one of Israel ?” It was not as if there was a single definite, objective Messianic ideal by which he could measure his own spiritual aspiration. It was by his own ideal, to which all the better elements in psalm and prophecy and rabbinism had contributed, that he measured all the rest and found them wanting. His was the greatest and the simplest of them all. The secret of its being so was partly in that simple life of Nazareth. But for the most part it was hidden in those depths of organization where it is quite impossible for us to penetrate. It must forever be a mystery how the initial step in the profoundest revolution that the world has ever seen devolved upon a man so humble in his origin, so little noticed by his contemporaries, slurred over in a line or two by Josephus, who evidently thought himself the more important person. But however it came to be so, his work once inwardly determined, the form of it will show at every step his Galilean training. Everywhere does Galilee crop out in Jesus, as Scotland in Burns. The man who doesn't see this has no eyes in his head. He would not find the home-religion of Scotland in the Cotter's Saturday Night.' Open the gospels at will. They are redolent as new-mown hay with the perfume of the soil." It is the Galilean education that shapes every parable, that determines every metaphor; ay, that furnishes the ideal of that Kingdom of Heaven by which the soul of Jesus is entranced. The Kingdom of Heaven is a univer 66 * * If the whole passage be not an interpolation. If it is not, it has been grossly tampered with. sal Galilee, without any hatreds or impurities or selfish greeds. And even when he hangs upon the cross, and cries out Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani, the words will be in his own Galilean dialect. He is a Galilean till the last. I have no dogma to enforce by these considerations. I have only tried to show you by what scenes and forces Jesus was surrounded during his childhood and his youth. That these scenes and forces account for his immense and sacred personality, I do not pretend. That they affected it in various ways, there cannot be a particle of doubt, and a few of the more obvious I have tried to indicate. It may be that some of you have been a little troubled, if not really pained, by the purely natural and human aspect of the picture which I have invited you to see. But, for myself, it is only in proportion as I am able to contemplate Jesus as a man among men, that he becomes at once vital and vitalizing to my spirit. For the most part, it is hard to penetrate into his real presence through the accumulation of obstacles that mistaken reverence and superstition have placed between him and the human soul. But when in some moment of greater force and courage I am able to do this, I find myself encountering the most unique, the most gracious personage in all the history of religion, a man whose dominant ideas never have been and never can be outgrown, the stoutest foe of dogmatism and formalism the world has ever seen, the stoutest advocate of "mere morality," and the most loving heart that ever beat in sympathy with universal sorrow, suffering, and sin. His memory and inspiration will go about their work with least obstruction when we forswear our whining, supplicating manners, our abject subservience and self-contempt, and stand upon our feet, selfrespecting and self-reverencing, that he may speak to us his brother-word of manly exhortation. O LORD! at Joseph's humble bench, Thy hands did handle saw and plane; That thou didst seem, thou wast indeed; Lord, might I be but as a saw, A plane, a chisel, in thy hand!- I pray, O Master! let me lie, As on thy bench the favored wood; No, no ambition, holy-high, Urges for more than both to pray : Then I, at bench, or desk, or oar, Shall do the Father's will again. THE ANGEL SONG. AN arbitrary criticism has attempted to separate the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke, those which contain the charming legends of the birth and infancy of Christ, from the gospels of which they form a part. Our own Andrews Norton, a professor in the Divinity School at Cambridge, a defender of the faith against what seemed to him in Mr. Emerson's great Address of 1838 "The latest form of Infidelity," although so careful and conservative, dealt with these chapters in this way. But I, for one, am very glad that subsequent critics, of equal scholarship and greater penetration, have decided that this method of dealing with these chapters is arbitrary and unwarrantable. The stories which they contain, however marvellous in their implications, do not differ in kind from scores of other marvellous stories scattered up and down through all the gospels. They do not differ in degree from a good many which Prof. Andrews Norton would have been very loth to spare from the New Testament. Eliminate from the four gospels everything that is marvellous, and you reduce them to a half or smaller fraction of their present size, and to a still smaller fraction of their present interest. In order to retain them it is not, however, necessary to suppose that the events which are reported actually took place at any time. The stories are easily accounted for, their generation and men's faith in them, without resorting to the hypothesis of actual occurrence. All things considered, such stories were absolutely sure to be generated, and once generated, to be believed. The more marvellous a story was, the readier credence it obtained. Did the story reflect honor upon Jesus?—this was about the only test the early Christian critics brought to bear on any story that purported to be a true account of any incident of his career. If it did this, the more wonderful it was, the better. But because these stories of the birth and infancy of Jesus are beautiful legends and not actual history, is no reason why they should be expunged from the earliest Christian records. As Phryne's judges said, "She shall live and not die, because she is so beautiful," so let us say of these. Moreover, they have a distinct historical value, though not such as the popular supernaturalism ascribes to them. It is quite as important to know what was thought in the first Christian century as to know what was done. In reality these stories have nothing to tell us about the birth and infancy of Jesus, but they have a great deal to tell us about the birth and infancy of Christianity. It is only so long as these stories are regarded as narratives of actual occurrences that they have |