of them. For are there none among us to whom the thought of God, the presence of God, seems the very last thing they desire? Perhaps there are men here who live without prayer; men who, when God speaks to them through conscience, try to drown the voice; who have the Bible, in which God's Word to them is written, and never open it; who find the things of God tedious and dull, and hate to have them forced on the attention; who care not a straw for that nearest revelation and communication of Himself which our Lord gives us in Holy Communion, and pass it by with a disdain or neglect which they are not wont to shew to invitations from their fellowsinners. Can such contempt of God here be a fitting preparation for beholding Him hereafter? Nay, may not conscience tell some of you that to see God now would be the greatest misery you could apprehend? To have Him summon you to His presence, reveal Himself to you now, with that bad thing in your heart which you are plotting, with that impure deed you did last night unrepented of-oh, do you not feel that this would be a summons utterly appalling? Would you not cry, "Oh, spare me a little, that I may recover my strength, before I go hence" and enter into Thy presence? It is not in sin,

then, that the thought of seeing God can be a blessing to you; and it is not in sin that you ever can see Him. To dwell before the burning purity of God, and be yourselves corrupt, oh! the contrast, my brethren, between yourselves and Him would be so agonizing, that heaven would be the veriest of hells to you. And this misery God will not inflict upon you. The sinner shall rise again, but not to see God. He shall dwell apart, in exile, in all that utter dreariness which the hiding of God's face implies. They who are striving to love God, who love all that tells them of God, who love to hear Him speaking in their hearts, who know His voice and follow it, who have no wish so dear as to be drawn more and more into the life of God, to see all things as in His presence, these are the men in whom all the gracious purposes and promises of Christ's resurrection shall be accomplished; in them the life of heaven is already, as it were, begun; the vision of God, discerned by faith and under veils, is now their joy, and by-and-by it shall break for them into a blaze of unveiled and open glory.

SERMON V.a

Christ without Sin.

1 ST. PETER ii. 22.

"Who did no sin."

THIS is the testimony of one of Christ's devoted

followers; but it is by His enemies as well as His friends-by that larger class of lookers-on, moreover, who cannot well be classed among either that evidence is given to the absolute perfection and sinlessness of His character. Whatever men may think of Jesus Christ, this at least they must allow, that on all sides there is the most remarkable, the most unanimous admission of His unblemished sanctity. An angel spoke of Him before His birth as "that holy thing." The same idea is carried on in the figures that are applied to Him, as when He is called a "Lamb," which is a well-known symbol of innocence, or compared to "light," whose prerogative it is to

Several of the leading thoughts in this Sermon were suggested by the perusal of Dr. Ulmann's treatise on the "Sinlessness of Jesus."

illuminate the darkest, foulest places, and yet itself to receive no taint. The dove is seen to descend upon His head, and the dove is the recognised emblem of purity. The people who behold His works and hear His words confess that "He hath done all things well." Even in those passages of His life where human affections and passions, so to speak, most rise to the surface, it is shewn that they are unmixed with any taint of evil; for when, e.g., in holy indignation He made a scourge of cords, and drove the traffickers from the Temple, the very fact that such a number of persons retired at once before His single presence manifests their consciousness that He was right and they were wrong. Bitter foes surrounded Him, but they could find no pretext for destroying Him, though they wished for nothing so much. They sent spies-as unscrupulous, no doubt, as themselves-to entrap Him in His words, and they could not. They despatched officers to take Him, officials of their court, men whose business it was to execute the behests of the law, whatever their private feelings might prompt, and yet even these dared not to lay hands on One so pre-eminently holy, but returned, saying "Never man spake like this Man." And when at last they had seized His

person, and arraigned Him on a false accusation, the testimonies to His innocence only seemed to gather more thickly round Him. The false witnesses who are produced against Him agree not together, thus mutually discrediting each other. The judge before whom He stands, himself a hard and cruel man, again and again declares His innocence; and his wife cannot rest upon her bed for fear lest her husband should be a party to the condemnation of one so pre-eminently righteous. His conduct under unparalleled insults and shocking tortures is such as to convert a hardened malefactor by His side, such as to extort from the Roman officer who presided at His execution (dare I call it?) the confession that here indeed was a sinless person, nay, One who must be more than human: "Certainly this was a righteous man,'

Truly this was the Son of God." And greatest of all the testimonies to His sinlessness that thus clustered round His cross was that of His own chosen, fallen, reprobate Apostle. Judas had sold Him for silver; and when he began to repent of the deed he had done, the first palliation to which his conscience would have recourse would be to try to fasten on something in the life of Jesus, which he could set forth to himself as a justification for the course he had taken. But he could