adults, or to combine the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove. Martial beauty, and hymeneal beauty also, has been painted often enough; intellectual beauty too sometimes, but never that of Paradisiacal happiness and innocence; much less could any ever paint the mournful, tender and sympathetic beauty of Sion's King. Beauty like his cannot be described in words, nor expressed on canvas, it can only be copied in a truly Christian life. Let those therefore who would copy it think of his example: and, THAT THEY MAY LOOK LIKE HIM, LET THEM ENDEAVOUR TO LIVE LIKE HIM; as they will unavoidably, if their modes be like his, or included therein.

=2, Looking again to the forecited seeming contradictions, we should expect to find in the Subject more Meanness than Dignity; indeed, that his outward appearance was as mean as his outward circumstances; and that, as he had no wealth to bribe, nor earthly power to command respect, so his personal appearance was little calculated to ensure it. We find indeed, some who have not a very prepossessing appearance, some whose appearance is harsh, if not really frightful and disgusting, have still a way of teaching people to respect them notwithstanding, and perhaps the rather for, their frightful looks. But it is expressly said in his prediction, that he would hardly be one to speak up for himself (Isai. liii. 7); and likewise in his record as well as prediction, that he was, and ordained to be, lowly and meek (Zech. ix. 9; Matt. xi. 29). He had no proud looks (Ps. cxxxi. 1), no menacing gestures, to frighten people into his views, but the very reverse: and where so much forbearance is added to so forbidding an aspect, that is with ordinary judges, one should suppose that their subject might as well command the winds and waves, as the affections of those whom he had to direct. But all this, like the lowness of the Subject's circumstances, and other temporal disadvantages that he seemingly had to contend with, was or

dained, no doubt, on purpose that the power of God might be more conspicuous in him. For to judge from the same authorities of prediction and record, and also from a growing experience, he must indeed have been able to command not only the affections of unruly men, but the motions of the wind and the proud waves likewise (Matt. viii. 27). It may seem hard to conceive, how one could at the same time look lowly, and speak with authority (Ib. vii. 29); be despised and rejected, yet command whom he liked and to what he liked: so that he had only to say, "Follow me," to Peter and Andrew, James and John (Ib. iv. 18, 21), to Matthew the publican (Ib. ix. 9), or any poor scribe that he might choose to employ, even then as at present, and they are straightway devoted to his service; to the service of one, who while he lived had neither money to maintain his followers, nor house to shelter them (Ib. xvii. 27; viii. 20), and when he died was able to leave them no better legacy than the present ill will of all the world with a promise of future remuneration, and just a little foretaste of its enjoyment (Ib. xix. 29; John xvi. 33). How shall we account for such seeming and usually real inconsistencies? are we to suppose that the Subject had two manners as well as two natures, to account for this contrariety? As he was at once both a citizen of Israel and its everlasting Sovereign, may we think that he combined the divine majesty of the one with the becoming meekness and citizen-like sobriety of the other? This does not seem unlikely: and then to a considerable portion of mankind the BETTER PART OF HIS DIGNITY Would be imperceptible.

But if we were to take our estimate only of a very inferior person from his outward form, type or apearance, it would most probably be very defective, how much more in the case of such a person as that before described in his modes or constituents; all the good objective constituents above described! And we are not thinking now of the spiritual and intellectual presence of the Subject

flowing from his native presence or person, but of the material presence or person from which it flows or appears to flow and of this a word or two may still be said, more particularly concerning

SO

=3, The two opposite properties of Ubiquity and Locality, which are equally attributed to the person of the Subject in authentic record. In ordinary subjects we observe and admire, that the mind and spirit, or acts so combined, have a motion and expansion infinitely (to appearance) beyond those of the body, which is the material combination, or contribution considered in common: that while this is seemingly fixed, and confined to certain walks, or it may be, not suffered to move, absolutely chained down with irons, the others shall still be as free as the wind; while this is present with the world, the others may be absent from the world and present with the Lord (Cor. II. v. 8), where they are more due. But it must seem particularly admirable when we come to consider, that in this case not only the mind and spirit or thoughts and affections of the Subject should be above with God while the body remained on earth, but the Subject himself as himself asserted in that saying to Nicodemus, "And no man hath ascended up to Heaven, but he that came down from Heaven, even the Son of man which is in Heaven" (John iii. 13). For being celestial essentially, or from the beginning, as "the Word was God” (Ib. i. 1), in which Word he consists, his presence would be in that sphere accordingly with God (Ib.) for ever, not excepting the humble period of his conversation and residence with men upon earth: whereas another being essentially terrestrial, his presence would accordingly be here as long as he lived, with other men upon earth, while he had his conversation, as he ought and might notwithstanding, in heaven (Phil. iii. 20), being here more sensible of the things around him.

This is a property that he derives from his Father; who being also most intimately cognizant of what passes

al

every where, is, as we may say, every where at home: essentially present in Heaven, he also dwelleth between the Cherubims below (Sam. I. iv. 4); at once inhabiting eternity, dwelling in the high and holy place, and "with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit" (Isai. lvii. 15). "Who is like unto the Lord our God, that hath, his dwelling so high; and yet humbleth himself to behold the things that are in Heaven and earth" (Ps. cxiii. 5): who, but his sacred Image, our Lord Jesus Christ: "which in his times he shall shew; who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see" (Tim. I. vi. 15, &c.). Thus during the residence of this sacred Image so to be revealed upon earth, his home was in Heaven; his head was in Heaven, while his feet touched the earth; and there was no extravagance in his forecited saying to that effect. For the Subject's visible person, "that which was in the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the Word of life" (John I. i. 1), or its visible mode or person, is only as his feet, or the soles of his feet in comparison, though presenting the whole to us, or all that we can now conceive directly of the same; "the invisible things of him from the creation of the world being clearly seen and understood by the things that are made, even his eternal Power and Godhead" (Rom. i. 20).

There is one consideration, which to those who entertain it must make very much against the incarnation and locality of the eternal Word; namely, that a Subject whose being is infinite should confine himself either to the limits of the earth during the present stage of his existence, or to the human form or person after his ascension into heaven. To those who can entertain such a consideration it must make exceedingly against that of the incarnation and locality of an eternal and infinite principle. For ad

mitting the possibility of such a limitation, and only supposing it to have lasted here for the short period first mentioned, it may be thought that his presence "by whom all things were created and consist," must have been greatly missed the while in other parts of the universe. And so it must be, to be sure, in such a case of privation. But who of the present day, when thought is freer than it was in the idolatrous reign of materialism, can possibly entertain such a lumpish consideration? It were about as rational and scriptural as to conceive, that the Lord had left vast Heaven and all the kingdoms of the earth to themselves, when He came down upon mount Sinai, and to the identical top of the mount (Exod. xix. 20); or, that when God went forth for the salvation of his people, Teman and Paran were left behind him (Hab. iii. 3, 13); or again, that when God returned to these parts the heathen were thereby rid of his formidable presence: whereas the place of his going and coming, as we understand it, is only the point of his apprehension, and has no particular relation to his absolute Presence. But

-2, To consider some properties of the Subject that are more spiritual; and

=1, As connected with locality, his Walks or Migrations; they were not so extensive as those of his countrymen have generally been from that period, and long before, to the present. It is said, indeed, that he went about doing good: which is the best way for a minister, as he was, to go about it. He was not stationary for years like a publican or exciseman, any more than St. Matthew was after his calling; but HE WENT ABOUT: and one circumstance before mentioned might have conduced to this habit, since he as a man would be in some measure a creature of circumstances like other men, namely, that after he left his father's house he never had a comfortable home. We read in the Gospel of the wanderings of an evil spirit (Matt, xii. 43): but wandering spirits are not necessarily evil; if they were the Subject himself would not