once carried with him both the understanding and the hearts of his hearers; while his noble countenance and deep musical voice gave full effect to his words by arresting both the eye and ear. His sermons, after the earlier years of his ministry, were never written; and the remarkable readiness and facility with which he preached could arise from nothing else but the constant and devoted occupation of his whole heart and mind with the one great object of his life-the saving of immortal souls. He seemed always ready; and whether he had come to his pulpit from the hurry of a journey or the retirement of his closet, could never have been argued from any difference in the depth and fervour of his preaching. A course of labour so various, so complicated, and so obnoxious to the advocates of cold orthodoxy and worldly wisdom, was not likely to be exempted from misrepresentation. The principles of evangelical truth were far more singular, even thirty years ago, than happily they have become since; and in proportion to their rarity was the odium cast upon those who held up the light amidst the surrounding darkness. Mr. Carus Wilson was assailed at various times and in various ways. But the surf-beaten rock abides, while the breakers which dash against it shiver themselves to atoms. Mr. Carus Wilson's works remain as standing monuments of his zeal, and faith, and love to God and man. His name is affectionately cherished by numbers who regard him as their greatest benefactor for time and eternity. The institutions for which he laboured so assiduously and so long remain to this day nurseries for heaven and pillars of the truth; and his memory will long be dear to many who have "owed to him their own selves also," and embalmed by the blessings of the poor, and of those "who had none to help them." THE LORD JESUS: THE FRIEND OF HIS PEOPLE. NOTHING would more tend to sanctify daily life, and to deepen our communion with Him who can only be perceived by faith, than the conviction that God has so ordered it that our earthly circumstances and relations are types and shadows of heavenly realities, and can therein alone find their completion and perfection. Thus, as regards the relations of life, how unsatisfying are the tenderest ties of earthly affection, how imperfect through infirmity, how short-lived through mortality! The bond of married life leads up to God as the Husband of the church (Isaiah liv. 5), and to Christ as the Bridegroom of his saints (Eph. v. 23-33; Rev. xix. 7-9; Matt. xxv. 1-13); as the Brother of the members of the family of God (Psalm xxii. 22, and Heb. ii. 11, 12; Matt. xxviii. 10; Rom. viii. 15-17; Matt. xii. 47-50;) as the Friend of his redeemed ones. This paper, and perhaps one or two others, will be devoted to the consideration of our Blessed Lord in this particular relation, a relation which, in a peculiar manner, meets the wants and ministers to the comfort of the believer. Placed in a world of sin and temptation, depressed by infirmities, beset by difficulties, and in continual need of sympathy, counsel, and aid, the friendship of the Lord Jesus presents a source from which we may derive effectual help and never-failing consolation; only, in order to this, the mind must be directed to the careful survey and adequate appreciation of "the breadth, and length, and depth, and height" of the love of Christ in this particular aspect. Friendship has ever been dilated upon as one of the main solaces and supports of earthly life; but comparatively few have realized, in their own experience, this privilege as described in the words of the wise man :-"There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." (Prov. xviii. 24.) There can be little question but that these words refer to human friendship. In the 22nd verse, and in the 14th verse of the next chapter, a wife is spoken of in like manner as a special blessing for this life, coming directly from God. Thus our thoughts are raised from the creature to the Creator, from the gift to the Giver. We are to acknowledge the relations of life as ordinances of God's appointment; to use and enjoy every thing as from him, and so in every thing to thank him for the bestowal of his gifts, and glorify him in the improvement of them. A friend such as that described by Solomon finds its best illustration in the case of David and Jonathan. David had seven brothers (1 Sam. xvi. 10; xvii. 12.), who manifested towards him only a jealous and spiteful spirit. Though David came to the camp of Israel by his father's directions, to bring a present, and see how his brethren fared, and take their pledge, yet Eliab's, his eldest brother's, anger was kindled against David, and he said, "Why camest thou down hither?... I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart, for thou art come down that thou mightest see the battle." In striking contrast with such feelings, stands out the pure and unselfish love of David's friend. From their very first interview (1 Sam. xviii. 1), "the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." Neither the persecutions of Saul, nor the conviction that David was to supplant him upon the throne of Israel, could lessen Jonathan's affection. As a friend, he could sympathize in the sorrows of his friend, and, what is more difficult, rejoice with him in the prospect of his honour, although that honour was to be at his own cost. No nobler expression of disinterested friendship ever proceeded from the mouth of man than when, with the clearest foresight of the future, Jonathan said to David: "Fear not, for the hand of Saul my father shall not find thee; and thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee." (1 Sam. xviii. 1; xix. 2; xx. 17, 30, 31; xxiii. 16-18.) Such a friend as this seems to come up to the description of Solomon; but such an one is confessedly rare. Job found it so in one way (Job xix. 14, 19, 21), and especially our Blessed Lord (Psalm xxxviii. 11; Matt. xxvi. 56); and even David, in another way, found the uncertainty and insufficiency of human friendship even at its best; for the very act which elevated David to the throne brought death to Jonathan. At the precise moment, when David could have enjoyed without hinderance his friend's affection, that friend had passed away from earth; and the first employment of the new king of Israel was to compose an elegy over Saul and over Jonathan his son. It seems to be under this conviction that Solomon's description of friendship has been generally applied, in a secondary, but still in its deepest meaning, to our Blessed Lord; as men have felt that he is, in very truth, to all who will receive him as such, "the friend that sticketh closer than a brother;" a friend available to all, and unaffected by any changes of outward circumstances or limits of personal existence-" Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." Our right to regard the Lord Jesus in the aspect of a Friend rests upon many express declarations of God's word. In the Book of Canticles the church is thus addressed (ch. v. ver. 1): "I am come into my garden . . . . . eat, O friends; drink, yea drink abundantly, O beloved." Again, verse 16, after surveying the perfections of Christ, the church speaks of her Lord in the same terms: "This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem." Our Lord, when upon earth, sanctioned and confirmed this relation between himself and his people: " Our friend Lazarus sleepeth" (John xi. 11); and more fully: "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth, I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." (John xv. 14, 15.) Receiving, then, this as one of the choicest privileges of the Lord's faithful ones, we may strengthen our faith and quicken our love by considering some of the leading characteristics of the friendship of the Lord Jesus. 1. He is a loving Friend. Love necessarily lies at the very foundation of close and intimate friendship; and when Divine wisdom asserts that there is a friendship which becomes even a stronger tie than brotherhood, the secret of this truth is probably to be found in this, that friendship is the spontaneous outgoing of love towards one of a disposition, of tastes and habits congenial with our own. The family relation is formed for us without any act or choice of our own; happily the intimate union of the same home, in most cases, brings it to pass that the relationship, which duty enjoins us to hold dear and sacred, is fostered and established by mutual affection. Still there are homes in which it is not so. In friendship, however, there must be love, or a connexion which is purely voluntary ceases forthwith to exist. It will be readily granted that love forms a main element in the friendship of the Lord Jesus. That love was manifested in its perfection in his great work of redemption, in leaving the glory which he had with the Father before the world was-in exchanging for our sakes riches for poverty-in emptying himself, and becoming of no reputation for his work on earth-in his lowly birth-his life of sorrowthe contradiction of sinners-the agony and bloody sweat-the cross and passion-which he endured, and endured, as he himself testifies, for his friends. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends." (John xv. 13, 14.) The ancient legends of heathen story give us some specimens, real or imaginary, of deep-seated and loving friendship. Such was the struggle of affection in the breasts of Pylades and Orestes, as to which of the two should have the privilege of laying down his life for the other : "Alter at e vobis, inquit, cadat hostia sacri, Ire jubet Pylades carum moriturus Oresten. Hic negat; inque vicem pugnat uterque mori." (Ovid. ex Pont. iii. 2.) Here may be heard the voice of lone man desiring such a fellowfeeling to cheer and comfort him in his wilderness-life. Here may be traced the longings for an affection which could seldom, if ever, be realized. Here is the ideal of a perfection in friendship which then found a reality of which all before had been but types and foreshadowings, when the Son of God gave up his life upon the cross in deepest love for his friends. We might trace out special instances of the workings of this love in the friendship of Jesus, as manifested towards the twelve specially selected as his companions and friends (John xiii. 1); or towards the favoured family of Bethany, each individual of which shared it to the full (John xi. 5); or towards the disciple whom, with all the sympathies of our nature, Jesus loved above the rest, as nearest to himself, as well in life as in gentle tenderness of heart. (John xiii. 23; xx. 2; xxi. 7, 20.) The study of the gospel is the study of the love of Jesus as the friend of sinners, no longer outcasts, but received into all the privileges of communion with him. The minute details, the exquisite touches and colourings of the unwearying love of this Friend cannot be traced out here, and indeed will be more sweet and edifying to each soul as wrought out by itself in prayerful study of the life of Jesus. Surely it is just such a friend that we need; not one cold, heartless, and unsympathizing, but one whose "love is strong as death;" "a love which many waters cannot quench, neither can the floods drown it." Let us, then, make Jesus our friend. We shall find none such on earth; only be it remembered that friendship implies mutual love: "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine," (Cant. ii. 16 and iv. 3), is the language of the faithful soul. What know we of this interchange and communion of love with our heavenly Friend? Without it any first kindlings of love within us will soon die out, and the unaccepted love of Jesus, meeting with no response, will return into his own full heart. 2. He is a compassionate Friend. Compassion is the specific form which love must take when manifested by a perfect being towards one full of imperfection. Love, in its very highest degree, is exercised by each Person of the Blessed Trinity towards each other. "God is love." Such love consists in closest unity; "I and my Father are one," (John x. 30, and xvii. 21); and in supreme delight. The Son, as the Divine Wisdom, says of himself, "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before his works of old. Then was I by him as one brought up with him; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him," (Prov. viii, 22-30,) and perhaps in other exercises which we cannot presume to investigate. Love, too, in a high degree animates the breasts of the angelic hosts towards each other, meeting as they do on a common ground of unfallen and unblemished, although of created, excellence. But when we come to speak of mutual love and friendship between the sinless and the sinful, the Almighty and the helpless, the eternal Son of God and the fallen children of Adam, there is here no common ground for the exercise of love on equal terms, and we necessarily shrink from friendship with Jesus through a sense of our own utter unworthiness. "David said unto Saul, Who am I, or what is my life, or my father's family in Israel, that I should be son-in-law to the king?" (1 Sam. xviii. 18.) We should expect little comfort from friendship with one altogether above us here in birth, intellect, and outward circumstances, although we might hope in some measure to conform to his habits, and to satisfy his requirements; but how can we enter into this relation with the Lord of all-the pure-the perfect-the heart-searching Son of God? We need not fear; here comes in the compassion of Jesus, as the friend of sinners. We know the condescending grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in this respect, that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor; and as the highpriest, taken from among men, could have compassion upon the ignorant, and on them that were out of the way, for that he himself also was compassed with infirmity, so in Jesus we have One made in all things like unto his brethren, that he might be merciful as well as faithful, and capable of being touched with a feeling of our infirmities, inasmuch as he was in all points tempted |