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to relieve a fellow-creature is more holy than to observe sabbaths, and that to a child the comfort of a parent should be more sacred than the treasuries of temples. His own nation was prostrate, and writhing under the oppression of Rome; and, although he raised no banner and mustered no armies, yet he uniformly asserted that a kingdom was to be established into which multitudes from the four quarters of the earth should be gathered. Thus he lived, wrought, and died, never deserted by that faith in the future, which is one of the most imposing, most mysterious traits of his character.

But the wonder is not even yet exhausted. He not only foresaw his own death, and the ultimate triumph of his religion, he saw so clearly into Futurity that he discerned the connexion between these two events. It was not a blind assurance of success that he cherished. He knew that he should soon be put to death, under circumstances the most painful and ignominious; that he should die misrepresented by the most, fully understood by none. And he felt that he should finally triumph, notwithstanding these circumstances apparently so fatal to every hope of success, aye, and in consequence of these very circumstances. He not only perceived that his death would not obstruct, he saw that it would directly and most gloriously aid the progress of truth. He foreknew his own fate, and what is far more astonishing, he understood and interpreted it. He discerned its end and issue. Here, I say, he evinced a depth of prophetic power altogether without precedent. "If I be lifted up," that is, on the cross," I will draw all men unto me." Again, in that answer to the two brethren who wished to sit on his right hand and on his left in his kingdom, to which I have already referred; how clearly does he show that he understood

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the purport and result of the sufferings he was about to endure ! "Can ye drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" How plainly does this language prove that the kingdom he was thinking of-the power which he sought, was a power to be gained over the affections of mankind, over their deepest sympathies, by the patient, voluntary endurance of suffering in their behalf! In immediate connexion with this passage, he gives that fine definition of true greatness, a definition to whose perfect truth, the progress of government and society has borne most expressive testimony-" He who would be greatest among you, let him be your servant." To reign most gloriously over men, we must be ready to serve them even to the loss of every earthly blessing— of life itself. Consecrating his whole being to the service of man, prepared to pour out his blood like water in the cause of Truth, he saw with the clearest prophetic vision, that a glorious and everlasting dominion must be his. He trusted not, he needed not to trust to perishing paper and parchment to perpetuate his name and influence in the world, for he was writing out his laws upon the living tables of the heart, in his own lifeblood. He knew that by drinking the bitter cup of death-by submitting to that fearful baptism, he was immortalizing his power; he was making an appeal to the sympathies of the human soul, which could not be in vain. Those steps of suffering, which to all other eyes seemed to lead down into utter darkness, in his illuminated vision were seen to be a glorified ascent to the right hand of Eternal Power.

Again. Listen to that most remarkable language of his upon the occasion of his last visit to Jerusalem, shortly before his death. "The hour is come that the son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say

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unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." To those who heard these words they could scarcely have been intelligible. And yet we may perceive a deep and natural meaning here. The glory with which his mind was engrossed was the pure moral glory of an entire self-sacrifice. It was as evidently necessary in his view that he should suffer and die as he was about to do, as that the seed should be buried in the earth and undergo that natural, familiar, but mysterious change by which it is converted into a fruitbearing plant. The process of vegetation was not more natural to his mind, than the dark and painful method by which he was to be glorified, and the triumph of his religion-the establishment of his kingdom consummated.

Once more. Let the reader turn to that declaration of his, to which I have referred before, uttered just after Judas had left him, to go and execute his traitorous purpose. The departure of Judas upon this base errand naturally enough caused Jesus to feel most vividly that the great crisis was at hand. Does he shrink at the dark prospect thus brought distinctly before him? The glory of God flames upon his sight. "Now is the Son of Man glorified," he exclaims, “and God is glorified in him." The elevation of his mind and his language could not have been more remarkable, if a visible spectacle of the wide spread of his religion had at that moment been accorded him. This is to me the unspeakable wonder. He not only knew that he must die, but it is shown beyond all doubt that he knew his death would be the instrument of his signal success, that by dying as he was about to die he would be glorified as no other ever had been, and God would be glorified in him. Here is a depth and extent of inspira

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tion to which the whole world can bring no parallel. This it is that attests him as the first and greatest of Prophets. For what but a most extraordinary illumination of mind could have so interpreted his fate-a death of the deepest shame, overtaking him before he had fully communicated his great purpose to a single human mind, and to all human seeming, equivalent to an utter and inevitable defeat. And then too, how astonishing is it that, possessing this extraordinary knowledge, he was not elated by it, nor the balance of his mind in the slightest degree disturbed. He was still the most patient, the meekest of beings. There is nothing excited, nothing hurried, nothing incoherent in his manner. The Present was not lost sight of in the near and familiar view of the vast Future. He was still the most practical of teachers.

CHAPTER XI.

THE MAN.

"To be tremblingly alive to gentle impressions, and yet to be able to preserve, when the prosecution of a design requires it, an immovable heart, amidst the most imperious causes of subduing emotion, is perhaps not an impossible constitution of mind, but it must be the rarest endowment of humanity." FOSTER-Essays.

"The combination of the spirit of humanity, in its lowliest, tenderest form, with the consciousness of unrivalled and divine glories, is the most wonderful distinction of this wonderful character." CHANNING.

I BEG leave here to admonish the reader, that I do not aim at any thing like completeness in the representation I have undertaken of the character of Jesus Christ. To prove the honesty of this disavowal, it is not necessary that I should indulge in any of those expressions of self-disparagement, by which one so seldom convinces others, and so often deceives himself. It is enough to say that since, after the lapse of eighteen hundred years, the moral significance of the life of Jesus remains unexhausted, I do not believe that it is now to be fathomed at a glance, even by the best and wisest. Nay, after a period of equal length a thousand times told, I am persuaded the treasures of moral life, truth, and beauty, hidden in Jesus Christ, will remain