which occupy different ranks in the moral hierarchy ?

It is in this sense that Jesus, though without sin, might be exposed to conflict, accessible to temptation. He had the most generous instincts, the most distinguished gifts of mind. As a philosopher, He would have surpassed Socrates; as an orator, have eclipsed Demosthenes. The substance and the form of His teaching both prove it. He had a heart capable of enjoying, more deeply than any one else, the tender affections of family life; and the high inspirations of patriotism would have found in Him, could He have given Himself up to them, the most heroic organ for their exercise. It is enough to recall His last words to His mother, and to the beloved disciple, and His tears over Jerusalem, on the day of His own triumphal entry! He had to suppress all these innocent instincts of His nature, to hold in check these noble impulses, to sacrifice these legitimate indulgences of lawful inclinations, in order to give Himself altogether to the task which had been assigned to Him from on high, to His work as Redeemer, offering, in His own person, to His Church a pattern of what the expressions mean,-" to cut off the right hand," "to pluck out the right eye," "to give

His life that He might take it again;" and just as truly as ourselves, He felt physical sufferings, and the sorrows and woundings of the heart. For love to His work as Mediator, He had to submit voluntarily to all the sufferings from which our human flesh and heart most legitimately revolt. But this submission was made each time at the cost of a struggle. We see that clearly at Gethsemane. So was it, as says the admirable Epistle to the Hebrews, that He was made perfect and learned obedience by the things which He suffered.1 Progress, conflict, are not these the marks of a holiness truly human? In the wilderness, at Gethsemane, it was perfectly possible to be in the forecourts of heaven, but assuredly not in heaven itself.

III. And this is precisely the reason on account of which the holiness of Jesus, perfect as it was, is nevertheless accessible to man, to every believer who aspires after it; not, certainly, apart from Him, or in a manner parallel with His, as the free-thinkers imagine, who hold that it suffices for them to represent to

1 Heb. ii, 10, v. 8, 9. No book of the New Testament brings out so powerfully, together with the Divinity of Jesus Christ (chap. i.), His complete humanity (chaps. iii. and v.).

themselves Jesus as their model, in order forthwith to be able to imitate Him. No, the distance between Him and us is too great for it to be possible for our sanctification to accomplish itself in the way in which ours does. It must work itself out by means of His.

There is in us the germ of sin, which was not to be found in Him, as we have perceived. He had but to learn; we have not only to learn, but also to unlearn, if I may use the expression. He had but to grow; we have contemporaneously to grow and to diminish. He had to fill His heart with God; we have, at the same time as we fill ours with God, to empty it of ourselves.

This twofold task surpasses the moral power of man; whoever will seriously attempt it, will not fail to discover it to be so. It is necessary, then, that the holiness of Jesus should become for us something more than a model. It is necessary that this holiness, which He has realized freely in His own person, during His human existence, should become ours. Did not Jesus Himself say, "For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth"?1 ("in truth" or "in reality" in

1 St. John xvii. 19.

the French edition). In sanctifying Himself, it was human life, it was ourselves, that He sanctified. In preventing, each moment of His life, sin from being born within His own person, He passed sentence of death upon it in ours too. He thereby demonstrated that sin is an intruder in human nature, and He planted in the consciousness of humanity the germ of the possibility, and therefore also the duty, of expelling it. By His life, perfectly human, and yet at the same time pure and holy, clear of every stain, and perfectly consecrated, He annulled sin, and laid the foundations of holiness, that is, of the kingdom of God, upon this sin-stained earth.

But before this kingdom could begin to spread, it was needful that the holiness which is its essence should pass from the King to its subjects. Such a transition presupposes some link of connection between the two; and this link Jesus described in the expression, "I am the Vine, ye are the branches."1 It was by His ascension that He put Himself in the position to effect this work, and by Pentecost that He actually accomplished it.

The pure sap which flowed in the Vine was to pass from it into the branches, and to take the place of 1 St. John xv. 5.

R

the poisoned sap which was flowing through them in abundance. By His elevation to the right hand of God, which signifies into the manner of existence of God Himself, to His omnipresence, His omniscience, His omnipotence, Jesus received the power to descend Himself into the hearts of believers, to come and live in them, and to realize in them that same humanity which He had already realized in His own person. Associated thenceforth with the sovereign power of God, He disposes of His Spirit, and can, by His instrumentality, reproduce in believers all the lineaments of His own moral physiognomy.

You know that art-one of the most marvellous discoveries of our day-by means of which we are all become artists of as great ability as the most consummate portrait painter: our likeness, reproducing itself, down to its most delicate traits, on a plate suitably prepared and placed for the purpose, our lineaments multiply themselves in a thousand copies, facsimiles of their prototype. It even succeeds in communicating to them something of the life which

vivifies themselves.

Just so, by the power of the Divine Spirit, Christ reproduces Himself in the hearts and lives of believers. If we place ourselves assiduously before Him, in the