His disciples at length said, "Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb."

Our Lord not only declared unto them that he was going to the Father, but he told them that he was going" to prepare a place for them, that where he is, there they should be also f;" that he would soon come and receive them unto himself; that, though they could not follow him now, they should hereafter follow him to the Father. In my. text he points out to his disciples the way by which they must go to the Father if they would follow. him.

If, then, you are, like Thomas, anxious to know. how you may follow Christ to the mansions of eternal bliss, I will this day set before you Jesus the Messiah, as the way, the truth and the life, and that by him only can you have access to the Father..

I would here bring forward this passage as a convincing proof of the divinity of Christ; for no created being can declare that he is, abstractedly, the truth and the life. He may declare that he is true and not false, and that he is alive; but not the truth, but not life in the abstract. The Creator alone can speak thus of himself, for he alone can be the fountain of truth and life. All truth, all life, must emanate from him alone. All beings must derive truth and life from him,

{ John xiv. 2.

and thus

become true and living; but never can they become essentially the truth, and essentially the life, nor can they therefore set themselves up, as Christ does here, to be the source of truth and life, from whence others may derive truth and life. But I will bring this more forcibly forward as I proceed with my discourse.

We will consider, then, first, the Messiah as the way.

All religions profess to teach mankind how they may approach God in an acceptable manner. Thus various religions have been established on the earth; and upon an examination of their principles we shall find, that they have been instituted upon the conviction of man being a transgressor, and subject to the anger of the Deity, whom they have offended. It is also remarkable, that the mode of access through propitiatory sacrifices seems to be the leading principle of almost all the religions with which we are acquainted. These, indeed, are the two fundamental truths which real religion teaches us; for we are taught to believe that the wrath of God abides upon us until we have had access to him through the propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

go

There is no religion, (as it is observed by an ancient writer,) however superstitious, which does

* John v. 36.

not contain some truth; and it may be difficult to account for the fact, how the prevalence of the opinion of man being a transgressor, and subject to the wrath of an offended Deity, and the mode of appeasing the same through propitiatory sacrifices, should have so interwoven itself in all the Grecian, Roman, and eastern mythology. It is most probable, that these two great truths, which were the fundamental doctrines of the religion of Noah, were handed down to posterity, and preserved, though obscured, amidst the mummeries and ceremonies of Jupiter Olympius and the Vishnu of the East. The fall of man from a state of innocency, by the instrumentality of the serpent, the longevity of the human race during the earlier ages of the world,—the destruction of the world by a universal deluge, the attempt to raise the tower of Babel,-the confusion of tongues, and many other

circumstances connected with this momentous history, are to be found in the fables of the East, and the romantic fictions of Grecian mythology. The oracles of old were but in imitation of the oracle of God; the hecatombs, holocausts, and libations of the Greeks, were but branches cut from the parent tree, and engrafted on the wild olive-tree of an idolatrous superstition; but they are easily recognised as a foreign and extraneous production, as not being indigenous to the country, but as plants of another soil. While we wonder how these

truths could have crept into religions so various and opposite, into countries so distant and far apart, maintained by people so hostile and opposed to one another, taught in languages so different and dissonant, we hail them at the same time as waymarks to guide us to the temple of truth, and proofs of the testimony of holy writ. The temple cannot be so totally destroyed, but some vestige of it will remain. The sun cannot be so entirely obscured, but some ray will penetrate the cloud; the foreigner cannot so entirely disguise his speech, but his country will be known. We recognise truth, though she presents herself to us covered with the squalid rags of falsehood; for her beauty will appear in spite of every thing to conceal it, and be felt and owned by her admirers, who lament that she is so seldom to be found in her native beauty and simplicity, and that she should ever appear dressed in any other robes and ornaments but her own; for she needs not the foreign aid of ornament, but when least adorned is then adorned and beautified the most.

So that while the religions of mankind are interesting to the poet, they are doubly so to the Christian philosopher. He beholds them all attempting what they can never effect. He reckons the Zoroasters of the east, the Numas and Lycurguses of the west, as thieves and robbers, who arrogated to themselves an authority which they

never possessed; taught doctrines that were never delivered to them, who in teaching many errors taught some truths, which they received by tradition from their fathers, from the mysteries of Eleusis, or the Sybiline oracles, and attempted to palm upon mankind as coming immediately from heaven. This vulgar belief gave sanction to their doctrines, and dignity to their persons.

But our Lord affirms that they “were all thieves and robbers"." By declaring himself to be the way to the Father, he proscribes at once all other religions which affect to teach the same: by declaring himself the way, he maintains that all other ways will deceive and mock the traveller; for he says, "No man cometh unto the Father but by

me."

The Pagan by an hundred hecatombs cannot effect it. The followers of Baal by cutting or maiming of the body; the devotee of the east by lengthened mortifications; the widow burning on the funeral pile of her husband; the wretch crushed under the wheels of the car of Juggernaut; the monk by the counting of his beads, and the multitude of his prayers; the Jew by circumcision and abstaining from meats; the Mahometan by his pilgrimage to Mecca; the Papist by hugging the crucifix, eating the wafer, and by the sprinkling

h John x. 8.