Extract from an Old Sermon.
The providence of God appointed the mission of Jesus to a time which brought him in close contact with the greatest variety of depraved character, and many of the highest degrees of human vileness. It would appear also that that degenerate time was marked with more than usual ravages of Satan, and many sad pictures of distressed humanity; and certainly it lacked none of the common sorrows of sickness and death, or of national calamities to the Jewish people. In condition, the lot of Jesus was cast among the lowest ranks of men, yet so that he had experience of the peculiar vices and miseries of all ranks from the lowest to the highest. He shared the privation and reproaches of the poor, and yet became himself the object of jealousy and spite from men in high position, who trembled lest they should be held second to the Nazarene. He mingled with multitudes of the sick, and maimed, and bereaved, with publicans and sinners—with self-righteous Pharisees, and cold philosophic Sadducees—with wavering friends and a traitorous companion—with self-seeking priests, and prejudiced judges, and with temporizing and unjust rulers.