2. How we may derive from it all the benefit it is destined to impart —
[We must receive it as the word of the living God, the word of God to us. We must yield ourselves " with meekness" altogether to its influence f. What is there that it will not then do for us? Verily, " it will do good to him that walketh uprightly8." Yes, all kinds of good: it will quicken, comfort, support, sanctify, and save the soul. Let your souls, then, be turned as the wax to the seal, or as the melted ore to the mould h. Then, through the teachings of the Holy Spirit, shall it perform its whole work upon you, and transform you " into the divine image in righteousness, and true holiness."]
f Jam. i. 21. s Mic. ii. 7. h Rom. vi. 17. See the Greek.
John vii. 36. What manner of saying is this that he said, Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me : and where I am, thither ye cannot come ?
FROM the character of our blessed Lord we might well expect, that, in whatever circumstances he should be placed, his words and actions would be such as became an incarnate God. Accordingly we find that he was never discomposed, never disheartened; but that, as well in the prospect of a cruel death as on all other occasions, he preserved a temper un- ruffled, a patience unsubdued. " The Pharisees had sent officers to take him;" and though the precise hour for his being delivered up into their hands was not yet arrived, it was very near : yet, instead of manifesting the smallest apprehension of his ap- proaching sufferings, he spake of his death as though he had been going a journey ; and shewed, that his chief concern was about the judgments that would fall upon his enemies : " Yet a little while am I with you ; and then I go unto Him that sent me. Ye shall seek me, but shall not find me ; and where I go, thither ye cannot come." This assertion of his ap- peared quite inexplicable to them. " They said among themselves, Whither will he go, that we shall