IX.

THE MESSIAH IN HIS PREPARATION AND PLAN.

In our last essay, we listened to the voice in the wilderness which for centuries had been sounding the note of preparation for a new dispensation. In John, the ascetic Baptist, we found its last and chief expression, and by him we were led to the Messiah, whose herald he was. Who is the being to whom this last of the old prophets yields such deference, and through whom the New Covenant is to take the place of the Old? Our subject thus readily presents itself. We ask, now, what had been the previous preparation of Christ for his ministry, and what was his plan? With him, who received baptism from the hands of John, the great future of mankind rested, as with no other who has ever lived. Before we contemplate that future, we of course desire to know something of the early life and master purpose of the chosen servant of God.

I. What was the preparation of our Lord for his ministry? Think not the question an irreverent one, because it implies discipline and progress in regard to a being who may be thought, from his exalted nature, to need none. Whatever view we may take of our Saviour's Divine endowments, we must nevertheless

expect them to be developed under earthly conditions, and that the Divine spirit which was imparted to him from the first in such fulness would be unfolded, like every gift of God to the soul, gradually, with the expansion of his powers and the influences of his position. Even they who regard our Saviour as the absolute God, are in the habit of tracing in his human nature the gradual development of the Divine, and might so far join with us in considering his preparation for his work.

We only desire to say at the outset, that, in speaking of the various influences that trained the mind of our Lord for his mission, we imply all along that he had, from the beginning, a peculiar and Divine Sonship, and that the various discipline through which he passed did not of course create, but simply brought out, the Divinity within him. What that Divine Sonship was, we can know only as it is developed to us. The birth of Christ, viewed as by a direct act of the Creator, leaves us none the less to learn his relation to God by his life; for all rational power originally came from God to his children by a direct creative act, and yet to know its character we study its development, and are not content merely to know its origin. Leaving then where the Scriptures leave it the descent of the Son from the Father, we would consider the various steps of the preparation that led the child of the Nazarene to go forth as the Messiah of God.

In

Who were his teachers, do we ask? The reply is ready. First, God's works were his teachers. those works the Divine Word that dwelt in him, not yet fully manifested, revealed itself, for by that

Word were the heavens made and the earth, and all that in them is. Nature was one of his instructors, for nature to a true soul speaks the voice of God. There are many ways of studying nature. We may study the universe economically, or in search of useful commodities or expedients; curiously, or in search of novelties and wonders; scientifically, or in search of natural laws; poetically, or in search of beautiful figures and pleasing fancies; and all these things are well, and may help us in the grander study of nature as an expression of the wisdom and love of God. For this expression the Nazarene child looked upon the works of his Heavenly Father, and read therein the fulness of an ineffable love. It was not his mission to unfold the physical laws of the universe. He read and was to set forth its great moral law. To him even the little sparrow in its flight and fall revealed the Omnipresent love as the central principle of the moral world, centuries before the falling apple disclosed to Newton the secret of the visible heavens.

That Christ had studied the spirit of God in his works is obvious from his position and the use which he made of nature in the instruction of the people. He lived in a region in which every prominent scene was connected with impressive historical lessons, as well as with natural beauties and harmonies. The land of promise was his country. Nazareth, little honored of old among the cities of Israel, but ever interesting for the beauty of its scenery and the romance of its vicinity, was his home. The hills, fifteen in number, meet together to form the basin in which Nazareth lies, as if they were guardian angels keeping watch over a treasure not yet to be ex

posed to the rude world. Along these hills he roamed, - of those springs gushing from the rock he drank. We will not vouch for the truth of the tradition which points out the workshop where he assisted Joseph, and the table at which he supped, and the synagogue in which he worshipped. We will not conjecture what were the emotions with which he looked upon the hallowed places of his neighborhood, as when from some hill-top he caught sight of Carmel, where Elijah prayed to the One God before that Mediterranean which it commands had floated a single Roman ship; or of Gilboa, on whose high places the beauty of Israel had so sadly fallen and the death of Saul was celebrated in an elegy whose pathos every age was to feel and repeat.

What stores of imagery lay treasured up in his mind to aid him in illustrating the Word in himself by the Word in nature! Of his teaching but a very small portion remains, but how full it is of similes that teach things spiritual by things natural, and thus ascend from creation to the Creator, from earth to heaven! The opening flower and the falling rain, the sunshine, the lightning, the gushing spring, the storm, the seed-time, the harvest, the rock, the sand, the wheat, the tares, the sky, the mountain, — these objects and such as these suggested to him profound moral and spiritual analogies. Thus was his soul open to the mind of God in nature. From the impulse given by him comes in great part that open vision of nature which the Christian ages have enjoyed. The arts have learned of him a lesson which the old classics little knew. Poetry and painting have won a great secret from this Divine Seer, and they have re

deemed the landscape from pagan contempt, and transfigured things material in the light of God and eternity.

We will not pause longer here, but speak now of another influence concerned in our Lord's preparation. We mean the Bible, or the portion of it then written,

the Old Testament. Probably in his home, certainly in the synagogue, the Scriptures were read in his hearing, and history, psalm, prophecy, proverb, were not without response from his divinely attuned soul. But within and above. the varied lessons of those hallowed pages, one topic presented itself to him which engrossed his thoughts and finally called him to his mission. Those Scriptures all turned upon one point, the true relation between man and God, a relation so sadly broken by transgression and to be restored by righteousness. Sin was the word that expressed the alienation of man from God. Salvation was the chief word that expressed reconciliation with God. In leading men to salvation, various means had been employed, and in a chosen Messiah these means were in the fulness of times to have their fulfilment. From a lost Eden to his own day, hope had been constantly active among men, and in the chosen race had taken a remarkable development. Patriarchs, lawgiver, kings, bards, prophets, all had helped to form the Messianic promise; and whilst the royal sceptre passed from hand to hand, an ideal crown, rich with the patriotic hope and religious faith of every age, was treasured up in the hearts of the people, awaiting the coming of one who should rule with a glory brilliant as that of David, and over a kingdom as broad as that promised by Isaiah. That