the Father, and the Father with him, he was qualified to speak, and could in verity say, I speak the words of the Father; the words which I hear him speak, the same declare I unto you.

Hearer! what a teacher is Christ! How glorious is the truth in him! His commission was such as no man ever had; and hence the power of his truth. And hence truths that had been preached for ages without effect, were clothed with a divine efficacy when they dropped from his lips. Let us listen to him, that our hearts may be sanctified. Let us spread his religion abroad among all nations, that all may be sanctified.

7*

SERMON III.

CHRIST THE HEIR OF THE WORLD.

BY REV. A. A. MINER.

"Whom he hath appointed heir of all things."- HEB. i. 2.

ONE of the most striking characteristics of the Iloly Scriptures is their announcement of the highest truths in language of the greatest simplicity. When the sacred historian would record the fiat of Omnipotence by which darkness should be no more, his language is, "And God said, let there be light, and there was light." St. Paul, also, having opened his epistle to the Hebrews in the most terse and dignified terms,"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us

1 Gen. i. 8.

1

by his Son,"-places before us, at a single stroke

of his pen, and in language of the most perfect simplicity, the entire of the Divine purpose

grasp

in sending his Son into the world, by adding, “Whom he hath appointed heir of all things."

Were we called upon to consider, in this language, a human bequest, we should find it of consequence to notice not only the bequest itself, but the validity of the transaction by which it is made, and its bearing upon general interests. If the legacy were found to be an unquestionable good; if the legator were rightfully possessed of the same, and made the conveyance lawfully, and if there were no impediment to the efforts of the legatee to take possession of the inheritance, then would the transaction excite its full measure of interest.

But it is no human bequest with which we are now concerned. And since the Deity himself is the legator, we need employ no words to show that he is rightfully possessed of the things of which he makes Christ the heir. Is he not the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and of all things therein? Does he not say, "All souls are mine"? In making Christ "heir of all

1

1 Ezek. xvin. 4.

things," therefore does he not convey to him what is his own to bestow?

Nor is there room to doubt the validity of the appointment itself. In human transactions, there must be conformity to existing laws, in default of which, human bequests are invalid. But God is a law unto himself. Christ is "heir of all things" by his sovereign appointment. He, whose right none can question, who "doeth his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and to whom none can say, what doest thou," he need regard no other law. His will is law, and makes valid every transaction of his hand. We pass to consider, then, the inheritance itself.

The "all things" of which Christ is made heir, are doubtless all souls. Whatever the doctrine which may result from this position, however important that doctrine may be, and however opposed to the current theology of the world, it cannot set aside the position itself. Nor can any of those methods be deemed successful, by which it is attempted to bring the universality of this phrase under suspicion. When