red
with the blood of the saints, into a lamb. But, as he is careful to
point out, the personal allusion is lost in his contemplation of his own
history, as being a specimen and test-case for the blessing and
encouragement of all who 'should hereafter believe upon Him unto life
everlasting.' So what we come to is this--that the work of Jesus Christ
is that which paints the lily and gilds the refined gold of the divine
loftinesses and magnificence, and which brings honour and glory even to
that remote and inaccessible majesty. For, in that revelation of God in
Jesus Christ, there is added to all these magnificent and all but
inconceivable attributes and excellences, something that is far diviner
and nobler than themselves.

There be two great conceptions smelted together in the revelation of God
in Jesus Christ, of which neither attains its supremest beauty except by
the juxtaposition of the other. Power is harsh, and scarcely worthy to
be called divine, unless it be linked with love. Love is not glorious
unless it be braced and energised by power. And, says Paul, these two
are brought together in Jesus; and therefore each is heightened by the
other. It is the love of God that lifts His power to its highest height;
it is the revelation of Him as stooping that teaches us His loftiness.
It is because He has come within the grasp of our humanity in Jesus
Christ that we can hymn our highest and noblest praises to 'the King
eternal, the invisible God.'

The sunshine falls upon the snow-clad peaks of the great mountains and
flushes them with a tender pink that makes them nobler and fairer by far
than when they were veiled in clouds. And so all the divine majesty
towers higher when we believe in the divine condescension, and there is
no god that men have ever dreamed of so great as the God who stoops to
sinners and is manifest in the flesh and Cross of the Man of Sorrows.

Take these characteristics of the divine nature as get forth in the text
one by one, and consider how the Revelation in Jesus Christ, and its
power on sinful men, raises our conceptions of them. 'The King of the
ages'--and do we ever penetrate so deeply into the purpose which has
guided His hand, as it moulded and moved the ages, as when we can say
with Paul that His 'good pleasure' is that, 'in the dispensation of the
fulness of times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ.'
The intention of the epochs as they emerge, the purpose of all the