to our individual need, with that minuteness of application of which that life, thus revealed to us in the Spirit, is capable, but of which no written record could be capable. How many a little child, remembering that Jesus was once a little child, and grew in wisdom, and in stature, and in favour with God and man, and looking to Him for help according to the need felt in seeking to follow God as a dear child, and be in obedience to those related to him as Joseph and Mary were to the child Jesus, has found his trust met, and felt no want of “a gospel of the infancy of Jesus." Let the divine favour, testified as resting upon that first portion of our Lord's life, sanctify to our hopes private life, the large proportion of the life of all, the whole of the life of most; and let us see that on which that favour rested, as a part of the eternal life given to us in the Son of God, which is to be God's glory in us in private life, a store from which to receive all that pertains to life and godliness as we are individual Christians, as truly as His life as a preacher of the kingdom of God, is that to a special participation in which those who are called in this to walk in His steps, are to look, as truly as His witnessing before Pontius Pilate a good confession, is for strength according to their need, to those who are called to suffer as martyrs for His

name.

As to our Lord's personal ministry, its distinguishing character is to be seen in this, that that ministry was the outcoming of the life of sonship. By this character of a life was His ministry distinguished from that of all who were only "teachers sent from God." In this respect was it that He "spake as never man spake." What He spake, as what He did, was a part of what He was. His words were spirit and life, and not a mere testimony concerning life. As now in the inner man of our being, when the Son of God is known as present in us claiming lordship over our spirits, there is a testimony of the Father to the Son in the Spirit, which in calling Jesus Lord we are welcoming, so we cannot doubt that then in Judea the man Jesus, in His living witnessing as the Son for the

Father, had a testimony of the Father borne to Him, which men heard according as they welcomed the teaching of God. This testimony was a testimony to what He was, to the life that was shining forth in His deeds and words. And the unconscious sense of this has manifestly gone beyond the intelligent recognition of it; so that we find men unable to resist the authority and power with which He spake, even though not beholding, as the disciple did, "His glory as the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father."

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Unless we realise this, and that that was presented to men's faith, if they could receive it, which pertained to one who could say, in reference to His own conscious life, “I am the light of the world," we cannot enter into that immediate presenting to men of what He Himself was as the Gospel, which we have seen in the words, Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls." And in that testimony as to who are blessed," with which the discourse which we call the Sermon on the Mount opens, we are to recognise the same thing. All these declarations as to the blessedness of the several conditions of spirit which our Lord there specifies are rays of the light of the life that was in Him; and will be such to us, being heard as utterances of that life, utterances of Christ's own conciousness in humanity, a part of His confessing the Father before men, being testimonies in humanity to the blessedness of sonship in doing the Father's will.

Accordingly the whole discourse keeps the Father before us. The foundation of every counsel is our filial relation to God. All is in harmony with the prayer which he teaches, putting the words, "Our Father," in our lips, and adding, as the first petitions which we are to present, the expression of an interest in the Father's "name" and " kingdom" and "will,"—an interest which, if these petitions are to proceed from unfeigned lips, must imply our participation in that life of sonship which is presented to us in Him who teaches us so to pray.

Nor are we to leave out of account, in contemplating our Lord's ministry as giving glory to the Father in being manifested sonship, that not only was this in our nature and in our circumstances, but that the consciousness of its being so, and the full knowledge of the amount of the demand made on us when called to learn of Him, is distinctly expressed, the knowledge that to call on us to follow Him, is to call upon as to take up the cross. When we in very truth betake ourselves to Him, as to that high-priest who is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin," and who in that He Himself hath suffered, being tempted, is able to succour us when we are tempted, we then learn to value the tone of full conscious entering into the amount of the demand which He makes upon men in calling upon them to hate their life in this world which pervades our Lord's teaching equally with the consciousness of being Himself living that life in the Father's favour which He is commending.

But that life of which our Lord's ministry was thus the living outcoming, in the consciousness of which He testified who are blessed, in the consciousness of which he declared to the weary and heavy laden what is the true rest,— speaking to us also in all this as our very brother,—that life needed, in order to its perfect development, as the light of life to us, to have the depth of its root in God— its power to overcome the world-the nature of its strength and victory-the weight of the cross which it bore in suffering flesh-revealed, as even the living teaching of the Lord's ministry did not reveal it. Therefore was that hour and power of darkness permitted which the closing period of our Lord's course presents in which sonship towards the Father and brotherhood towards man have had their nature manifested and their power displayed to the utmost.

As the time drew near the Lord prepared the disciples for this hour and power of darkness. "And Jesus going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem;

and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify Him; and the third day He shall rise again." (Matt. xx. 17, 18, 19.) His own feelings in looking forward to what, as to its outward form, He thus foretold, were such as to impress their minds with the most solemn anticipations, and His words then, so far as they are recorded, remain to us a portion of Scripture on which we meditate as bringing us near to a region of feeling into which we scarcely dare to venture; and yet these expressions of mental agony are recorded for our instruction as belonging to that life of Christ which is the light of life to us.

"I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." (Luke xii. 50.) "Now is my soul troubled; save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name." (John xii. 27.) And even after the conclusion which the words "For this cause came I to this hour" seem to express, when the awful hour was close at hand, it again became the subject of earnest pleading with the Father,pleading, the earnestness of which, while it reveals to us the measure of the apprehended bitterness of the cup, and terror of the hour to which it refers, makes a demand upon our faith as to the reality of life which was in our Lord's prayers, and how truly, in dealing with the Father, He dealt with a living will and heart, and not with a fate, which blessed are those who are able truly and fully to respond to. "And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and He saith to His disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. And He taketh with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; and saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. And He went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. And He said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from

me, nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt." (Mark xiv. 33-36.) "And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly; and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luke xxii. 44.)

In this awfully intense prayer we have to mark its alternative nature, and that the latter part was as truly prayer as the former: the former uttering the true and natural desire to which He was conscious as contemplating that which was before Him in the weakness and capacity of suffering proper to suffering flesh; the latter uttering the desire of the spirit of sonship, being that which was deepest, and to which the other, while consciously realized, was perfectly subordinated.

After being offered the third time, our Lord's prayer was answered, and the mind of the Father, which was the response to His cry, was revealed to Him in the Spirit. He was not to be spared the dreaded hour. The cup was not to pass from Him; and therefore, in that truth of sonship in which He had said, "Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt," the Father's will was welcomed, the bitter cup was received from the Father's hand as the Father's hand, and in the strength of sonship the Lord drank it. "And He cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. And immediately, while He yet spake, cometh Judas one of the twelve, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders." (Mark xiv. 41, 43.) Then Simon Peter having a sword, drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath the cup which my Father hath given me to drink, shall I not drink it?" To those who had come with Judas He said, "When I was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched forth no hands against me: but this is your hour, and the power of darkness." (Luke xxii. 53.)

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The precise point of time at which the anticipated hour and power of darkness had its commencement is