envy or provoke their indignation*. He conceals his preeminence under the mean garb of poverty, and suits the several parts of his conduct to his present situation; he withdraws himself out of the common road of popularity, confining his wonders for the most part to private places and obscure villages; till he had done enough to ascertain the evidence and establish the belief of his divine authority amongst them; till he was ready to finish all that remained for him to do in a more public manner, by witnessing his last good confession both before the Jewish and the Roman magistrates, by declaring the true end of his coming into the world, and bearing testimony to his most unblameable life before these iniquitous judges; and (which was the necessary consequence of that, without either violently overruling them, or miraculously escaping from them) scaling the same confession with his blood.

Consistently with the same plan, the persons he chose for partners in this work were of the meanest class, as well in station as abilities, who could only follow him at first upon the lowest views, and would at every turn be urging and impatient to have these accomplished: nor were they to be let into his real

*To name one instance out of many. A strong proof of this appears in his forbidding the leprous person to divulge the manner of his cure, and likewise in ordering him to present himself to the priest's examination, who was to judge of and bear tes timony to his being perfectly cured; and who might otherwise have taken occasion to complain of him as a violator of the law, and an invader of the sacerdotal office:

aim but by slow steps, and after a long series of gentle discipline. Such persons were in many respects most difficult to be dealt with; yet on the same account the fittest instruments in that for which they were intended, namely, to testify what they had so often seen and heard; and on all accounts proper to afford the best, most unexceptionable evidence to futurity: such as could by no means be supposed capable of themselves either to conceive a scheme so great as that of reforming a world, or entertain the least hope of accomplishing it when suggested to them: such as wanted both courage and conduct to attempt this vast design with any tolerable prospect of success; such, lastly, as he must suffer often to doubt and dispute with him; sometimes to distrust, desert, and even deny him; to convince after ages that they were such as could not with the least show of reason be suspected of having at first concerted all this of themselves, or carried it on afterwards, among themselves, or effected what they did effect of it by any methods merely human.

With such as these did Christ hold conversation during the whole course of his ministry; affectionately complying with their weakness, and patiently enduring their perverseness in order to cure them both; to strengthen their faith by degrees, and free them from all superstitious fears; to open their eyes, and enlarge their understandings so far that at length they might "even of themselves judge what was right," and teach the same to others.

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To these, and, by them, to the world, he sets a perfect pattern of humility and resignation to the will of God; of meekness and the most extensive benevolence to man; demonstrating to what height virtue may be carried under the most disadvantageous circumstances, and showing the practicableness of each part of our duty in the greatest difficulties. With the utmost zeal and constancy does he labour to dissuade and drive men from their ruin; and in the most endearing manner strive to draw and win them over to their truest happiness, and raise their minds above the little interests of this lower world. "Little children, yet a little while I am with you, but let not your hearts be troubled; I go to prepare a place for you. Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. In the world you shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

Having denied himself the comforts and enjoyments of this world, and at length laid down his life in executing the great plan of conducting men to a better; he rises again to revive the hopes of his desponding followers, and converses familiarly with them to confirm them in the faith, by a full assurance that he had all power in heaven and earth. And great occasion was there for such ground of comfort to them, who thought they had lost him, for whose sake they had parted with all other comforts. Greater yet, to reform and rectify their notions of and expectations from him, which were still fixed on im

mediate prospects of some temporal advancement, notwithstanding all that he had taught them to the contrary; nor could they help concluding that he would at this time certainly make use of all his power in the destruction of his and their enemies; and the erecting of the so long expected kingdom to which every other kingdom of the earth should bow.

But he soon shows them how far this was from being any branch of his office as described by the prophets: how inconsistent with his whole behaviour in discharging it; that on his very first entrance on it he had rejected the offer of these kingdoms and their glory; and that for the future they must think of renouncing all their narrow national prejudices of being a peculium crowned with conquest, wealth and power; that instead of coming a Messiah to bless his people in their sense, by distinguishing them from all the rest of mankind in things to which they had no better title, and of which they were not likely to make any better use; by not only delivering them from their subjection to other nations, but reducing every nation into an absolute submission to them; that he was to bring them blessings and deliverances, and raise them to a dominion of quite another kind: to bless them by turning every one of them from those iniquities to which they were enslaved; to deliver them from their spiritual chains of darkness, death and misery; and lead them to the light of life and happiness in his heavenly kingdom. Thus they

were to become the means of opening to the rest of the world, inviting mankind to enter with them into that inheritance; as their forefathers had been the great instruments of bringing men to the knowledge of that one true God, who is the giver of it; that as these his followers had all along seen ample proofs of his divine legation to this purpose, and were now to be let into the nature and design of his undertaking so far as they were capable of bearing a part in it, so they should shortly be invested with sufficient powers to carry it on without him, and enabled to proclaim and propagate it to the ends of the earth. After forty days spent by Christ in training and preparing his disciples for this great work of establishing a kingdom of so very different a kind, and to be established by ways so different from what they had hitherto imagined, he meets them all together, leads them out to some distance from Jerusalem, takes leave of them with his last solemn benediction, and, having promised to give them yet further proof of his care and love, by sending them another comforter, ascends visibly before them into heaven.

Having taken a short view of our Saviour's conduct, more particularly in private life, and run over some of the steps of his humiliation; let us stop a little to reflect upon the great excellence of such a character, and observe some of the signal benefits which we receive from this part of his conduct. Whenever we turn our thoughts upon the infinite perfections of the most high God, and try to form