takers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same." Then one other thought, but it is the chief one. This assumption of humanity was condescending and voluntary and complete that it might be atoning. The great purpose designed in the Redeemer's advent could not be accomplished but through death. This was the supreme object-the ultimate object for which He came into the world -that He might "bear our sins in His own body on the tree." There had been numerous predictions-in the seers' visions, from the prophets' lips, in the various adumbrations of typical foreshadowing-of some mighty one who should, in the end of the world, appear to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And this was a matter of such transcendent importance that all other purposes were rendered subservient to its achievement. He, therefore, took part of flesh and blood, not merely to furnish us with an example of unsinning obedience, although such was the illustrious holiness that beamed from his spotless life that the world had never seen the like-not merely to impress upon the world the teachings of a pure morality, although such was the spirituality of His lessons that never man spake like this man-not merely that He might work His healing wonders even, and show to the bleared vision of the world beneficence in action, although when the ear heard Him it blessed Him, and although at His every footstep some sorrow vanished and some joy came in. All these, however, separably noticeable, were only collateral-incidental-to the one purpose for which He came into the world. He was born to die. These were but the flowers that He scattered here and there, right and left, on His way to the cross. Distinct, steadfast, from His very birth-more distinct and vivid through the last years of His ministry-there is the vision-the appointed goal-the cross-that to which all His struggles tended that towards which all His actions converged-that which was the supreme and ultimate reason of His coming into the world at all-the cross. And the figure of the cross was distinctly before Him, and His eye, steady, serene, unflinching, fastened always there. That is His design-to be the surety of an insolvent humanity-to be the friend of a forsaken race --to be the refuge and shelter of endangered men. All the former characteristics of His incarnation had a bearing upon this, the chief design, and were essential to its completeness and value? Do you not see how? It was essential, first, that a being of high estate should condescend, because none other could avail. No angel had merit to spare; no man had merit at all. And, moreover, it was essential in order that the divinity might sustain the humanity under the pressure of its agonies, uniting with it to confer a plentitude of propitiatory value. Then it was necessary that that devotion should be voluntary, because there could be no availableness in exacted suffering, and it must be profoundly willing if it would be infinitely worthy. And then it was necessary that the assumption should be complete, because the human had sinned and the human must diebecause as in Adam, the first federal representative of the race, all were dead, so in Adam again-another Adam, the second federal representative of the race-all might have the free gift come upon them even to justification of life. Now you see where we have gone. We have got a willing victim. We have got a willing victim of high estate. We have got a willing victim of high estate who wedded Himself to the sinning nature. It only wants one thing more to meet every requirement, and that is that this willing human victim, allied mysteriously to the divine, should be without guilt, either hereditary or actual, in Himself. Well, the miraculous conception and you see how one Scripture doctrine hangs upon another the miraculous conception provided for the first. "He was born not of blood, not of the will of man, not of the flesh, but of God"; and, standing steadfast in the midst of the gainsayers, He could say, in the midst of His spotless life, "Which of you convicteth Me of sin ?" He was in the world, but not of the world. Like the chaste and queenly moon that shines down upon the haunts of beggars and the dens of thieves, and loses none of its brilliancy and gathers none of their foulness, so He moved about among the scum and offscouring of human society, and yet was perfectly and absolutely pure-without sin. No fault could be found in Him even by the embittered Pilate. Thrice the disparted cloud gave utterance to the voice that attested His righteousness from heaven. Ay, and the baffled demons, as they slunk regretfully and remorsefully out of the shrines they had inhabited, were obliged to wring out of themselves the reluctant confession, "We know Thee who Thou art, the Holy one-the Holy one of God." There, then, you see the willing victim-the human victim -the victim mysteriously allied to the divine—the victim without obligation and without taint-the divine human. Saviour-man's appointed Saviour-God's incarnate Son. Brethren, look at this Jesus thus incarnated for you, and as you look let your prayer rise— "Answer Thy mercy's whole design, Close upon the sharp agony of Gethsemane came His arrest by the treachery of one whom He had trusted. Patiently He bears the ribaldry and insult in the dishonored judgment hall of Pilate. Wearily He treads the rugged pathway to Calvary, bearing His own cross. And now the mighty crowd is gathered upon the hill of shame; and now the cross is reared, and the nails are fastened into the quivering flesh, and amid the scoff and the slander ebbs His pure life away. The last ministering angel leaves Him, for He must tread this winepress alone. Darkness gathers solemnly, and oh-mystery of mysteries the Father hides His face from the Beloved. Darkness deepened in the sky, and on the mind; how long the affrighted gazers knew not. Then comes a cry, sharp, piercing, agonizing, and all is silent. "It is finished. It is finished." The darkness gradually disperses; the malefactors and their companions are seen hanging upon the crosses three. The herding multitude of human beings gradually swarm off the hillside, talking eagerly and wonderingly about the events that they have witnessed. The moon rises calmly in the night sky, as if her sister sun had never set upon a scene of blood. But, oh, what a change had those few hours wrought in the destiny of the world! Brethren, in that death is the life of man. We can never fail to recognize it. God forbid that the time should come when we should ever fail to preach it. In that death is the life of man. Christ hath died, "the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." Christ hath died. Tell it to that despairing sinner-that man who is just about to seek escape from the upbraidings of an angry conscience by the terrible alternative of self-murder, that man that hath the cord about his neck, or the pistol at his throat. Go to him. Be quick! Tell him he need not die, for Christ hath died-hath died to bear His sin away. Salvation! That is the end of it. That is the gospel-the inner kernel of the gospel under all the wrappings-salvation. Sound it out from that hillside of Calvary. Let the summits of the sister hills echo it. Sound it out from every avenue of this vast necropolis of a world. Salvation for the guilty, for the condemned, for all, for you!-for you! Now, that is the gospel of the incarnation. My dear friends, receive it into your hearts, and may God help you to live it out, until at last you see Jesus. not on the cross, but on the throne. The Nature of Gospel Truth the Prophecy of its Universal Recognition. A MISSIONARY SERMON. PREACHED BY James M. Ludlow, D.D., IN THE WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, BROOKLYN. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened."-Matthew xiii: 33. THIS figure contains more than a prophecy of the universal spread of Messiah's kingdom; it tells something of the law of its propagation. Leaven is chemically adapted to work upon the meal: that is, there is something in the nature of the meal which the fermenting agency of the leaven excites, until, particle by particle, the whole is leavened. You cannot leaven sand or lime-dust, because there is no such natural adaptation between them and the fermenting property. So there is something in Christianity, and something in human nature mutually adaptive. It is our purpose to show that this adaptation of the Gospel to human nature is so strong that, as by a law, it necessitates the ultimate evangelization of all mankind. Listen to some of these "voices of the soul" which are clearsounding prophecies of the triumph of the gospel. I. The truths taught by our Saviour are such as verify themselves to our deepest consciousness, and are intuitively approved by our best thoughts. Watch that floating buoy! It is now overwashed and dashed out of sight; now it is flung by the fury of the waves, as if it had broken its chain and was gone forever. But it re-appears; and year after year it will float, wildly or tranquilly over the same bar or rocks. The sailors who have not been on that coast for many months expect to see it, and, by its indication, turn their craft from the destruction whose maw is close beside it. The buoy remains because it is not a mere float, but is anchored to the bottom. Such, too, has been the history of Christ's truth. Infidelity has at times over-washed and concealed it from the popular faith. Persecution has seemed to destroy it utterly. But here it is yet. As Paul found it, so did Augustine, and Gregory, and Bernard, and Luther; and so did last-night's convert. We to-day believe it; to-morrow we doubt it; now vividly realize it; now forget it. But whenever we look earnestly through whatever haze of philosophy or spray of fear, we see it, for it is anchored at the bottom of the great human heart. We all have certain thoughts which are not due to any particular culture, and which we cannot get rid of by any culture, or lack of culture: however vague, they are convictions; we may not formulate them, but we feel them. We build a fire of bright-glowing, plausible objections to them, but, like the bush in Horeb the fire only illumines the fact that they are unconsumed. Here are some of the branches of that bush. An impression of God. The world is not yet wise enough to contradict Plato, saying "No one who had taken up in youth this opinion that the gods do not exist, ever continued in the same until he was old." We look toward heaven, and shut our minds against the Deity; but it is like shutting our eyes against the sunshine. The glare goes through the eyelids, and the nerve tingles with it. All we accomplish is to shut out the form of the sun and the whole world beautified in its light. Atheism has the glare of Deity, but not His glory. The professed atheist uses the name of Good in his blasphemy even more frequently than the believer in his prayer. God does not leave Himself without a witness before any heart. He shines luridly through the atmosphere of human hate, vaguely through the mists of indifference, clearly through the medium of faith and love. We have also an impression of Divine justice. Conscience, like soft wax, fits itself into the mould of what the Bible says about right and wrong, about righteousness and sin; and. though skepticism destroy the mould, conscience retains the shape of it, We may deny the theological expression "Divine justice;" but the heart is incapable of denying ultimate justice; and both philosophically and practically, they are the same thing. So the general features of the doctrine of atonement, such as salvation of the soul in some way satisfactory to infinite right, and in all ways gratuitously to us, are recognized the world over. The cross is a stumbling-block and foolishness to many; but the world does not get around that stumblingblock, nor keep its eyes off that foolishness. In some form or other the two elements of atonement mentioned-justice and gratuity-have been elements in the problem of peace between conscience and the Inspirer of conscience since the beginning. Blood streaming down from altars has made the boundaries of the different religions of the earth. Out of the waters of guilt men have tried to drag themselves on to the "Rock of Ages," whether it has had the shape of the cross or not. What we deride as we float in the calm of our self-righteous pride, we will some day give the world to cling to, and curse the ebbing waves of doubt which drag us away as we try to grasp it. The heart has also a native impulse to pray. The earth exhales mists; they rise and form the clouds; they descend in the rain. It has been thus since there first went up a mist and watered the earth. And so since God first dropped the dew of His communion with man in Paradise, the heart of humanity has exhaled desires and aspirations, and waited, too often |