with joy, "Behold, Lord, Thy pound hath gained five pounds or ten pounds." And thus realizing our mutual relations, connexions, and influences, we shall be knit together with each other in the oneness of His body, having on earth a foretaste and earnest of that perfect union and harmony which shall be realized in heaven, when the good and faithful servants shall awake up after the likeness of their divine Lord and shall be satisfied with it.

May 13, 1860.

SERMON VI.

The Vision of God in Christ.

ST. JOHN vi. 40.

And this is the will of Him that sent Me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life.

No man might see the face of God and live. “And

God said to Moses, Thou canst not see My face: for there shall no man see Me, and live:" "Then said Isaiah, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts."

Man of flesh and blood could not see the great eternal "I AM." And yet, if the relation between heaven and earth, God and man, was to be anything more than a vague tradition and a dreary conjecture, this must be; man must see God. How could the faith of weak man be ever so vivified as to know Him unless human eyes had verily seen the Lord the King? And thus it was and is. Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, saw God; the seventy elders saw the God of Israel, and did "eat and drink." This opposition of ideas pervaded the whole of Jewish

thought, that man might and might not see God and live, and that men did see God and did "eat and drink." The language of God to Moses confirms this apparent contradiction, and partly explains it, telling us that man might in part and accidentally see God, but wholly and essentially never. That Moses placed upon the rock might see the back parts, as it were, of God's glory, but never the face of Jehovah.

And this mystery lasted from Adam to Christ. Ever and anon, the thick veil which hid the holy Creator from the eyes of His sinful creatures was in part withdrawn, but only to be re-drawn as impenetrable to sight as ever. There were moments when men caught as it were a ray of that light which bathed with its life-giving warmth the sinless pair in Eden.

Sin opened wide their eyes to see the physical world around them, and all but destroyed the optic power of seeing things spiritual: caused them to see plainly enough their own nakedness, but blinded them to the infinite love and loveliness of their Father and Creator.

These glimpses vouchsafed to the Jews, though but glimpses, were yet true visions of God in Christ, and were an earnest of the fuller vision to be granted to the Christian. They tell us that what was lost by the first Adam shall be recovered by the second; that the face of His Father, which man lost in Paradise, and was ever after groping blindly to see, shall once again beam upon mortal man in the "express image" of His blessed Son.

"The

"No man hath seen God at any time;" only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." He must be declared before He can be known. He must be seen before He can be believed. The glories of God's nature were spread out in all their loveliness before the eyes of the heathen, yet they failed to see Him, the Lord of nature. The Greek, as he wandered through his beautiful land of hill and dale, forest and glade, fountain and brook, could see nothing more than sylph and dryad; and the old Chaldeans, as they gazed on the cloudless stars, could see in them nought but the might of Bel or Astarte. The lesson was too hard for man to learn: at least, he learnt it not. Never, till human eyes had gazed on God the Son, might man really know God the Father. In the face, then, of Jesus Christ we may, nay, we must, see God: for he who hath seen Christ hath seen the Father.

Throughout the Old Testament this vision of God in the face of Jesus Christ was ever revealed to the faithful; and that, it would seem, in two ways,-either as a Person actually seen, or as a Revelation spiritually seen. Thus Moses, we are told, spoke face to face with God. Thus too did Joshua, before the walls of Jericho, "behold the Captain of the host of the Lord, who stood over against him with His sword drawn in His hand." In this way, then, did a select and highly privileged few, "see God face to face," and yet "their life was preserved a."

a Jacob-Gen. xxxii. 30.

But the usual vision granted to the faithful of old was the spiritual vision of Jesus Christ. Thus saw and spake of Him the prophets, and priests, and kings of old. The faithful Abraham is the type of all the faithful. They all, as he did, saw Christ's day and were glad-saw Jesus as the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world to bear away their sin. They saw Him, indeed, "afar off" in that dim far-distant age: yet to the eye of faith all things are plain and vivid; and, godlike in its power, to it a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years.

This twofold vision of Jesus Christ, which existed. under the old covenant, is but a type of the two ways in which Jesus is revealed under the Gospel.

I. There is, first, His actual and bodily presence, which a few only were privileged to see.

II. And, secondly, the spiritual vision of Himself, which all the faithful are called to see.

The eyes of a few chosen and highly favoured ones were blessed to behold the lowly Prophet of Nazareth. Well, indeed, might their eyes be blessed who saw such things; blessed the ears that heard what He spake. Think a moment what He was. A word of His turned sorrow into joy; a touch gave sight to the blind; a command raised the dead; one look melted the heart of St. Peter into floods of bitter tears; at the divine majesty of His presence the spearmen and soldiers fell to the ground as dead men ; one word to the weeping Mary, and she is at the feet