shape and substance in the life of Christ.  All this character of holiness is intelligible to us in Christ.  “No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten of the Father He hath declared Him.”

There is a third light in which God’s holiness is shown to us, and that is in the sternness with which He recoils from guilt.  When Christ died for man, I know what God’s love means; and when Jesus wept human tears over Jerusalem, I know what God’s compassion means; and when the stern denunciations of Jesus rung in the Pharisees’ ears, I can comprehend what God’s indignation is; and when Jesus stood calm before His murderers, I have a conception of what serenity is.  Brethren, revelation opens to us a scene beyond the grave, when this shall be exhibited in full operation.  There will be an everlasting banishment from God’s presence of that impurity on which the last efforts have been tried in vain.  It will be a carrying out of this sentence by a law that cannot be reversed—­“Depart from me, ye cursed.”  But it is quite a mistake to suppose that this is only a matter of revelation.  Traces of it we have now on this side the sepulchre.  Human life is full of God’s recoil from sin.  In the writhings of a heart which has been made to possess its own iniquities—­in the dark spot which guilt leaves upon the conscience, rising up at times in a man’s gayest moments, as if it will not come out—­in the restlessness and the feverishness which follow the efforts of the man who has indulged habits of sin too long,—­in all these there is a law repelling wickedness from the presence of the Most High,—­which proclaims that God is holy.

 Brethren, it is in these that the greatness of God consists—­Eternal
 in Time—­Unlimited in Space—­Unchangeable—­Pure in character—­His
 serenity and His vastness arise from His own perfections.

 We are to consider, in the second place, the greatness of man.

   1.  The nature of that greatness.
   2.  The persons who are great.

Now, this is brought before us in the text in this one fact, that man has been made a habitation of the Deity—­“I dwell with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit.”  There is in the very outset this distinction between what is great in God and what is great in man.  To be independent of everything in the universe is God’s glory, and to be independent is man’s shame.  All that God has, He has from Himself—­all that man has, He has from God.  And the moment man cuts himself off from God, that moment he cuts himself off from all true grandeur.

There are two things implied in Scripture, when it is said that God dwells with man.  The first is that peculiar presence which He has conferred upon the members of His church.  Brethren, we presume not to define what that Presence is, and how it dwells within us—­we are content to leave it as a mystery.  But this we know, that something of a very peculiar and supernatural character takes place