s of His life
still left utterly blank in point of incidents; and that there is no
reference whatever to topics which we might have expected to find
particularly noticed in the biography of so eminent a personage. After
His appearance as a public teacher, He seems, not only to have made
sudden transitions from place to place, but otherwise to have often
courted the shade; and, instead of unfolding the circumstances of His
private history, the evangelists dwell chiefly on His Discourses and His
Miracles. During His ministry, Capernaum was His headquarters; [20:1]
but we cannot positively tell with whom He lodged in that place; nor
whether the twelve sojourned there under the same roof with Him; nor how
much time He spent in it at any particular period. We cannot point out
the precise route which He pursued on any occasion when itinerating
throughout Galilee or Judea; neither are we sure that He always
journeyed on foot, or that He adhered to a uniform mode of travelling.
It is most singular that the inspired writers throw out no hint on which
an artist might seize as the groundwork of a painting of Jesus. As if to
teach us more emphatically that we should beware of a sensuous
superstition, and that we should direct our thoughts to the spiritual
features of His character, the New Testament never mentions either the
colour of His hair, or the height of His stature, or the cast of His
countenance. How wonderful that even "the beloved disciple," who was
permitted to lean on the bosom of the Son of man, and who had seen him
in the most trying circumstances of His earthly history, never speaks of
the tones of His voice, or of the expression of His eye, or of any
striking peculiarity pertaining to His personal appearance! The silence
of all the evangelists respecting matters of which at least some of them
must have retained a very vivid remembrance, and of which ordinary
biographers would not have failed to preserve a record, supplies an
indirect and yet a most powerful proof of the Divine origin of the
Gospels.

But whilst the sacred writers enter so sparingly into personal details,
they leave no doubt as to the perfect integrity which marked every part
of our Lord's proceedings. He was born in a degenerate age, and brought
up in a city of Galilee which had a character so infamous that no good
thing was expected to proceed from it; [21:1] and yet, like a ray of
purest light shining into some den of uncleanness, He contracted n