the kingdom”—“ last who shall be first, and first who shall be last"-" babes in Christ needing to be fed with milk, and men in understanding able for strong meat." In accordance with such language, the illustrative and instructive characters and lives written in the Scriptures exhibit the renewal of nature which goes on under the operation of faith-not as of one uniform habit, but presenting many activities of spiritual life and directions of spiritual growth.

of Christ

diverse.

2. The fact that the renewal of men's nature, through faith's Imitation beholding of Christ Jesus, is to be in His image, by no means not unidisagrees with differences in men's contemplation of Him; for form but in Him the human character was many-sided, as it does not appear in individuals of mere mankind. The natural temperaments, which are distributed much more than combined in our individual characters, united in Him; even as, in His circumstances, the diversified conditions of His own met together in a way that made the Jews think all the prophecies of the Messiah could not refer to one person-power and privation, social happiness and social trial, popularity and persecution, consciousness of holiness and intensest association with sin in relationship, temptation, oppression, and blame. The Saviour of the world, who, when lifted up, was to draw all men unto Him, was Himself perfect man—the complete man, in whom the feelings met of all human needs, human sufferings, and human joys. Believers in Him, "having Him ever before them," "looking unto Jesus" from all the different sides on which their lines of circumstances and suggested thoughts lie, are to be, by beholding Him, renewed in His likeness. But while the standard of their ultimate attainment is "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," their present conscious copying is directed to special points—those which are most obvious or attractive to them. All men are drawn up to Him, but along their different lines of thought to the different phases of His nature which their own conscious nature makes them think most upon and feel most in Him.

3. By diversity of faith is here meant, not diversity of ac- Meaning of diversity cepted creed or difference of opinion as to the truths which the of faith. understanding has become possessed of, but difference of habit

Causes of differing

of thinking about them-a diversity which appears, as to the portions of truth most thought upon and habitually seen by individuals, the facts, or classes of facts, in the knowledge of God's love, which come most readily into different minds. All believers are, in the progress of faith's thoughts of Jesus, converging to "unity of faith and of knowledge of the Son of God" (Eph. iv. 13). It is of their present state of progress, continuing to the end of this bodily and earthly life, and of the different states which at any time the converging minds and hearts will show as yet that the term diversity is used. And considering the sources of that diversity, no thoughtful Christian should be surprised at great want of uniformity of feeling and expression of the truth as it is in Jesus among His disciples, but should suspect the reality of a faith which confines itself to any very close uniformity of language. It has been aptly said that “in the same meadow the ox sees the herbage, the dog the hare, and the stork the lizard."

4. What things of man's own nature and condition are propensity there of obvious power to give a direction to individual of thought. thought upon any emotional subject—things because of which we should be prepared to see different individuals make different selections of things of Christ to think most upon, be attracted most by, make most use of in self-discipline? The temperaments are recognised parts of human character, and their peculiar manifestation is exactly a diversity of propensity in the thoughts; the choleric, the phlegmatic, the sanguine, and the melancholic, each having its own range of subjects in which it finds itself absorbed the things it "has ever before" it. Sex, age, and race are also recognised sources of difference in the habits and propensities of thought and feeling, determining the character or feature of character in a friend with which any thus differing individual can be en rapport, the manner of person he or she is likely to cleave to as an object of faith, or be taken up with. In the most uniform and natural condition of the members of a family, a sister's lines of thought differ from her brother's, a child's from his parents'; and their needs of sympathy-the objects their souls draw to in faith-also differ. Worldly condition, which

modifies original character, does so by inducing habitual thoughts. The ruts of work and difficulty, the sets of associations in which an individual's thoughts are so far confined, will certainly produce in him habits of looking most at particular things, and feeling most some particular truths. Special studies whet the perceptions in their own class of thoughts, not without the risk of a loss of appreciative power on subjects essentially different. Physical and metaphysical studies need, for instance, to correct each other's effects in order to keep a hard student in either fit for healthy general thinking. Race has likewise an influence that is well known. Celts and Saxons look at different features of the same matter. The French and German minds are notably different from each other, as to the excitements they are susceptible of, and the mental exercises attractive to them. It is plain how these diversifying influences, residing in the propensities of temperament, the needs of sex or age, the inherited proclivities and capacities of race, and the second nature of associations produced by employment, &c., will tend to determine the moral qualities which can be the subject of trust, or which will exercise an attractive influence over individuals. The effect will be the same in religious as in other subjects of emotional thinking. The thinking which different believers in Jesus, looking to Him as their salvation and their desire, will indulge themselves in, will be of differing things of Christ, although their formal creed may be the same. Their confession may be the same, but their practical creed, the matter of their habitual, constraining, attractive, besetting thoughts, will differ yet an equally entire cleaving to Jesus may characterise all those who so differ in the proportions of their care for the components of a formal creed.

Lord's

5. This normal diversity of the thinking of faith is put Difference appearing beyond the sphere of controversy by what we know of those among the who had been the personal attendants of the Lord. They personal manifestly differed in their propensities of thought, their ways disciples. of feeling things, their quickness to recognise, and their tenacity in holding fast particular truths. They understood not one another wholly, and had disagreements as to the truth in

its application to life; but they all understood Him, and felt that they were understood by Him (as Peter in John xxi. 17) with a completeness which filled each individual's needs, though the thoughts of one would have left empty some part or overfilled others of any brother disciple's consciousness. It would be most instructively and satisfactorily illustrative of the diversity of faith which we are to expect to meet, if we were to compare the differences which appeared among those believers who looked most nearly upon the Object of faith. What lines of thought concerning their Lord and their God was John prone to go into? What different lines were most natural to Peter and to James? Of the many-sided perfectness of their Lord's character each saw and felt and thought of one side chiefly. No one's sympathies had grasp enough to take such strong hold of all—each corresponding to but a part, reflecting that part, having that part his object of habitual contemplation, the part of his Lord's perfect complete humanity and divine grace with which his own peculiar nature or condition felt in closest relative connection. John's thought of Jesus' love, and of our love of Him, and its product, a spiritual life of love, fuses present and eternal life into one contemplated state of being "in Him" who was in the beginning with God, and was God, and came unto His own, and in Him was life, and His life was the light of men. Peter-it may be because of more of some kinds of experience of the necessity of selfdiscipline-sees impressively the process of salvation through Christ, and the eternal prospect rousing to present endeavour after holiness. Paul and James differ much. The goal shines before Paul's high susceptibility, and his soul is under the necessity of pressing onward, forgetting all attainment as now behind, laying aside every weight, and running the race yet before him. James, while having before his mind the sure help and prize, looks more on the human side of the struggle, and sees man's difficulties and his propensity to self-deceit, which may make the prospect he sets before himself a delusion, his character being incompatible with it; and accordingly James's felt necessity is, to press upon the imagined believer that he must constantly test his expectations by his life. In the picture

of the Christian's life-Faith working by love, purifying the heart, overcoming the world-Paul's eyes were chiefly attracted by the faith, John's by the love, and James's by the obedience. Other characteristic diversities in the mental turn of the three most famous apostles, Peter, Paul, and John, naturally drew them to different things of Christ, which appear prominently in their writings. Peter, distinguished by the special qualities which direct and confine the motions of an active man-courageous and confident, so as even to walk forth on the sea, but holding much by the tangible-had his thoughts of Christ, though he was the first to behold in Him the expected Messiah, so closely united with the law of Moses, which He came to fulfil, that he could not for long think of the Saviour separately from its ordinances, nor of Christians as not obedient to them. Paul, profound, and thoughtful of the principles of things, going below all forms and institutions for the roots of faith and conduct, was able, though he had been educated a straitest Pharisee, to behold in Christ not a portion of the law, its corner-stone, but the meaning of the law, to whom it was only a forelooking, the king of an Israel of God wide as humanity. The formal and positive sink in his eyes accordingly out of sight, as the consummation of the spiritual appears; that which is old passes away when that which is perfect is come. And so Paul and Peter came to variance as to the faith and conduct of believers in Jesus, until Peter's slower reasoning, aided by a divine vision, came to see clearly also. John, essentially different from both-contemplative, affectionate, having his life in near love of his Master, rejoicing in personal liking and faith and serviceoccupies his Gospel with the personal glory and goodness of the Lord, and fills his forelooking not with the fight of faith here, which fills Paul's thoughtful stewardship, but with the holy, eternal, spiritual life of love, which is gathering together now by all the divine means of positive and moral, formal and spiritual kinds that here are mingling or succeeding each other in the Church of salvation.

It has been remarked upon already how the four evangelists set the subject of their Gospels before us in characteristically