fant Jesus, has since his birth, in a still more deep and powerful manner, continued to move, to elevate, and strengthen these affections in the bosom of Christian families. The Jewish ideal infant has become the Christian model infant.

The general feeling, as it reigns throughout Christendom, that the infant Jesus is the model babe, has been embodied in immortal art by painters, sculptors, and poets. On canvas, in marble, and in living verse, as the achievement of the highest art, does the whole Christian world behold with great joy, the reflection of its own conceptions, the embodiment of its own feelings. The Madounas-the model mother and the model child-have been the admiration of the learned and unlearned, the high and low, because the master artists have given expression to the general feeling, and have located that image of beauty and perfection, which has for ages hovered before the general Christian mind. These embodiments did not create this universal sentiment; they only interpret it more clearly than each one could do for himself.

These master-pieces of art, answering thus to universal ideas, show what a powerful and wide influence the model bade has exerted upon family life and love. This influence it is difficult to define and measure, because it is so mild and silent; but this only proves it to be the more real and far-reaching. We readily acknowledge the power of Christ's general life in the way of model. No one doubts that He, as the pattern man,' ," is silently exerting a moulding influence on men even beyond the direct power of His teachings. Not only the words which fall from His lips, andare on record, move the mind of the world; but He himself as the great eternal Word. He is the embodied, ever-living truth, and life, and love. His glorious person radiates a transforming power. Every stage of His life is perennial; and thus does His infancy, as one lovely period, ever send out a power to mould parental love and bless infant life.

In this view our Saviour's infancy has a deep significance. In every respect agreeably to an acknowledged law, we are moulded by that which has been before us, and is now around us. Especially are we always strongly influenced by models. As the object which we behold in nature, is reproduced in an exact image of itself in our eye, so do the models which we admire silently reproduce themselves in us. There is no power in the world like that of models. They stand out in every department of art, science, and religion, like suns that shine on all beneath, and reflect themselves, with more or less perfection, in every surface that is turned toward them. Every one who has discoveredand there is none that has not-that there is a perfection above what he has yet reached, is silently, and perhaps even unconsciously, but yet surely, laboring up toward it. This is ever before his mind as the end to which every step of progress is constantly referred. It is on this account that the works of genius are of such immense value to the world.

Those who forget this law in our nature, or who know it not, sometimes disapprove of the expenditure of vast sums of money on works of art-paintings, sculpture monuments-not knowing that these are model elevations which over-look all beneath, and draw all things up toward themselves. This great principle was recognized by our Saviour when ja answer to the narrow spirit of Judas, He approved of the pious act of

Mary in pouring the costly and precious ointment on his feet. 'It is waste,' cried the earth-born traitor, in the same spirit which led him to think that Christ himself was waste when he might be sold for thirty pieces of silver! True, three hundred pence might have been given to the poor, and thus relieved a few small temporary wants; but what would that small good have been, compared with the influence which has since been exerted, and will continue to be till the end of time, by that model act of love and devotion, in silent power on ten thousand thousands of hearts.

These remarks may serve to show the power of models. In the light of this principle must we judge of the mysterious meaning of our Saviour's infancy, as it relates to the development and perfection of the parental feeling. This image spontaneously and without an effort, is constantly in the parental eye. In this model the Christian mother loves her own infant. Her spirit, filled out with this image, prays over it, and her eye lit up by a great hope thus inspired, educates its opening powers, while her parental nature is educated at the same time by a holy reflex influence.

The power of this model is heightened by the fact that the infant Jesus, though strictly human, is truly, and this consciously to the parental heart, more than a human infant. The eternal God in miniature. Vere Verbum hoc est abbreviatum. "The eternal Word of the Father is shortened to the dimensions of an infant."* It is the divine infantGod became an infant for infants. In

"The babe that lies in smiling infancy."

is seen that gracious power of life and love to which the parental heart feels that infants may be committed as unto a faithful Saviour. It not only inspires love, but more than love-reverence !-a feeling which sees in the object something greater than itself. Reverence for an infant !— Oh, mystery! "Most interesting is it," says Coleridge," to consider the effect, when the feelings are wrought above the natural pitch by the belief of something mysterious, while all the images, are purely natural. Then it is that religion and poetry strike deepest." This feeling is awakened in the parental heart by the divine-human babe. From it goes forth a natural, yet supernatural influence, under the mysterious power of which the bud of human life in the mother's lap may unfold into pious adult life, and ultimately into the holiness and joy of the saints in heaven. The devout and reverential contemplation of the infant Saviour sheds this light of hope over the cradle. The Christian mother "feels it in her joy," and hence her meditations ever alternate between her own and the model babe. Thus does love to the human infant grow in the power of love to the divine, and the lower is ever taken up and sanctified in the higher.

These holy alternations of the parental heart between its own offspring and the model babe divine is beautifully brought out in that true classic, Watts' celebrated cradle Hymn. Behold how the parental heart hangs, now on the one, and now on the other. The mother makes in deed the holy infant the nurse of her own. By hymning the story of that babe, which was the Prince and power of Peace, she hushes her own. We * Jeremy Taylor, vol. I. p. 36.

must quote it at length. See how in the whole hymn the divine and human blend, and how, in the sixth stanza, She turns by way of interlude to her own babe, and then so naturally turns to the story of the Holy Child. The humming of that hymn over the cradle is more than a prayer it is the presence, reproduction and power of the great saving fact of God incarnate a infant form, for mother and child.

Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber;
Holy angels guard thy bed;
Heavenly blessings without number,
Gently falling on thy head.

Sleep, my babe, thy food and rainment,
House and Home thy friends provide;
All without thy care, or payment,
All thy wants are well supplied.

Soft and easy is thy cradle;
Course and hard thy Saviour lay,
When his birth-place was a stable,
And his softest bed was hay.

Blessed babe! what glorious features,
Spotless, fair, divinely bright!
Must he dwell with brutal creatures?
How could angels bear the sight!
Was there nothing but a manger,
Cursed sinners could afford,
To receive the heavenly stranger?
Did they thus affront the Lord!

Soft, my child, I did not chide thee,

Though my song might sound too hard;

'Tis thy mother sits beside thee,

And her arms shall be thy guard.

Yet to read the shameful story,

How the Jews abused their King-
How they served the Lord of glory,
Makes me angry while I sing.

See the kind Shepherds round him,
Telling wonders from the sky;

Where they sought him, there they found him,
With his virgin mother by.

See the lovely babe a dressing;
Lovely infant, how he smiled:
When he wept the Mother's blessing
Soothed and hushed the holy child.

Lo, he slumbers in the manger,
Where the horned oxen fed!
Peace, my darling, here's no danger,
There's no oxen near thy bed.

"Twas to save thee, child, from dying,
Save my dear from burning flame,
Bitter groans and endless crying,
That thy blest Redeemer came.

May'st thou live to know and fear him,
Trust and love him all thy days;

They go dwell forever near him,
See his face and sing his praise.

I could give thee thousand kisses,
Hoping what I most desire;
Not a Mother's fondest wishes
Can to greater joys aspire.

This wonderful hymn needs no comments but those which the reading of it will cause to come in subdued echoes from every Christian parental heart. He who once stilled the tempest on the dark rolling Galilee, with less majesty but with equal love, here whispers over the restless infant: "Peace, be still!" It feels His power of peace in the mother's lulling voice, and sinks to rest.

The surrounding imagery which always presses into the picture with the infant Jesus gives to this model additional power, especially in the hearts and homes of the humble poor. We see not in the picture of the infant Saviour's birth the back-ground of a chamber in the home of the wealthy. No glittering brilliant chandalier to illuminate the apartment -no marble busts of an earth-honored ancestry in nitches looking outno soft, figured matting upon the floor-no richly flowing purple curtains hanging in heavy folds around a downy couch! No! no. Behold the picture.* A stable! Above, and around are the naked rough-hewn timbers. See the empty racks-the mute, stareing ox and ass, standing back astonished, and yielding the empty manger to the wonderful babe. See the open crevices! through which are heard the rude murmur and boisterous, idle laugh of the taxpayers, borne from the crowded inn upon the chilly, mournful night wind. For

It was winter wild,

While the Heaven-born Child

"All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies;
Nature in awe of him,

Had doffed her gaudy trim,

With her great master to sympathize.

* In contrast with this reads the following description of

"THE CRADLE OF NAPOLEON'S FUTURE HEIR-We translate from the correspondence of the Independence Belge the following description of the cradle which the city of Paris is about to offer to the future heir of Napoleon III.

"This cradle is a real chef d'œuvre, in the decoration of which all the arts seem to have vied with each other. It far surpasses the celebrated cradle of the King of Rome, and a description of it may not prove uninteresting to our readers.

"The cradle is the form of a ship, which is the principal emblem in the coat of arms of the city of Paris. At the prow, a silver eagle, with wings outspread, is in the act of flying. On the stern, the city of Paris, crowned with towers, sustains above the pillow an imperial crown of silver, to which are attached the curtains. The figure is flanked by two others representing children, the one wearing a helmet, the other a crown of olive branches, personifying Peace or War; the three statuettes are of silver, and half the size of life.

"The little vessel reposes on two supports, formed each of two miniature columns, and placed one at each end of the cradle. These supports are joined together by a long baluster. The extremities of the supports, and of the baluster which joins them, are of solid silver. The body of the cradle is made entirely of rose-wood, so sculptured as to receive the branches of laurel and silver ornaments that cover it almost entirely. On each side of the cradle are two medallions of blood-red jasper, richly framed in silver, and destined to be wrought into emblematical devices.

"Below the rosewood hand-rail that completely surrounds the upper part of the cradleship, extends an open work gallery of quaint architecture, and covered with silver ornaments. This gallery is intersected on each side by a silver cartouch bearing the ciphers of their majesties on a ground-work of enamel. From this cartouch depend garlands of silver flowers, which, descending to the middle of the ship's hull, pass below various medallions of jasper, and wind, the one around the prow, the other around the stern, thus relieving the uniformity of the vessel.

"Behind the stern-house, of which the wings are adorned with winged sirens in silver, a rich silver cartouch, surrounded with branches of laurel and olive, supports the arms of the city of Paris-enamelled and surmounted by a mural crown. Around these olive and laurel branches is rolled the devices of the city, written in letters of gold on an enamelled bandrol. The double curtains of the cradle are made of Alencon lace and blue silk, embroidered with gold."

It was no season then for her

To wanton with the sun!"

Such are the features of stern and humble poverty which stand in the picture with the model babe. Similar scenes of poverty surround the advent of thousands of infants among the lowly poor. Yet here is the story of the divine babe's advent known. Here does the light of parental love, which illumined the Stable of Bethlehem, also shine. Here is sorely-pinched poverty cheered by the presence of him who sanctified that state by passing through it himself. How many an humble Christian cot has thus been blest by him who for our sakes became poorblest by the remembered fact of the poverty which surrounded our Saviour's infancy. In no chamber of the rich has faith ever been in a position where it could feel Him to be so truly near.

Thus our Saviour's infancy gives a true value to infant life. Thus it elevates and sanctifies parental affection. No such ever moved the parental feelings in paganism. In Judaism there was, it is true, an approach to it, but it fell short as shadow does of substance. In the Jewish parent's heart there was, it is true, the hope that its offspring might be either the Messiah, or His mother: yet as ages passed solemnly and slowly, and thousands were born in whom they did not find the babe divine, that high feeling became only of very general power. There was only one chance among an almost infinite number. Christian parents, however, are sure that every infant born to them may become a Christian, a member of Christ, an heir with him forever. It may be a star in His crown, as it is now a lamb in His arms. With what hope, and joy, and holy purpose does such a thought fill a parent's heart. It plants this high conception of infant destiny in the bosom of every Christian family, ever associating the future glory of the child with that of the divine babe. It shows every human infant capable of being partaker of the divine nature. The divine in the human raises the conception to the human in the divine.

The same power of the model infant which thus silently and mysteriously affects the parental feelings, begins also very early to reach the mind and heart of infancy in general. Almost the first thing which affects and moulds the child in the Christian family, beyond the parental face and features-the first certainly whieh ought to meet its opening powers-is the story of the "babe divine." As the infant Baptist leaped at the salutation of the virgin so does early infancy joy at the first presentation of the holy child, whose name and power are "Wonderful." The infant not only loves but reverences the divine Infant. The picture of the holy infant in the manger, and on the virgin's knee, mingles in its play with dolls, and is the first which it seeks in the picture book. The crucifixon horrifies it: this presupposes and requires a knowledge of fearful elements in human nature, with which the child can have no sympathy. That is a picture for a later period. It will receive the fact, and gaze at it in wonder; but its heart will not flow into it. It is not so with the holy infant in the manger. That scene belongs to its own stage of life; and, to it, its heart responds by a deep and mysterious sympathy. It at once loves this infant Saviour, believes in Him with a faith that precedes knowledge, and is therefore true and pure. It learns to love Him as it learns to love its own mother's bosom, and eyes, and