ed the most condescending expedients to make them live in our minds. His disciples had often contested the question of precedence in his kingdom. He could at once have rebuked their ambition with a denunciation of wrath, have withered their pride with a frown; but, in accordance with his characteristic benevolence, he chose to admonish them by an affecting sign which they could not easily forget. How beautiful, affecting, and instructive the sight! The Lord of glory folding in his arms a helpless babe, as an emblem of the humility which adorns his kingdom. Humility, from that day, needs to plead no other sanction for her lowliest acts.

Often had he inculcated the condescending offices of brotherly love, for well he knew that, like the ligaments and arterial net-work of the human frame, the health and happiness of his body-the church-depended on their binding power and reciprocating influence. But by what new expedient can he deepen the effects of his past lessons? Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God; he riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself, and washed his disciples' feet. When he was about to ascend to the seat of universal empire; when the cross alone remained between him and the government of heaven, earth, and hell; even then he took a towel and girded himself, and poured water into a basin, and washed the disciples' feet, and wiped them with the towel wherewith he was girded; saying, Ye call me Master and Lord; and ye say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet: ye also ought to wash one another's feet; 'to condescend to the lowest office of christian beneficence and love. Beyond this, he might have said, ye cannot go.

But, O, there was another lesson to be taught, the highest, and the last; a lesson comprehensive of every other; and he sought to steep it in the essence of his tenderness and love. He, who had laid aside his garments to wash his disciples' feet, and laid aside his robes of celestial light and taken upon him the form of a servant, that he might become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 'The same night, therefore, in which he was betrayed he took bread and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you this do in rememberance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in rememberance of me.' Thus tenderly did he seek to impress us with the great love wherewith he had loved us to remind us how essential he is to our happiness; and to live in our devout affections. By this touching rite, he would have us to erect his cross in our minds, that we may hold personal and perpetual communion with his dying love. He gives into our hands the doctrine of his atoning sacrifices, charging us to keep itby all that is sacred in his death, precious in his love, valuable in our own happiness-charging us to keep it embalmed in his own blood. He gloried in his cross as the pillar of human hope; the column on which he desired that his name might be inscribed as the great memento of his love to man, as that single act by which he is content to be known, and on which he desires to rest his claim on the eternal gratitude of the world. Knowing the power which it would give him on human hearts, he has made his cross the depository of all the doctines of salvation.

III. But, thirdly, our professed object requires that we should present examples from our Lord's teaching illus

trative of his tenderness and benevolence.

'Learn of me,'

said he, for I am meek and lowly of heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.' This is the character which he gave of himself as a teacher; and the only instance, in which he laid claim directly to human excellencies. And who will not accord to him the amiable qualities which he here claims? When first he opened his lips in the synagogue of Nazereth, the audience wondered at the gracious words which proceeded from his mouth. And the description of his benevolent commission, which he then read from the prophet, and distinctly appropriated to himself, seems intended to throw forward a tender and mellowing light on the whole of his after course. By informing us at first of the gracious character he meant to sustain, he seems to seek to disarm our opposition, to invite our confidence, to ask us to meet his tenderness with a corresponding feeling of affectionate reliance. From a certain date, too, in his public ministrations, his teaching must have acquired a very affecting character, from his frequent allusions to his approaching sufferings and death. From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.' Up to that time he had but obscurely alluded to the subject: but suddenly he lays naked to their view the cross; he speaks of coming sorrows, approaching sufferings, impending death; he paints a scene in which he appears the principal object, bending under the weight of a cross, spit upon, scourged, crucified, the victim of human and infernal malice. Most probably, as often as he adverted to the topic, his voice took deeper and more tender tones, and his countenance assumed a more solemn aspect: but whether they did so or not, his teaching, which had always been grave and pathetic, had

เ

from this time infused into it a new element of solemnity and pathos. Henceforth he stood in a shadow, which threw on him a tender and solemn grandeur-the shadow of the cross; and while speaking from that position, his promises became more gracious, and his commands more affecting and binding than ever.

1. The first sentence he uttered, in his first recorded discourse, is a sample of the spirit he breathed in all his subsequent addresses; 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' To bless men, to make them happy, was the great object for which he descended from heaven. He came into the world, expressly, to bless whatever he could, to encourage and promote it, and to rescue from earth whatever would accord with the purity, and enhance the glory, of the world from which he came. Instead of using the lofty and imperative style of positive command, he seems to dismiss the state of supreme authority, to lay aside the character of the legislator, and to appear only as the Savior and the Friend: in the most gentle and engaging manner, he insinuates his will, and our duty, by pronouncing those blessed who comply with it. Blessing after blessing follow each other in quick succession; every sentence comes from his lips loaded with grace; like the gushing forth of a fountain long sealed up they showed the fulness of benovolence which possessed his heart.

Rejecting the minions and favorites of the world, he selected those whom the the world disowns. The poor in spirit, the meek, the holy, the sorrowful and broken-hearted, the merciful, the sincere, the peaceful, the persecuted: the orphans, the disinherited, the rejected of the world; such was the large family on whom his blessings fell, and to whom he opened his arms, and welcomed them to the shelter of his heart. Each of the virtues which he here implies,

may be regarded as a separate and essential feature of christian excellence; and, as he adds one lineament to the portrait after another, he surveys it with delight. He sees wealth in that spiritual poverty more ample and enduring than all the treasures which earth can boast; a majesty in this meekness to which pride can never erect itself; and, in this christian sorrow, he beholds the seeds of joy, the blossomings of glory. He contemplates it in reference to another state of being; and though the world in its blindness may hold this character in contempt, he knows that it is such as angels will bless; that the great God, seated on the throne of heaven, pronounces it blessed, repeats over it all the divine beatitudes; he would have us to know that when it departs by death from this earthly scene, he raises and welcomes it into his own kingdom; and that when every mere earthly embellishment shall have faded and disappeared, he will proclaim it happy in the presence of the universe, and crown it with glory and honor; that it is a character whose blessedness eternity itself will ratify and augment. As if the benevolence of God had forsaken every other vent to find a channel through his lips, thus freely and copiously did he pour forth his divine benedictions.

And may we not affirm, without a paradox, that it was in the exercise of this same benevolence that he uttered those denunciations of woe-if, indeed, they are not rather to be regarded as exclamations of pity-recorded in the 23rd chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. The compassion which brought him from heaven dictated these denunciations; for he uttered them in the defence of the oppressed and the wretched. Having identified himself with the victims of injustice, he stood forth in their behalf, as one who felt himself personally insulted and dishonored by their wrongs. He would be known to the avaricious, the proud,