every private virtue, and it were our privilege to be associated with him daily, intimately, by the respect and love he would inspire, would not every generous and virtuous sentiment be called into action? Would not our

cheeks be crimsoned with shame at the bare thought of doing anything abhorrent to the nature of our revered friend? Could anything act upon us so powerfully as such a fellowship with living virtue? Of precisely this nature is the force of the character of Christ, and this is the way in which he who believes in Christ attains to that blessedness, which the Scriptures describe as the presence of God, Heaven, Salvation. To live in a Christian land, among Christian institutions; to profess the Christian faith in one or another form,-this is not faith in Christ, although thousands hug the delusion. It is to have the sacred image of his excellence set up at the very fountain-head of one's spiritual being,-this is faith, living, Christian, saving faith. He who cherishes it will, aye, he must be saved. The decree is writ in the very con

stitution of the soul.

The world has suffered from nothing so much as from false ideas of greatness. The passion for military glory has been the fruitful cause of slavery, bloodshed, and crime. How little has the experience of its fatal results hitherto done to teach men wisdom! How is this deadly charm ever to be broken, save by the formation of a nobler idea, the creation of a better taste, the erection of the true standard? In Jesus Christ, the real greatness of our nature-the glory of a pacific, all-enduring temper-is

revealed. Let him then be lifted up before all eyes, and all hearts will be touched, and the sword and the spear and the banner bathed in blood will be buried at the foot of his cross, and it will be felt that all other courage is fear, all other glory shame, in comparison with that spirit which subdues by mercy and reigns by suffering.

Once more. There is a wide and mournful need of confidence in the omnipotence of moral truth. This it is that the wise in all ages have most seriously wanted. They have had, as it has been said of a certain political party, “more of the wisdom of experience than the wisdom of hope," and they have "looked for their Future-only in the direction of the Past." Look at the wise and the educated and the thinking at the present day. How faint and sickly are their hopes of the moral improvement of our race! Things are deemed impossible, for the instant accomplishment of which only that simple energy of will is required, which a sure faith in the vitality of moral truth would immediately create. In these circumstances how unspeakably precious, (could it only be brought home to the heart!) the memory of one in whom no trait is more conspicuous than a calm and unfaltering confidence in truth, and this too in a condition of things apparently the darkest and most hopeless! Without a single decisive token of success, he uniformly looked upon the great revolution he commenced, as already consummated. In no respect is his example more original and inspiring. In nothing does he stand so pre-eminently alone, far above all other teachers, as in his perfect faith in human nature.

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He scattered fearlessly abroad the seeds of truth, and trusted in God that they would germinate and grow. Whereas all other teachers have divided their doctrines into esoteric and exoteric-philosophy for the initiated, and fables for the vulgar. And at the present day, how frequently is it said in regard to any new and more rational view of religion-It is all very true. I understand and believe it. But it will not do to disseminate such views. The generality of men cannot appreciate them.' I say nothing of the modesty of this sentiment. It reveals the very worst kind of infidelity, and our sabbaths, our churches, and all our multitudinous institutions of Religion are but a dead and delusive show, so long as man believes not in man. Jesus Christ went down directly among the most ignorant and degraded, and well did he describe it as the most decisive attestation to his divine authority, that he delivered the glad messages of Truth" to the Poor."

But I have done. To bring the man of Nazareth, the elder brother of our race, the chosen son of God, the Revealer of God and man, more within the reach of human sympathies; to show that such, in the unspeakable grace of God, are the Records of his life, that the remotest generation may cherish, not merely a traditional, but a personal faith in him; that in the very form and structure of the Gospels there are the means by which every man may be brought into personal intimacy with him, beholding him, as it were, face to face, is the ultimate aim of the

present work; and gives it whatever value it may be found to possess. How imperfect it is, how all-inadequately I have touched upon the great subject, I feel deeply. Still it has been a delightful employment. If it fail to awaken interest in other minds, I do not say I shall not be disappointed. But I shall be ungrateful to the Giver of all good if I ever cease to acknowledge with fervent thankfulness the confirmation it has afforded to my own faith.

NOTES.