew ;
And Jesus is the conqueror's name.

The terms of salvation, are few and simple, and accord well with the plan of redemption and the character of the atonement made by Jesus Christ. Repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, are the conditions prescribed in the gospel. Our repentance should be deep, sincere, and lasting; our faith of the operation of the Spirit, for faith is the gift of God. It should be fixed singly on God, through Jesus Christ, the great Mediator between God and man, without any reliance upon ourselves, or our own righteousness; for by the deeds of the law no man can be justified in the sight of God. He must, therefore, turn away from Sinai, and from self, from every point of heaven, from all hope and every plea, but, God be merciful to me a sinner.