It is here that the Jewish religion is the chief trainer of the world. Revelation began with the personality of God. All the Jew's discipline taught him this: that the law of right was the will of a lawgiver. Deliverance from Egyptian slavery, or Assyrian invasion, was always associated with the name of a deliverer. Moses and the prophets were His messengers and mediators. "Thus saith the Lord," is ever the preface of their message. Consequently, only from Jews, and Christians trained through the Old Testament to know God, do we hear those impassioned expressions of personal love, which give us a sublime conception of the adoration of which human hearts are capable. Let us hear David-" Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee;" "My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God." And that glorious outburst of St. Paul: "Let God be true, and every man a liar," which can be understood only by those who feel that the desertion of all, and the discovery of the falseness of all, would be as nothing compared with a single doubt of the faithfulness of God. II. The other preparation is the patient waiting. 1. What is waited for?-an Advent of Christ. We must extend the ordinary meaning of this expression. There are many comings of Christ. Christ came in the flesh as a Mediatorial Presence. Christ came, a Spiritual Presence, when the Holy Ghost was given. Christ comes now in every signal manifestation of redeeming power. Any great reformation of morals and religion is a coming of Christ. A great revolution, like a thunderstorm, violently sweeping the evil away, to make way for the good, is a coming of Christ. Christ will come at the end of the world, when the Spirit of all these comings will be concentrated. Thus we may understand in what way Christ is ever coming and ever near. Why it was that St. James said, "Stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh and "Behold, the Judge standeth before the door." And we shall also understand how it was that the early Church was not deceived in expecting Christ in their own day. He did come, though not in the way they expected. 2. What is meant by "waiting?" Now it is remarkable that throughout the apostle's writings, the Christian attitude of soul is represented as an attitude of expectation-as in this passage, "So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ;" and again, "We are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." Salvation in hope: that was their teaching. Not a perfection attained, but a perfection that is to be. The golden age lies onward. We are longing for, not the Church of the past, but the Church of the future. Ours is not an antiquated, sentimental yearning for the imaginary perfection of ages gone by, not a conservative stagnation content with things as they are, but hope--for the individual and for the society. By Him we have access by faith, and rejoice in hope of the glory that shall be revealed. A better, wiser, purer age than that of childhood. An age more enlightened and more holy than the world has yet seen. "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God." It is this spirit of expectation which is the preparation for the Advent. Every gift of noble origin is breathed upon by hope's perfect breath. 3. Let us note that it is patient waiting. Every one who has ardently longed for any spiritual blessing knows the temptation to impatience in expecting it. Good men who, like Elijah, have sickened over the degeneracy and luxury of their times; fathers who have watched the obduracy and wild career of a child whom they have striven in vain to lead to God; such cry out from the deeps of the heart, "Where is the promise of His coming ?" Now the true preparation is, not having correct ideas of how and when He shall come, but being like Him. "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power;" "Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure. Application. "The Lord direct you" unto this. 3, Consider what the Thessalonians must have felt in their perplexity. Would that we had a teacher such as St. Paul, ever at hand to tell us what is truth-to distinguish between fanaticism and genuine enthusiasm-between wild false teaching and truth rejected by the many. "Here," might they have said, were we bewildered. How shall we hereafter avoid similar bewilderments without an infalli ble guide ?" Instead of which St. Paul says, "The Lord di rect your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ." God has so decreed, that except in childhood, our dependence must be on our own souls. "The way of truth is slow, hard, winding, often turning on itself." Good and evil grow up in the field of the world almost inseparably. The scanning of error is necessary to the comprehension and belief of truth. Therefore it must be done solitarily. Nay, such an infallible guide could not be given to us without danger. Such a one ever near would prove not a guide to us, but a hindrance to the use of our own eyes and souls. Reverence for such a guide would soon degenerate into slavishness, passiveness, and prostration of mind. Hence, St. Paul throws us upon God. IX. THE SINLESSNESS OF CHRIST. "Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law. And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin."-1 John iii. 4, 5. THE heresy with which the Apostle St. John had to contend in his day was an error of a kind and character which it is hard for us with our practical, matter-of-fact modes of thinking, to comprehend. There were men so over-refined and fastidious, that they could not endure the thought of any thing spiritual being connected with materialism. They could not believe in any thing being pure that was also fleshly, for flesh and sinfulness were to them synonymous terms. They could not believe in the Divine humanity, for humanity was to them the very opposite of that which was Divine and accordingly, while admitting the Divinity of Jesus, they denied the reality of His materialism. They said of His earthly life exactly what the Roman Catholic says of the miracle he claims to be performed in the Supper of the Lord. The Roman Catholic maintains that it is simply an illusion of the senses; there is the taste of the bread, the look of the bread, the smell of the bread, but it is all a deception: there is no bread really there, it is only the spiritual body of the Lord. That which the Romanist says now of the elements in the Lord's Supper, did these ancient here tics say respecting the body and the life of Jesus. There was, they said, the sound of the human voice, there was the passing from place to place, there were deeds done, there were sufferings undergone, but these were all an illusion and a phantasma-a thing that appeared, but did not really exist. The everlasting Word of God was making itself known to the minds of men through the senses by an illusion; for to say that the Word of God was made flesh, to maintain that He connected Himself with sinful, frail humanity this was degradation to the Word-this was destruction to the purity of the Divine Essence. You will observe that in all this there was an attempt to be eminently spiritual; and what seems exceedingly marvellous, is the fact withal that these men led a life of extreme licentiousness. Yet it is not marvellous, if we think accurately, for we find even now that over-refinement is but coarseness. And so, just in the same way, these ultra-spiritualists, though they would not believe that the Divine Essence could be mingled with human nature without degradation, yet they had no intention of elevating human nature by their own conduct. They thought they showed great respect for Jesus in all this: they denied the reality of his suf ferings; they would not admit the conception that frail, undignified humanity was veritably His, but nevertheless they had no intention of living more spiritually themselves. It was therefore that we find in another epistle, St. John gives strict commands to his converts not to admit these heretics into their houses: and the reason that he gives is, that by so doing they would be partakers, not of their evil doctrines, but of their evil deeds. They were a licentious set of men, and it is necessary to keep this in view if we would understand the writings of St. John. It is for this reason, therefore, that he says-"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of Life, declare we unto you." It is for this reason that he, above all the apostles, narrates with scrupulous accuracy all the particulars respecting the Redeemer's risen body-that he joined in the repast of the broiled fish and the honey-comb: and that he dwells with such minuteness on the fact that there came from the body of the Redeemer blood and water: "Not water only, but water and blood;" and it is for this reason that in speaking of Antichrist he says, "Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God, and this is that spir it of Antichrist whereof ye have heard that it should come.” So, then, we learn from this that the most spiritual of all the apostles was the one who insisted most earnestly on the materialism of the human nature of our Lord. He who alone had penetrated into that realm beyond, where the King was seen on His throne of light, was the one who felt most strongly that in humanity there is nothing degrading. In the natural propensities of human nature there is nothing to be ashamed of: there is nothing for a man to be ashamed of but sin-there is nothing more noble than a perfect hu man nature. My brethren, though the error of the ancient times can not be repeated in this age in the same form, though this strange belief commends itself not to our minds, yet there may be such an exclusive dwelling upon the Divinity of Jesus as absolutely to destroy His real humanity; there may be such a morbid sensitiveness when we speak of Him as taking our nature, as will destroy the fact of His sufferings-yes, and destroy the reality of His atonement also. There is a way of speaking of the sinlessness of Jesus that would absolutely make that scene on Calvary a mere pageant in which He was acting a part in a drama, during which He was not really suffering, and did not really crush the propensities of His human nature. It was for this reason we lately dwelt on the Redeemer's sufferings; now let us pass onward to the fact of the sinlessness of His nature. The subject divides itself-first, into the sinlessness of His nature; and secondly, the power which He possessed from that sinlessness to take away the sins of the world. With respect to the first branch, we have given us a definition of what sin is-" Sin is the transgression of the law." It is to be observed there is a difference between sin and transgression. Every sin is a transgression of the law, but every transgression of the law is not necessarily a sin. Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law. Now mark the difference. It is possible for a man to transgress the law of God, not knowingly, and then in inspired language we are told that "sin is not imputed unto him.” Yet for all that, the penalty will follow whenever a man transgresses, but the chastisement which belongs to sin, to known willful transgression, will not follow. Let us take a case in the Old Testament, which it may be as well to explain, because sometimes there is a difficulty felt in it. We read of the patriarchs and saints in the Old Testament as living in polygamy. There was no distinct law forbidding it, but there was a law written in the “fleshly tables of the heart," against which it is impossible to trans |