was a tranquillity, a retirement, a freedom from violent emotions, an abstinence from excitement and disturbance throughout it. His emotions were chiefly those of benevolence, compassion, abhorrence of sin. These overpowered, on all occasions, the inferior passions; and were most directly in contrast with any charge of insincerity or enthusiasm, which his enemies might otherwise have imputed to him. Our Lord is precisely what he should be ;-he appeared, and did, and acted, and spake, in every respect as the founder of such a religion as Christianity required.

2. Remark next THE SURPRISING NOVELTY AND SUBLIMITY of our Saviour's deportment and undertaking. His great purpose was entirely new and unheard of at the time he appeared upon earth; it sprung completely from his own divine goodwill, and was independent, and indeed contrary, to the temper of the age and the outward condition in which he appeared. I do not like the term original,33 as applied to our Lord's character, because we commonly mean by that word the efforts of unassisted genius, in the invention or execution of works of science or art.

But his whole project and manner of acting were novel; were in no respect the product of external circumstances; were not according to the taste of the age, and the sympathies of his countrymen. We know sufficiently of the spirit of his contemporaries, of the traditions, the disorders, the expectations of a temporal deliverer, the contempt for the Heathen and Samaritans, and even for Publicans and Nazarenes, which prevailed. We see in the disciples this impression of the age. Our Lord rises infinitely above it; his character is not created by circumstances; he forms his own project; he conceives the new and vast design of an universal religion: he acts upon that

33 Paley, and even Bishop Bird Sumner.

design, though not a single mind can sympathize with him; he possesses his soul in patience, in the calm persuasion of the success of his undertaking: and yet every appearance was against it-the prejudices of the Jews, the notions of a temporal Messiah, the powers and authorities and intellectual habits of the whole world. And there was nothing in our Saviour's birth, connexions, education, to raise him above these things. Yet not a word escapes him implying a doubt of the ultimate triumphs of his religion. In all his teaching and life you see a consciousness, which never forsakes him, of a relation to the whole human race.34 What a vast and noble design; what superiority and grandeur of thought; what self-possession and calmness in the pursuit; what expanse of charity; what height of benevolence! And yet his own death was to intervene :-he perceives, he foretells, he calmly describes, the acts of violence which were about apparently to cut short all his projects. What words can convey the impression of the character of the divine founder of Christianity, when you view him as inspired and filled, under such circumstances, with this mighty plan, the salvation of mankind!

3. Remark, again, how the different parts of our Lord's character, springing from his twofold nature, exactly correspond with his undertaking, make it natural, and join on upon all the DOCTRINES AND PRECEPTS of Christianity which we considered in former Lectures.35 We are no longer astonished at the enterprise of founding an universal religion, when we recollect that here is an incarnate Deity, the only begotten of the Father, the Lord mighty to save, the Eternal Word, come on an errand of grace. And when we turn to the human parts of his character, and consider them as the matter of his obedience, the -34 Dr. Channing,

35 Lect. XV. and XVI.

ground of his merits, the very sacrifice which he came to offer, the case is still further unfolded. The mystery, indeed, of the union of the divine with the human nature remains unexplained; but the fact of it is clearly laid down as the foundation of his mission, many of the ends of which it develops; whilst the combination of the qualities arising, without confusion, from the two natures, constitutes the peculiarity of our Lord's character as the founder of our faith. His divine and human nature correspond to the two classes of truths—the doctrines and precepts which compose his religion.

His divine nature and mediatorial office, together with the state of humiliation which is connected with them, precisely agree with the DOCTRINES of the fall and guilt of man, which rendered such a scheme of redemption needful and appropriate; that is, they precisely expound the truths which distinguish Revelation, and are, indeed, the facts on which those truths rest. The superhuman parts of Christ's life confirm all the doctrines dependent on his divinity-as the efficacy of his atonement, the merit of his sacrifice, the prevalence of his intercession. Without such parts, the doctrines would be less intelligible, less apparent, less consolatory; with them, all is congruous. If Jesus Christ were not the Eternal Word, the image of the invisible God; in short, the divine perfections: embodied in human nature-the system of redemption would be incomplete. And if the system of redemption were other than it is, the character of Christ would be unaccountable and inappropriate.

And then how exactly do the human virtues of the lovely Saviour correspond with, or rather embody and realize, all the PRECEPTS of the gospel: his life is the precepts harmonized, exhibited. If man is ever to be won to obedience, it must be by the force of such an example, presented in so divine a person, and sustained by such exuberant grace.

4. Next remark the IMPRESSION AND EFFECT OF THE WHOLE PUBLIC CHARACTER of Christ-how the contemplations of the separate excellencies of his character are heightened when the mind proceeds to embrace the whole. The high and lofty parts are so united with the lowly and attractive; the divine qualities of our Lord with his human; what he did as the Son of God, with what he suffered as the Son of man; the claims of equality with the Father, with his voluntary subjection to him; the example he proposed to his followers, with the salvation which he wrought out for them; his deportment as our pattern, with his exalted conduct as the founder of the Christian Revelation: all is so sublime, and yet so condescending; so divine, and yet so human; so infinitely above us, and yet so familiarly known, and so entirely level to our feelings; the mysterious parts are so softened down by the condescending ones; the authority and majesty are so blended with the compassion and kindness of Jesus, as to render the impression of the whole character beyond measure deep and penetrating. We feel that never did such a personage appear before or since. We feel that it is Deity incarnate; God stooping to man; the divine perfections made visible to mortal eye; the distance between the holy God and guilty sinners annihilated; salvation, joy, duty, motive, hope, resignation-all the Christian religion-concluded and comprehended in the brief but inexhaustible excellencies of the character of its founder.

5. This conviction is strengthened by observing, in the last place, the MANNER IN WHICH THE CHARACTER OF OUR LORD IS DRAWN BY THE EVANGELISTS. For the narrative, as we have before had the occasion to notice at some length,36 is the most inartificial ever There is no panegyric, no putting of things

seen.

VOL. II.

36 Lect. VI., on Credibility.

I

together, no drawing of a character, no apologies nor explanations. The evangelists merely relate faithfully what they severally remembered of one individual; but this individual was so extraordinary a personage, that in recording his life, they present a picture such as the world never before saw. The account, however, only furnishes the materials from which we may study, as we can, our Lord's several excellencies. The evangelists leave us to do this. They do not even arrange the different incidents in the order of time. Thus the minds of men are set at work; and the true impression and bearing of the history is the result of their own conclusions, from the incidents thrown together in naked and unadorned simplicity.

The very circumstance, indeed, of such a portrait being drawn by such writers, is an independent proof of the divine origin of the gospels. It could never have entered the mind of man. We know what efforts writers of the greatest genius have made in different ages to describe a perfect character. Poets, historians, philosophers, have laboured the point to the utmost. They have succeeded but imperfectly. Their entirely virtuous man has neither been amiable nor consistent nor imitable. Some gross defects have marked their first conceptions of the subject. But, behold! four unlettered and simple persons, give separate narratives of the life of their Master, and accomplish unwittingly what men in all ages and countries have aimed at, but failed. The gospels appear. The writers make no comments on the history they give; and they leave a character, without seeming to think of it, which is found to be new, to be such as the mind of man could never have conceived; and yet, at the same time, to be so lovely, so imitable, so dignified, so sublime, as to comprise, by universal consent, all the excellencies and perfections of which the human nature is sus

37

37 Scott.