Man's true glory.
"The Holy One of Israel, he hath glorified thee." We need to fill the word "glory," which often has such false renderings, with its true and ancient meaning.
I. TRUE RELIGION GLORIFIES MAN. He cannot he really glorified by titles or splendours of fame, but only by beauty and majesty of being. God says, "I will make a man as the gold of Ophir." Man is only truly glorified as he fulfils the great end of his being, which is to be in his moral nature like God.
II. THE HOLY ONE ACCOMPLISHES THIS. Christ took our manhood up into God. He redeemed body, soul, and spirit; so that all parts of our complex nature might be complete in all the will of God.
1. Christ glorified the body. He became man, not taking the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham. Thus he shows us how to live a heavenly life in an earthly citizenship. False philosophies of religions had, in the East, put—as the Manichaeans did-disdain on the body.
2. Christ glorified man's estate. He lived in humble estate, and showed that the poorest framework might enclose a Divine picture of character.
3. Christ glorified the soul. He lifted man as man above all grandeur of mere outward estate and honour, and propounded this great question, "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own life?" That life was to be supreme in grandeur as a God-like life. "And the glory which thou gavest me," said our Saviour, "I have given them."—W.M.S.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON