inferences from our present subject. First that our estimate of Christ, considered in the light of His unsearchable riches, ought to fill us with high and admiring notions of the grandeur of His spiritual character and resources. If He were wholly comprehensible we might regard Him as finite and like ourselves. If He were wholly incomprehensible, we would not have anything in common, He would so completely transcend us. But when we can contemplate Him both as the known and the unknown, greater and richer in all spiritual excellencies than anything we know, He awakens in our hearts feelings of the true sublime, none like Him. Nothing like Him.

The other inference is that since the riches of Christ is so vast and incalculable, His resources are all sufficient for the redemption of all who come to Him. He will forgive your debts, He will effect your ransom. All your demerits and all your broken obligations to God, He will cancel, and you will be received into the love and favour of the Father in Heaven. If the honourable debtor, or bankrupt, rejoices in those smiles of fortune which enable Him to wipe.out old debts and to begin a new and honorable career, may not you, O sinner, when all your debts and the vindication of your honour are laid on the loving Christ, whose riches are not only adequate, but unsearchable, and may you not in the joy of your heart sing :—

"Jesus, we ne'er can pay

The debt we owe Thy love,
Yet tell us how we may

Our gratitude approve :

Our hearts, our all to Thee we give,

The gift tho' small, Thou wilt receive."

X

THE UNIVERSAL REIGN OF CHRIST

"He shall have dominion also from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth "-Ps. lxxii. 8.

"Jesus shall reign where'er the sun
Doth his successive journeys run;

His Kingdom stretch from shore to shore ;
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

People and realms of every tongue
Dwell on His love with sweetest song;
And infant voices shall proclaim

Their early blessings on His Name."

THIS psalm opens in the original Hebrew with the name of Solomon and closes with that of David. For a long time expositors were divided as to which of these distinguished persons was the author of the psalm. Till a comparatively recent day it was currently regarded as David's, mainly because the closing sentence of the psalm states "the prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended." This was believed to be part of the psalm, and implied that it certainly was one of David's. It is now, however, generally believed that the sentence referred to does not belong to the psalm, but is a closing statement affixed to one complete division of the psalter, which is composed chiefly of psalms of David. There are besides such positive considerations as these, which lead us to the same conclusion. First, the phrase in the title, "A Psalm for Solomon," with which the psalm opens, is part of the Hebrew

original, and is of precisely the same form as in the seventieth and many other psalms which is translated "A Psalm of David." By all correctness of analogy, this should be translated "A Psalm of Solomon," and not a Psalm for Solomon. And second, the diction and imagery of the whole psalm have the glow of the peaceful and prosperous reign of Solomon, and not the warlike and unsettled times of David. But we must inquire of what King does the Royal Writer speak? Whose happy and prosperous reign does he portray in its glowing and beautiful language? We answer there are only two names which can claim mention—the writer's own name, and that of the Messiah, of whose significant name, and prosperous reign, Solomon's were types. There was no doubt a primary and limited reference to Solomon's Kingdom and reign, but the predictions and imagery of the psalm pointed, in a higher and fuller sense, to one greater than Solomon, in whose Kingdom and rule all its promises, intimations, and images, have a complete fulfilment.

Taking the words of the text as referring only in a limited and typical way to Solomon, and as properly setting forth the universality of Messiah's Kingdom and reign:

I. I wish in the first place to submit to your thoughtful consideration the grounds of our belief, that the dominion of Jesus Christ is destined to be wide as the world.

It is trueno King of Israel before Solomon's time, nor we may add any one who succeeded him, ruled over so large a territory or had so many nations tributary to him as Solomon had. He more

nearly, than any other, included in his Kingdom and held tributary to him all those lands and peoples which of old God had promised to Israel. His bounds were from the Red Sea and the River Nile, even to Lebanon, and from the Great Sea, or Mediterranean, Eastward to the Euphrates. But even then Solomon's Kingdom and rule lacked much of being as widely extended as that of him described in the text. Solomon's foreshadowed the Messiah's in many ways, yet as between an image and that which it represents, or between a substance and the shadow, which it casts, there is as in this case a wide difference. In this psalm it is affirmed of lands which never belonged to Solomon, of princes who never knew him, that they shall acknowledge and be ruled by the Messiah. It says of "the kings of Tarshish and of the isles" that " they shall bring presents." It also declares "all kings shall fall down before Him, all nations shall serve Him." This was not true in Solomon's case, but belongs alone to Christ's.

Again observe that God made over to the Messiah by promise and covenant the dominion of the world. "He put all things in subjection under His feet," leaving nothing "which is not put under Him; but the Apostle adds, "now we see not yet, all things put under Him, i.e. actually. As in the wide sense, all the peoples and the territories passed under the authority of Solomon, which had been promised to him, so all promised and of right given to the Messiah, shall become subject to, and acknowledge Him during His reign. Said the Lord to His Son, “I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance,

and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession." This promise stands good until fulfilled, and that is coming and will come to pass in God's good time. In the words following my text it is affirmed that the wild and untutored tribes of the desert shall come in the most submissive way, oriental like, licking the dust, and bowing to His sceptre. It is stated in the most general language "all kings shall fall down before Him, all nations shall serve Him." The prophet Isaiah asserts most emphatically, in words which the Apostle Paul applies to Christ, "I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return-that unto me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear"-and adds, “in the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified and in Him shall they glory."

Observe how grand is the language of the apocalypse, in which the realisation of all these predictions is recorded. We are told that when the seventh trumpet sounded, there were loud voices in heaven saying, "The Kingdoms of this world are become the Kingdoms of Our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever." These predictions and promises of the universal reign of Christ furnish our first line of proof. They show and assure us, in the light of revelation, that Christ's Kingdom and rule shall include all nations and reach to the ends of the earth.

But consider farther that inasmuch as Christ is invested with supreme right to rule over all kings and peoples of the world, so will He in due time be invested with the sovereignty of every part of our world. Our Lord, when commission