should at the same time indicate that the new votary had taken upon himself not simply a new service, but an entirely new mode of life, it would be so much the better. Christ adopted the rite of baptisın, and made it absolutely binding upon all his followers to submit to it.

The Call having been thus discussed, the First Part of the volume concludes with a Chapter (IX.) of Reflections on the Nature of Christ's Society.

What was the ultimate object of Christ's scheme? When the Divine society was established and organized, what did he expect it to accomplish? We may suppose he would have answered, "The object of the Divine society is that God's will may be done on earth as it is in heaven." In the language of our own day, we may say, provided we use it with sufficient insight and depth of meaning, its object was the improvement of morality. No strange or unusual object. Many schemes have been proposed for curing human nature of its vice, and helping it to right thought and right action. One large class of schemes may, for the sake of comparison with Christianity, be treated as one; for since the time of Sokrates philosophy has occupied itself with the same problem, and we may gain some insight into Christ's method of curing human nature, by comparing it with that of the philosophers. Similar as on the surface they may seem, the difference is radical. Many have compared Christ and Sokrates. Our author shows the contrast. The philosophers, if they constituted a society, did so for convenience only in giving instruction, and assumed a name derived from the wisdom they professed. Christ took his title from the community he ruled, and called himself King. Sokrates based everything on argument, and studied to sink his own personality, professing to know nothing, because he wished to exalt his method at his own expense. He wanted to give men, not truths, but power to arrive at truths, and persistently abstained from all dogmatic assertion. But we find Christ at the very opposite extreme. With Sokrates argument is everything, and personal authority nothing. With Christ personal authority is all in all, and argument altogether unemployed. Sokrates depreciates himself and dissembles his own superiority. Christ perpetually and consistently exalts himself and stedfastly asserts his own absolute superiority to all men, and his natural title to universal royalty. The same contrast appears in the requirements they made on their followers. Sokrates cared nothing what those whom he conversed with thought of him, and would bear any kind of rudeness from them; but he cared very much about the subject of discussion and to obtain the triumph for his method. On the other hand, the one thing which Christ required was a certain personal attachment to himself, a

fidelity or loyalty, and so long as they manifested this he was in no haste to deliver their minds from speculative error. Christ had a totally different object, and used totally different means from Sokrates. The resemblance is, no doubt, at first sight, striking. Both were teachers, both were prodigiously influential, both suffered martyrdom. But if we examine these points of resemblance we shall see that martyrdom was, as it were, an accident of the life of Sokrates, and teaching in a great degree of Christ's, and that their influence upon men has been of a totally different kind-that of Sokrates being an intellectual influence on thought; that of Christ a personal influence upon feeling. What real student of Sokrates concerns himself with his martyrdom? It is an impressive page of history, but the importance of Sokrates to man is not affected by it. Had he died in his bed he would still have been the creator of science. On the other hand, if we isolate Christ's teaching from his life, we may come to the conclusion that it contains little that could not be found elsewhere, and found accompanied with reasoning and explanation. Those who fix their eyes on the Sermon on the Mount, or rather on the naked propositions which it contains, and disregard Christ's life, his cross, and his resurrection, commit the same mistake in studying Christianity that the student of Sokratic philosophy would commit if he studied only the romantic story of his death. Both Sokrates and Christ uttered remarkable thoughts, and lived remarkable lives; but Sokrates holds his place in history by his thoughts, and not by his life; Christ by his life, and not by his thoughts.

Philosophy hopes to cure the vices of human nature by working upon the head, Christianity by educating the heart. Christianity and moral philosophy are totally different things then, and have different functions. Both endeavour to lead men to do what is right; but philosophy undertakes to explain what it is right to do, while Christianity undertakes to make men disposed to do it. It is not so much the knowledge of what is right that is needed, as something that shall be able to evoke good impulses and cherish them, and make them masters of the bad ones. This Christ does. A first step is to form a strong personal attachment, to be drawn out of one's self, the object of attachment being a person of striking and conspicuous goodness. The worship of such a person will be the best exercise in virtue that he could have. Let him vow obedience in life and death to such a person, let him mix and live with others who have made the same vow, he will ever have before his eyes an ideal of what he may himself become. His heart will be saturated by new feelings. A new world will be gradually unveiled to him, and more than this, a new self within his old self will make its

presence felt, and a change will pass over him, which he will feel it most proper to call a new birth. This is Christ's scheme stated in its most naked form.

Philosophy has no instrument that it can use to secure the end. There exists no other such instrument, but that personal one of which Christ availed himself; and if we examine the best product of philosophy, do we find the result satisfactory? If he does right, is it not without warmth and promptitude?

wonder. The principle of sympathy is feeble. Men become for the most part pure, generous, and humane, not by logical but by personal influences. Of these two things, that of reason and that of living example, which would a wise reformer re-enforce? Christ chose the last. He gathered all men to a common relation to himself, and demanded that each should set him on the pedestal of his heart, giving a lower place to all other objects of worship-to father and mother, to husband and wife. In Him should the loyalty of all hearts centre; He should be their pattern, their authority, their judge. Of Him and His

service should no man be ashamed; but to those who acknowledged it, morality should be an easy yoke, and the law of right as spontaneous as the law of life; sufferings should be easy to bear, and the loss of worldly friends repaired by a new home in the bosom of the Christian kingdom; finally, in death itself their sleep should be sweet, upon whose tombstones it could be written, "Obdormivit in Christo."

The author dwells on the fact of personal influence in creating virtuous impulses, and illustrates the magical passing of virtue out of a virtuous man into the hearts of those with whom he comes in contact by the story of the woman taken in adultery, which we gave in last number, and which concludes the First Part of the book. The Second Part, on Christ's Legislation, contains fourteen chapters, but we have already used all our available space in this abstract of the First Part. Imperfect and unsatisfactory as such an abstract must be, it may nevertheless help to give some idea of a very thoughtful and remarkable book; which the Earl of Shaftesbury, we find, the other day, at a meeting of the Church Pastoral Aid Society, characterized as "the most pestilential book ever vomited, I think, from the jaws of hell." Lord Shaftesbury is, of course, entitled to his own opinion.

368

THE HAPPINESS OF JESUS CHRIST.

"These things have I spoken to you that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”—JOHN XV.

THE object of the immense sum of Christian teaching and preaching that is going forward around the world is the producticn of eternal joy; for, in the words inscribed at the head of this paper, Jesus Christ Himself declared that such was the aim he proposed to himself in his Gospel. We might translate the motto into modern English propositions in some such manner as this first, that Jesus Christ himself is exceedingly happy, with a kind and measure of happiness unknown to the generality of men; and, second, that it is the end of the Incarnation to communicate the same kind of happiness to mankind for

ever.

And this offer of service is peculiar to Jesus of Nazareth. I do not recollect any other acknowledged leader who distinctly offers to make his followers exceedingly happy. How strangely, nevertheless, such a proposal would sound in the ears of any mixed and busy assembly of modern men. Imagine that Jesus. Christ, just as he appeared among his contemporaries, with a countenance like a window into heaven, translucent to the light within, but in all other respects clothed as an ordinary mortal, could stand on the front steps of the Royal Exchange in London, and with a loud voice call upon the traffickers and merchants and passers by "to come to Him," because He would make them "full of joy" for ever; what would be his reception? One can conceive the expression of most of the countenances of the persons hurrying along to arrange an immediate purchase of shares, or to receive payment for a parcel of goods, or to agree upon a price for freight, or to send an order by telegraph to Lancashire or Yorkshire for cloths or cottons, or to Lyons for silks, or to Birmingham for hardware-an expression indicating the somewhat angry feeling that such a dreamer should be permitted by the supervisors of the traffic to interfere with practical business, or to distract the streets with such insane outeries as this offer of happiness to mankind. The feeling would be, in the majority, that they knew how to take care of their own happiness, so far as happiness was attainable on earth.

Certainly not much of it was to be gained, for life is subject to infinite vexations and annoyances; there are troubles enough, no doubt, and there is that detestable Shadow of Death at the end of the prospect,―and GOD, perhaps, beyond that, with whom some: sort of "peace" must be "made" before they die; but meantime the way to be happy is to make money, for money will buy all the solid comforts of life, all that has any reality in it; and any pretence to another sort of happiness, such as probably this dreamer proposes-an intellectual or moral happiness-that is nothing better than enthusiasm, for it is well known that religion, so far from conferring happiness, when it does not find a man gloomy and splenetic, generally makes him so. "Onward"then, such men would say in effect to the crowd brought to a stand for a moment by the great uplifted Voice and wondrous Eyes that flashed with the everlasting light,-" Onward, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."-So much for the general belief in the motto on the pediment of the Royal Exchange"THE EARTH IS THE LORD'S, AND THE FULNESS THEREOF."

Yet amidst the crowd of busy traffickers would probably be found some on whose hearts a deeper and different impression would be made; who would begin to think and muse, as they listened and passed along, on that question of Happiness, deep, vital, and enduring; and who would confess to themselves that it was a matter deserving of the serious attention even of a modern Englishman. Some such train of thought as this might occur (for among these myriads of busy people who throng the pathways of our great cities, there are not a few who have trains of thought passing through their minds which would be worthy of being uttered aloud to all the persons traversing at the moment even the most crowded thoroughfale, from end to end):-"Well, as I look upon these hard and anxious faces that hurry along by tens of thousands, it is strange to notice how very rarely occurs one that is distinguished from the rest by looking exceedingly happy. Now and then passes a face that indicates a supreme spiritual repose within, and now and then a youthful countenance that is illumined by the gladsomeness of youth; but the expression of the great majority is far from satisfied. When one looks upon or listens to the voices of a thousand birds, and then of a thousand of mankind, the contrast is great indeed. The birds are cheerful up to the extent of their ability, the lark sings even in a cage; but these human creatures seem borne down by outward or by inward cares. Many appear to be bearing through life a burden of anxiety as to their outward concerns, which bends them to the earth. Others, whose apparel indicates prosperity, seem full of sorrow in the expression of the eyes, where chiefly the soul is seen, as if