we ascend to knowledge of the Divine. This twofold truth corresponds to a twofold personality. By one, we have almost unlimited ability of thought and emotion; by the other, we communicate and incarnate this thought and emotion. By this power of revelation and incarnation, we are in relation to, and capable of receiving, that other revelation and incarnation by which we are brought into fellowship with God. When the great thinker reproduces his thought in us, when the artist embodies grand and ennobling conceptions, this work responds to that blessed operation by which our dear Redeemer makes known the glories of His nature and endows us with capacity for His fellowship. A fellowship proved by the fulness of love and devotion that has been laid at His feet. Love, entrancing the earliest disciples. Love, enduring through all ages of succeeding time, now rising, now sinking, but generally of steady intensity, strong in calm and holy fervour. Love, so that some died for Him; love, so that Paul and Chrysostom, Augustin and Anselm, in the power of it wrought their masterpieces of eloquence and

reason. Love-so that St. Bernard, and Dante, and Milton, were of seraphic spirit, and wrote in lines of flame. Love-so that men rose in moral mastery and in superhuman courage to dare, and do, and die. Love-so that by widespread manifestation of the power of Christ in men, those men grew up in the power of God.

In the person of Jesus, we find a junction of Divine sufficiency and human infirmity as truly one Personality as are the spiritual and material in us. It is very simple, very beautiful, very wonderful, the life of all sacred thought and prayer. "Abide in Me, and I in you. He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit for without Me you can do nothing" (John xv. 4, 5). Life is not a series of mean or of illustrious actions, in which we are well or ill at ease; it is of marvellous depth, richness, and splendour of colour; it is a living picture by the hand of God. He is exalting it through all the gloom to glory; and, unless we ourselves slur the sketch and mar the colouring, He will frame it in such setting of events as shall become a place

in the Heavenly Mansion.

name of Jesus

"Name beloved,

Name of which the true proclaiming

To the ear like music cleaves;
Name of which the very naming

On the lips its sweetness leaves;
Name on which her musings framing
Light and joy the soul receives."

John Ellerton, from Lat.

CHAPTER III.

ENIGMA OF LIFE.

"He who with all Heaven's heraldry whilere Entered the world, now bleeds to give us ease. Alas! how soon our sin

Sore doth begin

His infancy to seize !"

Milton (The Circumcision). THE Circumcision was a prelude to Calvary. The Divine Infant's cradle received a crimson reflection from the Cross. He was named Jesus, that is, "Salvation of Jehovah." "Human name of God above," a name given by the Father, a Name whereby we must be saved, the only Name under heaven by which we can be saved. A name which invests Him with dignity, indicates His work, claims our homage.

"Jesus! Name of mercy mild,

Given to the Holy Child.

When the cup of human woe

First He tasted here below."

Bishop Walsham How.

He was the Little One, that we, being little,

He emptied sinless man

may increase in stature with Him. Himself of glory, and became the among sinful men, that the sinful might become sinless and enter glorious state. His growth into manhood was a strictly human growth. He grew in favour with God and man, waxing strong in spirit, and through a childhood of stainless, sinless beauty-" as the flower of roses in the spring of the year, and as lilies by the waters ”*—with no illumination of splendid circumstance, no flash of amazing miracle, in an obscure village home of a disregarded valley belonging to a conquered land.

Four events only of the Lord's infancy are narrated in the Gospels: the Circumcision and the Presentation in the Temple, by St. Luke; the Visit of the Magi and the Flight into Egypt, by St. Matthew. During thirty years of His life, the Saviour, like most of those who become great, was unnoticed and unknown. It is no mean trial to repress the spirit, and restrain the great workings of a holy and powerful mind, within the narrow limits imposed by necessary

* Quoted in Farrar's Life of Christ, Vol. i., p. 56.