SERMON VIII.

JOHN Xviii. 38.

"AND PILATE SAID UNTO HIM, WHAT IS TRUTH?"

POOR Pilate !-he knows what truth is now. It must have cost him, I presume, some bitter pangs before he consigned Messiah to the hands of his ruthless enemies. He had been faithfully warned, even by his own wife. Half decided, he had the meanness, and the wickedness, to consign him to death, whom he knew to be innocent.

What the Saviour had told him, must, when he reflected on it, have been eminently satis

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factory to him. "Jesus answered, My king

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dom is not of this world." He tells him his kingdom was wholly spiritual. Pilate had, doubtless, heard of the miracles which Jesus wrought; perhaps he might have entertained a suspicion that an individual, endowed with miraculous powers, might have done what he pleased; and, therefore, have seized the kingdom at will. But the Saviour suffers not any thing like the slightest suspicion on this head to remain. My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered unto the Jews but now is my kingdom not from hence." Connect with this two other portions of the word of God. "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." "Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above.)" These few texts convince me the Saviour is not to come down to reign on this earth.

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O my

1 1 Ver: 36.

2 Rom: xiv. 17.

3 Rom: x. 6.

young friends, pay attention to this! I would watch over you with parental solicitude! I am ambitious of being the humble instrument in the hands of my God of preserving you from all error in principle, and vice in practice. A minister has his trials; and some of them are the pain he feels when he sees those whom he loves going astray.

"Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice."1

The ancient philosophers, Greek and Roman, frequently professed to be lovers and followers of truth. Most of them professed to be in search of it; and, perhaps, as this must have been known to Pilate, (who was, doubtless, more or less a literary man,) it may, in some measure, account for the question he put. "Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?" But

1 John xviii. 37.

he does not wait for an answer: he probably thought the Saviour some weak impostor, and after he had asked the question, he went out unto the Jews, and said unto them, “I find in him no fault at all.”

But, "What is truth?" Have you and I courage to ask the question, and to receive an answer from God-to enter into the inmost recesses of our hearts, and rather perish than reject that answer? Essential Deity must first enter the heart, if we require truth there;—Essential Deity must enter in and live there. “I am the way, the truth, and the life."1

First, then,

I. JESUS CHRIST IS ESSENTIALLY GOD.

He is the true God. He is not an imaginary being, inhabiting only the human imagination, and having no existence elsewhere;-no! he is the God of heaven and earth-the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things; and, therefore, necessarily, the true God. In the

1 John xiv. 6.