The Coin and the Prince

‘* l7t the Scriptures there is a draught of God, but ift Christ there is God himself A coin bears the image of Ccesar, but CcBsar’s son is his lively resemblance. Christ is the living Bible.” We rightly call the Scriptures “The Word of God,“’ and yet in the deepest and truest sense Christ only is” THE WORD.” What reverence, then, is due to him, and how important it is that we get beyond all the outward signs and symbols of religion, and even beyond the letter of Scripture, to the person of the Son of God himself. His promise of rest is to those who come to himself, — “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden’’; for it is in himself that the divine power is centred. He tells us, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father”; but the eye of the mind has never yet beheld the glory of God, or known him in any true sense until it has gazed upon Immanuel, God with us; for he alone is “the brightness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of his person.”

God is in every covenant blessing, but not as he is in Christ, for “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”

A man had better have the prince for a friend than possess a thousand images of the king his father upon gold and silver; and so it is a happier thing for us to know that Christ is ours than to possess all other blessings, however much of God there may be about them. “Christ is all,” and he is more than all. To his people he is all in all, for such is God.

My soul, let this endear Jesus to thee beyond all else, and let it make thee urgent and eager to draw very near to him. Here lies thy way to God, for God is in him, and nowhere else canst thou ever find him. What a happy thing for thee that thy God, thy heaven, thy all, are treasured up in one so accessible to thee as thy Mediator and Friend.