The education of human souls to fitness for everlasting spiritual life, is of all God’s purposes the one which we can most continuously discern. No reign of peace and bliss upon this earth could be of indefinite continuance; a perfected Humanity could only endure for a time. Consequently, if we limit our Love to a Humanity visibly existing on the earth, we give up our hearts to something which must necessarily come to an end: if we make a Deity of this we shall serve but a temporary God. But—although the earth should be calcined to powder, or fly off into regions of space where the temperature is fatal to life—still that Humanity which has the Son of Man for its central and presiding figure may abide with Him for ever, in some of the many mansions of His Father’s House. CHRONOLOGICAL APPENDIX. It will be of service to readers to have a summary of the actions and movements of our Lord, in the order in which they are treated of in the Text. Few of the dates can be fixed with any certitude and it remains a matter of opinion in what order many of the events occurred. The only dates which can be historically determined are those of the death of Herod, and of the beginning (A.D. 25) and end (A.D. 36) of the Governorship of Pilate; with these latter I am not now concerned. When St Luke names the fifteenth year of Tiberius (A.D. 28, A.U.C. 781 beginning on August 19), it is not quite certain whether he means to fix the time when John began to preach, or when Jesus was baptised, or when John was cast into prison. The grounds for fixing the dates of our Lord’s birth, His appearance in public, and the duration of His Ministry are given in Tischendorf’s “Synopsis Evangelica.” I assume, as sufficiently admitted for my working hypothesis, (1) that our Lord was born early in the year B.C. 4, A.U.C. 750, In which, shortly before the passover, as we learn from Josephus, Herod the Great died; and also (2) that the Baptism of our Lord took place in the very beginning of A.D. 28. I propose to exhibit the order of events, taken month by month, as I suppose them to have occurred. In the greater number of cases I am supported by the authority of Dr Edersheim in his work on the “Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah,” and also frequently by Bishop Ellicott, from the Notes to whose Historical Lectures on the Life of our Lord, delivered 1860, I have obtained much help in forming this Appendix. A.D. 28. _January._ A.U.C. 781. I place the Baptism of our Lord near the close of the month. This was immediately followed by His withdrawal into the wilderness. A.D. 28. _February._ The whole of this month I suppose to have been passed by our Lord in the wilderness. A.D. 28. _March._ About the 10th or 12th of March our Lord appears “in Bethany (or Bethabarah) beyond Jordan where John was baptizing.” John i. 28.