Passing now to what is more interior in his ministry, taken as a

revelation of his character, we are struck with another distinction, viz., that he takes rank with the poor, and grounds all the immense expectations of his cause, on a beginning made with the lowly and dejected classes of the world. He was born to the lot of the poor. His manners, tastes, and intellectual attainments, however, visibly outgrew his condition, and that in such a degree that, if he had been a mere human character, he must have suffered some painful distaste for the kind of society in which he lived. The great, as we perceive, flocked to hear him, and sometimes came even by night to receive his instructions. He saw the highest circles of society and influence open to him, if he only desired to enter them. And, if he was a properly human character, what virtuous, but rising young man would have had a thought of impropriety, in accepting the elevation within his reach; considering it as the proper reward of his industry and the merit of his character--not to speak of the contempt for his humble origin, and his humble associates, which every upstart person, of only ordinary virtue, is so commonly seen to manifest. Still he adheres to the poor, and makes them the object of his ministry. And what is more peculiar, he visibly has a kind of interest in their society, which is wanting in that of the higher classes; perceiving, apparently, that they have a certain aptitude for receiving right impressions, which the others have not. They are not the wise and prudent, filled with the conceit of learning and station, but they are the ingenuous babes of poverty, open to conviction, prepared, by their humble lot, to receive thoughts and doctrines in advance of their age. Therefore he loves the poor, and, without descending to their low manners, he delights to be identified with them. He is more assiduous in their service than other men have been in serving the great. He goes about on foot, teaching them, and healing their sick; occupying his great and elevated mind, for whole years, with details of labor and care, which the nurse of no hospital had ever laid upon him--insanities, blind eyes, fevers, fluxes, leprosies, and sores. His patients are all below his level and unable to repay him, even by a breath of congenial sympathy; and nothing supports him but the consciousness of good which attends his labors.

No great social architect ever saw the wisdom of it. Meantime, consider what contempt for the poor had hitherto prevailed among all the great statesmen and philosophers of the world. The poor were not society, or any part of society. They were only the conveniences and drudges of society; appendages of luxury and state, tools of ambition, material to be used in the wars. No man who had taken up the idea of some great change or reform in society, no philosopher who had conceived the notion of building up an ideal state or republic, ever thought of beginning with the poor. Influence was seen to reside in the higher classes, and the only hope of reaching the world, by any scheme of social regeneration, was to begin with them, and through them operate its results. But Christ, if we call him a philosopher, and, if he is only a man, we can call him by no higher name, was the poor man's philosopher; the first and only one that had ever appeared. Seeing the higher circles open to him, and tempted to imagine that, if he could once get footing for his doctrine among the influential and the great, he should thus secure his triumph more easily, he had yet no such thought. He laid his foundations, as it were, below all influence, and, as men would judge, threw himself away.

And precisely here did he display a wisdom and character totally in advance of his age. Eighteen centuries have passed away, and we now seem just beginning to understand the transcendent depth of this feature in his mission and his character. We appear to be just waking up to it as a discovery, that the blessing and upraising of the messes are the fundamental interest of society--a discovery, however, which is only a proof that the life of Jesus has at length begun to penetrate society and public history. It is precisely this which is working so many and great changes in our times, giving liberty and right to the enslaved many, seeking their education, encouraging their efforts by new and better hopes, producing an aversion to war, which has been the fatal source of their misery and depression, and opening, as we hope, a new era of comfort, light, and virtue in the world. It is as if some higher and better thought had visited our race--which higher thought is in the life of Jesus. The schools of all the philosophers are gone, hundreds of years ago, and all their visions have died away into thin air; but the poor man's philosopher still lives, bringing up his poor to liberty, light, and character, and drawing the nations on to a brighter and better day,