sent to bring us to God the Father, and to deliver us up to him when the vi^hole work entrusted to him shall be complete. The Lord Jesus Christ is to be considered in a three-fold view; as God, as man, and as the Mediator between God and man. As God, he is equal with the Father : as man, and as Mediator, he is inferior to the Father ; as St. Paul has said ; " I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ ; and the head of the woman is the man : and the head of Christ is God ^." He is the Father's servant, to redeem both Jews and
Gentiles by his own obedience unto death' In all that
he spoke, and in all that he did, he acted agreeably to the commission which he had received from the Father : and all that he suffered was " according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God the Father." Whilst this glorious work is going forward, we must look to Christ, in whom all fulness is treasured up for the use of his Church, and " in whom all fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily :" but in the last day, when all the elect shall have been gathered in, and every enemy shall have been put under the feet of our victorious Lord, the whole body, with Christ himself at their head, shall be subject unto God the Father, being delivered up to him as the supreme Head of this glorious kingdom, that " God may be all in all'"." As a mediatorial kingdom, it has been received from God the Father ; and when, as a mediatorial kingdom, there shall be no longer any need of the Mediator's office, it shall be given up into the hands of Him from whose counsels it proceeded, and by whose power it was completed.
Seeing then that we, and all the whole Church, are God's ex- clusive property, we must, from fidelity to him, guard against the smallest disposition to alienate from him any portion of that honour and authority which are due to him alone.] We will IMPROVE the subject,
\. In its negative and more appropriate view — [We must " not glory in men." It matters little whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, be the object of our preference ; the attachment which leads us to set up one above another is altogether carnal. Four times in as ma?it/ verses is this conduct characterized as carnal"". Happy would it be for the Church of God, if this disposition were viewed in its proper light ! for there is scarcely a place where more than one minister officiates, but this hateful temper springs up to disturb the union and harmony of the Church. Moreover, as this temper is carnal in itself, so is it injurious to the welfare, as well of those who indulge it, as of all who are affected by it. Wherever it exists, it deprives the person of all the benefit which he might receive
^ 1 Cor. xi. 3. I Isai. xlii. 1, 6. andxlix. 1— .3, 6.
"" 1 Cor. XV. 24, 28. " ver. 1 — 4.