The Crowned Christ

Originally Published in 1880

Few prefatory words can be needed to introduce to our readers the series of papers which, if God grant time and ability, may follow this. I propose to take up, in reliance upon divine grace to enable me, the personal titles and glories of our Lord Jesus Christ, as Scripture declares them to us, for the worship of our hearts, and that, in meditation upon so fruitful a theme, we may perhaps realize more distinctly what He is to us, and, as it were, crown Him with His many crowns. For this He looks for from us, to give Him the glory which is His: in doing which our own souls will surely enlarge their possessions, and find more the wealth with which He has endowed us, living in the blessed beams of that effulgent glory, and being brightened by it: "with open face beholding the glory of the Lord," and being "changed into the same image from glory to glory."
Our study will be, therefore, above all a devotional one, if God grant the desire of my heart, as He knows it. Perilous, indeed, it would be to approach such a theme in any other than the spirit of a worshiper. To look into these divine infinities without realizing in whose Presence we stand would be profanity. Yet our safeguard is not in refusing to draw near where grace invites and welcomes us, but the opposite. The place of nearness is where alone we are safe: the sanctuary is our refuge. And while we look upon Him of whom it is written, "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father," our comfort and assurance lie in this, that, in so far as Scripture speaks of Him, it speaks to be understood; and the only thing that can be the part of faith is to seek to understand it.