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THE

CHARACTER OF JESUS

FORBIDDING HIS
POSSIBLE CLASSIFICATION WITH MEN.

BY

HORACE BUSHNELL

NEW YORK :

CHARLES SCEIBNER'S SONS,

1902.

.^.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year i860, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER,

In the Clerk*s Office of the District Court of the United States
?or the Southern District of New York.

Copyright, 1886, by
JHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

Press of J, J. Little & Co.,
Astor Place, New York,

PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMEM'.

In this little volume we reprint, with consent of
the Author, the tenth chapter of his Treatise, Na-
ture AND THE Supernatural.

This chapter, taken as a sketch of the self -evidenc-
ing, superhuman character of Christ, has attracted
much attention ; and we have been solicited, many
times over, in the various notices and reviews of the
book, as well as by private readers, to give it to the
public by itself. This, too, we do the more readily,
that it makes a complete whole by itself, and is in
a style to be read by multitudes who probably will
not undertake to master the more elaborate and
difficult argument, of which it is only a subordinate
member.

CONTENTS.

We assume nothing reported of him to be true, .... 8
The only character that has a perfect youth, 10

The picture stands by itself, ....
The absurd pictures given of infant prodigies,

Jesus the only great character that holds a footing of innocence
The only religious character that disowns repentance, .

He unites characters difficult to be united, .

The astonishing pretensions of Jesus,

His pretensions enter also into his actions, .

Nobody offended by these pretensions, .

What mere man could support such pretensions ?

Peculiar in the passive virtues,

Does not falter in the common trials of existence.
His passion, no mere human mart.vrdom.
His agony misplaced, taken as being only a man's,
It is, humanly speaking, excessive, ....

The pathology is divine,

His defence before Pilate, all that could be made, .

He undertakes what is humanly impossible.

He assumes to set up the kingdom of God among men,

His plan covers ages of time,

Such attempts not human,

He takes rank with the humblest orders of society.
No groat social architect ever saw the wisdom of it,

. 11
13

. 14

17

. 20
22

.. 24
25

. 28

27
. 28

30
. 31

32
. 32

40

6 CONTENTS.

PAGE

And still he raises no partisan feeling, 42

No human leader in this, ...» 43

OriginaV and independent as no man is, 45

Teaches by no human method, ........ 47

Warped by no desire to gain assent, 47

Compreheni^ive, under no human conditions, .... 48

Could not hold a one-sided view , . 49

Clear of all the current superstitions, 50

But no liberaiist, 52

His simplicity is perfect, 53

Shining as pure light, 55

Adequately teaches God even to the humble, 55

This morality is not artistic, 57

Bui intuitive and original, 58

Never anxious for success, 58

Eaised and made sacred by familiarity, 60

Our experience of men reversed iu him, 63

Recapitulation, 63

Did such a being actually exist ? 66

Was he a sinless character? ........ 67

Mr. Parker's estimate of him, . 69

Mr. flenners estimate, 70

Faults charged, 70

Faults supposed and intimated, 71

His invective against the Pharisees, 73

Milton's right of invective, 74

The fact of his miracles inferred, . . . . . . . .75

Hi^= errand is order itf^elf, 77

No disruption of law or system, 78

The mythical hypothesis impossible, 79

Their success Mr. Parker concedes, 80

The miracles are in place in a gospel, 82

Miracles rejected, so is Jesus the Grand Miracle, .... 83

Jesus himself the all-sufficient evidence, ..... 84

THE

CHARACTER OF JESUS

It is the grand peculiarity of the sacred writings,
that they deal in supernatural events and transac-
tions, and show the fact of a celestial institution
finally erected on earth, which is fitly called the
kingdom of God ; because it shows Him reigning,
as a Eegenerator and Restorer of the broken order
of the world. Christianity is, in this view, no mere
scheme of doctrine, or of ethical practice, but is in-
stead a kind of miracle, a power out of nature and
above, descending into it ; a historically supernat-
ural movement on the world, that is visibly entered
into it, and organized to be an institution in the
person of Jesus Christ. He, therefore, is the central
figure and power, and with him the entire fabric
either stands or falls.

To this central figure, then, we now turn our-
selves ; and, as no proof beside the light is neces-
sary to show that the sun shines, so we shall find
that Jesus proves himself by his own self-evidence.
The simple inspection of his life and character will
suffice to show that he cannot be classified with
mankind (man though he be), any more than what
we call his miracles can be classified with mere nat-

(7)

8 CEABAGTEB OF JESUS.

ural events. The simple demonstrations of his life
and spirit are the sufficient attestation of his own
profession, when he says — " I am from above " — " I
came down from heaven."

Let US not be misunderstood. We do not assume
the truth of the narrative by which the manner and

We assume ^^^^^ ^^ ^'^^ ^^^^ ^^ Jcsus are reported
ed^of"hin[To°be *^ "^^ » ^^^ ^^^^' ^J ^^^ Supposition, is
*^"^- the matter in question. "We only as-

sume the representations themselves, as being just
what they are, and discover their necessary truth,
in the transcendent, wondrously self-evident, pic-
ture of divine excellence and beauty exhibited in
them. We take up the account of Christ, in the
New Testament, just as we would any other ancient
writing, or as if it were a manuscript just brought
to light in some ancient library. We open the
book, and discover in it four biographies of a cer-
tain remarkable character, called Jesus Christ. He
is miraculously born of Mary, a virgin of Galilee,
and declares himself, without scruple, that he came
out from God. Finding the supposed history made
up, in great part, of his mighty acts, and not being
disposed to believe in miracles and marvels, we
should soon dismiss the book as a tissue of absurd-
ities too extravagant for belief, were we not struck
with the sense of something very peculiar in the
character of this remarkable person. Having our
attention arrested thus by the impression made on

CHARACTER OF JESUS. &

our respect, we are put on inquiry, and the more
we study it, tlie more wonderful, as a character, it
appears. And before we have done, it becomes,
in fact, the chief wonder of the story ; Hfting all
the other wonders into order and intelhgent pro-
portion round it, and making one comj^act and
glorious wonder of the whole picture ; a pictui'e
shining in its own clear sunlight upon us, as the
truest of all truths — Jesus, the Divine Word, com-
ing out from God, to be incarnate with us, and be
the vehicle of God and salvation to the race.

On the single question, therefore, of the more
than human character of Jesus, we propose, in per-
fect confidence, to rest a principal argument for
Christianity as a supernatural institution ; for, if
there be in Jesus a character which is not human,
then has something broken into the world that is
not of it, and the spell of unbelief is broken.

Not that Christianity might not be a supernatural
institution, if Jesus were only a man ; for many
prophets and holy men, as we believe, have brought
forth to the world communications that are not
from themselves, but were received by inspirations
from God. There are several grades, too, of the
supernatural, as already intimated ; the supernat-
ural human, the supernatural prophetic, the super-
natural demonic and angelic, the supernatural divine.
Christ, we shall see, is the supernatural manifested
in the highest grade or order ; viz., the divine.

10 CHABACTER OF JESUS.

"We observe, tiieii, as a first peculiarity at the root
of his character, that he begins hfe with a perfect
youth. His childhood is an unspotted,
chJacter °h!a ^ud, withal, a kind of celestial flower.
youth. ^^'^^^''^ The notion of a superhuman or celestial
childhood, the most difficult of all
things to be conceived, is yet successfully drawn
by a few simple touches. He is announced before-
hand as "that Holy Thing"; a beautiful and
powerful stroke, to raise our expectation to the
level of a nature so mysterious. In his childhood,
everybody loves him. Using words of external
description, he is shown growing up in favor with
God and man, a child so lovely and beautiful, that
heaven and earth appear to smile upon him to-
gether. So, when it is added that the child grew
and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and,
more than all, that the grace or beautifying power
of God was upon him, we look, as on the unfolding
of a sacred flower, and seem to scent a fragrance
wafted on us from other worlds. Then, at the age
of twelve, he is found among the great learned men
of the day, the doctors of the temple, hearing w^hat
they say, and asking them questions. And this,
without any word that indicates forwardness or
pertness in the child's manner, such as some Chris-
tian Rabbi, or silly and credulous devotee, would
certainly have added. The doctors are not offend-
ed, as by a child too forward or wanting in modesty;

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 11

they are only amazed that such a degree of under-
standing can dwell in one so young and simple.
His mother finds him there among them, and be-
gins to expostulate with him. His reply is very
strange ; it must, she is sure, have some deep mean-
ing that corresponds with his mysterious birth, and
the sense he has ever given her of a something
strangely peculiar in his ways ; and she goes home
keeping his saying in her heart, and guessing vainly
what his thought may be. Mysterious, holy secret !
which this mother hides in her bosom ; that her
holy thing, her child whom she has watched, during
the twelve years of his celestial childhood, now be-
gins to speak of being " about his Father's busi-
ness," in words of dark enigma, which she can not
fathom.

Now we do not say, observe, that there is one
word of truth in these touches of narrative. We
only say that, whether they be fact or
fiction, here is given the sketch of a stands^ by it-

self

perfect and sacred childhood, not of a
simple, lovely, ingenuous, and properly human
childhood, such as the poets love to sketch, but of
a sacred and celestial childhood. In this respect,
the early character of Jesus is a picture that stands
by itself. In no other case, that we remember, has
it ever entered the mind of a biographer, in di-awing
a character, to represent it as beginning with a spot-
less childhood. The childhood of the gTeat human

12 CHABACTEB OF JESTI8,

characters, if given at all, is commonly represented,
according to the uniform truth, as being more or
less contrary to the manner of their mature age ;
and never as being strictly one with it, except in
those cases of inferior eminence where the kind of
distinction attained to is that of some mere prod-
igy, and not a character of greatness in action, or
of moral excellence. In all the higher ranges of
character, the excellence portrayed is never the
simple unfolding of a harmonious and perfect
beauty contained in the germ of childhood, but it
is a character formed by a process of rectification,
in which many follies are mended and distempers
removed ; in which confidence is checked b}^ defeat,
passion moderated by reason, smartness sobered by
experience. Commonly a certain pleasure is taken
in showing how the many wayward sallies of the
boy are, at length, reduced by discipline to the
character of wisdom, justice, and public heroism,
so much admired.

Besides, if any writer, of almost any age, will
undertake to describe, not merely a spotless, but a
superhuman or celestial childhood, not having the
reahty before him, he must be somewhat more than
human himself, if he does not pile together a mass
of clumsy exaggerations, and draw and overdraw,
till neither heaven nor earth can find any verisimil-
itude in the picture.

Neither let us omit to notice what ideas the Bab-

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 13

bis and learned doctors of tliis age were able, in
fact, to furnish, when setting forth a
remarkable childhood. Thus Josephus, pictures given of
drawing on the teachings of the Rabbis,
tells how the infant Moses, when the king of Egypt
took him out of his daughter's arms, and playfully
put the diadem on his head, threw it pettishly down
and stamped on it. And when Moses was three
years old, he tells us that the child had grown so
tall, and exhibited such a wonderful beauty of
countenance, that people were obliged, as it were,
to stop and look at him as he was carried along the
road, and were held fast by the wonder, gazing till
he was out of sight. See, too, what work is made
of the childhood of Jesus himself, in the Apocry-
phal gospels. These are written by men of so
nearly the same era, that we may discover, in their
embellishments, what kind of a childhood it was in
the mere invention of the time to make out. While
the gospels explicitly say that Jesus wrought no
miracles till his public ministry began, and that he
made his beginning in the miracle of Cana, these
are ambitious to make him a great prodigy in his
childhood. They tell how, on one occasion, he pur-
sued in his anger, the other children, who refused
to pla}^ with him, and turned them into kids ; how,
on another, when a child accidentally ran against
him, he was angry, and killed him by his mere
word ; how, on another, Jesus had a dispute with

14 CHABAGTER OF JESUS.

his teaclier over the alphabet, and when the teacher
struck him, how he crushed him, withered his arm,
and threw him down dead. Finally, Joseph tells
Mary that they must keep him within doors, for
everybody perishes against whom he is excited.
His mother sends him to the well for water, and
having broken his pitcher, he brings the water in
his cloak. He goes into a dyer's shop, when the
dyer is out, and throws all the cloths he finds into
a vat of one color ; but, when they are taken out, be-
hold, they are aU dyed of the precise color that was
ordered. He commands a palm-tree to stoop down
and let him pluck the fniit, and it obej^s. When
he is carried down into Egypt, aU the idols faU
down wherever he passes, and the lions and leopards
gather round him in a harmless company. This the
Gospel of the Infancy gives, as a picture of the
wonderful childhood of Jesus. How unlike that
holy flower of paradise, in the true gospels, which a
few simple touches make to bloom in beautiful self-
evidence before us!

Passing now to the character of Jesus in his ma-
turity, we discover, at once, that there is an element
Jesus the only ^ ^^ which distinguishes it from all
fhaihoWs?foJtI ^luman characters, viz., innocence. By
ing of innocence, ^^jg ^^ mean, uot that he is actually
sinless ; that will be denied, and, therefore, must
not here be assumed. We mean that, viewed ex-

OHARAGTEIt OF JESUS. 15

temally, he is a perfectly harmless being, actuated
by no destructive passions, gentle to inferiors, doing
ill or injury to none. The figure of a Lamb, which
never was, or could be appHed to any of the great
human characters, without an implication of weak-
ness fatal to all respect, is yet, with no such effect,
applied to him. We associate weakness with inno-
cence, and the association is so powerful, that no
human writer would undertake to sketch a great
character on the basis of innocence, or would even
think it possible. We predicate innocence of in-
fancy ; but to be a perfectly harmless, guileless
man, never doing ill even for a moment, we consider
to be the same as to be a man destitute of spirit and
manly force. But Christ accomplished the impossi-
ble. Appearing in all the grandeur and majesty of
a superhuman manhood, he is able still to unite the
impression of innocence, with no apparent diminu-
tion of his sublimity. It is, in fact, the distinctive
glory of his character, that it seems to be the natu-
ral unfolding of a divine innocence ; a pure celes-
tial childhood, amplified by growth. We feel the
power of this strange combination, but we have so
great difficulty in conceiving it, or holding our
minds to the conception, that we sometimes subside
or descend to the human level, and empty the char-
acter of Jesus of the strange element unawares.
We read, for example, his terrible denunciations
against the Pharisees, and are shocked by the vio-

16 CHARACTER OF JESUS.

lent, fierce sound tliey have on our mortal Kps ; not
perceiving that the offence is in us, and not in him.
We should suffer no such revulsion, did we only
conceive them bursting out, as words of indignant
grief, from the surcharged bosom of innocence ; for
there is nothing so bitter as the offence that inno-
cence feels, when stung by hypocrisy and a sense
of cruelty to the poor. So, when he drives the
money-changers from the temple, we are likely to
leave out the only element that saves him from a
look of violence and passion. Whereas, it is the
very point of the story, not that he, as by mere
force, can drive so many men, but that so many are
seen retiring before the moral power of one, a
mysterious being, in whose face and form the in-
dignant flush of innocence reveals a tremendous
feeling, they can no wise comprehend, much less
are able to resist.

Accustomed to no such demonstrations of vigor
and decision in the innocent human characters, and
having it as our way to set them down contemptu-
ously, without further consideration, as

" Incapable and shallow innocents," —

we turn the indignant fire of Jesus into a fire of
malignity ; whereas, it should rather be conceived
that Jesus here reveals his divinity, by what so pow-
erfully distinguishes Grod himself, when he clothes
his goodness in the tempests and thunders of na-

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 17

fare. Decisive, great, and strong, Christ is yet all
this, even the more sublimeh^ that he is invested,
withal, in the lovely, but humanly feeble garb of
innocence. And that this is the true conception, is
clear, in the fact that no one ever thinks of him as
weak, and no one fails to be somehow impressed
with a sense of innocence by his life. "When his
enemies are called to show what evil or harm he
hath done, they can specify nothing, save that he
has offended their bigotry. Even Pilate, when he
gives him up, confesses that he finds nothing in him
to blame, and, shuddering with apprehensions he
cannot subdue, washes his hands to be clear of the
innocent blood ! Thus he dies, a being holy, harm-
less, undefiled. And when he hangs, a bruised
flower, drooping on his cross, and the sun above is
dark, and the earth beneath shudders with pain,
what have we in this funeral grief of the worlds,
but a fit honor paid to the sad majesty of his divine
innocence ?

We pass now to his religious character, which, we
shall discover, has the remarkable distinction that
it proceeds from a point exactly opposite to that
which is the root or radical element in -pj^^ ^^^
the relio'ious character of men. Human !'S'°"^. ch-^racter

o that disowns re-

piety begins with repentance. It is the pentance.
effort of a being, implicated in wrong and writhing un-
der the stings of guilt, to come unto God. The most

18 CEABACTEB OF JESUS.

righteous, or even self-rigliteous men, blend expres-
sions of sorrow and vows of new obedience with their
exercises. But Christ, in the character given him,
never acknowledges sin. It is the grand peculiarity
of his piety that he never regrets anything that he
has done or been ; expresses, nowhere, a single
feeling of compunction, or the least sense of un-
worthiness. On the contrary, he boldly challenges
his accusers, in the question — Wliich of you con-
yinceth me of sin ? and even declares, at the close
of his life, in a solemn appeal to God, that he has
given to men, unsullied, the glory divine that was
deposited in him.

Now the question is not whether Christ was, in
fact, the faultless being, assumed in his religious
character. All we have to notice here is, that he
makes the assumption, makes it not only in words,
but in the very tenor of his exercises themselves,
and that by this fact his piety is radically distin-
guished from all human piety. And no mere hu-
man creature, it is certain, could hold such a relig-
ious attitude, without shortly displaying faults that
would cover him with derision, or excesses and de-
linquencies that would even disgust his friends.
Piety without one dash of repentance, one ingenu-
ous confession of wrong, one tear, one look of con-
trition, one request to heaven for pardon — ^let any one
of mankind try this kind of piety, and see how long
it will be ere his righteousness will prove itself to be

CEARAGTE'R OF JESUS. 19

the most impudent conceit! how long before his
passions sobered by no contrition, his pride kept
down by no repentance, will tempt him into absurdi-
ties that wiU turn his pretenses to mockery! No
sooner does any one of us begin to be self-right-
eous, than he begins to faU into outward sins that
shame his conceit. But, in the case of Jesus, no
such disaster follows. Beginning with an impeni-
tent or unrepentant piety, he holds it to the end,
and brings no visible stain upon it.

Now, one of two things must be true. He was
either sinless, or he was not. If sinless, what
greater, more palpable exception to the law of
human development, than that a perfect and stain-
less being has for once lived in the flesh ! If not,
which is the supposition required of those who
deny every thing above the range of hxmian de-
velopment, then we have a man taking up a re-
ligion without repentance, a religion not human,
but celestial, a style of piety never taught him in
his childhood, and never conceived or attempted
among men : more than this, a style of piety, withal,
whoUy un suited to his real character as a sinner,
holding it as a figment of insufferable presumption
to the end of life, and that in a way of such un-
faltering grace and beauty, as to command the uni-
versal homage of the human race ! Could there be
a wider deviation from all we know of mere human
development ?

20 GHABAGTEB OF JBSUS.

He was also able perfectly to unite elements of
character, that others find the greatest difficulty in
He unites Uniting, howcver unevenly and partial-
ficuir'^^tl '^be ly* H^ i^ never said to have laughed,
united. Qj^^ jQ^ Y^Q never produces the impres-

sion of austerity, moroseness, sadness, or even of
being unhappy. On the contrary, he is described
as one that appears to be commonly filled with a
sacred joy ; " rejoicing in spirit," and leaving to his
disciples, in the hour of his departure, the bequest
of his joy — " that they might have my joy fulfilled
in themselves." We could not long endure a hu-
man being whose face was never moved by laugh-
ter, or relaxed by humorous play. What sj^mpathy
could we have with one who appears, in this manner,
to have no human heart? We could not even trust
him. And yet we have sympathy with Christ ; for
there is somewhere in him an ocean of deep joy,
and we see that he is, in fact, only burdened with
his sympathy for us to such a degree, that his
mighty life is overcast and oppressed by the charge
he has undertaken. His lot is the lot of privation ;
he has no powerful friends ; he has not even where
to lay his head. No human being could appear in
such a guise, without occupying us much with the
sense of his affliction. We should be descending to
him, as it were, in pity. But we never pity Christ,
never think of him as struggling with the disad-
vantages of a lower level, to surmount them. In

^CHARACTER OF JESUS. 21

fact, he does not allow us, after all, to think much
of his privations. We think of him more as a being
of mighty resources, proving himself only the more
sublimely, that he is in the guise of destitution. He
is the most unworldly of beings, having no desire at
all for what the earth can give, too great to be caught
with any longing for its benefits, impassible even to
its charms, and yet there is no ascetic sourness or
repugnance, no misanthropic distaste in his man-
ner ; as if he were bracing himself against the world
to keep it off. The more closely he is drawn to other
worlds, the more fresh and susceptible is he to the
humanities of this. The Uttle child is an image of
gladness, which his heart leaps forth to embrace.
The wedding and the feast and the funeral have all
their cord of sympathy in his bosom. At the wed-
ding he is clothed in congratulation, at the feast in
doctrine, at the funeral in tears ; but no miser was
ever drawn to his money, with a stronger desire,
than he to worlds above the world.

Men undertake to be spiritual, and they become
ascetic ; or, endeavoring to hold a liberal view of
the comforts and pleasures of society, they are soon
buried in the world, and slaves to its fashions ; or,
holding a scrupulous watch to keep out every par-
ticular sin, they become legal, and faU out of lib-
erty ; or, charmed with the noble and heavenly Hb-
erty, they run to negligence and irresponsible living ;
so the earnest become violent, the fervent fanatical

22 CHARACTER OF JESUS.

and censorious, the gentle waver, the firm turn big-
ots, the liberal grow lax, the benevolent ostentatious.
Poor human infirmity can hold nothing steady.
Where the pivot of righteousness is broken, the
scales must needs slide off their balance. Indeed,,
it is one of the most difficult things which a cultiva-
ted Christian can attempt, only to sketch a tlieoretic
view of character, in its true justness and proportion,
so that a little more study, or a little more self-ex-
perience, will not require him to modify it. And
yet the character of Christ is never modified, even
by a shade of rectification. It is one and the same
throughout. He makes no improvements, prunes no
extravagances, returns from no eccentricities. The
balance of his character is never disturbed, or read-
justed, and the astounding assumption on which it is
based is never shaken, even by a suspicion that he
falters in it.

There is yet another point related to this, in
which the attitude of Jesus is even more distinct

from any that was ever taken by man,
ing pretensions and is yct triumphantly sustained. I

speak of the astonishing pretensions
asserted concerning his person. Similar preten-
sions have sometimes been assumed by maniacs, or
insane persons, but never, so far as I know, by per-
sons in the proper exercise of their reason. Certain
it is that no mere man could take the same attitude
of supremacy towards the race, and inherent affinity

CHARAGTEB OF JESUS. 23

or oneness with God, without fatally shocking the
confidence of the world by his effrontery. Imagine
a human creature saying to the world — " I came
forth from the Father " — " ye are from beneath, I
am from above"; facing all the intelhgence and
even the philosophy of the world, and saying, in
bold assurance — " behold, a greater than Solomon
is here " — " I am the light of the world " — " the
way, the truth, and the life"; publishing to all peo-
ples and religions—" No man cometh to the Father,
but by me"; promising openly in his death— "I
will draw all men unto me "; addressing the Infinite
Majesty, and testifying — " I have glorified thee on
the earth "; calling to the human race — " Come
unto me"; "follow me"; laying his hand upon all
the dearest and most intimate affections of life, and
demanding a precedent love — " he that loveth father
or mother more than me, is not worthy of me."
Was there ever displayed an example of effrontery
and spiritual conceit so preposterous ? Was there
ever a man that dared put himself on the world in
such pretensions ? — as if all light was in him ; as if
to follow him and be worthy of him was to be the
conclusive or chief excellence of mankind ! What
but mockery and disgust does he challenge as the
certain rewai'd of his audacity ! But no one is of-
fended with Jesus on this account, and what is a
sure test of his success, it is remarkable that, of all
the readers of the gospel, it probably never even

24 GEABAGTEB OF JESUS.

occurs to one in a hundred thousand, to blame his
conceit, or the egregious vanity of his pretensions.

Nor is there any thing disputable in these preten-
sions, least of all, ftny trace of myth or fabulous
tradition. They enter into the very
sions enter also wcb of his ministry, so that if they are

into his actions. , , ^ -, ,, . nj., . t

extracted and nothing left transcending
mere humanity, nothing at all is left. Indeed, there
is a tacit assumption, continually maintained, that
far exceeds the range of these formal pretensions.
He says — " I and the Father that sent me," What
figure would a man present in such language — I and
the Father ? He goes even beyond this, and appar-
ently without any thought of excess or presump-
tion ; classing himself with the Infinite Majesty in
a common plural, he says — We will come unto him,
and make our abode with him. Imagine any, the
greatest and holiest of manldnd, any prophet, or
apostle, saying we, of himself and the Great Jeho-
vah ! What a conception did he give us concerning
himself, when he assumed the necessity of such in-
formation as this — " my Father is greater than I ";
and above all, when he calls himself, as he often
does, in a tone of condescension — " the Son of Man.'"
See him also on the top of Olivet^ looking down on
the guilty city and weeping words of compassion
like these — imagine some man weeping over London
or New York, in the like — " How often would I have
gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather

CHABAGTER OF JESUS. 25

her chickens under her wings, and ye would not ! "
See him also in the supper, instituting a rite of re-
membrance for himself, a scorned, outcast man, and
saying — "this is my body" — "this do in remem-
brance of me."

I have dwelt thus on the transcendent preten-
sions of Jesus, because there is an argument here
for his superhumanity, which can not be
resisted. For eighteen hundred years, fende°d°L/ these

., T • !• ^ 1 pretensions.

these prodigious assumptions nave been
pubUshed and preached to a world that is quick to
lay hold of conceit, and bring down the lofty airs of
pretenders, and yet, during all this time, whole na-
tions of people, composing as well the learned and
powerful as the ignorant and humble, have paid
their homage to the name of Jesus, detecting never
any disagreement between his merits and his pre-
tensions, offanded never by any thought of his ex-
travagance. In which we have absolute proof that
he practically maintains his amazing assumptions !
Indeed it will even be found that, in the common
apprehension of the race, he maintains the merit of
a most peculiar modesty, producing no conviction
more distinctly, than that of his intense lowliness
and humility. His worth is seen to be so great, his
authority so high, his spirit so celestial, that instead
of being offended by his pretensions, we take the
impression of one in whom it is even a condescen-
sion to breathe our air. I say not that his friends

26 CHARACTER OF JESUS.

and followers take tMs impression, it is received as
naturally and irresistibly by unbelievers. I do not
recollect any skeptic or infidel who has even thought
to accuse him as a conceited person, or to assault
him in this, the weakest and absurdest, if not the
strongest and holiest, point of his character.

Come now, aU ye that teU us in your wisdom of
the mere natural humanity of Jesus, and help u;3 to

What mere ^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^' "^^^^ ^^® ^^ ^^^J ^ natural

pm-" Tu^ch p"?I development of the human ; select your
tensions ? h^^t aud wiscst charactcr ; take the

range, if you will, of all the great philosophers and
saints, and choose out one that is most competent ;
or if, perchance, some one of you may imagine that
he is himself about upon a level with Jesus (as we
hear that some of you do), let him come forward in
this trial and say — " follow me " — " be worthy of
me " — " I am the light of the world " — " ye are from
beneath, I am from above" — "behold a greater
than Solomon is here " ; take on all these transcend-
ent assumptions, and see how soon your glory wiU
be sifted out of you by the detective gaze, and
darkened by the contempt of mankind ! Why not ?
is not the challenge fair ? Do you not teU us that
you can say as divine things as he ? Is it not in
you, too, of course, to do what is human ? are you
not in the front rank of human developments '? do
you not rejoice in the power to rectify many mis-
takes and errors in the words of Jesus ? Give us

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 27

then this one experiment, and see if it does not
prove to you a truth that is of some consequence ;
Tiz., that you are a man, and that Jesus Christ is —
more.

But there is also a passive side to the character
of Jesus which is equally peculiar, and which like-
wise demands our attention. I recol- Peculiar in the
lect no really great character in history, Passive virtues.
excepting such as may have been formed under
Christianity, that can properly be said to have united
the passive virtues, or to have considered them any
essential part of a finished character. Socrates
comes the nearest to such an impression, and there-
fore most resembles Christ in the submissiveness of
his death. It does not appear, however, that his
mind had taken this turn previously to his trial, and
the submission he makes to the public sentence is,
in fact, a refusal only to escape from the prison
surreptitiously ; which he does, partly because he
thinks it the duty of every good citizen not to break
the laws, and partly, if we judge from his manner,
because he is detained by a subtle pride ; as if it
were something unworthy of a grave philosopher,
to be stealing away, as a fugitive, from the laws and
tribunals of his country. The Stoics, indeed, have
it for one of their great principles, that the true
wisdom of life consists in a passive power, viz., in
being able to bear suffering rightly. But they

28 CHABACTEB OF JESUS.

mean by this, tlie bearing of suffering so as not to
feel it ; a steeling of the mind against sensibility,
and a raising of the will into such power as to drive
back the pangs of life, or shake them off. But this,
in fact, contains no allowance of passive virtue at
all ; on the contrary, it is an attempt so to exalt the
active powers, as even to exclude every sort of pas-
sion, or passivity. And Stoicism corresponds, in
this respect, with the general sentiment of the
world's great characters. They are such as like to
see things in the heroic vein, to see spirit and cour-
age breasting themselves against wrong, and, where
the evil can not be escaped by resistance, dying in a
manner of defiance. Indeed it has been the im-
pression of the world generally, that patience, gen-
tleness, readiness to suffer wrong without resistance,
is but another name for weakness.

But Christ, in opposition to aU such impressions,
manages to connect these non-resisting and gentle
passivities with a character of the severest gran-
deur and majesty ; and, what is more, convinces us
that no truly great character can exist without them.
Observe him, first, in what may be called the
common trials of existence. For if you will put a
character to the severest of all tests,
te?i°n^thTcomI s^e whcthcr it can bear without falter-
Sis"tenc?^' °^ ii^g*' t^e little common ills and hin-
drances of Hf e. Many a man will go to
his martyrdom, with a spirit of firmness and heroic

CHABAGTEB OF JESUS. 29

composure, whom a little weariness or nervous ex-
haustion, some silly prejudice, or capricious opposi-
tion, would, for the moment, throw into a fit of
vexation, or ill-nature. Great occasions rally great
principles, and brace the mind to a lofty bearing, a
beai'ing that is even above itself. But trials that
make no occasion at all, leave it to show the good-
ness and beauty it has in its own disposition. And
here precisely is the superhuman glory of Christ as
a character, that he is just as perfect, exhibits
just as great a spirit, in Httle trials as in great ones.
In all the history of his life, we are not able to de-
tect the faintest indication that he shps or falters.
And this is the more remarkable, that he is prose-
cuting so great a work, with so great enthusiasm ;
counting it his meat and drink, and pouring into it
all the energies of his Hfe. For when men have
great works on hand, their very enthusiasm runs to
impatience. When thwarted or unreasonably hin-
dered, their soul strikes fire against the obstacles
they meet, they worry themselves at every hin-
di'ance, every disappointment, and break out in
stormy and fanatical violence. But Jesus, for some
reason, is just as even, just as serene, in all his petty
vexations, and hindrances, as if he had nothing on
hand to do. A kind of sacred patience invests him
everywhere. Having no element of crude will
mixed with his work, he is able, in all trial and op-
position, to hold a condition of serenity above the

so CEABACTER OF JESUS.

clouds, and let tliem sail under him, without ever
obscuring the sun. He is poor, and hungry, and
weary, and despised, insulted by his enemies, de-
serted by his friends, but never disheartened, never
fretted or ruffled.

Tou see, meantime, that he is no Stoic ; he visi-
bly feels every such ill as his delicate and sensitive
nature must, but he has some sacred and sovereign
good present, to mingle with his pains, which, as it
were, naturally and without any self -watching,
allays them. He does not seem to rule his temper,
but rather to have none ; for temper, in the sense
of passion, is a fury that follows the wiU, as the
lightnings foUow the disturbing forces of the winds
among the clouds ; and accordingly, where there is
no self-will to roU up the clouds and hurl them
through the sky, the lightnings hold their equilib-
rium, and are as though they were not.

As regards what is called pre-eminently his pas-
sion, the scene of martyrdom that closes his life, it

is easy to distinguish a character in it
no^SerT^hS- which Separates it from aU mere human
dpm. °'^''^" martyrdoms. Thus, it will be observed,

that his agony, the scene in which his
suffering is bitterest and most evident, is, on human
principles, wholly misplaced. It comes before the
time, when as yet there is no arrest, and no human
prospect that there will be any. He is at large, to
go where he pleases, and in perfect outward safety.

CEABAGTEB OF JESUS. 31

His disciples have just been gathered round him
in a scene of more than family tenderness and af-
fection. Indeed it is but a very few hours since
that he was coming into the city, at the head of a
vast procession, followed by loud acclamations, and
attended by such honors as may fitly celebrate the
inaugural of a king. Yet here, with no bad sign ap-
parent, we see him plunged into a scene of deepest
distress, and racked, in his feeling, with a more
than mortal agony. Coming out of this, assured
and comforted, he is shortly arrested, brought to
trial and crucified ; where, if there be any thing
questionable in his manner, it is in the fact that he
is even more composed than some would have him
to be, not even stooping to defend himself or vin-
dicate his innocence. And when he dies, it is not
as when the martyrs die. They die for what they
have said, and remaining silent will not recant. He
dies for what he has not said, and still is silent.

By the misplacing of his agony thus, and the
strange silence he observes when the real hour of
agony is come, we are put entirely at
fault on natural principles. But it was mi?pLce?°t£
not for him to wait, as being only a man, \^^^ a man's?^
till he is arrested, and the hand of death
is upon him, then to be nerved by the occasion to a
show of victory. He that was before Abraham,
must also be before his occasions. In a time of
safety, in a cool hour of retirement, unaccountably

32 CHABAGTER OF JESUS.

to his friends, lie falls into a dreadful contest and
struggle of mind ; coming out of it finally to go
ttirough his most horrible tragedy of crucifixion,
with the serenity of a spectator !

Why now this so great intensity of sorrow ? why

this agony ? Was there not something unmanly in

It is hu ^^' something unworthy of a really great

manly 'speak- gQul ? Take him to be only a man, and

ing, excessive. "^

there probably was ; nay, if he were a
woman, the same might be said. But this one thing
is clear, that no one of mankind, whether man or
woman, ever had the sensibility to suffer so intense-
ly ; even showing the body, for the mere struggle
and pain of the mind, exuding and dripping with
blood. Evidently there is something mysterious
here ; which mystery is vehicle to our feeling, and
rightfully may be, of something divine. What, we
begin to ask, should be the power of a superhuman
sensibility ? and how far should the human vehicle
shake under such a power ? How too should an in-
nocent and pure spirit be exercised, when about to
suffer, in his own person, the greatest wrong ever
committed ?

Besides there is a vicarious spirit in love ; all

love inserts itself vicariously into the sufferings and

woes and, in a certain sense, the sins of others.

The pathoi- taking them on itself as a burden.

ogy is divine, jj^^ ^-^^^^ £f pcrchauce Jesus should

be divine, an embodiment of God's love in the

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 33

world — how should he feel, and by what signs
of feehng manifest his sensibility, when a fallen
race are just about to do the damning sin that
crowns their guilty history ; to crucify the only par-
feet being that ever came into the world ; to crucify
even him, the messenger and representative to them
of the love of God, the deliverer who has taken their
case and cause upon him ! Whosoever duly pon-
ders these questions, will find that he is led away,
more and more, from any supposition of the mere
mortality of Jesus. What he looks upon, he will
more and more distinctly see to be the pathology
of a superhuman anguish. It stands, he will per-
ceive, in no mortal key. It will be to him the an-
guish, visibly, not of any pusillanimous feeling, but
of holy character itself; nay, of a mysteriously
transcendent, or somehow divine character.

But why did he not defend his cause and justify
his innocence in the trial ? Partly because he had
the wisdom to see that there really was His defence
and could be no trial, and that one who l'h1°'%oufd' be
undertakes to plead with a mob, only '"^^^•
mocks his own virtue, throwing words into the air
that is already filled with the clamors of prejudice.
To plead innocence in such a case, is only to make
a protestation, such as indicates fear, and is really
unworthy of a great and composed spirit. A man
would have done it, but Jesus did not. Besides,
there was a plea of innocence in the manner of Je-

34 CHABAGTER OF JESUS.

sus, and the few very significant words that he
dropped, that had an effect on the mind of Pilate,
more searching and powerful than any formal pro-
testations. And the more we study the conduct of
Jesus during the whole scene, the more shall we be
satisfied that he said enough ; the more admire the
mysterious composure, the wisdom, the self-posses-
sion, and the superhuman patience of the sufferer.
It was visibly the death-scene of a transcendent
love. He dies not as a man, but rather as some one
might, who is mysteriously more and higher. So
thought aloud the hard-faced soldier — " Truly this
was the Son of God." As if he had said — "I have
seen men die — this is not a man. They call him Son
of God — he can not be less." Can he be less to us ?

But Christ shows himself to be a superhuman
character, not in the personal traits
what is humanly ouly, exhibited in his life, but even
impossi e. uiore sublimcly in the undertakings,
works, and teachings, by which he proved his Mes-
siahship.

Consider then the reach of his undertaking ;
which, if he was only a man, shows him to have
been the most extravagant and even wildest of all
human enthusiasts. Contrary to every religious
prejudice of his nation and even of his time, con-
trary to the comparatively narrow and exclusive re-

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 35

ligion of Moses itself, and to all his training under
it, he undertakes to organize a kingdom of God, or
kingdom of heaven on earth. His pui'pose includes a
new moral creation of the race — not of the Jews only
and of men proselyted to their covenant, but of the
whole human race. He declared thus, at an early
date in his ministry, that many shall come from the
east and the west and sit down with Abraham, and
Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom of God ; that the
field is the world ; and that God so loves the world,
as to give for it his only-begotten Son. He also
declared that his gospel shall be published to all
nations, and gave his apostles their commission to
go into all the world, and publish his gospel to every
creature.

Here, then, we have the grand idea of his mission
— it is to new-create the human race and restore it
to God, in the unity of a spiritual king- He assumes to
dom. And upon this single fact, Eein- fo m o f g o^d
hard erects a complete argument for ^"^°"smen.
his extra human character ; going into a formal re-
view of all the great founders of states and most
celebrated lawgivers, the great heroes and defenders
of nations, all the wise kings and statesmen, all the
philosophers, all the prophet founders of religions,
and discovering as a fact that no such thought as
this, or nearly proximate to this, had ever before
been taken up by any living character in history ;
showing also how it had happened to every other

86 CEABACTEB OF JESUS.

great character, however liberalized by culture, to
be Hmited in some way to the interest of his own
people, or empire, and set in opposition, or antag-
onism, more or less decidedly, to the rest of the
world. But to Jesus alone, the simple Galilean
carpenter, it happens otherwise ; that, never having
seen a map of the world in his whole life, or heard
the name of half the great nations on it, he under-
takes, coming out of his shop, a scheme as much
vaster and more difficult than that of Alexander, as
it proposes more and what is more divinely benevo-
lent! This thought of a universal kingdom, ce-
mented in God — why, the immense Boman empire
of his day, constructed by so many ages of war and
conquest, is a bauble in comparison, both as regards
the extent and the cost ! And yet the rustic trades-
man of Gahlee propounds even this for his errand,
and that in a way of assurance, as simple and quiet,
as if the immense reach of his plan were, in fact, a
matter to him of no consideration.

Nor is this all ; there is included in his plan,
what, to any mere man, would be yet more remote
His plan cov- f^^om the possiblc confidence of his
ers ages of time, frailty ; it is a plan as uuivcrsal in time,
^as it is in the scope of its objects. It does not
expect to be realized in a lifetime, or even in
many centuries to come. He calls it understand-
ingiy, his grain of mustard-seed ; which, however,
is to grow, he declares, and overshadow the whole

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 37

eartli. Bat the courage of Jesus, counting a thou-
sand years to be only a single day, is equal to the
run of his work. He sees a rock of stability, where
men see only frailty and weakness. Peter himself,
the impulsive and always unreliable Peter, turns
into rock and becomes a great foundation, as he
looks upon him. "On this rock," he says, "I will
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not pre-
vail against it." His expectation, too, reaches boldly
out beyond his own death ; that, in fact, is to be
the seed of his great empire — " except a com of
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth," he
says, " alone." And if we will see with what confi-
dence and courage he adheres to his plan, when the
time of his death approaches — how far he is from
giving it up as lost, or as an exploded vision of his
youthful enthusiasm — we have only to observe his
last interview with the two sisters of Bethany, in
whose hospitahty he was so often comforted. When
the box of precious ointment is broken upon his
head, which Judas reproves as a useless expense, he
discovers a sad propriety or even prophecy, in what
the woman has done, as connected with his death,
now at hand. But it does not touch his courage,
we perceive, or the confidence of his plan, or even
cast a shade on his prospect. " Let her alone. She
hath done what she could. She is come aforehand
to anoint my body to the burying. Verily I say
unto you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached

88 CHARACTER OF JESUS.

throughout the whole world, this also that this
woman hath done shall be told for a memorial of
her," Such was the sublime confidence he had in
a plan that was to run through all future ages, and
would scarcely begin to show its fruit during his
own lifetime.

Is this great idea then, which no man ever before
conceived, the raising of the whole human race to God,
Such attempts ^ P^^^ Sustained with such evenness of
not human. couragc, and a confidence of the world's
future so far transcending any human example — is
this a human development ? Eegard the benevo-
lence of it, the universahty of it, the religious
grandeur of it, as a work readjusting the relations
of God and his government with men — the cost, the
length of time it will cover, and the far-off date of
its completion — is it in this scale that a Nazarene
carpenter, a poor uneducated villager, lays out his
plans and graduates the confidence of his undertak-
ings? There have been great enthusiasts in the
world, and they have shown their infirmity by lu-
natic airs, appropriate to their extravagance. But
it is not human, we may safely affirm, to lay out
projects transcending all human abiUty, like this of
Jesus, and which cannot be completed in many
thousands of years, doing it in all the airs of sobri-
ety, entering on the performance without parade,
and yielding life to it firmly as the inaugural of its
triumph. No human creature sits quietly down to

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 39

a perpetual j^roject, one that proposes to be execU'
ted only at the end, or final harvest of the world.
That is not human, but divine.

Passing now to what is more interior in his min-
istry, taken as a revelation of his character, we are
struck with another distinction, viz , jj^ ^^^^^ ^^^^
that he takes rank with the poor, and l^^, tl^^^'^oi
grounds all the immense expectations ^°^^^^y-
of his cause, on a beginning made with the lowly
and dejected classes of the world. He was born to
the lot of the poor. His manners, tastes, and intel-
lectual attainments, however, visibly outgrew his
condition, and that in such a degiee that, if he had
been a mere human character, he must have suf-
fered some painful distaste for the kind of society
in which he lived. The great, as we perceive,
flocked to hear him, and sometimes came even by
night to receive his instructions. He saw the high-
est circles of society and influence open to him, if
he only desired to enter them. And, if he was a
properly human character, what virtuous, but rising
young man would have had a thought of impropri-
ety, in accepting the elevation within his reach;
considering it as t-he projoer reward of his industry
and the merit of his character — not to speak of the
contempt for his humble origin, and his humble as-
sociates, which every upstart person, of only ordi-
nary virt,ue, is so commonly seen to manifest. Still

40 OHARAGTEB OF JESUS.

he adheres to the poor, and raakes them the object
of his ministry. And what is more pecuhar, he vis-
ibly has a kind of interest in their society, which is
wanting in that of the higher classes ; perceiving,
apparently, that they have a certain aptitude for
receiving right impressions, which the others have
not. They are not the wise and prudent, filled witli
the conceit of learning and station, but they are the
ingenuous babes of poverty, open to conviction,
prepared, by their humble lot, to receive thoughts
and doctrines in advance of thek age. Therefore
he loves the poor, and, without descending to their
low manners, he delights to be identified with them.
He is more assiduous in their service than other
men have been in serving the great. He goes about
on foot, teaching them, and healing their sick ; oc-
cupying his gi'eat and elevated mind, for whole
years, with details of labor and care, which the
nurse of no hospital had ever laid upon him — in-
sanities, blind eyes, fevers, fluxes, leprosies, and
sores. His patients are all below his level and un-
able to repay him, even by a breath of congenial
sympathy ; and nothing supports him but the con-
sciousness of good which attends his labors.

Meantime, consider what contempt for the poor

No great so- ^^^ hithcrto prevailed among all the

eveV saw'^'^S ^^^^ statcsmeu and philosophers of

wisdom of it. j^Q world. The poor were not society,

or any part of society. They were only the con-

CHABACTER OF JESUS. 41

veniences and drudges of society ; appendages of
luxury and state, tools of ambition, material to be
used in the wars. No man who had taken np the
idea of some great change or reform in society, no
philosopher who had conceived the notion of build-
ing up an ideal state or republic, ever thought of
beginning with the poor. Influence was seen to re-
side in the higher classes, and the only hope of
reaching the world, by any scheme of social regenera-
tion, was to begin with them, and through them oper-
ate its results. But Christ, if we call him a philoso-
pher, and, if he is only a man, we can call him by no
higher name, was the poor man's philosopher ; the
fii'st and only one that had ever appeared. Seeing
the higher circles open to him, and tempted to im-
agine that, if he could once get footing for his doc-
trine among the influential and the great, he should
thus secure his triumph more easily, he had yet no
such thought. He laid his foundations, as it were,
below aU influence, and, as men would judge, threw
himself away.

And precisely here did he display a wisdom and
character totally in advance of his age. Eighteen
centuries have passed away, and we now seem just
beginning to understand the transcendent depth of
this feature in his mission and his character. We
appear to be just waking up to it as a discovery,
that the blessing and upraising of the masses are
the fundamental interest of society — a discovery,

42 CEABACTER OF JESUS,

however, whicli is only a proof that tlie life of Jesus
has at length begun to penetrate society and pubUc
history. It is precisely this vv^hich is working so
many and gTeat changes in our times, giving liberty
and right to the enslaved many, seeking their edu-
cation, encouraging their efforts by new and better
hopes, producing an aversion to war, which has been
the fatal source of their misery and depression, and
opening, as we hope, a new era of comfort, light, and
virtue in the world. It is as if some higher and
better thought had visited our race — which higher
thought is in the life of Jesus. The schools of all
the philosophers are gone, hundreds of years ago,
and aU their visions have died away into thin air ;
but the poor man's philosopher still lives, bringing
up his poor to liberty, light, and character, and draw-
ing the nations on to a brighter and better day.

At the same time, the more than human character
of Jesus is displayed also in the fact that, identifying
himself thus with the poor, he is yet able to do it,
without eliciting any feelings of partisanship in

, , .„ , them. To one who will be at the pains

And still he

raises no parti- f q reflect a little, nothincf wiU seem more

san feeling. ' *='

difficult than this; to become the patron
of a class, a downtrodden and despised class, with-
out rallying in them a feeling of intense malignity.
And that for the reason, partly, that no patron, how-

CHAEACTER OF JESUS. 43

ever just or magnanimous, is ever quite able to sup-
press the feelings of a partisan in himself. A little
ambition, pricked on by a little abuse, a faint desire
of popularity playing over the face of his benevo-
lence, and tempting him to loosen a little of ill-
nature, as tinder to the passions of his sect — some-
thing of this kind is sure to kindle some fire of ma-
lignity in his cHents.

Besides, men love to be partisans. Even Paul
and Apollos and Peter had their sects or schools,
glorying in one against another. With ^o human
all their efforts, they could not suppress ^^^^^'''"^ ^^is.
a weakness so contemptible. But no such feeling
could ever get footing under Christ. If his dis-
ciples had forbidden one to heal in the name of Je-
sus, because he followed not with them, he gently
rebuked them, and made them feel that he had
larger views than to suffer any such folly. As the
friend of the poor and oppressed class, he set him-
self openly against their enemies, and chastised
them as oppressors, with the most terrible rebukes.
He exposed the absui'dity of their doctrine, and si-
lenced them in argument ; he launched his thunder-
bolts against their base hypocrisies ; but it does not
appear that the populace ever testified their pleasure,
even by a cheer, or gave vent to any angry emotion
under cover of his leadership. For there was some-
thing still, in the manner and air of Jesus, which
made them feel it to be inappropriate, and even

44 CEABACTEB OF JESUS.

made it impossible. It was as if some being were
here, taking their part, whom it were even an irrev-
erence to applaud, much* more to second by any
partisan clamor. They would as soon have thought
of cheering the angel in the sun, or of rallying under
him as the head of their faction.

On one occasion, when he had fed the multitudes
by a miracle, he S88w that their national superstitions
were excited, and that, regarding him as the Messiah
predicted in the Scriptures, they were about to take
him by force and make him their king ; but this was
a national feeling, not the feeling of a class. Its
root was superstition, not hatred. His triumphal
entry into Jerusalem, attended by the acclamations
of the multitude, if this be not one of the fables or
myths, which our modern criticism rejects, is yet no
demonstration of popular faction, or party animos-
ity. Robbing it of its mystical and miraculous
character, as the inaugural of the Messiah, it has
no real signification. In a few hours, after all,
these hosannas are hushed, Jesus is alone and for-
saken, and the very multitudes he might seem to
have enlisted, are crying " Crucify him ! " On the
whole, it cannot be said that Jesus was ever popu-
lar. He was followed at times, by great multitudes
of people, whose love of the marvellous worked on
their superstitions, to draw them after him. They
came also to be cured of their diseases. They knew
him as their friend But there was yet something

CHABACTEB OF JESUS. 45

in him that forbade their low and malignant feel-
ings gathering into a conflagration round him. He
presents, indeed, an instance that stands alone in
history, as God at the summit of the worlds, where
a person has identified himself with a class, without
creating a faction, and without becoming a popular
character.

Consider him next as a teacher ; his method and
manner, and the other characteristics of his excel-
lence, apart from his doctrine. That will be dis-
tinctly considered in another place.

First of all, we notice the perfect originality and
independence of his teaching. We have a great
many men who are original, in the sense
of being originators within a certain independent as
boundary of educated thought. But
the originality of Christ is uneducated. That he
draws nothing from the stores of learning, can be
seen at a glance. The impression we have in read-
ing his instructions, justifies to the letter, the lan-
guage of his contemporaries, when they say, "this
man hath never learned." There is nothing in any
of his allusions, or forms of speech that indicates
learning. Indeed, there is nothing in him that be-
longs to his age or country — no one opinion, or
taste, or prejudice. The attempts that have been
made, in a way of establishing his mere natural
manhood, to show that he borrowed his sentiments

46 CEABAGTEB OF JESUS.

from the Persians and the eastern forms of rehgion,
or that he had been intimate with the Essenes, and
borrowed from them, or that he must have been ac-
quainted with the schools and rehgions of Egyjot,
deriving his doctrine from them — all attempts of
the kind have so palpably failed, as not even to re-
quire a deliberate answer.

If he is simply a man, as we hear, then he is most
certainly a new and singular kind of man, never be-
fore heard of ; one who visibly is quite as great a
miracle in the world as if he were not a man. We
can see for ourselves, in the simple directness and
freedom of his teachings, that whatever he advances
is from himself. Shakspeare, for instance, whom we
name as being probably the most creative and origi-
nal spirit the world has ever produced, one of the
class, too, that are called self-made men, is yet tinged,
in all his works, with human learning. His glory is,
indeed, that so much of what is great in history and
historic character, lives and appears in his dramatic
creations. He is the high -priest, we sometimes hear,
of human nature. But Christ, understanding human
nature so as to address it more skilfully than he, de-
rives no help from historic examples. He is the high-
priest, rather, of the divine nature, speaking as one
that has come out from God, and has nothing to
borrow from the world. It is not to be detected,
by any sign, that the human sphere in which he
moved imparted any thing to him. His teachings

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 47

are just as full of divine nature, as Shakspe are's of
human.

Neither does he teach by the human methods. He
does not speculate about Grod, as a school professor,
drawing out conclusions by a practice Teaches by no
on words, and deeming that the way of ^""'^^ "'"'^°'^-
proof ; he does not build up a frame of evidence
from below, by some constructive process, such as
the philosophers dehght in ; but he simply speaks
of God and spiritual things as one who has come
out from Him, to tell us what he knows. And his
simple telling brings us the reality ; proves it to us
in its own subhme self -evidence ; awakens even the
consciousness of it in our own bosom ; so that formal
arguments or dialectic proofs offend us by their cold-
ness, and seem, in fact, to be only opaque substances
set between us and the light. Indeed, he makes
even the world luminous by his words — fills it with
an immediate and new sense of God, which nothing
has ever been able to expel. The incense of the
upper world is brought out, in his garments, and
flows abroad, as psrfume, on the poisoned air.

At the same time, he never reveals the infirmity
so commonly shown by human teachers, when they
veer a httle from their point, or turn
their doctrine off by shades of variation, desire to gain
to catch the assent of multitudes. He
never conforms to an expectation, even of his friends.
When they look to find a gTeat prophet in him, he

48 CHABACTEB OF JESUS,

offers nothing in the modes of the prophets. When
they ask for places of distinction in his kingdom, he
rebukes their folly, and tells them he has nothing to
give, but a share in his reproaches and his poverty.
When they look to see him take the sword as the
Great Messiah of their nation, calling the people to
his standard, he tells them he is no warrior and no
king, but only a messenger of love to lost men ; one
that has come to minister and die, but not to set up
or restore the kingdom. Every expectation that
rises up to greet him, is repulsed ; and yet, so great
is the power of his manner, that multitudes are held
fast, and can not yield their confidence. Enveloped
as he is in the darkest mystery, they trust him still ;
going after him, hanging on his words, as if detained
by some charmed influence, which they can not shake
off or resist. Never was there a teacher that so uni-
formly baffled every expectation of his followers,
never one that was followed so persistently.

Again, the singular balance of character displayed
in the teachings of Jesus, indicates an exemption

Comprehen- f^om the standing infirmity of human
human""^condi- ^^ture. Humau opinions are formed
*^°"^- under a law that seems to be universal.

First, two opposite extremes are thrown up, in two
opposite leaders or parties ; then a third party en-
ters, trying to find what truth they both are endeav-
oring to vindicate, and settle thus a view of the sub-
ject, that includes the truth and clears the one-sided

i

VHABAGTEB OF JESUS. 49

extremes, wliicli opposing words or figures, not yet
measured in their force, had produced. It results,
in this manner, that no man, even the broadest in
his apprehensions, is ever at the point of equilibrium
ias regards all subjects. Even the ripest of us are
continually falling into some extreme, and losing our
balance, afterward to be corrected by some other
who discovers our error, or that of our school.

But Christ was of no school or party, and never
went to any extreme — words could never turn him
to a one-sided view of any thing. This couid not hold
is the remarkable fact that distinguishes ^ one-sided view
him from any other known teacher of the world.
Having nothing to work out in a word-process, but
every thing clear in the simple intuition of his super-
human intelligence, he never pushes himself to any
h-nman eccentricity. It does not even appear that
he is trying, as we do, to balance opposites and clear
extravagances, but he does it, as one who can not
imagine a one-sided view of any thing. He is never
a radical, never a conservative. He will not allow
his disciples to deny him before kings and govern-
ments, he will not let them renounce their alle-
giance to Csesar. He exposes the oppressions of
the Pharisees in Moses' seat, but, encouraging no
factious resistance, says — " do as they command
you." His position as a reformer was universal ;
according to his principles almost nothing, whether
in church or state, or in social life, was right, and

50 CHABACTEB OF JESUS.

yet lie is thrown into no antagonism against tlie
world. How a man will do, when he engages only
in some one reform, acting from his own human
force ; the fuming, storming phrenzy, the holy rage
and tragic smoke of his violence, how he kindles
against opposition, grows bitter and restive because
of delay, and finally comes to maturity in a char-
acter thoroughly detestable — all this we know. But
Christ, with all the world upon his hands, and a re-
form to be carried in almost every thing, is yet as
quiet and cordial, and as little in the attitude of
bitterness or imj)atience, as if all hearts were with
him, or the work already done ; so perfect is the
balance of his feeling, so intuitively moderated is it
by a wisdom not human.

We can not stay to sketch a full outline of this
particular and sublime excellence, as it was dis-
played in his life. It will be seen as

Clear of all ^ ^ . . ,

the current su- clcarly lu a smgic comparison or con-

perstitions. i i • • j n t

trast, as m many, or m a more extended
inquiry. Take, then, for an example, what may be
observed in his open repugnance to all superstition,
combined with his equal repugnance to what is
commonly praised as a mode of liberality. He lived
in a superstitious age and among a superstitious
people. He was a person of low education, and
nothing, as we know, clings to the uneducated mind
with the tenacity of a superstition. Lord Bacon,
for example, a man certainly of the very highest in*

CHABAGTEB OF JESUS. 51

teUectnal training, was yet harmed by superstitions
too chilclisli to be named with respect, and which
clung to him despite of aU his philosophy, even to
his death. But Christ, with no learned cultare at
aU, comes foi-th out of Galilee, as perfectly clean of
au'the superstitions of his time, as if he had been a
disciple, from his childhood, of Hume or Strauss.
"You children of superstition think," he says, "that
those Galileans, whose blood Pilate mingled with
their sacrifices, and those eighteen upon whom the
tower in Siloam fell, must have been monsters, to
suffer such things. I tell you, nay ; but except ye
repent, ye shaU aU likewise perish." To another
company he says— "You imagine, in your Pharisaic
and legal morality, that the Sabbath of Moses stands
in the letter ; but I tell you that the Sabbath is
made for man, and not man for the Sabbath ; little
honor, therefore, do you pay to God, when you
teach that it is not lawful to do good on this day.
Your washings are a great point, you tithe herbs
and seeds with a sanctimonious fidelity, would it
not be as well for you. teachers of the law, ta have
some respect to the weightier matters of justice,
faith, and benevolence?" Thus, whHe Socrates,
one of the greatest and purest of human souls, a
man who has. attained to many worthy conceptions
of God, hidden from his idolatrous countrymen, is
constrained to sacrifice a cock to Esculapius, the
uneducated Jesus Hves and dies superior to every

52 CEABACTEB OF JESUS.

superstition of liis time ; believing nothing because
it is believed, respecting nothing because it is sanc-
tified by custom and by human observance. Even
in the closing scene of his life, we see his learned
and priestly associates refusing to go into the judg-
ment-hall of Caiaphas, lest they should be ceremo-
nially defiled and disqualified for the feast ; though
detained by no scruple at all as regards the instiga-
tion of a murder ! While he, on the other hand,
pitying their delusions, prays for them from his
cross — " Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do."

And yet Christ is no liberal, never takes the
ground or boasts the distinction of a liberal among
But no liber- -^^^ couutrymcu, bccausc it is not a part
^^^^^' of his infirmity, in discovering an error

here, to fly to an excess there. His ground is char-
ity, not liberality ; and the two are as wide apart in
their practical implications, as adhering to all truth,
and being loose in all. Charity holds fast the mi-
nutest atoms of truth, as being precious and divine,
offended by even so much as a thought of laxity.
Liberality loosens the terms of truth ; permitting
easily and with careless magnanimity variations
from it ; consenting, as it were, in its own sover-
eignty, to overlook or allow them ; and subsiding
thus, ere long, into a licentious indifference to all
truth, and a general defect of responsibility in re-
gard to it Charity extends allowance to men ;

CHABAGTEB OF JESUS. 53

liberality, to falsities* themselves. Charity takes the
truth to be sacred and immovable ; hberality allows
it to be marred and maimed at pleasure. How dif-
ferent the manner of Jesus in this respect from that
um-everent, feeble laxity, that lets the errors be as
good as the truths, and takes it for a sign of intel-
lectual eminence, that one can be floated comforta-
bly in the abysses of liberalism. " Judge not," he
says, in holy charity, "that ye be not judged"; and
again, in holy exactness, " whosoever shall break,
or teach to break, one of these least commandments
shall be least in the kingdom of God " — in the same
way, "he that is not with us is against us"; and
again, " he that is not against us is for us " — in the
same way also, " ye tithe mint, anise, and cummin";
and again, " these things ought ye to have done,
and not to leave the other undone" — once more,
too, in the same way, " he that is without sin, let
him cast the first stone "; and again, " go, and sin no
more." So magnificent and subhme, so plainly di-
vine, is the balance of Jesus. Nothing throws him
off the centre on which truth rests ; no prejudice, no
opposition, no attempt to right a mistake, or rectify
a delusion, or reform a practice. If this be human,
I do not know, for one, what it is to be human.

Again, it is a remarkable and even superhuman
distinction of Jesus, that, while he is ad- ^is simplicity
vancing doctrines so far transcending imperfect.
all deductions of philosophy, and opening mysteries

o4 GEABACTEB OF JESUS.

that defy all human powers of explication, he is yet
able to set his teachings in a form of simplicity, that
accommodates all classes of minds. And this, for
the reason that he speaks directly to men's convic-
tions themselves, without and apart from any learned
and curious elaboration, such as the uncultivated
can not follow. No one of the great writers of an-
tiquity had even propounded, as yet, a doctrine of
virtue which the multitude could understand. It
was taught as being ro uaXov [the fair], or ro
TtpETtov [the becoming], or something of that na-
ture, as distant from all their apprehensions, and as
destitute of motive power, as if it were a doctrine
of mineralogy. Considered as a gift to the world
at large, it was the gift of a stone, not of bread.
But Jesus tells them directly, in a manner level to
their understanding, what they want, what they
must do and be, to inherit eternal life, and their
inmost convictions answer to his words. Besides,
his doctrine is not so much a doctrine as a biogra-
phy, a personal power, a truth all motivit^^, a love
walking the earth in the proximity of a mortal fel-
lowship. He only speaks what goes forth as a feel-
ing and a power in his life, breathing into all hearts.
To be capable of his doctrine, only requires that
the hearer be a human creature, wanting to know
the truth.

Call him, then, who will, a man, a human teacher ;
what human teacher ever came down thus upon the

CEABAGTER OF JESUS. 55

soiil of the race, as a beam of light from the skies —
pure Hghtj shining directly into the
visual orb of the mind, a hght for all that puS^iighu ^^
live, a full transparent day, in which
truth bathes the spirit as an element. Others talk
and speculate about truth, and those who can may
follow ; but Jesus is the truth, and lives it, and if
he is a mere human teacher, he is the first who was
ever able to find a form for truth, at all adequate to
the world's uses. And yet the truths he teaches
outreach all the doctrines of all the philosophers of
the world. He excels them a hundred-fold more,
in the scope and grandeur of his doctrine, than he
does in his simplicity itself.

Is this human, or is it plainly divine? If you
will see what is human, or what the wisdom of hu-
manity would ordain, it is this— exactly
what the subtle and accomplished Celsus, teachll^^God
the great adversary of Christianity in its humble? *^^
original promulgation, alleges for one of
his principal arguments against it. " Vv'oollen
manufacturers," he says, " shoemakers and curriers,
the most uneducated and boorish of men are zeal-
ous advocates of this rehgion ; men who can not
open their mouths before the learned, and who only
try to gain over the women and children in fami-
lies." * And again, what is only the same objection,
under a different form, assuming that religion, like

* Neander's Memorials of Christian Life, p. lo.

56 CHARACTER OF JESUS.

a philosopliy, must be for the learned, he says, " He
must be void of understanding who can beheve
that Greeks and barbarians, in Asia, Europe, and
Lybia — all nations to the ends of the earth — can
unite in one and the same religious doctrine." * So
also, Plato says, "it is not easy to find the Father
and Creator of all existence, and when he is found
it is impossible to make him known to all." f " But
exactly this," says Justin Martyr, "is what our
Christ has effected by his power." And Tertullian,
also, glorying in the simplicity of the gospel, as al-
ready proved to be a truly divine excellence, says,
" Every Christian artisan has found God, and points
him out to thee, and in fact, shows thee every thing
which is sought for in God, although Plato main-
tains that the Creator of the world is not easily
found, and that, when he is found, he can not be
made known to all." J Here, then, we have Christ
against Celsus, and Christ against Plato. These
agree in assuming that we have a God, whom only
the great can mount high enough in argument to
know. Christ reveals a God whom the humblest
artisan can teach, and all mankind embrace, with
a faith that unifies them all.

Again, the morality of Jesus has a practical
superiority to that of all human teachers, in the

* Neander's Memorials of Christian Life, p. 33.

t Timseus.

J Neander's Memorials of Christian Life, p. 19.

IS not artis-
tic.

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 57

fact that it is not an artistic, or theoretically elabo'
rated scheme, but one that is propounded ^^^.^ ^^^^y^^
in precepts that carry their own evidence, [y
and are, in fact, great spiritual laws
ordained by God, in the throne of religion. He
did not draw long arguments to settle what the
summum bonum is, and then produce a scheme of
ethics to correspond. He did not go into the vexed
question, what is the foundation of virtue? and
hang a system upon his answer. Nothing falls into
an artistic shape, as when Plato or Socrates asked
what kind of action is beautiful in action ? reduc-
ing the principles of morality to a form as difficult
for the uncultivated, as the art of sculpture itself.
Yet Christ excels them all in the beauty of his pre-
cepts, without once appearing to consider their
beauty. He simply comes forth telling us, from
God, what to do, without deducing any thing in a
critical way ; and yet, while nothing has ever yet
been settled by the critics and theorizing philoso-
phers, that could stand fast and compel the assent
of the race, even for a year, the morality of Christ
is about as firmly seated in the convictions of men,
as the law of gravity in their bodies.

He comes into the world full of all moral beauty,
as God of physical ; and as God was not obliged
to set himself to a course of aesthetic study, when
he created the forms and landscapes of the world,
so Christ comes to his rules, by no critical practice

58 CRABACTEB OF JESUS.

in words. He opens his lips, and the creative glory
. . of his mind pours itself forth in livinfif

But intui- ^ *=*

tive and orig- precepts — Do to others as ye* would that
others should do to you — Blessed are
the peacemakers — Smitten upon one cheek, turn the
other — Eesist not evil — Forgive your enemies — Do
good to them that hate you — Lend not, hoping to
receive — Beceive the truth as little children. Omit-
ting all the deep spiritual doctrines he taught, and
taking all the human teachers on their own ground,
the ground of preceptive morality, they are seen at
once to be meager and cold ; little artistic inven-
tions, gleams of high conceptions caught by study,
having about the same relation to the Christi-an
morality that a statue has to the flexibility, the self-
active force, and flushing warmth of man, as he
goes forth in the image of his Creator, to be the
reflection of His beauty and the living instrument
of his wiU. Indeed, it is the very distinction of
Jesus that he teaches, not a verbal, but an original,
vital, and divine morality. He does not dress up a
moral picture and ask you to observe its beauty, he
only teUs you how to live ; and the most beautiful
characters the world has ever seen, have been those
who received and lived his precepts without once
conceiving their beauty.

Once more, it is a high distinction of
iou^^^or suJ- Christ's character, as seen in his teach-
^^^' ings, that he is never anxious for the

CHABACrER OF JE8TT8. 59

success of his doctrine. Fully conscious of the fact
that the world is against him, scoffed at, despised,
hated, alone too, in his cause, and without paiiisans
that have any public influence, no man has ever
been able to detect in him the least anxiety for the
final success of his doctrine. He is never jealous
of contradiction. When his friends display their
dulness and incapacity, or even when they forsake
him, he is never ruffled or disturbed. He rests on
his words, with a composure as majestic as if he
were sitting on the circle of the heavens. Now the
consciousness of truth, we are not about to deny,
has an effect of this nature in every truly great
mind. But when it has had an effect so complete ?
What human teacher, what great philosopher, has
not shown some traces of anxiety for his school,
that indicated his weakness ; some pride in his
friends, some dislike of his enemies, some traces of
wounded ambition, when disputed or denied ? But
here is a lone man, a humble, uneducated man,
ne\er schooled into the elegant fiction of an assumed
composure, or practised in the conventional digni-
ties of manners, and yet, finding all the world
against him, the world does not rest on its axle
more firmly than he upon his doctrine. Questioned
by Pilate what he means by truth, it is enough to
answer — " He that is of the truth heareth my voice."
If this be human, no other man of the race, we are
sure, has ever dignified humanity by a Hke example

60 CHABACTEB OF JESUS,

Sucli is Christ as a teacher. When has the world
seen a phenomenon like this ; a lonely uninstmcted
youth, coming iorih. amid the moral darkness of
Galilee, even more distinct from his age, and from
every thing around him, than a Plato would be ris-
ing up alone in some wild tribe in Oregon, assum-
ing thus a position at the head of the world, and
maintaining it, for eighteen centuries, by the pure
self -evidence of his life and doctrine ! Does he this
by the force of mere human talent or genius ? If
so, it is time that we begin to look to genius for
miracles ; for there is really no greater miracle.

There is yet one other and more inclusive dis-
tinction of the character of Jesus, which must not
be omitted, and which sets him off more
made^^^ sac^red widcly from all the mere men of the
y famiianty. ^.^^^^ j^g^ bccause it raiscs a contrast
which is, at once, total and experimental. Human
characters are always reduced in their eminence,
and the impressions of awe they have raised, by a
closer and more complete acquaintance. "Weakness
and blemish are discovered by familiarity ; admira-
tion lets in qualifiers ; on approach, the halo dims a
little. But it was not so with Christ. With his
disciples, in closest terms of intercourse, for three
whole years ; their brother, friend, teacher, monitor,
guest, fellow-traveler ; seen by them under all the

CHARACTER OF JEStTS. 61

conditions of public ministry, and private society,
where the ambition of show, or the pride of power,
or the ill-nature provoked by annoyance, or the
vanity drawn out by confidence, would most certain-
ly be reducing him to the criticism even of persons
most unsophisticated, he is yet visibly raising their
sense of his degree and quality ; becoming a greater
wonder and holier mystery, and gathering to his
person feelings of reverence and awe, at once more
general and more sacred. Familiarity operates a
kind of apotheosis, and the man becomes divinity,
in simply being known.

At first, he is the Son of Mary and the Nazarene
carpenter. Next, he is heard speaking with author-
ity, as contrasted even with the Scribes. Next, he
is conceived by some to be certainly Elias, or some
one of the prophets, returned in power to the world.
Peter takes him up, at that point, as being certainly
the Christ, the great mysterious Messiah ; only not
so great that he is not able to reprove him, when he
begins to talk of being killed by his enemies ; pro-
testing " be it far from thee. Lord." But the next
we see of the once bold apostle, he is beckoning to
another, at the table, to whisper the Lord and ask
who it is that is going to betray him ; unable him-
self to so much as invade the sacred ear of his
Master with the audible and open question. Then^
shortly after, when he comes out of the hall of Caia-
phas, flushed and flurried with his threefold lie, and

63 CHARACTER OF JESUS.

his base hypocrisy of cursing, what do we see but
that, simply catching the great Master's eye, his
heart breaks down, riven with insupportable an-
guish, and is utterly dissolved in childish tearSo
And so it will be discovered in all the disciples, that
Christ is more separated from them, and holds them
in deeper awe, the closer he comes to them and the
more perfectly they know him.

The same, too, is true of his enemies. At first,
they look on him only as some new fanatic, that has
come to turn the heads of the people. Next, they
want to know whence he drew his opinions, and his
singular accomplishments in the matter of public
address ; not being, as all that knew him testify, an
educated man. Next, they send out a company to
arrest him, and, when they hear him speak, they are
so deeply impressed that they dare not do it, but
go back, under a kind of invincible awe, testifying —
"never man spake hke this man." Afterward, to
break some fancied spell there may be in him, they
hire one of his own friends to betray him ; and even
then, when they come directly before him and hear
him speak, they are in such tremor of apprehen-
sion, lest he should suddenly annihilate them, that
they reel incontinently backward and are pitched
on the ground. Pilate trembles visibly before him,
and the more because of his silence and his won-
derful submission. And then, when the fatal deed
is done, what do we see but that the multitude,

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 63

awed by some dread mystery in the person of the
crucified, return home smiting on their breasts for
anguish, in the sense of what their infatuated and
guilty rage has done.

The most conspicuous matter, therefore, in the
history of Jesus, is, that what holds true, in all our
experience of men, is inverted in him.

T (. 1 Our experience

He grows sacred, peculiar, wonderful, of men reversed
divine, as acquaintance reveals him. At
first he is only a man, as the senses report him to
be ; kuowledge, observation, familiarity, raise him
into the God-man. He gTows pure and perfect,"
more than mortal in wisdom, a being enveloped in
sacred mystery, a friend to be loved in awe — dies
into awe, and a sorrow that contains the element
of worship ! And exactly this appears in the his-
tory, without any token of art, or even apparent
consciousness that it does appear — appears because
it is true. Probably no one of the evangelists ever
so much as noticed this remarkable inversion of
what holds good respecting men, in the life and
character of Jesus. Is this character human, or is
it plainly divine ?

"We have now sketched some of the principal dis-
tinctions of the superhuman character of Jesus.
AVe have seen him unfolding as a flower,

£ r\ P j> 1 ji Recapitulation.

irom the germ oi a periect youth ;

growing up to enter into great scenes and have his

64 CHARACTER OF JESUS.

part in great trials ; harmonious in all with himself
and truth, a miracle of celestial beauty. He is a
Lamb in innocence, a God in dignity ; revealing an
impenitent but faultless piety, such as no mortal
ever attempted, such as, to the highest of mortals,
is inherently impossible. He advances the most
extravagant pretensions, without any show of con-
ceit, or even seeming fault of modesty. He suffers
without affectation of composure and without re-
straint of pride ; suffers as no mortal sensibility
can, and where, to mortal view, there was no reason
for pain at all ; giving us not only an example of
gentleness and patience in all the small trials of
life, but revealing the depths even of the passive
virtues of God, in his agony and the patience of his
suffering love. He undertakes also a plan, universal
in extent, perpetual in time ; viz., to unite all na-
tions in a kingdom of righteousness under God ;
laying his foundations in the hearts of the poor, as
no great teacher had ever done before, and yet
without creating ever a faction, or stirring one par-
tisan feeling in his followers. In his teachings he
is perfectly original, distinct from his age and from
all ages ; never warped by the expectation of his
friends ; always in a balance of truth, swayed by
no excesses, running to no oppositions or extremes;
clear of all superstition, and equally clear of all lib-
eralism ; presenting the highest doctrines in the
lowest and simplest forms ; estabhshing a pure,

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 65

universal morality, never before established ; and^
with all his intense devotion to the truth, never
anxious, perceptibly, for the success of his doctrine.
Finally, to sum up all in one, he grows more great
and wise, and sacred, the more he is known — needs^
in fact, to be known, to have his perfection seen»
And this, we say, is Jesus, the Christ ; manifestly
not human, not of our world— some being who has
burst into it, and is not of it. Call him for the
present, that " Fl oly Thing," and say, " by this v/e
believe that thou camest from God."

Not to say that we are dissatisfied with this
sketch, would be almost an u-reverence of itself, to
the subject of it. Who can satisfy himself with
any thing that he can say of Jesus Christ ? We have
seen, how many pictures of the sacred person of
Jesus, by the first masters ; but not one, among
them all, that did not rebuke the weakness which
could dare attempt an impossible subject. So of
the character of Jesus. It is necessary, for the holy
interest of truth, that we should explore it, as we
are best able ; but what are human thoughts and
human conceptions, on a subject that dwarfs all
thought and immediately outgrows whatever is con-
ceived. And yet, for the reason that we have failed,
we seem also to have succeeded. For the more im-
possible it is found to be, to grasp the character
and set it forth, the more clearly it is seen to be
above our range — a miracle and a mystery.

66 CHABAGTER OF JESUS.

Two questions now remain, which our argument
requires to be answered. And the first is this — did
any such character, as this we have
being actually been traciug, actually exist? Admit-
ting that the character, whether it be
fact or fiction, is such as we have seen it to be, two
suppositions are open ; either that such a character
actually lived, and was possible to be described, be-
cause it furnished the matter of the picture, itself ;
or else, that Jesus, being a merely human character
as he lived, was adorned to set off in this manner,
by the exaggerations of fancy, and fable, and wild
tradition afterward. In the former alternative, we
have the insuperable difficulty of believing, that any
so perfect and glorious character was ever attained
to by a mortal. If Christ was a merely natural
man, then was he under all the conditions privative,
as regards the security of his virtue, that we have
discovered in man. He was a new- created being,
as such to be perfected in a character of steadfast
holiness, only by the experiment of evil and re-
demption from it. We can believe any miracle,
therefore, more easily than that Christ was a man,
and yet a perfect character, such as here is given.

In the latter alternative, we have four different
writers, widely distinguished in their style and
mental habit— inferior persons, all, as regards their
accomplishments, and none of them remarkable for
gifts of genius — contributing their parts, and oo-

CHAR AC TEE OF JESUS. 67

alescing thus in the representation of a character
perfectly harmonious with itself, and, withal, a
character whose ideal no poet had been able to cre-
ate, no philosopher, by the profoundest effort of
thought, to conceive and set forth to the world.
What is more, these four writers are, by the suppo-
sition, children all of credulity, retailing the absurd
gossip and the fabulous stories of an age of marvels,
and yet, by some accident, they are found to have
conceived and sketched the only perfect character
known to mankind. To beheve this, requires a
more credulous age than these writers ever saw.
We fall back, then, upon our conclusion, and there
we rest. Such was the real historic character of
Jesus. Thus he lived ; the character is possible to
be conceived, because it was actuahzed in a Hving
example. The only solution is that which is given
by Jesus himself, when he says — " I came forth f i om
the Father, and am come into the world."

The second question is this : whether this char'
acter is to be conceived as an actually existing sin-
less character in the world ? That it is -^^g ^le a sin,
I maintain, because the character can if^ss character ?
no otherwise be accounted for in its known excel-
lences. How was it that a simple-minded peasant
of Gralilee, was able to put himself in advance, in this
manner, of all human teaching and excellence ; un-
folding a character so peculiar in its combinations,
and so plainly impossible to any mere man of the

68 CHABACTER OF JESUS.

race? Because his soul was filled with internal
beauty and purity, having no spot, or stain, distort-
ed by no obliquity of view or feeling, lapsing,
therefore, into no eccentricity or deformity. We
can make out no account of him so easy to believe,
as that he was sinless ; indeed, we can make no
other account of him at all. He reahzed what are,
humanly speaking, impossibilities ; for his soul was
warped and weakened by no human infirmities, do-
ing all in a way of ease and naturalness, just be-
cause it is easy for clear waters to flow from a pure
spring. To believe that Jesus got up these high
conceptions artistically^ and then acted them, in
spite of the conscious disturbance of his internal
harmony, and the conscious clouding of his internal
purity by sin, would involve a degree of credulity
and a want of perception, as regards the laws of the
soul and their necessary action under sin, so la-
mentable as to be a proper subject of pity. We
could sooner believe all the fables of the Talmud.

Besides, if Jesus was a sinner, he was conscious
of sin as all sinners are, and, therefore, was a hypo-
crite in the whole fabric of his character ; realizing
so much of divine beauty in it, maintaining the
show of such unfaltering harmony and celestial
grace, and doing all this with a mind confused and
fouled by the affectations acted for true virtues !
Such an example of successful hypocrisy would be
itself the greatest miracle ever heard of in the world.

CEABAGTER OF JE8U8. 69

Furthermore, if Jesus was a sinner, then he was,
of course, a fallen being ; down under the bondage,
distorted by the perversity of sin and its desolating
effects, as men are. The root, therefore, of all his
beauty is guilt. Evil has broken loose in him, he
is held fast under evil. Bad thoughts are streaming
through his soul in bad successions ; his tempers
have lost their tune ; his affections have been
touched by leprosy ; remorse scowls upon his
heart ; his views have lost their balance and con-
tracted obliquity ; in a word, he is fallen. Is it
then such a being, one who has been touched, in
this manner, by the demon spell of evil — is it he
that is unfolding such a character ?

"What, then, do our critics in the school of natu-
ralism say of this character of Christ? Of course
they are obliged to say many handsome j^^. packer's
and almost saintly things of it. Mr. estimate of him.
Parker says of him, that " He unites in himself the
sublimest precepts and divinest practices, thus more
than realizing the dream of prophets and sages ;
rises free from all prejudice of his age, nation, or
sect ; gives free range to the Spirit of God, in his
breast ; sets aside the law, sacred and true — hon-
ored as it was, its forms, its sacrifice, its temple, its
priests ; puts away the doctors of the law, subtle,
irrefragable, and pours out a doctrine beautiful as
the light, sablime as Heaven, and true as God." *

* Discourses of Religion, p. 294.

70 CHARAGTEB OF JESUS.

Again — as if to cliallenge for his doctrine, tiie dis-
tinction of a really supernatural excellence — " Try
him as we try other teachers. They deliver their
word, find a few waiting for the consolation who
accept the new tidings, foUow the new method, and
soon go beyond their teacher, though less mighty
minds than he. Though humble men, we see what
Socrates and Luther never saw. But eighteen cen-
turies have passed since the Sun of humanity rose
so high in Jesus ; what man, what sect has mastered
his thought, comprehended his method, and so fully
applied it to life." *

Mr. Hennel, who writes in a colder mood, but has,
on the whole, produced the ablest of all the argu-
Mr Hennei's i^ents yet offcrcd on this side, speaks
estimate. morc cautiously. He says, " Whilst no

human character, in the history of the world, can be
brought to mind, which, in proportion as it could
be closely examined, did not present some defects,
disqualifying it for being the emblem of moral per-
fection, we can rest, with least check or sense of in-
congruity, on the imperfectly known character of
Jesus of Nazareth." f

But the intimation here is, that the character is

not perfect ; it is only one in which the sense of

Faults perfection suffers " least check." And

charged. -^hcre is the fault charged ? Why, it is

discovered that Jesus cursed a fig-tree, in which he

* Discourses of Religion, p. 303. t Inquiry, p. 451.

CHARACTEB OF JUSUS, 71

is seen to be both angry and unreasonable. He de-
nounced the Pharisees in terms of bitter animosity.
He also drove the money changers out of the tem-
ple with a scourge of rods, in which he is even be-
trayed into an act of physical violence. These and
such like specks of fault are discovered, as they
think, in the Hfe of Jesus. So graceless in our con-
ceit, have we of this age grown, that we can think
it a point of scholarly dignity and reason, to spot
the only perfect beauty that has ever graced our
world, with such discovered blemishes as these ! As
if sin could ever need to be made out against a real
sinner, in this small way of sj^ecial pleading ; or as
if it were ever the way of sin to err in single parti-
cles or homoeopathic quantities of wrong ! A more
just sensibility would denounce this malignant style
of criticism, as a heartless and really low-minded
pleasure in letting down the honors of goodness.

In justice to Mr. Parker, it must be admitted that
he does not actually charge these points of history
as faults, or blemishes in the character
of Jesus. And jet, in justice also, it posed and imi-
must be added that he does compose a
section under the heading — '' The Negative Side, or
the Limitations of Jesus," — where these, with other
like matters, are thrown in by insinuation, as possi-
ble charges sometimes advanced by others. For
himself, he alleges nothing positive, but that Jesus
was under the popular delusion of his time, in re-

72 CHABACTER OF JESUS.

spect to devils or demoniacal possessions, and that
lie was mistaken in some of bis references to the
Old Testament. "What, now, is to be thought of
.such material, brought forward under such a head-
ing, to flaw such a character ! Is it sure that Christ
was mistaken in his belief of the foul sioii'its ? Is it
certain that a sufficient mode of interpretation will
not clear his references of mistake ? And so, when
it is suggested, at second hand, that his invective is
too fierce against the Pharisees, is there no escape,
but to acknowledge that, " considering his youth, it
was a venial error ? " Or, if there be no charge but
this, " at all affecting the moral and religious char-
acter of Jesus," should not a just reverence to one
whose life is so nearly faultless, constrain us to look
for some more favorable construction, that takes the
solitary blemish away ? Is it true that invective is
a necessary token of ill-nature ? Are there no occa-
sions where even holiness will be most forward in
it ? And when a single man stands out alone, fac-
ing a whole living order and caste, that rule the
time — oppressors of the poor, hypocrites and pre-
tenders in rehgion, corrupters of all truth and faith,
under the names of learning and religion — is the
malediction, the woe, that he hurls against them, to
be taken as a fault of violence and unregulated pas-
sion ; or considering what amount of force and
public influence he dares to confront and set in
deadly enmity against his person, is he rather to be

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 73

accepted as God's cliampion, in tlie honors of a
great and genuinely heroic spuit ?

Considering how fond the world is of invective^
how ready to admire the rhetoric of sharp words,
how many speakers study to excel in

.T n I a ' JL- X. Ki^ invective

the line art or excoriation, now many against the Pha-
refonners are applauded in vehement
attacks on character, and win a great repute of
fearlessness, just because of their severity, when, in
fact, there is nothing to fear — when possibly the
subject is a dead man, not yet buried — it is really a
most striking tribute to the more than human char-
acter of Jesus, that we are found to be so appre-
hensive respecting him in particular, lest his plain,
unstudied, unrhetorical severities on this or that
occasion, may imply some possible defect, or " venial
error," in him. Why this special sensibility to fault
in him ? save that, by his beautiful and perfect hfe,
he has raised our conceptions so high as to make,
what we might applaud in a man, a possible blemish
in his divine excellence ?

The glorious old reformer and blind poet of Puri-
tanism— vindicator of a free commonwealth and a
free, unprelatical reHgion — holds, in our Milton's right
view, a far worthier and manlier con- of invective.
ception of Christ's dealing with the Pharisees, and
of what is due to all the usui'pations of titled con-
ceit and oppression in the world. With truly re-
freshing vehemence, he writes — "For in times of

74 CHARACTER OF JESUS,

opposition, wlien against new heresies arising, or
old corruptions to be reformed, tliis cool, impassion-
ate mildness of positive wisdom, is not enough, to
damp and astonish the proud resistance of carnal
and false doctors, then (that I may have leave to
soar awhile, as the poets use,) Zeal, whose substance
is ethereal, arming in complete diamond, ascends
his fiery chariot, drawn by two blazing meteors fig-
ured lite beasts, but of a higher breed than any the
zodiac yields, resembling those four which Ezekiel
and St. John saw — ^the one visage d like a lioi-\ to
express power, high authority, and indignation ; the
other of man, to cast derision and scorn upon per-
verse and fraudulent seducers — with them the in-
vincible warrior, Zeal, shaking loosely the slack
reins, drives over the heads of scarlet prelates and
such as are insolent to maintain traditions, bruising
their stiff necks under his flaming wheels. Thus
did the true prophets of old combat with the false ;
thus Christ, himself the fountain of meekness, found
acrimony enough to be still galling and vexing the
prelatical Pharisees. But ye will say, these had im-
mediate warrant from God to be thus bitter ; and I
say, so much the plainer is it found that there may
be a sanctified bitterness against the enemies of the
truth." ^

Probably Christ himself had no other account to
give of his conduct, on the occasion referred to ;

♦ Apology for Smectymnus, Sect. I.

CHARACTER OF JESUS. 75

and no other was needed, than that he felt a zeal
Avithin him (answering to Milton's picture), which
could not, must not be repressed. His disciples felt
his terrible severity, and were going to be shocked
by it, but they remembered the Scripture — "The
zeal of thy house hath eaten me up." After all, it
was, when rightly viewed, the necessary outburst,
only, of that indignant fire, which is kindled in the
sweet bosom of innocence, by the insolence of hy-
pocrisy and oppression.

I conclude, then, (1.) that Christ actually lived,
and bore the real character ascribed to him in the
history. And (2.) that he was a sinless character.
How far off is he now from any possible classifica-
tion in the genus humanity 1

Here, then, is a being who has broken into the
world, and is not of it ; one who has come out from
God, and is even an expression to us of ^j^^ fact of his
the complete beauty of God— such as tirades implied.
he should be, if he actually was, what he is affirmed
to be, the Eternal Word of the Father incarnate.
Did he work mii'acles ? This now is the question
that waits for our decision — did he work miracles ?
By the supposition, he is superhuman. By the
supposition, too, he is in the world as a miracle.
Agreeing that the laws of nature will not be sus-
pended, any more than they are by our own super-
natural action, will they yet be so subordinated to

76 CHABACTEB OF JESUS.

his power, as to permit the performance of signs
and wonders, in whicli we may recognize a super-
human force ? Since he is shown to be a superhu-
man being, manifestly nature will have a relation to
him, under and by her own laws, such as accords
with his superhuman quality, and it will be very
singular if he does not do superhuman things ; nay,
it is even philosophically incredible that he should
not, and that without any breach upon the integrity
of nature. Thus an organ is a certain instrument,
curiously framed or adjusted in its parts, and pre-
pared to yield itself to any force which touches the
keys. An animal runs back and forth across the
key-board, and produces a jarring, disagreeable
jumble of sounds. Thereupon he begins to reason,
and convinces himself that it is in the nature of the
instrument to make such sounds, and no other. But
a skilful player comes to the instrument, as a higher
presence, endowed with a super-animal sense and
skill. He strikes the keys, and all-melodious and
heavenly sounds roll out upon the enchanted air.
Will the animal now go on to reason that this is
impossible, incredible, because it violates the nature
of the instrument, and is contrary to his own expe-
rience ? Perhaps he may, and men may sometimes
not be wiser than he. But the player himself, and
all that can think it possible for him to do what the
animal can not, will have no doubt that the music is
made by the same laws that made the jargon. Just

I

CHARAGTER OF JESUS. 11

so Christ, to whose wiU or touch the mundane sys-
tem is pHant as to ours, may be able to execute re-
sults thi'ough its very laws subordinated to him,
which to us are impossible. Nay, it would be itself
a contradiction of aU order and fit relation if he
could not. To suppose that a being out of human-
ity, wiU be shut up within aU the limitations of hu-
manity, is incredible, and contrary to reason. The
very laws of nature themselves, having him present
to them, as a new agent and higher first term, would
require the development of new consequences and
incidents, in the nature of wonders. Being a mira-
cle himself, it would be the greatest of all^'miracles
if he did not work miraclea

Let it be fuii:her noted, that Christ is here on an
errand high enough to justify his appearing, and
also of a nature to exclude any suspicion

4-^^^i. x. • • I .-, ' His errand is

tliat ne is going to overthrow the order "'^^"^ '^''^^^^
of aod's works. He declares that he has come out
from God, to be a destroyer of sin, a regenerator of
aU things, a new moral creator of the world ; thus
to do a work that is, at once, the hope of aU order
and the greatest of all miracles. He teUs us, in-
deed, that he is come to set up the kingdom of God,
and fulfil the highest ends of the divine goodness in
the creation of the world itself ; and the dignitv of
his work, cei^ified by the dignity also of his character
sets all thmgs in proportion, and commends him to
our confidence in all the wonders he perfoma

•3S OEABAGTEB OF JESUS.

Nor shall we apprehend in Lis miracles any dis-
ruption of law ; for we shall seethat he is executing
No disruption ^^^^ ^^^® sjstem, above nature and
of law or system, j^q^q comprehensiye, which is itself the
basis of all stability, and contains the real import of
aU things. Dwelling from eternity in this higher
system himself, and having it centred in his person,
wheeling and subordinating thus ail physical instru-
ments, as doubtless he may, to serve those better
ends in which aU order lies, it wiU not be in us,
when he comes forth from the Father, on the
Father's errand, to forbid that he shall work in the
prerogatives of the Father. Visibly not one of us,
but a visitant who has come out from a realm of
spiritual majesty, back of the sensuous orb on which
our moth-eyes dweH as in congenial dimness and
obscurity of light, what shall we think when we see
diseases fly before him, and blindness letting faU
the scales of obscured vision, and death retreating
from its prey, but that the seeming disruption of
our retributive state under sin, is made to let in
mercy and order from above? For, if man has
buried himself in sense, and married all sense to
sin, which sin is itself the soul of ail disorder, can
it be to us a frightful thing that he lays his hand
upon the perverted casualties, and says, " thou art
made whole ? " If the bad empire, the bitter un-
nature of our sin, is somewhere touched by his
liealing power, must we apprehend some fatal shock

CEABAGTER OF JESUS. 79

of disorder? If, by his miraculous force, some
crevice is made in ttie senses, to let in the light of
heaven's peace and order, must we tremble lest the
scientific laws are shaken, and the scientific causes
violated ? Better is it to say — " This beginning of
miracles did Jesus make in Galilee, and manifested
forth his glory, and we beheve in him." Glory
breaks in through his incarnate person, to chase
away the darkness. In him, peace and order de-
scend to rebuild tiie realm below, they have main-
tained above. Sin, the damned miracle and misery
of the groaning creation, yields to the stronger mir-
acle of Jesus and his works, and the great good
minds of this and the upper worlds behold integrity
and rest returning, and the peace of universal em-
pire secure. Out of the disorder that was, rises
order ; out of chaos, beauty. Amen ! AUeluia ! for
the Lord God omnipotent reigneth !

At the same time, it must not be overlooked, that
the account which is made of the Christian mira-
cles, by the critics who deny them, is
itself impossible. It is that they are hypofheTil* im-
myths, or legendary tales, that grew ^°^^^
up out of the story-teUing and marvelling habit of
the disciples of Christ, within the first thirty years
after their Master's death. They were developed,
in other words, in the lifetime of the eye-witnesses
of Christ's ministry, and recorded by eye-witnesses
themselves. We are also requii'ed to believe that

80 CEABAOTER OF JESUS.

four common men are able to preserve such a char-
acter as that of Christ, while loading down the his-
tory thus, with so many mythical wonders that are
the garb of their very grotesque and childish cre-
dulity ! By what accident, then, we are compelled
to ask, was an age of myths and fables able to de-
velop and set forth the only conception of a perfect
character ever known in our world ? Were these
four mythological dreamers, believing their own
dreams and all others beside, the men to produce
the perfect character of Jesus, and a system of
teachings that transcend all other teachings ever
given to the race ? If there be a greater miracle,
or a tax on human credulity more severe, we know
not where it is. Nothing is so difficult, all human
literature testifies, as to draw a character, and keep
it in its living proportions. How much more to
draw a perfect character, and not discolor it fatally
by marks from the imperfection of the biographer.
How is it, then, that four humble men, in an age of
marvels and Rabbinical exaggerations, have done
it — done what none, not even the v/isest and greatest
of mankind, have ever been able to do ?

So far, even Mr. Parker concedes the right of my
argument. " Measure," he says, " the religious doc-
trine of Jesus by that of the time and
Mr. Parker con- place hc Hvcd iu, or that of any time
and any place. Yes, by the doctrine of
eternal truth. G^nsider what a work his words and

CHABACTEB OF JESUS. 81

deeds have wrought in the world. Kemember that
the greatest minds have seen no farther, and added
nothing to the doctrine of rehgion ; that the richest
hearts have felt no deeper, and added nothing to the
sentiment of religion ; have set no loftier aim, no
truer method than his, of perfect love to God and
man. Measure him by the shadow he has cast into
the world — no, by the light he has shed upon it.
Shall we be told such a man never lived ? the whole
story is a lie ? Suppose that Plato and Newton never
lived. But who did their wonders, and who thought
their thought ? It takes a Newton to forge a New-
ton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus?
None but a Jesus." *

Exactly so. And yet, in the middle of the very
paragraph from which these words are gleaned, Mr.
Parker says, "We can learn few facts about Jesus";
also, that in certain things — to wit, his miracles, we
suppose — " Hercules was his equal, and Yishnu his
superior." Few facts about Jesus ! all the miracles
recited of him, as destitute of credibility as the sto-
ries of Hercules and Yishnu ! And yet these evan-
gelists, retailing so many absurd fictions and so much
childish gossip, have been able to give us a doctrine
upon which the world has never advanced, a chi^rac-
ter so deep that the richest hearts have felt nothing
deeper, and added nothing to the sentiment of it.
They have done, that is, the difficult thing, and

* Life of Jesus, p. 363.

82 CHARACTER OF JESUS.

broken down nnder tlie easy ! preserved, in the life
and discourses of Jesus, what exceeds all human
philosophy, all mortal beauty, and yet have not been
able to recite the simplest facts ! Is it so that any
intelligent critic will reason ?

Neither let it be objected that, since the miracles
have in themselves no moral quahty, there is no ra-
tional, or valuable, or even proper place

The miracles „ ,, . ' , -". ^ "^ ^"^

are in place in a ±or them lu a gospel, cousidered as a
^°^^^ ■ new-creating grace for the world. For

it is a thing of no secondary importance for a sin-
ner, down under sin, and held fast in its bitter terms
of bondage, to see that God has entered into his
case with a force that is adequate. These mighty
works of Jesus, which have been done and duly
certified, are fit expressions to us of the fact that he
can do for us all that we want. Doubtless it is a
great and difficult thing to regenerate a fallen na-
ture ; no person, reaUy awake to his miserable and
dreadful bondage, ever thought otherwise. But he
that touched the blind eyes and commanded the
leprosy away, he that trod the sea, and raised the
dead, and burst the bars of death himself, can tame
the passions, sweeten the bitter affections, regener-
ate the inbred diseases, and roll back all the storms
of the mind. Assured in this manner by his mira-
cles, they become arguments of trust, a storehouse
of powerful images, that invigorate courage and
stimulate hope. Broken as we are by our sorrow,

GHABAGTEB OF JESUS. 8S

cast down as we are by our guiltiness, ashamed, and
■weak, and ready to despair, we can yet venture a
hope that our great soul-miracle may be done ; that,
if we can but touch the hem of Christ's garment, a
viiiue will go out of him to heal us. In all dark
days and darker struggles of the mind, in all out-
ward disasters, and amid all storms upon the sea of
life, we can yet descry him treading the billows, and
hear him saying, "It is I, be not afraid." And lest
we should believe the miracles faintly, for there is a
busy infidel lurking alwaj^s in our hearts to cheat ns
of our faith, when he cannot reason it away, the
character of Jesus is ever shining with and through
them, in clear self-evidence, leaving them never to
stand as raw wonders only of might, but covering
them with glory, as tokens of a heavenly love, and
acts that only suit the proportions of his personal
greatness and majesty.

There are many in our day, as we know, whOj
without making any speculative point of the ob-
jection we are discussing, have so far Miracles re-
yielded to the current misbelief as to itJ^s^^thr Gr/nd
profess, with a certain air of self- com- ^^i^^cie.
pliment, that they are quite content to accept the
spirit of Jesus ; and let the miracles go for what
they are worth. Little figure will they make as
Christians in that kind of gospel. They will not,
in fact, receive the spirit of Jesus ; for that, un-
abridged, is itself the Grand Miracle of Christianity,

84 CEABACTEE OF JE8TT8.

about wHcli all tlie others play as scintillations only
of the central fire. Still less will they believe that
Jesus can do any thing in them which their sin re-
quires. They will only compliment his beauty, imi-
tate or ape his waj^s in a feeble lifting of themselves,
but that he can roll back the currents of nature,
loosened by the disorders of sin, and raise them to
a new birth in holiness, they will not believe. No
such watery gospel of imitation, separated from
grace, will have any living power in their life, or
set them in any bond of unity with God. Nothing
but to say — " Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of
G-od by miracles and signs which God did by him,"
can draw the soul to faith, and open it to the power
of a supernatural and new-creative mercy.

We come back, then, to the self- evidencing su-
perhuman character of Jesus, and there we rest.

He is the sun that holds all the minor
the all-sufficient orbs of revclatiou to their places, and

pours a sovereign, self-evidencing light
into all religious knowledge. We have been debat-
ing much, and ranging over a wide field, in chase
of the many phantoms of doubt and false argument,
still we have not far to go for light, if only we could
cease debating and sit down to see. It is no in-
genious fetches of argument that we want ; no ex-
ternal testimony, gathered here and there from the
records of past ages, suffices to end our doubts ;
but it is the new sense opened in us by Jesus him-

CHARAGTEIt OF JESUS. 85

self — a sense deeper tlian words and more immedi-
ate than inference — of the miraculous grandeur of
his life ; a glorious agreement felt between his
works and his person, such that his miracles them-
selves are proved to us in our feeling, believed in
by that inward testimony. On this inward testi-
mony we are willing to stake every thing, even the
hfe that now is, and that which is to come. If the
miracles, if revelation itself, can not stand upon the
superhuman character of Jesus, then let it fall. If
that character does not contain all truth and cen-
tralize all truth in itself, then let there be no truth.
If there is any thing worthy of belief not found in
this, we may well consent to live and die without
it. Before this sovereign light, streaming out from
God, the deep questions, and dark surmises, and
doubts unresolved, which make a night so gloomy
and terrible about us, hurry away to their native
abyss. God, who commanded the light to shine out
of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. This it is that has conquered the
assaults of doubt and false learning in all past ages,
and will in all ages to come. No argument against
the sun will drive it from the sky. No mole-eyed
skepticism, dazzled by its brightness, can turn away
the shining it refuses to look upon. And they who
long after God, wiU be ever turning their eyes thith-
erward, and either with reason or without reason, or,

86 GHABACTEE OF JESUS.

if need be, against manifold impediments of reason,
will see and believe.

But before we drop a theme like tliis, let us note
more distinctly the immense significance to our
religious feeling of this glorious advent of Jesus,
and have our congratulations in it. This one per-
fect character has come into our world, and lived in
it ; filling all the molds of action, all the terms of
duty and love, with his own divine manners, works
and charities. All the conditions of our life are
raised thus, by the meaning he has shown to be in
them, and the grace he has put upon them. The
world itself is changed, and is no more the same
that it was ; it has never been the same since Jesus
left it. The air is charged with heavenly odors, and
a kind of celestial consciousness, a sense of other
worlds, is wafted on us in its breath. Let the dark
ages come, let society roll backward and churches
perish in whole regions of the earth, let infidehty
deny, and, what is worse, let spurious piety dishonor
the truth ; still there is a something here that was
not, and a something that has immortality in it.
Still our confidence remains unshaken, that Christ
and his all-quickening life are in the world, as fixed
elements, and will be to the end of time ; for Chris-
tianity is not so much the advent of a better doc-
trine, as of a perfect character ; and how can a per-

CHAUACTER OF JESUS. 87

feet character, once entered into life and history, be
separated and finally expelled ? It were easier . to
untwist all the beams of light in the sky, separating
and expunging one of the colors, than to get the
character of Jesus, which is the real gospel, out of
the world. Look ye hither, meantime, all ye blinded
and fallen of mankind, a better nature is among
you, a pure heart, out of some pure world, is come
into your prison and walks it with you. Do you
require of us to show who he is, and definitely to
expound his person ? We may not be able. Enough
to know that he is not of us — some strange being
out of nature and above it, whose name is Wonder-
ful. Enough that sin has never touched his hal-
lowed nature, and that he is a friend. In him
dawns a hope — purity has not come into the world,
except to purify. Behold the Lamb of God, that
taketh away the sins of the world ! Light breaks
in, peace settles on the air, lo ! the prison walls are
giving way — rise, let us go.

THE END,

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