Master will receive you. In the language of Martha then, though employed on another occasion, we may say, 'The Master is come and calleth for thee.' 'Come, for all things are now ready.' The fatted calf is killed, and the best robe is prepared.

In conclusion, we must remember, that 'no servant can serve two masters.'* He who is our Master, even Christ, must have our undivided affections. 'He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.' This is the first lesson in his school. It was proposed in the days of his flesh to all those who would become his disciples. 'Go,' said the great Master to the young man who proposed to become one of his disciples, 'go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come and follow me, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.' But he could not even bear the first lesson in the school of this Master, and therefore 'he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.'† And how few of our race, from that age to the present, have been able to receive this lesson! It is the door to the kingdom; it is the great initiatory truth. It is the first rudiment. Wealth, fame, and power have engrossed the attention of the world, and few, very few, have been ready to renounce them all, and enter the school of our Master, even Christ. And yet this Master has unsearchable riches; his yoke is easy, and his burden is light! Finally, let us remember, that we have 'a Master in heaven,' and therefore we should 'continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving.' What a blessed state of society

*Luke xvi. 13.

† Matt. xix. 16-22.

Col. iv. 1, 2.

there would be on earth, if all would consent to be governed by the lessons of this Master! Now Christendom is rent into a thousand sects, and each one is striving for the mastery! Oh! may the love of the Master be shed abroad in all our hearts. Then 'the works of the flesh' would cease: 'adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.' Then would all possess 'the fruit of the Spirit,' which is 'love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain-glory, provoking one another, envying one another.'*

But we must close, and we feel that we ought once more to go back to the point from which we started; and we hope that the lesson will not fall lightly upon the ear of the reader: 'Neither be ye called masters, for one is your Master, even Christ.'

*Gal. v. 19-26.

LIV. MEDIATOR.

'For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus! 1 Tim. ii. 5.

THIS word occurs seven times, and is applied to the Saviour in four instances. It seems rather to designate an office of the Redeemer than a title, though it may be considered in either light with propriety.

There seems to be something in the human heart that leads man to look for a Mediator. Such are our imperfections and our guilt, that we seem to be deterred from coming immediately into the presence of an Omnipotent and Omniscient Being. We like some medium through which we can offer our homage. The mind loves to ascend gradually to a Being whom it is said 'the heaven of heavens cannot contain.' Such has been the feeling of man throughout the whole earth. Both Jews and Gentiles have a notion of a Mediator. The Jews call the Messiah, the Mediator or Middle One. The Persians call their God Mithras, a Mediator; and the demons, with the heathens, seem to be, according to them, mediators between the superior gods and men. Indeed, the whole religion of Paganism was a system of mediation and intercession. Among the Sabians, the celestial intelligences were constituted mediators; among other idolaters, their various idols; and this notion

still prevails in Hindostan and elsewhere. Sacrifices were thought, to be a kind of mediators; and, in short, there has been a universal feeling, a sentiment never forgotten, of the necessity of an interpreter or mediator between God and man.'

But in what sense was Jesus the Mediator between God and men? We are told that the word Μεσιτης, Mediator, signifies literally, a middle person, one whose office it is to reconcile two parties at enmity. Suidas explains it by a peacemaker.

A monstrous error has been committed on the subject. It is said that 'God was offended with the crimes of men to restore them to his peace, Jesus Christ was incarnated; and being God and man, both God and men met in, and were reconciled by him!' Pollok says,

*

* "The Son of God,
Only begotten, and well beloved, between
Men and his Father's justice interposed;
Put human nature on; his wrath sustained;

And in their name, suffered, obeyed, and died.'

A more erroneous view of the office and mission of this Mediator, we think could not be conceived. The great Father has never been unfriendly towards man. The greatest enemy in the universe to the sinner is -himself. By his own transgressions, he kindles a hell within his own soul, where fiercer pains exist than were ever imagined by poets or divines.

We admit that the business of a mediator is to effect a reconciliation between parties, but then it should be remembered, that it does not always follow that both parties are unreconciled. A mediator may be as necessary where one party is wrong, as where

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both parties are so. The great difficulty in the minds of many Christians is, that they suppose both God and man to be offended, or in an unreconciled state. The sinner, it is said, hates God, and then God hates him. The sinner has brought into existence a temporal evil, and to meet this, God hereafter brings on the sinner an evil that shall last as long as he himself exists! Yet, we are told, this Mediator is both God and Man, and came to effect a reconciliation in himself! It is singular to see how many errors will cluster around a single false doctrine! There is, however, one glorious consideration, connected with an opposite view of this subject; which is, that if we obtain one truth, many more will generally follow in its train. The great object of the Mediator between God and men was, to remove all impurity, or, in other words, to effect a reconciliation in the human heart. This doctrine is very clearly set forth by the Apostle: 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.'* Here we see the great work to be accomplished between God and the world. Can any doctrine be rendered plainer than that all the unreconciliation is on the part of man? There is all the wrath, and all the cruelty. Man has sublimated his worst passions, and placed them in the bosom of Deity, and then he has imagined a mediator necessary to remove that very wrath and cruelty which he himself has created!

Three views may be taken of our general subject: I. Jesus is the only Mediator.

II. He is a suitable, constant, and willing Mediator.

* 2 Cor. v. 19.