of one countenance as out of another. His moral nature is catholic. He can discern and appreciate goodness in all races and in all classes of men. His sympathies were broad. The Jew was the very type of an aristocrat. He regarded himself as a sacred person set apart from all the rest of the world; the uncircumcised in his eyes were no better than dogs; he could have no dealings with misbelievers, save with the sword. Hate with him was a sacred virtue. Greedier he was than an American; for he wanted to annex all the empires of the earth to his holy city. The Greek, too, was narrow, counting all foreign nations indiscriminately as outside barbarians. The Roman was exclusive. Modern history exhibits to us most conspicuously the antipathies of race. It is deemed unreasonable that Americans should be expected to make common cause with Hungarians or Italians, that white men should interest themselves in black men. The most comprehensive affection known to most men is patriotism. "Our country, however bounded," was received as a grand sentiment here a few years ago. Every nation has its Samaritans; every sect its infidels; every order its pariah caste, upon whom it looks with all the contempt felt by the Pharisee for the Publican. But the heart of Jesus was broad enough to take in every species of man he met. He held intercourse freely with the neighboring heathen, whom his countrymen held to be accursed; the Canaanite woman, daughter of a race abhorred, received his benediction; the chief personage in one of his loveliest parables was a Samaritan. From the order of Publicans he chose a disciple. The harlot was not an object of scorn to him; nor was the leper an object of disgust; nor did he hide his face from the man possessed with devils. To him all men were brothers; and the more they needed his assistance the more they were his brothers. There is no evidence that he recognized at all the common distinctions universally and almost instinctively recognized between man and man. The world has enjoyed eighteen hundred years of instruction in the school of Jesus; and yet we find no tribe, no class, no individual—yes, no individual philanthropist whose sympathies are at once so quick and so broad as his. They all have their pet bigotries - he alone is human.

And yet, as Robertson in one of his sermons finely remarks, the private sympathies of the man are not lost in this comprehensiveness, nor is any sacrifice made of personal affectionateness to general humanity. His love for all men does not kill his love for

He does not spread

individual men, as is so frequently the case. the sheeny vans of a sentimental philanthropy, and soar triumphantly over the groaning earth, through a rarified atmosphere of abstract principles, intent on conveying moral pocket-handkerchiefs to the natives of Timbuctoo, and earnest to bear a message to the Indians of Bengal, having meanwhile no attention to bestow on the individual native of Timbuctoo shrinking a fugitive in his shed, or the individual savage lurking round the corner. Jesus had strong personal friendships. There was at least one beloved disciple. In the little village of Bethany stood a house at which he was a frequent and cherished visitor; and in that house lived a Mary whose name is very tenderly associated with his own, and whose connection with him was probably something closer and fonder than one of discipleship. Cases of misery came to him one by one, and one by one he ministered to them. He pities persons; thus showing that his nature was deep as well as broad. For Humanity is in individual men and women. He who sees it not

there to love it, surely will not see it in masses of men and women; nor, on the other hand, can one see it there without seeing it also wherever men and women are found.

In this character we meet with other singular combinations of qualities. He is reformer and regenerator; he is devotee and philanthropist; he is friend of the simple and teacher of the wise; he is poet and moralist; uniting a Greek's love of natural beauty to the holy conscience of a Hebrew; he can bear without shrinking and work without faltering; he can scorch hypocrites with his flaming invective, and pray on the cross that his murderers may be forgiven. He loves retirement and meditation; he knows the blessing of solitude; he can pass nights in devotion; and yet from the very Mount of Transfiguration he enters the crowd that surrounds the lunatic and does a deed of humblest compassion.

"He prayeth best who loveth best

All things, both great and small"—

Is as profoundly as it is sweetly true. But so to understand prayer and so to understand love that aspiration and affection, devoutness and duty, work and worship shall increase and fulfil each other, is given only to the divinest spirits. Tempest and calm, the tornado and the breeze, both had their home in this capacious heart. can denounce evil and evil-doers; he can drag a sin out into the light, convict it, shame it, crucify it with a stern justice that

He

hearkens to no apologies and admits no defence. But penitence melts him in a moment; for the weak, the unnurtured, the misled, the betrayed, his pity is boundless. He kneels down and waters with his tears the affections which cruel men have trodden under foot. In the contrite all error and turpitude are forgotten; he sees only a child of God needing mercy and forgiveness now. His endeavor was to open the hidden springs of the heavenly life which gurgle far down in every human heart, now shattering by earthquake force the mountain of worldliness that hid them from view, now by the copious rain of his compassion enticing them to bubble up through the arid sands of the desolate and withered life. And this is the reason why "the vilest of the vile came to him as the babe comes to its mother, fearing no rebuke, expecting indeed the milk of an unprecedented consolation."

It is charged against Jesus that he was violent, denunciatory and bitter in his speech. And it is true enough, he did use strong language. Dr. Channing translated the "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees," into "Alas for you." But that terrible indignation is not thus to be turned into a sigh. It is invective, and pointed invective - no declamation against abstract perfidy, but an overwhelming rebuke of personal guilt. But observe, the wrath is holy. Jesus never scorns, nor speaks a word that might make the wickedest feel himself despised. Like a volcanic eruption, his anger breaks up the crust of earthiness only to make the soil more quick and fertile. Pure moral indignation never injures. Jesus spoke the truth in love. But his love was comprehensive, deep, intense. It was the passion of a great soul that took into itself the sorrows of a world and longed to lift the heavy burdens of sin and error from its weary heart. Such a love sees the mischief and feels the enormity of wickedness as no ordinary nature can. The heartier its admiration of good, the heartier its abhorrence of evil. It uses no sweet, syruppy sentences in describing guilt; but in the interest of those whom it harms and wrongs, breaks forth against it in speech proportionate to its feeling. Merely amiable natures can not judge the words of Jesus, for they can not appreciate his emotions. Only they who hate sin as he did can speak of it as he did. Only they who love men as he did have a right to blast them 80 can blast them so with the lightning which is nothing more at last than the genial, regenerating electricity in its most concentrated form. Instead of imputing the invective of Jesus, therefore,

to a passionate or fanatical temper, we deem it a mark of his moral earnestness and elevation, seeing how free it was from private animosity. True, we can not read those words of his; but that may be for the reason that we can not feel as much as he did either towards good or towards evil.

The crowning distinction of Jesus was, however, that he exalted the feminine elements of character to their due rank in the estimation of men. He was himself a man and a woman. Is his manliness questioned? If it is still regarded as manly to triumph over passion by sheer force of a consecrated will,-to choose the hardest path, the crookedest, the thorniest, and to walk in it firmly with bleeding feet to the end; if it is still considered manly to maintain one's personal honor amid all inducements to falter or palter; if still it is reckoned manly to bear witness to the Truth, through uproar and flattery, and sternly to hold one's purpose though foes grow furious and friends become faint; if it is yet allowed to be a manly thing to let rich supporters go rather than compromise a principle, and calmly to choose a lonely and bitter death in preference to an ignominiously successful career; if still we concede Truth to be a manly quality, or Justice, or Fortitude, or Self-Possession, which lets fall no complaint amid toil and suffering; if the power to bear hunger and thirst and fatigue is to be counted a manly possession, then we must grant that Jesus was manly, and after that old heroic style of which we see few imitators now. An iron man we might almost call him; a disciple of the ancient Zeno, trained in a school of indifference, hardened against emotion, and toughened against every accident of Fortune. But see now this iron man melting into tears by the grave of his friend; hear his wail over Jerusalem (how like a mother's!); listen to his conversation at the parting supper with his disciples, so full of tender compassion; behold him dropping the big tears of a solitary spirit upon Gethsemane's hallowed dust; look at him as he bends yearningly over his drowsy followers who could not watch with him one hour; he murmurs gentle charities as he staggers beneath the cross, and from its cruel elevation drops benedictions down. This certainly is no stoic. This is a woman. Here we have a powerful illustration of the womanly virtues as elements of greatness in personal character, as elements of strength in the organization of society. Our attention is called to the fact that what people contemptuously speak of as "passive virtues" really display the

highest form of activity; that one of the ruling forces in the world is charity. The grandeur of self-renunciation, the sublimity of meekness, the loftiness of obedience, the heroism of patience, and the all-subduing might of gentleness Jesus taught and manifested. He was a living demonstration of the power of sympathy to disarm violence, allay passion, convert unbelief, and reclaim error.

The theology of Christendom is a standing testimony to the prominence of these feminine attributes in the character of Jesus. They have reflected themselves in its whole conception of the Godhead. The Christian's God has always had a tender, womanly side. A virgin who was at the same time a mother shared his throne, and mingled an ineffable sweetness with the principles that ruled the earth. Was the deification of Jesus anything more than the deification of qualities which Jesus displayed? In saying that Jesus was God, was anything else meant than that God was like Jesus? In worshiping Jesus, had men any other thought than to worship the attributes he exhibited sanctity, pity, mercy, benevolence? What was the Christian Trinity but an attempt to engraft on the awful Hebrew Divinity the qualities Jesus had made them feel were Supreme? The Son was Deity coming down in human form, sharing human infirmities, bearing human burdens, soothing human sorrows, lifting the dead from human graves. The Spirit was Deity working in the hearts of the grieving and the lonely, counselling the erring, warning the tempted, pleading with the bad. The Virgin was Deity discharging towards the womanly half of humanity especially those more delicate offices of consolation which Jesus in two or three instances is reported as having fulfilled while living on the earth.

A new and original type of character this, to be glorified among men and gods, a character which commands instant respect, but which no age would be likely to throw out as its ideal type of humanity. The qualities held practically in highest esteem are now as heretofore the harsher qualities that rule by conquest. The military commander is still the model man. We do not care so much to see him dressed in regimentals and marching at the head of his brigade,we rather prefer to see him in the dress of an explorer, pioneer, discoverer; but we honor in him the same attributes that we honor in the soldier - the knowledge to direct affairs, and the energy to subdue men. The popular idols are even yet made of muscle and brains. Straws show which way the wind