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was God.” This is the commencement of all we know o f the Lord Jesus Christ: when He was at home in heaven, when He was with the Father. The Eternal Father had an Eternal Son, and the .Lord Jesus Christ is revealed to us in Scripture as the Unique Son o f God, in a sense in which no other person can possibly be a son. The passage in Proverbs viii, which records the personification o f Wisdom and other similar passages, should be associated with Johnl :1 in the study p f Christ in the glory o f the eternal past. II. Christ in the glory of the act of Creation. John 1 :^5: “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” Col. 1:15-16: “ He is the first-born o f every creature, for by Him were all things created.” Heb. 1 :2 : “ By whom also God made - the- worlds.” This is what Lightfoot long ago called the cosmic relation Of Christ, and jj adds immensely to the glory o f our Lord when we think o f Him, not only as our Redeemer but as the One through whom God made the world. As we Took up into the sky, we'can say, Christ made those stars; when we look over the landscape, we can say, Christ was responsible for that. And so, when we look upon creation in the light o f that great Colossian passage, we think o f Christ as God’s instrument in the mak ing o f all things. Many passages - can be associated with this period o f our Lord’s life. III. Christ in the glory of the revelation of the Old Testament. Ft would seem as though the primal Divine purpose had been fellowship between God and man; but that purpose failed three times; It failed first in Adam, it failed next in Seth and his line, it failed in Noah and his family; and then God ~ had to make a fresh start with Abraham. God introduced'a new method, a covenant not o f works but o f grace; and from the time o f Abraham onwards the Old Testa ment is essentially a revelation of grace, though also for the .purpose o f grace a record so f works in the Mosaic law. All
through the Old Testament there are these two lines o f teaching: God was preparing the Messiah for the people, and preparing the-people for the Messiah. All along . from ' Genesis to Malachi these two pro cesses are at work. And as we look at the Old Testament from the standpoint o f the Jews we see this first o f all: in the Pentateuch there is a Divine religion o f redemption and deliverance. Then, in the history o f the Jews, the Divine religion o f redemption is developed, while in the prophetical and poetical books it is deepened. That is the Old Testament view o f religion. From the standpoint o f the Messiah we ; see something similar. In the Pentateuch it is sthe Messiah pre-eminently as Priest; in the historical books it is the. Messiah pre-eminently as King; in the poetical and prophetical books it is the Messiah pre eminently as Prophet: Prophet to reveal, Priest to redeem, King to rule. “Jesus, my Prophet, Priest, and King.” And let me say here that we clergy do ourselves and pur people immense injury if we avoid preaching sermons from the Old Testa ment. As some one has said: “We must not rob the children-of at lehst h a lf'o f their bread.” I have heard o f a man who used to preach for the most part from the New Testament, and in particular from John and Romans. Occasionally he would wan der into Isaiah 53, but it is certain that if all his sermons fo r one year were counted and classified, his use o f the Old Testa- merit would be seen to be very small. Mr. Dale used to keep two slips o f paper in his study, and put on them the subject and text o f his sermons; then he would look at them from time to time, in order that he might preserve due proportion in his preaching. And it would be well for us to remember that the Old Testament,' on any showing whatever, is full o f the Lord Jesus Christ. IV. Christ in the glory of His Incarna- tion. Here we are concerned with the Gos pels, and o f course we must, concentrate
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