Isai. lxii. 3. Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.
IT was promised to our blessed Lord, that, " when he should have made his soul an offering for sin, he should see a seed, who should prolong their days, and the pleasure of the Lord should prosper in his hands." These promises are to be fulfilled in the
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conversion of souls to him : and then only will they be fully accomplished, when all the kingdoms of the world are his, and when the entire Church, both of Jews and Gentiles, shall be " a crown of glory, and a royal diadem in his hand." In another part of his writings, the prophet says, that " Jehovah shall in that day be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty unto the residue of his people3." And that appears an expression suited to the occasion. But the language of our text seems altogether inexplicable. That God should be "a crown of glory" to us, as adding glory to us, and crowning us with loving-kindness and tender mercies, is conceivable enough ; but that we should be a royal diadem to Mm, is utterly inconceiv- able. Yet so it is : and the declaration of it to us will lead me to shew,
I. In what estimation God holds his Church and people —
To form a just idea of this subject, we must con- sider in what light an earthly monarch views his crown ; and then transfer to Jehovah those feelings, as far as they will comport with the holiness of his Nature, and the dignity of his divine Majesty.
God regards, then, his Church,
1. As an emblem of his power —
[Crowns and sceptres are generally used as emblems of royalty, and as bearing witness to the power of Him who is invested with them. Now God's Church and people are pre- cisely such " witnesses for him." The works of creation indeed testify of his eternal power and Godhead, and that in terms that are intelligible to allb: but the new creation of his people speaks no less strongly on this subject. By sin, they are fallen from the image in which they were first created, and are trans- formed into the very likeness of Satan himself. Now, to repair these ruins, to cancel, in consistency with God's perfections, the guilt that has been contracted, to purge away all the pollu- tion with which the soul is defiled, to impress again upon it the divine image, and to render it meet for the enjoyment of God himself in heaven, is confessedly a work which no finite imagination could ever have contemplated. But God has wrought it: he has wrought it for every individual of his
a Isai. xxviii. 5. b Rom. i. 19, 20.