"old things are passed away, and all things are become new;" when earth has become irradiate with the feeling of our Father's business and our Father's home.

XV.

CHRIST'S ESTIMATE OF SIN.

"The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost."Luke xix. 10.

THESE words occur in the history which tells of the recovery of Zaccheus from a life of worldliness to the life of God. Zaccheus was a publican; and the publicans were outcasts among the Jews, because, having accepted the office under the Roman government of collecting the taxes imposed by Rome upon their brethren, they were regarded as traitors to the cause of Israel. Reckoned a degraded class, they became degraded. It is hard for any man to live above the moral standard acknowledged by his own class; and the moral standard of the publican was as low as possible. The first step downward is to sink in the estimation of others -the next and fatal step is to sink in a man's own estimation. The value of character is that it pledges men to be what they are taken for. It is a fearful thing to have no character to support-nothing to fall back upon-nothing to keep a man up to himself. Now the publicans had no

character.

Into the house of one of these outcasts the Son of Man had entered. It was quite certain that such an act would be commented upon severely by people who called themselves religious it would seem to them scandalous, an outrage upon decency, a defiance to every rule of respectability and decorum. No pious Israelite would be seen holding equal intercourse with a publican. In anticipation of such remarks, before there was time perhaps to make them, Jesus spoke these words: "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." They exhibit the peculiar aspect in which the Redeemer contemplated sin.

There are two ways of looking at sin. One is the severe view: it makes no allowance for frailty-it will not hear of temptation, nor distinguish between circumstances. Men who judge in this way shut their eyes to all but two objects —a plain law, and a transgression of that law. There is no

more to be said: let the law take its course.

Now if this

be the right view of sin, there is abundance of room left for admiring what is good, and honorable, and upright: there is positively no room provided for restoration. Happy if you have done well; but if ill, then nothing is before you but judgment and fiery indignation.

The other view is one of laxity and false liberalism. When such men speak, prepare yourself to hear liberal judgments and lenient ones: a great deal about human weakness, error in judgment, mistakes, an unfortunate constitution, on which the chief blame of sin is to rest-a good heart. All well if we wanted, in this mysterious struggle of a life, only consolation. But we want far beyond comfort-goodness; and to be merely made easy when we have done wrong will not help us to that!

Distinct from both of these was Christ's view of guilt. His standard of right was high-higher than ever man had placed it before. Not moral excellence, but heavenly, He demanded. "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Read the Sermon on the Mount. It tells of a purity as of snow resting on an Alpine pinnacle, white in the blue holiness of heaven; and yet also, He the All-pure had tenderness for what was not pure. He who stood in divine uprightness that never faltered, felt compassion for the ruined, and infinite gentleness for human fall. Broken, disappointed, doubting hearts, in dismay and bewil derment, never looked in vain to Him. Very strange, if we stop to think of it, instead of repeating it as a matter of course. For generally human goodness repels from it evil men: they shun the society and presence of men reputed good, as owls fly from light. But here was purity attracting evil; that was the wonder. Harlots and wretches steeped in infamy gathered round Him. No wonder the purblind Pharisees thought there must be something in Him like such sinners which drew them so. Like draws to like. If He chose their society before that of the Pharisee, was it not because of some congeniality in evil? But they did crowd His steps, and that because they saw a hope opened out in a hopeless world for fallen spirits and broken hearts, ay, and seared hearts. The Son of Man was forever standing among the lost, and His ever predominant feelings were sadness for the evil in human nature, hope for the divine good in it, and the divine image never worn out wholly.

I perceive in this description three peculiarities, distinguishing Christ from ordinary men.

I. A peculiarity in the constitution of the Redeemer's moral nature.

II. A peculiarity in the objects of His solicitude.

III. A peculiarity in His way of treating guilt.

I. In His moral constitution. Manifested in that peculiar title which he assumed-The Son of Man. Let us see what that implies.

Im

1. It implies fairly His divine origin: for it is an emphatic expression, and, as we may so say, an unnatural one. agine an apostle, St. Paul or St. John, insisting upon it perpetually that he himself was human. It would almost provoke a smile to hear either of them averring and affirming, I am a son of man: it would be unnatural, the affectation of condescension would be intolerable. Therefore, when we hear these words from Christ, we are compelled to think of them as contrasted with a higher nature. None could without presumption remind men that He was their brother and a Son of Man, except One who was also something higher, even the Son of God.

2. It implies the catholicity of His brotherhood.

Nothing in the judgment of historians stands out so sharply distinct as race-national character: nothing is more ineffaceable. The Hebrew was marked from all mankind. The Roman was perfectly distinct from the Grecian character; as markedly different as the rough English truthfulness is from Celtic brilliancy of talent. Now these peculiar nationalities are seldom combined. You rarely find the stern, old Jewish sense of holiness going together with the Athenian sensitiveness of what is beautiful. Not often do you find together severe truth and refined tenderness. Brilliancy seems opposed to perseverance. Exquisiteness of taste commonly goes along with a certain amount of untruthfulness. By humanity, as a whole, we mean the aggregate of all these separate excellences. Only in two places are they all found together in the universal human race; and in Jesus Christ. He having, as it were, a whole humanity in Himself, combines them all.

Now this is the universality of the nature of Jesus Christ. There was in Him no national peculiarity or individual idiosyncrasy. He was not the Son of the Jew, nor the Son of the carpenter; nor the offspring of the modes of living and thinking of that particular century. He was the Son of Man. Once in the world's history was born a MAN. Once in the roll of ages, out of innumerable failures, from the stock of human nature, one bud developed itself into a faultless flow

er. One perfect specimen of humanity has God exhibited on earth.

The best and most catholic of Englishmen has his prejudices. All the world over, our greatest writer would be recognized as having the English cast of thought. The pattern Jew would seem Jewish everywhere but in Judea. Take Abraham, St. John, St. Paul, place them where you will, in China or in Peru, they are Hebrews: they could not command all sympathies: their life could not be imitable except in part. They are foreigners in every land, and out of place in every country but their own. But Christ is the King of men, and “draws all men," because all character is in Him, separate from nationalities and limitations. As if the lifeblood of every nation were in His veins, and that which is best and truest in every man, and that which is tenderest, and gentlest, and purest in every woman, were in His character. He is emphatically the Son of Man.

Out of this arose two powers of His sacred humanity-the universality of His sympathies, and their intense particular personality.

The universality of His sympathies: for, compare Him with any one of the sacred characters of Scripture. You know how intensely national they were in their sympathies, priests, prophets, and apostles: for example, the apostles "marvelled that He spake with a woman of Samaria :”—just before His resurrection, their largest charity had not reached beyond this, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom unto Israel?" Or, to come down to modern times, when His spirit has been moulding men's ways of thought for many ages:-now, when we talk of our philanthropy and catholic liberality, here in Christian England, we have scarcely any fellow-feeling, true and genuine, with other nations, other churches, other parties, than our own: we care nothing for Italian or Hungarian struggles; we think of Romanists as the Jew thought of Gentiles; we speak of German Protestants in the same proud, wicked, self-sufficient way in which the Jew spoke of Samaritans.

Unless we bring such matters home, and away from vague generalities, and consider what we and all men are, or rather are not, we can not comprehend with due wonder the mighty sympathies of the heart of Christ. None of the miserable antipathies that fence us from all the world, bounded the outgoings of that love, broad and deep and wide as the heart of God. Wherever the mysterious pulse of human life was beating, wherever aught human was in struggle, there to Him was a thing not common or unclean, but cleansed by God and

sacred. Compare the daily, almost indispensable language of our life with His spirit. "Common people ?"-Point us out the passage where He called any people that God His Father made, common? "Lower orders ?"-Tell us when and where He, whose home was the workshop of the carpenter, authorized you or me to know any man after the flesh as low or high? To Him who called Himself the Son of Man, the link was manhood. And that he could discern even when it was marred. Even in outcasts His eye could recognize the sanctities of a nature human still. Even in the harlot one of Eve's family :”—a cr son of Abraham" even in Zaccheus. Once more, out of that universal, catholic nature rose another power-the power of intense, particular, personal affections. He was the Brother and Saviour of the human race; but this because He was the Brother and Saviour of every separate man in it.

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Now it is very easy to feel great affection for a country as a whole; to have, for instance, great sympathies for Poland, or Ireland, or America, and yet not care a whit for any single man in Poland, and to have strong antipathies to every single individual American. Easy to be a warm lover of England, and yet not love one living Englishman. Easy to set a great value on a flock of sheep, and yet have no particular care for any one sheep or lamb. If it were killed, another of the same species might replace it. Easy to have fine, large, liberal views about the working classes, or the emancipation of the negroes, and yet never have done a loving act to one. Easy to be a great philanthropist, and yet have no strong friend ships, no deep personal attachments.

For the idea of an universal manlike sympathy was not new when Christ was born. The reality was new. But before this, in the Roman theatre, deafening applause was called forth by this sentence, "I am a man-nothing that can affect man is indifferent to me. A fine sentiment-that was all. Every pretense of realizing that sentiment, except one, has been a failure. One and but One has succeeded in loving man: and that by loving men. No sublime high-sounding language in His lips about "educating the masses," or "elevating the people." The charlatanry of our modern sentiment had not appeared then it is but the parody of His love.

What was His mode of sympathy with men? He did not sit down to philosophize about the progress of the species, or dream about a millennium. He gathered round Him twelve men. He formed one friendship, special, concentrated, deep. He did not give himself out as the leader of the publican's cause, or the champion of the rights of the dangerous