PREFACE. THE following slight and brief sketch is merely the story of the life and death of our Lord. It has been written for those who have not the leisure, or the books, needed for threading together the fragmentary and scattered incidents recorded in the Four Gospels. Of late years these records have been searched diligently for the smallest links, which might serve to complete the chain of those years passed amongst us by One who called Himself the Son of Man, and did not refuse to be called the Son of God. This little book is intended only to present the result of these close investigations, made by many learned men, in a plain continuous narrative, suitable for unlearned readers. There is nothing new in it. It would be difficult to write anything new of that Life, which has been studied and sifted for nearly nineteen hundred years. The great mystery that surrounds Christ is left untouched. Neither love nor thought of ours can reach the heart of it, whilst still we see Him as through a glass darkly. When we behold Him as He is, face to face, then, and only then, shall we know fully what He was, and what He did for us. Whilst we strain our eyes to catch the mysterious vision, but dimly visible, we are in danger of becoming blind to that human, simple, homely life, spent amongst us as the pattern of our days. "If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. But if any man love Happy they who are God, the same is known of Him." content with being known of God. Christmas, 1874. |