all times. But these were walks which Jesus never trod. He left the literature, science, and art of his age just where he found them. He could point to no discovery or invention as the outcome of his work, nor to any book as the vehicle and instrument of his power. He left no volume. It does not appear that he ever wrote a line. There was nothing of what is technically understood as the scholar about him. He loved to climb the hills, to walk through the fields, to muse in the moonlight and to wander on the shore. He mingled with the people at their feasts, took part in their conversation and told them many a pleasant tale. There was poetic beauty and popular breadth, such grace and sweet reasonableness in his talk, that the common people heard him gladly; but no endeavour after scientific or literary greatness.

Other men again, attain to eminent success in politics. They have an eloquence, a wisdom, which sways and guides the councils of nations. They possess a genius for the adminstration of affairs, and the organization of men. By timely reforms they stave off revolutions, remove some oppressive burden, or abolish some abuse. They adjust the lines of custom to the laws of right, they fling a meaning of truth, and breathe a soul of mercy into usages and forms. But Jesus had done none of these things. As far as he was concerned, the laws and institutions, the oppressions and tyrannies of the world remained during his lifetime unaffected. Except at the points where politics touch and run down into morality he had nothing to say about them. And when he died there was no political oppression the less, no political amelioration the more, through any direct intervention of his.

And there is yet another element in which the life of Jesus was without result. To form a home, to transmit one's name and character to a group of children is an almost universal ambition among mankind. And they who can point to days spent in strenuous labour, to children trained to intelligence, industry, and virtue, have won a real victory, a substantial and solid success. But Jesus was homeless, solitary, childless. The duties and pleasures of domestic life were excluded by other and all-absorbing aims; and to all the affections, hopes, and inspirations, which cluster round the name, and pertain to the relation of fatherhood, except indirectly and by sympathy, he was an alien and a stranger.

And to pass for a moment into the field of morality and religion, Christ's special sphere, to all outward seeming he was equally and during his lifetime unsuccessful here. Many a moral and religious teacher has begun his mission in obscurity, and toiled through long years of opprobrium, slander, and defeat, but has come out at last into the light of truth and the gladness of victory; has lived to see his idea the common thought, his trust the general hope, or at least the enthusiasm of the younger and more ardent minds, with whom always lies the arbitration of conflicting faiths. Moses did not cross into the promised land, but he brought his people to its borders, and from Pisgah's top he viewed its sun-lit fields and vine-clad hills, and recognised in Joshua the Captain who should champion the cause. Socrates saw in Plato the broadbrowed youth, whose ample gifts should retrieve his work from failure,

whose celestial genius and golden tongue should transfigure his teaching in the hues and splendours of a rich imagination, and embalm it in the fragrance of beauty, and so secure for it an abiding lodgment in the hearts of men. Buddha and Mohammed died amid the shouts of victory. They saw of the travail of their souls and were satisfied. But it was otherwise with Jesus. The Apostle destined to put his work in the way and on the path of success was as yet in the camp of the enemy. He had no large following, and his most intimate friends misconceived his words, and only partially understood his character and mission. Traditionalism was too strong for him, and he went down before the ignorance and bigotry of his age.

And then there are some men who are fortunate and triumphant in the very circumstances of their death. There are elements of tragic pomp, of imperial grandeur and display in their death, which make a glorious life more glorious still, and avail to redeem a career otherwise insignificant from the levels of common place.

Wolfe and Nelson died amid the thunder and acclaim of victory. Many of the martyr-deaths were of this kind. But about the death of Jesus there were gathered all the external indications of defeat and shame. There was the cowardly desertion of friends-the falsehood of this disciple, the treachery of that-there were mocking and derision, spitting and blows, and last of all the opprobrium of the cross. This, then was the result and outcome of the life of Jesus up to his death. A few sermons and parables addressed to miscellaneous crowds, from hillsides and fishing boats, and which were apparently forgotten; the collection of a few disciples, who have now dispersed and fled; the temporal good of life relinquished for spiritual ends which are unachieved, a few years of hopeful, enthusiastic, and divine endeavour, and a hateful death between two thieves as a reward. To every eye, except to the eye of that faith which gives conviction of things not seen, the great Hebrew Prophet had most ingloriously failed. There was lacking no mark of disappointment and defeat. If the question had been put to the angry crowd which raged round Calvary it would have cried "defeat." The disciples as they prepared to return to Galilee must have assented to the shout, and the women who lingered weeping, while resenting the spirit of the verdict, could not have demurred to its truth. Had some calm unprejudiced observer, pondering things to come, asked that multitude, whence would come the spiritual forces which should mould men's faiths and lives in coming ages; the Jew would have signalized the temple, the prophets and the law; the Greek would have answered "from Greece, from her philosophy and science, her heroes and poets, her literature and art;" the Roman would have replied "from Rome, from her all-victorious senate and armies, her power to conquer and organize." Not a man of them would have pointed to the cross. And should this imaginary spectator, gifted with the faculty of foresight, have made answer:-"The temple, the prophets, and the law are great, but they shall derive their greatest glory from association with the man who hangs on that cross. In his words the world shall find a

deeper love than was taught in the academies of Greece, and in his life shall see a more exceeding beauty than Athenian artists have made to glow on canvas, or have carved in stone. Rome herself shall perish. Her mighty framework shall be shivered into fragments, and her light be quenched in gloom. Her gods shall vanish, her armies disappear, her temples fall. And when there arises, as there shall arise, another and a grander Rome, shining through the ages with a more refulgent light, with higher faiths, and larger hopes, and purer life, it will be seen that this radiance has streamed from that drooping head, and that these transforming forces have issued from that closing life. For that life there ebbing away is the most beauteous and sacred thing that has appeared in human history, and despite its seeming ignominy now, it is destined to become the most blessedly productive, the most fertile in human and moral issues, and its memory shall echo through all time." I say had some inspired prophet spoken so, with what incredulous disdain would that crowd have turned away, deeming him a dreamer, a visionary, a madman; and yet such a speech would have been but a feeble statement of the truth, as we well know to-day.

"For blazoned on the sky's eternal noon,

The cross leads generations on."

And what has been highest, brightest, divinest in the world's thought, faith, and life for the last eighteen centuries, has come largely and mainly from the thought, faith and life of the great founder of Christianity. I said that Jesus formed no home; but he has shed a blessing upon every home in Christendom. He has put purity, patience, endurance, forbearance, affection, in the foremost ranks of our lives. We saw that he added nothing to the world's material wealth; but he has created a living heart at its centre, sent pulsations of humanity through its circle, made it more conscious of its responsibilities, more mindful of the claims of suffering and of want. He took no immediate part in politics, redressed no grievance, removed no abuse, enacted no law, established no institution; but he has breathed into politics the breath of a living soul, which yearns for the removal of all abuses, the redressing of all wrongs, and would fain harmonize with justice and mercy, every institution and every law. He made no discovery in science. But his spirit has entered into science too, and is taking possession of its vast and marvellous resources, for the purpose of putting them to human and philanthropic ends; to alleviate pain, to promote health, to soothe the grief of wounds, to sap the sources of disease, to multiply and to diffuse the elements of moral welfare, and to rain on men the charities that soothe and heal and bless. The transmitted goodness of Jesus is a presence to be known, and heard, and felt, in all the philanthropies and humanities of modern life. The eloquent historian of "European Morals" writing with the calm, unbiassed judgment of a philosophic thinker, thus describes the wonderful power of a divine personality upon human character. "The tender beauty of Jesus, the many scenes of compassion and suffering associated with him, are the pictures which for

centuries have swayed the imagination and allured the hearts of the most cultivated, and also the rudest and most ignorant of mankind. His faith has indissolubly united in the minds of men, the idea of supreme goodness with that of active and constant benevolence; and has covered the globe with countless institutions of mercy, absolutely unknown to the whole Pagan world. The vast and unostentatious movement of public charity, operating in the crowded city and the village hamlet, giving sight to the blind, strength to the weak, health to the sick; surrounding the lonely orphan with the comforts of home; staunching the widow's tears and following all the windings of the poor man's grief, is distinctly traceable to the influences exerted on humanity by the character and teachings of Jesus."

From all this, there are two facts to be gathered, which we in this age are rather slow to learn. The first is, the reality, endurance and power of things not seen. With a royal glance of genius flashing into the essential heart of things, St. Paul has said, and all deep thinkers have said the same "The things that are seen are temporal, for a time; but the things that are not seen are eternal, for all time." The outward universe is constant to a constant change--stars vanish and are seen no more-rocks and mountains are worn down into a gradual disappearance -continents are submerged, and ocean floors are converted into habitable land. Only that in nature which is invisible, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, but which is revealed to thought alone, her unseen and primal forces, have any true endurance and permanence of being. It is the same in human life as in history. Here too, the visible, or audible, or tangible, is ephemeral and evanescent. The fashion, the scheme and structure of this world passeth away. The framework of empires, the forms of world-wide faiths, the wealth and merchandise of nations, the pomp of many-peopled cities, "are melted into air, into thin air." Only that in civilization, in religion, in all the visible forms of human life, which is itself invisible, and which forms and symbols temporarily shadow forth, has any abiding place and name. of the stuff that dreams are made of.

All else is

The other fact, which is suggested by the line of thought which I have pursued, is the reality of God's providence in human things. That there is a Providence in the natural world seems to most people very plain. Everywhere in nature are number, measure, proportion, order, law, and these are always more remarkable for what they suggest, than for what they are. They are phenomena, for which we must seek an adequate cause. But is there a Providence in human life? It often seems as though there were not, when we take a hasty glance and a bounded view. Life then appears a play of passions and of interests, a rivalry of greeds, a contention of avarices and ambitions which are decided without any regard to moral law. We see noble men cast down and crucified, and selfishness enthroned; the lofty-minded cloven down, and wicked men exalted; meanness clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day; and heroism stooping under burdens too grevious to be born, and faltering with weary steps along

paths painful to tread. God's Providence would seem very dark and doubtful to the friends and disciples of Jesus during those closing scenes. Just for one agonizing moment it seemed all dark to Jesus himself. But could they have had prevision of the future and beheld the end from the beginning; could they have foreseen what was to come of all that sorrow, they would have been contented. There seems to be a divine necessity for suffering; but it is a beneficent necessity, and issues in chastened character-in tempered passion-in mellowed wisdom-in enriched affection and manifold results of good-in perfection through suffering. Look at life for moments and have regard only to material interests, and it all seems chance; but let your survey take in centuries and embrace moral interests, and the outlook is changed. Instead of life being turbid and chaotic, the chaos resolves itself into symmetry, the confusion into order, and throughout the physical and the human worlds

The awful shadow of an unseen power
Floats, though unseen among us.

DEATH AND LIFE.

CLERICUS.

How close the kinship is 'twixt death and life!
Members of Nature's self-parts of her scheme-
Her all pervading ministers-they seem

At most, but like two brethren at strife.

Death haunts life's presence even as the night
Like a black shadow, skulks behind bright day :
Malignantly, with fratricidal spite,

He waits in envious eagerness to slay.

His blows descend a million times an hour,
But life, disguised, as often slips aside;

Bequeathing earth and air the vital power.

Whose germy essence mocks death's blasting pride,
Yea, from the grave-mound, rears in scorn the flower;

Whilst all Time's rolling years the strife deride.

C