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justly condemned? Is it a feasible plan to gain popularity, to oppose sternly all the common desires and propensities of the human heart? Yet this was what Christianity did. It found the Jewish, Greek, and Roman world, sensual, proud, avaricious, cruel, revengeful, steeped in divers lusts and pleasures, hateful, and hating one another." Seneca's description only confirms that of St. Paul, -"Wickedness is no longer secret; it is before our eyes; it has become so public, and exerts such power, that innocence is not only rare, but nonexistent." To which Juvenal adds,

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"Nothing is left, nothing for future times
To add to the full catalogue of crimes;
The baffled sons must feel the same desires,
And act the same mad follies as their sires:
Vice has attained its zenith."

To all this, Christianity at once offered the most uncompromising opposition. Men were proud and self-sufficient; it told them that they were weak, and blind, lost, and incapable of delivering themselves. Men were sunk in the mire of sensual enjoyments; Christianity demanded purity, temperance, self-denial. The greatest hero of antiquity is described by the Latin bard in one nervous line:

"Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer."

To all such, Christianity came with the startling injunction, "Be kind, and tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." "If thine enemy hunger, feel him; if he thirst, give him drink."

Rome itself, under Nero, "a vast multitude" were subjected to the most cruel deaths, "worried to death by dogs, nailed to crosses, and set fire to by night," as a kind of horrid illumination of the imperial gardens. In like manner, Pliny, in Trajan's day, speaks of the number of culprits (Christians) being so great as to cause embarrassment, and says that the superstition had spread not only through cities, but even into villages and country parts, so that the temples had been nearly deserted. But he, too, together with his master, Trajan, takes for granted that to be a Christian is to be deserving of death.

These conflicts went on, with more or less fury on the part of the prosecutors, for more than two hundred years. The last was probably the most furious and determined effort to extirpate the Christian faith that had ever been seen. People of all ages and all ranks were burned, not by twos or threes, but in large companies. Considering that Christians were now found in great numbers in every province, it is impossible that Diocletian could have so far deceived himself as to imagine that he had entirely destroyed the sect against which he made war, unless he had indeed slain many thousands. When he struck a coin or medal to commemorate the fact that "the name of Christian was abolished," he must have relied upon his own knowledge that whole myraids had been actually put to death. Yet this moment of the Church's darkest night was also the moment which preceded the dawn. A few short years passed over, and this despised and persecuted faith ascends the imperial throne, and Paganism vanishes, at once and for ever, from the precincts of the Roman empire.

Whence, then, I again ask, this astonishing success? The power of Rome, which had broken or bent all nations, cannot overcome a little band of Galilean fishermen, but is conquered by them. Men have celebrated the glories of Alexander, who with thirty thousand men overthrew an empire; but what were the triumphs of the hero of Macedon when compared with the conquests of this little band of apostles. Christianity, without arms, without wealth, without influence, without worldly allurements, goes forth from a lowly shed in Bethlehem, per

And in this utter opposition to all the reigning passions and opinions Christianity was uncompromising. It said to Paganism, "Your priests are jugglers, and your gods a lie." It said to Judaism, "Your mission is fulfilled, your rites are at an end." It told the sage, "Your speculations are vain janglings, and nothing more." It denounced the Epicurean as one who had degraded himself to the level of the beasts; and the Phairsee as a disguised hypocrite. In a word, it declared war against the whole course of this world, and the reception it met with was what might have been, and what was, in fact, foreseen and reckon-vades and subdues the various seats of

ed upon.

Of the apostles themselves, few, if any, seem to have escaped martyrdom. But we may gather some idea of the success which had attended their labours, when we find, from the testimony of Tacitus, that even in

science and of empire; overturns idols, altars, and temples, sweeps away the religious beliefs of centuries, ascends the imperial throne, and gives laws to the nations. Here is a mystery demanding a solution. Here is a stupendous effect, traceable to no

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Several lines of inquiry, then, conduct us to the same result. ECCE HOMO! Be hold the Man, who was contemplated by prophecy, and announced by the lips of God, thousands of years before His appearance. Behold the Man, who was found to unite in himself, when He did appear, six or eight seemingly dissonant lines of prediction: the Son of God, and yet the Son of a virgin. He whose goings forth were from everlasting, and who, nevertheless, was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; He who was to have a kingdom and dominion exceeding all that earth had ever known, and who yet was led as a lamb to the slaughter, "cut off, but not for himself." Behold him, too, who, by death, destroyed him that had the power of death; "him who had held mankind in bondage." Behold him who is now beginning, by His sufferings in Gethsemane, in the Hall of Judgment, and on Calvary, a kingdom and dominion which shall have no limit, and which shall know no end.

But can we pause here? I have sought to know, when called on to "behold the man," who that man was. And I find abundant reason to accept his own account of himself. "God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." "The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father." "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live." 66 Verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am." In these, and in a multitude of similar passages, Jesus plainly and distinctly asserted His rank and character, as "the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." We hear the words of Pilate, then, "Behold the Man!" and we acknowledge the truth of that Man's own words: "He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father." In beholding "the Man," we behold Him who was "the brightness of His Father's glory, and the express image of His person, and who upholdeth all things by the word of His power." We look on "the Man" whom all the angels of God worship, and before whom shall be gathered all nations,

to receive from His lips their final doom. This was "the Man" upon whom hundreds of human eyes then looked, with hatred and cruel anger; while, at the same moment, thousands of angelic eyes were regarding Him with adoring wonder and inexpressible admiration.

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But can we quit the scene without asking one more question? The things which "the angels desire to look into," are plainly made known to us. When we see Him "who was before all things, and by whom all things consist," dragged to a human bar, and sentenced to a felon's death, can we help exclaiming, "Why is this?" Do we not exceedingly desire to know, how so strange a thing- a thing which darkened the sun, and made the rocks to quakecame to pass? Can we hear the words of Pilate without being forced to ask, "Who is this?"-and when we learn that it is indeed Him "who laid the foundations of the earth,". can we help exclaiming, "But how, then, and why, came He here?" And who can have a better right to be heard on that question than He himself? Who can unfold such an apparent mystery better than He whose claim it is, that it was from "the bosom of the Father" that He came? Let us hear Him, then, calmly tell the Roman governor," Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above." Let us hear Him quieting His disciple with the remark, "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how, then, shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" He stood, then, an innocent prisoner, awaiting and expecting a cruel death, because it was His pleasure to do so. He had told his disciples, not long before, "I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself."

It was a voluntary sacrifice, then, -as one of His apostles, not many days after, told the whole multitude of the Jews, saying, " Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." In another place He is called " the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." This whole transaction, then, had been foreseen and foreordained, when God said unto the serpent," The seed of the woman shall bruise thy head." It had been foretold, centuries before, in those Scriptures of which Christ spoke, as words which "must be fulfilled." And what had those Scriptures said? How had they de

scribed the transaction, which now, in Pilate's hall of judgment, was being carried on ?

Daniel, writing five hundred years before, described a heavenly vision, in which the archangel Gabriel instructed him, that at the end of a certain limited time, "Messiah the Prince" should appear, and "the Most Holy" be anointed. He should be "cut off, but not for himself;" and His mission should be, "to make an end of sin, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness."

sign to this awful and momentous fact; his standing at a human bar, and submitting to a malefactor's sentence?

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We have, without the possibility of mistake, the interpretation put upon it by that Apostle, who saw Christ, after His resurrection, visibly, and heard the words of His mouth, that apostle who was "caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words." He tells us, again and again, the meaning he attaches to this great transaction. "We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man." God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

We have, indeed, I know, even some ordained ministers of the Church of En land amongst us who deem themselves better judges of these things than Isaiah or St. Paul. They deny that any "reconcilation"

In precise accordance with these descriptions, had Isaiah written two centuries before, but with even greater fulness and explicitness. "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." "He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; he was wounded for our trangressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all." "It was needed. "Salvation," to them, is a pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath word without meaning. That the sins of put him to grief: when thou shalt make men should be imputed to Christ, and that his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his He should "bear their iniquities," seem to seed, he shall prolong his days, and the them ideas the most irrational. That “it pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his pleased the Lord to bruise him, and to put hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, him to grief," in order that "by his stripes and shall be satisfied; by his knowledge shall we might be healed," is an idea positively my righteous servant justify many; for he revolting to them. They look on the awful shall bear their iniquities. It is no dream scene of Gethsemane, and on the mental or fancy of Christians of modern times to agonies of Calvary, with a blind and ignosee in these words "the Man "who stood rant wonder; because they utterly refuse by Pilate's side. When the eunuch asked to admit God's own account. That Christ Philip, "Of whom speaketh the prophet should be "made sin for us," and viewed this? Philip "began at the same Scrip- as "bruised for our iniquities," is a thought ture, and preached unto him Jesus." Nor against which their minds are closed and can we doubt, that when Jesus himself barred. And hence it naturally follows, asked the two disciples "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things?" and when he "expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself," this 53rd chapter of Isaiah formed a principal subject of his exposition. Dr. Rowland Williams may indeed argue, that there were no "things concerning him in the Scriptures," and that therefore all this must be a delusion. But it would be more honest and straightforward to assert at once that Christianity is a delusion, and the Bible an old fable, than thus to accept it in name, and to deny it in fact.

that the whole history of Christ becomes a problem; to solve which, many attempts have been made in our day, by Strauss, by Ewald, by Rénan, and the authors of Essays and Reviews.

The

But shall we prefer their surmises and theories, to the convictions of that apostle, who himself saw the risen Saviour, and "heard the words of his mouth"? persecutor, Saul, we see, on one day filled with bitter hatred of Christ and of all his followers. Four days afterwards, having had a vision in the way, and having passed three days in wrapt meditation, he I ask, then, once more, and finally, If we at once began to "preach Christ in the admit that this prisoner of Pilate must synagogues," to the utter amazement of the have been "the Son of God," what mean- Jews. But what was the tenor of his ing, what purport and intent, can we as- preaching? Did he tell the Jews that he

had at last been convinced that the Cruci- tion," this " Gospel," can mean. But, unfied One was an innocent man, a great til the history of man's fall is honestly and Teacher, Master, and Example? No, humbly received into the heart, the solution he preached Christ in the synagogues, of the mystery never will be found. that He is the Son of God."

Of the tenor of this preaching, we know from his writings. He there describes to us this " Son of God," telling us, that " by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the Church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of His Cross, by Him to reconcile all things in earth, or things in heaven." (Col. i. 16—20.)

Such was the man · Ecce Homo· whom Paul worshipped. Is it a light thing? is it a thing to be hastily ventured, to reduce this representation, and to depict a modified and less exalted Christ? Can we, without impiety, describe Him as another Socrates, or Confucius? Is it less than profane to call Him less than the coequal Son of God? Dare we reject His own words, uttered but a few days before His death:-"When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. And before him shall be gathered all nations and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth bis sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left." (Matt. xxv. 31-33.) Yet if we believe these words, can we think without alarm of that great audit-day, and of the account to be then rendered by the authors of such theories as those we have just been describing?

The secret of all these attempts to alter and modify the Christ of the Bible is, that the third chapter of Genesis is not really believed. There is no consciousness of guilt; no confession of sin. And hence it naturally follows, that when the announcement is made, "Thou shalt call his name JESUS, for he shall save his people from their sins," - it is simply unintelligible. The student, in this frame of mind, frankly confesses, "Here is something I do not understand." And hence follows a series of vain attempts, of gropings in the dark, of efforts to find out what this" salvaFOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. V.

of

I suppose that I must here end this paper. Several other topics remain, on which I hoped to be able to say a few words, such as the confirmation Scripture prophesies, and especially of Christ's own words, which is given in the history of the Jews and in the terrible fate of Jerusalem: Also, the suitableness of the remedy provided in the Gospel to the wants of the human race, as shown in the recorded experiences of multitudes. But no space remains. I cast my eye over the foregoing pages, with many feelings of regret and humiliation, but no time is left for any attempt at improvement. Still I know that the truth can suffer little from my imperfect handling. Nothing can be more certain, than that no amount of fiction can permanently overlay or obscure the plain Word of God. And it is not to be doubted, that a portrait composed of only a portion of the facts of the case, is a fiction, is a romance. It presents to view a person who never lived, who never had any being among men. It would not be difficult to show even more than this,— that the Christ of Rénan or of Strauss is a person who never could have had any reai existence; — is, in fact, a moral impossibility. The portraits so painted may obtain. much applause for the respective artists,

- they may exhibit great and varied talents, and may call forth much popular admiration. But, after all, the prophet's description of the gods of the heathen may justly be applied to all these modern idols:

They are laid over with silver and gold, but there is no breath at all in the midst of them.”

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CHAPTER LI.

some schoolboy, Neil, the years had flown so swiftly that it might seem but yesterday

GERTRUDE THINKS HERSELF SUPERIOR she blushed through that bridal hour of love,

TO SIR DOUGLAS.

THERE is a grievous moment in the lives of many who love humbly and sincerely, and think little of themselves; a moment of strange contradiction of all the previous impressions of that love; a dethroning, as it were, of its object. No longer better, wiser, greater than all other mortal creatures: no longer the infallible guide, the crown and glory of life; loved still, but loved in a different way. Something of splendour departed, we know not where: something of security vanished, we know not why such is the change that comes at such times. It comes to men in the first consciousness of their over-estimation of some fair syren whose song has only lured them to the rocks and shoals of existence. It comes to women whose love has bordered on adoration, when they feel compelled to mingle pity with the regard they bestow on their husbands.

-

When Gertrude read- - with strained and amazed eyes- the letter put into her hands that morning, she pressed her lips to the signature with the kiss of passionate pity one bestows on a wounded child.

"Oh my poor Douglas! my husband!" was all she said. But in that one brief grieving sentence, they seemed to change positions forever. He stood lower: she stood higher. Never could she have been so deceived! Never, though all the stars in heaven had seemed to shed their light on the deception, could she have accepted as against him the wretched forgery of proof he had accepted against her. Never!

Poor Douglas! Ay, poor indeed. Beggared of trust, and hope, and belief in human nature; for if he doubted her, in whom could he believe?

The sick pang at her heart increased. She rang, and ordered preparations for instant departure; and then she once more sat down to re-read the strange lines penned by that familiar hand. That hand which had clasped hers at the altar; which had detained her with its warm, gentle, almost trembling grasp, when first they stood together on the threshold of her new home at Glenrossie; detained her that he might murmur in her ear, before she entered, his hope that she would be always happy there; his wife, his own for evermore.

She was a girl then. She was a young matron now. If it was not for her hand

and heard that welcome HOME; that blessed sentence, spoken in music, since spoken by his voice.

And now, what had he written? How could he write so? Poor Douglas?

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Gertrude," the letter said, "I am spared at least the anguish of explanation, by being enabled to enclose you these papers. Your own letter and" (there was a blur here, as though the name " Kenneth" had been begun and effaced) “my nephew's.

"I endeavour to do you justice, and believe that his conduct at Naples and many combining circumstances, made you think it best to reject him, and accept me.

"I feel certain that no worldly calculations mingled with the arguments of others, or your own thoughts, when you so decided.

"You could not then perhaps test the strength or weakness of your heart. You mated your youth with my age: a gap of long years stretched between us!

"I have the less time remaining to suffer from the remembrance of my bitter loss.

"Whether my life of loneliness to come, shall be longer than I could desire, or brief as I wish, you will see me no more. I shall endeavour to devote myself to the service of my country, as in earlier days.

Not in unmanly despair, but in submission to God, I trust to spend what measure of the future He may allot me.

For you. you know me too well to doubt my desire that all this should pass without open scandal; and without that bitterness which assumes a right of vengeance for irreparable wrong.

"I am gone. I will not part you from your son. I have seen what that suffering is in other women; that tearing out of the heart by the roots. You will doubtless be much with your mother; but when Neil's holidays come, you will meet him at Glenrossie, and remain with him there. I shall see him — but not now. I make no condition; except that you avoid all explanation with him. Let him—at least in this his happy boyhood-know me absent, not parted, from home ties. Let all around you think the same.

"I have hesitated to add anything respecting the cause of our separation. I will only say that it is a dreary satisfaction to me to believe that, seeing what your first step towards sin has brought about, you will never take a second.

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