ren shall find
their true life, but in the holy of holies only of His own immediate
presence, and in the possession of the spirit of life and of love
which is in His first-born Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. And this was
the glory and joy which Jesus himself manifested on earth, when "He
had no place to lay his head;" and was "despised and rejected of men;"
and His "countenance was marred like no man's;" when He carried His
cross; and revealed to us that true life which He died to obtain, and
rose from the dead to impart to us by His Spirit. He did not come
to teach us to become artists, orators, or men of mere intellectual
cultivation, capable of creating a hero-worship. The race who
built Nineveh and Thebes, or produced the artists, orators, poets,
historians, or the world--conquerors of Greece and Rome, needed no
such teaching as this. But He came to reveal to men--who, whatever
else they knew, did not know their Maker, but "changed the truth of
God into a lie"--that eternal life of love which was with the Father,
so that in its possession they might have fellowship with the Father,
with the Son, and with one another, and in this way only have His own
joy fulfilled in themselves. He taught us to follow Him, "with all
lowliness and meekness," and thus "to walk worthy of God who hath
called us to His kingdom and glory!"

I have dwelt, perhaps, at unnecessary length upon this part of my
subject, yet I am anxious to quicken in you the conviction of what you
cannot doubt, that our moral nature can be satisfied only with God's
likeness. So is it now; so will it be for ever. The sweet peace which
the believer enjoys in God here; the elevating delight he experiences
from contemplating His character, and saying, "My Father, let Thy name
be hallowed! let Thy kingdom come! let Thy will be done!"--his joy in
the possession of the graces of the Christian life, are not foretastes
only, but earnests also, and pledges of the coming fulness, the
first-fruits of the approaching harvest. "We shall be like Him!"
Oh blessed consummation, before which everything else vanishes in
comparison! Our souls cleansed from every stain of guilt, and made
white in the blood of the Lamb; and washed, too, from all the
pollution of sin with the waters of regeneration and the renewing of
the Holy Ghost, shall be "faultless," "not having spot, or wrinkle, or
any such thing." The pure and holy God resting on us as His own work
through His Son and Spirit, sh