ing or the gloom of night, till the silence became. intense enough to make him feel

"So lonely 'twas that God Himself

Scarce seemed there to be."

He who has not had some such experience as this knows little more of the mystery of his own nature than does the child yet unborn. The intense mental tension that accompanies such physical isolation is akin to pain.

But how

blessed it is in its results! A man learns in solitude something of his own capabilities. He learns that he is not like a drop in the ocean, obliged to move with the tide; nor like a leaf in the forest, obliged to bend to the wind; but that he is a free and godlike agent, and that, feeble as he has been accustomed to think himself, he is in reality strong enough to resist a universe of evil, and to conquer even death and hell. Christ's isolation, social and physical, made Him calmly and divinely self-reliant. How strong He was! Since the world began, there have been no such scathing denunciations as He uttered against the Pharisees and Scribes,-uttered to their very face and in the hearing of the populace, though He knew all the while that they had power to put Him to death.

Isolation, moreover, tends not only to self

development, or to the growth of a man's selfconsciousness, but also to the intensification of his God-consciousness. It not only teaches him how great he is in himself, but it also reveals to him how much greater is the God from whom his own greatness is derived. At first it makes him feel that he is alone; but afterwards he perceives that God is with him. I suppose that most of us have had more or less experience of this, amid the lonely scenes of nature. Wordsworth says of the Wanderer that

"In the mountains did he feel his faith;

Nor did he believe, he saw."

But social isolation—that is, want of sympathy and appreciation—still more, perhaps, than mere physical solitude, tends to the development of our God-consciousness. 'It is not till we feel we are alone on earth, that we know for a certainty we are not alone in heaven." It was the utter want of sympathy that Christ experienced which, more than anything else, taught Him to say, "I am not alone, for the Father is with 'me." Moreover, this want of human sympathy, of which His homelessness formed a conspicuous part, combined with the sorrowful tenor of His whole life, must have made it easier for Him to set His affections entirely upon His mission

upon the accomplishment of the Father's will. So long as He acted conscientiously, there would be nothing to live for in this world, and hence it was but natural for Him (so to speak) to dwell in another. This idea is well expressed by John Henry Newman:

"Thrice bless'd are they who feel their loneliness,

Till, sick at heart, beyond the veil they fly,
Seeking His presence who alone can bless."

How completely Christ lived beyond the veil ! "I have meat to eat," He said to His disciples,

that ye know not of." And He spoke of Himself as the "Son of Man which is in heaven."

With regard to Christ's temptations, I need only repeat what we have already seen, that unless He had suffered under them, He would not really have been tempted; and that without temptation it is impossible to acquire a perfect character, or indeed any character at all.

Once more, we have seen that pity, tenderness, mercy, compassion and self-sacrifice, which are essential elements in a perfect character, can only be developed by suffering. If you want any further proof of this, look at the great cruelty of young boys, who have, generally speaking (unless, from being delicate, they understand what suffer

ing means), no greater delight than to cause pain. Tennyson speaks of some one who was

"As cruel as a schoolboy, ere he grow

To pity."

It is not till the schoolboy begins to experience suffering, that he ceases to take delight in inflicting it.

Now He who was pre-eminently acquainted with grief, was pre-eminently remarkable for His tenderness and compassion. Read those loving words of His to the disciples, and His prayer for them as recorded in the fourteenth and following chapters of St John. He knew that the darkest scenes of His life were at hand, yet He thought only of comforting them. This pity He manifested all through His ministry, under the most varied circumstances. Listen: "Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not."

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Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? Neither do I condemn thee."-"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!""Go into all the world and preach the remission of sins, beginning at Jerusalem,"

the scene of His crucifixion.-"Could ye not watch with me one hour? The spirit, indeed, was willing, but the flesh was weak."-"Son, behold thy mother! Woman, behold thy son!" -"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

The death of Christ was the perfecting of His perfection. It was the last and steepest step of the altar of self-sacrifice He had been so long ascending. All the sufferings of His previous life were, as we have seen, there gathered up and consummated. He who had borne all His previous troubles unblenchingly, shrank and shuddered at the thought of Cavalry and the anguish it involved. We saw that, among other things, it meant leaving the world when He had, to all outward appearance, scarcely accomplished anything. We saw that the inducement must have been terribly strong to parley with conscience, to make a compromise with the Pharisees, to do evil that good might come. This temptation would be the severest He had ever experienced, and overcoming it must have involved the extremest suffering. But had He failed here, all would have been lost. He would have shown that He was unselfish, but only within certain limits. He would