SERMON II.

Christ the Medium between God and Man.

1 COR. viii. 6.

But to us, there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him.

IT

T has been often and truly said, that the philosophical systems which the learned of old invented to satisfy the wants and cravings which mankind felt, have one and all been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Once of old, in the city of the Athenians, these systems, in their highest and noblest forms, were brought face to face with the then nascent faith of Jesus Christ; and those keen and graceful Athenians, regarding that matchless chaplet of temples which crowned their acropolis, and those numberless statues, held yet to be the glory of all time, as emanations from the inner spirit of the religion of their fathers, might naturally look with contempt at the unknown stranger from a despised nation as he stood there on their Hill of Mars, alone and unaccredited, and might naturally ask what this unlettered babbler would dare to say to them, the

beloved of the all-wise Minerva. And in truth, the courage and faith of this Jew, who doubtless fully realized the noble efforts of which unaided heathens were capable, and who in this their very citadel and stronghold could yet dare to tell them, that with all this apparatus of service they were still ignorant of God, and that these their proudest works should pass away as a vanished dream, because the unknown God dwelt not in temples made with hands,—this faith and courage of the Apostle must doubtless have struck and attracted the Athenians, as it cannot fail to have struck us. And yet, with all this disparity between St. Paul and his opponents, he needed only to speak to be victorious, for his words were as the words of his Master, "spirit and life,” and kindled in the souls of his hearers the heaven-sent light of the Gospel of Christ, which should live and grow for ever, and before which all earth-born fires should wane and die. And as St. Paul in Athens, so stood Christianity to Heathenism. When we compare the faith of Christ, as represented by those few disciples met together in the large upper room at Jerusalem, with the religion of heathendom, supported in every corner of the then known world by the mighty power of imperial Rome, we see how truly the prophet of old shadowed forth these things by the little stone which smote down the image and became the great mountain. As of old the tiny stone of the brook, wielded by the arm of the youthful David, smote down the uncircumcised giant, so truly has this small

stone of the Gospel of Christ, wielded by the arm of our God, broken in pieces the mountains of heathen opposition, and shall yet lay low everything which opposeth itself to the name of Christ.

During these Advent weeks, when we prepare ourselves to celebrate the birth of our only Lord and Saviour, it may be well to ask ourselves, wherein does the faith of Christ meet the needs of human nature more than those systems which it has superseded. And this seems to be one of the special duties of Advent.

Our Church now bids us to learn well what our faith is, to see to it that we are in the faith if we would give an answer to every one that asketh us a reason of the hope that is in us, and if we would participate in the joy of the angels, and understand what they mean when they sing the glad tidings of "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will towards men.' And here we and all the Church of Christ may ever be learning without exhausting the height and depth of the mystery which surrounds the Babe of Bethlehem. Only when we see face to face, when we know even as also we are known, only when we are made throughly one with Him, can we hope to know and understand the birth, life, and death of the Man Christ Jesus, of whom, however, we are yet on earth permitted to know so much that we believe in Him, we preach Him, we love Him, and will follow Him, by His grace, unto our life's end. Let me endeavour, asking God's blessing, to lay before you just a few remarks concerning one aspect of the

Gospel, to suggest a few thoughts on one of the many ways in which it accomplishes what all other religions have failed to do.

The centre, then, and total of our religion is the worship of a Person, of one who is man like ourselves, and who is also very and eternal God, as God Himself is, for Jesus Christ is the whole of Christianity. The apostles all felt and knew this; they were 'messengers,' 'witnesses,' servants, worshippers of Jesus Christ; He was all they knew; God incarnate, "Jesus Christ and Him crucified," was all they had to give. They offered to the poor heathen no abstract set of rules, no fine theories, no dogmatic systems; they offered a Man who, as God, had power to lay down His life and to take it again; they spoke of the Man Christ Jesus, and simply asked, Will you have Him to rule over you? He shall be to you as a brother, for He is the Friend of sinners; nay, more, for He is the Saviour of sinners. To hear of one who was able to forgive, to pardon, and to cleanse, and who would yet condescend to be a friend, and to love the sinner, this was indeed a gospel, a good news, which the wisest of old had never dreamt of.

You may at once see how this differs from all systems before or since. In the case of those heathen systems, when once devised and written in a book, it mattered little how soon their authors were forgotten. We call the law, indeed, Mosaic, but it would still be the law, "holy, wise, and good," whether Moses were remembered or forgotten. But what would our

Gospel be if we forgot Jesus Christ as God and Man? A world without a sun; an inexplicable riddle, containing a loftier morality than preceding systems, but even less successful, because exciting aspirations and longings without in any way satisfying them. If, then, we would know Jesus Christ, let us live in the atmosphere of the four Gospels. A glowing warmth there breathes from every page, a halo of love and beauty, much of which we miss even in the most exalted Epistles; and this because light and warmth, and love and beauty are more where He is more. It was the life and death of Christ which converted the heathen world, not the acts of His apostles; the Gospel of the Lord and Master, not the Epistles of the men, His servants. Christ, then, the Man-God, is the Christian's all,-the Author and Finisher, the Alpha and Omega of his faith. He is the Christian's life, both as an example and as a vitality, "for by Him are all things, and we by Him;" He is the life of both the Sacraments, for He is in the waters of Baptism to make us members of His own body, and He is in the holy Eucharist to communicate to us more and more of that "His most blessed Body and Blood."

Pursuing, then, this first thought, we find it to mean this, that between the great and holy Creator and the puny sinful creature there was a great gulf fixed, which Christianity, and Christianity alone, has bridged over. Say what he might, man felt himself to be sinful, and knew God to be most holy. What

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