the last generation, stated on his death-bed that on looking back on his life the one thing he most regretted was that he had not given more time to the careful study of the life of our Lord in the four evangelists. Probably he has not been alone in that regret; and if the truth were told, many of us would have to confess that we spend much more thought and time upon the daily papers, which describe the follies and errors of the world, than on the records of that Life which was given for the world's redemption. The festival of an evangelist ought to suggest a practical resolution that, so far as we are concerned, the grace which he received, according to the measure of the gift of Christ, shall not, please God, be lost. Ten minutes a day seriously spent on our knees, with the Gospel in our hands, will do more to quicken faith, love, reverence, spiritual and moral insight and power, than we can easily think.--_H. P. Liddon._ Vers. 9, 10. _The contrasted Humiliation and Exaltation of Christ._ +I. The circumstances of the Saviour's depression from His original state.+--We say that a person stoops, that he bends, that he sinks. Moral correspondencies to these actions are understood. They are condescensions. Immanuel is the name of our Saviour when born into our world and dwelling in it--God with us. A local residence is thus described. And we are informed of the degree which marks His coming down from heaven, of the manner in which He came into the world--He descended into the lower parts of the earth. What lowliness is this! Similar terms are employed in other portions of the inspired volume; by collating them with those of the text we shall most satisfactorily determine its sense. 1. _The incarnation of Christ may be thus expressed._--To what did He not submit? By what was He not buffeted? What insult did not disfigure His brow? What shade did not cloud His countenance? What deep waters did not go over His soul? His was humanity in its severest pressures and humblest forms. 2. _This form of language may denote the death of Christ._--It is the ordinary phrase of the Old Testament; "They shall go into the lower parts of the earth: Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps." Does it not seem strange that His soul should be commended hence who had often bound death to His bidding and summoned from the grave its prey? He is brought low to the dust of death. The erect figure is prostrated. The instinctive life is arrested. That mysterious frame--related to the infinite and the Divine temple of all greatness, shrine of all sanctity--that "Holy Thing" sleeps in death.