One of the most striking features of Christ's education was the purity, strength, and copiousness of his affections. From the aristocracies of the age, in both church and state, he was isolated and contradistinguished; but to his sisters, to children, and to all spirits not dwarfed by bigotry and degraded by passion, he was ever closely allied. He first breathed on the breast of a virgin, and perpetually grew in intimate contact with the great heart of humanity, throbbing in the bosom of unsophisticated life. He came to uprear love's standard upon the battlements of truth; and he won his best preparation for the task, not in the contracted and desiccative influence of polemical warfare, but amid the expanding and ennobling tendencies which prevail where "glides the calm current of domestic joy."

Speaking of a great master of American theology, a distinguished professor at Andover recently remarked,

"We cannot help wishing that he had been somewhat more of a brother, and somewhat less of a champion; that he had left his book on the Will just as large as it is, but had made his book on the Affections and sentiments more comprehensive and full; that he had been a little more like one on whose bosom we might lean our heads at a supper, and a little less like one standing in the gloom of solitude, and awing down every weakness of our poor nature. We need and crave a theology as sacred and spiritual as his, and moreover one that we can take with us into the flower-garden, and to the top of some goodly hill, and in a sail over a tasteful lake, and into the saloons of music, and to the galleries of the painter and the sculptor, and to the repasts of social joy, and to all those humanizing scenes where Virtue holds her sway, not merely as that generic and abstract duty of a love to being in general,' but also as the more familiar grace of a love to some beings in particular. We do want a theology that will not frown with too great austereness on every playful sentiment, nor disdain all communion with those things which hard-nerved men call 'innocent follies,' but which were designed by Him who

remembereth our frame to make the intellect more pliant and versatile, and the manners more polished, and the whole man more human. Many of our systematic treatises on theology have been written in schools, and garrets, and cloisters, and prisons; some of them by men bearing the title of 'bachelors in divinity,' and the character of bachelor in humanity also; but these treatises would have been more exactly true, had they been composed amid the scenes of a more sympathizing and social life, and by men not so intensely married to their folios and parchments.' Much of our theology has been hammered out by metaphysicians; and we all know what Burke says of these men There is no heart so hard as that of a thorough-bred metaphysician.""

Christ was the divinest of theologians, because he taught not in abstraction, but exemplification; not in dogmas merely, but deeds; in the ardor of his heart, as well as the energy of his mind; in the gentleness of his demeanor and the beneficent industry of his life. The love of the beautiful, the good, and the true, were a trinity in his soul, never mutilated, smothered, or divorced. From the earliest youth he so deepened and refined the sentiment of the beautiful, that he could not be otherwise than good; and he so deepened and refined the sentiment of the good, that it was impossible for him to be otherwise than true. He chose this order and condition of development here below, that he might prepare for earth that which earth most needs- men and women in whom the beautiful, the good, and the true, may be one, harmonious, and divine, causing their hearts instinctively to soar toward heaven whenever they behold the flowers of the field, the stars in the firmament, and, with purer vision still, gaze on angels round the eternal throne.

Christ assumed our humanity, and rendered it intensely human, that it might become divine. He did not isolate it, nor associate it more closely with the exclusive few; he socialized it-blended it intimately with the great masses, knowing that every development of our social nature tends toward the

development of our religious emotions. Absolute solitude is unnatural to mankind. It is unfavorable to the profoundest meditation, and suicidal to all that is elevated and comprehensive in the unfolding of our powers. Man is not by nature an ascetic, sown by hazard on earth, to live and die in the hidden shadow of a rock or forest; he is born in the midst of society, which adopts him, nourishes him, trains him, communicates to him its ideas, its passions, vices, virtues, and to which in turn he leaves, with his dust and memory, the influences of his own life. In humanity every thing which is true of the individual is true of the race; and whatever is true of all was designed to be concentrated in each for his improvement, enjoyment, and safeguard. Our fellow-men are our fellow-men in all respects; and Christ, who through his incarnation obtained the truest knowledge of our condition, by the most perfect experience of our wants, felt the most profoundly that human nature admits of no privileges; that in distributing the two richest treasures we can possess freedom and truth - partiality is a crime. Hence the first thing the Redeemer did, was to rec

holy law of mutuality, of Who better than he could

ognize and fortify the great and reciprocity, in every worthy deed. perceive that beings endowed with passions and affections are necessarily dependent upon and responsible to each other? A distinguished follower of his taught that the obligation of brotherly love among men is a debt from which we are never absolved or acquitted, saying, "Owé no man any thing, but to love one another." But the great Master had long before inculcated this law by his example, when, disowned by his brethren according to the flesh, and discarded by the worldly great, he was compelled to rely on his own resources, and illuminated the retired but social sphere of his development with the torch of love, calm and majestic, like "the waveless ocean in its noontide slumbers."

The chief design of Christianity is, to create in its subjects a new life, and to accelerate their spiritual progress. That this may be accomplished with the greatest certainty and widest

success, a minor motive is, to develop and refine social ties, that through these others may be wooed into companionship by the way, and a participation of the final reward. Therefore its Founder, though superhuman, did not wish to appear as a giant, least of all a solitary one, lest the multitude of ordinary mortals should be alarmed at his height, and shudder before him as a monster. He first taught that family life, social spirit, patriotism, universal brotherhood, or by whatever name the law of reciprocity may be designated, all spring from the existence of our affections, which indissolubly bind our fates to those of our fellow-men; that intellectual, or moral, or religious solitude is impossible so long as love is exercised; and that without the development of this, the best portion of our nature, perfection can never be attained. Therefore all the superstitious admiration ever felt for the life of anchorites, so far from being the legitimate product of true religion, is directly opposed to it. Hermits are monsters, inasmuch as they adopt a mode of life in conflict with the nature' of man, and in every respect injurious to his healthy growth. Nothing but the corruption and impiety of the times can justify a solitary life; and even this is not a sufficient excuse, according to the apostle Paul: "I wrote to you in an epistle not to company with fornicators; yet not altogether [to break all intercourse] with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world." One of the most attractive features in the character and life of Christ, is this early and unbounded development of his social nature under circumstances which were apparently so adverse. He may have been neglected by others, but he neglected none. His birth was so low, and his preparatory career so obscure, that the great and influential of earth found themselves incapable of stooping to foster his worth; but he who was greater and mightier than all, voluntarily assumed that position, not for the purpose of dragging any down, but for raising all up. Kings, princes, and priests; Sadducee, Pharisee, and Essene; all sects, orthodox and het

erodox, may have striven equally to make their respective adherents bow and mould themselves to their own creed; but he, the lowly and loving man of the people, the Son of God, the Son of man, every where and in every condition, would let his mighty heart swell under a prostrate and abused race, that he might raise them above oppression, by imparting to the soul a power and a deliverance which sectarianism and tyranny can never wrest from its grasp. As Christ moved about from scene to scene where the great masses antagonized with penury and wrong, drudging through long periods of unproductive toil, that a few might riot in luxurious ease, and gathering at remote intervals a few gleams of home-joy, while their oppressors wasted their whole lives in riotous delights, it is easy to see how he constantly yearned to be their Redeemer, and to make other redeemers; to spread far and wide ideas and emotions fitted to make men divine; to undergo all privation, peril, and pain; to love where he was hated, and to die that humanity might live, in loyalty to the widest affection and the highest truth. Hence has generation after generation been disinthralled and beautified, blessed with patriots, sages, martyrs, prophets, and apostles, men facing the dungeon, the sword, and the flame, rather than desert their allegiance to the best interests of the greatest number. This was indeed God man

ifest in the flesh a Deity full of justice, wisdom, and benevolence; who passed from heaven to earth, that he might raise earth to heaven; who adopted our shape and carried our sorsows, that he might comprehend us better, compassionate more benignly our infirmities, and vindicate us without defeat when tortured by the evils which in this bad world we cannot escape. It is this intense humanness of the Savior, as well as his divinity, which gives to his religion its ineffable gentleness and irresistible power.

But if the necessity of self-reliance occasioned the thorough and comprehensive development of Christ's sensibilities, it had an equally beneficial influence on his intellect. In some respects, the early training of the Old Testament prophets and