divine and human consciousness, independent of all other sources. It would have been the height of arrogance in any man to assume such a relation to humanity, to style himself absolutely MAN. But He, to whom it was natural thus to style himself, indicated thereby his elevation above all other sons of men the Son of God in the Son of Man."

The time arrives when the Redeemer should manifest himself more openly to the world: he emerges from the artisan's shop, through a long and varied course of experience, rises naturally into the sphere of beneficent action, and his public life has commenced. He instructs, reproves, commands, and exercises all the functions connected with our social condition. The cares of authority, the fatigues of power, and all the yearnings of charity divine, were exemplified in him. In solitude he has garnered every sentiment that is pure, and in practical efforts to do good he has rendered himself skilful in the use of all the means adapted powerfully to move mankind. Filial love dwells in his bosom, intimately blended with chaste friendship and generous compassion. He shares in the joys and griefs of all around him; mingles in the festivity at Cana, and anon passes forty days in the desert without either companion or food. Vicissitudes of joy and grief, complacency and indignation, sweep over him as over other men. Calumny, treason, and dark ingratitude pursue him at one moment, and boisterous applause hails him the next. Envious priests spread vengeful nets in his private paths, and state tyrants plot more publicly to destroy his life. He experienced every form of favor and hate, serene confidences as well as sombre despair, and in his own destiny wrought out the destinies of all our race. Truly did he carry our sorrows and experience our griefs; and it was this practical knowledge that gave him unlimited popular power. He addressed no peculiar or limited order of feelings, but united in his discourse all the qualities and emotions which are spontaneous in every order and condition of mankind. His audience was coëxtensive with humanity itself, because his experience included the

experiences of all, and as his heart thrilled and responded to their own, he verified in the highest sense the saying that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin."

Hence the mercifulness and wisdom of Christ's incarnation; he must assume the form, and experience the condition, of a servant, that he might bind our hearts to eternal life with the trembling fibres of his own. Even for those fledged souls who

desire to soar upon the wings of devout meditation, it is well, from time to time, Antæus like, to rest upon this grosser sphere; it was infinitely more necessary that he who came to elevate us from earth to heaven should absorb into his own person, and destroy the oppressions of our present state, that we might have both space and power to rise. This he did. He became the son and companion of the common people; was born in a town proverbially depraved; of a nation preeminently distinguished for superstition, national pride, bigoted self-esteem, and contempt towards all other men. He chose to arise "in an age of singular corruption, when the substance of religion had faded out from the mind of its anointed ministers, and sin had spread wide among a people turbulent, oppressed, and downtrodden; a man ridiculed for his lack of knowledge, in this nation of forms, of hypocritical priests and corrupt people, falls back on simple morality, simple religion, unites in himself the sublimest precepts and divinest practices; thus more than realizing the dream of prophets and sages; rises free from all prejudice of his age, nation, or sect; gives free range to the spirit of God in his breast; sets aside the law, sacred and time-honored as it was its forms, its sacrifice, its temple, and its priests; puts away the doctors of the law, subtle, learned, irrefragable, and pours out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as Heaven, and true as God. The philosophers, the poets, the prophets, the Rabbis he rises above them all. Christ was greater, more popular as a teacher, than those who preceded him, because he was more manly, imbued with more natural dignity and grace. He habitually spoke as a being related to all whom he addressed. He never arrogated

to himself superiority over the humblest, and a narrower sphere than the whole world for the exercise of his benevolent regards seems never to have entered his thoughts. This native tone of grandeur and love which pervaded his teaching was duly impressed on his hearers. He breathed more energy into them than did common teachers, because he had more to breathe; and they in turn were inclined to manifest esteem for him proportioned to the natural enthusiasm he kindled in their souls. The multitudes pressed upon his steps, published his glory, and diffused his fame all around. Until corrupted by priestcraft, and suborned by aristocratic power, the common people spread their garments, and cast palm branches in the triumphal way of the great Teacher whom they adored.

Secondly, Christ not only shared our human condition in all its wants, but he profoundly respected it; and this was another secret of his great popular power. He recognized the fact that, whatever may be the feebleness of man and his degree of corruption, the immortal principle within, which reminds him of his origin and destiny, never loses its empire upon the soul; a deathless fibre forever remains in the heart to vibrate to the influence of true religion. Connected with this is another fact of great importance: it is, that the common people are competent to appreciate the profoundest truths that any teacher can distinctly state. Not many mighty, not many noble, in this world's estimation, become the disciples of Christ, because they rely more on mind, the faculty of pride, than on love, the faculty of devotion. In the day of judgment, many a peasant will appear more imbued with faith and light than the doctors of the law, because affection sees farther than intellect; and when the soul yields to her mild but potent influence, truth accompanies her flight, as an eagle seizes her little ones upon her back and bears them to the sun.

It is the plain, practical, and yet profound common sense of the masses, that saves the world when statesmen and men of genius fail in their mission, and betray, with the cause of God, the cause of humanity. It is reason in the toil-worn and

suffering which counteracts ambitious diplomacy and the vagaries of inexperienced abstractionists. It is the people, the great masses, between whom and Jesus were such mutual sentiments of esteem, who in every age receive from God the instinctive wisdom necessary to resist the treason against popular rights which the masters of the world employ all their resources to execute. This, the heroical aspect of human nature, Christ respected, as he did every thing interesting and great in man. Those profound aspirations, latent in every mind, and which the thoughtful keenly feel compelling them to live in the past as well as the future, Christ did not despise; on the contrary, he incurred the deepest opprobrium, and suffered the greatest sacrifice, that he might bestow on our race a religion adapted to educe all our faculties, and impart to them the divinest growth. He would deliver from all oppression, and conduct us out of the regions of contracted perception into the unbounded domains of enjoyment and thought. The soul pants for the unlimited and undying with a thirst which human objects cannot assuage. From the beginning, as Novalis remarks, "every science had its god, which was its end. Philosophers sought the unlimited, though they found only what is limited. They sought infinity, though they found only things." But Christ brought to earth the elements of a nobler science, free for all, and opened for every devotee instructions the most satisfying and sublime. They were in harmony with the deepest wants of the human heart and intellect; with the idea of perfection which slumbers there, and which, by his teachings, is awakened to reality and consciousness. Man every where requires not merely intellectual excitement and luxury, but an adoration, which humbles, sanctifies, and regenerates his higher powers: this was the prerogative of Him who is higher than all the sources of mere genius, and who came to the weary and heavy-laden people that they might freely drink of the waters of life. His words were spirit and vivifying power to the listening multitudes. He profoundly respected every vestige of God in man, feeling that the feeblest intellectual life, of which

obedience is the law, is but a participation of the supreme reason, a full consent to the testimony which Jehovah has himself rendered to his creature. All created intelligences are animated by rays of the eternal intelligence, that divine reason which communicates itself through the words of Christ, and is the cause of that divine life of which faith is the essential mode. The mortal combat of the flesh against the spirit goes ever on, and Christianity comes with its mighty energies to emancipate, enlighten, and transform the soul-a task effectually accomplished because the agency employed is but the assemblage and manifestation of all the truths useful to man.

They who do not profoundly respect the worth and capabilities of the common people, are always themselves unworthy of being confided in. The mind of the masses may often be quite uncultivated, but its instincts are always sure, and they never long adhere to leaders, or eulogize talents, which are not destined to enduring fame. The multitude, in its ignorance, is wiser than philosophers crippled and perverted by factitious learning, because it will not shut its eyes to that light, truly natural, which shines in the midst of the world, and enlightens all who are sincere. Who gave the signal of revolt against Jehovah, and provoked those calamities, the record of which is so frightful? Kings, and their courtiers, the leaders of schools, and the priests of a party. Such have ever been the instruments of supreme selfishness, and the chief destroyers of popular rights. They have always persecuted and oppressed humanity, as, under the false and lying protection of hypocritical sovereignty, they betrayed Christ to their pretorium, crowned him with a diadem of thorns, and, after having rendered his sacred head gory with their blows, knelt before him, exclaiming, We salute thee, King of the Jews!

On the contrary, who pressed around Christ, on the mountains, by the sea, and in desert places, to listen with profound respect to his instructions? The people. Who wished to choose him for ruler supreme, in the greatest transports of popular admiration crying, “Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh in