been, to impute to God actions, and thoughts, and tempers, which are (as your own consciences, if you would listen to God’s Word in them, would tell you) unjust, cruel, and proud; and then you will be tempted to say that things are justifiable in God, which you would not excuse in any other being, by saying:  ’Of course it must be right in Him, because He is God, and can do what He will.’  As if the Judge of all the earth would not do Right; as if He could be anything, or could do anything, but the Eternal Good which is His very being and essence, and which He has shown forth in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who went about doing good because God was with Him.  We all know what the good which He did was like.  Let us believe that God the Father’s goodness is the same as Jesus Christ’s goodness.  Let us believe really what we say when we confess that Jesus was the brightness of His Father’s Glory, and the express image of His Person.

SERMON VIII.  SONSHIP

John v. 19, 20, 30.  Then answered Jesus, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do:  for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.  For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth Him all things that Himself doeth.

I can of mine own self do nothing:  as I hear, I judge:  and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of my Father which is in Heaven.

This, my friends, is why man should walk humbly and obediently with his God; because humility and obedience are the likeness of the Son of God, who, though He is equal to His Father, yet to do His Father’s will humbled Himself, and took on Him the form of a slave, and though He is a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered; sacrificing Himself utterly and perfectly to do the commands of His Father and our Father, of His God and our God; and sacrificing Himself to His Father not as a man merely, but as a son; not because He was in the likeness of sinful flesh, but because He was The Everlasting Son of His Father; not once only on the cross, but from all eternity to all eternity, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.  This is a great mystery; we may understand somewhat more of it by thinking over the meaning of those great words, Father and Son.

Now, first, a son must be of the same nature as his father,—­that is certain.  Each kind of animal brings forth after its kind:  the lion begets lions, the sheep, sheep; the son of a man must be a man, of one substance with his earthly father; and by the same law, the Son of God must be God.  Take away that notion:  say that the only-begotten Son of God is not very God of very God, of one substance with His Father, and the word son means nothing.  If a son be not of the same substance as his father, he is not a son at all.  And more, a perfect son must be as great and as good as his father, exactly