the Wesleyan belief, or the Unitarian belief; for if men are earnest and pious, their various beliefs will help them in their endeavours after the one religion. Beneath all outward creeds, forms, and organizations, then, it is good to see that all godly men are striving after the same thing, though in diverse ways; and good to know that by our many outward paths of creed, or form, or church, we may all reach the same heavenly city, even as now we may all have the same religious love and dependence here.

So, too, it will be seen, that religion has no place, nor time, nor round of deeds set apart for her to live in; but that all places, and times, and deeds are hers. For once think of religion as a life in the soul, and we have done away with the poor distinction the world has made, between religious and secular things: such a distinction will utterly vanish, and only this will remain-religious and godless. Then will be understood that most blessed truth, that religion has to do with everything in life, and may be made to enter into all our thoughts, and plans, and actions. Then creed-believing, or a passionate experience, compliance with a ceremony, or observance of a round of so-called religious duties, will not be looked to, and depended on as the best evidences of religion in the soul; but these-the "fruit of the spirit," as they are rightly called, will be the blessed, and dearest

signs-"Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." "Against such," says the Apostle, "there is no law."

T

"THE MAN CHRIST JESUS."

HE fact (one can hardly say the doctrine) of the

manhood of Jesus Christ, is full of sweet comfort and good cheer, to the earnest soul: and yet men have acted respecting it, like brothers who should wrangle over their father's will; and so, where there should have been quietness, and tenderness, and tears, there have been strifes and bitterness and noise. From all such strife and wrangling about words, however, the wise man will turn away; and the fact will be looked at, for its meaning to him, and its power to do him good, or make him better. If he be asked to quarrel over it, he will rather give it all up than do it: not because he values it little, but because his better nature tells him that it is better to seem to lose than really to dishonour a friend—that it is much better to forego than to spoil what should

In

be "a thing of beauty" and "a joy for ever." contemplating, therefore, this manhood of Jesus Christ, we have to do with a fact and not a dogma, and we are to get entirely away from the atmosphere of colleges where doctors debate, and from the din of the pulpits, where zealots contend; that we may look at it with our own eyes, and interpret it according to the longings of our own souls.

One of the great wants of the Church now is a nearer coming to the manhood of Jesus Christ. I do not mean, the doctrine of his humanity, but the fact of his manhood. For we have sadly theorized away His brotherhood, and debated away His humanity— raising a cloud of dust where there should have been perfect clearness, and making a din where every breath should have been still, until we have little but a book-Christ left. We have lived too much in the ideal, and too little in the real. We have contemplated too much the miracles, and too little the sorrows-too much His power, and too little His weak

ness.

Our painters, in their deep reverence for His greatness, have sadly wronged us here, in setting Him forth with splendid robe and encircling glory, forgetting the man "despised and rejected of men: " and we hardly believe the prophet when he says"His visage was so marred, more than any man; and His form more than the sons of men. He hath

no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty for which we should desire Him." Our poets have wronged us too, in putting Him out of sight, in their high songs, and hiding Him from us, with the incense of their one-sided praise. I wish we could get away from all this finery-this circumstance and pomp. I wish we could forget the long, rich robe, and the glory round His head, and so get back to the real life of the lowly, loving Nazarene, who played as a boy in those old-world streets, and worked in the little shop as His arm grew strong; who toiled for His living, like other people, and wore the common garb; whose sandals had to be tied, and whose tools got blunt, like other men's: who perhaps cut out, in that little carpenter's shop, tiny boats and pleasant figures for the children whom He ever loved, and who doubtless ever loved Him well: who went out at eventide, and lay down on the sweet grass to look at the lilies, or to watch the birds as they lived out their careless lives, or to brood over the sins and the woes of Time, and wonder how long it would be before men could be brought to do God's will as perfectly as those sweet lilies or birds did it.

Now all this is no dogma, but a fact, and as a fact it is to be looked at. Why should I begin some curious and heartless process of logic about that living

Christ, and talk about divinities and trinities, before I understand humanities and unities? What is it to me whether His "essential essence "-His " proper nature," were the human or divine? If I conclude it was the human, He is no less precious to me, as "God manifest in the flesh "—an incarnation "in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily:" and if I say it was the divine, I have still to do what I never can do,-explain what I mean by that, or even get to know, for myself, what I mean. Surely then it is our better part, since life is so short, and the art of it is so long, to just accept the fact as the Apostles put it-leaving logics, and systems, and all verbal anatomies to care for themselves; clinging to just so much of the fact as will serve to win us to that blessed redemption and holy freedom which He first won for us in the flesh.