Would their zeal abate if the harm were less conspicuous? Would it quit the field, if the forces arrayed against it were more than it could meet? On the contrary they are held by an unconditional necessity which brooks no measurement and leaves no option, and which is strained, if possible, to higher intensity, if it sets them apart, and is concentrated in them alone. They are charged with an infinite commission, and its seeming impossibility does not damp, but fire them. Theirs is an act of faith; and it does not wait for a little mountain before it dares to say, "Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea!" How then can this be? Is it mere madness that seizes on these tense and stormy wills, and spends them in a wild crusade? Must reason desert the noblest spirits, ere they can enter on the greatness of their life? Rather do they take the altitude of a higher reason, and identify themselves with a "wisdom of God" which passes for foolishness only with calculating men. They are assured of a Divine suffrage which brings to nought the most overwhelming register of human votes against them; and foresee that, however they may be baffled here and there, the everlasting stars in their courses will fight for them, and that the most reluctant powers must come round to them at last. This imperishable conviction, that if a thing is right, it will have to be, is the underlying rock on which all great character is built; and it carries in it a trust, implicit, if not explicit, in the moral

government of the world. This indeed it is which alone can render absolute the rules of righteousness, can save them from the gnawing corrosion of exceptions, and raise them from flexible convictions of men into a law secured on the eternal Holiness. Who can suppose that the mere expediency of maintaining a general maxim intact, whether it applies or not, would avail to silence interest and passion, when no other answer can be given to their plea? If the strength of a chain is that of its weakest link, the first flaw which, in a rule of right, refuses the strain put upon it, scatters the whole structure into ruin. Intellectual integrity, moral tenacity, spiritual elevation, all alike involve, in their higher degrees, an unconditional trust in the everlasting sway of divine wisdom, justice, and love. Than the ability indeed to carry this feeling through every change, to hide it in the stricken heart, to fold it round the shivering lot, to drop it as an anchor and a stay into the tempestuous sea, to subsist wholly by it and in it, be appearances what they may, there can hardly be a more genuine mark of a grand and lovely nature. This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ: self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness, hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish; but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All

Good; these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages; and could these be but a delusive show of perfection, unrelated to the system of eternal verity, human life would sink at once from the sublimest to the most pitiable of things, the inflation of a romance, the tears and raptures of a dream; and it were then the highest wisdom, as well as the most passionate despair, to curse God and die. The very suspicion should be repelled as a temptation. Let us simply trust the good man's trusts, and fling ourselves into the Everlasting Arms that have cherished and protected the faithful and saintly of all times. Abide with us, O Lord, and breathe into us the peace of hearts stayed upon Thee!

II.

How sayest thou, 'Shew us the Father'?

JOHN xiv. 8, 9.

"Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?"

THE world has been less dull of heart than Philip; and, ever since the ministry in Galilee, has well known whither to turn for the true moral image of the Father. Men would have realized these words, though they had never been spoken: it was impossible for them to be visited by the influence of a soul like Christ's without its flush of beauty suffusing their thought of God ever after. Between the highest human mind and the Divine, there lies nothing, to our apprehension, but a blank vastness,―mere metaphysical dimension,-known to our thought, but foreshortened and annihilated to the eye; like the deeps, immeasurable yet viewless, that separate the moving planet from the unchanging constellations over which it glides. We know that the interval is there; yet the nearer light gives its height

to the heaven above us, no less than the more remote: both are referred to the same infinite sphere: both, whether in our system or beyond it, belong to the divine stars, and glorify the midnight of this world; and the gaze that follows the parallax of the one alone becomes conscious of the other's steady and eternal light. Looking along the line of Christ's life and spirit, we see the moral firmament opened, and gain insight into the dwelling-place of God. Whether we direct our view upon him, or forward, through the lustre of his thoughts, on the great Object of adoration, we find ourselves introduced into an interpretation of the Divine Nature, at once peculiar and sublime.

For instance, every disciple of Jesus must feel assurance, of a kind altogether new and characteristic, of the Spirituality of God. Whoever enters, with deep sympathy, into Christ's representation of his relation to the infinite Inspirer, the interfusion of the Divine Spirit with his own, the absolute consciousness of a heavenly guidance within him, imparting the thought of sanctity, and sustaining the will of duty, must rise above the conception of the mere physical activity of Deity, or of his judicial inspection from without, and discern him rather in the choicest powers that rule our life, the force of Truth, the authority of Conscience, the suggestions of disinterested Love; will worship him, not simply as a past constructive Intelligence and a present Sovereign Will, but as the living Mind, enwrapping and

VOL. II.