IT is a King that our spirits cry for, to guide them, discipline them, unite them to each other,--to give them a victory over themselves a victory over the world. It is a Priest that our spirits cry for, to lift them above themselves to their God and Father,--to make them partakers of His nature, fellow-workers in carrying out His purposes. Christ's Sacrifice is the one authentic testimony, that He is both the Priest and King of men.

But since He is come to make them like Him--since He has taken their flesh and blood, that they might have His Sonship--they have a portion also in all that appertains to that Sonship. "He has made us," says St. John, "Kings and Priests unto God and His Father." The kingly right of government over the earth, which was assured to him at creation, is redeemed for him in Christ. Earth is the instrument of his purposes, not the mistress who may command him. But she is so, while he reclaims that other more precious prerogative of ruling himself, which Christ has also asserted for him,--which, in Christ's might, while he depends on Him, he can exercise.

And so it is with the other office. The Son of God is the Priest for ever,--the sympathising Priest, touched with the feeling of man's infirmities, because He is filled with the holiness and love of God,--bearing their sins, because He is one with the All-Righteous. And He comes to make us Priests, to give us all the power of offering up spiritual sacrifices to God, of offering up ourselves, of feeling with our brethren, of entering into the holy place with them and for them, of presenting to them the image of Christ's Father and their Father.--Sermons on Sacrifice, p.295.

Project Canterbury