of despair. It has sought, in prayer and sacrifice, to return again to Him to whom it feels that it is related, and whom it would fain call once more, 'Abba, Father!' In sacrifices, it has sought atonement, and in prayer, reconciliation." Closely connected with this has been the universal feeling of the necessity of a mediator between an offended God and his sinful creatures. "Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die," was the language of the Jews, awed by the signs they had of the majesty and holiness of Jehovah. This was the expression of the feeling, deeply rooted in human nature universally, of the necessity of a mediator to stand between, to reconcile a holy God and his sinful creatures. We recognise this feeling in all the inventions of Paganism, and in the multiplied mediators of Romanism. The Gospel alone points to the needed and allsufficient Mediator: "There is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." Truth says, You must have a Mediator. The word of the truth of the Gospel says, You must not only have a Mediator, but you must also learn that there is One who spans, as it were, the whole arch, who is Himself the arch between a holy God and sinful human nature. He is one with Jehovah, and He is one with us-"the God-man, Christ Jesus!" The same may be said with reference to the consciousness of a future state after death. The feeling and desire of immortality is deeply rooted in * Ex. xx. 19. † 1 Tim. ii. 5.

D

human nature; the natural and universal aspiration of the human mind towards it in every age has been considered presumptive evidence of its certainty. But all the belief of the world, with the single exception of the Jews-all the light of philosophy, left mankind in darkness, doubt, and uncertainty on this all-important subject of anxious inquiry. "Light and immortality are brought to light by the Gospel." Here alone, in the teachings of Christ and his apostles, are revealed in clearness, and confirmed by his resurrection and ascension to heaven, and by his precious promises and awful threatenings, the certainty of a future state; and, according as their lives were in this world, the future destinies of all mankind, their resurrection from the dead, and their bliss or woe through eternity. The Gospel of Christ alone meets every want, solves all difficulties, commends itself to the universal reason, wants, and desires of mankind. It has in itself a witness that convinces and satisfies in all these respects. How must this have been felt wherever the Gospel came ! What new light, refreshment, and life were the happy results of it wherever the Gospel was received!—there were realized "times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord."

In the life of Christ set forth in the Gospel as the Mediator and Saviour of the world, we behold Christianity embodied and exemplified in the highest perfection. In his example, we have the law and the Gospel "drawn out in living characters." If, according to the truism, example is more efficacious than precept, the

exhibition which the Gospel gives of the character of Christ, wherever received and influential, must prove renovating and sanctifying to those who believe it. It is the design of God, and this is the end of Christianity, that we be "conformed to the image of his Son." * Conformity to Christ is the standard of Christian excellence set up by the Gospel. What the degree of moral excellence was that was possessed by man before the Fall we can know but imperfectly. Of this much we may be certain, that all in which it consisted, and in superior glory, is realized and set forth in the character aud example of the Saviour. In Him is restored the lost glory of humanity. The example of Christ in our nature, from this view of it, acquires a character of intense importance and efficacy on all who believe the Gospel. This is too much overlooked by us. We are too much accustomed too exclusively to fix attention on Christ as the Divine Saviour, and on the benefits of his redemption, and too feebly to regard the example He has left us in his life for our imitation. The Gospel insists on likeness to Him as the only sure evidence of interest in Him—as the only sure way to joy and comfort in Him. This shows us the love and wisdom of God, as manifested in the assumption of our nature into union with his Divine nature by Christ in order to accomplish our redemption, and also in the various conditions and circumstances of humanity through which the Saviour passed in his state of humiliation, of childhood and man* Rom. viii. 29.

hood, of poverty and disgrace, of joy and sorrow, of suffering and dying, to show his fellowship and sympathy with us in like circumstances, as also to exhibit for our imitation those moral excellencies which it is our duty to imitate, and in which consists the true glory of humanity, and the reality and excellence of that Christian character which the Gospel requires. It is in the degree that such a character is manifested and spreads through the world, the world will be renovated, refreshed, and sanctified. Oh! what a time of refreshing will it be to the world, when all who profess love to the Saviour are thus living representatives of Him; when there shall be presented to the world, not the mere dogmas and symbols of Christianity, but, in the lives of its professors, the bright and efficacious reflection of those moral excellencies which shone forth in the Saviour's life in peerless and unclouded glory. What a demonstration of the divinity and truth of the Gospel was the life of Christ to mankind at the commencement of the Gospel dispensation, when those who preached it to the world could appeal to the lives of Christians in proof of it. It is in the degree in which this conformity to the life of Christ is exhibited the Gospel dispensation will be seen and felt, as ushering in "times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord."

CHAPTER III.

TIMES OF MESSIAH-THE GOSPEL DISPENSATION-" TIMES OF REFRESHING."

THE example of Christ is one of the great attractions and motive powers of the Gospel for the refreshment and renovation of the world. This may with equal truth be affirmed of the sublime morality taught by Christ and the first preachers of the Gospel. There existed at the commencement of the Gospel dispensation, both among Jews and Gentiles, a low and perverted state of morals. We have only to read the writings of the most celebrated historians, philosophers, and poets of Greece and Rome for proof of this. The picture drawn by the apostle of Pagan morality, and it was that of the great mass of mankind, is painfully graphic and true:-"Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents; without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful." * If the state of morals

* Rom. i. 29-31.