that, too, in the highest degree of excellence to which virtue is capable of being exalted. That idea of complete goodness which the ancient philosophers took so much fruitless pains to describe, and which they justly thought would so strongly attract the affections of men if it could be made visible, was in the person of the Holy Jesus, and in him only, since the world began, presented to the

eyes of mankind. His ardent love for God, his zeal for the service, his resignation to the will, his unreserved obedience to the commands of his heavenly Father; the compassion, the kindness, the solicitude, the tenderness, he showed for the whole human race, even for the worst of sinners and the bitterest of his enemies; the perfect command he had over his own passions; the consummate prudence with which he eluded all the snares that were laid for him; the wisdom, the justness, the delicacy of his replies; the purity and the gentleness of his manners; the sweetness yet dignity of his deportment; the mildness with which he reproved the mistakes, the prejudices, and the failings of his disciples; the temper he preserved under the severest provocations

from his enemies; the patience, the composure, the meekness, with which he endured the cruellest insults, and the grossest indignities; the fortitude he displayed under the most painful and ignominious death that human ingenuity could devise, or human malignity inflict; and that divinely charitable prayer which he put up for his murderers in the very midst of his agony: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what "they do:" all these, and a multitude of other peculiar excellencies in his character, (which it is impossible here to enumerate) concur to render him, beyond comparison, the greatest, the wisest, and the best, of men.

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Considered more particularly as a PUBLIC TEACHER, what an understanding must that have been, and whence enlightened, from which so sublime and perfect a system of piety and morals, as that of the Gospel, proceeded, excelling not only all the discoveries of men, and the most perfect systems of Pagan morality, but all the revelations of God made before him. *

* For the principal and most valuable part of the six following pages, I am indebted to my late excellent friend and patron Archbishop Secker.

But further still. How astonishing, and from what source inspired, must the mind of that man be, who could entertain so vast a thought in so low a condition, as that of instructing and reforming a whole world; a world divided between atheism and superstition, but universally abandoned to sin; of teaching the whole race of mankind to live soberly, righteously, and godly here, and leading them on to an eternity of happiness hereafter? How contemptible a figure do they, who affected to be the conquerors of the world, make, when compared with him who undertook to be the Saviour of it? Then, in the execution of this immense design, what condescension without meanness, what majesty without pride, what firmness without obstinacy, what zeal without bitterness or enthusiasm, what piety without superstition; how wonderful a combination of seemingly most opposite, if any could be opposite, virtues: how exact a temperature of every thing great, and venerable, and lovely, in his soul! And another very important and remarkable consideration is, that all these admirable qualities appeared perfectly easy and natural to him, and seemed not to

require the least exertion of his mind to produce or to support them. And the case was the same in his discourses and his instructions. No emotion when he delivered the most sublime and affecting doctrines, the most comfortable or most terrifying predictions. The prophets before him fainted and sunk under the communications which they received from above. But truths that overwhelmed the servants of God, were familiar to his Son. Composed on the greatest occasions, respectable even on the least, he was at all times the same; and the uniform dignity and propriety of his behaviour throughout, evidently flowed from the inbred grandeur and rectitude of his mind. Tried he was every way (and that in so public a life perpetually) by wicked men, by the wicked one, by friends as well as by enemies; but far from being overcome, never once disconcerted, never once embarrassed, but calmly superior to every artifice, to every temptation, to every difficulty.

Well, then, may we ask, even after this very short and very imperfect sketch of our Saviour's character, "whence has this man "these things, and what wisdom is this,

"that is given unto him?" He had evidently none of the usual means or opportunities of cultivating his understanding, or improving his heart. He was born in a low and indigent condition, without education, without learning, without any models to form himself upon, either in his own time, and his own country, or in any records of former ages, that were at all likely to fall into his hands. Yet, notwithstanding this, he manifested and supported invariably through life such wisdom and such virtue as were never before found united, and, we may venture to say, never will be again united in any human being. The consequence, then, is unavoidable, and one of these two things must be true. Either the character of our Lord, as drawn in the Gospels, must be absolutely ideal and fictitious, existing no where but in the imagination of those who drew it; or else the person to whom it really belonged must be endowed with powers more than human. For never did mere mortal man either speak or act as Jesus did.

If we take the former part of the alternative, and affirm, that the portrait of our Saviour, as drawn in the Gospels, is an ideal