ver the multitudes. What
sweet allurement in the face that made children leap into His arms!
What winsome benignity that made mothers feel that His touch would
return the babe with double worth into the parent's bosom!

Purity in others has been cold and chaste as ice. How strange that in
Him purity had an irresistible fascination, so that the corruptest and
wickedest felt drawn unto Him, and "depravity itself bowed down and
wept in the presence of divinity." What all-forgiving love, what
all-cleansing love, in one who by a mere look could dissolve in
repentant tears men long hardened by vice and crime! What an
atmosphere of power He must have carried, that by one beam from His eye
He could smite to the very ground the soldiers who confronted Him!

Did ever man have such a genius for noble friendship? What bosom words
He used! What love pressure in all His speech! How were His words
laden with double meanings, so that hearing one thing, men also heard
another, even as they who hear the sound of the distant sea, knowing
that the sound they hear is but a breath of the great infinite ocean
that heaves beyond in the dim, vast dark. Among all the heroes of time
He walks solitary by the greatness of His power, His beauty and the
wonder of love His personality excited. Standing in the presence of
some glorious cathedral or gallery, beholding the Parthenon or
pyramids, the rugged mountain or the beautiful landscape, emotion and
imagination are sometimes so deeply stirred that men lose command of
themselves and break into transports of admiration. But the enthusiasm
evoked by mountain or statue or canvas is as nothing compared to the
rapturous devotion felt by the multitude for this One, who united in
full splendor all those eminent qualities of mind and heart that all
the ages and generations have in vain sought to emulate. High over all
the other worthies He rises like a star riding in untroubled splendor
above the low-browed hills.

In all ages great men have educated themselves by reading the biography
of ancient worthies, and emulating the example of the heroes of
antiquity. Great has been the influence of these reformers and
philosophers, statesmen and poets, hanging in the heavens above men and
raining down inspiration upon the human imagination. Yet from all the
worthies of the past, and all modern heroes, man has drawn less of
inspiration and personal influence than from the single example of this
ideal