Thus closed the earthly career of Him who is both the Son of man and the Son of God.  Though He was sorely tried by the privations of poverty, though He was exposed to the most brutal and degrading insults, and though at last He was forsaken by His friends and consigned to a death of lingering agony, He never performed a single act or uttered a single word unworthy of His exalted and blessed mission.  The narratives of the evangelists supply clear internal evidence that, when they described the history of Jesus, they must have copied from a living original; for otherwise, no four individuals, certainly no four Jews, could have each furnished such a portrait of so great and so singular a personage.  Combining the highest respect for the institutions of Moses with a spirit eminently catholic, He was at once a devout Israelite and a large-hearted citizen of the world.  Rising far superior to the prejudices of His countrymen, He visited Samaria, and conversed freely with its population; and, whilst declaring that He was sent specially to the seed of Abraham, He was ready to extend His sympathy to their bitterest enemies.  Though He took upon Him the form of a servant, there was nothing mean or servile in His behaviour; for, when He humbled Himself, there was ever about Him an air of condescending majesty.  Whether He administers comfort to the mourner, or walks upon the waves of the sea, or replies to the cavils of the Pharisees, He is still the same calm, holy, and gracious Saviour.  When His passion was immediately in view, He was as kind and as considerate as ever, for, on the very night in which He was betrayed, He was employed in the institution of an ordinance which was to serve as a sign and a seal of His grace throughout all generations.  His character is as sublime as it is original.  It has no parallel in the history of the human family.  The impostor is cunning, the demagogue is turbulent, and the fanatic is absurd; but the conduct of Jesus Christ is uniformly gentle and serene, candid, courteous, and consistent.  Well, indeed, may His name be called Wonderful.  “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world know him not.  He came unto his own, and his own received him not.  But an many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” [32:1]

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE TO CHAPTER II.

THE YEAR OF CHRIST’S BIRTH.

The Christian era commences on the 1st of January of the year 754 of the city of Rome.  That our Lord was born about the time stated in the text may appear from the following considerations—­