allure with the offer of prosperity? A hundredfold more we adore Him because of His bitter sufferings; and find cause and explanation of the mystery-in the imputation of sin to Him as man (Isa. liii. 6), in His possession of righteousness as God (Rom. iii. 21, 22); in the girdle that encompassed Him with human infirmity (Heb. ii. 9, 10), yet mysteriously enfolded Him with the might of Divinity (Acts ii. 24).

As if by a law of our moral and spiritual being, all grand and lofty minds, all true and loving hearts, are drawn to Jesus; and to help humanity they labour, study, and suffer apparent loss. The highest summits of purity, the inner courts of wisdom, are ascended and entered by Christly men. To have our spiritual and intellectual elements of character in perfect harmony, with the fullest development of both, we must walk on earth as that One walked who came from heaven to make us sons of God.

Many thoughts arise in connection with so great a wonder; thoughts connected with the universe.

Our whole system of worlds, viewed by the most powerful telescope, possibly does not bear so great a relation to the entire universe as a single leaf to all the leaves of a forest: nor are we to imagine that Nature copies herself accurately and incessantly throughout space. There are many worlds, why not many sorts? why not a variety rich and manifold as the Divine perfections? Jesus, by taking flesh in so small a world as ours, makes us free of the universe, and opens out a prospect for enraptured spirits in many spheres. The Incarnation is not the encompassing of the Infinite, so

that the Incomprehensible may be possessed and embraced it is the bringing of our earthly sphere within the heavenly, and the making our human nature that embodiment of the Holy and Mighty which conveys right and power to go through the gateways of sense, of intelligence, of emotion, to possess infinite and various glory in God. The Incarnation also shows that an Infinite Spirit participates in all life and intelligence, personally dwelling in the capable loving heart. Nor is that all-in Christ was no limit, His finitude of individual self entered and possessed the unlimited and universal. Talk no more of material beauties, of worlds shrined in dew-drops, miracles of splendour on butterflywing; they are as nothing to God manifest in the flesh; less than nothing to the glorious transformation and marvellous inner fashioning by which we are fitted to know and rejoice in the Almighty.

The Nature and Work of Christ, though wrought in nature, are preternatural and supernatural; because Redemption is essentially a work of Divine mercy, as Creation is a work of Divine might. On this account the Christ-life, and the Christ-death, transcend all other -enthrone Divinity of morality, and love stronger than death, in our existence. We do not see how to account for a Nature producing such marvellous moral results, or for the powers of a Mind so greatly influencing the world-“Τί τούτων τῶν σημείων μεῖζον ἐπιζητεῖς, ἄνθρωπε, ἀθρόον τοσαύτην τῆς οἰκουμένης μεταβολὴν opov yeyevnμévnv" (S. Chrysostom); unless we allow that the owner of that Mind and Nature possessed peculiar qualification as Healer of Souls, as Seer of things invisible, as Divinity in communion with the Realities

of the universe. Looking at Sin, looking at the Atonement; our science and intellect, our conviction and emotion, say, "Man hath sinned and God hath suffered."

If we recognize this as the initial process for Divine rectification of existing wrong, the remedy for prevailing wretchedness, we shall also recognize the work which is given us to do; and so long as a man sees and believes in some great good, he will work toward that, come what may, in the way he is best fit for. Persistent sagacious efforts for the improvement of the moral and material condition of humanity on the earth, to be intellectually and morally right, to be spiritually, socially, physically happy, conduce to welfare and honour in present and in future life. When we so live in and by our Christianity, that with concentrated and urgent attention we elevate and transfigure the state of our land and people; that wise simplicity, divine purity, gentle peace, and gladsomeness, possess our country; we shall know the beginnings of that Good Time which was promised by Christ and sung by the poet

"... Golden days, fruitful of golden deeds, With joy and love triumphing and fair truth."

Paradise Lost, iii. 337.

Take the pictures of early life darkly drawn by Sir John Lubbock, the investigations of Darwin, the incidents of ancient and modern history, the common and uncommon facts of every life, and see whether a finished Salvation, which science calls "the progress and triumph of humanity," is not the grand truth which explains the mystery of creation, the mystery of evil, the mystery of miracle, and the mystery of redemption? The creation

we understand, humanly, as a Revelation of Godhead bringing fashioned substance-forms of life and beauty out of chaos. The existence of evil we tremble at-the voluntary faults of intelligent free creatures in rebellion against Supreme Holiness. The operations of miracleInspiration of the Bible, Incarnation Resurrection Ascension of Jesus, and Coming of the Holy Ghost-all redemptive, are a Divine amending of the fault, a Divinity of process by which our world will be restored and grandly embellished.

Creation, material and spiritual, can only be adequately understood when viewed as a display of the Almighty's attributes; and we must think of it—not, as the technical scientist, from what is lowest but from that which is highest. The low cannot, unaided, exceed their nature, and ascend to the high-otherwise the less contains the greater; but it is a property of the high that it can descend to the low, elevate, and make it partake of the descending greatness. The aspirations of men, our hungerings and thirstings after God, are not transformations of brutal passions into spiritual instincts, not dreams produced by indigestion, not illusions from the marshy ground of reptilian cravings: they are the breathings of our intellect and emotion, utterance in our language, embodiment in our acts, of that Holy Reality who gives variable substance, diverse life, ascending intelligence, sacred emotion, forming and informing the receptivity of His creatures. The Divine Narrative of Antiquity, concerning this, deserves reverence: as truth —it is the ground on which we stand, a sure and perfect way for our feet, and by it we make the great progression to Higher Life.

It follows from all this, that Jesus is the great original moral Worker and Thinker-unique in the world, "unus instar omnium,” “eîç ȧvrì μvpíwv." His comprehensiveness of character is rendered more wonderful by the consideration that His youth was spent in a small country town apart from the strife of politics, from the great questions of the age, and amongst simple uncultured men. He was in no respect like the Roman, who aimed at establishing national supremacy by force of arms, to make Rome the eternal city. In no particular did He resemble the Greek, who sought to subdue the earth by culture, by art, by science, by literature, by philosophy. Far from embodying the aims and aspirations of His own countrymen, He was, and ever has been, so opposed to their peculiar mode of thinking and conduct of life, that the nation generally, even unto this day, refuses Him though He stands far ahead-the greatest and best of all Jewish men. We study His life, and find in it a nature inexhaustible and infinite. Weeks and weeks we give to one phase of His character; we try to write it out-a more perfect and massive representation than that in the Gospels, but we cannot give the whole; there is always more, and when that is expressed there is still more. His nature, with its relations to heaven above and the earth beneath, in all its personal, social, moral, divine elements, seems Infinite. Parts that lay obscure, that escaped our minutest attention, suddenly shine in splendour, God's Spirit giving light.

The marvel grows in connection with His birth, manner of life, peculiar genius, extraordinary death, when we remember that He was the foretold, the expected, the miraculous, the Blessed and Blessing One.