CHARGE L

THE SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST.

ROM. i. 1.-"A servant of Jesus Christ."

My Christian brother, how many the moral stages which, in the short course of your religious career, you have necessarily passed through already-how momentous the stage which you have now reached-and, if seasonable advice was important at each of those preceding stages, how responsible is the office of him who undertakes to give you counsel now!

There was the moment when in feeling, if not in words, your prevailing inquiry was, "What must I do to be saved?" How much depended on the answer which you then received

an ambiguous, unscriptural reply might, humanly speaking, have led to the loss of your soul. There was the hour when you sat in deep solicitude, anxious to hear, yet trembling when told, that you were received into communion with a Christian church. And the solemn hour when, with agitated hand, you first took the memorials of the body and the blood of Christ-how full of interest and influence was every word which then fell on your ear! There was the season when you first stood up, fearful, yet desirous, of speaking to others in the name of Christ. And again, when the subject of your preparing for the office of the ministry was first broached, how much depended, under God, on the propriety of what was then said to you. There was the hour, when you found yourself crossing the threshold of the institution in which you were to prepare for the office. And again, (can you ever forget it?) when your heart first

thrilled with wonder and gratitude at the information that God had blessed your preaching to the conversion of a soul. If, in reference to each of these occasions, it might be said, a word in season, how good it is! how full of influence it is at the moment! how laden with consequences for all the future! then, who shall calculate the importance of the words addressed to you at the solemn stage which you have now reached all the past has been only preparatory to this. Numerous and eventful as the previous stages of your moral history may have been, all their influence meets and is. summed up in this stage. This is the crisis to which the prayers, desires, and endeavours of years have been tending -and from this central, this culminating point, the future, with you, may take its moral complexion for eternity! With you? perhaps with numbers! For if you take heed to yourself, and to the doctrine, and continue in it, you will both save yourself and those that hear you. True, my brother, the office on which you are entering has, no doubt, so much engaged your serious consideration already, that possibly nothing which I can advance will much add to your knowledge of its duties and details. But when I remember that it behoves me to address you, as if none of these duties had yet presented itself to your notice-and that not only your own welfare, but the endless wellbeing of others, may more or less depend on the way in which the duty is discharged," Who is sufficient for these things?" God grant that whatever my insufficiency may be, you, as a man of God, deriving your instructions direct from the Bible, may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

The passage of Holy Scripture which has presented itself to my mind, as suggestive of a train of remark appropriate to the occasion, you will find in the first chapter of the Romans, first verse, "A servant of Jesus Christ." Independently of the general adaptation of this clause to the nature of your new official relation to Christ, and to His Church, I have been induced to select and detach it from the

context, partly that, through its brevity, simplicity, and forcibleness, it may the more easily and permanently secure a place in your memory. Often may it serve to recall the hallowed solemnities and obligations of the day; and, though every observation now addressed to you by the speaker should be forgotten, may the text be remembered—and, as often as it is remembered, may it bring back with it a recollection of the good confession which you have now publicly made the solemn vows you have recorded—the earnest and united prayers offered by your fathers and brethren in the ministry in your behalf-the Christian sympathies of this congregation, including, as it does, members of many of the neighbouring churches-and the hallowed impressions of which, I doubt not, your heart has been deeply conscious. In moments of depression, may the recollection cheer and sustain you; and in seasons of difficulty, or of approaching indifference, may it arouse and excite you to vigorous effort, like the blast of a trumpet! Take it, then, as your mottoinscribe it on your official banner, and let your own private meditations on it supply the deficiencies which may attend my endeavour to illustrate and apply it.

Let me remind you, that in order to comprehend your present position as a servant of Christ, it is important that you should bear in mind, first, The origin of the relationship— how it is that He is a Master, and that you are His servant. There was a time when Christ himself was a servant-but, oh, in how peculiar and sublime a sense-He "who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. You know "the work which was then given him to do”—a work for the Godhead-a service voluntarily undertaken—a

service which no other being in the universe could have rendered—a service which involved a sacrifice such as can never be repeated. Well may the apostle linger on it as he does-dividing it into parts-as if the immensity of the stoop which the Saviour made were too vast to be comprehended at once--tracing it from point to point-and following Him downwards from stage to stage, till He has reached the lowest depths of His humiliation. But amazing as was that ever-deepening series of condescending acts-and costly beyond all compensation as was the sacrifice in which they ended—never did the Saviour cease voluntarily to serve and to suffer, till He could lift up His eyes to heaven, and say, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." I have magnified the law-expiated human guilt-demonstrated that God is Love. It is finished! Then closed His servitude. He dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him. He is a servant no more. His service has been rewarded by investiture with authority. He is a master now. "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and hath given to him a name which is above every name." has a throne now; for "when he had by himself expiated our sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high." He has servants of His own now; "all power is his in heaven and on earth." For, for this cause Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living."

He

This, then, accounts for His being a Divine Master—“ a Son over his own house." How, and in what sense, have you become His servant? The term is used in Scripture in two senses—or in reference to two classes of persons. Private Christians, whatever their stations may be, are reminded that they "serve the Lord Christ" that, whatever the stations assigned to them by the providence of God, they are never for a moment to forget that they are the servants of Christ, and are to discharge all their diversified duties, "as to the Lord, and not to men." Now, in this sense, you are a ser

vant of Christ, in common with all the community of the faithful. And the way in which you have been brought under special obligation to serve Him, as a Christian man, should ever be present to your mind. "You are bought with a price." You were not always in His service. Once you were the bond-slave of Satan; but Christ hath redeemed you-redeemed you with His own most precious blood-laid all your nature under obligation-bought all your powers— and, therefore, as an emancipated, pardoned sinner, and an accepted believer, you can say with the Psalmist, “O Lord, I am thy servant; I am thy servant; thou hast loosed my

bonds."

But there is another kind of service to be rendered to Christ than that which we owe to Him in our several stations as Christian men-a service relating more directly to Himself, to His Church, and to the diffusion of His Gospel through the world. Having finished His work of obedience and atonement on earth, He is exalted and empowered to apply it, and to reap its fruits in the salvation of all them that believe. He who on the cross "obtained eternal redemption" for sinners, is now on the throne to bestow it; and, for this end, He employs the agency of some of those who have themselves received it. "Wherefore, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." He gave some, apostles;" concerning whom He said, in solemn prayer to the Father, "As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." Accordingly, they devoted themselves to the work of the Christian ministry. As apostles, indeedcompanions of Christ during His earthly sojourn, and witnesses of His resurrection, their office was peculiar, beginning and ending with themselves. But, as preachers of the Gospel, they stood not alone; for the same Supreme author