A Goodly Heritage

Dear Sir, On the topics mentioned in my last, which respect the making and administration of the covenant of grace, how delightfully ought the preacher to display the exceeding riches of the grace of God and how the whole of our redemption tends to the praise of the glory of that grace; how fit the blessed Jesus is to rescue us from the broken law, from sin, death, and hell; how altogether lovely, precious, rich, liberal, and gracious He is; and what exceeding great and precious promises are given to us as the New Testament in His blood. More particularly, 1. He ought plainly to set forth God’s redoubled gift of His own Son—as a ransom, to obey and suffer for us ungodly sinners, and as a husband, effectual Savior, and portion to espouse, deliver, and satisfy us sinful and miserable sons of men—as the foundation of every call and invitation to accept of Him. Without this, His calls and invitations to receive Christ and His salvation are little else but an instructing of men how to rob G...

John 20:24-29 D. Young I. THOMAS AND HIS FELLOW-APOSTLES. When they told Thomas they had seen Jesus, and he refused to believe, they must have been rather staggered at first. They would insist on how they had seen Jesus with their own eyes, and heard him with their own ears; not one of them, but all. They would point out how the sepulcher was empty, and how Jesus had said that it behooved him to be raised from the dead. They might ask whether Thomas imagined that they were all in a conspiracy to play an unseemly practical joke upon him. Yet there was really nothing to complain about in the incredulity of Thomas. Who of them had believed Jesus as he deserved to be believed? Their thoughts had never been really directed towards resurrection. They had been dreaming of individual glory and sell: advancement, and all that tended in a different direction had been unnoticed. We must do them the justice to say that no tone of complaint against Thomas appears. They would be too conscious that ...

The greatest marvel of all creation is that the Son of God should come to redeem; and next to that is this, that having come, He should be neglected and rejected by those who had so long looked for Him. Here is the greatest wonder in all history: a nation neglecting the realisation of its own dream. Search your histories and see if you can find a parallel case. The old Jewish theocracy aspired to pretensions that Rome, Greece, Persia, and Egypt never dared to dream, to bestow to the world one universal king. And what is that land of Palestine, and what are these Jews who aspire to such pretensions as this?...It has no deep thought like India; no genius of stability like China; no sense of beauty like Greece, no high culture like Egypt, no powerful arms like Rome, and yet there is the fact; they speak concerning the kingdom their king should establish. "The Gentiles shall come to Thy light, and kings to the brightness of Thy rising." Yet, marvellous to relate, when she had giv...

Queen Mary. ‘Yea, but ye are not the Kirk that I will nourish. I will defend the Kirk of Rome, for it is, I think, the true Kirk of God.’ John Knox. ‘Your will, Madam, is no reason; neither doth your thought make that Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ. Wonder not, Madam, that I call Rome an harlot; for that Church is altogether polluted with all kind of spiritual fornication, as well in doctrine as in manners. Yea, Madam, I offer myself to prove, that the Church of the Jews which crucified Christ Jesus, was not so far degenerate from the ordinances which God gave by Moses and Aaron unto His people, when they manifestly denied the Son of God, as the Church of Rome is declined, and more than five hundred years hath declined, from the purity of that religion which the Apostles taught and planted.’ Queen Mary. ‘My conscience is not so.’ John Knox. ‘Conscience, Madam, requireth knowledge; and I fear that right knowledge ye have none.’ Queen Mary. ‘But I have ...