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I. THE GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. "The doctrine of God." If the gospel of Christ be the doctrine of God it ought to reflect the attributes of God. We venture to say it does thus reflect its Author; the New Testament bears conspicuously the grand characteristics of divinity.

1. Think of the vastness of the gospel. We feel in it the infinitude of God. We are redeemed before the foundation of the world; the redemption disclosed is that of a race; it is worked out through the ages; its issues are in the great eternity beyond.

2. Think of the purity of the gospel. There is a strange purity in revelation. The Old Testament stretches like a stainless sky above the wild, sensual, corrupt nations of antiquity; the New Testament bears the same relation to the life of modern nations. As we look into the pure blue of the firmament far beyond our smoky atmosphere, so do we look up to the righteousness revealed in Christ as the body of heaven for clearness.

3. Think of the love of the gospel — comprehending men of all nations, languages, tribes, and tongues.

4. Think of the power of the gospel. We feel in revelation the energy of suns, the force of winds, the sound of many seas. There is a majestic moral power in the gospel that we do not find in the sublimest philosophies of men, that is also painfully missing in the noblest sacred literature of the heathen (Romans 1:16).

5. Think of the permanence of revelation. Science says, "Persistence is the sign of reality." How divinely real, then, is the gospel of God in Jesus Christ! It is the only thing on the face of the earth that does persist. Every now and then when a new heresy starts up there is a panic, as if the authority of revelation had come to an end; but if you wait awhile it is the heresy and the panic which come to an end. A gentleman told me that he was walking in his garden one day when his little child was by; suddenly the little one burst into tears and cried out in terror, "Oh! father, the house is falling." The child saw the clouds drifting over the house, and mistook the movement of the clouds for the movement of the house — the house was right enough, it is standing now. So sometimes we think that revelation is falling and coming to nought, but it is soon clear that the movement is elsewhere. Nations, dynasties, philosophies, fashions, pass like fleeting vapours and shadows, but the gospel stands like a rock. Ah! and will stand when rolling years shall cease to move.

II. THE SUPREME DEMONSTRATION OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IS FOUND IN CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. "That they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things." The gospel is not a mere speculation, a superb philosophy, a grand ideal; it is intensely practical; it is to prove itself the doctrine of God by making all who believe in it like God.

1. "Adorn the doctrine." That is, reveal, display, make conspicuous and impressive the splendid contents of your faith. The doctrine of God is in the Testaments in suppressed magnificence, and the saints are to give it expression, embodiment: they are to flash out the unrevealed glory in their spirit and language and conduct. The vastness, the depth, the tenderness, the beauty of their creed is to be made tangible. Our creed must transfigure our life; our life must demonstrate the divinity of our creed. As the stars adorn astronomy, as the roses of June adorn botany, as the rainbow adorns optics, so our conduct must flash out the hidden virtue and glory of the doctrine of God.

2. Adorn the doctrine "in all things." The saints are to illustrate the doctrine of God in all its fulness — to do it justice at all points. And so we have much to do. Every system of morality outside the Christian Church: Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean, Utilitarian, Positivist; every system concerns itself with some pet virtue, or with some special class of virtues; but Christianity is most comprehensive — it concerns itself with whatever is just, true, lovely, or of good report; everything virtuous and praiseworthy is made an object of aspiration. We must do justice to the doctrine of God throughout our whole personality. At one end of our complex nature are the grand faculties of intelligence, conscience, will, imagination, linking us with the upper universe; at the other end of our being are basal instincts and affinities establishing a kinship between us and the world below our feet. We must see to it that our faith hallows our whole personality, that our splendid faculties are sacred to their lofty uses, that our inferior instincts are duly chastened, that we live sanctified in body, soul, and spirit. The ethics of Christianity comprehend the whole grammar of ornament. The faith of Christ is a salvation from all sin, a salvation into all holiness. As everybody knows, Shakespeare was a great lover of the old English flowers, frequently making them to spring forth in his poems with the freshness of nature itself, and so some years ago, when his admirers restored the cottage in which the dramatist was born, they resolved to plant in its grounds all the sweet things of summer found on the bard's immortal page: rosemary, ox-lip, wild thyme, pansies, peony, lily, love-in-idleness, cuckoo-buds, lady-smocks, freckled cowslip, daisies pied, eglantine, woodbine, nodding violets, musk roses, red roses — all were carefully planted out in the sun. What a catalogue of virtues could we compile from revelation! What a multitude of graces are here, and fine differentiations of sublime qualities and principles of moral life! Now all these we are to realise in actual life as season and opportunity may permit, until the whole range of our character and action is filled with beauty and fragrance as the garden of the Lord. In adorning the doctrine of God in all things we render that doctrine the most valuable service any may render it. The world is not persuaded by logic, by learning, by literature, but by life; the multitude believes in what it can see — in the eloquence of conduct, the logic of facts, the feeling and power of deeds. We may see this very clearly illustrated in another direction. Why do we all believe in astronomy? Why have we such a positive faith in a science which professes to give the true account of the distant mysterious firmament; which assumes to weigh suns, to analyse stars, to calculate the movements of endless orbs and comets? Do we believe in all this because we have read Sir Isaac Newton, mastered his reasonings, verified his calculations and conclusions? Not for a moment. The faith of the million rests on what it can see. Our common faith in astronomy is derived not immediately from Newton's Principia, but indirectly through the penny almanac. At the beginning of the year we learn that an eclipse of the sun or moon is predicted, and on the palpable fulfilment of that prediction rests the firmest faith of modern times — faith in astronomy. On the day or night of an eclipse myriads of people look into the sky who never look into it at any other time, and the exact fulfilment of the prediction brings conviction to their mind touching all the large assumptions of celestial science. People believe in what they see; the popular faith is based entirely on the darkened orb. So the faith of men generally in Christianity does not rest on theology, criticism, logic, but on Christianity as it finds expression in the spirit and life of its disciples. Once more men believe in what they see, only this time they are not called to look upon a darkened orb, but on a Church bright as the sun shedding on men and nations moral splendours like the light of seven days.

(W. L. Watkinson.)

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KJV: Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again;

WEB: Exhort servants to be in subjection to their own masters, and to be well-pleasing in all things; not contradicting;