SERMON XIII.

PHILIPPIANS ii. 5—11.

LET THIS MIND BE IN YOU, WHICH WAS ALSO IN CHRIST JESUS: 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, HE HUMBLED HIMSELF, AND BECAME OBEDIENT UNTO DEATH, EVEN THE death of THE CROSS. WHEREFORE GOD ALSO HATH HIGHLY EXALTED HIM, AND GIVEN HIM A NAME WHICH IS ABOVE EVERY NAME: THAT AT THE NAME OF JESUS EVERY KNEE SHOULD BOW, OF THINGS IN HEAVEN, AND THINGS IN EARTH, AND THINGS UNDER THE EARTH; AND THAT EVERY TONGUE SHOULD CONFESS THAT JESUS CHRIST IS LORD, TO THE GLORY OF GOD THE FATHER.

The

I HAVE declared to you in my Sermon of this morning the connection and meaning of these words. connection is, a claim upon this people to whom the apostle writes, to assist his expectation of the advantage which was to accrue from his imprisonment and various sufferings for the cause of Christ, by their

conversation and behaviour. Their conversation must be such as becometh the gospel of Christ; which especially stands in a spirit of unity and concord: and to this he would add, a fearless undaunted spirit towards their adversaries. And then he comes back again to this spirit of unity and concord, of which he perceives that a most essential advancement will be made by a willingness to take the lowest room; that there may be no contention and striving, each with other, for preeminence; but that each may be content to take a place lower than that which is really due to him. Now by way of encouraging this spirit of selfhumiliation he proposes to them the example of the Lord Jesus Christ; and in proposing this example sets before us a vast portion of the faith of Christ, the truth, the mystery of God's will; by which faith, or truth, or mystery of God's will, we are taught the nature of God, his being, and his relations, unto the knowledge of Him; in which knowledge stands our strength, our wisdom, and our consolation. Beloved, I opened the relations of the subject this morning. I told you the conviction I had, that man can only be strengthened in a holy and obedient life, such a life as is the exhibition of a correspondent heart, by the knowledge of God,—and can only come to the knowledge of God by the knowledge of his plan or counsel in Christ. It is by knowing God unto the contemplation of Him, unto the use of Him, unto the enjoyment of Him, so as to find our happiness in Him,—it is thus, and thus

only, that we can be made strong and happy. And this knowledge of God can only be derived to our souls from that source which God has appointed and devised for it, even his plan or counsel in Christ, which He has made to be the teacher of his being and his character, of his government, and of all whereby we are to know what He is. You see then, beloved, that the introduction to this subject is a desire to promote the spirit of self-humiliation. I shall therefore prosecute the plan which I commenced this morning. I shall, in the first place, show you distinctly the meaning of these words, which I have but partially considered hitherto; I shall then draw your attention to that portion of the faith which is exhibited in these words; and then endeavour to enforce the exhortation which introduces them,-namely, that you put on a spirit of self-humiliation, a willingness to take a place amongst your brethren which is lower than your due, your proper, your right place,-for thus only can you promote in your own soul and in the souls of others that spirit of unity and concord which is so essential to the wellbeing and well-doing of Christianity.

I explained the former verses then; that, though the Second Person of the Godhead hath, from the beginning and in the beginning, by a predestinative and covenant subsistence, been regarded, and hath regarded himself, as that risen Man who had passed through death, having taken union with man by taking a body of his substance, though, I say, He had obtained that elevation

as the risen Second Person in manhood, by a predestinative and covenant subsistence, before a stone of the world was laid, yet, as to verity, He was no other in personal substance than the eternal infinite spiritual substance of the Second Person of the Godhead before his incarnation, which took place somewhere about four thousand years after the creation of the world. And the view here taken,-which is that of a change in the reality of his substance and relations by reason of his incarnation, death, and resurrection,-is not contradictory to, or inconsistent with, that view which is elsewhere taken of his predestinative and covenant subsistence as the risen Godman before the world was made it is not contradictory to, or inconsistent with, that view, though distinct from it. This is what I laid down in my Sermon of this morning. And having made this preliminary remark, I proceeded to show you that it is here stated that He,-until this operation of his incarnation being subsistent as very God, the eternal infinite spiritual substance of the Second Person, -counted it no robbery to claim perfect coequality with that Person who is preeminently called God, the First Person; but, being such, and making such claim, "He emptied himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men." He condescended to limit the exercise of the powers and capacities of his eternal infinite spiritual substance as the Second Person, to the powers and capacities of that created substance which He joined to himself,-the