munion with GOD, over the rest of nature. Jesus honored His FATHER by the perpetual consecration of every act to His FATHER's glory. "A Body hast Thou prepared Me. I come to do Thy will, O GOD."

We are perhaps often accustomed to think of the redemption of mankind as the great object of our LORD's Incarnation. It is important that we should remember that there is a greater object even than that, a higher object as the real end of this mystery. The primary object of our LORD'S Incarnation is the glory of GOD; and it is only as identified with GOD's glory, that the redemption of mankind is effected by it. JESUS was clothed with our nature and compassed about with infirmity, and so He offered to GOD the sacrifice of praise from the level of our common manhood. In a life of continual mortification, He was ever occupied about His FATHER'S business.* So was He enabled to say, as He drew near to the final oblation of Himself upon the cross, "I have glorified Thee upon the earth; I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do."†

But when we consider the Lamb of GOD offering

the sacrifice of praise to His FATHER, we may well wonder that this sacrifice should be a work of suffering. We might have expected that where. soever the spotless SON of GOD was to be found praising His FATHER, His sacrifice of praise would have been an act of perpetually joyous communion -that is to say, we never could have anticipated how really He was to become man-how really He, the Spotless One, was to become identified with the nature of sinful man. He did, however, take upon Himself our nature, and as He became a man, He became a man of sorrows, bearing our griefs. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, that He might condemn sin in the flesh. This was the sacrifice of praise which it was suitable for Him to offer when He came upon the earth-a sacrifice over and above the worship due from Himself individually to His FATHER— a sacrifice to GOD's glory violated by man's sin.

How could it be otherwise? He could not be in this sinful world, and live amongst men a dreamlife, having regard only to His own personal holiness, and unaffected by the evil which was around. It was in the struggle with sin that He manifested the glory of GOD. He took upon Him our nature with all those susceptibilities which the

fall had introduced. Although His appetites were held in perpetual control by the law of the Eternal SPIRIT, that law of holiness reigning within only made Him the more sensitive to the contradiction of sinners against Himself. Their hatred to Himself was felt by Him in the fulness of the measure of their alienation from GOD. They hated not His manhood. The divine perfections of His manhood brought on Him their hatred. His manhood was at one with GOD: and they hated GOD. The SON of GOD knew they hated Him only because He was the SON of GOD. Herein was the anguish of soul. In the perfection of divine love which constituted His devotion to His FATHER'S glory, He felt as man on behalf of GOD, that bitter sorrow for the sin of man which will overwhelm the world of sinners when they wake to the consciousness of what their sin has brought upon themselves. The love which He bore to His FATHER made Him feel the value of every soul which should have been alive to His praise. Knowing the value of individual souls, and abiding in the unity of holiness with God, He could not but feel by virtue of His omniscience, the intensity of every act of guilt which ever should be committed, as if done against Himself.

So said He Himself-" They have seer both Me and My FATHER."* The i praise, therefore, offered by the spotle God in a world of sinners, had to lift up burden of the sin of man before it could in its proper accents of joy.

So, likewise, did the praise due to H require that His outer life should be a mortification of those appetites,, in the of which consists the sin of His fellow in His inner life He realized His unity and thus appreciated the enormity of done against Himself, so in His out realized His unity with mankind, and every faculty of our common nature in GOD by deeds of holy mortification con with their sinful indulgence. The pra in a sinful world could not be uttered, meeting the opposition of the world the inner consciousness and in the ou flict. "It became Him, for Whom ar and by Whom are all things, in brin sons unto glory, to make the captain of tion perfect through sufferings."† T

sacrifice of praise did JESUS offer, "when, for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross,"* rising above the world in the acknowledgment of His FATHER'S glory. "Into Thy hands I commend My spirit, for Thou hast redeemed Me, O LORD, Thou God of Truth."†

And now, my brethren, how are we to offer the sacrifice of praise?

First of all, we must remember that this oblation is the great end for which we were created. GOD requires that we should make of every act a sacrifice to His glory. Every act of our life has missed its mark, if it is not in some way an utterance of praise to GOD-an acknowledgment of His sovereignty. The praise of GOD is the true object of all acts of devotion, and all the dealings of worldly life. Every faculty and every possession must be consecrated to this one object. "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of GOD."‡

The religion of the world is apt to be too mercenary, and it is difficult for us to escape from a calculating spirit as to how much GOD requires O my brethren, until we have escaped

of us.

*Heb. xii.,

2.

+ Ps. xxxi. 6.

1 Cor. x., 31.