commandments. In Matt. xix. 18, he re-arranges them, putting "Honor thy father and mother" after the rest, instead of before them; and adding an eleventh commandment, out of Lev. xix. 18: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Evidently, our Lord, in reading Leviticus, had seen this command shining like a star in the midst of the ceremonial and ritual ordinances. It left its place in Leviticus, and joined the ten great commandments, at his behest; for he was Lord of the Scripture as of the sabbath, because he was the Son of man.

This very phrase "Son of man was taken by Jesus from Dan. vii. 13. In this passage, the Messiah is represented as "a man," coming "with the clouds. of heaven," and standing before the "Ancient of days" to receive an everlasting dominion which shall never pass away. have been foretold by the prophets. He saw himself as a man, receiving an everlasting dominion, but coming "in the clouds of heaven;" for the "clouds of heaven,” in the language of the Old Testament, indicate the obscurity which surrounds the providences of God. When Jesus predicts his future coming as to be "in the clouds of heaven," he means that it will be without "observation."

There Jesus could see himself to

The subject I have spoken of is one for a book, not for a sermon.

These thirty-nine quotations from the Old Testament deserve to be weighed carefully, till we learn what Jesus found in each of them. His meditations

on them are full of light for us all. We shall find that to him the Old Testament was a book most valuable, not for what it said, but for what it suggested; that he searched in it for the spirit, and not for the letter; that he did not value its prodigies and wonders; that he did not regard its long procession of marvels and portents; that all its savage wars he omits to notice; and that of the worldliness, infidelity, and unbelief of its people and princes he says nothing. Solomon, for example, who is to the Mahommedans so much, to Jesus is nothing.

The texts most quoted by our modern Orthodox teachers and writers, Jesus never quotes at all.

Jesus took the best out of the Old Testament as, out of every thing. This is the lesson of his quotations. He passes by the low, the mean, the false, and finds the good. Finding the good, he found the true; for only that which is good is really true.

How differently have others studied the Old Testament! Some study it to find proof-texts of this or that doctrine; some to find arguments in favor of old abuses, slavery, intemperance, polygamy, despotism, persecution, war, witchcraft; some to find faults, errors, contradictions, absurdities, in its letter; some to justify low views of God as an arbitrary Being, of man as a degraded being. But Jesus studies these inspired writings to find the best, highest, and purest in all things. So he finds in them a divine spirit; he searches in them for a profounder sense of God's love; he develops them all to a higher point; and he

thus fulfils every thing which they contain.

He makes them full of meaning and full of life. He takes out of the hard shell its living kernel; he supersedes much of them, and values always the practical part more than the ceremonial.

XXIII.

DIARY OF 1863.

2 Cor. iii. 3: "YE ARE MANIFESTLY DECLARED TO BE THE EPISTLE OF CHRIST, WRITTEN NOT WITH INK, BUT WITH THE SPIRIT OF THE LIVING GOD; NOT IN TABLES OF STONE, BUT IN FLESHLY TABLES OF THE HEART."

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T the beginning of the year, one of the usual actions is to provide one's self with a diary,little blank volume, with each day of the year having a space arranged for it, in which its engagements may be written beforehand, and its events afterward. Many persons have, for years, found it convenient to keep such diaries. Formerly, they were obliged to prepare them for themselves; but now, blank journals of this kind are for sale in every bookstore. Evidently the practice of keeping such journals has greatly increased, or there would be no demand for such a supply. Is it that men value time now more than formerly? Is it that the historic element of our nature is taking a fuller development? It is evident that some periods and some nations tend more to this habit of recording events than others. The ancient Egyptians, for example, carved and painted on stone all the actions of their lives: so that the traveller to

day can read on walls, built four thousand years ago, what men did then every day; how they hunted and fished, and hatched birds by artificial heat, and beautified their gardens with summer-houses, flower-stands, and vases; how they kept accounts; went to ride in chariots and litters; carried parasols to keep off the sun; taught monkeys to hold torches for them at a feast; made music on harp, pipe, and drum; anticipated the pirouettes of the modern ballet; played games of checkers; played with dice, with balls, and the like. Thus they wrote down every day on tables of stone, moved by some instinct to journalize all their life. Other nations did nothing of the sort. The Greeks, for example, were so occupied with living, that they could not stop to describe their lives. This historic impulse apparently comes as the activity of man abates. The greatest men and the greatest nations have not been given the most to minute journalizing. Mr. Samuel Pepys is like an Egyptian in keeping his diary; but who ever saw Shakspeare's diary? It is all in "Hamlet" or "Othello,"-nowhere else. Men who are thinking the highest thoughts and doing the noblest actions do not usually stop to record them they leave it to others to do so. He who lived the noblest human life on earth never but once, so far as we know, wrote a line; and that line he wrote, not on imperishable stone or perennial brass, or even on parchment which may last a thousand years, but on the sand: "He stooped down, and wrote on the ground."