the Greeks were accustomed to see gods, heroes, and all objects of admiration or adoration, represented by the beautiful and majestic forms of Greek art. They wrote in the language of a people whose artistic power prolonged the days of paganism. Of the Emperor Julian it has been said, that in his return to paganism he mistook beauty for truth- a mistake which has always paganized Christianity. To the rapid development of the Fine Arts in Great Britain in the last forty years is probably due in part the leaning of imaginative minds and of our wealthy and educated youth to mediæval superstitions and symbolic worship. They worship beauty rather than "whatsoever things are true;" and are more indulgent to falsehood and deception if it come dressed in fair colours and proportions, though half-conscious of its vanity. This is surely but a stage or episode in modern progress and a brief one-in which truth will again prevail, enforced by this solemn silence of Scripture.

It may be said that, in this reserve, the writers of the New Testament have only followed the example of Old Testament history and biography. Of the outward man of an Abraham, a Moses, and a David, we are told wonderfully little; and the dead body of a Moses was buried "no man knows where unto this day." But this only increases our wonder, giving us-from Genesis to Malachi, as well as from Matthew to the Apocalypse-sixty instead of thirty different writers, writing in divers manners and at sundry times, throughout a long period of fifteen hundred years; all of them exercising a similar reticence, but a reticence all the more difficult as our Lord is greater than an Abraham or a Moses, and the desire would be all the greater to possess an image of Him whom all Christians believed to be "the chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely." The writers of the Old Testament might justly have been afraid to dwell too much on the persons of its worthies, lest they should draw men to man-worship; but no such fear could keep back the communications of a John. Their fears were all the other way-lest men should not honour Him enough. Every reason for the silence of the Old Testament writers respecting their worthies seems a reason for those of the New

breaking through this reserve regarding the personelle of our Lord. How difficult, on any human principles and feelings, for Matthew to be silent as to the person and looks of Him that called him from the receipt of custom, and for whom he made the great feast in his house! How much more difficult when we reflect that Matthew wrote his account when he believed that his Master was exalted to the right hand of Divine Majesty! How difficult for "the beloved disciple" to tell of his first meeting with Christ, and introduction to Him by the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan as "the Lamb of God," when he followed Him, and "abode with Him that night;" and yet to give us nothing of his first impressions, none of that look and manner and those tones which first impressed his young heart! Once and again-ay, six times in the course of six chapters of his Gospel-John tells us that he himself is "the disciple that Jesus loved," and "on whose bosom he leant at meat ;" yet John is silent on all these occasions as to the personelle of Him whom he loved so well, and who, after His ascension, was never long absent from his memory. Two of our Lord's disciples. meet Him after His resurrection on His way to Emmaus. He talks with them by the way, and their hearts burn within them. He is recognized, and vanishes from their sight. An image of that meeting which no time could fixed itself on their minds; yet out of the abundance of their hearts they speak neither of His features, looks, nor manner. No minute and fond transcript do they give of what they saw and felt; nought but the significant exclamation, "Did not our hearts burn within us as He talked by the way?" Not even when recording the last look, as they gazed after Him into heaven, do the evangelists dwell on His bodily presence, now gone for ever.

efface must have

Is this marvellous reticence to be explained by saying, that the four Gospels are not histories nor biographies in the modern sense, but only notes and fragmentary recollections, the work of illiterate men, unaccustomed to and unconscious of the interest that would belong to such details ? But the more we suppose them to be simple and unlearned, the more inexplicable their silence on every natural principle. The narratives of simple

and unlettered men should have been minute and personal, like those of woman and children, like those of Old Homer, designed for the popular ear and taste. However brief and general in other matters, they should have abounded just in such fond, personal details. The marvel to be explained is, that being what they were by birth and upbringing, they should have recorded just what they have done, neither more nor less-given so large an account of what was morally and spiritually great in character and instructive in our Lord's teaching; and just as much respecting His humanity as was needed to assure us that in all respects He was one of us."

66

There remains only the supposition that the New Testament writers had a strong peculiarity of mind and character, an idiosyncrasy so remarkable, that matters of interest to all other men had none for them. This supposition, allowable in the case of an individual, cannot be admitted as to a succession of writers throughout centuries. Unlikely to occur in one instance, this silence becomes almost infinitely unlikely in a long succession of writers, whose temptation to break silence increased with the increase of Christian converts and the decrease of the few surviving witnesses of Christ as He lived and taught on earth; and most of all in the evangelist John, the last survivor of the twelve.

If these suppositions exhaust the attempts to account in any natural way for this silence, we are shut up to the conclusion that they were silent "as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." This silence discloses another internal evidence of the Divine foresight that presided over the formation of the books of the New Testament, and in an especial manner over the four gospels-an evidence the more beautiful and impressive, that it remained so long unobserved, or observed only by the few, biding its time and its service. It is told of an Egyptian architect, employed by one of the Pharaohs to erect a lighthouse on the Nile, that being ordered to inscribe upon it the name of the monarch in whose reign and under whose patronage it was reared, he inscribed the name of his patron on the plaster, which time soon effaced, and his own name on the stone beneath, which time revealed as fast as the other vanished away. Who that read the name of the architect, as the

royal name mouldered away, could doubt of the forethought and intention; and who, as he observes this marvellous silence, so long unread, can doubt that it was of Divine forethought and intention, that Scripture might teach us, like the sundial, "not only by its light, but by its shadow." What, then, are the lessons of this silence? In all ages, and not less in our own, man has shown two tendencies. The one to make a God of every new and striking object and appearance in nature; the other to lose all thoughts of God by deifying creation itself. The one is polytheism, and the other pantheism. The one idolatry in the particulars and details of nature; the other, in the sum of these particulars, called Nature. Jesus Christ is our Creator's last and most loving protest against both forms of idolatry, but especially against this last-the idolatry of nature, the snare of the scientific mind in our day. Against the first tendency, the Jewish nation was, and is still, God's standing witness. Against the second, the New Testament has revealed a personal God in Jesus Christ. For this end the Divine Word became flesh. This is the ladder let down from heaven by which the human spirit ascends nearest to God, as near as human nature admits. In Jesus Christ the insufferable brightness of the Godhead is shaded and softened by being humanized, that we may draw nearer to the Most Holy, not only without terror, but with filial confidence and love. How expressive, in this view, are the New Testament names of our Saviour-"The knowledge of God" (Eph. iii. 10, 19); "The image of God" (2 Cor. iv. 4); "The express image" (Heb. i. 3); "The brightness of His glory" (Heb. i. 3); "The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. iv. 6); "The fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Col. ii. 9).

Plutarch tells of an inscription on an Egyptian temple: "I am He that was, and is, and shall be ; and who is He that shall draw aside my veil?" Jesus Christ alone has drawn aside the veil and shown us the Father; yet, in showing us all of the Father that human eyes and hearts can receive, there was need to guard that image against all human meddling. As if in anticipation of the degenerate worship of Himself after the flesh, we find Him, after His resurrection, refusing all external worship from Mary Mag

dalene. "Touch Me not," said our Lord, when she was about to throw herself at His feet (John xx. 17). The same thought seems expressed when he pronounces those more blessed that hear and obey, than see the Word made flesh (Luke ii. 27, 28); yea, more blessed than the mother that bore Him-a strange thought to the worshippers of Mary, a 'startling rebuke to all that by sculpture or painting seek the worship of our Lord "after the flesh."

In the Jewish church and temple, no symbol of deity more definite was permitted than the Shekinah, which was a bright cloud, and that retired within the veil, which only the high-priest could draw aside. In giving to the Christian Church a human image, there was need of retiring that image as well as of revealing it; of Christ "going away," as well as of Christ's "coming." "It is expedient that I go away." Is not the silence of the New Testament regarding the personelle of Christ, the veiling or retiring of the Christian Shekinah? Almost thirty years of His life is passed over in silence in the inspired record. In three only of the thirty-three years of His dwelling on earth, is He openly seen and known, and most of all when about to retire for ever; seen best, it has been said, in the glory of His receding majesty. The image of Christ is thenceforth to be seen and reproduced, not on the canvas or marble, but by the Word and Spirit in the hearts of men; not a fixed and unchangeable image, but a thing of life, to grow with the growth of the Christian, who, as he becomes more Christ-like, should realize yet more and more the beatitude of the pure in heart-" for they shall see God." The rise of a Christianity of the senses and imagination so soon after the inspired writers were in their graves, and its revival in our day, show us historically the meaning of this veiling of the Christian Shekinah. The Roman Cardinal Bona has unintentionally shown us this in his account of the rise and progress of symbol worship in the Christian Church. First arose the simple cross. 2. The cross with the figure, not of Christ, for that was too bold, but only of a Lamb at the foot of a cross. 3. Christ clothed on the cross, with hands uplifted in prayer, but not nailed to it. 4. Christ fastened to the cross with four nails, still living and with open eyes.

Lastly, in the tenth and eleventh centuries He is represented as dead, and the cross passes into the crucifix.*

In heathen countries the gods were carried about in rings, amulets, and miniatures, that they might salute and worship them; and they disdainfully asked the Christians, "Where were their gods?" A religion without a visible image, altar and sacrifice, with nothing but the memory of the birth, teachings, doings, and sufferings of a Saviour, they did not understand. In their first faith and love Christians felt little craving for an image of Him "whom, having not seen, they loved and rejoiced in with a hope full of immortality;" but as faith and love declined, men took anew to worship Christ after the manner of the nations, and heathen practices dragged down Christians from their first spiritual worship. Yet, as if awed by the silence of the sacred writers, for centuries no Christian writer attempted even to invent or to imagine in description the bodily presence of our Lord. Clement, Barnabas, and Ignatius, called from their nearness to apostolic times, "The Apostolic Fathers," say nothing of the appearance of Christ. Either the Church was too spiritual to desire it, or its leaders were, as yet, too honest to pretend to know what the first followers of our Saviour had thought fit to conceal. So late as the fifth century, Augustine, the most eminent of the Latin fathers, says "that the real features of the virgin, as of our Saviour,' were unknown." +

When the fathers break this silence, it is only, says Milman, to dispute and differ from each other. One party taking literally the words of Isaiah, "without form and comeliness;" another as confidently affirming that the Divinity shone through His humanity, and endowed Him with a celestial grace and corporeal beauty that formed a halo around His person.

Still no Church historian of the first four centuries ventures a description of His personal appearance, leaving it to Nicephorus, a mere compiler of history, and that so late as the fourteenth century, to give us a personal portrait, the only one which the learned Calmet, anxious for the credit of his church, knows of, to justify her

• See Milman's "Early Latin Christianity," iii. 516
† Aug. De Trinitato, ch. 8.

Whispering sweetly, 'Lo, the winter-time
Is past and gone, rise up and come away!'
He dreameth on, as careless of the Spring
And all the musical soft stir of life,

As of the troubled winds, that fight and moan
Above his head in winter.

Yet a while, A little while, and I shall go to him Who will not come to me. He, rising not To let me in, yet draws me to his side, And I shall shortly yield, and sleep with him. It may be that, this very night, my God, After so long a time, will think of me And call me into Peace.

He reckons up

The number of my sins; He knows this stain
Of guiltless blood, that burns upon the hem
Of a Prophet's garment; yet, my God, I think
That I, even I, shall be as white as snow
When I am dead. I know, or think I know,
That my Redeemer liveth.

O my God!

Most terrible, most terrible,-to Thee
My heart repeats this night its history,
And, through the darkness, looketh to Thy Face.
Thou knowest, only Thou, the old old years
When, in the Spring of life, my heart was Thine,
And Thou wert mine. Then would I pass long
days

And solemn nights, afar from homes of men,
That I might be alone, alone with Thee,
And hear Thy voice, and see, perhaps, some gleam
Of angel-feet upon the Desert-ground,
Making it joyful, as with Summer-showers.
No simple human pleasures, dear to hearts
More free than mine, had any charm for me:
I only lived to hear the voice of God,
For He had visited my soul, and mine
It was to bear the Prophet's glorious doom.
Thou knowest, Lord, because Thou knowest all,
And yet Thou knowest not (having no part
In flesh or blood), the thrill and throb of soul
And body, when to mortal lips is laid
Thy coal of living fire : *—and when our eyes,
Used only to the curtained gloom of Earth,—
Are lightened suddenly to meet the Sun.
Thou knowest, but for angels ministering,
The Prophet's heart would fail and break, between
The rapture and the pain. Oh! blessed eyes
That see, before their time, Thy mysteries,
And blessed ears that hear Thy glorious voice

* Isa. vi. G.

Peel through the rending sky; but blessed too Are those who have not seen, who have not heard, And yet believe. They walk, in faith and hope, Through the soft darkness of a Summer-night, Lighted by gleamings of the silver stars,

And see no awful glories of the Sun

Till the Dawn breaks in Death. But, having seen
The brightness of Thy Presence, having felt
The winds of Heaven blow upon my brow,
And having tasted of Thy cup, my God,
How could I ever be content to wait,
As other servants, in Thy courts by night?
And therefore went I mourning many days,
When visions of Thy Glory ceased to haunt
My waiting soul. Was it for sin of mine
Thou hadst withdrawn? or was my mission o'er?
Thou knowest, Lord: I only know I mourned
Too bitterly and wildly at the Doors
Which Thou hadst closed in Heaven, seeking not
To wait by night, in humble trust, on Thee,
But ever thirsting, burning, for the Word
Which Thou hadst taken from me.

When the Storm
Broke suddenly at midnight through my dreams,
Hast Thou not seen me rise and hurry forth,
Braving the terrors of the awful night,
In hope of catching but one word from Thee?
Ah! how I vainly waited, for but one
Articulate utterance, of the Thunder-voice,
Which shook both Earth and Heaven. And when
Dawn

Broke full of tender promise, low I knelt-
Praying that on its fragrant breath might come
The still small voice of God; but the sweet wind
Swept silently across my prayers, and bore
Perhaps to other ears, the messages
Refused to mine. It was a bitter fight,
And Thou wert strong and silent, and I grew
More reckless, drawing further from Thy hand
For all that fervid longing, once again

To hear Thy voice. Thou knowest how I dwelt
Alone amongst Thine enemies, and saw
Strange altars rising up to other gods,
And would not speak for Thee, as any man
Who loved Thee might have done not being
allowed

To speak with wonders and with signs from
Heaven.

And that dark day, which was to see the King
Stand forth, defying God, before the Land,
I tarried, heavy and displeased for Thee,