more glorious will be his reward in heaven. It is certain, too, that
what was good for St. Peter is good for us. It is good for a man to have
holy and quiet thoughts, and at moments to see into the very deepest
meaning of God’s word and God’s earth, and to have, as it were, heaven
opened before his eyes; and it is good for a man sometimes actually to
_feel_ his heart overpowered with the glorious majesty of God, and to
_feel_ it gushing out with love to his blessed Saviour: but it is not
good for him to stop there, any more than it was for the apostles; they
had to leave that glorious vision and come down from the mount, and do
Christ’s work; and _so have we_; for, believe me, one word of warning
spoken to keep a little child out of sin,—one crust of bread given to a
beggar-man, because he is your brother, for whom Christ died,—one angry
word checked, when it is on your lips, for the sake of Him who was meek
and lowly in heart; in short, any, the smallest endeavour of this kind to
lessen the quantity of evil, which is in yourselves, and in those around
you, is worth all the speculations, and raptures, and visions, and
frames, and feelings in the world; for those are the good _fruits_ of
faith, whereby alone the tree shall be known whether it be good or evil.
SERMON XVI.
THE CRUCIFIXION.
ISAIAH, liii. 7.
“He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.”
ON this day, my friends, was offered up upon the cross the Lamb of
God,—slain in eternity and heaven before the foundation of the world, but
slain in time and space upon this day. All the old sacrifices, the lambs
which were daily offered up to God in the Jewish Temple, the lambs which
Abel, and after him the patriarchs offered up, the Paschal Lamb slain at
the Passover, our Eastertide, all these were but figures of Christ—tokens
of the awful and yet loving law of God, that without shedding of blood
there is no remission of sin. But the blood of dumb animals could not
take away sin. All mankind had sinned, and it was, therefore, necessary
that all mankind should suffer. Therefore He suffered, the new Adam, the
Man of all men, in whom all mankind were, as it were, collected into one
and put on a new footing with God; that henceforward to be a man might
mean to be a holy being, a forgiven being, a being joined to God, wearing
the likeness of the Son of God—the human soul and body in which He
offered up all human souls and bodies on the cross. For man was
originally made in Christ’s likeness; He was the Word of God who walked
in the garden of Eden, who spoke to Adam with a human voice; He was the
Lord who appeared to the patriarchs in a man’s figure, and ate and drank
in Abraham’s tent, and spoke to him with a human voice; He was the God of
Israel, whom the Jewish elders saw with their bodily eyes upon Mount
Sinai, and under His feet a pavement as of a sapphire stone. From Him
all man’s powers came—man’s speech, man’s understanding. All that is
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