REPOSING ON JESUS, AS MAN.

In the days of His flesh, there was no difficulty in believing that Christ was Man. Then the office of faith was to believe that He was God. But now Christ is in the heavens, no longer visible to mortal eyes. The only means of personal intercourse that we can have with Him is by means of prayer, and spiritual communion. Hence we naturally clothe Him with the attributes of Godhead-and, it being contrary to unassisted reason that God can be anything but purely divine, the effort, now, is to believe that Jesus is really Man. And yet we have the evidence of Scripture most plain, and decided on the matter.

When He was upon earth, Jesus said of Himself, "The Father . . . . . hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man." John v. 26, 27. And after Jesus was ascended into heaven, we find the great Apostle thus writing, "Because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man, whom He hath or

dained, whereof He hath given assurance in that He hath raised Him from the dead. Acts xvii. 31.

Jesus said, before His death, "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power." Matt. xxvi. 64. And Stephen, after the ascension of Jesus, said, "I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." Acts vii. 56.

On the day of Pentecost Peter told the Jews that He, whom God had made both Lord and Christ, was "a Man, approved of God among them by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God "had done" by Him. Acts ii. 22.

In like manner we read of Jesus, since His ascension into heaven, that there is "One Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus." 1 Tim. ii. 5.

And again, "Be it known unto you, men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin." Acts xiii. 38.

All these are plain statements, and, were we not fallen creatures, we should receive them as simply as they are declared plainly. But every thing that concerns God, and His dear Son, can only be received through faith. We learn from Scripture that we cannot practically believe either that God is, or that He made the world, except by

faith-meaning faith in the Son of God. There may be a theoretical knowledge of those facts; but, till we come to know who God is (and this knowledge we can receive from none but Jesus Christ, through faith in His blood, Luke x. 22), our heart neither apprehends, nor is affected by, them. Heb. xi. 3, 6. In like manner, we do not practically receive that Christ is either God, or man, till we believe on Him with the heart. And even after we have believed, except when our minds are under the direct influence of faith, we find our ideas of Jesus floating, in a kind of indefinite realisation, between the Godhead, and the Manhood, and thus laying a firm hold neither on the one, nor the other.

As with the Godhead of Christ in the days of His flesh, so with the Manhood of Christ, now that He is at the right hand of God, the only path to settled and practical conviction of the truth is, to begin with the birth of Jesus, as the Son of Mary-to follow Him in His work, and ministry upon earth-thereby to have a plain view of the reality of His Manhood—and then, to realise that the very same Jesus ascended up into heaven, having in no wise laid aside His humanity—and still, as the same Jesus, that He "is on the right hand of God; angels, and princi

palities, and powers being made subject unto Him." 1 Pet. iii. 22.

The identity of Jesus, at the right hand of God, with Jesus, in the days of His flesh, rests upon evidence of the plainest kind. We have the word of the beloved disciple, John. He knew Jesus most intimately in the days of His flesh. He conversed frequently with Jesus during the forty days that He was on earth, after His resurrection. More than sixty years after His ascension into heaven, he beheld Him, in vision, walking among the golden candlesticks-and afterwards, as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, as the seed of David, in the midst of the throne of God. Rev.i. 13; v. 5, 6. Now, John could have had no doubt that He, whom he saw standing by the lake after the resurrection (John xxi. 4), was the same Jesus, on whose bosom he had often reclined. As little could he question that He, who said to him in vision, "I am the first and the last; I am He that liveth and was dead" (Rev. i. 17, 18), was the very same Jesus, who, after His resurrection, had said, " Behold My hands, and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." Luke xxiv. 39.

The fact of Jesus being, now, in the midst of the

throne cannot undo what He saw, and felt, and did, in the days of His flesh; neither can His existence in heaven do away with the life, that He lived upon earth. The body, in which He appeared after His resurrection, was evidently the same as that, in which He had been crucified. In that very same body they saw Him ascend into heaven. It was still the same body, in which John saw Him in vision; for, though the Father had then glorified Him with His own self, with the glory that He had with Him before the world was, the glory had neither destroyed the body, nor effaced the marks of its identity-it was still the body of the crucified Jesus-He was still the Lamb, as it had been slain. Rev. v. 6. Jo. xvii. 5.

It is impossible to destroy the identity of the soul. As far as we know, spirit is an indestructible, an unchangeable thing. Were it possible for the body to undergo endless changes, the soul would remain ever the same. When Christ ascended into Heaven, He had within Him the same heart, the same mind, the same feelings, that He had before. His human sensibilities underwent no change. The remembrance of what He had been could not pass away from His mind. The associations of His earthly life could not be effaced. Those, who had been His