Christ is the Spirit of God. The Lord Jesus Christ revealed the heart of God so perfectly, that he who presses his finger upon the pulse of Christ may feel the heart of God beat. Such a revelation of God, while it brings God down to the affectionate apprehension of the child, is sufficient to satisfy the largest and most pressing demands of the highest intelligences, in the heavens and on the earth; while I think it might very well satisfy the Christian Church. She has been burdened and over-weighted with curious and unprofitable discussions respecting matters which, from their own intrinsic nature, can never be absolutely settled. She has too often turned away from 'the end of the commandment,' which is 'charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned,' unto 'vain janglings;' while it has long seemed to me that to receive the Son as a personal revelation of the Father, to receive what we are accustomed to call the 'Humanity of Christ' as the medium through which such a revelation could best be made, to realize that through Him we have access by one Spirit unto the Father,' is to find 'the secret of Christ,' the very meaning and value of His gospel, that which is alone essential to our faith, and out of which a life of reverent and trustful obedience may come. If the Lord Jesus be, what I here claim for Him, the personal revelation of the Eternal Father, a revelation of God as no other person ever was, or ever can be, then our proper attitude towards Him is not one of cold criticism, but of submission, faith, loyalty; while, instead of every now and again fearing and trembling for the fate of Christianity, we should trust the Christianity of Christ Himself, be utterly candid and fearless in our dealing with those who reject it, and above all exemplify it, with a brave and modest consistency, in our own everyday lives. There is just one word I should like to add. It is this: Whatever systems of divinity, or ecclesiastical organizations, or persons teaching in the name of Christ may say, let us believe nothing of the moral character of God which is clearly inconsistent with the words, the works, and the Spirit of the Lord Jesus. When men tell us that God has said this, or has done that, or will do something in the future, let us remember that He has given us an image of Himself in His Son, and that we are now in a position to know the moral character of God as reflected in the face of Christ as we were not before that reflection was made. God is as good as

Jesus Christ was; there is nothing in God contrary to what we find in Jesus Christ; the nature of the Father is to be judged by the nature of the Son; the character of the Father is revealed in and through the words, works, life, and Spirit of the Incarnate Son of God. The world needs no new theologies, no new gospels, but the old theology of Him who was and is the Word, the Wisdom of God, and is the embodied 'Good News of God,' and who shall at last illuminate, and strengthen, and gladden, and save the entire human

race.

[This Appendix No. II. is a very condensed report of five sermons on the 'Philosophy of the Incarnation,' which the author preached to his own congregation at Reading, during the Advent Sundays of 1882. In this report there will be found ideas and even phraseology similar, if not identical with what may be found in the body of this work; while passing and cursory references here can be verified in the chapters which treat of the various books of the New Testament. It is only fair to add, that while the literal words of the original sermons are not always reproduced here, the spoken form of these sermons is retained; and that not the smallest attempt has been made to give a literary finish to what was always intended to be a popular exposition.]

APPENDIX No. III.

OUR LORD'S PERSONAL APPEARANCE, TONES OF VOICE, ETC.

ELSEWHERE in this volume will be found some extracts from the writings of the Rev. E. H. Sears, of America. In a wonderfully suggestive work of his, entitled The Fourth Gospel the Heart of Christ1 (Boston: Noyes & Co.), I find the following intensely interesting chapter, p. 404: The four biographers of Jesus have given no description of His person, such as His form, figure, features, expression of countenance, walk, gesture, tones of voice, and style of speech or eloquence. The reason is partly that moral painting after the modern style was remote from their thought and purpose, simple narrative being all they aim at; and there was a further reason, for the subject-matter of the Divine message so controlled and subordinated the manner as to blend with it and become a part of it, and they never thought of separating one from the other. In reading these biographies, however, it must occur to any one that such things could not have been done, nor such words spoken, in a way comporting with our ordinary methods of utterance. There is a class of writers who, looking at Jesus only from the natural side, and ignoring or denying a large portion of the record, find in Him an amiable young man, of sweet and winning manners, almost feminine, which endeared Him to His followers, and gained the affections of little children and Syrian maids;—a remarkable and promising youth cut off by an untimely death. Herein they discern those traits of moral beauty which cannot be mistaken, and which beam forth along the whole pathway of Jesus of Nazareth. But let any one take this portraiture as expressing His entire character, and go through His history with it, and he will find a whole range of facts which are

1 The Fourth Gospel is the Heart of Christ,' is the enthusiastic language of Ernesti.

utterly inexplicable, and that he has not yet seen the person of Jesus Christ. Though His biographers attempt no such portraiture, it comes of itself, and gathers consistence, clearness, and brightness in the imagination, as we read their story. It is that of a supernal power and majesty, always in reserve under these lineaments of moral beauty and gentleness. This comes to us from casual expressions which they let fall here and there, and more yet from the impression which His person and manner made upon their minds, and the minds of the multitudes. We are to remember that they seldom understood the import of His doctrine, while their sensibilities were stirred sometimes to their lowest depths; and that this effect, therefore, must be ascribed to the tone and manner of its utterance. At the close of the Sermon on the Mount, crowds were struck with astonishment because He taught as one having authority, and not as the teachers of the law. To get the whole meaning of this, we must reproduce the scene to ourselves. Moses was the supreme authority in all the teaching of that day; as binding and as sacred as if they heard it audibly from Mount Sinai. Here is a man who quotes no precedent, acknowledges no authority, but, standing up before the people, pushes Moses and all his special code clean out of the way, and with only the formula, “I say unto you," legislates to the world from the immediate conceptions and revelations of His own mind. What amiable young Jew could have done this? What man of ordinary presence could have done it, without raising a shout of derision from the multitude? This man did it in such wise as to fill them with a sense of wonder. And it shows that they had some vision, however dim, of a moral power and majesty towering above Sinai itself. It is no explanation of the authority of Jesus over the crowds that came to Him, to ascribe it to the miracles which He wrought. If the miraculous power was merely something adjoined to Him as a common man, He would have excited the same curiosity as the wonder-workers and jugglers of His day. His miraculous works were plainly the emanations of His own being, the forthgoing of that Divine force which gave command to His words. Not merely the works themselves, but the mind and grace beaming through them so as to determine their manner and adaptation, impressed the multitude and held them as with a spell. Hence people approach Him as one clothed with royalty. They come worshipping" " that is,

bowing in adoration, or they come "kneeling," or they come "falling at His feet," or "trembling and falling down to Him." Remembering the air of command and authority, felt always in His presence, and its subduing power over the minds of men, many passages in His biography otherwise inexplicable need no explanation,-the moneychangers vacating the temple courts at His word; the police officers going to arrest Him, but cowering before Him as they come into His presence; His walking unharmed among the enraged multitude, as at Nazareth, where they were prompted to throw Him down a precipice, but did not dare to lay hands on His person; the fear and vacillation of Pilate in the palace at His final examination. Often He speaks to the people and holds them by the power of His words, when it is plain that His meaning is quite above their range, and that it is the manner not the subject-matter that amazes and even convinces them. On the great day of the Feast of the Tabernacles, for instance, when they were pouring out water around the altar, Jesus arrests the ceremony, standing above it and calling aloud, "If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink!" "He that believeth on me, out of his breast shall flow rivers of living water." Not a word of this could His hearers have understood as to its interior meaning. But many of the crowd said to one another on hearing it, "This is certainly the Prophet." "This is the Christ." And His enemies present, and wishing to arrest Him, did not dare to lift a hand against Him. Even after His arrest there was a lingering fear in the minds of His enemies, lest some supernatural agency should take Him out of their hands, for even on the cross, when the drugs were brought to Him to drink, some of them said, "Hold! let us see whether Elijah is coming to take Him down." Though His biographers do not describe to us the expression of His eye and countenance, they more than intimate their efficacy and influence. Sometimes when His hearers were astounded at His words, the Evangelist says He spake "looking around" or "looking at them;" or again, when the cavillers came to ensnare Him, He "looked at them with anger;" or again, when the young ruler came kneeling to Him, He loved him, "looking upon him,"-passages which plainly imply that power and grace went out from Him, not merely in His words, but in the beamings and flashings of His countenance. In the walk of Jesus with His disciples, we find none of that kind of