to my little mean troubles and anxieties? Besides, how can I expect
him to feel for them; I, a mean, sinful man, and he the Almighty
God? How do I know that he will not despise my meanness and
paltriness? How do I know that he will not be angry with me? I
must be more reverent to him, than to trouble him with very petty
matters. He was a man once when he was upon earth: but now that he
is ascended up on high, Very God of Very God, in the glory which he
had with the Father before the worlds were made, I must have more
awful and solemn thoughts about him, and keep at a more humble
distance from him.

Do you ever have such thoughts as those come over you, my friends,
when you are thinking of the Lord Jesus, and praying to him? If you
do, shall I tell you what to say to them when they arise in your
minds, 'Get thee behind me, Satan.' Get thee away, thou accusing
devil, who art accusing my Lord to me, and trying to make me fancy
him less loving, less condescending, less tender, less
understanding, than he was when he wept over the grave of Lazarus.
Get thee away, thou lying hypocritical devil, who pretendest to be
so very humble and reverent to the godhead of the Lord Jesus, in
order that thou mayest make me forget what his godhead is like,
forget what God's likeness is, forget that it was in his manhood, in
his man's words, his man's thoughts, his man's actions, that he
shewed forth the glory of God, the express image of his person, and
fulfilled the blessed words, 'And God said, Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness.' Get thee behind me, Satan. I believe
in the good news of Easter Day, and thou shall not rob me of it. I
believe that he who died upon the Cross, rose again the third day,
as very and perfect man then and now, as he was when he bled and
groaned on Calvary, and shuddered at the fear of death, in the
garden of Gethsemane. Thou shalt not make my Lord's incarnation,
his birth, his passion, his resurrection, all that he did and
suffered in those thirty-three years, of none effect to me. Thou
shalt not take from me the blessed message of my Bible, that there
is a man in heaven in the midst of the throne of God. Thou shalt
not take from me the blessed message of the Athanasian Creed, that
in Christ the manhood is taken into God. Thou shalt not take from
me the blessed message of Holy Communion, which declares that the
very human flesh and blood of him who died on the Cross is now
eternal i