The

What is called Christian love is, in many cases, a very shadowy, unsubstantial thing: gratitude to a deliverer, simply as such-not affection for one's truest, tenderest Friend. Christ is chosen often as the least of two evils; as, at least, better than the wrath and curse of God. The soul feels to Him as the traveller feels to the great rock in the weary land—not as the living child feels to its living mother, or as the living angel feels when entranced in the vision of God. gallop over the plain, the saunter under the palm-trees, sweet dalliance in garden or grove, would be infinitely more delightful; but then the fierce wind, the blinding sand, the burning sun, are unendurable, and the shadow of the rock a kindly shelter; the best thing in the circumstances, not the best possible. Ah, my brother, Christ does not want you to love Him as you love a sheltering rock, but, as you love a MAN-a living soul like yourself. He wants you to love Him as your Chief Good, as the noblest Friend your heart can love, the grandest Being your spirit can know. O Thou Christ of the living God, teach us to love Thee, not simply as a short and easy method of deliverance, not as a convenient way of escaping the terrible pains of hell; but as our Brother, our Fellow, our Friend, our one Supreme Good, in whom alone. everlasting happiness and peace can be found!

And now, consider what a privilege, what an honour thou hast in being permitted to love the invisible Jesus. Thou art more blessed than the disciples. They had the less blessing of loving One they had seen; thou hast the greater blessing of loving One thou hast not seen. Thy love to be Christian must be spiritual, through and through. Consider this strange fact: the

CHRIST NOT KNOWN OR LOVED AFTER THE FLESH. 347

Gospels give no hint as to Christ's personal appearance, the colour of His eyes or hair, the cast of His features, the form of His head, the fashion of His body. Christ, as to physique, is to us an absolutely unknown being; but as to spirit, is the best known of all beings. While physical descriptions help us to understand other persons, they would mar our conception of Him. In ordinary cases a good portrait is better than a big biography. Sokrates would be to us much less real did we lack the picture of the squab, ill-shaped, pugnosed, pugnacious little man-inquiring, questioning, punning, puzzling in the streets of Athens. How much better do we understand Dante, when we study his sad yet severe, worn yet ethereal face, with its keen, clear-cut features, yet look as of infinite remoteness from the world men most realize? or Luther, when we examine the lines of his heavy and broad, yet massive and mighty countenance, so full of laughter or tears, the loud indignation of the controversialist, and the inflexible resolution that could stand solitary against the world? or Oliver Cromwell, in whose large eyes, seamed brow, cheek furrowed and warty, and strong mouth, the mystic and soldier, the man of iron will and silent counsel, stands expressed? But so little has the outer man to do with Christ, so little is the face capable of expressing what was within, so impossible is it to human flesh or form to reveal the grace and truth that were in Him, that we should feel a description or a portrait an injury to our faith, a depravation to our spiritual ideal. There is, indeed, no one who has been so often painted, so idealized and served by human art. Everything that painting or sculpture can do to glorify its object has been done, that it may

fitly express its conception of Christ. Men of highest spirit and purest devoutness, like Fra Bartolomeo, who painted out of truest piety; men whose art was religion, and whose works are joys for ever, like Raphael and Angelo, Titian and Rubens, have exhausted the resources of their genius and their art in giving form and colour to their ideal of Him who was at once "the Man of Sorrows" and the "altogether lovely" Son of Man. Go where we may in search of the noblest creations in art, His is the image that ever meets us, His the form in which the painter has striven to embody his sublimest dream. But whatever the æsthetic faculty may have felt in the presence of these creatures of the imagination, the spiritual has never been satisfied. From the purest and most perfect picture of the Christ, in infancy or manhood, in sorrow or in glory, it has turned away, pained, perhaps offended, saying, "My Master is lovelier and more Divine than these. Pencil cannot delineate His perfection; colour cannot express His beauty. The human form must be transfigured and transformed into the Divine ere it can tell the glory and the grace of the indwelling Christ." We would not then, O Christ, wish Thee to become visible-One we could see with our fleshly eyes, and handle with our fleshly hands. Remain Thou within the veil; there Thou art worthier to be loved; and while here we abide we shall enjoy the blessedness of those who, because they have not seen, have only the more believed and the better loved.

THE CITY OF GOD.

"Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God." --Psalm lxxxvii. 3.

I.

1. AUGUSTINE, the greatest and the noblest of the Western Fathers, lived when the Empire of Rome was far gone in decay. The growth of luxury, the deterioration of morals, the decline of the old Roman virtues before an almost oriental licence, wasted her energies within, while the barbarian hosts assailed her in quick succession from without. Those inner and outer forces of decay were stronger than the strength of the Cæsars. Though the religion of Christ had poured new blood into the state, yet it could only prolong the days, could not restore the exhausted energies of the immense body politic. The Cross had indeed given the crown to Constantine, but it could not secure their authority and dominions to his successors. And so the Romans, enfeebled throughout, were forced to look on in almost utter helplessness while the barbarians spoiled their cities, made their most fertile plains desolate, seized and held their splendid colonies, ravished their hearths, and defiled their altars. Amid the universal misery and impotence, so sternly and terribly brought home to every mind by the storm and sack of the Eternal City herself, many a noble heart

recalled for comfort the ancient valour and fame, the days of Roman heroism, when the old gods reigned. and made the state they loved victor and queen of the world. They thought of the strong patriotism that had driven the Tarquins forth and held the Tarquins out, of the spirit that could face unconquered the swift victories of Hannibal; of the Scipio who saved Rome by assailing her enemy in his home; of the Cato, so stern in spirit and mighty in arms, who had destroyed more towns than he had spent days in Spain, and then they said :—

"If we had the old faith we should have the old days. If Rome had her ancient gods she would regain her ancient majesty. This Christian faith has many mysteries; one God who is yet conceived to be Three, springs from a Man, yet speaks of Him as God. But these mysteries are small things, might be believed were it not that this new Faith has been so fatal to our city. Ever since the Cross floated from the Capitol disaster and defeat have come to Rome. We hate this new religion, not for its doctrines, but for its action on our state; its life has worked our death. We will not believe that what has caused so many calamities is Divine. Our divinities are those of our fathers, the men of our heroic and glorious past."

Augustine stood forward to defend the Faith so gravely assailed. His apology was twofold-concerned at once fact and idea. As to the matter of fact, Rome, he pleaded, was dying of her pagan vices. They had weakened her, stolen away her courage, dimmed her ancient honour, poisoned all the springs But the new Faith had created new virtues, which were working like a healing and

of liberty and action.