SERMON XIII.

MATTHEW, XXVII. 46.

"And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

In heretofore discoursing upon the nature of the godhead, we have illustrated, it is presumed, with sufficient clearness, how there is and must be a trinity in the one God. We have shown the nature of the word which was in the beginning with God, and was God. We have shown how this word was made flesh and dwelt among us. The perfect unity of the humanity and divinity has been demonstrated. So that in Jesus Christ God is seen as man and man as God, as a divine essence in a human form, or a divine soul in a human body, and thus one as a soul and body are one-one God in one person, the only proper object of all christian worship-" God over all blessed for ever"—"the only true God and eternal life."

But there is no subject so difficult, in the nature of things, for the sensual mind to conceive, as the unity of God and man in one person. And appearances in the letter of the Word are so much against the idea, that, while the sensual mind rests in those appearances, the difficulty of its conception is increased. Hence it is almost impossible to explain this matter to such a mind.

To appearance, man is a determined form, limited and fixed in time and space, and, though possessed of powers of almost indefinite variety and extent, yet essentially ignorant, weak, dependent and erring; while God is supposed to be all that is opposite to these qualities-formless, unlimited mind-infinitely

above time and space, yet omniscient and omnipresent-totally independent of all beings-in himself possessed of life-eternal, infinite, all wise and all powerful in his being and attributes, and absolutely unerring in all his operations. To conceive a union of such opposites, therefore, is impossible. And hence, to speak of a divine human is, to some minds, a solecism-is sneered at as a contradiction in terms. And to them, the assertion that Jesus Christ is God, is equally so. His own declarations that he and the father are one, and they that see him see the father-that he is in the father and the father in him that he has life in himself as the father has life in himself -that he has all power in heaven and on earth-that he is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, who was, who is, and who is to come, the Almighty, are interpreted to mean any thing but what they really do mean—his individual unity and identity with the whole godhead. These declarations are supposed to have a figurative meaning to mean that he, as the first and highest, though subordinate, agent of the Divine Being, is gifted with those supreme titles on account of his delegated divine functions-that he is called God as angels, to whom the word of God came, were so called. They contend that it would have been arrogant and blasphemous in the extreme for him to have claimed those titles to himself as expressing qualities inherent in him as his own; and they prove, to their own satisfaction, that he used them in relation to himself only in some modified, conditional, relative or derivative sense. And they feel themselves fully borne out in their view by the letter of the Sacred Scriptures. Hence, when, from these his own declarations, you argue for his unity with the Essential Divinity, their minds instantly revert to those other sayings of his in which he confesses his inferiority to the father, or his subordination to him,-as where he declares," My father is greater than I"-"I speak not of myself, but the father that is in me, he doeth the work”—“ I ascend unto your father and my father, to my God and your God," and, in our text, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!"—and they reply, how can Jesus Christ be one

and the same God with the Essential Divinity when he expressly addresses that Divinity as his God? And when he calls himself the father, and says he is one with him, how can he literally mean what he says, when he elsewhere positively declares his inferiority to the father? It is, indeed, a strong case for them as well as for us. Both of us are justified in our views by the mere letter of the Word. The flaming sword of the cherubim turns every way. The Lord does indeed say as positively in the letter that the father is greater than he, as he positively says that he and the father are one, and that they who see him see the father. So that, if we stick in the mere letter, the Lord apparently contradicts himself. Hence, those who look upon him only as a man, reconcile his words by supposing him, when he asserts his identity and unity with the father, to speak figuratively; and to speak literally, when he asserts his inferiority to him. And they explain those his figurative expressions, so as to make them harmonize with these which they deem the literal truth.

The reason why they suppose those to be figurative, of course, and these literal is, because it is contrary to all appearance that Jesus as man should be God, and they rest in appearances. It was so with the Jews, who when he asserted his divinity took up stones to stone him, because "he, being a man, made himself equal with God." The Jews, in this case, judged according to appearance, and the appearance to them was indeed such as to justify their judgment. And nothing was more contrary to the appearance than the Lord's assertion to Philip, "He that hath seen me hath seen the father." If he had been to appearance the father, Philip would not have asked him to show them the father, and he need not have asserted his and the father's identity with so much asseveration. Thus, if he had manifestly appeared to be the father, he need not have said to Philip, "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?" For Philip would of course have discerned him to be the father, if he had appeared such to Philip. Hence we say his assertion to Philip was contrary to appearance; and, consequently, those in the present day who

rest in appearances, and suppose things as they appear to them, to be alone really true, suppose the Lord's words to Philip to be figurative expressions, and explain them accordingly to mean something other than their literal import, namely, that he and the father are one God as a body and soul are one person; so that when we think of him we should think of God, and when we think of God we should think of him for if Philip saw the father when he saw Jesus in person, we must think of the father when we think of Jesus, because thinking of any one is seeing him in spirit.

But, to the sensual mind, God did not when he was on earth, and does not now, appear to be in Jesus; and, thinking as that mind does according to appearance, it, consequently, cannot think of God when it thinks of Jesus; but thinks of God as a formless, unlimited, infinite, eternal and omnipotent spirit, separate and distinct from Jesus Christ; and only thinks of Jesus Christ, as he appeared on earth, to be "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." (Isa. liii. 3.) And hence, as we have said, it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for this mind to conceive of God and man as existing in one perAnd all our attempts to explain this unity to the sensual man are abortive, because no explanation of ours can ever make it true according to appearance, that is, true as things appear to him.

son.

In fact, the subject is not to be brought down to the sensual mind, but the sensual mind is to be brought up to the subject. The sensual and natural man must, by regeneration, be raised out of the region of mere sensuous appearances, that is, be raised, in mental perception, above the mere natural plane of being, and be made by regeneration to see things as they appear in the spiritual plane, before he can see Jesus as God and God as Jesus. There must be, as we have fully shown on another occasion, a renewing and transforming of the natural man's spirit by the spirit of God, sent unto him by Jesus Christ from the father, before he can have any such testimony to the character of Jesus Christ in his soul. And this we may confirm, more particularly than we did on that occasion, by Paul's

assertion, that "no man can call Jesus Lord but by the holy ghost." To call Jesus Lord is to see and acknowledge him to be Jehovah in form or person. For Jehovah himself expressly says, (Isaiah, xlii. 8,) "I am the Lord, that is my name, and my glory will I not give to another." The name of Jehovah could not therefore be given to Jesus, if he were another than Jehovah, without making Jehovah himself utter an untruth, which the holy ghost, or the spirit of Jehovah, certainly could not do. Yet the holy ghost would do this, if it gave unto any one to call Jesus Lord, while Jesus were a separate and distinct person from Jehovah; for then Jehovah, by his own spirit, would, contrary to his express declaration in Isaiah, have given his name, and so his glory, to another. But this is impossible; and therefore, we say, when the holy ghost gives unto any one to call Jesus Lord, it gives unto him to see and acknowledge that Jesus and Jehovah are one person, and so one God. But, until the sensual or natural man is so operated upon by the holy ghost as to be raised above the sphere of sensuous appearances, he cannot see and acknowledge this identity and unity of Jesus and Jehovah; and thus the sensual and mere natural man must continue to think of Jehovah as God and Jesus as man, separate and distinct the one from the other, notwithstanding all our efforts to explain their real unity and identity.

Still such men are perpetually calling upon us for explanations of this to them inexplicable truth. When we speak of, and demonstrate from one class of scriptural quotations, the unity of Jesus and the father, they fly into the citadel of some certain passage of Scripture favouring their views, and defy us to dislodge them. Their minds pertinaciously adhere in those other scripture sayings, spoken according to mere appearances in the sensual mind, in which Jesus is represented addressing the father as a person separate from and superior to him, and they exclaim with seeming triumph, " Well, what do you make of these passages, then!" And foremost among these passages is our text, wherein Jesus on the cross is represented as addressing the father and exclaiming, just previously to his giving up the ghost, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!"