he life and character of Christ Jesus are
everywhere multiplying around us. Attempts to account for the marvels of
His glorious Being on a simply natural plane are made in apparent good
faith, and with considerable ability. Mr. Furness approaches his subject
with reverence: he has studied the man, Jesus, with his heart. The human
phases of His marvellous character are elaborated with skill and
patience. He regards Christianity as a 'natural product, a product
realized, not against, or aside from, but in the established order of
things; that were we competent to pronounce upon the purposes of the
Infinite Mind, which we are not, we might say that, so far from His
being out of the course of nature, nature culminated in Christ, and
that, of all that exists, He is the one being profoundly human,
preeminently natural.' In the dove which descended at His baptism, Mr.
Furness 'discovers the presence of a common dove divested of its
ordinary appearance, and transfigured by a rapt imagination into a sign
and messenger from heaven.' He says 'there is no intrinsic impossibility
in supposing that Jesus was naturally possessed of an unprecedented
power of will, by which the extraordinary effects attributed to him were
produced.' 'The bloody sweat is an evident fiction--how could blood have
been distinguished in the dark?' He pronounces the story of 'the wise
men from the east an evident fable.' Mr. Furness puts no faith in the
miraculous conception, but believes in the resurrection. He says: 'Bound
by irresistible evidence to believe that Jesus was again alive on that
memorable morning, I believe it will hereafter appear that He came to
life through the extraordinary _force of will_ with which He was
endowed, and by which He healed the sick and raised the dead; or, in
other words, that consciousness returned to Him by an action of the
mind, in itself no more inscrutable in this case than it is in our
daily waking from sleep.'

We deem that there is more difficulty in admitting that Christ rose from
the dead by _extraordinary force of will_, than in admitting the truth
of the record that He was the only Son of the Father, with full power
over life and death. We thank Mr. Furness for the skilful manner in
which he has brought to light the infinite tenderness and divine
self-forgetfulness of the Redeemer, but we cannot think he has succeeded
in lifting the veil of mystery which surrounds the birth, miracles,
crucifixion, resurrection,