ce of powerful men. They saw him hungry,
though they believed him able to turn the stones into bread; they
saw his royal pretensions spurned, though they believed that he
could in a moment take into his hand all the kingdoms of the world
and the glory of them; they saw his life in danger; they saw him
at last expire in agonies, though they believed that, had he so
willed it, no danger could harm him, and that had he thrown
himself from the topmost pinnacle of the temple he would have been
softly received in the arms of ministering angels. Witnessing his
sufferings, and convinced by the miracles they saw him work that
they were voluntarily endured, men's hearts were touched, and pity
for weakness blending strangely with wondering admiration of
unlimited power, an agitation of gratitude, sympathy, and
astonishment, such as nothing else could ever excite, sprang up in
them; and when, turning from his deeds to his words, they found
this very self-denial which had guided his own life prescribed as
the principle which should guide theirs, gratitude broke forth in
joyful obedience, self-denial produced self-denial, and the Law
and Lawgiver together were enshrined in their inmost hearts for
inseparable veneration.

It is plain that whatever there is novel in such a line of argument
must depend upon the way in which it is handled; and it is the
extraordinary and sustained power with which this is done which gives
its character to the book. The writer's method consists in realising
with a depth of feeling and thought which it would not be easy to
match, what our Lord was in His human ministry, as that ministry is set
before us by those who witnessed it; and next, in showing in detail the
connection of that ministry, which wrought so much by teaching, but
still more by the Divine example, "not sparing words but resting most
on deeds," with all that is highest, purest, and best in the morality
of Christendom, and with what is most fruitful and most hopeful in the
differences between the old world and our own. We cannot think we are
wrong when we say that no one could speak of our Lord as this writer
speaks, with the enthusiasm, the overwhelming sense of His
inexpressible authority, of His unapproachable perfection, with the
profound faith which lays everything at His feet, and not also believe
all that the Divine Society which Christ founded has believed ab