humanity, and that mysterious glory which at intervals lightened upon them from within. Perhaps the chief design of the transfiguration was to correct and raise their low ideas of him.

Consider besides, that, under the full direct impression of sight, there would be a great restriction on faith, acting in the way of imagination. The mind does not know how to expand into splendid ideal conception upon an object presented close, and plain, and familiar, to sight.

Should not such considerations make it evident, that to see the Messiah in his personal manifestation, was a mode of contemplating him very inferior, for the excitement of the sublimer kind of affection, to that which we have to exercise by faith? It is true, that to those who regard him as nothing more than a man, all this will appear impertinent and fantastic. But those who solemnly believe their salvation to depend on his being infinitely more, will feel the importance of all that gives scope to their faculties for magnifying the idea of their Redeemer. This scope is the greater for our "not having seen;" since,-our conceptions are not reduced and confined down to a precise image of human personality, a particular, individual, graphical form, which would be always present to the mind's eye, in every meditation on the exalted Redeemer.

We have no exact and invariable image, placing him before us as a person that we know; exhibiting him in the mere ordinary predicament of humanity. It does invincibly appear to me, that this would be a depressive circumstance in solemn and elevated contemplations. We are not informed how this circumstance did operate in the minds of the apostles, who had seen him. It would have been interesting to know in what manner, and with what effect, the precise and familiar image mingled with their lofty and magnificent thoughts of him. But it is clearly better to be

left, as we are, to an indistinct and shadowy conception of the person of our Saviour as seen on earth. For, thus we can, with somewhat the more facility, give our thoughts an unlimited enlargement in contemplating his subline character and nature. Thus, also, we are left at greater freedom in the effort to form some grand, though glimmering, idea of him as possessing a glorious body, assumed after his victory over death. Our freedom of thought is the more entire for arraying the exalted Mediator in every glory which speculation, imagination, devotion, can combine, to shadow forth the magnificence of such an adored object.

Do not let it seem as if such a train of thought were like being ashamed of the humiliation of our Lord. We cannot be ashamed to see our humble nature so honoured as by his assuming even its inferior part. We cannot be ashamed to see such an illustration of the value set on our souls, as that he, the Judge of their value, would descend from heaven to assume a body to redeem them.

But it is important that our conceptions of him should but little rest on the level, if we may so speak, of his state of humiliation. In the scriptures, besides the doctrine of his divinity, there is much in the character of the imagery by which he is represented, to demand an elevation in our ideas of his personal glory. For example, the manner in which he appears in the visions of Daniel; the fact of the transfiguration; the overpowering lustre in his manifestation to St. Paul; and the transcendent images in the visions of St. John. It is clearly intended that our predominant idea should not be humble and familiar. And we must think that, in this respect, there is a very serious fault,—an unintentional impiety,-in many of our popular devotional writings, even in such as are designed and used for public worship. Such, we think, is the advantage, to later Christians, of not having seen their Lord in a mortal form.

The text may suggest to us an additional idea, which it could not to those to whom the apostle wrote. We not only have not seen him, but we live very long after the time in which he could be seen; we, therefore, in endeavouring to form a sublime conception of him, can add, and accumulate upon the idea, all the glory that has arisen to him from the progress of his cause in the world ever since. So many mighty interpositions ;-conquests gained;-strongholds of darkness demolished ;—such a multitude of sinful immortal spirits redeemed,-devoted to him on earth, and now, triumphing with him in heaven;-all this is become an added radiance around the idea of HIM!

As such an exalted "In whom, though

Such is the object of Christian faith. being, he is to be believed on unseen. now ye see him not, yet believing,"-that is, holding a most firm assurance that such he is, and regarding him with an earnest interest as such a Redeemer. And then, an inseparable result or associate of that faith, is to "love" him, though unseen; to give the soul's affection to him; to think of him with complacency and gratitude; to think of him as what it were death to want; to devote the soul to him as possessing the supreme excellence that deserves this devotement, and as having done that for us that demands it.

And then, finally (on which we cannot enlarge), through this faith and love, there will be "joy." "Ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." Most rationally such believers rejoice, because, so believing and loving, they have a present, direct access to where he maintains, though unseen, the exercise of his mediatorial power. They believe all that is promised by him, and in his name. They have the sense, the assurance, of a sacred union with him, which involves an ultimate participation of his glory and joy. They consider him as actually preparing for them the felicity of another state, and as conducting and training

them toward it. They can sometimes imagine somewhat of that felicity-and how can they imagine it as to be theirs, and not rejoice?-And, inasmuch as these anticipations are of something unseen, unrealized, and indefinitely great, the "joy" is correspondent; it is "unspeakable," in this sense, that it is not restricted, not limited to a precise measure, but expansive,-mingled with the sense of mystery. It aspires to be commensurate with unknown possibilities, and so is "unspeakable," as well as in its emphasis. And the soul of man (if not sunk and stupified in the earth), aspires for ever to a joy having this quality, that is, undefinable, not reducible to exact and competent expression, that goes beyond all assigned limits and calculation.

See in all this, how the joy of Christians-the only persons entitled to rejoice on earth-is both in its sentiment and its causes, combined with, founded upon, a recognition of Christ.

And we cannot close without adding one remark, a common and obvious one indeed;-On the supposition of our Lord's being merely a human person, however exalted in prophetic office, no language expressive of the sentiments and emotions regarding him could be more absurdly extravagant, more unworthy of apostolic seriousness and wisdom, than such expressions as those of the text; to which, nevertheless, there are very, very many, throughout the New Testament that correspond. On this hypothesis, no men ever wrote or spoke in a strain of more inflated fanaticism than they who were commissioned to illuminate the world!

September 30, 1824.

LECTURE XLVI.

THE APOSTOLIC ALTERNATIVE.

PHILIPPIANS i. 21.

“To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

ONE has often wished it were possible to know exactly what kind of sentiment is excited in the minds of persons of various orders, at hearing pronounced some very remarkable sentence of scripture. It is, indeed, but too probable, that in many there may be no distinct excitement of feeling or reflection at all. But we would not willingly suppose this in the case of hearing so eminently remarkable a declaration as this of the Apostle,-so adapted to turn every mind to a reflection on itself. Here we have the Apostle deliberately taking account, in reference to himself, of two things, of the deepest interest to every man,-forming a comparative estimate of life and death, as to the preferableness, to him, of the one or the other. And we can give him full credit when he avows which of them is, in itself, preferable in his esteem and desire.

Now, we may presume that most persons have their comparative estimate of these two things. They have it in settled feeling, if not in deliberate thought. And, with the generality of men, how does that estimate stand? At the very first view of the matter, we have an unfavourable light thrown on it by the evident fact, that men generally have a horror of death. This, indeed we must, in part, set to the account of a mere natural feeling, which the Creator himself has intentionally made instinctive in our constitution.