Yes, He has given us, in Himself, a king who can never misgovern, a teacher who can never mislead, a priest whose sacrifice can never be unaccepted, a protector who can never grow weary, a friend who can never betray. And all that this earth has in it really worth loving,--the ties of family, of country, of universal brotherhood--the beauties and wonders of God's mysterious universe--all true love, all useful labour, all innocent enjoyment--the marriage bed, and the fireside circle--the bounties of harvest, and the smiles of spring, and all that makes life bright and this earth dear--all these things He has restored to man, spiritual and holy, deep with new meaning, bright with purer enjoyment, rich with usefulness, not merely for time, but for eternity, after they had become, through the accumulated sin and folly of ages, foul, dead, and well nigh forgotten. He has united these common duties and pleasures of man's life to Himself, by taking them on Himself on earth; by giving us His spirit to understand and fulfil those duties; by making it a duty to Him to cultivate them to the uttermost. He has sanctified them for ever, by shewing us that they are types and patterns of still higher relations to Himself, and to His Father and our Father, from whom they came. Christ our Lord and Saviour is a witness to us of the enduring, the everlasting nature of all that human life contains of beauty and holiness, and real value. He is a witness to us that Wisdom is eternal; that that all-embracing sight, that all-guiding counsel, which the Lord "possessed in the beginning of His way, before His works of old," He who "was set up from everlasting," who was with Him when He made the world, still exists, and ever shall exist, unchanged. The word of the Lord standeth sure! That Word which was "in the beginning," and "was with God," and "was God!" Glorious truth! that, amid all the inventions which man has sought out, while every new philosopher has been starting some new method of happiness, some new theory of human life and its destinies, God has still been working onward, unchecked, unaltered, "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." O, sons of men! perplexed by all the apparent contradictions and cross purposes and opposing powers and principles of this strange, dark, noisy time, remember to your comfort that your King, a man like you, yet very God, now sits above, seeing through all which you cannot see through; unravelling surely all this tangled web of time, while under His guiding eye all things are moving silently onward, like the stars in their courses above you, toward their appointed end, "when He shall have put down all rule and all authority, and power, for He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet." And then, at last, this cloudy sky shall be all clear and bright, for He, the Lamb, shall be the light thereof.