and of the prodigal son. It was when a certain lawyer stood up and tempted Him that He spoke the parable of the good Samaritan, which, next to that of the prodigal son, has been dear to the heart of the world. It was in answer to Simon's suspicion that He told of the creditor who frankly forgave both his debtors.

These instances might be added to. What do they show? They show that the more Christ's mind is drawn out, the richer it is. He is never so great as when He speaks without premeditation in reply to His enemies. Remember who they were and who He was. They were the wise men of the nation, skilled from their childhood in all manner of word-fencing. He was but a poor carpenter, who had just left the bench, who had never learned. What makes Him such an antagonist? Whence has He that wisdom? Why is it that He is never worsted? Why is it that these conflicts always end in the humiliation of His enemies? that He makes the wrath of man to praise Him, and the heathen to sound His trumpet? Is not the man who can do these wonders God with us?

So it has been since He spoke. Attacks on

the Christian religion have brought forth replies which have been the fullest exposition of Christian truth. We owe more to the enemy than to the friend. The enemies who attack Him are, in spite of themselves, made to swell the host of His friends. The devil's assaults on the saints have issued in the most pathetic and devotional utterances of the human mind. The Church has been at her greatest when led to prison and to judgment. The blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the Church.

CHAPTER XIII.

Christ's Toil for Men.

"I must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work.”

"This life of mine

ROBERT BROWNING.

Must be lived out, and a grave thoroughly earned."

E aim in this chapter at giving an idea of the way in which the days of Christ's ministry were spent. Before speaking of His work, something has to be said of His endurance. His sufferings in one sense were solitary and unique, but He had His share also of those pains which every great and noble life has to pass under. He was the enduring Christ, not only in the deep mystery of His atonement when He drank the bitterness of our punishment, not only in the trial agony which He endured as our representative, but in the life-long pain of His days. He lived surrounded by an atmosphere of calumny and rejection. He was misunderstood by those who were closest to Him in ties of blood.

For the gospel's sake He had to break through the bonds which had been confirmed through thirty years of His life. He had to endure the misunderstandings even of His own disciples who were nearest to Him, and to whom He showed most of His heart. And, besides, He lived under the fierce, fiery, watchful hatred of the Pharisees. There is no hatred like the hatred of religionists who fear that their system is to be overthrown, and that hatred He knew to the full. He was dogged by keen and critical malignity. Every action was misinterpreted, every word twisted. Men sought in all things to find materials for accusing Him. This hatred pained Him, as it would pain any-nay, it pained Him more keenly than it could pain us, because of His absolute sinlessness. He felt such a requital, because there was nothing within Him which declared it to be even in a remote degree just. We who indistinctly know our imperfections have the feeling that criticisms passed upon us, if not deserved in one point, are deserved in others. He had no such alleviation. Besides, since He loved all and despised none, every harsh judgment wounded Him. And further, His pain was intense, because He saw that men in thus treating Him were kick

When

ing against the goads to their own ruin. men reject their fellow-men, they for the most part know that the worst suffering will be that of the rejected. Christ knew that the loss and the ruin would be to those who so tried Him, and this consciousness, instead of lessening His pain, made it keener.

Yet He endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself. The word implies more than stoical patience, it signifies an unalterable tenacity of purpose. He abode in His place, saw the plain path, and pursued it in spite of all opposition. This persistence of Christ in His course, the exceeding tenacity with which He pursued His point, is often missed by us, because His purpose never drooped. Had he faltered sometimes, as all men do, and knit Himself up after a temporary swerving, we should have appreciated much more easily the thorough and perfect determination of His life. But the fact that the motive always prevailed makes it more difficult for us to perceive it. And, besides, the exceeding gentleness with which this resolution was as it were sheathed conceals it from us. A velvet glove is over the iron hand, but it is an iron hand. He endured the contradiction of sin