substance, and do so gladly, thinking it a privilege; yea, I know some who pinch themselves-some of the poor and needy-who stint themselves that they may give to Christ. Such are doubtless blessed in the deed. I do not understand those men who have thousands upon thousands of pounds, perhaps hundreds of thousands, and profess to love Christ, and dole out their gifts to Jesus in miserable fragments. I must leave them to their Master, to be judged at the last, but I confess I do not understand them or admire them. If I did love Christ at all, I would love Him so that I would give Him all I could, and if I did not do that, I think I would say, "He is not worth it, and I will not be a sham professor." It is rank hypocrisy to profess love and then to act a miserly part. Let those who are guilty of it settle the account between God and their own souls. This woman's alabaster box was given freely, and if she had had more to give she would have given it, after the spirit of that other woman, that memorable widow, who had two mites, which made a farthing, which were all her living, but she gave it all out of love to God. Grace reigns indeed with high control when it leads men who naturally would be selfish to practise liberality in the cause of the Redeemer. Let these gleanings suffice, the vintage of the fruits of grace is too great for us to gather it all this morning.

I would have you remark, in the third place, that grace is seen by attentive eyes in our Lord's acceptance of what this chosen vessel had to bring. Jesus knew her sin. The Pharisee wondered that Jesus did not shrink from contact with her. You and I may wonder too. We sometimes feel it a task to have to commune with persons of a certain character even when they profess to repent: our Lord's sensitiveness of the guilt of sin was much keener

than ours, yet He rested still upon the couch, and quietly accepted what she brought, permitted her the fond familiarity of kissing His feet again and again, and to bedew them with her tears-permitted all that, I say, and accepted all that, and herein made His grace to shine most brightly. Oh, that Jesus should ever accept anything of me, that He should be willing to accept my tears, willing to receive my prayers and my praises! We cheerfully accept a little flower from a child, but then the flower is beautiful, and we are not far above the child; but Jesus accepts from us that which is in its nature impure, and upbraids us not. O grace! how condescending thou art; see, believer, Jesus has heard thy prayers and answered them; He has blessed thy labours, given thee souls as thy reward, and at this moment that which is in thy heart to do for Him He receives, and He raises no objection, but takes what thou bringest to Him, takes it with joy. O grace! thou art grace indeed, when the offerings of unwealthy ones become dear unto Jesus' heart. C. H. SPURGEON.

THE CHARACTER AND DIVINITY OF CHRIST. THE infidel and the sceptic, after being introduced by history to all the grand and heroic characters of the past, would be constrained to acknowledge that the character of Christ is unique in the world. True, in the brilliantly historical and more august and elevated examples of our species, there have always been strongly marked personal characteristics and individualities. One man of genius has never been exactly like another man of genius; and, on the other hand, every man of very high ability, and great force of character, has been still more unlike the rank and file

in the great dead level of humanity. Yet all our men who have put their shoulder to the globe, and, by their gigantic force, retarded or accelerated the revolution of the world on to progress, may be classed into sets and groups. Virgil is only Homer and water; Shakespeare is only a Greek dramatist considerably larger than life; a thousand specimens of the Alexander of Macedon genus have unfurled their banners to the sun, and written the story of their renown in blood; Newton was an English Euclid; Cromwell, in broad essentials, an English Rienzi, and so forth,-but with whom are we to class Jesus Christ the Nazarene? We may vociferate the question to the world's end, but no echo will reply. There have been, like Him, propounders of new religious codes and creeds-nay, some of these creeds have more votaries than are numbered under the banner of the cross, but, even on a stage created by the wildest and most irreverent fancy, what one of these founders of religious sects can stand, even for a single moment, by the side of Jesus! There is something in the very idea too blasphemously appalling, and sacrilegiously awful,—we tremble to contemplate it,-Christ measured in the light of the fire-dreams of Zoroaster with the carnal and voluptuous prophet of Islam! By the comparison, nay, by the mere coupling of such names with that of the Son of Mary, morality is horrified, manhood insulted, and Deity blasphemed. Oh, the grand and the sublimely simple elevation and nobleness of Jesus! In every trait of character is evidenced the mystic and grandly mysterious blending of the man and the God. No shouting of hosts, no thunder of the drum and blast of the clarion, heralded the movements of the Prince of Peace. From no lofty social pedestal the splendour of His greatness blazed. No pens of schoolmen, orators, and philosophers, were

dipped in atrimentum to embellish the story of His simple yet awful renown. The little power puppets of paltry humanity wore the purple and the ermine, but the humblest vestments wrapt the form of Him who in the manger cradle wore swaddling bands, and yet in high heaven, and on the Mount of Transfiguration, was entitled to wear the white and glistering raiment of the angelic land. Who was Matthew the publican, John the stripling fisherman, and their comparatively illiterate compeers, to write the biography of its founder, and teach Christianity eventually to the greatest and most intelligent, but consequently the least credulous, peoples of the world? A physician, a few fishermen, a tax-gatherer, one solitary, clever, but raw and undeveloped student from the schools of Jerusalem-a medium, humanly speaking, how miserably inadequate ! Did ever mortal, could ever mortal, blunder to a three years' notoriety, or rise even to a one year's fame through instrumentality like this? Consult the histories of the world, and they will answer, Never. From the cradle to the cross, He never enjoyed even one day of temporal power, never basked in the smile of even one influential relative or friend. Has any other name come down to us through circumstances like these, through the darknesses, the revolutions, the convulsions of well-nigh two thousand years?

The poor and friendless Son of a lowly Israelitish woman went about in His humble sphere doing good; He was most exemplary in His manner of life, and at an early age gave evidence of certain talents and mental calibre which promised, if properly directed, to elevate the gifted Jew to a position of usefulness and distinction. But He disappointed the expectations of His friends.

He soon de

clined to work along with His putative father as a car

penter, and the best efforts of His well-wishers failed to settle Him respectably in life, in the industrious pursuit of some normal and recognised business or profession. He betook himself to the unprofitable and precarious calling of an itinerant preacher and philanthropist; and about a dozen individuals of His own class having become personally attached to Him, and enamoured of His strangelyrigid doctrines, followed Him constantly in His wanderings. Of course He came not unfrequently into unpleasant collision with political cliques and ecclesiastical sects, which circumstance ultimately cost Him His life. He suffered upon a hill called Calvary, in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem, the death of a common malefactor.

These few words are the record of Christ's entire human history. Why, it is as stale and commonplace a little minute as could well be imagined. Every day we meet men whom we consider never redeemed the high promises of their youth. Misdirected and even prostituted talent is lamentably common. It is a selfish and heartless world we live in; but a generous kindness of heart, and the most gentle amiability of manners, are not so unfrequent in it, that we hail them as a prodigy. Then why is this poor straw glorified, deified, and so emphatically selected from the tremendous harvest of mortality, which the scythe of Death has cut down through six thousand years? For a year or two we could understand how a leper about Chorazin, or a seaman about the shores of Galilee, might mention incidentally that they had seen once or twice a strangely-gifted and eccentric character, of most extraordinary goodness of heart and visionary ideas, and call to mind an approximate of His stature, the expression of His countenance, and some little peculiarities of His accent and dress. The human life of the Man of sorrows war