te C: Joel iii. 3.]

"THOU THOUGHTEST THAT I WAS ALTOGETHER SUCH AN ONE AS THYSELF."

In passing by the worst forms of slavery, with which he every where came
in contact among the Jews, the Savior must have been inconsistent with
himself. He was commissioned to preach glad tidings to the poor; to heal
the broken-hearted; to preach deliverance to the captives; to set at
liberty them that are bruised; to preach the year of Jubilee. In
accordance with this commission, he bound himself, from the earliest
date of his incarnation, to the poor, by the strongest ties; himself
"had not where to lay his head;" he exposed himself to misrepresentation
and abuse for his affectionate intercourse with the outcasts of society;
he stood up as the advocate of the widow, denouncing and dooming the
heartless ecclesiastics, who had made her bereavement a source of gain;
and in describing the scenes of the final judgment, he selected the very
personification of poverty, disease, and oppression, as the test by
which our regard for him should be determined. To the poor and wretched;
to the degraded and despised, his arms were ever open. They had his
tenderest sympathies. They had his warmest love. His heart's blood he
poured out upon the ground for the human family, reduced to the deepest
degradation, and exposed to the heaviest inflictions, as the slaves of
the grand usurper. And yet, according to our ecclesiastics, that class
of sufferers who had been reduced immeasurably below every other shape
and form of degradation and distress; who had been most rudely thrust
out of the family of Adam, and forced to herd with swine; who, without
the slightest offense, had been made the foot-stool of the worst
criminals; whose "tears were their meat night and day," while, under
nameless insults and killing injuries, they were continually crying, O
Lord, O Lord:--this class of sufferers, and this alone, our biblical
expositors, occupying the high places of sacred literature, would make
us believe the compassionate Savior coldly overlooked. Not an emotion of
pity; not a look of sympathy; not a word of consolation, did his
gracious heart prompt him to bestow upon them! He denounces damnation
upon the devourer of the widow's house. But the monster, whose trade it
is to make widows and devour them and their babes, he can calmly endure!
O Savior, when wilt thou stop the mouths of such blasphemers!

IT IS THE SPIRIT THAT QUICKENETH.

It seems, that though, a