both before He
had discovered Himself to be our Lord, as well as after He had made that
great discovery, always clothing Himself with humility as with a garment;
taking up His yoke of meekness and lowly-mindedness every day, and never
for one moment laying it down. When some writer with as holy an
imagination as that of John Bunyan, and with as sweet an English style,
and with a New Testament scholarship of the first order so arises, and so
addresses himself to the inward life of our Lord, what a blessing to our
children that writer will be! For he will make them see and feel just
what all that was in which our Lord's perfect humility consisted, and how
His perfect humility fulfilled itself in Him from day to day; up through
all His childhood days, school and synagogue days, workshop and holy
days, early manhood and mature manhood days; till He was so meek in all
His heart and so humble in all His mind that all men were sent to Him to
learn their meekness and their humility of Him. I envy that gifted man
the deep delight he will have in his work, and the splendid reward he
will have in the love and the debt of all coming generations. Only, may
he be really sent to us, and that soon! Theodor Keim comes nearest a far-
off glimpse of that eminent service of any New Testament scholar I know.
Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Goodwin also, in their own time and in their own
way, had occasional inspirations toward this still-waiting treatment of
the master-subject of all learning and all genius--the inward
sanctification, the growth in grace, and then the self-discovery of the
incarnate Son of God. But, so let it please God, some contemporary
scholar will arise some day soon, combining in himself Goodwin's
incomparable Christology, and Taylor's incomparable eloquence, and Keim's
incomparably digested learning, with John Bunyan's incomparable
imagination and incomparable English style, and the waiting work will be
done, and theology for this life will take on its copestone. In his
absence, and till he comes, let us attempt a few annotations to-night on
this so-called shepherd boy's song in the Valley of Humiliation.

He that is down, needs fear no fall.

The whole scenery of the surrounding valley is set before us in that
single eloquent stanza. The sweet-voiced boy sits well off the wayside
as he sings his song to himself. He looks up to the hill-tops that hang
over his valley, and every shining tooth of those many hill-to