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Our means of communicating with Christ's manhood can be gathered only from God's revealed will. And here two main occasions are disclosed, wherein the sanctified humanity of the Son of Man is communicated to His brethren. For "as many of you as have been baptized into Christ," says St. Paul, "have put on Christ." And again, "we are buried with Him by Baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." This is the first step in that spiritual work, whereby the Blessed Comforter was to bring Christ back to His people. "For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body."

And as baptism is declared in Holy Writ to be the commencement of this union, so is the Lord's Supper set forth as the occasion wherein it is increased and strengthened. "We being many, are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread." Its very purpose is to supply the true manna, whereof the food of earthly Israel was but a sign the real sustenance of God's spiritual people throughout all their wanderings in this worldly wilderness. "I am the living bread, which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread which I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." It belongs, then, to saving faith to discern this side likewise of Our Lord's Mediation, to perceive that He is that Second

Adam, from whom are derived the blessings of grace, as from our first parent proceed the gifts of nature. To speak of Christ Our Lord as though He had effected His work upon the cross, in order that we might afterwards draw near of ourselves to God, is to leave out of account that intervention of our Great Head, which is not less necessary as the channel of grace than as the mean of supplication. All this, of course, is a spiritual and not a material work. His humanity is not communicated like that of our earthly parent, by birth, but through that divine efficacy, whereby the Holy Ghost renews the bodies and souls of those whom He inhabits. But it is not less a real work, whereby the whole nature of man must be renewed even in this present world, even as their carnal bodies will be refashioned on the day of the resurrection. And to lose sight of it, would be so far forth to overlook the reality of Our Lord's Mediation, to fail to discern "the Lord's Body," and to expect those gifts according to the law of nature, which can only be found according to the law of grace. And this were to substitute faith in Christianity for faith in Christ.

For saving faith is not to know what Our Lord has done for humanity, to recognize the excellence of His system or the holiness of His life. It is not the cold assent of the critical spectator, who approves the wisdom with which the Gospel is designed, and admires its appeals to the sympathies

of mankind. The Christian's faith is that which lays hold on Christ as his Saviour, through that true work of Mediation, whereby the law of grace has been substituted for the law of nature. It looks to the God-man as the sole sacrifice for all transgressions. It trusts to His Intercession as the alone mode of access to the Father. It looks, finally, to Him, as having centred in His own humanity those gifts of grace, which are the unfailing source of regeneration to mankind. Those heavenly treasures which the Creator may in the first instance have designed to bestow directly and individually upon men, are now given only through the humanity of that Second Adam, through whom alone we can draw near to God. "There is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." Through Him alone do all prayers ascend from man to God, through Him are all spiritual gifts bestowed by God upon His creatures.

All this must true faith realize and accept. It must look to Christ as a personal Mediator, and from His man's nature accept the gifts which shall regenerate ours. It must seek to discern the Lord's Body. It must wait upon Him in the ordinances of His love, with firm persuasion that from Him there issues sufficient grace for the salvation of a world. This is the effect of that grace of faith, of which the practical attainment is so main a part of our Church's continual teaching. But it is well that we should meditate at times on the

principle itself, that we should remember what that principle implies, from which flow all the practical graces of the Christian character. For it is no idle form of words, no heartless principle of reasoning, nor yet any mere appeal to the feelings of mankind: it is the real acceptance of a living gift: the gift of Christ's Mediation and the renewal of man by God's grace.

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SERMON XXIII.

OLD AND NEW REASON.

I. ST. JOHN, v. 19, 20.

"We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true: and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ."

No statements of Scripture are more distinct than those which testify, that without divine guidance it is impossible to understand the truths of the Gospel. "The anointing which we have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is true, and is no lie." Nor is this saying peculiar to the beloved Apostle, whose meditative disposition might be expected to dwell on the original and intuitive depths of the Gospel: the same truth is witnessed

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