truth that He has finished His work, and "by His one offering perfected for ever them that are sanctified,”* is the foundation of our faith; and the idea of our work for God atoning for any sin, or adding to the righteousness which Christ has wrought out for us, would be not merely presumption, but a most fatal error, such as would destroy the value of all our professed works for God, and turn them into sin. When the Jews asked our Lord, "What must we do that we may work the works of God?" He answered them, "This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent." Every work for God, to be really for Him and such as He accepts, must be derived from our faith in Him whom God hath sent to be the propitiation for our sins. But it is necessary to bear in mind that our Blessed Lord Himself, in speaking of His work, has given us very clear directions indeed as to that part of it in which He is an example and pattern to us, so that we not only may follow Him therein without presumption,

*Heb. x. 14.

but ought carefully to study it in all its principles, that we may be guided by them in our own work for God.

I refer especially to the language of the Saviour's intercessory prayer, recorded in the 17th chapter of St. John's Gospel, which He offered on the eve of His Passion. He was then about to give Himself up into the hands of sinful men, that through death He might make, "by His one oblation of Himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world." But it must be noticed that, in this prayer, our Redeemer does not make any reference to the work which was before Him, except in those simple, yet most solemn words, which no one but the only Son of God could have uttered, "Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee." But of His past earthly life, of which He speaks as now completed, and as having had a work of its own, quite distinct from that of the awful hour upon which He is entering, He says, "I glorified

Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou gavest me to do." And what was that work? He defines it with the utmost exactness: "I manifested Thy Name unto the men whom Thou gavest me out of the world." The work of Christ therefore, which God had "given Him to do" during His ministry on earth, was manifesting the Name of God.

We find this view of Christ's work for God during His earthly life confirmed, and further expounded, by His words to the Roman governor who asked whether He was indeed a king. "Jesus answered, thou sayest that I am a king. To this end have I been born, and for this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." The truth, of the very existence of which as anything more than the creation of the individual mind, so many in the present day question, as did Pilate then, is contained in the Name of God which Jesus manifested on earth. And He was a king, even during all the time of His humiliation, the

power of His kingdom being that which the truth exercises over all that are of the truth, or, as He elsewhere says, of God. *

In His fulfilment of this work, during His ministry on earth, Jesus found a refreshment for His spirit which sustained Him in all His bodily weariness; as, after His conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, He said to His disciples, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of," for "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to accomplish His work.” He had been manifesting the Name of God to that ignorant, heathenish woman, whose soul, blind and sinful as she had been, responded to the truth; and this was His work which it was His meat and drink to fulfil. Oh, that it may be ours also!

It was for this purpose, in order that both by His words and by His works He might manifest the Name of God, that Jesus received the gift of the Holy Spirit by which He both taught and wrought all His mighty works. He refused at * St. John viii. 4

all times to exercise His miraculous powers for any other purpose except that He might be enabled by them to fulfil His work for God. To use them for His own glory, to satisfy His own wants, or relieve His own sufferings, would have been unfaithfulness to His trust.

That this work of Christ, to which, as we have seen, He refers so emphatically, was, so far as regarded Himself, one which terminated with His lifetime, and therefore did not include the act of making propitiation for sin by His death, is certain from His own language respecting it.* "I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work. When I am in the world, I am the Light of the world."+

Now it is certain that in this His work for God from the time of His baptism till His death, not only is it no presumption to set His example before us as a standard, but the duty of following that example is distinctly and in

* St. Jchn ix. 3, 4, 5

+ cf. also St. Mark i. 38; and St. John xi. 8, 9.