me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. This is the will of him that sent me, that every one who seeth the Son and believeth on him, may have everlasting life. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me" "(John vi). "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna" (Rev. ii. 17).

Such future blessings as these promises exhibit were most appropriate to the subject He had been teaching and working to enforce. The full divine support and preservation of the soul, if once begun, would evidently go on unceasingly, and result, as its natural consequence, in a life eternal, as the eternal One who gave it. It implies an endless state of freedom from every want, of closest communion with or dwelling in Christ, and of eternal support by that mysterious "hidden manna;" for the soul will in eternity be ever still as directly dependent on Christ, its Saviour, as while on earth; still as much in need of that Almighty Redeemer, who multiplied the barley loaves, and declared himself the living Bread from heaven.

Prophetic words so kindred in nature to the others Christ had spoken, would at once sink into any hearts that had witnessed the miracle, and believingly heard the doctrine. All this that was promised for the future was certainly within the reach of divine power to accomplish. Christ had already shewn that He possessed divine power to support life; who then could ever take this power from Him, or hinder the fulfilment of His promise? What could change His loving concern for men's safety, or shake the steadiness of this predetermined intention of exercising it for their good in the everlasting state they were created to enjoy? On the contrary, were not such prophecies just what might have been expected to come from the worker of that kindred miracle, and the announcer of that kindred doctrine? Was it not most probable and fitting, that such combined power and goodness as shone forth in them, to attract and bless and cheer men's bodies for this life, would also send forth rays of brightest hope for the life beyond the grave, so much more to be desired? All Christ did and taught could be valuable mainly in proportion as it helped the soul to look for, prepare for, and hope in that eternal life; how necessary, then, as an accompaniment to His wondrous acts and spiritual teachings on earth, was this influx of eternal hopes, so carefully and wisely blended with his other words. It was the way to shew how much lay in the redemption offered by Him, how secure beyond every risk was the happiness of all that trusted Him with such a precious charge.

This redemptive promise was, indeed, the fitting sequence to the redemptive truth and the redemptive act.

Reviewing now the whole three, we may better feel the necessity of each for the full exhibition of the great idea running through them all. Any two without the third, would be defective in some vital point. Were the doctrine and prophecy deprived of the miracle, they would lose the attested visible evidence for the divine authority and truth of what they announce. Were the miracle and prophecy deprived of the doctrine, the guiding truth for man's soul in this life would be so obscured, that the miracle would lose its point, and the prophecy would have no distinct allusion to a known truth, such as it needs for its explanation. Were the doctrine and miracle deprived of the prophecy, they would lose that attractive stimulus to embracing them, which is contained in the glorious future reward promised to the believer. They would then, apparently, be bounded in their aim by the present life; it would seem to have been not worth while for Christ to appear on earth for such a narrow purpose; and little inducement would remain for His hearers, at certain loss and risk to "leave all and follow him." It was to the three together that Christ's hearers would trust; and by them, as by a "threefold cord not quickly broken," our own hearts are drawn in fullest confidence to the gracious Redeemer, who prepared this triple link between heaven and earth.

II. Our next example will be taken from the character Christ assumed as the great healer of bodily and spiritual disease. "And behold, they brought unto him a man sick of the palsy lying on a bed and Jesus seeing their faith, said unto the sick of the palsy, Son be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee" (Matt. ix. 2). Our Lord here claims divine authority of the highest possible kind. Such an assumption as this, that He was able to forgive sins done against God, involved in its truth or falsehood most momentous consequences. All that guilty man could long for hung upon its truth,-its falsehood would plunge any who believed it into irreparable ruin. The clearest confirmation of its truth certainly was urgently needed.

The way in which Christ thus first addressed the palsied man must have seemed to the sufferer somewhat perplexingperhaps even disappointing. For he was in the height of expectation, full of the instant relief from pressing disease, which he expected to receive; and he might have thought sadly within himself—" "Tis not of sin I was thinking-what bodily relief am I to get,-cannot even He cure me?” But a double cure awaited him: and from the pointed prominence given by Christ to the soul's disease, the man afterwards would learn to be more

grateful for the spiritual cure than even for the healing of the palsy. He would see that besides the pity which moved Jesus to help him, there was a deeper feeling in the healer's breast,—a Redeemer's compassion for his soul, and a wish to give instruction along with ease. As for the more critical among the audience, we are told what they thought. "Certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth. Who can forgive sins but God only ?"

Christ alone" knew what He would do." He had ready to support His doctrine, a miracle of kindred nature and most satisfying result. "Wherefore," said He, "think ye evil in your hearts; for whether is it easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins (then saith He to the sick of the palsy), Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house."

How exquisitely this miracle was calculated to support the doctrine. The disease cured was one of those inveterate ones, hopeless with human remedies, curable only by the same Almighty hand that inflicted it: yet by Christ's word of command, pronounced in His own name (without a shadow of doubt on His part of its success, or a moment's delay of the disease in recognizing and obeying it), the man before buried so wretchedly in that living death, arises, walks, and once more luxuriates in the life of healthy vigour, which seemed so utterly destroyed. Here was a demonstration as perfect as analogy could supply. This healer of the palsy thereby proved Himself to be "very God," in whom must necessarily reside equal power over everything, and particularly over the soul, to heal its diseases by forgiving its iniquities. Equally easy it must undoubtedly be for Him to do both. And since they could not actually see the process of soul-healing or forgiving, he showed them the other which they could see, the healing of the body by its redemption from the outward primitive effects of sin. Removing these ravages due to the curse entailed on sin, was the best possible (indeed the only possible) evidence for the reality of His assumed power to remove the curse itself. The Jewish mind would the sooner believe this, from the fact that disease was always considered by them as a special type of sin. The miracle was thus exactly the one fitted to support the doctrine; and the doctrine just such as might have been expected from the worker of such a miracle. The two harmonized completely.

Let us now notice how a kindred prophecy comes in, one made both to rest upon and to deepen the impression jointly produced by the miracle and the doctrine. Christ prophesies

that He will hereafter exercise at the great day of judgment, the same power to forgive or to retain sins. "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. Then shall the king say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world. Then shall he say unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal" (Matt. xxv. 31-46). Though accompanied by additions of grander solemnity, and more extended magnificence, this position in which Christ represents Himself as hereafter to occupy, is still the same in nature as that which He did actually assume at the bedside of the palsied man. The judicial power which, while veiled in humanity, could effectually pronounce and miraculously support that absolution to one suffering mortal, would evidently be entitled to assume, in its full development, all the majestic universal authority ascribed in the prophecy to the glorified Son of man. "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee," finds its true meaning, only when considered as the preliminary private declaration of a sentence to be finally and publicly ratified in the words, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you." The earthly absolution would lose its full power to cheer and comfort, if no prophetic promise had been given to shew that it conveyed real and eternal benefits: any earthly deliverance would be incomplete and less acceptable, did it not point onwards to another heavenly welcome." It is together that they bring pardon and peace" to Christ's faithful people, uniting them to Him in closest truest friendship. And we may observe that one great charm in that wondrous union lies hid in the fact, that besides procuring a possibility of sins being forgiven in heaven, for His sake and through His merits, our Lord has also gained the power and right of directly forgiving sins Himself. So that the sufferer discovers in Him not only a way by which he might hope, perhaps, at length to obtain relief from a distant God, but also the very relief itself, near and ready, waiting for him in that loving Saviour's hand, which can heal all it touches, and touches all who come to be healed.

To each sin-palsied soul lying at Jesus' feet, does not the whole subject repeat with stirring emphasis these words of life,

"Son, thy sins be forgiven thee?" The miracle is there, to set at rest all doubts of the healer's power. The doctrine is there, pouring in the balm of peace on the wounded conscience. The prophecy is there, to eternalize the blessing begun with those words of pardon; exhibiting to the soul, while convalescent on earth, how perfect a cure will be completed for it in eternity.

III. The life and death, or rather the death and life, of Lazarus at Bethany supplies us with the next examples. Intentionally staying away from the home of his humble friend until the third day after his death, our Lord then came to make up most fully for his seeming neglect. His greeting of consolation to the sisters contained a doctrine which even the departed Lazarus would think it worth while to have died for, when he found that thereby he had been both the occasion of its announcement, and the exemplification of its truth. "I am the resurrection and the life" (John xi. 25). It was not only to those much tried mourners that our Lord revealed this truth. A world was in His thoughts. Those whose hopes of Christ's assistance had seemed to die a lingering death along with their departed brother, and to be buried with Him in His rocky tomb, stood there the unconscious representatives of the whole family of mortal men and through them He addressed earth's countless mourners, themselves all in turn to be laid low and mourned for. For their comfort during every age this doctrine was announced declaring Christ Jesus to be the Lord of life and death. Both the power of resurrection for the body, and the source of life to the soul, are claimed by Christ as His own; possessed by Him so entirely that they are spoken of as part of His own very nature, the essential offspring of His divine existence. He not only claims to have them, but to be them. How changed the aspect of earth's saddest scenes if this doctrine be true! When the Speaker implied that the mouldering body is not annihilated, and the soul, though disappearing, is still full of unquenchable life, simply because He has them both in His care, He claims to have planted such a holy light in the midst of the "valley of the shadow of death," as may assure each trembling entrant that in the gloom he need "fear no evil."

For this all-important doctrine to be brought home to men's hearts some proof of the most undoubted certainty was needed, and was given. The well-known miracle which followed exactly supplied the required proof. Although the body of Lazarus had now been so long dead, that the speedy corruption of a hot climate already had done much of its dreadful work, yet at the voice of Christ's command, it was revived, renewed, restored to instant perfection of faultless health: and although the soul