is of no great account in or out of Christendom, have ever cast reflections on the moral character of Jesus. The simple Humanitarians have been profoundly reverential towards him. Theodore Parker speaks of him again and again in a way that might satisfy any believer who appreciated qualities, and prized the solid elements of character more than the accidents of rank or the prestige of office. We have ourselves more than once heard Mr. Parker speak of Jesus in tones of the deepest enthusiasm, with trembling voice and moistening eyes; and probably he has done more to impress upon the mind of his generation a conviction of Christ's real greatness than the most eloquent "Orthodox" preacher or writer has done. Could we take the voice of Christendom's extreme " Left" to-day-could we get the judgment of the "infidels," the "come-outers," the " Deists," the "socialists," the "unbelievers" of every stamp, we should undoubtedly find Jesus enthroned in the most sacred niche of their reverence, as the representative of their ideal of manliness in its elements.

What shall we make of this universal sentiment of respect, of this universal resemblance of copy, if we do not regard it as the stamp of a very strong personality. There is more agreement in the images of Jesus that hang up in our minds than there is in the likenesses painted by the evangelists. We know him probably simply as a historical character better than they could know him; for we have the advantage of standing at a better focal distance. Small men are best understood by their contemporaries, as a statuette is best appreciated by those who stand nearest it. But as Mt. Blanc can only be seen in its grandeur some sixty miles away, so the great person must be adjusted to the eye of posterity. He grows larger as the generations move away from him and follow the fall of his shadow across the centuries. A great many neighbors, if they catch any glimpse of his greatness, are overpowered and bewildered by it. Not being able to comprehend and analyze the character, to seize its elements or place it in its relations, they simply glorify it in their imaginations, and express their sense of its majesty by a profusion of myths, which transform the mortal shape into some cloudy spectre of the Brocken. The charming legends of the early biographers - the virgin overshadowed and embraced by the Holy Spirit; the midnight birth in the stable near the inn; the angels making the air rustle with the movement of their wings, and the starlight vocal with their songs; the shep

herds startled from their slumbers on the plain by the great blaze of light and the sound of the celestial message; the meteor throwing its trail of splendor over sleeping cities and across leagues of dim and perilous desert; the Magi with their costly robes and jeweled turbans, their stately forms and flowing beards, their troops of sable attendants and their strings of camels bearing wondrous treasures, wending their tedious way from distant Arabia to lay their gifts at the feet of the little child,― were enthusiastic attempts to picture a glory which could not be accurately described. It is only as these gorgeous cloud-paintings fade and disappear that the eyes of men are permitted to measure the figure they so fantastically but adoringly misrepresented.

To say that Jesus was a complete and exhaustive expression of human nature in its whole varied and vast possibility of excellence, -to say that he carried every spiritual faculty to its very last point of consummate beauty and power, would be saying a great deal more than he allowed his contemporaries to say in his presence. To say that he introduced into the world an original type of human character, which may well be regarded by us of to-day as the final and perfect type of manliness,-to say that he demonstrated the worth of a new order of capacities, opened for daily use a new magazine of powers, set in action a new class of principles, glorified a new stamp of goodness, established a new classification of virtues, fixed a new standard of duty, and thus inaugurated a new era in the life interior and exterior of the individual, reörganized indirectly the elements of society, reconstructed virtually the constitution of the state, infused a regenerating spirit into the relations which man sustains to man,-to say this is to say no more, perhaps, than is justified by the common sentiment of the Christian world comprehensively taken.

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Who can fail to see in Jesus a certain cosmopolitan character, such as marks the man of the world in the highest sense? child of the East, he has traits that are not Oriental; of Jewish extraction, he is something more than a Jew; a descendant of Abraham, the blood of Abraham is not red in his veins; a pupil of Moses, the laws of Moses fall from him like outworn garments. He takes on the lineaments of every nation, yet is ever himself. He has been Anglicised, Germanized, Italianized, Gallicized, still his personality remains unaffected by change of climate. We have his face in Greek outline, in French, but the soul looks as well out

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

individual men, as is so frequently the case. He does not spread 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. He 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

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 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,

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