II. We come to consider, what there was in this person that might attract our Saviour’s love. 1. He had probably some natural qualifications which were agreeable and pleasing. His youth is expressed; Mat. xix. 20. A young man, in the prime of his days, in the force and flower of his age, the beauty and vigour of his nature: And it is very likely, that he might be of a comely figure and ingenuous countenance; for it is said, our Saviour beholding him, loved him. He fixed his eyes, and probably saw something in him delightful in his very aspect and appearance, which might partly induce him to those various expressions of love before-mentioned, and to pity so lovely a youth, who was enslaved to riches, and bound to destruction in fetters of gold. 2. He had a courteous and obliging carriage, which appears in several instances; _viz._ he kneeled before our Lord, and paid him great respect with the gesture of his body; he saluted him, good Master! which our Lord did not reprove, when he said, there is none good but God; but put him to the trial, whether he would own him to be God or no. He acknowledged Christ as his superior, though he was so much a stranger to him, and so much a poorer man than himself. By his whole deportment we find him a person of great civility; he knew how to pay the honours of his country well, to give titles to whom titles are due, and to do these things gracefully. A courteous, humble, and decent behaviour, without affectation or flattery, is so far from being reproved by Christ, that not only, in this place, our Lord seems to be pleased with it, but in many places of the New Testament, it is recommended to make christianity amiable: It is pleasing to human nature, and cannot but gain love and esteem with all wise and virtuous persons. 3. He was religiously educated even from his childhood, and had grown up in sobriety, perhaps, from his very cradle; for he was but a young man when he came to our Lord, and yet he says, concerning the commandments of moral duty, I have kept them all from my youth. He sprung surely from good parents; he had such instructions from them, and they such a jealous and watchful eye over him, that he was kept from gross sins, and was brought up in all the forms of godliness, and in the observance of the moral law. Now Christ, considered merely as a man, loved the law of God so well, that he could not but take pleasure in a person that performed it, so far as that obedience reached. Virtue, in the mere outward part of it, will command respect even from the vile and the wicked: much more will the good and pious man pay honour to the practice of it. There is something amiable in sobriety, temperance, charity, justice, truth, and sincerity, though they may not proceed from the divinest principle of love to God rooted in the heart.