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Where the carcaj^e is, there toiU the eagles he gathered; as Judaea falls, she will be rent by the Roman eagles; but also, wherever sin is ripe, there the ravening judgments will be gathered. The7i shall they see the Son of Man coming. They saw unwillingly, when Jerusalem was fallen, Mankind taking the place of Jewry, and humanity more esteemed than a narrow fanaticism ; but also they saw the name and doctrine of Jesus whom they had crucified, taking the upper place in the hearts of all nations. Destroy this temple, and in three days I vrill raise it up : they thought it said of a temple of stones, but He meant one which should be an assembly of living minds, pervaded by the breath of God, and so tenanted by the spirit of Christ, that to His mind it would become an embodiment, and out of it should go sacrifices of thanksgivings, and incense of prayer, to the great Father. Except a man be bom of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into 23—2 356 THE WORKS OF CHRIST. the kingdom of God. Unless Nicodemus unlearned that mind of prejudices which he had imbibed with his mother's milk, and rose out of the waters of baptism into a new world of thought, he could never know the power of that kingdom, after which God was fashioning the world anew ; but again, unless we have the holiness of which our baptismal water is a symbol, and run counter to many himiours that come of our natural birth, we cannot be kings and priests in God's kingdom of tlie mind, or have that peace which the world cannot give. " As the words of Jesus teach, so do His deeds. As He is the great teacher against sin, so is He the healer of pain*. Thereby we learn, how these two things hang together ; the one being contrary to the will of Grod in our mind, and the other in our body ; both therefore being invaders of His kingdom. But when the rightful Lord reigneth, all such enemies must be put under our feet. Sin, being the greatest, must go first; and suffering, so far as practicable, must decrease; and so far as it remains, as being, for wisdom or necessity, the will of our Heavenly Father, we shall not call it evil. Hence, when Jesus takes away the sin of the world. He says to the cripple. Arise, and walk ; and to the leper, / will, he thou clean. Thus Jesus shews first the lovingkindness of the supreme Deity whose * express image ' is made manifest to our sight in Him ; then He teaches the connexion of sin with suffering ; He again sets to right the order of Grod's world, by taking away these things which disordered it; and altogether He manifests in His own person that image of divine power, healing, and blessing, and comforting, which men instinctively fall down and worship, as answering to the best prophecies of their conscience respecting the nature of the Godhead. As by faith He opens the eyes of our conscience, so He gave sight to the blind ; as He purifies from sin, so He cleanses the leper; as He raises the palsied • It is worthy of note that nothing tuffen but what feart, and bo is capable of apprehending some degree of law; and as responsibility ascends in the creation, so generally sensibility to pain. THE WOBKS OF CHfilST. 357 energies of our soul into better life, so He made the paralytic bodies walk; as He gives an utterance to our better thoughts in prayer and praise and bold confession before any adversary, so He made the dumb to speak ; as He casts out evil tempers, so He healed men of disorders in mind or body, which seemed the working of evil spirits ; as He lifts our humanity out of the death of its nobler part, so He called forth Lazarus from the grave ; and as He gives us a victory over death and extinction, so He exhibited the same in His person and His cause, by dying and rising again. Thus His works are not only wonderful, but significant ; they are signs to us of might, and of right, and of holiness, and of a love rejoicing to overtake evil and to change it into a ministry of good. Yet, if some have dwelt too exclu- sively on the element of wonderful power in the works of Jesus, we will not altogether overlook it. For certainly His works transcend the skill or knowledge of man ; they run counter, not indeed to the highest law, but to the ordinary processes of nature; they introduce, as it were, a new cause into the order of effects, so as to modify them, and this cause seems of a creativeness equal or kindred to that which originally designed the whole. They are works of healing greater than man's works, and certainly no one would think of ascribing their goodness to any malignant demon, or B&kshasa; it remains then, that these apparent interpositions in nature come of a goodness above nature, or of the Mind which disposed all things. It is very wholesome to be reminded, on some signal occasions, that all this visible order is under the rule of a higher mind; and we can more easily believe such mementos to come of the highest, when their working is for health, and in harmony with the will of goodness which is ever fulfilling itself by a law of love. It is also to be noticed, that Jesus heals chiefly those who have faith, or a certain concurrence of will; and we not only find it natural for the will when touched by faith to brace the lower powers, but such a result is quite in harmony with the entire genius of that realm of thought, which 358 THE WORKS OF CHRIST. Jesus proclaims as the kingdom of God. Nor is the mere wonder or awe in signal cures altogether useless. For out of awe comes naturally worship; and if ruder races most require to be so awakened, yet the most disciplined thinkers will accept such process as a step to something higher, if they are so led on to find a higher order, and a display of the Divine wisdom in things strange, as well as usual. Nor is it difficult to believe, that the highest truth, or the liighest wisdom, may work by order even in things strange; for it partakes of, or coincides with, that very wisdom which made the worlds, and knows all the laws which itself, or its Author, fixed of old. Since then Jesus spake as never man spake, and lived a life of God em- bodied in flesh, we think it but reasonable for liim to have done the works of God. How different arc His wonders firom those told in your Indian legends of mountains held over milk- maids, or of magicians riding through the air, or of demon- dwellers in Ceylon shivering as they felt a new power near them. Jesus does nothing for caprice, or for ostentation, or as it were of mere human will ; but He works the will of the sui)reme Father, in both manifesting His power over nature, and the beneficent will which wields it. No one of HLs works, save at most two, are not works of clear goodness; and those two are striking lessons, as wlicn He makes the stricken fig-tree a parable to barren loiterers on the earth, or the drowning of the swine an emblem of unclean creatures given up to e\dl impulses. " Thus the entire life of Jesus is that of perfect man, and yet of the Son of God manifesting His grace and truth. His truth comes out from no less than the higliest Being, which it visibly mirrors, and with which it ever remains One ; His love is that of God calling through Him all His wandering children to the Father ; His wisdom is that of Him who knows all tlic secret springs of nature, and holds in His hand the hearts of men, and the fountain of events. Here is truly an Incarnation. The thought of God here comes to fiilfilment in man; the INCARNATION. 359 likeness of God, in which man was destined according to his Maker's will to live, is here shewn without "blur or spot ; the Divine goodness and the human obedience are blended in one great Harmoniser or Mediator; and this outcoming or mani- festation of Deity in our nature may truly profess to have been from the beginning, even from of old.