May we feel more and more, my dearest brother, the interior presence
of that "guest of guests," that Divine Impersonation of Truth,
Rectitude, and Love, whose image has had more power to soothe and
tranquillize, stimulate and fortify, the human heart, than all the
philosophies ever devised by man; who has not merely left us rules of
conduct, expressed with incomparable force and comprehensiveness,
and illustrated by images of unequalled pathos and beauty; who was
not merely (and yet, herein alone, how superior to all other masters)
the living type of His own glorious doctrine, and affects us as we gaze
upon Him with that transforming influence which the studious
contemplation of all excellence exerts by a necessary law of our
nature; but whose Life and Death include all motives which can enforce
His lessons on humanity;--motives all intensely animated by the
conviction that He is a Living Personality, in communion with our own
spirits, and attracted towards us by all the sympathies of a friendship
truly Divine; "who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities,
though Himself without sin." May He become so familiar to our souls,
that no suggestions of evil from within, no incursion of evil from
without, shall be so swift and sudden that the thought of Him shall
not be at least as near to our spirits, intercept the treachery of
our infirm nature, and guard that throne which He alone deserves to
fill; till, at every turn and every posture of our earthly life, we
may realize a mental image of that countenance of divine compassion
bent upon us, and that voice of gentle instruction murmuring in our
ears its words of heavenly wisdom; till, whenever tempted to deviate
from the "narrow path," we may hear Him whispering, "Will ye also go
away?" when hated by the world,--"Ye know that it hated me before
it hated you"; when called to perform some difficult duty,--"If ye
love me, keep my commandments"; when disposed to make an idol of any
thing on earth,--"He that loveth father or mother more than me is not