blossoms so white, and pure, and sweet of fragrance, as the flowers of a garland on a Saviour's brow! Is Magdalene, is Manasseh, is Saul, are a thousand and a thousand others in glory yonder, a wonder to angels, and an astonishment to themselves? But great as is the work begun on earth and consummated in heaven, how much greater is the worker? Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength? He comes; hell flies his presence. He appears; all the angels of God worship him. He speaks; the tempestuous sea is calm. He commands; the grave gives up its dead. He stands on this sin-smitten world, "in praises, doing wonders;" the visible image of an invisible God. Angels celebrate his advent and attend his departure-hovering alike over the manger of Bethlehem and the crest of Olivet; and when he has left the grave to ascend the throne, hark to the cry at the gate of heaven, Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlast ing doors; and the King of Glory shall come in. Within, they ask, Who is this King of Glory? The gate rolls open, and, greeted with shout and song, the procession enters, as his escort answer, The Lord of Hosts, he is the King of Glory. With such honors and gladness may he be received into our hearts! Holy Spirit, throw open their gates! Jesus ascend their throne! that, holding Thee whom heaven holds, we may have a heaven within us; and, washed in thy blood and renewed by thy Spirit, may present in ourselves what sin has forfeited but grace restores--a visible image of the invisible God.

The Image of God.

(CONTINUED.)

Who is the image of the invisible God.--COLOSSIANS i. 15.

DESCRIBING a tribe of pagan Africans, Dr. Livingstone says, Like most others, they listen with respect and attention, but when we kneel down and worship an unseen Being, the act and position appear to them so ridiculous, that they cannot refrain from bursting into uncontrollable laughter. Accustomed from our earliest childhood to worship the unseen, we wonder at these merry savages; and yet, by nature like them, we are all creatures of sight and sense. Hence our desire to see any remarkable person; hence the pleasure we take in the portrait that embellishes the biography of a great or good man, or in the statue which preserves his features and adorns his tomb. Some may call the publican's a childish curiosity. But we sympathise with Zaccheus, when, having heard that Jesus was passing, he left the receipt of custom to join the throng; but, lost there, shot a head of the multitude, and climbed a friendly sycamore, to catch a passing glance at the wonder-working man. We esteem it not the least of the blessings which shall be enjoyed in heaven, that we shall see Jesus there; see him as he is; gaze with fond, adoring love on the very face and form which our faith has so often tried to fancy, and painters of the greatest genius have utterly failed to express.

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A sense of guilt makes man afraid of God. Conscience makes cowards of us all; so that, as Adam fled from his presence to the bushes of the garden, many fly even from the thought of him, in whom, but for sin, they would have lovingly confided. But for the fears of guilt, the contemplation of God's works would kindle a devout curiosity to see the hand they sprung from. And when, so rapt in admiration as for the time to forget that we are sinners, we gaze on the spangled firmament, or look out on the blue rolling ocean, or, from the peak of some lofty mountain, look over a tumbling sea of hills, or down on the glorious landscape, as in the mingled beauty of dark greenwood, and golden fields, and silver streams, and castle-crowned summits, and scattered villages, and busy towns, it stretches away to the distant shore, the soul has some longing for a view of God more palpable than it gets. We almost wish that he were not invisible, and enter, in some measure, into the feelings of Moses on Mount Sinai. The everlasting thunderings were grand, vividly the lightning flashed and flickered, awfully sublime were the dark cloud and voices of the mount, but they were not God. The heart craved for some view of himself. And so, highest example of perfect love casting out fear, with the lightnings playing around him, and the earth shaking beneath his feet, bold man! he bowed his head and bent his knee, and said, Show me thy glory.

Being, as we have already shown, so much creatures of sight and sense, this incident leads me to remark

I. That God, as revealed visibly in Jesus Christ, meets and satisfies one of our strongest wants.

Our Lord's dis 'nity, which is to some like his death,

to the Jew "a stumbling-block," like his resurrection to the Greek, foolishness, does not stagger my faith in the Bible. On the contrary, Christ's divine nature strengthens my belief in its divine authority; and, in the light of that doctrine, the sacred volume appears all the more plainly to be both the power of God and the wisdom of God. That doctrine, as I hope to show you, goes to establish, not shake its claims to be devoutly received as a revelation from heaven.

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow thyself down to them, nor serve them." So runs the second commandment; and, if I am to judge from the universal practice of mankind, there is not one of the ten commandments which runs more counter to our nature.

may surprise you. But in proof of it

1. Look at the heathen world.

That remark

For long dark ages the whole earth was given up to idolatry, with the exception of a single nation. The Hebrews stood alone. They worshipped in a temple without an idol, and rejected the use of images in the services of religion. Go back to remotest time. Start from the age either of those old Assyrians, whose gods we have been digging from the ruins of Nineveh, or of those older Egyptians whose mummy forms, with their dog and hawk-headed divinities, lie entombed on the banks of the Nile; and, coming down the course of time to the last-discovered tribe of savages, we find that all nations, with scarcely an exception, have been idolaters. All have clung to the visible, and employed sensible representations of the divinity; theirs a sen

suous worship, whether they adored one or ten thousand gods. Nor is this wonderful. To fix the mind and affections on an invisible Being seemed like attempting to anchor a vessel on a flowing tide or rolling billows. These offer nothing to hold by. And, as a climbing plant, for lack of a better stay, will throw its arms around a ruined wall or rotten tree, rather than want something palpable to which their thoughts might cling, men have worshipped the Divine Being through images of the basest character and most hideous forms. We gaze with blank astonishment on the gods of many heathen races. We ask, is it possible that rational beings have bent the knee to this painted stick, that, with a bunch of feathers stuck on its head, and two bits of inlaid pearl-shell for eyes, presents but the rudest resemblance to the form of humanity? Not only possible but certain. Talk of " the dignity of our nature!" How that ugly idol, with man supplicating its help and trembling before its wrath, refutes the notion, and proclaims the fall! Contrast Adam, erect in his innocence, and lifting up an open countenance to the heavens, with that dark, crouching, miserable savage, who kneels to this stick. What a fall is there! How is the gold become dim? how is the most fine. gold changed? Then,

2. Look at the evidence of this proneness to sensu ous worship as it appears in the history of the Jews. Even among God's chosen people, how did this pro pensity to idolatry constantly manifest itself, just as I have seen broom, and furze, and heath, and such other wild plants as were natural to the soil, spring up in cultivated pastures--ready to resume possession, should the husbandman relax his efforts to keep them down