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deformed by evil, which makes the character which possesses it spiritual, not only with the spirituality which unites the spirit to its heavenly Father, but also with that which unites the imagination and the intellect to that part of the being of God which moves in and is revealed by the beauty and order of the universe.

To many men who have the poetic temperament, who see as much in a flower as in a book of genius, to exclude Christ from all this region is to separate them from Christianity; to find Him truly there is to hallow their love of Nature and their work therein, and to fill with a diviner air those moments of communion with the universe, when thought is not, but only inspiration.

But still higher in Him was that intense sensibility to human feeling, which made Him by instinct know, without the necessity of speech, the feelings of those He met.

This is the highest touch of beauty in a character. What is it which most charms us in a friend? It is that he can read the transient expression on our face and modify himself to suit the feeling we are ourselves but half conscious of possessing; it is that he knows when to be silent and when to speak; it is that he never mistakes, but sees us true when all the world i wrong about us; it is that he can distinguish the cynicism of tenderness from that of malice, and believe our love though we choose to mask our heart.

Such a friend has not only power of character but beauty of character. Who is it who is most haunted in society, around whom people collect as around a perfect picture? It is that man or woman who, from sensi

bility to the feeling of others, knows how to develope in the noblest way each personality, whose mediating charity and sympathy bring into musical accord the several characters of their society, till, all having been lured to do what each can do best, they learn to work happily and live happily together.

This is another element of the beautiful character, and the root of its beauty is sensibility which worketh by love, and delights in its own power.

He saw Nathanael in the early days coming to Him from the garden and the fig-tree. He looked upon the simple and earnest face, and recognised the long effort of the man to be true. In a moment He frankly granted the meed of praise: Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.' A few words more, in which Christ went home to the secret trials of the man, and Nathanael was his for ever.

He met Peter in the morning light, and seeing through all the surface impetuosity of his character deep into the strength of his nature, called him Cephas, the man of rock, on whose powerful character the infant Church should be built. And Peter, catching inspiration from the word, saw a new life opening before him and began to believe in his own power; too much at first and for some years, till, in the hour of bitter failure, the transient force of self-confidence melted away before the last look of his Master, and the diviner strength which flows from penitence fulfilled the prediction of Christ.

When the woman who was a sinner knelt at his sacred feet and wept, Christ felt the thrill of con

tempt which ran from guest to guest, and felt how bitterly it smote upon the woman's soul. He turned, and in an exquisite reproof rebuked the scorn, shamed the scorners, and redeemed the woman by recognition of her tenderness. Fallen, shamed, the exile of the world, she was born into a noble life when those words fell upon her ear: Her sins which are many are forgiven her, for she loved much.' When the malefactor on the cross appealed to Him, Christ saw at once that the fountain of a noble life had begun to flow. Without an instant's hesitation, He claimed its waters for Paradise. When the persistency of Thomas refused to believe without a sign, another teacher might have been angry. Christ penetrated to the inner honesty which prompted the scepticism and vouchsafed a reply of love. It struck home, and the Apostle's heart was broken into adoration. It was the same with bodies of men as with men. He wove into one instrument of work the various characters of the Apostles, making them harmonise with and understand each other. How did He hold together those vast multitudes day by day? By feeling their hearts within his own. How did He shame and confute his enemies? By an instinct of their objections and their whispers, so that He replied to their thoughts before they were spoken. Men, women, and children, all who were natural, unconventional, simple in love, and powerful in faith, ran to Him as a child to its mother. They felt the beauty of character which was born of sensibility to human feeling and spiritual wants, and they were bound to Him for ever.

This, then, is the Founder of a religion for man, a religion not only of the inner and mystical life of the spirit, but also a religion of feeling and imagination; which talks not only of sin, and suffering, and redemption, but which has entered, in its Author's life, into those finer touches of sense, and those remoter haunts of imagination which are at once the ministrants and the children of a high culture; which, taking its impulse from the natural instinct of Christ to penetrate by feeling into the lives and hearts of men and catch their fleeting impressions, and to do this for all men-so that He saw the beautiful and the strange in men who seemed to others commonplace-has enabled us, using his instrument of love, to grow ourselves beautiful in character from continual discovery and vision of the beautiful in others; till gaining his power of seeing in nature the ever-changing forms of one Divine beauty, and of seeing in man, beneath all evil, the unalterable traits of that image of the heavenly which Christ revealed, we grow up into somewhat of his loveliness of character, and begin to look forward with a strange, new exultation to the fulfilment of that ancient promise: 'Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty.'

THE BEAUTY OF CHRIST'S CHARACTER.

'Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty.'-Isaiah xxxiii. 17.

THERE is a difference between the worthiness and the beauty of a character. A man's acts and thoughts may have worth to kindle respect, but not to touch the imagination with that peculiar pleasure which is derived from the reception of beauty. They are like the reading of honourable prose; whereas the same acts and thoughts by a character which is beautiful as well as worthy, are like the reading of noble poetry. We continue to read the character of Christ to-day, not for its worth especially, but distinctly for the poetic beauty which adorns its worth.

The first of its beautiful elements we found to be sensibility, and we described how intense it was with regard to impressions received from nature and from man. But we especially said that this sensibility was necessarily active in a perfect character. It seeks, and that with passion, to clothe and to realise itself in an outward form. We discussed it in itself last Sunday. Our object to-day will be to investigate it in action in the words and deeds of Christ. A certain amount of repetition of thought will naturally mark what we have

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