expression at first sight seems full of mystery. Who is this Christ? What the membership in Him? And wherefore such blessedness resulting? Would not such questions as these at once suggest themselves to the mind of any intelligent Roman heathen of old, and to any heathen of the heathen world now, on first hearing the gospel message preached to him by the Christian missionary?

As to the first question there would of course have to be set before him from the Christian books the wonderful story of Jesus Christ of Nazareth:- how that in the most ancient historic books existing, viz. the Jewish Scriptures, there was recorded the original creation of man, all good and happy, and in intimacy of union with God his Creator; then how he fell through disobedience of the divine command, thereby introducing all that sad alienation from God which was perpetuated ever after in the human family; but not without a most merciful promise being given at the same time of a destined Saviour,-one called mysteriously "the seed of the woman,"-who should at some certain time, and in some certain way, not then explained, come into our world, and remedy the terrible evil so introduced:-how that the remembrance of this promise was ever kept up afterwards, through fresh communications from time to time by the mouth of a series of prophets in a nation providentially insulated from all the rest of the world, in order to its being the depository of the promise: prophets divinely inspired, it is affirmed: (I shall hereafter, when on the evidences of Christianity, have to speak more fully on the details of those old Messianic prophecies, and proof of their divine inspiration from the very fulfilment in Jesus Christ :) and then, further, how at length a wonderful man, named Jesus, the very meaning of which word is a Saviour, was born supernaturally into our world, at the time, in the place, and of the nation and family, so predicted :-one who, both by the sinless perfection of

his character and life, and by multitudinous miracles of mercy, showed Himself to be, what He asserted that He was, very God as well as very man: and how, after having often during life spoken of his coming death by crucifixion as what He purposed undergoing in the gracious character of the self-devoted bearer of God's curse on man for sin, (this being an essential conclusion to his earthly mission of mercy,) this same Jesus was accordingly by most unjust sentence thus put to death: and how then, in fine, He rose again the third day, as He said He would; and soon after ascended in the disciples' sight to heaven; there to plead with the Father his thus wonderfully accomplished work of man's redemption from the curse of sin, even as if by a second Adam, on behalf of each true disciple: that so, in the words of the Christian Scriptures, "He might become the author of eternal salvation to all that should believe in Him."-Such, in brief, is the Christian explanatory story concerning Jesus Christ.

Further, secondly, in order to show the nature of membership in Christ, through faith, spoken of, and the mode in which it would operate in bringing back fallen men into the relationship of children to God, it would be told by the Christian teacher, how there were used by Jesus Himself, or by his first apostles, certain striking and most illustrative similitudes. As a branch engrafted into a vine-stem would thenceforth become part of that vine, instead of the wild vine from which it might have been taken, deriving ever after its life-sap and fruitfulness from the new vine-stock,-such was one similitude used to mark the asserted closeness, and intimacy, of a Christian believer's soul with the Lord Jesus Christ, the ascended Saviour Himself. Again, as each member of the human body is vitally and essentially united with the head, and derives thence its nervous influence and vitality, so too, said an early Christian teacher, is it with each true believer in Him who is the Head of the Christian body, Jesus Christ.

Indeed, yet further might that similitude have been applied. For, according to later scientific discoveries,* it is not one nerve singly, but a parallel pair of nerves, which runs from the brain to every part and member of the body, each with its distinct office: the one, the nerve of motion, by which the will acts upon the members, and enables it to move in conformity, unless hindered by some sad stroke of paralysis; the other of sensation, through which every feeling experienced by the member is transmitted upwards to the brain. So, according to the Christian system, is it between Jesus Christ and his disciples. From Him they receive life, and power to live after his will and commandments; and unto Him they communicate all their feelings, thoughts, desires. They are, in fact, in heart one with Him. Such, I say, was, and is, the explanatory statement of all true Christian teachers on this question. The believer's life "is hid with Christ in God."

And so the theory is that Christians, having thus become "members of Jesus Christ," and one with Him, must necessarily stand in the same blessed relationship to God that Christ does Himself. As He said, "I ascend unto my Father, and (so) your Father; to my God and your God."-Such is the connexion, according to Christian doctrine, between the two first great blessings conditionally promised at baptism, -that of being members of Christ, and that of being children of God; the condition (on which more in a later Lecture) being that of true discipleship, true belief in Jesus; belief not only in profession, but in

heart.

3. There is proposed to Christians, as from God, in the Christian baptismal covenant, the blessing of being made" inheritors of the kingdom of heaven."

So do the Christian baptismal blessings professedly extend from earth to heaven, from time into eternity. And how indeed could there be any less result than this, By Dr. Marshall and Sir Charles Bell.

*

consistently with the two previously assured blessings? If children of God, and in a relationship to Him so close and dear as we have seen to be affirmed of Christ's faithful disciples in the Christian Scriptures, how could the heavenly Father be supposed to fail of receiving them after death into his more immediate Again, if one with Jesus Christ, presence in heaven? their Lord and Master, essentially and intimately one, even as members of his mystical body-how could it be but that the members should follow their ascended Head thither whither He has gone before; there to be united with Him perfectly, and for ever?

But what as to the kingdom of heaven, which is the Here the precise phrase used; not simply heaven? statements in the Christian Scriptures explain that ever since man's primeval apostacy from God, soon after his first creation, the kingdoms of this world have, in respect of their ruling maxims and principles, followed in the track of the apostacy; insomuch that one there exists, it is the Evil Spirit (for such an said, the enemy of God, and also of man,) rules in fact at present as the Prince of this world :-but that At so it is not to be always; for that Jesus is to come again, and take the kingdom from the usurper. his first coming indeed, in the humiliation of man's mortal form and nature, He announced his kingdom as then in one way begun; viz., in respect of the invitations sent out to the children of men to enter into it-there being declared at the same time that, in this its present inchoate and imperfect state, both bad and good, false and true, would profess to join it: but that at his second coming in glory, the false of every age and nation would be cast away, and the true alone recognised as its real members; and that then the just should shine forth as the sun, in the at length perfected Of the glory and blessedness kingdom of their Father. of the kingdom, as then to be manifested, it is declared in the Christian Scriptures, that "eye hath not seen,

nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive," what God has prepared in it for Christ's faithful disciples. They are then to be, as it were, assessors with Him in the throne of his glory. "The saints," it is said, "shall take the kingdom." To enhance men's ideas of its glory and blessedness, all the beauties of figure and symbol are used in God's Scriptures of revelation.* Meanwhile, in their present state, Christians are to have the joy of regarding themselves as heirs to it. For, it is said, "If children of God, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ: if so be that we have (in any measure) suffered with (or for) Him, that we may be also glorified together."+

Such, dear young friends, is the third mighty blessing conditionally offered, even as if from God Himself, in Christian baptism.

But is the offer trustworthy?

Is there good reliable

In

evidence that it does really come from God to us? other words, is there satisfactory evidence for the truth of Christianity, as a religion from God?

So we come to the all-important question of the Christian evidences. Of these I shall have to speak in my two next Lectures. And in them I doubt not to show that we have not followed cunningly devised fables in setting forth these as blessings of the Christian covenant divinely offered us in baptism; but that in very truth the offer comes (though made, as must be ever remembered, conditionally) from God Himself.

Matt. xiii. 43; 1 Cor. ii. 9; Matt. xix. 28; Dan. vii. 22, 27; etc. + Rom. viii. 17.