repeat it, is the Gospel of Christ; and it may well challenge all the efforts of ancient wisdom combined together, to produce any plan or contrivance worthy of being compared with it, either in principle or operation, for the recovery of a perverse and untoward generation, sunk in ignorance and impieties, and lost to all pure and spiritual obedience towards its great Creator and Benefactor. Let the Philosophers produce every argument they can invent; let them enlarge on the beauty and excellence of virtue; let them pronounce the will free to choose the good and refuse the evil; still that single sentence, "if ye love me, keep my commandments," contains in it more profundity of wisdom, and more efficacious and systematic contrivance, than all the numerous and heavy volumes of the philosophers, and all the rich and extensive libraries of the learned, for the blessed purpose of bringing back the degenerate sons and daughters of Adam to a willing, rational, and spiritual service of the righteous Father of spirits, who never desires the death of a sinner; and to a humble and grateful sense of their immense obligations to his Son, who redeems them both from the penalty and the dominion of sin.

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SERMON VI.

JOHN xx. 17.

Go to my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.

IT is generally observed, that the last words of great and good men are remembered, as being peculiarly important, and deserving very particular attention. How much more, then, do merit our notice, the last words of Him who " spake as never man spake;" who is God as well as man,— "Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God!" I have chosen, then, these words, which were some of the precious last words of our Lord while here on earth, to speak from this morning, for the profit and instruction of this congregation.

Here is a message delivered to Mary Magdalen, on Christ's discovery of himself to her after his resurrection. What affection does he shew to his disciples! He would have them to know he looks on them as a brother does: "Go to my brethren," says he. He has the spirit of a brother towards them. He is just going to his Father and his God, to take possession of the inheritance, in their name and his own; assuring them of the reality of their being owned by the Father as their Father and their God, as much as he himself was so owned: for that he had purchased the inheritance of heaven for them with his own blood. He had now finished the work of redemption; and also proved that he had finished it for them, by his resurrection. He, the eldest Brother, and the First-born from the dead, was going to take actual possession first; and, as he had told them before, to prepare a place for them. There are many mansions in the Father's house the disciples were "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;" and after a course of afflictive discipline, they were to be taken up to reign with Him, and "return to Zion with songs, and with everlasting joy upon their heads:" they

should obtain "joy and gladness, and mourning

and sorrow should flee away."

Such is the nature of that comfortable message which the gracious Shepherd of Israel sent to his eleven disciples, at that time mourning and disconsolate. From St. Mark's account of their dejection, unbelief, and hardness of heart at this season, we have no great reason to believe that it conveyed to them at present any considerable consolation; whereas, if the message had been received with faith and thankfulness, what could be conceived so delightful? Poor miserable worms of the earth, covered with guilt and corruption, to be told of a relationship to God the Father, as their Father; and to God the Son, as their Brother! To be well assured that this relationship was real and substantial, and should have all the properties of the like relationship among men; that, after a little longer course of suffering here, they should as certainly be translated into the inheritance of heaven, and blessed with the eternal enjoyment of the love of God, as Jesus himself was about to be; and that in the mean time they were the happy objects of his care, and as safe in the arms of his providence

and grace as if they were already arrived at their home, since the same love wherewith the Father loves his Son should be in them, and he in them. Blessed disciples indeed! But (as I have said) they do not seem at this time at all to have been in a frame of mind capable of receiving the consolations of this blessedness. Yet children of God's love they certainly were, amidst all their dejection and darkness; and so, I trust, now, and have been in all ages, not a few of our fellow-creatures, the children of men: I mean those who have fled for refuge to Jesus as their only hope, and have shewn, by their sound Christian fruits, that he is their only hope, and that they are entitled (on true scriptural grounds) to be denominated heirs of the promises.

Now it may happen, in every congregation of professing Christians, that there may be some very sound characters, who are so far in the situation of the eleven disciples that they also derive no considerable comfort from reflecting on such a passage as this, where Christ condescends to call his true followers brethren, and to tell them that his Father is their Father, and his God their God. Moreover, this may easily happen, and often does

VOL. I.