to our door, in myriads of insects produces their food; how those creatures that burrow in the soil have bodies shaped like a wedge, and fore-feet so formed as to do the work of a spade; how the animals that inhabit arctic climes are wrapped in furs, which man, for the sake of their warmth, is glad to borrow, and to which God, for the protection of their lives, has given the color of snow; how, furnished with hollow bones and downy feathers, birds are adapted to float in an atmosphere of thin transparent air; and how other creatures, slow of motion, and unarmed for battle, and thus helplessly exposed to their enemies, carry a strong castle on their backs-retiring within their shell, as men into a fortalice, safe from all attack. The student of nature thus recognizes, with adoring wonder, the harmony which God has established between his creatures and their circumstances. Now the divinity of our faith is not less conspicuous to the believer's eye, in respect of its perfect adaptation to the peculiarities, or, if you will call them so, to the infirmities of our nature. In his incarnate Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, God presents himself to me in a form which meets my wants. The Infinite is brought within the limits of my narrow understanding; the Invisible is revealed to my sight; I can touch him, hear him, see him, speak to him. In the hand which he holds out to save me, I have what my own can grasp. In that eye bent on me, whether bedewed with tears, or beaming with affection, I see divine love in a form I feel, and can understand. God addresses me in human tones; God stands before me in the fashion of a man; and, paradox as it appears, when I fall at his feet to say with Thomas, My Lord and my God, I am an image-worshipper, yet no idolater; for the Being before whom I bend is not a mere mau,

nor a graven image, nor a dead thing, but the living, loving, eternal, "express image" of the "invisible God."

II. Consider in what sense Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God."

This term, image, is to be taken here in its widest, most comprehensive sense. It means much more than a mere resemblance; it conveys the idea of shadow less than that of substance; and is to be understood in the sense in which Paul employs it, when he says of the Mosaic institutions-" The law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image," or substance, "of the things." An image may be moulded in clay, or cut in marble, or struck in metal, or so formed on the watery mirror, that, when blustering winds were hushed, and no ripple disturbed the lake, we have lain over our boat to see the starry firmament imaged in its crystal depths, and wish it were thus in our bosom a heaven above repeated in a heaven below. Then there are living as well as dead images. And as a Christian's life, without any occasion for his lips telling it, should proclaim him to the world a child of God, so I have known an infant bear such striking resemblance to his father, that what his tongue could not tell, his face did; and people, struck by the likeness, remarked of the nursling, He is the very image of his father. Such was Adam in his state of innocence. Endowing him with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, God made good his words, Let us make man in our own image.

Now it may be said that, as our Lord, like the first Adam, was a pure and holy creature," harmless," and "undefiled," he is therefore called the image of God.

Yet that does not exhaust the meaning of this term; nor is it at all on that account that Paul speaks of him as" the second Adam," but because, as their representative and federal head, Jesus stood to his people in the same covenant relationship as our first parent did to all his posterity.

Nor have they sounded the depths, seen to the bottom of this expression, who say that, since our Lord was endowed with power to do the works of God, to work many mighty miracles, he might therefore be called the image of God. For many others, both before and after him, were in that sense equally images of God. How godlike was Moses, when he raised his arm to heaven, and thunders rent the answering skies; when, giving origin perhaps to the heathen legend of Neptune and his trident, he waved his rod upon the deep, and, billow rolling back from billow, the sea was parted by his power! What a godlike action Joshua's on that battlefield, when he met, and where he conquered five kings in fight! God fought for him with hailstones, and he fought for God with swords; and no more than devils of hell could stand before us, did prayer always summon heaven to our aid, could mortal men stand before such onslaught—“ Kings of armies did flee apace;" that day five crowns were lost. But, apparently a most inopportune event, ere Joshua has reaped the fruits of his victory, the sun, emerging from the dark hail-cloud, has sunk low in the sky. His burning wheels touch the crest of Gibeon, while the pale moon, marshaling on the night to protect the flying enemy, is showing her face over the valley of Ajalon. Joshua sees, that, as has happened to other conquerors, darkness will rob him of the prize; nor leave anything more substantial in his hand than a

wreath of laurel, the honors of the day. Iuspired for the occasion, he lifts his bloody sword to the heavens, he commands their luminaries to stop; and when, like high-mettled coursers which, knowing their masters' hand, instantly obey the rein, the sun and moon stand still, hang motionless in the portentous sky, how grandly does he stand there, a visible image of God? Yet, where is Joshua, or Moses, or Elijah, or Paul, or Peter, or any of all the servants by whom Jehovah wrought such wonders in the days of old, called an "image of the invisible God?" Where are these men set forth as mysteries? Where are they represented as "God manifest in the flesh?" Of which of them did God himself say, Let all the angels of God worship him? A blind superstition may worship them ; but yonder, where Moses bends the knee by the side of Mary Magdalene, and Joshua bows low as Rahab, and Paul sings of the mercy that saved in himself the chief of sinners, they worship Jesus, as in his double nature both God and man; a visible manifestation of the invisible; "the only begotten of the Father; distinguished from all other images, whether impressed on holy angels or on sainted men, as the express image of his person." Herein lies the amazing breadth, and length, and depth, and height, of the love of God; for you he gave that image to be broken-shattered by the hand of death. Blessed be his name, He died, the just for the unjust, that we might be saved.

III. Let me direct your attention to some illustrations of this truth.

"Shew us the Father," said Philip to our Lord. Had he said, Cleave me that mountain, divide this sea stop the sun, lay thy finger on the hands of time, he

had asked nothing impossible; nothing more difficult for Jesus than saying to a cripple, Walk, or to the dead, Come forth. Yet impossible as was that for which Philip asked, since "no man hath seen God at any time, nor can see him," and strangely bold as was his request, it was followed by a happy issue. What clear testimony does our Lord's reply bear both to his own divinity and to his father's loving, pitiful, tender nature! "He that hath seen me, Philip," seen me weeping with the living and weeping for the dead, seen me receiving little children into my arms to bless them, seen me inviting the weary to rest, pitying all human suffering, patient under the greatest wrongs, encouraging the penitent, and ready to forgive the vilest sinners, "he that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." In me, my character and works, you have a living, visible, perfect" image of the invisible God."

In selecting some of the divine attributes to illustrate this, I remark

1. In our Lord Jesus Christ we see the power of God.

An Arab, a wild son of the desert, one more accustomed to fight than to reason, to plunder a caravan than to argue a cause, was asked by a traveler how he knew that there was a God. He fixed his dark eyes with a stare of savage wonder on the man who seemed to doubt the being of God; and then, as he was wont, when he encountered a foe, to answer spear with spear, he met that question with another, How do I know whether it was a man or a camel that passed my tent last night? Well spoken, child of the desert! for not more plainly do the footprints on the sand reveal to thy eye whether it was a man or camel that passed thy