comes to you as certainly as He would from the apostles themselves. Once, first, in your baptism He came and dwelt in you, though no mortal eye saw the tongues of fire, or ear heard the sound of the wind rushing down to quicken the new-made Christian child. And, dwelling in you in your childhood, He prompted you to all the good acts that you did in childhood; and in youth, restraining your evil propensities, He tried to keep you temperate and continent. And a second time, by the laying on of hands in your confirmation, He gave you a strengthened possession of his sevenfold gifts, which may abide in you for ever, the responsibility of which will never leave you, doubly marked out thereby for good or for evil, as being of the regenerate family of God. And again, most especially when we celebrate the Holy Communion is He pleased to come to us. The Holy Ghost is there with us, and He makes His abode in our hearts, and renews us in good-will and desires of good action. Himself having given the law, and made us in our baptism subjects to it, He gives us in this holy ordinance strength to keep it; it a renewal of the law in our mind: He makes He makes them a mark of profession, by which they are known who have chosen the Lord's side, who are sensible of their high calling, and desirous to work on their high privilege. It is again the sign of the ceremonial law, that by which Christ has desired to be remembered, and in which we set forth His most precious death until He comes again. And it is the help to all virtuous and godly living and keeping of the law of holy works with all our might, soul, heart, and strength. Come to His table, and you shall not go away without the assurance that Jesus has loved you, and died and given Himself for you, and does give Himself to you in this Sacrament; that in it He is with you always, even unto the end of the world; and in it He sends His Holy Ghost to comfort you, and give you strength to follow where your Saviour Christ is gone before. O, if God came in wrath, and fire, and flame, and with trumpets of judgment, and hell was open for punishment, you would not disregard Him; then why will you when He comes in love, and gives Himself to you as a friend and helper? You believe that He will come one day in judgment, why will you not believe that He comes now, and here? You have the same word for both. JOHN HENRY PARKER, OXFORD AND LONDON. Sermons for the Christian Seasons. THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. THE LAW OF LIFE. GALATIANS iii. 16-22. To Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, That the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise. Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. THE salvation which is by Jesus Christ came by the promise; the preparation for salvation was by the law; the law was a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ: the Jews were the people of the preparation, the people of the law; we, beloved, are the children of the promise. No sooner was the perfection of the creation spoiled by the sin of Adam, than its restoration was promised in the seed of the woman. That promise was made again to Abraham; in his seed all the families of the earth were to be blessed. That which had been lost for all the earth by the sin of the first Adam, was to be restored by the obedience of a second Adam. He was to come as Man, and be God as well. For His ancestor, as man, God chose Abraham, His friend; deserving by the faith in which he left his own country at God's call, and went out knowing not whither he went; in which he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; in which he looked for a city that hath foundations whose builder and maker is God; in which he offered up his son Isaac, which also is imputed unto him for righteousness, deserving by this faith to be called the father of the faithful. He pleased God, and so God chose him to be the forefather of the Messiah. God became his shield, and his exceeding great reward. God gave him a promise; he, believing that promise, earned the fulfilment of it. God gave him a command; he, obeying, obtained of God a surpassing glory; that he who had offered Isaac in faith, should in ages to come be called Father by the Almighty Offering, Christ the slain on Calvary; that he who, offering the heir of the promise, seemed to be executing a command which would put that promise to an end for evermore, should by all ages and generations of the faithful be called Father also,-father of a more abundant, and holy, and faithful new posterity. And what was this promise? Not of the land of Canaan only; the blessing of the whole earth in the seed of Abraham, that was the promise. There were temporal and transitory promises, made to preserve the race of the faithful till the Messiah should come. But the Promise was salvation. In the fulness of time He was to bring it; when God should will, or from the foundation of the world had ordained. We might enquire why God should fix the fulness of the time when He did, or why He should choose out especially a nation among whom He would place the partial knowledge of His name and will. But there is no need the children of wisdom : |