You tried to hold on to them with your stout arms, and you said, "O Lord, spare them. I can't give them up; I can't give them up. Let me keep them a little longer." But they broke away from your arms into the light of heaven. It seemed as if Jesus and the angels were determined to have them there and then.

But we have tried to make this church a comforting place for all the broken-hearted. Oh, how many of them there are! We have tried to fill the song and the sermon, and the prayer with the solace of God's promises, and so it shall be hereafter. It is no mere theory with me. I have had enough trouble of my own to know how to comfort those who are desolate, and it is my ambition to be to you a son of consolation. Standing as we do at the open portals of another pastoral year, let us to-day make a new vow of consecration. Let us be faithful to God and faithful to each other; for soon we must part, and all these pleasant scenes in which we have mingled will vanish forever. By the throne of God, our work all done, our sorrows all ended, may we be permitted to talk over the solemn, delightful, and disciplinary occurrences of this my sixth pastoral year in Brooklyn.

THE SUPERHUMAN JESUS.

"Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen."-Ro mans ix., 5.

PAULI

AUL was a reckless man in always telling the whole truth. It mattered not who it hit, or what theological system it upset. In this one sentence he makes a world of trouble for all Arians and Socinians, and gives a cud for skepticism to chew on for the next thousand years. We must proceed skillfully to twist this passage of Scripture, or we shall have to admit the Deity of Jesus Christ. I roll up my sleeves for the work, and begin by saying, perhaps this is a wrong version. No; all the versions agree -Syriac, Ethiopic, Latin, Arabic. Perhaps this word God. means a being of great power, but not the Deity. It is "God over all." But perhaps this word God refers to the first person of the Trinity-God the Father. No; it is "Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen." Whichever way I take it, and when I turn it upside-down, and when I try to read it in every possible shape, I am compelled to leave it as all have been compelled to leave it who have gone before me, an incontrovertible proof of the eternal and magnificent Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ. "Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen."

About the differences between the evangelical denominations of Christians I have no concern. If I could by the turning-over of my hand decide whether finally all the

world shall be Methodists, or Baptists, or Episcopalians, or Congregationalists, or Presbyterians, I would not turn over my hand; but between Unitarianism, which believes the Deity of Christ, and Trinitarianism, which argues his divine nature, there is a difference as wide as eternity. If Christ be not a God, then we are base idolaters. If Christ be God, then those who deny it are blasphemers. To that Christological question we come this morning, and may God help us to do right in a question where mistake is infinite!

I suppose we are all willing to take the Bible as our standard. It requires as much faith to be an infidel as to be a Christian; but it is faith in a different direction. The Christian believes in the statements of Moses, and Isaiah, and David, and Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and Paul. The infidel believes in the statement of the freethinkers. We have faith in one class of men; they have faith in another class of men. But as I suppose the vast majority of the people in the audience this morning are willing to take the Bible as their guide in morals and religion, I shall make this book my starting-point.

You may be aware that the two great generals who have marshaled the largest army of Unitarian troops are Strauss and Renan. The multitudes of the slain under them will never be counted until the day when the archangel sounds the roll-call of the resurrection. These men, and all men who have sympathy with them, begin by attacking the fortress of the miracles. They know that when once they have captured that fortress Christianity must surrender. The great German exegete says that all the miracles are myths. The great French exegete says that all the miracles are legends. They must somehow or other explain away every thing supernatural in the Bible-every

thing supernatural in the life of Christ--though to accom plish that they must go up the greatest absurdity. They prefer the miracles of human nonsense rather than the grand miracles of Jesus Christ. They say, for instance, that the miraculous birth of Christ was a myth, just as it is a fanciful idea that Romulus was born of Rhea Silvia and the god Mars. They say that Christ did not feed five thou sand with a few loaves of bread; that is only a myth which got mixed up with the distribution of twenty loaves among a hundred people by Elisha. They say Christ did not turn the water into wine; that was only an improvement on the old Egyptian plague by which water was turned into blood. They say no star pointed down to the manger where Jesus lay; that was only the flash of a passing lantern. They say that Christ's sweating great drops of blood in Gethsemane was not very astonishing, for he had been exposed to the night, and had been taken suddenly physic ally ill. They say no tongues of fire sat on the heads of the disciples at the Pentecost; it was only a great thunderstorm, and the air was full of electricity, and it snapped and flew all around about the heads of the disciples. They say that Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus, and Christ made. up their minds it was necessary to get up an excitement in order to forward their religion, and so they resolved to play funeral, and Lazarus consented to be the corpse, and Mary and Martha consented to be mourners, and Christ consented to be chief operator. I, of course, put it in my own words, but state accurately their meaning. They say that the four Gospels are spurious, written by superstitious or lying men, and that they were backed up by people who were to die, and actually did die, for a thing they did not believe. Now, I take back the limited remark I made a

moment ago, and say that it requires a thousandfold more credulity and faith to be an infidel than to be a Christian, and that if Christianity demands that the whale swallow Jonah, then skepticism demands that Jonah swallow the whale.

I propose this morning to show you, so far as the Lord may help me, that Jesus Christ is God. I shall prove it, first, from what inspired men say of him; then, from what he said of himself; then, from his wonderful achievements. "Get a good fat text to start with," said Dr. Ludlow, our grand old theological professor. If I never had such a text before, I have one this morning: "Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen." Not over Solomon's throne; not higher than David's throne; not higher than Cæsar's; not higher than the Henrys', than the Fredericks', than the Louis', than Napoleon's, than Victoria's? Oh yes. Gather all those thrones and pile them up, and my text overspans them as easily as a rainbow spans the mountain-top. "Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen."

The Bible says, "All things were made by him." Stop! Does not that prove too much? He did not make the Mediterranean, did he? not Mount Lebanon? not the Alps? not Mount Washington? not the earth? not the stars? not the universe? Yes, all things were made by him. And, lest we should be so stupid as not to understand it, the apostle concludes by saying, "Without him, was not any thing made that was made." Why, then, he must have

been a God.

The Bible says, "At the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow, of things on earth and things in heaven." See all heaven coming down on their knees-martyrs on their.