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Pray, pray, pray. And then when your prayers are answered, they will be lost in everlasting praise; and you shall meet above them with whom you held sweet communion below; and nature's ties, glorified in the light and splendor of the better land, will be the media of only more reciprocal delight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and glory.

LECTURE XXXV.

THE THRONED PRIEST AND KING.

"And he shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne: and the counsel of peace shall be between them both."-ZECHARIAH vi. 13.

THE prophet, I need not say, refers to the Lord Jesus Christ, this is the prophecy of what He shall be. There can be no difficulty in coming to this decision. I do not therefore spend time in attempting to prove it. It has been fulfilled in no other, it has been actualized in Christ, and this alone as proof that it relates to Him. This spectacle of Christ upon his throne was seen by Isaiah when he saw "the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above stood the seraphim: each one had six wings, with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes

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have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." Who was this King, or Lord of hosts, that Isaiah saw? We are informed by the evangelist John that these things spake Esaias when he saw Christ's glory, and spake of Him; and those things that he thus refers to are the things quoted, specifically quoted, in the sixth chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah. I cannot conceive how it is possible to conclude that Christ is merely a creature, as long as I find an evangelist, inspired by the Spirit of God, quoting a prophet's delineation of Jehovah, the Lord of hosts, and asserting that vision and delineation to be the Lord Jesus Christ. I only wonder how the Unitarian ever gets over the difficulties of his creed: they seem to me insuperable; and either he must be gifted with superhuman penetration to arrive at so extraordinary a conclusion, or he must have badly read a book which the more it is read reveals more clearly the impress of its author, and the deity of our blessed and adorable Lord. He was seen upon a throne by Isaiah; and he is here predicted to sit upon his throne. The expression, "sitting upon a throne," is figurative, but being figurative, it must have substance as its meaning. Spoken of in Scripture are several thrones. There is first the throne of majesty, or that universal sovereignty and precedency which Christ exercises over all the universe; all the things that are fair upon earth, all the things that are beautiful in the sky are under his control and subject to his government. Heaven is his throne, we are told, and earth is his footstool; he made the sea and the dry land. He superintends and governs from that throne the sea with its waves, earth with its flowerets, the sky with its clouds,

and its stars, nations and their people, thrones and their occupants, cherubim, and seraphim, and children, all are under the presidency, the government, and inspection of Him beyond whose cognizance the greatest things are not, and within whose superintendence the minutest things ceaselessly lie.

But there is also a throne called "the throne of grace." "He is exalted a prince," that is royalty, "and a savior to give repentance and remission of sins." And the apostle says in the epistle to the Hebrews, "Having a high-priest over the house of David, let us come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help us in the time of need."

There is the throne of judgment. Christ will be the occupant of that. We read expressly, "The Son of man shall sit upon the throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered all the nations." Again, "We must all appear at the judgment-seat of Christ." Again, "He will judge the world in righteousness." And again, Christ says from the throne, "Come, ye blessed of my Father.” There is another incidental proof that Jesus is God. If God be not upon the judgment-seat, where can He be, or should He be? I could almost conceive God to be absent at the creation of the world; I could almost conceive the absence of a God in the government of the world; but I cannot conceive that Deity shall be absent from that throne, at which and from which the doom and the interests of all flesh shall be adjusted, all hearts laid bare, and to every man meted out the exact and everlasting retribution that justly belongs to him. Grant me that my Redeemer is to sit upon the judgment throne, and I need no text to prove

that He is God; none but God can be there; and if God be not there, He seems to me absent from that place where of all places in the universe His presence is imperatively required.

But all these thrones, we are told, will be ultimately merged in one, called the throne of glory. "When he shall sit upon the throne of glory, a Prince and a King for ever;" every knee bowing to Him, every tongue confessing that He is Lord. "Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever." Now a picture of this throne we have very beautifully and graphically set before us in the book of Revelation, where John says in the fifth chapter, "And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns," that is, omnipotence-"seven ages"-that is omniscience" which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth unto all the earth." Then he says, "And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof; for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests; and we shall reign on the earth.” At the eleventh verse: “And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands." It will not be a little number that will be saved; we cannot agree with the exclusive bigot that a handful will be saved; we cannot agree with the latitudinarian universalist that all mankind will be

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