The doctrine of the Divinity of our Lord is Scriptural, and is placed before you for your reception or rejection. Compare it with those passages from which we derive our knowledge of the true God, and upon which we build our hope of everlasting blessedness. If Jesus Christ be our all, God blessed for ever; if he possesses all the fulness of the Godhead, a rejection of him must be attended with the most awful consequences. If we
[p. 17]
reject the arm of Omnipotence, what can save us? My fellow-mortals, we stand on the brink of eternity."
"A point of time, a moment's space,
Removes us to yon heavenly place,
Or shuts us up in hell."The sentiment I have been presenting to you, and which I have feebly supported in this place, and from this pulpit, for more than twenty-five years, is now the only ground of my own hope, and that which I wish to commend when the messenger of death shall summon my soul to an account before the only wise God my Saviour. I mention this, not as an argument for the veracity of the doctrine, for I am fully sensible that the most abominable and vile sentiments may be sanctioned by the most hoary antiquity, and adhered to with a pertinacity of enthusiasm that outbraves death; but if I may possess any claim to honesty, I express it as my settled confidence in what the Scriptures reveal, and what is intimately connected with our eternal condition. The Scriptures we must understand for ourselves. To our Master we stand or fall. An attempt to explain what is inexplicable, is absurd; but to believe what is inexplicable, is rational, and what we all do daily. You are entreated to believe in Jesus Christ, as revealed in his word. Believe in him as God manifest in the flesh, as one with and in the Father; as the eternal life which was with the Father. In such a being as this, who would not trust? Turn your eyes from all worldly objects to behold Him who is glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders. Fear not, ye humble and trembling souls! your salvation is sure. So wondrous is his power, that no part of the planetary system varies in its course; so wondrous his love, that nothing can either wander in disorder, or be wanting to complete his system of grace. Join, then, with the prophets: How great are God's signs! How mighty are his works! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion is from generation to generation. . . .
======== [From Joseph Belcher, editor, The Baptist Pulpit of the United States: Eloquent and Instructive Passages . . ., 2nd edition, 1853, pp. 16-17. Document from Google Books. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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