58

PRELIMINARY PRINCIPLES

3. Again, we may reflect on the personal qualitiesdisplayed by the Saviour, in prosecuting a design thusfraught with the choicest hopes and prospects of mankind ; hispatience and endurance, equally inexhaustible by labor, by suffer-ing, and by provocation ; his uncompromising denunciations ofiniquity, in places however high, and under circumstanceshowever hazardous; # his mildness and benevolence, as seenin his kindness to children,! in his weeping upon the deathof his friend Lazarus | and over the approaching ruin of hiscountry, § in his notice of the widow’s mite, (j in his para-bles of the ungrateful servant, of the pharisee and publican, andof the good Samaritan, and in his prayer for his enemies in themidst of his sufferings, which seems then to have been new,though it has since been frequently imitated ; his humility, as seenin his commending moderate desires after the goods of fortune,ITand in his constant reproof of contentions for superiority ; hispiety and devoutness of mind, as seen in his frequent retire-ment for solitary prayer ,** in his habitual giving of thanks, ff inhis reference of the laws and beauties of nature to a DivineProvidence, || in his earnest addresses to his Father, more par-ticularly the brief but solemn prayer before calling Lazarus fromthe tomb, in the profound piety of his behaviour in the gardenon the last evening of his life ; §§ his prudence, where prudenceis most wanted, that is, on trying occasions, and in giving an-swers to artful and ensnaring questions. Particular and strikinginstances of these are seen in his withdrawing, at various times,from the first symptoms of tumult, || [J with the wish of pros-ecuting his ministry in quietness ; in his declining every kind anddegree of interference with the civil affairs of the country ; inhis judicious answer to the ensnaring question respecting thepayment of tribute to Caesar ; HI in his solution of the difficultyconcerning the interfering relations of a future state, as proposed

* Matt. xi. 20-24 ; xxiii. 13-38, &c. t Mark x. 16. fJohnxi. 35.

§ Luke xix. 41 - 44. || Mark xii. 42.

If Luke xii. 15-34. **Matt. xiv. 23; Luke ix. 28.

tt Matt. xi. 25; Mark yiii. 6 ; John vi. 23; Luke xxii. 17.

tt Matt. vi. 26 - 28. § § John xi. 41; Matt. xxvi. 36-47.

1111 Matt. xiv. 22; Luke v. 15,16; John v. 13; vi.15. HIT Matt. xxii. 19.