TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
The contrast between the Old and New Dispensation is vividly set forth
in the Gospel and Epistle for this Sunday. Glorious as the former
was in its origin and in its continuation, it was a ministration of condemnation,
with sacrifices of atonement, but with no sacraments of life. The
Incarnation of the Son of God was the origin, and the Mystical Presence
of Christ the continuation, of a spiritual life which the world had not
before known since the Fall. The Church of God had grown deaf, and
heard not the Voice from Heaven as that Voice had been heard of old; there
was an impediment in her speech, so that the Word of God did not go forth
from her lips in prophecy. The Son of God came down on earth, and
touched her by making Himself one with her through His human nature; the
sigh of His Passion was followed by the "Ephphatha" of the Resurrection;
and as soon as His work was perfected by the looking up to Heaven of His
Ascension and Session at the right hand of God, the ears of the deaf were
unstopped to receive the Inspiration of Pentecost, and the tongue of the
dumb loosed, so that "their sound is gone out into all lands, and their
words into the ends of the world." The same Touch of Christ and communication
of grace in the communication of that which forms part of His Person, is
still the means by which the Church as a corporate body, and every individual
member of it as a living member, is vivified and sustained; and He Who
gives spiritual ability to the ministers of the New Testament, that their
acts and words may be the means by which His Presence is continued in the
Church, is making the ministration of righteousness, even in the by-places
of the earth, to exceed in glory the ministration of Moses at the foot
of Sinia.
