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he needed no special inspiration to utter, has been fulfilled. "The odour of that ointment," as it has well been said, "was not confined to that lowly Jewish dwelling. It has filled the world."

In a like incidental manner, the fact that Jesus knew he was to die, and that he was also aware of the manner in which he was to suffer, is revealed in the very form of that event upon which the commemorative service of the Lord's Supper is founded. When seated at table with his personal friends, a short time before he was seized by his enemies, he broke bread and distributed it among those present, as a symbol of his body soon to be broken, and poured out wine and gave it to them as a like symbol of his blood. I do not believe, (and I deem it of the first importance to a just appreciation of this rite so to consider it,) that Jesus was conscious on this occasion of having formed a deliberate design to establish a particular service or institution. He spoke and acted, I think, from the simple and natural impulse of a touching sensibility. With his mind filled with the images of death and suffering, we have seen how naturally he associated the ointment which Mary poured upon his person with his embalming. So when he was seated for the last time with his disciples, the same state of mind-the same principle of association led him to see in the broken bread, and in the flowing wine, the symbols and mementos of his own body and blood. Thus hallowed by the deep sensibility of Jesus, shall they not be everlasting mementos! Shall not our hearts melt with answering tenderness, and can we disown or cancel the vows of gratitude and remembrance which Nature herself prompts !*

* When I contemplate Jesus breaking the bread, and pouring out the wine, in commemoration of himself, I cannot conceive of him as deliberately insti

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We cannot fail to perceive here how incidentally his prophetic knowledge is revealed. It is not explicitly and purposely disclosed. It appears only by implication. And this is the most satisfactory way possible.

In a similar way, but still more strikingly, the foreknowledge of Jesus appears in his answer to those who, on different occasions, demanded of him a sign. When he drove the money-changers from the Temple, and was immediately asked to produce the sign of his authority for so doing, his reply is, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up." In this obscure allusion to his death and resurrection, how undesignedly is his foreknowledge of these events revealed! Again, when at another time a sign was demanded, his answer is, “an evil and adulterous generation is seeking after a sign, but no sign shall be given it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Here again how unconsciously is his knowledge of his death and resurrection implied! Had the narrators designed to ascribe to him a foreknowledge which he did not possess, they never would have wrapt up the evidences of it in such obscure allusions. The reference to the prophet Jonah, by the way, is wonderfully pointed; if, as we may with great probability suptuting a positive rite. It is his heart that seems to me to be appealing to the universal human heart, and therefore this observance secures my cordial regard. When it is thus considered as originated, not so much by the understanding as the affections of Jesus, a service of commemoration, having him for its special object, appears to be among the most significant and affecting of our religious institutions, and to have an imperishable basis in the heart. It is too common to represent the Lord's Supper as a mere means of improvement. It is a means, a great means, but only because it is a great end. He who eats and drinks worthily at the Lord's table, eats and drinks not for his own sake, but for Christ's, and therefore he receives divine nourishment.

pose, those, who asked for a sign, desired to witness some dazzling exhibition of miraculous power. It is as if he had said, 'You are seeking a luminous and overpowering display of my authority. I tell you that the true sign of my authority will be given in events shortly to occur (my death and resurrection,) which, so far from corresponding to your ideas of the Messiah's glory, can be likened to nothing among all the splendid signs and wonders of your history, so appropriately as to the humiliation of the prophet Jonah.'

But we have not by any means fathomed the depth of the miracle; we have caught but a glimpse of the real greatness of the prophetical character of Jesus, when we have seen simply that he foreknew his own death. He possessed a far deeper knowledge still. Every where throughout the histories of his life, we are given to understand, naturally, undesignedly, that he cherished a calm and perfect confidence in his own ultimate success. He saw and knew that Futurity was his. To what is this unparalleled faith attributable but to the profoundest prophetical inspiration? Here we have the fact of a young man, in a dark and corrupt age, of obscure birth, in the bosom of a bigoted nation, separated from all other nations by a great gulf of political and religious hatred, and on the brink of ruina young man without education or wealth, backed by no imperial warrant, not only unassisted by the spirit of the nation, and the age in which he appeared, but directly and vehemently opposed by the prevailing sentiments of the day, and the whole temper of his countrymen we have, I say, the undisputed fact of an individual thus situated, unknown, friendless, powerless, and without any traces of human philosophy about him, undertaking a work of revolution, the most noble and

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comprehensive, a work tending to nothing short of the thorough illumination and improvement of the whole race of man, a purpose of creating the world over again, and converting its savage tribes into beings dignified by knowledge, refined and blest by affection and kindness. I say nothing of the wonder that such a thought should have been entertained at such a time, and under such circumstances, although the bare conception of the thing, the mere expression of belief in its practicability, might well have been recorded among the inspired sayings of human wisdom, reflecting immortal honour upon any one who should have uttered it. But the circumstance that absorbs our attention is the quiet confidence, all so unobtrusively evinced, with which Jesus Christ lived and spoke and died in accordance with an aim so vast, that we should be almost ready to pronounce it chimerical, had not the lapse of ages begun to furnish some testimony to the possibility of its accomplishment. The great revolutions, commenced by other men, have in the course of a century or two exceeded in their actual results all that was contemplated by their original movers, spreading farther and going deeper than their authors dreamed. But not so is it with Christianity. The world has not yet realised the purpose of its Founder, although it has so nearly approximated it, that we cannot but feel that he was inspired with a mysterious and far-reaching wisdom.

The work which he began and so steadily pursued is no less astonishing for the originality of its methods, than for the comprehensiveness of its objects. Under the greatest disadvantages, disregarding all ordinary means of success, committing nothing to writing, elaborating no system, and with a world, in all the pride of its philosophy and all the glare of its power, arrayed

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against him, he proceeded to fulfil his aim with a confidence as sublime for its calmness, as it was mysterious for its strength. If every human hand had been extended to aid him, and every human heart sealed to his service, he could scarcely have spoken and acted with a more unfaltering assurance that his labour would not be in vain, that the objects at which he aimed must be fulfilled. He went forth on his lonely and untried path, as if he were placed upon a mountain top, and saw his success written out upon the world lying at his feet; as if every word that he uttered, instead of being caught up and perverted and turned against him as it was, were a spell, operating with magical rapidity and resistless power. Had his career been one unbroken triumph, he could not have exhibited a more settled conviction of ultimate success. Among a people burning with the fiercest passions, with the impatient hope of national dominion, he announced an empire whose glory is righteousness, whose laws are peace and love. In an age when religious worship was, in most places, scarcely better than a pageant, and religion was a thing of costly temples and long processions and glittering rites, he taught that the object of worship is a pure spirit, and that the service of God consists not so much in calling on his name, as in doing his daily will. Upon a corrupt and licentious world, he inculcated a purity of mind with which a look tending to sin is inconsistent. At a time when military prowess was the first of virtues, and heroes and conquerors were the world's saints, he exhibited a new model of greatness, revealing man's highest honour in humility, in forgiveness of injuries, and in sacredly abstaining from all violence. In opposition to superstitious observances and artificial duties, he vindicated the simple and despised laws of nature; teaching that