plain understanding can judge upon à question like this;-can evidently discern that Jesus was not born as men are, who begin visibly to exist when they are born; but that Jesus existed in the brightness of heavenly glory," before the world was.'

The Scripture is perfectly consistent with itself. Jesus must have existed before the world began; because, in fact, by him God created the world. "By him," saith St. John, by "the Word,"

which became incarnate when Jesus took upon him our nature, "were all things made; and without him was not any thing made that was made." 66

By him (as

we read in the second verse of the first

chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews) God made the worlds.' 66 "By him (saith

St. Paul, in the sixteenth verse of the first chapter of Colossians) were all things

created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him, and for him; and he is before all things."

The unbelieving Jews attempted to stone Jesus because he said unto them, "Before Abraham was, I am:"-as if he had said, "Abraham existed but from and after a certain known and recorded point of time;-I have existed from all eternity; I existed 'before all worlds,' together with the Father, who exists from everlasting to everlasting, whose existence, like mine, is one continued present,-one continued I am." You must evidently see that Jesus carried back his pre-existent state to a date far short of what he might have carried it;—indeed, no numbers can reach its beginning;-number fails when it is applied to count the days of eternity.

Most certainly he existed "before Abraham," since he existed" before the world was." But now, if this be so certain, what shall we say of the tribe of heretics, who deny the existence of Christ before he came into the world? who deny that he is the Son of God? who deny that he is of a nature above the nature of sinful man? If he was not of a nature above our's, my beloved, how could he redeem us by shedding his blood? How could the death of one compensate the transgression of many? How could an inheritor of Adam's guilt do away the penalty of eternal death, which Adam incurred and entailed on his posterity? If these heretics speak truly, if Jesus was but the Son of Joseph, this conclusion must inevitably follow, that we are yet unredeemed, that "we are yet in our sins;"-and the only termination of their impious labour to de

preciate and degrade the nature of Jesus, is this, the assurance of damnation,-not, what comforts the Christian under every trying circumstance, the certainty of sal vation through the blood of the Son of God. "Who shall separate us, (triumphantly asks the Christian, with the holy apostle) who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." If one man could do away the sin of mankind,-and this were evidently an insufficient satisfaction,-why might not

the sacrifice of a bull or a goat take away sins? This, the Scripture tells us, is impossible. "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins." And here, too, attached and appended to this text, is another proof of the pre-existent state of Christ. "When he cometh, (that is, as appears from the last verse of the ninth chapter of the Hebrews, Christ)—when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me; in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure :-then said I, Lo, I come, to do thy will, O God." The Son of God evidently determines to take upon him our nature, and to offer that great and sufficient sacrifice of which the Jews seemed to lose sight, whilst, forgetting the reality, they put their trust in the figure, and sunk the antitype in the type;