erament, and am, besides, a member of that
sect which Dr. More has called, mistakenly indeed, "the most melancholy
of all;" but I confess a special dislike of disfigured faces,
ostentatious displays of piety, pride aping humility. Asceticism,
moroseness, self-torture, ingratitude in view of down-showering
blessings, and painful restraint of the better feelings of our nature
may befit a Hindoo fakir, or a Mandan medicine man with buffalo skulls
strung to his lacerated muscles; but they look to me sadly out of place
in a believer of the glad evangel of the New Testament. The life of the
divine Teacher affords no countenance to this sullen and gloomy
saintliness, shutting up the heart against the sweet influences of human
sympathy and the blessed ministrations of Nature. To the horror and
clothes-rending astonishment of blind Pharisees He uttered the
significant truth, that "the Sabhath was made for man, and not man for
the Sabhath." From the close air of crowded cities, from thronged
temples and synagogues,--where priest and Levite kept up a show of
worship, drumming upon hollow ceremonials the more loudly for their
emptiness of life, as the husk rustles the more when the grain is gone,
--He led His disciples out into the country stillness, under clear
Eastern heavens, on the breezy tops of mountains, in the shade of fruit-
trees, by the side of fountains, and through yellow harvest-fields,
enforcing the lessons of His divine morality by comparisons and parables
suggested by the objects around Him or the cheerful incidents of social
humanity,--the vineyard, the field-lily, the sparrow in the air, the
sower in the seed-field, the feast and the marriage. Thus gently, thus
sweetly kind and cheerful, fell from His lips the gospel of humanity;
love the fulfilling of every law; our love for one another measuring and
manifesting our love of Him. The baptism wherewith He was baptized was
that of divine fulness in the wants of our humanity; the deep waters of
our sorrows went over Him; ineffable purity sounding for our sakes the
dark abysm of sin; yet how like a river of light runs that serene and
beautiful life through the narratives of the evangelists! He broke
bread with the poor despised publican; He sat down with the fishermen by
the Sea of Galilee; He spoke compassionate words to sin-sick Magdalen;
He sanctified by His presence the social enjoyments of home and
friendship in the family of Bethany; He laid His hand of bl