Now, it is of the last importance to apprehend with distinctness the primary object of the heart of Christ in the work of redemption. It tends to consolidate the believer's peace. The accomplishment of God's will, the establishment of God's counsels, and the display of God's glory, occupied the fullest, deepest, and largest place in that devoted heart which viewed and estimated every thing in reference to God. The Lord Jesus never once stopped to inquire how any act or circumstance would affect Himself. "He humbled Himself"--"He made Himself of no reputation"--He surrendered all. And hence, when He arrived at the close of His career, He could look back upon it all, and say, with His eyes lifted up to heaven, "I have glorified Thee on the earth; I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." (John xvii. 4.) It is impossible to contemplate the work of Christ, in this aspect of it, without having the heart filled with the sweetest affections toward His Person. It does not detract, in the smallest degree, from our sense of His love to us, to know that He made God His primary object in the work of the cross. Quite the opposite. His love to us, and our salvation in Him, could only be founded upon God's established glory. That glory must form the solid basis of every thing. "As truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord." (Numb. xiv. 21.) But we know that God's eternal glory and the creature's eternal blessedness are, in the divine counsels, inseparably linked together, so that if the former be secured, the latter must needs be so likewise.