SERMON IV.

The Victor, exalted to His Throne.

DANIEL vii. 13.

"I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before Him."

HIS is one of those passages which has been made

THIS

a ground of objection to the authenticity of the book of Daniel, on account of the clearness with which it seems to enunciate a great Gospel verity, and so to anticipate the ideas and belief of a later period. It occurs at the conclusion of the vision in which, under the similitude of the four beasts, was represented to the prophet the successive rise of four great monarchies. The immediate object of the whole revelation was probably to encourage the Israelites in their captivity, and, at the same time, to prevent them in their impatience from expecting a speedy coming of the kingdom of the Messiah; monarchy after monarchy would arise, throne after throne would cast its shadow over the nations. The lion, and the leopard, and the bear, and the beastdiverse from and stronger than the rest, Chaldæan, Persian, Greek, Roman, must each run their course, bringing apparently no nearer the hope of Israel; but ("though it tarry wait for it, because it will surely come,

it will not tarry always"), suddenly a change passes over the prophetic ecstacy. The field of vision is no longer this earth. From the weary spectacle of human power rising but to fall, gathering its strength only to be broken, Daniel is transported to the sight of a sublimer sovereignty: "I beheld till the thrones were cast down and the Ancient of Days did sit; whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like the pure wool; His throne was as the fiery flame, thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near unto Him." The passage was uniformly interpreted by the Jewish doctors of the person and kingdom of Christ. And the language is too plain to be otherwise expounded, hence the attempt to get rid of its testimony as a great Messianic prophecy by bringing forward the authorship of the chapter to a later date. But, indeed, clearly and magnificently as these verses speak of Christ upon His throne, they do not stand alone in the Old Testament. This prophecy of Daniel is by no means an isolated one. Blot it out of the Sacred Volume, and the great truth of Christ's exaltation to the right hand of power would still remain written down unmistakeably in the prophetic Scriptures. For example the 110th Psalm is no less distinct: "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool." Our blessed Saviour has Himself applied these words to His own person and kingdom; and it is obvious, if interpreted of Him, that they point to the same event as those of Daniel,—the bringing near of the glorified humanity of the Redeemer into the presence

of the Father, the seating it upon the throne of heaven thence to exercise a special dominion, until all things shall be subdued under His feet.

Now it is this crowning and enthroning at the right hand of the Father, of the Man Christ Jesus, which is the subject proposed for our thoughts to-night. It is told us historically in the words of St. Mark: "So, then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God." It is predicted, not in one but in many passages of the Old Testament; not exclusively, although with a wonderful sublimity, in that which we have read to you for the text: "I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before Him."

Upon this exaltation of Christ we now go on to speak.

I. And first as to the truth itself.

Now the peculiarity of both the prophecies alluded to, that of the text and that in Psalm cx., consists in this, that they represent the act of exaltation, as seen within the veil. We are all familiar with this act, so far as it was beheld from the earth: "He led them out as far as to Bethany, and lifted up His hands and blessed them. And it came to pass while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and a cloud received Him out of their sight." The natural eye could see no more of that great enthroning of humanity. The steadfast upward gaze could not penetrate the veil between the two worlds. It is just here that the prophetic Scriptures supply what is wanting; that which the natural eye could not see, the inner consciousness of the old prophets in ecstacy had been privileged to behold.

Daniel had gazed upon the scene within the everlasting doors, to which all that passed upon the Mount of Ascension was the introduction, the in-coming into heaven of the Son of Man. David, in the spirit, had caught the mystic words, the high welcome of the eternal Father: "Sit Thou on My right hand."

Now when we turn to the doctrine involved in these passages, we are at once brought across that which has in all ages formed the great trial of men's faith, "the twofold nature of Christ." It has not passed away, that old probation of the Church. In early ages, when the remembrance of Christ Jesus upon the earth was comparatively fresh, when His gracious accents still lingered as it were upon the air, the temptation was, in the vivid perception of His perfect Manhood, to drop or hold loosely the truth of His eternal Godhead. Hence the multifarious heresies which vexed the primitive Church, agreeing mostly in the attempt to find, as it were, some place for the Redeemer which should satisfy in a measure the great things spoken of Him and yet make Him less than God. Resisted by Athanasius, condemned by the Council of Nicæa, that old Arian heresy has never wholly died out, although it may have changed its form. And one of the evils which it has produced has been this, that in their very zcal to maintain the proper Godhead of their Lord, true and devout souls have sometimes lost sight comparatively of the equally great truth, "that He is perfect man." This second error finds place chiefly in regard to our blessed Lord's present life in heaven. Let us examine it for a few minutes to-night.

The grand question between the Church and the world, philosophy and faith, is this-"What is Christ now?" To the world He is a great Benefactor of the past,