and if in that search, the man Christ Jesus, worshipped in his Divinity, shall also be brought home to men's hearts in his human nature and sympathies, the writer will be more than rewarded. Invoking God's blessing upon his efforts, he dismisses the work to the charitable judgment of those who honour the cause in which it is written.

THE LIFE OF CHRIST.

I.

The Angels Bymn.

THE fourth kingdom, seen by Daniel in "a vision and dreams of his head upon his bed," was established in the earth. The beast, dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly, "had devoured, and broken in pieces and stamped the residue with his feet." In all the habitable world the Roman power was known and acknowledged; for to go beyond the dominions of the Cæsars was to go without the pale of civilization; to exchange the absolute but usually equitable rule of the Empire for the capricious tyranny of barbarism. Governments were devoured and absorbed in the one mighty dynasty which ruled the world by its deputies, supported by the imperial armies, and owning the imperial unity of power. Bounds of kingdoms, local customs and religions, were broken in pieces, or stamped under foot, until they were brayed into the mighty mass which owned no king but Cæsar. "Strong

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exceedingly," this strength was the growth of centuries; for, if the figure be allowable, the "great beast" digested as it devoured. Preceding dynasties had found in their very extent, the elements of decay. The march of Alexander was like the rolling of a wheel, which crushed indeed, as it went, rapidly, as urged by "four wings." But as the wheel rolled, its newest conquests released the lately vanquished; and while terror paled before the conqueror, resistance rose behind him; and at his death, his mighty empire, projected, but never established, crumbled into fragments.

Not so with Rome. Each new accession was permanent; each new conquest added new strength. The nation which resisted to-day, vanquished and incorporated into the rising empire to-morrow, aided to destroy the next power which presented an object to the cupidity, or an obstacle to the world-wide ambition of the "beast dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly." National distinctions were obliterated, and the conquered were willing, with a great price, to obtain the freedom of Roman citizenship. No death of a conqueror dimmed. the glory, or stayed the march of Rome. The robberkings, her founders, bequeathed their work to the Republic. The Republic, through all its changes, and amid all its quarrels and revolutions at home, preserved the power of Rome abroad; and the successful generals who contended with each other for the sovereignty of Rome, did not suffer their divisions to diminish the empire for which they contended. The Emperors found the

Roman power, at their accession, greater than it had ever been before: and increased and transmitted it from Cæsar to Cæsar. It was for Rome, and not merely for a victorious general, that the conquering legions marched. And the process of aggrandisement was steadily kept in view; the process of incorporation was regularly continued, till in symbolic language the whole earth was devoured. Roman arts perfected what Roman arms begun. Roman roads made a highway over formerly impasssable tracts. The traveller who could not, while his nation had not yet lost its name, have ventured beyond the narrow range of his own immediate tribe or family, could wander, protected by Roman Laws, from the Pillars of Hercules beyond the Euphrates; from the cliffs of Albion to the Lybian Desert.

The world was at peace. If, when all civilized nations owned but one government, there was in any place resistance, it was not war, but a rebellion, promptly suppressed, and almost instantly forgotten. To this era the finger of prophecy pointed, as to the day when SHILOH should come. Nor was the expectation confined to the Jews. The kingdom founded in peace, was to begin when peace reigned in all the world; and for the fact that the world recognised in this profound quiet the hour to which the prophecies looked, we have not only sacred warrant, but the testimony of profane historians. Tacitus says: "The generality had a strong persuasion, that it was contained in the ancient writings of the priests, that at that very time the East should prevail; and that some

who should come out of Judea should obtain the empire of the world." Suetonius records that "There had been for a long time, all over the East a constant persuasion that it was in the Fates, that at that time some who should come out of Judea should obtain universal dominion." And Josephus mentions as a chief incitement of the Jews to war against Rome, that at this time some one within their country should arise that should obtain the empire of the whole world. The jealous tyrant Herod, when he asked information of the chief priests relative to the coming of the Messiah, asked not when, but where Christ should be born.

Successive conquerors

The fulness of time had come. had overrun the earth, obeying the decrees of the same King of Nations who had confounded the speech of mankind at Babel. As He then scattered the children of Adam by the confusion of their speech, so had he overruled their purposes to the fulfilment of His will; and the commencement of the Christian era beheld a world more of one mind and one speech, than it had been since the day of the confusion of tongues. He had ordered events and prepared the nations for the Advent of His only begotten Son; He had opened, by the domination of the Romans, highways by which the Apostles and Ministers of Christ should obey his command: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." The paths which the Roman conquerors built served for the journeys of the ambassadors of Christ; the highways

which the Roman soldier toiled to raise, were pressed by