characters grow into forms of Christian piety and grace, as the palm-tree rises graceful and majestic amid the stillness of the forest. With them the struggle is less severe; every victory is easy, and their Christian course is a continuous ovation. Conscience always obeyed becomes unerring and clear, sweeter to hear than a song at evening, its voice a constant "Well done!" from the indwelling Spirit of God. If there is any thing in the universe fitted to awaken emotions of the morally sublime and beautiful, like this unfolding of childhood into the conscientious young man or woman, we do not know what it is, childhood leading a charmed life, walking through the furnace while the flames play innocuous around. We may find its image and representation in nature, but we can find nothing half so lovely. I have seen the planet of evening, when her disc was nearly obscure," the new moon with the old moon in her arm," and she seemed little else than a dark mass hanging in the sky. But she turns towards the sun, and a brighter crescent appears; it grows larger and encroaches upon the line of darkness, till she emerges complete in light, and rides in full beauty along the plains of heaven. Such is childhood emerging out of hereditary corruption, not through the spasms and agonies of repentance and conversion, but through growth in that grace that never fails, but always enlarges till it comprehends the whole man, and he reflects the Divine light and the Divine charms in complete beauty and glory.

But it is the shame of our Christian education and

Christian example, that there are few such cases as these. The way of our regeneration lies through bitter repentances and death-struggles for victory, and perhaps at the end of our mortal course we find the victory but half gained. And yet we would not represent that the Christian life is only a life of struggle. There are intervals of sunshine and peace, when we rest upon our arms and contemplate the fields we have won, and the affluent dominions we are yet to gain. The region of eternal rest is not reached through a path of incessant upward toil. We go from one height to another, as hills rise above hills, and on every height gained we enjoy its partial peace, and in our breathing-time we sing victorious songs. There are seasons when our wrong propensities are quiescent, and we rest from our labor until temptation wakes them up and the conflict begins anew. And when one of these enemies is destroyed, we have the peace of victory till another comes in sight, all the while rejoicing in our faith in Him who is our shield and buckler, and who gives us at these intervals the earnest of everlasting rest.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MEDIATOR.

"The few pale stars had vanished from the sky;
There was no moon, but blackness over all
Dense as the cloak of death, without relief,
Or hope of change, - a visible despair:
Then the retiring darkness gave to view
A lucid sphere enveloped in the gloom;
Sudden, effulgent, glorious, it burst,
As if a sun were born at midnight deep.
Radius-like bent round the brow of Christ

It shone, the promised DAY-SPRING FROM ON HIGH.”

THE theology of the New Testament involves three leading ideas, all of which centre in the person of Jesus Christ.

First, there is a perfect and glorified HUMAN NATURE, exhibiting in its changes from its humiliation to its exaltation all the possible virtues, graces, and excellences that belong to our human condition.

Secondly, there is the DIVINE NATURE in its paternal benignity, infinite wisdom, and universal and unchanging love, contrasting with the dark and partial conceptions of God which prevailed among Jews and Gentiles.

Thirdly, there is the UNION of these two in Jesus Christ, so that in him are revealed at the same time perfect humanity and the all-perfect Divinity.

All classes of Christians receive these three ideas, though not in the same combinations. All believe that the New Testament reveals the perfect man. All believe that it reveals the perfect God, the Universal Father. All believe that in Jesus Christ God and humanity were united. It is when they come to discuss the mode of this connection, whether by inspiration, by indwelling, or by hypostatic union, that differences begin to appear. We are not going to follow out these subtilties. "That way madness lies."

Keeping close to our main purpose, however, and hoping to draw the reader along with us, we premise that it is no example of mere human nature, however sublimated and exalted, that satisfies our wants as sinful men. No finite power and influence can create us anew. No models of human virtue, however pure and perfect, are to regenerate and save us. Rather do they dazzle and mock us with ideals which we can never realize ourselves. I may fix on them my earnest and despairing gaze; but there aloft they shine and shine in vain, giving me gleams of a region of purity and peace which I cannot climb to, and which fall upon my unsunned and frozen nature like the shimmer of moonbeams upon a mass of snow. Christ has placed before me an example of human perfection, and told me to follow in his steps. And is that all? If that be all, it were like standing on the shore and helping a drowning man by merely shouting to him to rise and walk the waves. In our fallen, sinful state, it is

We

not first and chiefly an example that we want. want God. We want Divine succor and influence, coming within us with creative power, not primarily to bring us into conformity with some model that is placed before us, but to revive the Divine image within us, so that by its own radiation it shall produce around us the halo of all Christian virtues and graces.

Whatever, then, may be the mode of union between the human and the Divine in the person and history of Jesus Christ, and we shrink from applying the scalpel of our metaphysics to the Divine nature, this one truth stands bold and prominent in the entire history of the incarnation, that the human was so overlaid, controlled, and possessed by the Divine, that the Saviour is without reserve "God with us." The Divine inlays all his words and actions, so that they are the undoubted expositions of the Eternal Wisdom and Love. The New Testament writers are careful to inform us that the man Christ Jesus had no human father, but that the Holy Spirit itself descended into this world and took its normal clothing of flesh and blood and its expression in the human form. They put this fact in the foreground of the Christian theology, for by this fact they make the Author of Christianity not an inspired prophet, but a Divine Man. The prophet is inspired to utter his message, and that done he is like other men. Christ was not inspired after birth, but the effluence of the Divine nature formed the inmost principle of his natural being, so that his most