: curse, and to commence his passion, at his very incarnation; knowing that, as he came to obey, death would be the measure of his obedience. This necessity of death did in no way constrain his Divine liberty of will to die. As God, he had power not to die but he had, as God, consented to receive, and therefore he behoved to execute, the command of his Father. This command he began to execute when he was conceived and born under the law and its curse. He did not cease its voluntary execution till death: and so the irreversible sentence of mortality, and all other consequences of man's fall-not of his-under which he had freely come, without sin, so far from controuling him, was just that method whereby he brought to pass his will to become, by resurrection out of curse, the Redeemer of them that were under the law and the curse: made under the law, to redeem them that were under it; and now passed into the holiest, having obtained eternal release (Heb. ix. 12). But while his being flesh was most strictly and constantly voluntary, his becoming flesh rendered him truly dependent, as a creature, on the Father whence it is that his reception of the Holy Ghost was, so to speak, the condition of his consent to become obedient unto death. As the Almighty God, he neither owed obedience, nor possessed merit, nor needed help; but when he became God-man, and had to put away sin by his righteous bloodshedding in the flesh of sin, and to inherit life by his merit as man, he came into conditions of law, conditions of assault, conditions of helplessness. He himself could not maintain his own manhood; else it had not been the obedience, or the sacrifice, or temptation of a man, but of God: for his was a Divine person; and, instead of his emptying his Godhead, he would have only filled his manhood, and left us no example at all. Neither could the Father maintain his manhood, for the obedience was due to the Father. But the Spirit, proceeding from both, did. The Son, as come into the limitations of a man, obtained of the Father the Holy Ghost also in creature limitation; who being, one with him as God, did also dwell in him, and maintain him as man. So that although his mighty works, his faith, his obedience, and sacrifice, were by the Holy Ghost, they were still those, not of the Holy Ghost, but of the Christ as man. office of the Holy Ghost was to enable the Son to execute the Father's will, when, by voluntarily becoming flesh, though sent, he came at once under the obligation, and the inability as man, to do that will. The eternal covenant of the Son with the Father ensured the perfect gift of the Spirit to this end, and so the perfect ability of the Son to fulfil the pleasure of the Father in the flesh. But it was by receiving the Spirit, and not by change of constitution, that the flesh in the person of the Son was presented and sacrificed holy unto God. The 66 Whatsoever is born of God doth not commit sin:" and so Christ, being begotten of the Holy Ghost, was free from sin, having had no hand in the fall, having no fellowship with its pollution. He came in the flesh, and abode in it in the days of his flesh; not of his humanity merely (for he is man for ever), but of his flesh yet he at every instant walked not after the flesh, but after the Spirit; and so fulfilled the righteousness of the law, not merely by the absence, but by the condemnation of sin; not merely by shewing our flesh without it, but by shewing that its existence in our flesh was utterly without excuse in the sight of God. Coming to reveal God, by the declaration of all God's attributes in a man, especially of God's love in a human and sympathetic heart; and coming to glorify God in all his Persons, in all respects, and against all gainsaying; he declared in his person the Godhead of the Father by obeying him, for no creature may for its own sake be obeyed ;--he therein declared the Godhead of the Son, by consenting at every instant to obey; for every creature is bound, without consent, to obedience, and none but God can empty himself by a continued act into the form of a servant ;-and he therein declared the Godhead of the Holy Ghost, who consented to be the Father's gift, who upheld the Son as the Father's servant, and now obeys him as the Father's Christ, and Lord and King. The yoke of God is an easy yoke; it is sin that makes it hard. The curse of God on sin is righteous. The devil and his children, alone, denying the character of God, deny the character of his curse on sin. The Father, in whose person stood the offended law, did so love men, and desire that they would not slay themselves, but live, that he spared not the Son of his bosom. The Son, whose delights, though he was in the Father's bosom, were eternally with the sons of men, did so love them, and did so yearn for the honour of the Father in them, that he came into a creature condition and took the yoke; that he came into the lost condition of the creature, and set his seal to the death of that lost condition; and recovered it to delight with a Holy-Ghost and regeneration joy in the yoke. He knew what was good for the creature, even to enjoy God, and depend on him for life and strength and blessing. And, therefore, if any man say that God's yoke is hard, let him learn of the Son of God, who joyfully preferred his Father's yoke, becoming man that he might delight in his Father's law. If any man want to find blessedness, let him learn of the Son, who, coming in our flesh, meek and lowly, declared it as the creature's true blessedness to be subject unto God. If any man want to find rest, let him learn of the Son, who found continual rest to his soul in reposing on his God and Father. All this Christ did by faith, and all his faith was by the Holy Ghost: he of his ownself did nothing, and nothing for himself: he did all for his Father, and in his Father's strength; that God might be seen as at once the fountain and the object of all honour and obedience. He lived by the Father; he learned of the Father; he spake of the Father; he judged as he heard, so that his judgment was certainly just. The Father continually rejoiced in his Servant, whom he upheld, and on whom he had put his Spirit. The Son continually opened his ear to hear his Father's counsel, to acquire the tongue of the learned, that he might speak to the weary. "I will put my trust in him," was Christ's daily watch-word, on the strength of which he could continually say, Father, I have glorified thee on the earth." He spake a true word when he said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." That word is true of the Father; and so the Son, the Father's Equal, came to bless and glorify the Father by receiving all things at his hand. It is true of the Son; and so he calls on all men to bless Him by receiving of his fulness at his hand. It is also true in the history of the Son; and so his present condition, as the dispenser of the Spirit of life, is more blessed than his former condition, as the receiver thereof. Therefore He is now glorified, who in flesh glorified the Father. He doth now, on the Father's throne, and in the Father's power and glory, possess the joy set before himthe joy of giving life to men-to the glory of God the Father. And herein appears the vast propriety of his words, "The Father loveth me," not merely "because I lay down my life" (for it would have been a fruitless generosity to do no more than bear our curse), but because I lay it down "that I may take it again.” The Father loveth to see men blessed; in other words, to see them come to him: therefore he loved Christ for saying amen, and in his own person acting amen, to that desire, at every expense to himself; for being so filled with it as to lay down his life rather than it should not take effect; for descending into law-boundness, and curse-endurance, and God-forsakenness, just that he might redeem them that were under a dishonoured law, perverted by them from a blessing into a curse; just that— as the Upright (ootos) One, who could not see corruption; as the spotless Lamb, who took away the sin of the world; as he whose righteous blood made an end of sin; as he whose circumcision on the cross put off the flesh of sin, destroyed the body of sin, and entombed for ever man's Adamic and forfeited life; as he who, by fulfilling the law, took from sin its strength; as he who, condemning sin, took from death its sting-he might burst the gates of brass, and tear asunder the veil, and bring up the spoils of all captivity, and find for himself as a forerunner an eternal release, and surmount the grave by a heaven-begotten life, and pass straightway with all boldness of access to the Father. Thus he was himself the Resurrection, for in resurrection he overcame; and they which have him, are risen in him. Thus he was himself the Life, for he got of the Father the life which he asked; and they who know him are alive before the Father. Thus he was himself the Way, for he hath not merely opened a way, but found and trodden it to the Father. Thus he was himself the Truth, for by his resurrection we see in a man, not only all the character, but all the faithfulness of the Father. The way into the holiest is made manifest; for he hath cleared it for ever, who drew near to his Father "with a true heart and in full assurance of faith." He went to God and lived. If any man deem himself unable to do likewise, he must be doubting that Christ his brother has gone; or doubting that He who raised Christ hath raised him as the very beacon and pledge of faith and hope; or doubting that the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is shed down to draw men in his footsteps up to God, to satisfy them there with the substance of things hoped for,—a resurrection life, exceeding gladness in the countenance of God. Christ came to obey the Father; to declare, assert, and glorify him. To this end he gave himself wholly up. He had counted the cost; and, cost what it might, he would do it. He obeyed, in shewing the worthiness of his Father to be honoured; he obeyed, in shewing the worthiness of the flesh to be destroyed. He never attempted to glorify his Father by the flesh, but always did it by the Spirit. He had his Father's mind. This he learned not of man, but of God. He entertained no theological doctrines: he sought life, the life of God, and got it from his Father. He learned out of the word of God; he pleaded the word of God against men and devils; he rested on it as a sure resting-place, and was not put to shame; but he never worshipped it-he worshipped God. He received his Father's word, just because it was his Father's. He dwelt in God; he beheld God; he set God before him; his heart was fixed in God; and all this by faith. His reasonable soul was informed by the Holy Ghost; his body was the temple of God, through the Spirit of God. God though he was, the Spirit shewed unto him the things of God. He came in all things like unto the children, sin excepted, for that very thing he came to deliver them from; and the children are called to be like unto him in all things, Godhead excepted. God asks of them no unreasonable service; he reaps never where he has not sown; and we, who are called to walk in the footsteps of Christ, may be as much assured that he hath no where set his foot where we may not follow him, as we may be that we can in no way glorify God in which Christ has not been before us. There are no two kinds of holiness, else there were two Gods. As man, Christ did nothing which we may not do. The difference between him and us lies in his incommunicable Godhead. He became man, which we cannot do: he atoned for sin, which we cannot do : he became the substitute of sinners, which we cannot be; for herein was seen the essential dignity and price of his Divine person substituted in flesh for those of men. But in all his jealousy for God, in all his worship of God, in all his trust on God, in all his grief for sin, in all his condemnation of it, in all his mortification of the flesh to all things in the world, in all the love which teemed from his human heart, in all the peaceful simplicity and singleness of his walk, in all his unshaken persuasion of things unseen and eternal, we are called to imitate him to the very letter; for God can never expect less of the regeneration than of his original creation, without admitting the Fall as a righteous excuse for man's iniquity. We have the same spirit of faith as Christ, to do the same works: and if man under the Law be guilty of all by breaking one point, the Gospel were truly a bounty on sin, did it represent God as ready to be contented with a short-coming which his Law condemned, or with any thing less than the fulfilment of the righteousness of the law in us. The condition stated in Rom. vii. is the wrong condition of a saint. Paul cried out "wretched," because he was in it. Christ is no deliverer out of a right state. It is not a contest with the flesh, but a victory over it, its crucifixion, its death, that constitutes holiness; and if the working of the flesh be sin, it is impossible, without supposing God to approve sin, to regard him as approving a condition in which the flesh is in any degree at work. Increase of holiness stands not in bettering, but in multiplying the works of the Spirit. Satan never more effectually gained his end, than by converting our short-comings into excuses for themselves, instead of constant causes why we should abhor ourselves in dust and ashes. : What is this law, the law of God? His very mind delared. It is spiritual; it is holy; it is good (Rom. vii. 12,-14). God made every creature to enjoy, to glorify, to know, to trust, to obey, to declare, him: he made no creature to serve any other end, to feel any other joy, to perceive or display any other glory; especially-oh, mark it well!-he made no creature to serve itself. Man came from God's hand ready to conform himself to God's mind, in whatever manner or degree he might see fit to declare it and therefore, as long as man was thus right with God, the publication of God's law could be nothing but a blessing to him, whose joy lay in its obedience. It is not of God, but of the devil, that any man feels the declaration of God's mind a sorrow, or the demand that he fulfil it a burden. The inherent office of the Law is unchangeably to bless : its blessing just lies in its fulfilment. When that blessing failed, it was man that marred it: and the power of man so to do lies just in this, that the law has no power to enforce its own obedience; for the power to effect conformity to God's mind resides, not in |