said with exquisite knowledge of the less or more which might have spoiled its influence. There is no irritating repetition of reproof; one sharp stern phrase is spoken and no more: Get thee behind me, adversary;' 'Ye know not what spirit ye are of'—and then silence.

6

The same may be said of his praise. There is no flattery; the central point worthy of praise in the character, often a quite unexpected point, is seized on at once and brought into prominence. Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile;' 'I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel;' She loved much; '-in all, the one clear sentence which revealed the man to himself, and which will remain, because of its absolute fitness, as his central attribute in our memory.

This is the beauty of energy, the child of passion, in a nature perfectly at harmony through the exercise of temperance.

But Christ has been accused of intemperance, especially in his severe treatment of the Pharisees. If this be true, perfect beauty of character is gone, for temperance, inasmuch as it keeps all the powers of the soul from extravagance, 'is the girdle of beauty.' But I have never been impressed with the justice of this objection. I can conceive nothing more worthy of indignation than Pharisaism. In all its forms it is hateful; and not only Christ, but every teacher, Pagan or Christian, in proportion as he loved truth, mercy, and righteousness, has denounced it as the worst of evils. The more true, and pure, and human a man was, the more indignation would he feel against it, and it was because Christ was truer, purer, and more

human than others, that He spoke more strongly than others.

But were his expressions used in anger, rather than in indignation? If so, however deserved, they were intemperate. They do not wear that aspect. In anger, reason has not time to operate; words rush almost unwittingly to the lips. Hence, they are incoherent; they are unjust; they want the mark of deliberate choice; they run on in unmeaning declamation; they do not hit the point, they do not sting. But indignation, being a noble and divine quality, is led by reason and is the servant of justice. It waits before it speaks. Its denunciation is calm, deliberate, and full; the words are chosen so as to hit the point and the evil hard, and in the centre; they are weighed so as to be scrupulously just. They bear the stamp of thought, and they do their work, making the heart on which they fall writhe with shame and pain. A certain amount of fine irony often goes with this indignation, for there is calm at its root, and irony is the child, in such matters, of indignation and calm.

Now, Christ's words to the Pharisees have all the marks of indignation and none of the marks of anger. I cannot conceive beauty of character without indignation at evil. Purity implies it, and indignation, by its very essence, is restrained to strict justice, laying on its scourge exactly with the requisite severity and in the requisite place. There was passion in the words of Christ, but it was divine passion, under the restraint of law. It did not sin against temperance; nay, it derived its force from temperance.

K

Lastly, passion and energy, limited by temperance, imply repose of character. As we cannot attribute repose to that which has not the capability of energy, so that energy is not noble energy, nor is it directed by temperance in the midst of its passion, unless it be capable of profound calm. I will even go further, and say that all noble moral energy roots itself in moral calm. Now, as in all art, so also in all human character, we demand, as in one the appearance, so also in the other the reality of repose, as a primary element of beauty. All restlessness-a very different thing from vital energy-is ugly, having no goal, being full of vain effort. Activity in repose, calm in the heart of passion, these things are of the essence of beauty.

And in Him in whom we have found the King in his beauty this peacefulness was profound. His activity grew out of his deep quietude of trust in his Father's will. It mattered little to Him that the turbulence of parties surrounded Him and the wild mob of Jerusalem cried for his death. He passed on in the calm of one to whom duty was all, to finish the work given Him to do; content quietly to live or quietly to die, unalarmed, and unimpatient, for his Father's law was his law, and his life and death were hidden in the stillness of God's will; consistent in self-rule, because He had escaped from self into union with the perfect good; satisfied to suffer, for He reposed upon the promise and believed in the love of his Father. This is the final touch of beauty, which gathers into itself, and harmonises, all the others; and hence no words are so beautiful as those in which, having perfect rest Himself, He bestows

it as his dying legacy on men: 'Peace I leave with you, peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you;' and repeats it as his resurrection gift: 'Peace be unto you.'

Let us part with this supreme conception in our hearts. In the midst of the fevered activity and unrestrained passion of our life in this great city, seek for a centre of calm. Find it where Christ found it, in humble trust in a Father's love; find it in the calm which comes of duty accepted as the law of life, duty to your heavenly Father, duty to your brother-men. Find it in resolute obedience; so that the spirit of that solemn inscription over the dead at Thermopyla may be true of you: Stranger, tell the Lacedæmonians that we lie here in obedience to their orders.' Find it by realising in yourself, through union with Christ's spirit and Christ's life, that deep calm of his which translated noble passions into noble energy, and moved his energy forwards within the temperate sphere of law. So will you see and reflect in character the King in his beauty. For all moral loveliness, and all spiritual, lies in knowing what He meant when He said: 'Come unto me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,'

PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW.

'Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.'-James iv. 3.

PRAYER is in its plainest meaning a petition addressed to God. We desire Him to give us some blessing, to help us in some difficulty, or to relieve us from some pain. But this meaning, when brought face to face with the conception of the absolute, or to the test of modern scientific knowledge, is open to a series of objections. To escape from these objections other meanings have been given to prayer. It has been said, that to labour is to pray it has been said that to have comrunion with God, and to meditate on Him, is to pray: it has been said, that aspiration is prayer. But however true these definitions may be, they are not, even taking them all together, an adequate definition, as long as they omit or place in the background the idea of petition. Nor do we avoid the metaphysical and scientific difficulties when we ignore petition as being of the essence of prayer. It is and will always remain its greatest part.

It is wiser, then, if we would retain prayer as an intellectual conception and not discredit it to ourselves in the spiritual world, to look its difficulties in