favour and aid, not by means of their innate superiority, but as the means of rising to holiness and virtue. We cannot take any steps at all in true moral excellence, till we are possessed of the love of GOD. This is the foundation of Christian truth. The divine life must have its beginning in repentance and renunciation of self, in deep humility and consequent trust in divine aid, given to all who ask it for Christ’s sake; because GOD is love. We shall see, nevertheless, that the views of many Christians have been tinged with the Stoic belief, that by self-mortification, and even by trying to uproot natural affections and feelings, planted in man by GOD himself for wise ends, the human soul renders herself worthier of the friendship of heaven. We hear St Paul, however, setting before the Athenians this great duty, first of all, that they feel and acknowledge themselves in error, in order to amendment of life; and that they trust in the merits of another, in order to atone for their own demerits. “He commandeth all men everywhere to repent.” This was the testimony of the messenger of the true GOD. From the mention of the resurrection of Jesus, immediately after this, and the manner in which that resurrection is spoken of, it would seem that St Paul gave the Athenians some particulars of the Redeemer’s life and death either on Mars’ Hill or in the Agora. Now the life of Christ would teach the Stoic, that true philosophy is not trying to eradicate human feelings and instincts, but controlling them. Nothing is so striking and so lovely in the divine life of the Son of GOD, as its _humanity_. He is a “man with men,” in every sense of the word. He is not ashamed to show ordinary human feelings. He was truly noble, yet not the less meek and lowly. He was truly brave, yet did not think it unworthy of himself to show how intensely he suffered. He was truly resigned to the will of Heaven, yet thought it not contrary to right to express his sorrow when he was bereaved. He dignified human sympathy by even weeping with those that wept. How incomparably does this true nobility rise above the Stoic apathy, which condemned such feelings, and led Seneca, in an Epistle to Lucilius, to deprecate the indulgence of grief for a friend’s loss. “I myself,” says he, “wept so immoderately for Annæus Serenus, ... that I must, against my will, be reckoned among the examples of those whom grief has overcome. Nevertheless, to-day I condemn my error[21].” The last days of our Saviour’s life gave the world a perfect example of true dignity; yet, we can see, he counted it only fit, as a man, to show that he felt keenly reproach and pain. But it was the Saviour’s death, and the reason for which his death was deemed necessary by eternal justice, that took away for ever any foundation for Stoic pride and self-dependence. Nothing less than this was sufficient to atone for human error, and make it possible for man to