purpose; though, at the same time, while the danger was still impending, he did not shrink from the open exercise of his functions when his Father's business required it. When, therefore, his temporary object was fulfilled, he ceased at once to provide for his safety according to his usual custom, and thus manifested to the world that a desire to escape from personal violence had suggested no part of his previous conduct. None of those things moved him, neither counted he his life dear unto himself, so that he might finish his course with joy 3.

The same reason which prevailed with our Lord to prevent his incurring unnecessary danger, would equally induce him to avoid whatever would give unnecessary offence.

As the tribute money collected for the use of the temple was designed for the service of God, the Son of God would have been duly exempted from the usual payment by an argument

3 Acts, xx. 24.

drawn from the practice of earthly sovereigns. "Notwithstanding,' said he, lest we should offend them..... thou shalt find a piece of money; that take and give unto them for thee and me".'

In the case of the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, so silently and unostentatiously was the cure performed, that he who was healed knew not the name of his benefactor, for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place 5.

6

The lepers whom our Lord cleansed were dismissed with an injunction to comply with the observances of the ritual law, without mentioning from whom they had received the benefit, lest they should increase the jealousy existing against him by spreading his fame.

The whole of this systematic attention to the dictates of human policy shows that Christ did

4 Matt. xvii. 24-27.

6 Matt. viii. 4. Luke, v. 15, 16.

5 John, v. 13.

not usually employ the divine power with which he was endowed so as to render himself independent of the precautions which prudence suggested. He preferred on all practical occasions the use of ordinary means to the working of a miracle in his own behalf, that he might leave behind him a pattern of those human virtues which are within the reach and imitation of mankind in general.

V. It is a mark of no ordinary judgement to know when to reprove, and when to be silentwhere forbearance should end, and restraint should begin. It often happens, that zeal in this respect hurries men into rashness, or that caution degenerates into timidity or indifference. Our Lord stands as a beacon between both extremes; equally removed from intemperate warmth on the one hand, and from supineness on the other.

It will not be denied, that the corrupt state of the Jewish world at the advent of Christ, required great faithfulness in pointing out, and

great firmness in correcting abuses. The picture which St. Paul has drawn of the immorality of his countrymen affords an humiliating view. of the licentiousness of human nature, when not under the restraint of the purifying principles of the Gospel. To remedy these evils was of course. an important part of the object of our Saviour's. mission, and his mode of proceeding deserves notice.

Now it appears, that notwithstanding the general corruption which prevailed, no individual is held up to reprobation by name throughout the discourses recorded in the gospels". The Scribes and Pharisees are rebuked with the

greatest severity collectively the difficulty which the rich, as a body, especially during the infancy of Christianity, would experience in entering the kingdom of heaven, is also mentioned-the cities wherein most of his mighty works

7 When Christ tells his disciples to beware of the leaven of Herod, he is speaking not of the individual, but of the sect of Herodians. Mark, viii. 15. But the passage ought, perhaps, to be excepted in which our Lord sends a message to the designing tetrarch by the title of that fox.

A A

were done are upbraided, because they repented not-but there is a systematic forbearance with regard to particular persons which it is impossible should have been the effect of accident. It is the vice which is named and stigmatized, but rarely the vicious person-it is the sect, and not its component members, which is exposed and held up to shame--it is Capernaum or Nazareth, or Jerusalem, and not their individual citizens singled out and specified, the generation at large and not a part of it—which is reproached with unbelief, or mourned over on account of its obduracy. Once when his disciples seem to have drawn unfavourable conclusions respecting the religious state of those on whom the tower in Siloam fell, he shewed how averse he was from personality by turning their minds from an uncharitable and fruitless speculation to a moral of immediate practical utility. 'Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.' Judging, therefore, of the nature of his discourses from the portions of them which the Evangelists have preserved to us, it is certain that nothing which could be construed into a direct or private attack formed any part of them.