HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY James M Paton 了 Miss Lucy A. Paton's Boston Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, BY M. W. DODD, In the Clerk's office of the Southern District of New York. STEREOTYPED BY THOMAS B. SMITH, 216 WILLIAM STREET, N. Y. THE GLORY OF CHRIST. CHAPTER XI. THE GLORY OF CHRIST IN THE MISSION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. So far as it respects its influence upon men, the great object of Christ's coming into the world was to elevate them to moral rectitude. There is a higher good than mere enjoyment; something more valuable than the pardon of sin, and deliverance from the wrath and curse; else would there have been no such revealed conditions of salvation, and no such sacrifice as the humiliation of the Son of God. Infinite goodness would make men happy, but not at the expense of holiness; it is a holy happiness which it seeks to bestow. In the final issues of his government, God cannot tolerate an unholy happiness. When we speak of holiness, we speak of that which God most loves. His own character is glorious in holiness." Seraphim and cherubim cover their faces with their wings when they pros trate themselves at his throne, and say, one to another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!" Such a being, from his nature, must be the support and guardian of holiness on the earth. This world can give riches, pleasures, honors, dignities, crowns; but it cannot give holiness. The sons and daughters of men are pilgrims to the Holy Land; but they cannot enter it unless they themselves are holy. There is no such thing as a happy hereafter, unless it be a holy hereafter; nor is there any crown of immortality unless it be "the crown of righteousness." They themselves must be consecrated temples, sanctified by precious graces, and adorned with the beauties of holiness. Though formed for blessedness, they must forever be banished from God's presence if they remain defiled with the pollution of sin. Their title to eternal life was not only extinguished with their innocence, but the gates of heaven remain forever barred against them unless there be superadded to the expiation of the Son of God, that divine arrangement by which they are born anew to a spiritual life, not of corruptible, but of incorruptible seed, which liveth and abideth forever. Every principle of the gospel illustrates its supreme and immutable regard to holiness. The wondrous and eternal purpose which originated it; the doctrines it reveals, its promises and its threatenings, its institutions and means of grace, are all designed |