It was not only heathen sages who had spoken of man's divine faculties, divine origin, divine destiny. The Scriptures had called those whom God had set over men, gods. Psalmists, who were most jealous for the honour of Jehovah, had not feared to use the language. Prophets could not maintain the truth of their own mission--could not declare that the word of God was speaking by them and in them--without falling into it. There _was_ the greatest peril of men becoming Lucifers,--of their setting themselves up in the place of God. It is the very danger of which Christ has been speaking in this discourse,--the temptation into which kings, prophets, priests,--even teachers who pretended to no inspiration, who merely stood on the ground of their traditional greatness, or of men's preference for them,--had fallen. Nor was there any deliverance from such pretensions, and from the robberies and murders which were the consequence of them, unless One came who did not exalt Himself, who did the works of His Father, who simply glorified Him. Such a One could justify all the high words that had ever been spoken of our race, and yet could lay low the pride of those who had aspired to be the lords of it. He could show what the true man is; and, in doing so, could show what the true God is. By putting Himself into the position of the lowest of the sheep, by enduring the death to which each one of the sheep had been subjected, He could prove that the glory of man is to serve; He could show that the true sons of God had been the true servants of men; He could show that the perfect servant of all must be _the_ Son of God. All titles, honours, dignities among men, had derived their virtue and efficacy from Him. Their virtue and efficacy lay in His Sonship. He was content to be a Son, to be nothing else than a Son. So He showed forth His eternal consubstantial union with the Father. If God is merely absolute Power, then all this Christian theology is a dream and a falsehood,--then there is no Son of God or Son of Man, in any real sense of the words. But if God is absolute Love, then He who died for the sheep must be His perfect image and likeness, the '_only-begotten, full of grace and truth_;' then to separate Him from the Father, to seek for the Father in any but Him, must lead to the denial of both, ultimately to the glorification of an evil spirit, a being of absolute selfishness, in place of both. From which frightful consummation, brethren, may the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the one God, whose name is Love, preserve us and His whole Church! DISCOURSE XX. THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. [Lincoln's Inn, 4th Sunday after Trinity, June 15th, 1856.] ST. JOHN XI. 25. _Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live._