The Glory of Christ, Volume 1

In giving the present volume to the press, the author has little to say but that which is suggested by the importance of the subject of which it treats. Christians should often call to remembrance those truths which remind them of their high relation to Jesus Christ. Such truths are fitted to give vigor and freshness to their hopes, and enforce their obligations not only to avoid bringing religion into reproach, but to hasten its predicted supremacy in the earth.

It was the original design of the writer to make the present work the sequel and counterpart to his last published volumes, entitled “First Things.” In arranging his thoughts for this purpose, he found the topics so allied to the glory of his Divine Master, that he selected rather the present title, because without excluding “Last Things,” it would furnish him a wider range of useful topics.

It has not been his desire so much to suggest new thoughts, as to illustrate and enforce those that are old. A Christian minister is never warranted, even when writing for the press, to forego the opportunity of addressing the conscience. It may be there is in some of these chapters a redundancy of practical remark; and even a reiteration of thought in urging those obligations and inducements to godliness which result from different truths. Nor could this be well avoided. It is difficult to prevent the same light from being reflected from different reflecting surfaces.

When he first announced his topic, some of his friends kindly

intimated that the train of thought suggested by it might too closely resemble that which he had already presented in the work entitled “The Attraction of the Cross.” He felt at the time, that there was weight in the suggestion; nor has he felt it less in the progress of the work itself. He can only say that he has endeavored to avoid a recurrence of the same illustrations even upon the topic which would most naturally offer them.

The theme and the service have been delightful ones to his own mind; fitted to humble and stimulate it, to remind him of his responsibility, and “so much the more as he sees the day approach¬ ing.” Should this prove his last service of the kind, he is thank¬ ful that it has been employed on such a theme. If the reader be interested and profited, he will share in the pleasure with which the work has been prepared, and the gratitude due to the Father of lights in allowing it to be consecrated to the glory of his great name.

G. S.

Brick Church Chapel, )

New York, March, 1852. )

Nature and reason say nothing of Christ. Truths there are which they demonstrate and en¬ force; they are great truths, truths which under¬ lie the whole theory of revealed religion, and which none but atheists deny. But they are not appropriately Christian truths. They lack the distinctive coloring of Christianity, because they reveal no hope for the fallen, and speak not of the gospel of peace. They tell us of God and man, of law and government, of conscience, and responsibility, and retribution; but they have no consolations for the wounded spirit, when it is bowed down by the burden of sin, and trembles at the apprehension of the coming wrath. They encircle God’s throne with light; but they throw no bow of promise around it amid those portentous omens that fill the world with terror. Benighted and desolate world! did not the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, brighten these scenes of desolation, and show us “the path of life.” God out of Christ, is nature, is reason; God in Christ is Christianity. Throughout the Bible “Christ is all, and in all his character and work form the great and prominent subjects of this entire book of God. This, then, is the thought with which we introduce the present series of lectures: The

PRE-EMINENCE OF ClIRIST AS THE PRINCIPAL SUBJECT OF SUPERNATURAL REVELATION.

To a great extent, the Bible is a narrative of facts. It is an historical chart, sketching the events of more than four thousand years, from the earliest times. It speaks of the creation of the world, and of the original apostasy of angels and men. It speaks of the corruption of the patriarchal age and the destruction of the race by the deluge. It speaks of the selection of a peculiar people to be witnesses for the truth, when the world was sunk in idolatry; of their intellectual, civil, and religious advancement; of their bondage and their deliverance; of their internal convulsions and their foreign wars; and of their exile and return. It speaks of the overturning of states and empires; of men who, by their rank, their talents, their virtues and their vices, have contributed to elevate or disgrace the age in which they lived, and who were designated to act a distinguished part in fulfilling the counsels of heavenly wisdom and mercy toward our lost race. It speaks of events, some miraculous, and some in the ordinary course of Divine Providence. We affirm of all these, that they are strongly marked by their alliance to Him who came to seek and save that which was lost. There are facts recorded in these sacred pages which have but an incidental and remote relation to this great personage; yet are they few, unillustrated and insignificant, compared with those which, for their moral influence, their chronological, or genealogical verity, sustain a more direct relation to the u Word made flesh.”

Political history reveals the knowledge of man; scriptural history reveals the knowledge of Christ. In the political history of the world, we see so many events which perplex us by their intricacy, that our very knowledge of them confounds us; nor are we duly sensible of our embarrassment until we try to thread out the labyrinth. We are assured, indeed, that infinite wisdom and g6odness have never been dethroned for a moment; yet, subduing as this conviction is, doubt and darkness envelop us. From the instructions of the Scriptures we learn, that not only facts that are inexplicable by us, but the entire series of events in the divine government, have a single aim; while the facts themselves there recorded, not only have a bearing on the method of mercy by Jesus Christ,

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TIIE GLORY OF CHRIST.

but unravel that divine mystery, show how the system of providence moves onward in subserviency to this gracious design, and how the great events they speak of are the stepping-stones in the progress of his redemption. As we read them, we are convinced that this redemption is no new thought in the divine mind. We feel that amid all the conflicts and convulsions of earth, God’s work has been going on, and that all things work together toward this great end. They all have this great peculiarity, that they are facts which God himself has recorded; and the reason why he has recorded them, and left so many others unrecorded, is found in the special relation they sustain to this great purpose. Events and characters, men and nations there spoken of, though at first view they seem wholly disconnected, are ultimately seen to be bound together by this great centripetal agency.

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