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The fallen race of Adam have an Advocate who ever lives to make intercession in their behalf; one who was thrust out from the houses of the rich and powerful here below, that he might prepare for outcasts mansions of glory on high; one who graced the mechanic's shop, and sweat great drops of agony on the barren earth, ere he broke his mighty heart on the cross, and ascended in triumph to the mediatorial throne. He was humanity's worker before he was humanity's Savior. His experience in the flesh spread out his sympathies from the lowest to the highest, prompted him to break down all hinderances to personal freedom, and, by both precept and example, encouraged pure aspirations in every breast. There is vast significance in his command, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Because Christ had himself been a child, he knew to what sublime height the thoughts of children, the most obscure, may rise.

So abjectly subject to sin and the slavery of grovelling habits is man, that he needs some one who has not partaken of the fall to stand by his side at every step, and with divine earnestness to tell him how much he is yet able to perform, despite the degradation he has incurred. The world of youth needs the example of that sinless one, whose every action and appearance are designed to disclose how that we should put forth all the divinity of deed, of attitude, and of expression, of which our immortal nature is capable. He demonstrated that all fortune can be conquered by bearing it; and no more valuable lesson can, by the young, be learned. Every soul has its bright visions, as well as its sombre; but, unfortunately, in this uncongenial world, it is the better aspirations that we are least disposed to indulge. "The vision and the faculty divine" is greatly obscured, because its exercise is but little encouraged by our associates. Each one may have his own occasional gleams of exalted things, but he will be little inclined to contemplate the revelations made to others. The world is less disposed to recognize our sincerity, when delineating the gor

geous heights of celestial achievements which, in meditation, we have seen, than when detailing those loathsome phantasies in which the best of depraved beings sometimes revel. Thus the frigid multitude without forces us to be hypocrites, when we have the strongest disposition to be sincere in the best pursuit, and to assume a supineness and meagreness which ill correspond to the height, and depth, and lavish variety, of the inner man, in its spontaneous efforts to expand and soar. But Jesus most acutely experienced "the reachings of our souls," and made provision for their freest and widest flight. Impelled by divinest aspirations, he would have us mount to the starry gates of God's dwelling in the skies, and drink into our panting souls, with unutterable ravishment, broad and clear beamings of his mysterious splendor, and then, in our generous warmth, he would have us hasten to distribute among our brethren the glad and sanctifying beams with which we are imbued. If they spurn our gift, depreciate its value, deny even its existence, and question our capacity to attain views so blissful, he would not have us chilled into despair by the captiousness we incur, but hold on our way in patient effort, till Omnipotence comes to crown with success our beneficent design.

Says Neander, "There was peculiar fitness in Christ's being born among the Jewish people. His life revealed the kingdom of God, which was to be set up over all men; and it properly commenced in a nation whose political life, always developed in a theocratic form, was the continued type of that kingdom. He was the culminating point of this development; in him the kingdom of God, no longer limited to this single people, was to show its true design, and, unfettered by physical or national restraints, to assert its authority over the whole human race. The particular typifies the universal; the earthly the celestial. So David, the monarch who had raised the political theocracy of Jesus to the pinnacle of glory, typified that greater Monarch, in whom the kingdom of God was to display its glory. Not without reason, therefore, was it that Christ, the summit of the theocracy, sprang from the fallen line of royal David."

And yet, what is remarkable in the youth of Christ, he never fortified his claims to popular regard by allusions to an illustrious ancestry, and his origin from royal blood. On the contrary, he avoided courting the favor of the worldly great, refused to meddle with every thing connected with oppressive sovereignty, and preferred the humblest position among the masses, at once their symbol, their champion, and friend. The beautiful spirit of young Christ, rising from the people and shining on them all,

"Looked down on earth's distinctions, high and low,
Sunken or soaring, as the equal sun

Sheds light along the vale and mountain's brow."

Great and beneficent souls always rise from the general mass and belong to it. They spring from the industrious ranks, diffuse the principles of equality, bind the great elements of society together, and ennoble them. They inspire fresh thoughts, execute generous deeds, and transmit the grandest influence to the end of time. Such, in a preeminent degree, was the case with the "child Jesus." Though he was in character divine and of exalted birth, he claimed no immunities on account of these considerations, but, from the lowest grade of rational existence, dared to aspire to the highest, and win the most glorious attitude by his own sufferings and toil. He was not educated in a learned school, nor sustained by any favorable combination of clique and circumstance. "He was obliged to contend with poverty, lowness, and contempt, and was surrounded with obstacles, difficulties, and dangers, which seemed invincible. In his obscure and helpless condition, however, we find him capable of forming a plan for the good of all nations, and cherishing a thought which lay beyond the reach of human intellect, though possessed of the greatest powers, and exercised under the most favorable circumstances. We find him capable of making a bold effort to carry it into execution, and indulging a hope that all would be accomplished, never firmer than in the moment when to human view all was lost; when he was forsaken by his intimate friends,

opposed and even put to death by his nation. What conclusion must we draw from a phenomenon so distinct in its kind? Shall we not be justified in considering him the most exalted sage, the greatest benefactor of mankind, a most credible messenger of the Godhead?"

The aspirations of our Lord in his early youth, their intensity and lofty aim, are indicated by the circumstances of a wellknown event, concerning which the profoundest of modern commentators remarks as follows:

"Of the early history of Jesus we have only a single incident; but that incident strikingly illustrates the manner in which the consciousness of his divine nature developed itself in the mind of the child. Jesus had attained his twelfth year, a period which was regarded among the Jews as the dividing line between childhood and youth, and at which regular religious instruction and the study of the law were generally entered upon. For that reason, his parents, who were accustomed to visit Jerusalem annually at the time of the Passover, took him with them for the first time. When the feast was over, and they were setting out on their return, they missed their son. This, however, does not seem to have alarmed them, and perhaps he was accustomed to remain with certain kindred families or friends. Indeed, we are told (Luke ii. 44) that they expected to find him 'in the company,' at the evening halt of the caravan. Disappointed in this expectation, they returned the next morning to Jerusalem, and, on the following day, found him in the synagogue of the temple, among the priests, who had been led by his questions into a conversation on points of faith. His parents reproached him for the uneasiness he had caused them, and he replied, Why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?' Now, these words of Jesus contain no explanation, beyond his tender years, of the relations which he sustained to the Father; they manifest simply the consciousness of a child, - a depth, to be sure, but yet only a depth of presentiment.

"We can draw various important inferences from this inci

dent in the early life of Christ. At a tender age he studied the Old Testament, and obtained a better knowledge of its religious value by the light that was within him than any human instruction could have imparted. Nor was this beaming forth of an immediate consciousness of divine things in the mind of the child, in advance of the development of his powers of discursive reason, at all alien to the character and progress of human nature, but entirely in harmony with it. Nor need we wonder that the infinite riches of the hidden spiritual life of the child first manifested themselves to his consciousness, as if suggested by his conversation with the doctors, and that his direct intuitions of divine truth, the flashes of spiritual light that emanated from him, amazed the masters in Israel. It not unfrequently happens, in our human life, that the questions of others are thus suggestive to great minds, and, like steel upon the flint, draw forth their inner light, at the same time revealing to their own souls the unknown treasures that lay in their hidden depths. But they give more than they receive; the outward suggestion only excites to action their creative energy; and men of reflective and receptive, rather than creative, minds, by inciting the latter to know and develop their vast resources, may not only learn much from their utterance, but also diffuse the streams which gush with overflowing fulness from these abundant well-springs. And these remarks, applying-in a sense in which they apply to no other—to that mind, lofty beyond all human comparison, whose creative thoughts are to fertilize the spiritual life of man through all ages, and whose creative power sprang from its mysterious union with that Divine Word which gave birth to all things, show us that his consciousness developed itself gradually, and in perfect accordance with the laws of human life, from that mysterious union which formed its ground.

"And further, without in the least attempting to do away with the peculiar form of the child's spiritual life, we can recognize in this incident a dawning sense of his divine mission in the mind of Jesus; a sense, however, not yet unfolded

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