humility.

He always stood in the beauty of His own actions; it was not an effort, but a necessity to Him, to "take the lowest place." The highest dignity He ever accepted was to enter, "lowly, and riding upon an ass," into His own Jerusalem.

And yet, it must have been a wonderful sight, to see how, in the midst of that deep humility, and that degradation of His self-abandonment, the Deity, the full Deity, Iwould here and there shine out in its clearness. The immunities of Deity, the privileges of Deity, the visible glory of Deity, He did, for a season, put entirely away from Him; there were none. All His sublime attainments were by the power of the Holy Ghost, which dwelt in Him without measure. And it is a problem yet to be solved on our world, how far a man that never grieved the Spirit that was in him in anything, would reach towards the mind, and towards the conduct, of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the most faultless man, were he perfect, could never approach Him in whom that Spirit dwelt immeasurably.

But infinitely beyond all, was that,-His own essential Godhead,-which at times gleamed forth from the shroudings of His manhood, "Father, I will," "I and my Father are one," "I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto Him, Thou hast said." There was always behind the natural, the pure, the spiritual, the visible, the awful sublimity of a veiled Omnipotence.

And all along, from Bethlehem to Bethany, it was a mystic life. There was more there than met the common eye. In that life, thousands and tens of thousands were living; in that death, thousands and tens of thousands were dying. It was always a representative life.

grave was our grave, for we have life in Him. We grow in His growth; and we are one with His maturity. And the victories He was always getting, we won those victories in Him. And the righteousness He wrought so patiently, was our righteousness, our only righteousness. When He died, all His Church died in Him, never to die again. They went down with Him to His burial; they rose with Him in the unity of their perfect membership, on that resurrection-morning; and in His ascension, they all soared with Him to the higher level of a glorified life.

Already in Him, our old life is dead, and our new life is begun. Already in Him, the material is changing into the spiritual. Already our real life is with His hid within the veil. And already we sit with Him, in His ascending glory in heavenly places. Once in union with Christ, His whole life in heaven and earth is ours. Alone He came forth from the Father; but not alone, but with the whole body of the Church, He went back to that Father again. And soon He shall come forth once more from that Father; and "when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory.”

These are deep thoughts for poor sinners, and blessed as they are deep. But no thoughts of ours can ever gauge the depth of all that lies in that infinite profound, “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father."

IV.

Christ's Absence Expedient.

"It is expedient for you that I go away."-JOHN xvi. 7.

WE

E can easily understand that it was in the delicacy of our Saviour's life to feel very jealous lest any of His people should think, for a moment, that His going away from this world, would make any change in His feelings. To us now, such a supposition may seem ridiculous; but not to them. Is not history full of such things?-men who have bound themselves to a great and spontaneous effort of affection, and when it is done, the heart, like a plant exhausted with its one flower,-has lapsed, if not into its apathy, yet certainly into a very low level of feeling. We very seldom sustain anything which rises above mediocrity.

Our

And there was another element at work here. Saviour was going to rise, in outward circumstances, exceedingly. Will He follow the usual law, and from His new elevation, think less of those who were the companions of His lowlier state?

It might be in part to meet such a thought, that our Lord spoke the words of my text. And if so, we must take care that we throw the emphasis in the right place;"It is expedient for you,"—it is for your sake, I am not going to do it selfishly,-"It is expedient for you that I go

away." So that like everything else that the Lord ever did, the ascension was for His people.

Place yourself in the position of those to whom those words were spoken, and you will see that it would be impossible to conceive any proposition which it would be more difficult to believe. Now in the case of some things in which it is impossible to give a reason, the impossibility is the reason.

I do not, therefore, to-night, expect or wish altogether to explain our Lord's words. Yet, we have all had things which have led us up towards this great principle.

Faith has seldom a harder exercise than when we are called upon to believe that the death of any one we love is to do us good. And yet, there are many in this church tonight, who could put their hands to it, and say, "Oh! it was a wrench that tore my very soul,—a bitter, bitter thing; but it was a very good thing for me; I have had thoughts and feelings since that day which nothing else would have given me; that night was the dawn of a new day to me." Well did St. Paul place it in the catalogue of a Christian's possessions,—and make it one of the things that are ours,—death, death. Some of us have a great spiritual property in death. that soul as it parts from you, say,—hear it, and believe it, "I am not going selfishly, I am dying for you, 'It is expedient for you that I go away.""

When the next goes, hear

Now let us look at one or two of the reasons why it was good for the Church that Christ's visible presence should be taken away from it. At least, the consideration may help to shew us the dignity, and therefore the responsibility, in which we all now stand. For if to have lived with Christ upon this earth,-to have seen the expression of that face,

-to have caught that smile,-to have listened to those words, to have ministered to His very wants,—would have been such an incalculably sweet privilege that we all have longed to have been there,—and if to be as we are now is better than all that, then, how very high we must be! what a dispensation this must be in which we are living! So it is. The dispensation of the invisible Holy Ghost, is better than the dispensation of the age which saw, and felt, and handled the visible Son of Man. How can this be?

Among the reasons for this mysterious truth, I should be inclined to place first this great fact,—that God has so constituted us, that a state of pure, simple faith, ¿.e., of dealing with the unseen, is essential to the development of the highest and best faculties of our nature. The best reason I can give for this, is, that ultimately we shall all of us have to do with spirit; and therefore we are disciplined now to deal with what is only spiritual, that we may be prepared for perfectly spiritual intercourse. As we are now, there is in everything that is material, something that circumscribes and clogs. We are capable, and we feel that we are capable, of loving and using it better than we do, or than we can love it, as it is now. May not this be one cause why almost everything we love is taken away from us, and removed out of our sight for a little while? Is not it that we may be prepared, by the loving it through faith for a season while it is not seen, to love and enjoy it perfectly and indeed, when presently it will be given back to our outward senses? I am persuaded that it would not have been so well for us, apart from all other considerations, on account of the nature and habit of the human mind, to have had our God always visible. We should have been