you can see it in His gestures, you can read it in His parables.1 For each of these, at this moment far away from church or preacher, He has His gracious benediction. Amongst them, if they would but hear Him, He walks (with reverence, yet with truth, must it be spoken) as though He was of them, and not of us: so that they who go by are tempted to say of Him: "Behold a friend of publicans and sinners." "He is gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner." "He is beside Himself." "He is a Samaritan." "He speaketh blasphemies." "He is reckoned amongst the transgressors."2

O freedom, beyond our narrow conception! O grace and condescension, beyond our poor imitation! O consolation, blessed indeed to those who can receive it rightly! O Gospel, at once most evangelical and most catholic, uniting in one those two well-known words, turned by party strife to gall and wormwood, yet in themselves sweeter than honey and the

1 Luke v. 2, 27, vii. 6, 37, 39, x. 33, xv. 1—32, xviii. 9, xix. 2, xxiii. 34, 42; Matt. xv. 28; John viii. 11.

2 Luke v. 21, vii. 34, xix. 7, xxii. 37; Mark iii. 21; John viii. 48.

honeycomb! Most evangelical, because there is proclaimed to the broken heart, in the most moving, the most tender accents, the glad tidings of infinite mercy and infinite hope. Most catholic, because that tidings is proclaimed to the universal race of man-to the whole congregation of Christian people dispersed throughout the world-to those who are not with us as well as to those who areto those with whom we have no dealings as well as to those at whose feet we sit-to strangers, aliens, and enemies, as well as to our friends, our neighbours, and ourselves.

O most welcome and acceptable year of Jubilee, whenever it dawns upon us, which shall see us go and do likewise!

SERMON VII.

BELIEF IN CHRIST.

(SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY, 1857.)

JOHN VI. 29.

This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.

WE have now come to the teaching of Christ, as it appears in the Gospel of S. John. Up to this point we have followed our Saviour's teaching as that of our highest Master, as containing all that is eternal in endurance, all that is pure in moral elevation, all that is transparent in truthfulness, all that is commanding in authority, all that is tender in mercy and universal in sympathy. Even thus far, however, this is much more than could be truly said of a merely human teacher. Such a

combination is itself Divine. And even thus far the results of His teaching are much beyond what could have occurred to the most enlightened heathen or the most devout Jew. Such a union of morality with religion is in itself peculiarly and essentially Christian; it is more distinctively and emphatically Christian doctrine than some of the most remarkable of the abstract truths which are

commonly so called. But still there is a point in the teaching of Christ yet beyond this, which, though pervading more or less all the Gospels, is specially brought out in the Fourth. In that Gospel we see more clearly than anywhere else the subject round which all His teaching turns. It is not His precepts, or His doctrines, or His authority, or His acts, but HIMSELF. "This is the word of God, that ye should believe on Him whom He hath sent;" "I am the bread of life;" "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you;" "Ye believe in God, believe also in me;" "I am the way, the truth, and the life;" "I am the vine; ye are the branches." What are we to learn

from these and many

like passages?

I. What do they teach us about Him who spake them? Taken by themselves, they

would perhaps tell us but little. If there were nothing else recorded of Him, they might awe us by their majesty, they might confound us by their solemnity, but they might also leave on us only the impression which they left on the unbelieving Jews, that He who spoke was beside Himself in making claims so vast, in making Himself equal with God. But, taken in conjunction with the rest of His teaching, the conclusion is almost irresistible. On the one hand, the moral grandeur and purity of that general teaching (to say nothing of His actions) compel us to receive these exalted claims as the words of absolute truth and soberness, as demanding nothing more than He had a full, perfect, and sufficient right to demand. And on the other hand, the fact that He does so use them places an impassable gulf between Himself and any merely human teacher that has been, or that ever can be. Read these passages, place them in the mouth not only of any great philosopher, but in the mouth of Moses, of Isaiah, of Paul, of John, and what presumption would they imply