LECT. afterwards announced, "I am come a light into II. the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not walk in darkness. I am the Light of the world he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

But there are who will not come unto Him that they may have light and life. When He first came it was so, and so, alas! it is still. "He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not." His own world rejected Him, as a rebel country might reject a lawful and beneficent king. The very work of His hands, that which was indebted to Him for its very being, refused to recognise Him. "We will not have this man to reign over us." Such their wilful and rebellious language.

And more, His own people rejected Him. "He came unto His own, and His own received Him note." The people of Israel, who had been the objects of His peculiar favour,-they who, whatever others might have done, should have received Him with special affection,-they too joined with the rest of the world in rejecting Him. Indeed, they were the first to refuse and rebel, and seemed the most mad against Him; as undutiful children might be the first to rise up against their own parent, and procure others to do Him injury: and Christ's foes were, so to speak, "the men of His own household." And so He founded to Himself a new people, a nation composed of all who "received" Him; that is, as explained in the

d Chap. xii. 46. and viii. 12.

e Williams (Thoughts on the Study of the Holy Gospels) refers us to Psalm xxxviii. 11.

end of the same verse," them that believe on His LECT. name."

To receive Christ, therefore, is to believe in Him. We cannot now indeed receive Him into our houses, but we may receive Him into our hearts. Christ may now dwell in our hearts by faith: and all who thus receive Him, or believe in His name, (that is, in His power and in the character He claims for Himself, that name whose import is declared by St. Matthew, where he says, "Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins,") to them He gives the power to become the sons of God. He removes all the obstacles in the way of their becoming such. He takes away the sins which separate between them and their God. He brings them into the blessed state of sonship. He adopts them for His own. And in this new family, people, and nation of the sons of God, "there is neither Jew nor Greek" that is, admission into it depends not upon the circumstances of a man's birth, on which the Jews prided themselves so much: for the sons of God are "born not of blood', nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." This was a truth most necessary to be taught to those prejudiced Jews, who boasted so much of their descent, and depended so much upon their pedigree, and thought they must surely be the sons of God, because they were the posterity of Abraham.

f In the original the plural is used, "bloods," which may denote the different degrees of consanguinity, and so have reference to the several ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, from whom the Hebrews boasted that they were sprung. Augustine (in Jo. Tract. ii.) interprets it, "tanquam maris et fœminæ." And again, (Ser. cxxi. 4.) "Prima nativitas ex masculo et fœmina: secunda nativitas ex Deo et Ecclesia."

II.

LECT.

II.

But, besides, there is doubtless intended here a deep contrast between the natural birth and the new birth, between generation and regeneration, between the being born and the being born again, between that which is only carnal and that which is altogether spiritual; whereby we, frail members of the human family, might become "partakers of the Divine Nature," might realize that unspeakable blessedness spoken of in the Scripture," the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God."

This portion of Holy Scripture concludes with a notice of Christ's incarnation; His becoming man, and dwelling amongst us: "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us:" "tabernacled" among us, as the original so graphically describes it.

The Jews in the wilderness had a tabernacle or tent, wherein they worshipped God, and there the glory of God was seen. Over the mercy seat A glorious light, the

hovered the Shechinah.
symbol of the Divine presence, shone ever in the
sanctuary. In like manner Christ, who is "the
brightness of the Father's glory," the true
Shechinah, tabernacled among us. His flesh, that
is, His body of human nature, was as a tabernacle,
in which resided that Divine nature of which the
glory in the Jewish tabernacle was the symbol.
Thus the tabernacle of God was with men, and He
dwelt among us.

"We

The Evangelist speaks as a spectator, beheld His glory." As he saith also in his first Epistle, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,

g Heb. i. 3.

II.

which we have looked upon, and our hands have LECT. handled, of the Word of life; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us ;) that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." The Apostles were eye-witnesses of those divine words and works on which they built their testimony, that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. They beheld His glory: His glorious words, His glorious works; His miracles and wonders and signs; His transfiguration on the mount, where He was clothed with His proper glory.

And this glory was "the glory as of the only begotten of the Father;" such glory as the Son of God alone could have1. All true believers are sons of God, but Christ is the Son; not one of the adopted sons like us, but the only begotten Son of God.

And He is full of grace and truth. He is full of grace towards us; ready to make us, if we will only receive Him into our hearts, the sons of God.

And He is full of truth in Himself. He is "the truth":" full of all that purity, and all those perfections, which the term truth represents and includes.

Thus our Evangelist sets the Lord before us, both in His divine and in His human nature, that we might believe, and believing have life through His name".

"&s does not here signify comparison, but reality, i. e. what was consonant to, and might be expected from." Wordsworth.

LECTURE III.

THE TESTIMONY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

LECT.

III.

JOHN i. 15-28.

HAVING previously mentioned the fact that John the Baptist came to bear testimony to Christ, our Evangelist now proceeds to state what that testimony was.

Before Christ entered upon His ministry, the Baptist had borne witness concerning His coming: "He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for He was before me." Or, as St. Mark expresses it, "There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose." And when Christ entered upon His ministry, the Baptist, pointing to Him, applied that testimony; he "cried "," lifting up his voice like an ancient prophet, and proclaimed, "This was He of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me."

The Baptist would not have the people honour him, but ever directed them to Him that should come after, as greater than he, and as advanced to a far higher dignity. And he also gives the reason

On the singular difference of tenses in the original Lampe remarks, "MapTupeî Joannes in præsenti, quia testimonium ejus ad totam Ecclesiam spectat: Kékрaye in præterito, quia clamantem soli auditores ejus perceperunt."