enclosed between the human spirit at the centre, and the Divine Spirit embracing the circumference: itself, no doubt, quite sacred, as the methodised action of God; but leaving a yet more sacred element, in the moral relations of responsible minds, in the drama of temptation, fall, or victory; in the communion of personal affection; and the final harmony of the finite will with the Infinite Perfection.

IX.

That the Christ ought to suffer.

LUKE xxiv. 26.

"Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?"

IF the Man of Sorrows himself could thus plead the propriety of his own sufferings, it was not for others to make complaint of their severity. Yet long after Jesus, whose mind seems at one time to have been flushed by brilliant anticipations, had resigned himself not only to the general conception of a despised and afflicted Christ, but to the personal realization of the contempt and anguish in his own life, his countrymen and even his immediate followers turned away from the thought in scorn and anger. Such a notion appeared a plain denial of the whole design of the heavenly kingdom,— a direct contradiction of the meaning comprised in Messiah's name. He was no other than the representative of the nation's splendour, so long deferred ;— the symbol of their greatness; the heroic image of all the scattered glories of their history; and how could

such an office be fulfilled unless he reversed, instead of repeating, in his own person, the woes and depression of his people? He was to be, moreover, the vicegerent of God upon the earth; the agent of his worldadministration, and the awful emblem of his character and presence among men; and how could this be, unless he were exempted from the infirmities which are human, not divine, and were manifested in a majesty incapable of humiliation, and unclouded by grief? whether as the type of the national grandeur, or as the vicarious regent of heaven, it became him not to suffer, but rather to enter into his glory.

Experience has taught us that such as Messiah was expected to be, he by no means actually was; that the poor design of his advent, drawn by the lofty but narrow genius of his people, was disappointed and infinitely surpassed; that the essential idea of his office, that is, the idea registered in the purposes of heaven, proved quite different from the historical conception, long cherished in the oriental regions of the earth. We can trace the mode in which the great reality of God developed itself from the paltry imagination of men. And specially we know, that the Christ was no national hero, but the grace and glory of humanity; the ideal, not of Hebraism and its history, but of man and his existence; the reflection, not of the avenging Jehovah of Palestine, but of the gracious Father of the mortal and immortal worlds.

Yet it

may be doubted whether, with all the advantage of later experience, we should antecedently have inclined, more than the Hebrews, to choose a representative, outwardly clad in the garment of poverty and shame, and inwardly with the spirit of grief. If we had been left to frame for ourselves an emblem of whatever is divine within and above our human life, to invent a mind that should exhibit the perfection of man and give hints of the spirit of God, one of the first thoughts would have been, "Such a one must be lifted above the infirmities and vulgar conflicts of our being: he must live in the grandeur and serenity of God, who ever acts and never suffers; or if drawn at all within the limits of sorrow, must be untouched by the meaner and more shameful ills that flesh is heir to." To our coarse and superficial judgment dignity and happiness are essential to perfect being; human tradition fills its Paradise with sweets; poetry envelops its heroes with glory; religion thrills its heaven with transport;-dreams, every one, of anxiety and appetite, having greatness of scale without sanctity of spirit. Singularly did Providence deviate from this, when he took up that Galilean Son of Man, and said, "Behold my likeness and your ideal; my holy one that cannot see corruption; the mediator who shall win the love of earth and carry it to heaven; the image of God, and the Messiah of humanity." In the surprise and originality of such announcement, in the new direction which it gives to our quest of the great

and divine, together with the entire assent which our deeper and purified affections subsequently give to it, consists its power as a Revelation. If it simply answered to our own earlier conceptions, and realized our poor imaginings, it would but repeat an influence already spent. If it failed to reach at last our inmost conscience and find therein a deep' Amen,' it would unlock no fresh spring of our nature, and reveal nothing to our spiritual apprehension. Repugnance at the beginning, and in the end the deep response of emphatic consent, constitute the characteristic reception of every true revelation to mankind. How well and wisely our natural anticipations have been reversed, it is now easy to show in retrospect; how truly suitable it was to the Messiah of heaven,-the representative of what is divine in the life of man and the intelligible. nature of God, to "suffer these things, and to enter into his glory."

It was needful for the Christ to suffer, if he were to be the emblem of the life of man in its most sacred form. Otherwise indeed his lot would not have been truly human, and would have attracted, not the fruitful sympathy, but the barren longings of struggling men. His exemption from grief would have removed no disciple's sorrows; his endurance has consecrated them all; has shown how much higher may be the spirit that can glorify them, than the skill that can escape them; has revealed to us how small a part of them may