books on great subjects, abbreviated
statements of large systems. Error lurks in summaries, and yet here the
whole fulness of God's communication to men is gathered into a sentence;
tiny as a diamond, and flashing like it. My text is the one precious
drop of essence, distilled from gardens full of fragrant flowers. There
is an old legend of a magic tent, which could be expanded to shelter an
army, and contracted to cover a single man. That great Gospel which
fills the Bible and overflows on the shelves of crowded libraries is
here, without harm to its power, folded up into one saying, which the
simplest can understand sufficiently to partake of the salvation which
it offers.

There are five of these 'faithful sayings' in the letters of Paul,
usually called 'the pastoral epistles.' It seems to have been a manner
with him, at that time of his life, to underscore anything which he felt
to be especially important by attaching to it this label. They are all,
with one exception, references to the largest truths of the Gospel. I
turn to this one, the first of them now, for the sake of gathering some
lessons from it.

I. Note, then, first, here the Gospel in a nutshell.

'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.' Now, every word
there is weighty, and might be, not beaten out, but opened out into
volumes. Mark who it is that comes--the solemn double name of that great
Lord, 'Christ Jesus.' The former tells of His divine appointment and
preparation, inasmuch as the Spirit of the Lord God is upon Him,
anointing Him to proclaim good tidings to the poor, and to open the
prison doors to all the captives, and asserts that it is He to whom
prophets and ritual witnessed, and for whose coming prophets and kings
looked wearily through the ages, and died rejoicing even to see afar off
the glimmer of His day. The name of Jesus tells of the child born in
Bethlehem, who knows the experience of our lives by His own, and not
only bends over our griefs with the pity and omniscience of a God, but
with the experience and sympathy of a man.

'Christ Jesus came.' Then He _was_ before He came. His own will impelled
His feet, and brought Him to earth.

'Christ Jesus came to save.' Then there is disease, for saving is
healing; and there is danger, for saving is making secure.

'Christ Jesus came to save sinners'--the universal condition,
co-extensive with the 'world' into which, and for which, He came. And so
the essence of the Gospel,