up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"

"The faith of the Son of God" is, therefore, a faith which has for its object the person of the Godman, and which taketh hold of the crucified and risen One as the very Son of God, of one substance with the Father from eternity. It is a faith which findeth the virtue of the divine in all that Christ was as human; beholding in him, who was made flesh and tabernacled amongst men, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father. It is a faith which perceiveth that it became the Father to glorify the Son of man in his own glory, seeing that he had that glory with him before the world was; and that he came forth thence to tread the path of suffering, down into those unknown depths of sorrow, from which he brought up his chosen church. The faith that believeth in the Son of God, seeth not how the divine righteousness, which he wrought for his people by his one obedience, can fail to bring them into the heavenly glory, since that obedience was performed by none other than the God-man mediator. It is a faith which seeth not how the blood of the cross can ever lose its power to cleanse from sin, to free from guilt, to preserve from wrath, and to fit for the holy presence of God, the soul that resteth thereon, knowing that it is the blood of God's own Son. It is a faith that doubteth not the all-prevalent power of the intercession carried on for us before the throne, "seeing that we have a great High Priest, Jesus the Son of God, who is passed into the heavens." Divest the living obedience and the dying agonies of the virgin-born man of the infinite worth mysteriously

pervading them from the Godhead of the obedient sufferer, and the Rock of ages sinks beneath the feet of faith, leaving the soul submerged in the quicksands of doubt and uncertainty-even the deep mire where there is no standing. Take away from the atoning sacrifice of the spotless humanity the intrinsic value of the personal divinity, and faith sees not why God must give, for the sake of that one sacrifice, all things beneath and above, in time and in eternity, unto them that trust therein. On the other hand, only give to faith the sure foundation of the personal Godhead, underlying the obedient and suffering manhood, and in the face of heaven, earth, and hell, she will put forth the challenge, "Who is he that condemneth?" and waiting in vain for a reply, she herself will give the exulting response, "It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." Give to faith the great truth that it was his own Son, in his own nature, whom the Father spared not, but whom for us he delivered up to the death of agony and shame; and in the midst of tribulation, distress, persecution, or famine, and in the face of peril and sword, she will confidently ask, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" And her own voice shall break the inevitable silence that shall ensue, as she triumphantly replies, "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." In the power of the indwelling, Christ

revealing, Christ-exalting Holy Ghost, our apostle clung to the person of the Son of God as his life and his all. Sent of the Son, he lived by the Son, as the Son lived here below by the Father.

II. We proceed to consider the next word of our apostle, "Who loved me." The same blessed Jesus who said, "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me," said also, "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you." Had he not loved us, we had never known him as our life; and did he not continue to love us, we should cease to live by him. When with the Father, "as one brought up with him, daily his delight, rejoicing always before him," even then he rejoiced "in the habitable parts of the earth," and his "delights were with the sons of men." It is a wondrous truth, that the love of Jesus to his people moved his heart from eternity: that when in the full enjoyment of fellowship with the Father, in the glory which he had with him before the world was, his love went forth toward his chosen and appointed bride. I wish to walk in no path, and to dive into no mystery, into which the Divine Spirit, the glorifier of Jesus, would not lead; but I confess to an intense desire to search out, to find, and evermore to dwell near, the pure fountain of that ineffable blessedness which is in the heart of Jesus for us. And surely that Spirit which loves to take of the things of Christ, and to show them to us, would willingly guide our spirits into these deep things of God, were we desirous to be led of him thereunto. Be it then our endeavour how to follow our Great Teacher into his own illustration of the special

character of the love of Jesus. "Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for her; that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that she should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church; for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." Herein, then, is the peculiar nature of the love of Jesus to the Bride appointed to him of the Father, whom he came into this world to seek and to save, that he might take her back with him in faultless beauty, purity, and blessedness, into the bosom of God, there to dwell with him for ever. While it was the good pleasure of God the Father to love us sinners with a love that would make us children; while it was the good pleasure of the Holy Ghost to love us unholy ones with a love that would renew and sanctify us, and fit us to become children; it was the good pleasure of the Eternal Son to love us with a love special to himself with a love that would yield to us his own life, and unite us to himself in that life, making us one with himself evermore. Moved by this love, he consented to be laid down in the sleep of death, that of him might be formed that wonderful thing, the Bride of the second Adam; that she might spring forth with him from his grave, and through union with him, and life from him, be developed unto the most beautiful of all God's creatures, the perfect counterpart of the glorified Son of man himself.

Hence our Jesus not only loved us as Son of God, but as man. His human spirit was replete with the new life which dwelt in him in its highest state of moral perfectness, even while he abode in the flesh. And as love is of the very essence of the new man, that love burned in his soul with its intensest fervour. Therewith loved he God with all his heart, and mind, and soul, and strength; therewith he loved and pitied fallen ruined men; and therewith loved he his own with a fervour that lost not its hold of them in the agonies of Gethsemane, in the death struggle of Calvary, or in the deep waters of the wrath of God, that went over his soul, as it became an offering for sin. We say not that Christ loved the Church with a love more free, more gracious, or more intense than the love of the Father. We say not that the love of the Spirit to us was less blessed or immutable, less compassionate or infinite, than the love of Christ; but with adoring reverence, we may say that the Father could not love us with a human heart, that the Spirit could not love us with a human soul, while the Son took flesh, that, loving us with a human heart and soul, he might draw us with the cords of a man, and with the bands of love. The Father loved us with a love that desired to quicken us into life, and make us his children; but in bringing us into the relation of sons, he could not give us of his Godhead life. The Holy Ghost loved us with a love that prompted him to renew our dead souls, and make us alive in Christ for evermore; but he could not implant in us his own essential life. But Jesus, as man, imparts to us his own very life; so that we live in union with him as our life, and