way has been well brought out by our best modern divinesnamely, that God gave His Son to the world, in the same of goodness as He affords particular persons the friendly 'assistance of their fellow-creatures. . . in the same way of ' goodness, though in a transcendent and infinitely higher 'degree."1 It is only from the community of spirit which exists between the Manifestation of Christ and the likeness of Himself in the good men who preceded or who succeeded, that we can speak of them either as His types or His followers. It is by thus speaking of them that we shall best conceive the work of Him in whom in the dispensation of the fulness ' of time all things were gathered together in one. Both theirs and ours Thou art, As we and they are Thine; Kings, Prophets, Patriarchs, all have part O bond of union, dear And strong as is Thy grace; Saints, parted by a thousand year, The immediate preparation for that Manifestation in the period between the Captivity and the final overthrow of Jerusalem and of the Jewish nation may be the subject of another volume, if life and strength are granted, amidst the pressure of other engagements, to continue a task begun in earlier and less disturbed days. May the Students for whom these Lectures were specially intended receive them as the memorial of efforts, however imperfect (if I may employ the words in which the plan of these Lectures was first indicated), so to delineate the outward 'events of the Sacred History as that they should come home 'with new power to those who by familiarity have almost 1 Butler's Analogy, Part II. Ch. v. ૐૐ ૐ, 7. 2 Christian Year, on 'The Circumcision of Christ.' |