able deficiencies, but knowing also that they have come to Christ, and are walking with Him and feeding on Him, they can say, "I am ready; were He to come to-morrow, or were He to come to-day, I am ready."

My brethren, may each one of us be able to

say so too.

15

SERMON II.'

THE PURPOSE OF GOD IN THE INSPIRATION OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.

2 TIMOTHY iii. 16.

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God."

It is my intention in this sermon to preach to you upon the Holy Scriptures as a gift of God, and upon our duty because God has given us such a gift.

I shall take as my guide in opening out this subject the collect for this Sunday, with which, I doubt not, you are all familiar.

In taking this collect, however, I shall not speak of the general duty of hearing Scripture, or of reading it, marking it, learning it, or inwardly digesting it. I shall confine myself to what is the real prayer of the collect, viz. that we may in such wise hear, read, learn, and inwardly digest Holy Scripture as to embrace and to hold fast the hope of everlasting life which God has given us in Jesus Christ.

First, then, the text tells us, that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God," or, as the collect expresses it, God has "caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning." This means, that when Moses, or David, or

Isaiah, or St. Matthew, or St. Paul wrote the books of Scripture that bear their names, they did not write of themselves, but God by His Holy Spirit filled their minds with all knowledge that was necessary to enable them to give a true account of the things they were commissioned to tell, and God guided them in some wonderful way in their writing, so that they put down what was most needful and profitable for us to know, and expressed it in the way best calculated to make that impression upon us which God intended.

Take, for instance, St. Matthew, God inspired him to write that history of our Lord's birth, life, and death, that we call the Gospel according to St. Matthew.

St. Matthew was one of the twelve apostles. As such he was one of the constant companions of our Lord, and so he must have had very much to say about Christ's life, miracles, and discourses; but when he wrote his gospel he was not left to his mere memory to put down what he remembered, and to make out what he thought a perfect history, but the Holy Spirit brought vividly into his mind those particular parables, or miracles, or discourses which He wished to have most deeply impressed upon us. Now our Lord was most probably thirty-three years old when He was crucified, and the last three years of His life were spent in going about preaching, and

teaching, and working miracles. We read of His healing multitudes of people, we read of His preaching and teaching for days together, and yet all the events related in St. Matthew, from Our Lord's baptism to His ascension, if put one after the other, would not occupy one month of the three eventful years of His ministry. You know that St. John says that our Lord did so many things that "if they should be written every one the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." Out of the immense number, then, of events that St. Matthew saw with his eyes, and out of the multitude of short sayings, or parables, or sermons that he heard spoken by our Lord, he was guided by the Holy Ghost to put down those only which we have in the twenty-eight chapters of his gospel. Now I believe that if all the words and all the actions of any one day of Our Lord's ministry had been written down as they occurred, with all their attendant circumstances, they would fill a gospel much longer than that of St. Matthew. Out of all this, then,the Holy Ghost guided this evangelist to write for our learning what we find in his gospel; and so with St. Mark and St. Luke and St. John. Ought not this to impress upon us very strongly indeed the unspeakable importance to our souls of the particular words and actions of Jesus Christ that are recorded in Scripture? and how by thinking over them,

C

and praying over them, till our souls are full of them, we shall be in the surest way of getting to know that blessed Saviour, the love of Whose heart they reveal?

Consider for a moment, my brethren, the Eternal Son of the Most High God, the Maker of all things, the Second Person in the Ever-Blessed Trinity, living amongst us as one of ourselves for nearly thirty-three years; during three years of this time exercising the most active ministry that was ever fulfilled by man; from morning till night preaching to the multitudes, or discoursing in private with the disciples, or disputing in the temple, or healing diseases. And the records of all these wonderful things we have in the Scriptures, particularly in the four Gospels.

The four Gospels, then, are no other than the fourfold life of God dwelling amongst men. They are the record of the life of the AllHoly amongst sinners, the All-Wise amongst the ignorant, the Eternal and Incomprehensible amongst the creatures of time and sense. Of what unspeakable importance to us, then, are the incidents of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, that we have in the four Gospels. Of all the innumerable wise and good things that the Eternal Son of God did whilst amongst us they are the things most useful for us to know; they are the things most