themselves, he said, " Before Abraham was, I AM." And when he appeared to John in a vision, he said, " I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty^." Behold then the dignity of our Lord and Saviour! " His goings forth have been from everlasting^:" he was set up "from everlasting; from the beginning, or ever the earth was''." We must say of him, in the words of David, " From everlasting to everlasting thou art God." And is this a matter of small importance ? Does the Christian feel no interest in this truth ? Yea, is it not the very foundation of all his comforts ? He may be deemed a bigot for laying such a stress on the divinity of Christ : but having once tasted the bitterness, and seen the malignity of sin, he is well persuaded, that the blood of a creature could never have availed to expiate his guilt, nor could any thing less than " the righteousness of God" himself, suffice for his accept- ance in the day of judgment. Know then, believer, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever : he is the eternal and immutable Jehovah : he is worthy of all thy love, of all thy trust, of all thy confidence. Thou needest never be afraid of thinking too highly of him : when thou " honourest him as thou honourest the Father," then thou re- gardest him in the manner that becomes thee : when thou bowest the knee before him, and confessest him him as thy Sovereign Lord, then thou most effec- tually glorifiest God the Father'. Remember then, under all the trying dispensations thou mayest meet with, and, most of all, under the bereavement which thou art now so bitterly lamenting, that he, in whom thou hast believed, is an all-sufficient Saviour ; and that when thou lookest to him for any blessing what- soever, thou mayest cry with confident assurance, " My Lord, and my God." The ministers of the Church " are not suffered to continue by reason of death." That tongue which lately was " as a tree of
f Rev. i. 8. g Mic. v. 2.
h Prov. viii. 26. ' Phil. ii. 10, 11.