I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

4thly. That He should not be touched till after His Ascension: "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father."

5thly. The tradition of holy Baptism, with the law of obedience: "Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you."

6thly. The Holy Ghost to remit and retain sins: "He breathed on them and said, Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained."

7thly. The Pastoral Commission', addressed directly to St. Peter, and made to rest upon love: "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? Feed my lambs. Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Feed my sheep. Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Feed my sheep."

8thly. The privileges of the baptized and faithful. 1. Salvation": "He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved." 2. Miraculous powers": "And these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall

speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." 3. The blessedness of them that believe without seeing: "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

1

9thly. The immediate promise of the Holy Ghost: "And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you."

probably

to others:

these alone

Such, then, are the principal "things of the There were kingdom of God," which the Lord is recorded have uttered during the great forty days in which are written. He delayed His ascension into heaven. There probably were many other sayings, as well as deeds and signs, communicated to the Apostles during the same sacred period. But these are written that we may believe, and believing, have eternal life; these, whatever may have been the others, the Holy Ghost has chosen to record in writing, for the perpetual use and edification of the Church. If there were others, the traces of them will, no doubt, be found in the later teaching and institutions of the Apostles; but of these there can be no doubt: they are the Lord's own written, sacred words; words which, whatever be the true meaning in which they are respectively to be understood, cannot but be at the very foun

1 Disc. V. p. 249.

2 Cf. St. John xx. 30; xxi. 24.

dation of the constitution and privileges of the Christian Church.

Of these separate sayings, some short examination will be made in the following Discourses. Each will be found to open a large field of Scriptural investigation. If the account now given of their place in the Christian scheme be at all a just one, each will be found to be, as it were, a principle of the kingdom; to be, if we may so term it, the actual enactment of that which had been often spoken of, with various degrees of clearness and obscurity, before. They do not, indeed, supersede the earlier Scriptures. All, in their respective places, exhibit the manifold wisdom of God, dividing at different times, and to different persons, severally as He would. But in a certain sense, they stand before them. they throw light upon them; they enable us to read them rightly, and arrange them truly in their application to the Church. Though all, no doubt, speak the mind of the Spirit, and are full of the truth of God, yet if, out of so many and so various sayings, a question can arise as to the relative meaning and importance of any of them, these, it can hardly be doubted, are they by which the darker, earlier, prospective sayings are to be interpreted.

They lead them;

And therefore they are of high and sacred value, and require to be most carefully and reve

rently considered. They contain within them the germ of every thing most precious to Christians in knowledge, privilege, and comfort. Unless men can trace a personal claim to have a share in them, and the institutions founded on them, it is difficult to say where they can look for well-founded peace or hope. Feeling themselves, as baptized and dutiful Churchmen may, rightful inheritors of them by a title of clear and unquestionable descent, they may look on them as their written charter of privilege, the documentary evidence of their Christian citizenship, with all its blessings of present acceptance, strength, and peace, and future welcome, recognition, and eternal joy.

DISCOURSE II.

I. The royalty of Christ.

1. Given at the Resur

Μὴ φοβοῦ, τὸ μικρὸν ποίμνιον· ὅτι εὐδόκησεν ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν δοῦναι ὑμῖν τὴν βασιλείαν.-S. Luc. xii. 32.

THE first of the sayings of the great forty days, is that which asserts the royalty of our blessed Lord Himself. It is the first in place, for it occurs as the first in the first of the Evangelists, and it is the first also in its own proper order and meaning; for from the Royalty of Christ the existence of the Church, with all her powers, privileges, and hopes, is directly derived. As a King, He founded His kingdom; as a King, He commissioned His ministers; as a King, He laid out the limits and constitution of His kingdom, according to His own will.

Let it, then, be first observed, that this royalty rection. is first fully given in the Resurrection: "And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth 1."

1 St. Matt. xxviii. 18.