Besides, waiving these considerations, historical precedents might have warranted the expectation that miraculous power would be evinced rather by acts calculated to awe and terrify, than by acts of mercy. When Moses was ordered to give proof by means of signs that the Lord had appeared unto him, and had sent him to Pharaoh, it was by destructive plagues, and the loss of the first-born of the land, that he produced an unwilling conviction of the truth of his commission. When Ahaziah sent messengers to Elijah, the prophet established his authority as a man of God by twice calling down fire from heaven to consume the captains and their fifties..

But it was more consistent with the tenor of our Saviour's character, to produce the same general result in another way. It is true, that except he did signs and wonders the people would not believe; but the miracles which he worked for their conviction were miracles of beneficence, and his power was commonly exerted on those very persons who from the nature of their disorder, or its inveteracy, were the

greatest objects of compassion. It was the man who had been blind from his birth, or the patient who had been afflicted with an infirmity thirty-eight years, or the only son of a widow, or the woman who had spent all her substance on physicians without relief, who experienced that there was authority given to their benefactor to stop the progress of disease, and suspend the ordinary course of nature. It is true of

every action of his life, that he

shewed his almighty power most chiefly by shewing mercy and pity.'

A similar spirit prevailed in his choice of the powers with which he gifted the apostles and seventy disciples, on sending them forth before him into the cities of the Jews. They were to heal the sick,-to cleanse the lepers,-to raise the dead, to cast out devils. The authenticity of their commission was to be established by the benefits conferred through their medium; but if those benefits failed of effecting the desired impression, they were not authorized to resort to any acts of a different tendency in order to pro

duce conviction by terror, or by the infliction of judgements. If any house or city refused to receive them, they were simply ordered to depart from it, and to shake off the dust from their feet, as a token against its inhabitants. After Christ's death, Ananias and Sapphira, Herod, and Elymas the sorcerer, were all rendered examples that the Lord's hand was as able to strike as it had been to save; but during his own ministry not a single instance occurred in which he laid aside the compassionate character of a Saviour to assume the severer part of an avenger or judge.

There is also a perfect analogy in this respect between the language of our Lord and his actions. The tone of kindness which was manifested in all his discourses, coincided uniformly with the gracious errand of his ministry. I allude particularly to his frequent use of the word son';' and to the strength and variety of the terms he employed to designate the nature

9 Matt. ix. 2, 22. Mark, x. 24. John, xiii. 33. xxi. 5.

of his affection for those whom he was about to redeem with his precious blood. The same feeling prevailed in the condescending notice which he took of the poor widow who cast her two mites into the treasury'. It may also be observed in the subject of many of his parables— especially in those of the lost sheep, and lost piece of money, of the good Samaritan, and of the ungrateful servant-parables which could only have been conceived by a mind wherein love towards man was the ruling principle.

Tenderness to others, if it be not founded upon, is at least inseparable from an absence of all selfish feeling. Regardless, therefore, as our Lord was of personal privations, he was too thoughtful of the wants of others to expose them to trials from which, at the same time, he never shrunk himself. Though on seeing that the multitudes who flocked around him had nothing to eat, he had compassion on them and worked a miracle in their behalf, yet he listened

Mark, xii. 42.

so little to the demands of his own nature in a similar situation, that he talked with the woman. of Samaria with as much energy and patience as if he had not been previously wearied with his journey, and in want of the refreshment which the apostles were gone to seek. There would have been also, had he chosen to avail himself of it, a plausible pretence for declining to enter into a discussion, even if the woman, instead of our Lord, had made the first advances to a conversation. For the very act of talking with a Samaritan was considered as such an extraordinary instance of condescension in a Jew, that the woman herself remarked it with surprise; and when his disciples returned they were only restrained from inquiring the cause of such an unusual occurrence, by an habitual deference to their Lord's authority 2.

A similar observation will apply to his conduct to the apostles who were witnesses of his passion. Their eyes were heavy, and in spite of

2 John, iv. 9, 27.