vividly than any other character described in books, but that character is made up of features which, whether taken separately or in combination, are altogether without a parallel.

Look, for instance, at the benevolence of Jesus. Is there anything like it in the whole range of history? His is a benevolence so expansive, that it reaches to all men without distinction of country, or creed, or condition; so tender, that it descends to the humblest offices of kindness; so energetic, that it refuses to forego any opportunity of doing good; so superior to injury, that it pursues its beneficent path, unmoved by ingratitude or hostility, and even returns blessing for cursing. He stoops down to the sorrowful estate of man solely from a benevolent concern for our wellbeing; and though He descries beforehand, as from a height, the whole of the thorny path He has to tread, He never halts or falters till He has reached its termination at the bitter Cross. Can it be, that a benevolence so godlike suggested itself to human invention in an age when stoical insensibility was counted the perfection of virtue?

Or look at his humility. The greatest of characters, He is at the same time the gentlest. All the paths of human ambition are open to Him, yet He passes them by. All the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof are in His offer, yet He rejects them. He takes the condition of the lowly. He disdains not to be the teacher and friend of unlettered fishermen, and the helper and comforter of publicans and sinners. He takes little children in His arms to bless them; He washes the feet of His disciples. And even when disclosing the profoundest truths, or performing the most stupendous miracles, He always appears in the same simple, beautiful garb of humility. Strange if this most winning feature of character was the mental offspring of persons born and reared in the very hotbed of Pharisaic bigotry and pride!

Nor is Christ's character more unprecedented in its separate elements than in their combination. Every reader of the Gospels is struck with the contrasts in our Lord's outward condition-the contrast, for example, between His lowly nativity and the angelic pageant which announced it-the contrast between the manger where He was cradled, and the

star which lighted the way to it. His personal character presents like striking contrasts. In Him the lofty and sterner unite with the soft and gentle virtues. There is the towering grandeur of the Alpine precipice, but there is also the green and peaceful valley at its base. You behold in Him a self-sustained and commanding dignity, which isolates Him from all the men around Him; yet with this He conjoins the sweetest simplicity and condescension. You behold in Him an intense abhorrence of sin; yet compassion to sinners fills His heart and flows from His tongue. Nowhere else do you find such supreme devotion to a great enterprise; yet, instead of being chagrined by ill success, He bears opposition and disappointment with unruffled equanimity. Nowhere else do you find such an entire superiority to the need of earthly pleasures; yet, instead of displaying an ascetic temper, or frowning on human enjoyments, He joins freely in the genial courtesies and social festivities of life. Are such opposite qualities usually combined? Nay, does the whole history of mankind furnish another instance of their union? And, to increase the marvel, these seemingly incongruous elements never clash, never jar, never impair the oneness of the character. They always harmonize; they always unite in perfect apposition and concord; they always blend and combine like the prismatic colours in the ray of silvery light. There is no confusion and no distortion. See Jesus where you may on the high walk of miraculous power or in the humble scenes of common life-with His enemies or with His friends-amid the glories of the Transfiguration or amid the dishonours of the Cross-you behold one and the same harmonious character; you recognise His unmistakable identity; you hear, as it were, a holy voice speaking to your heart, and saying, "IT IS I."

And then, besides being altogether peculiar, this character is absolutely perfect. It commends itself to our moral sentiments as consummately excellent; and, what is not less signal, it commends itself the more the longer we study it. It grows in beauty, in symmetry, in moral grandeur, as we gaze upon it. It advances in our admiration in proportion to the refinement of our sensibilities; and they who are holiest,

The human mind has

appreciate it best and admire it most. been in a state of progress ever since the days of Jesus, and society has long outgrown the religions, the ethics, the tastes, the modes of thinking, which then prevailed. But His character, instead of shrinking before the scrutiny of advancing intellect and refinement, has only attracted to itself additional admiration as ages have rolled on. Even infidels have been forced to confess its awful beauty. Like the presence of a holy shrine, it has often restrained impious hands from violating the sanctuary of our religion; and many who have scrupled not to sport with everything else in the Gospel, have passed by the character of Jesus in reverent silence.

This is the character which we find portrayed in the writings of the Evangelists-portrayed in all its sweet harmonies, in all its unmatched perfection, and with inimitable vividness and verisimilitude. Can credulity itself believe that the Evangelists could have painted such a portrait, had it not been a portrait from the life?

THE PHASIS OF MATTER.

A GROWING plant draws inorganic matter from the soil and the air, and incorporates that matter with its own organized substance and living frame. The plant is then devoured by some animal, and straightway converted into muscle, or nerve, or bone, as circumstances may prescribe. Erelong the animal dies, and if the particles thus obtained have not previously been dissipated, they return to the atmosphere and the soil— the reservoirs from which they were originally derived. This circulation goes on continually. Matter is ever flowing from the mineral to the vegetable, and from the vegetable to the animal, and from the animal back again to its native site. In passing, however, from kingdom to kingdom, the ultimate atoms never change their intrinsic character. The oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and other elementary substances remain indelibly the same, despite the variety of combinations in which they successively appear. In nature's currency nothing is lost she marks all her coin. Every atom that existed

at the Creation is still existing somewhere, and might be called in at any moment in its pristine integrity.

In effecting these mutations all the physical forces are employed, and, in addition to them, the magical power of Vitality. With the laws and operations of the physical forces science is somewhat acquainted; but what Life is, and how it exerts its marvellous influence, science is unable to tell, and is never likely to discover. The fact, however, is unquestionable that to the proximate agency of forces, either physical or vital, are to be ascribed all the combinations and changes which the elements of matter undergo, whether in the rock, the soil, the water, the air, or in the structure of plants and animals.

Even within the limits of the mineral kingdom the law of material change and interchange is in constant operation. All the rocks of which the crust of the earth is composed, are ever, by slow but sure degrees, becoming disintegrated, and their substances passing into new conglomerations. But this is a tame phasis compared with that which occurs in bodies when they enter into organic structures. Then, the elements group themselves into complex compoundscompounds which art can analyze, but is utterly unable to reconstruct. The soil, which may be said to stand midway between dead and living matter-because from it animals and plants obtain by far the greater part of their frames--consists of substances in which the ultimate elements are much more variously and intricately combined than in the rocks where they previously existed; and still more various and intricate are the combinations into which these elements enter in the frame of vegetables and animals.

The numerous points of difference between plants and animals all serve to exemplify this grand law of circulation and interchange. One of the most prominent differences is to be found in the diet of the two. While the plant feasts on the earth, the animal cannot dine directly on the soil. The materials on which the latter subsists must pass through some vegetable form, in order that they may be worked up into gluten, oil, and other combinations, before they can be accepted and assimilated by the lordlier structures.

A second difference brings into view additional -changes, at least in the case of animals. While vegetables, generally speaking, retain in their frames until death the inorganic matter which they take up as food, the animal fabric is subject to incessant flux and dissipation. Parts of it are undergoing dissolution every moment, to be again recruited by fresh supplies of food. In the case of the human animal the whole fabric is dissipated in the course of a few years; so that, in the range of a long lifetime, each individual wears out several suits of bodies, as he does several suits of clothes. In this process of ceaseless change the Vital Principle is the chief worker; and his working is the more marvellous that it proceeds without our being aware of it. Though the corporeal houses we inhabit are pulled down, stone after stone, and rebuilt as fast as they are destroyed, yet no eye can follow the process. The masons and carpenters are never off our premises for an hour, and yet the chink of their chisels or the grating of their saws is entirely unheard. And still more striking is the fact, that the very organs which are the main instruments in effecting these changes are themselves silently renewed without interrupting their functions for an instant. The heart is reproduced out of our food without losing a single beat, and without spilling a solitary drop of blood. The eye is taken to pieces, time after time, and the windows of vision reglazed, without disturbing our sight for a day; and new stomachs are repeatedly inserted in our bodies without our ever being compelled to abstain from digestion, until the apparatus can be properly replaced.

One other point of difference between plants and animals may be mentioned, as illustrative, if not of the phasis of matter, at least of the broad distinction between the merely unconscious, passive life of the plant, and the conscious, sensational life of the animal. Plants exercise no choice in selecting their food. Whatever fluid is presented to their rootlets, be it noxious or salutary, it is indiscriminately absorbed. But every animal above the class of sponges has the power of rejecting or accepting substances presented to it. Nor let us here overlook the remarkable instinct which