Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE THIRD AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.341this realm should break in pieces and consume allother kingdoms,18^^ v^ \_y j-JL^K-/* but itself stand for ever, was thetrust on which the whole Christian life of enduranceand hope was built.The Christian society through its whole struc-ture was marked with the seal of that great act onwhich it grew, the assumption of human nature bya divine Person. Its whole government, its wholeworship, and the whole moral and spiritual beingof its people radiate from that Person as King, asPriest, and as Prophet. Take first the characterof the individual Christian. It is in all itsgradations,O /in that marvellous rangeOof the samebeing which stretches from the highest saint maturedin acting and suffering to the most imperfectpenitent received into the bosom of the one mother,a copy, more or less resembling, of our LordHimself. Pie, * the divine Image, O / is the original Ofrom which every Christian lineament is traced,and every one of His race repeats Him in somedegree. Every virtue is such as a transcript ofsome portion of His character ; and the whole lifeof the individual resolves itself into an imitation ofHim. Thus He is the Prophet not only declaringthe whole divine will to men, but leading them init by His own example. The divine Painter is butrepresenting in every one of His children a copyin some sort of that life, which He set forth in18 Dan. ii. 44. Compare Apoc. i. 9. 6 aSeA^bs tifuav Kal ffvyKoiwvbs eVTTJ &\tyei KOI eV rfj ;8acriAej'a Kal viropovfj 'Irjdov Xpiorov.ST. MASY S COLLEGE