One sacrifice, and that to be offered not again, was exhibited upon Mount Calvary, that last altar of earthly oblations; and the sources of redemption were thenceforth complete. The memory of this scene was to be perpetuated, and its benefits symbolised and conveyed, by an intelligible solemnity, common to all countries, and attainable wheresoever two or three were gathered together in His name. The moral law proceeding on the perpetuity of natural obligation entered of necessity into the stipulations of the new covenant. But it was no longer fettered in operation by a literal Decalogue; no longer repulsive from its stern demand for uncompromising obedience. Its enactments were transferred by the Founder of Christianity into the general and enlarged principles of human action, and defect in its observance supplied by an atonement laid up or invested in the heavens. But not only was this alteration of doctrine and ceremony made from transitory to eternal: the law being changed, there arrived of necessity a change in the priesthood also. The temporary functions of the race of Aaron were superseded by the ordination of a solemn body of men, whose spiritual lineage and clerical succession should be as perpetual as the creed they promulgated. The scene recalled by our text is that of the shore of Genesareth, whereon stood the arisen Lord, with the eleven men. Thence the sons of Zebedee, and others among them, had departed at His mere command from their occupation of the waters, and had become the followers of His path of instruction in Judæa, and Samaria, and Galilee. They had seen the supernatural passage of His life in wonder and in sign. They had gradually imbibed the doctrines of His mouth; for them He had given unto the olive and the vine the voice of instruction, and hung, as it were, a parable on every bow. From the cross of shame, indeed, they had shrunk in shuddering dismay. But then, faith revived with His resurrection and they were permitted to identify His arisen body. And now they beheld Him on that accustomed spot, the apparent Conqueror of death, from whose grasp He had returned, the Author of that second life, the breath which He breathed into his new-founded Church; the evident Lord of—in His own declaration—all power in heaven and on earth. In the first ordination of Christian antiquity, the Son of God invested with His last authority the apostles of His choice: “Go ye into all the world, and proclaim the gladening message into every creature. Make disciples in all nations by baptism unto the religion and worship of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”