man wants a personal God, and so this conception of God needs to be supplemented by that derived from human nature The man of letters needs to consult the metaphysician and get his thought of God to add to his own, and then "his power not ourselves" will cease to be an unthinking force, and become an intelligent will, a living soul, like ourselves, "who doeth according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth."

Take again the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The peculiarity of Christianity is that it is a revelation of God in a person, in a living character. Christ, so to speak, lived God out before men. His life was a transcript of the Divine life. The moral principles of the Divine character he exemplified in his own character. He was the image of God, the moral likeness of the All-perfect. He acted in a finite sphere as God acts in an infinite sphere. And this is the great glory and value of this revelation, that it is a revelation in a person, in a real character, in an actual life.

In no other way could God reveal His real character, His true, inward life to us. In no other way could He give us a moral likeness of Himself, and so let us look, as it were, into the very heart of the Infinite. Only by raising up and richly endowing a human soul, a soul like the soul of the Highest for all souls are created in the image of God — and sending him into the world to act out the Divine perfections; to live among men, go about doing good, and so manifest in actual life the very spirit of the Almighty, could He make His own heart, His all-forgiving love and saving grace known to men. By going through all the experiences of men, by living a man among men, by being tempted as we are, by suffering and dying in the most cruel manner, Christ exhibited the heavenly spirit,- showed how God feels towards us in every trial, and how we ought to live, in view of His all-embracing sympathy and compassionate tenderness.

The revelation of Ged through Christ, therefore, is very precious. None is more so, and no one equals it in moral sublimity. Only through him came there a thought of God

that speaks peace to the penitent soul, or brings contrition and encouragement to the sinful heart; and he who slights or ignores this revelation, shuts his eyes to the clearest vision of the inwardness of the Almighty ever given to man, or that can be given to him.

But this revelation is not perfect. It lacks something. It is perfect in kind, but not in degree. It tells the truth, but not the whole truth. It shows us God, but it, does not show us all of God. It is a true picture of the Almighty, but it is a finite picture. Christ is not God, but the image of God. In his life and character he shows us God, but God under human limitations. Hence the revelation of God we receive through him is finite, limited. As we look to Jesus we do not see the Infinite, we only see a picture of the Infinite. So Christ's revelation of God is perfect in, kind, but limited in degree. Its defect is that it does not reveal the infinitude of God. But this defect in the revelation of Christ constitutes its real value to us. It is because the picture of Deity he gives us is finite, that it is so precious to us. We cannot comprehend the Infinite. A perfection that has no bounds, it is not possible for us to comprehend. Everything we see must be Christ, therefore, in giving

seen through human limitations. us a finite picture of God, put his perfections within our comprehension, enabled us to grasp the real substance, the spirit and essence of the Divine character; and so the real value of his revelation is in its finiteness, or it is so at least so long as we do not forget that it is finite. So long as we remember that the picture is not life-size, its limitations constitute its chief value to us, and the vision we get of the Eternal is precious beyond all comparison.

But just here is the danger. Just at this point we stumble into error. We do forget the finiteness of the picture. We do here just as we do in a thousand other things take the shadow for the substance, the sign for the thing signified. Just as men think that baptism depends on the amount of water, so are we prone to forget that Christ is only the image of God, and make him God Himself. The tendency is to

deify the image, to spread the finite picture over the infinite perfections.

This tendency has had full sway in Christian theology. It has dominated almost the entire thought of the church. In the great body of its divinity, Christ is not only the image of God, but the veritable Jehovah. Christians have not only seen God in Christ, but they have tried to see all of God in him. They have closed their eyes to all other revelations. What they could not see in Christ they would not see at all. They would have it that the Christian revelation is perfect, not only in kind, but in degree, and so they would have no other God but Jesus.

Hence in all that is known as Orthodoxy to-day there is no such thing as a perfect God. The God of Orthodoxy is bound around with human limitations. There is much He would do if He could. He would save the world if He could. His will is good enough. Hell is not a matter of choice with Him, it is something He cannot help. It is forced upon Him. His moral universe has unfortunately become so deranged that somebody must be lost. Here is the very element of human limitation. The finiteness of man is transferred to Deity. The perfections of God are limited and narrowed down to the scale of humanity. And this comes as we have said, from trying to see all of God in Christ, from forgetting that he is only the image of God, and taking him for the Almighty.

It was the mission of Christ to show us what God is, not how great He is; to show us how or what God does, not how much he can do; to give us an example of His perfections, and so lead us to trust in the infinitude of those perfections that lie behind. Christ suggests the Father's unlimited glory. Just as the government's promise to pay suggests the dollar that lies behind, so Christ, in what he reveals, suggests the infinite resources of power, wisdom and goodness that lie behind. What he does is not a limit of Divine possibilities, but a specimen of these possibilities; and so as we look to him, we are led to believe, that "with God, all things are possible.' Hence the need there is of bearing in mind continually that

Christ is not God, but the image of God, and of looking through him up to God.

We see therefore the necessity of supplementing the revelation we get in Christ, with that we get in nature. Nowhere is the impression of God's infinitude made upon us as it is in the study of the physical Universe. The vastness of nature, its limitless space, its boundless network of laws, its measureless forces, its immense suns, and systems, and worlds, stretching away beyond the reach, not only of human ken, but of human thought,- give us the impression of infinitude as nothing else can. As we contemplate the physical Universe, we can but feel that the Creator of all this can be none other than an Infinite God. Every attribute of His being, we argue, must be as measureless as the Universe He has created. None but a Being infinitely perfect could be the Creator of all this boundless magnificence and perfection, is the conviction forced upon us.

It is this conviction, the conviction of the infinitude of God, that Christian theology so much needs. It needs to see clearly and feel deeply that the Father whom Christ revealed is none other than the Maker of heaven and earth, the Infinite Creator. For the moment this is seen and felt, the notion of the Divine impotency disappears, and with that notion goes much. of the fear and superstition that disfigure our religion.

Take the thought of God given us in the Gospel, and ascend with it the ladder of science, until some conception of the vastness of the universe is reached, and then think how absurd is the notion that down in this little world of ours there is something that is likely to defeat the designs of the Almighty! Imagine, while standing thus amid the immensity of creation, that in this little speck of a world, which is less to the universe than a drop of water to the ocean, there is a race of beings that the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth cannot control nor render obedient and loving, and so is forced to damn a part of them in order to save the rest.

Imagine, further, that this Omnipotent Creator, who is none other than the all-loving Father, revealed in Jesus Christ,

imagine that He grew so angry, because He could not govern this puny race, in this little speck of a world, that He was about to destroy them all, and was prevented from doing so, only by the sacrifice of His only Son, to appease His own wrath! How absurd are all such notions when viewed from the standpoint of the infinitude of God which nature gives! Supplement the idea of God given in Christianity with the impression of the Infinite that Nature imparts, so that we see God as the all-loving and omnipotent Father, and how silly and childish are all these notions, which have so long dishonored our religion! We see, therefore, how needful it is that the revelation of God in Jesus Christ should be supplemented by that given in nature!

And the great contribution that science is making, and is destined to make to our theology is, and will be, in this direction. It will not be in the direction of agnosticism. nor of atheism, but in that of elevating and enlarging our conception of the infinitude of God. Science will not eliminate God, but she will help us to a greater, grander Deity than the world has yet seen. Slowly and surely is she widening our thought of God. Beneath all her assumptions, and half-proved theories, and fanciful speculations, there is a mighty under-current of truth that is silently bearing the world up to higher and loftier views of the Infinite Invisible. By and by, when science gets over the sneer of the stripling, and theology over the fear of the fogy, they will join hands, and then we shall have such an infinite and all loving Father in heaven, that we can worship, magnify and praise His holy name, and rest as confidingly and peacefully in His arms, as the infant sleeps on its mother's bosom.

Having seen now how needful the revelation of nature is to the revelation of the Gospel, let us turn to the other side, as a final illustration, and see how needful the revelation of the Gospel, the idea of God in Jesus Christ,-is to the revelation of Nature. We have seen how Nature reveals Gɔd. Let us specify one or two points in this revelation which are