the living and the dead. There have been in our own day cruel massacres at the barricades of a Christian metropolis, but the gentle self-devotion of Affré was a bequest from the Good Shepherd, whose words hung upon his dying lips. The fierceness of war is not on the whole what it was of old; and, if slavery still unhappily survives in some Christian nations, much at least in its incidents, which the highest public opinion of Rome or Athens allowed, is emphatically condemned by the universal conscience of Christendom.1 Hence, again, the Passion of Jesus has conferred on childhood, and the child-like temper, a new dignity, and made the love of children-whom He took into His arms and blessed-a reflection and memorial of His own. Even a heathen poet could tell us that the greatest reverence is due to boyhood, but our Lord made children the living types of that temper without which none can enter into His kingdom. Of the seven sacraments that flowed from His riven Heart on Calvary two alone were designed for any special age, and both for the age of childhood. Nay, more, He has vouchsafed to be named, for our abiding devotion, by the lips of Apostles and Evangelists, "the Holy Child Jesus." And in the days of His earthly pilgrimage children were drawn to Him as by the spell of an instinctive sympathy. They See Note at the end of this Chapter. 2 Luke ii. 43., Acts iv. 27, 30. It would seem that waîs in these passages of the Acts has its proper meaning of Boy, as well as slave or servant of God, as in the parallel passage of Isaiah liii. 11. There is probably an allusion in both places to the fact that favourite slaves were often boys. It is remarkable, that the classical poets hardly ever refer to their childhood, while few Christian poets have failed to dwell on it. were the first to welcome Him on His entrance into the world, the last to sing His praise. They form the vanguard of the whiterobed army of Martyrs, "baptized in blood for Jesus' sake" in the cradles of Bethlehem, pursuivants of a long procession from every clime and age. When the representative wickedness of all generations of mankind was concentrated in the crowning act of apostasy which converted the chosen city into a moral wilderness, and seemed, but only seemed, to seal the Tempter's victory, every race, age, sex, condition, but one, conspired to swell his triumph. The purity of the judgment-seat was corrupted, priestly sanctity profaned, the gentleness of woman turned to gall; the crowds who chanted Hosanna,' on Palm Sunday afternoon were the same that on Friday morning shouted, Crucify.' One class alone, so far as the Gospels tell us, never joined that cry. While priests and scribes were plotting under the very temple roof, the last time He visited it, the death of its Lord, Hosannas rose once more from boyish voices that would not be put to silence, and the mouths of babes and sucklings rebuked the madness of His people. เ More than this; there has been a 'tender grace' thrown over all the relations of thought, of literature, and of life, which may no doubt often degenerate into mere idle sentimentalism, but none the less springs from a deeper and truer estimate of the sacredness of that humanity, which Jesus sanctified in sorrow and death. One of the greatest modern writers on physical science has commented on the very different appreciation 306 1 of natural scenery exhibited in classical and in Christian literature. There was no subjective poetry among the ancients. "What was evening to the Greek? It was not till ChrisWhat was it to the Roman ? tianity, that true but sadder second thought, had drawn a veil over much that seemed, but only seemed, so clear; till all the light that lay on human life had faded into the hues of twilight, that men began to feel, dimly at first, and as if by instinct, the true significance of that wondrous interval which is not night nor yet day, but more to the heart than either." 2 Even in mere earthly enjoyments there is nothing pure, or noble or enduring without the sense of mystery And both are learnt on Caland the cost of sacrifice. vary. As the prismatic hues are centred in the sunbeam, the tenderness of affection and the experience of life are summed up and harmonized in the Cross. 5. It follows from this, that the vision of Calvary interprets, while it chastens, our yearning for ideal loveliness. Why has even physical beauty so powerful an attraction for us? Why do we so fondly, so madly, so wildly, so passionately love it? Why is it, as a modern writer has truly said, that no heart is pure which is not passionate, no virtue safe which is not I See Humboldt's Kosmos, vol. ii. ch. 1., Eng. Tr. with the quotations from St. Basil and the two Gregories. Cf. Newman's Church of the Fathers (London, 1840), pp. 126, 127. "I am indebted for this passage to the unpublished Essay of a friend. The nearest approach, as far as I am aware, to modern idealism and subjectivity in classical poetry is to be found in the Idylls of Theocritus, which in their way are unique. Virgil is perhaps an extreme case on the opposite side. enthusiastic?1 Degraded, indeed, the feeling may easily become into shapes of nameless horror, for there is a blight over all that is loveliest in this fallen world. But in itself it is surely part of our unfallen nature, a relic of primeval innocence and earnest of future beatitude; it is the instinctive the creature for the Creator, the longing of the exiled spirit for the sympathies of an immortal home. In this ideal sense the poet's words are true: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, The soul that rises with us, our life's star, And cometh from afar.": cry of He was not wrong who taught that the love of Beauty is indeed no other than the love of Eternal Truth. And only in the brightness of the uncreated Vision can that love find its adequate satisfaction.* "Wir müssen nach der Heimath gehien, Um diese heilige Zeit zu sehen." But the corruption of what is noblest is most base. 1 Ecce Homo. 2 See Pascal's Pensées (Paris, 1761), 3, 6. 3 Wordsworth, Ode to Immortality. 4 66 Perhaps no man can attain the highest excellence, who is insensible to sensuous beauty......it gives conceptions which are infinite, but it never gives or realizes the infinite. Still it leads on to it. To see the King in His beauty is the loftiest and most unearthly attainment. Can anyone be keenly alive to this who has no heart for external beauty?" Robertson's Letters, vol. i. p. 223-4. Cf. vol. ii. p. 54. "I am quite certain that beauty attracts an unvitiated heart only because it seems, by a law of our thought, the type of mental and moral beauty." The records of Heathendom tell us into what strange aberrations even religious enthusiasm, when undisciplined, may lead its votaries. He, who is the Flower of humanity, "fairest among the sons of men," is proposed to our adoration, not so much as modern art has striven to represent Him, in that winning brightness of His Boyhood which riveted the gaze of the assembled doctors in the temple, or the grace of maturer years which drew upon Him the eyes of all the worshippers in the synagogue of Nazareth before He had begun to speak, but with countenance "marred more than any man," with "no form or comeliness that we should desire Him," in the dishonour of His Passion, and the cold repose of death. He is lifted on the Cross, a bleeding Victim, to draw all men to Himself. It is the stream that flows from Calvary, whose living waters make glad the city of our God. And thus the Cross is a response to our unfulfilled aspirations, while it consecrates our discipline of sorrow. It is a pillar of fire to lighten our eyes, and the shadow of a great Rock in a weary land; pointing upwards to the thrones on the right hand and on the left, but reminding us of the chalice of agony, the Red Sea of the baptism of blood. 6. It was observed in an earlier chapter, that Heathen sacrifices could scarcely, if at all, be taken as prefigurements of the death of Christ, and that St. Augustine and others regard even the Jewish sacrificial worship more as a concession to temporary exigencies, and a safeguard against idolatry, than as |
