Daniel 8:27

REFLECTIONS

READER! let us both beg of God for grace to gather suitable improvements from this Chapter, and such as God the Holy Ghost evidently intended the Church should derive from the perusal of it in all ages. The image of the ram with two horns, and the goat with a notable horn between his eyes, these similitudes are explained to us in the Chapter, and had their accomplishment in the kingdoms of Media and Persia, and of Grecia that succeeded both, and have long since been done away. But the vision of the evening, and the morning, and the daily sacrifice; these are subjects of everlasting meditation, and lead to unceasing improvement under divine teaching, as long as the Church shall continue on the earth. And who doth not see, blessed and eternal Spirit, when taught by thee, the sweet allusions in those things in the lamb of the morning, and the lamb of the evening, and daily sacrifice, to the person, blood, and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ? Is not Jesus the lamb slain from the foundation of the world? And if the exhibition by type of this sacrifice was needful, so the Lord thought fit that it should be set forth both morning and evening, to manifest, that from the morning of life to the evening of it in death, a propitiation is needful for sin, and becomes continually necessary! And Reader! do not fail to connect with this view of the subject, as often as the Holy Ghost graciously brings it before thee, that this contemplation of the Lamb of God taking away sin by the sacrifice of himself, is of all subjects the most momentous and interesting. Think, Reader! how infinitely meritorious in itself. Think how blessed must it have been in the sight of God the Father, when for four thousand years together, before the thing to be accomplished was brought to pass, the Lord appointed a daily memorial of it, in the lamb of the morning, and the lamb of the evening, to be sacrificed! Precious Jesus! let it be our daily delight, both in the morning and evening of every day, to contemplate thy body bruised, and thy soul made an offering for sin! Frequently, Lord, at thy table, and in thine house of prayer, be it our happiness to commemorate thy death in holy communion. And while we behold the Lamb of God taking away sin by the sacrifice of himself; give to us such rich views of God the Father's complacency, in the blessed act of Christ dying for us, that we may enter into the most lively conviction and certainty, that when he died on the cross, for the sin of his people, he died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. Jesus was then made sin, and a curse for his redeemed, that they might be made the righteousness of God in him. Amen.