language of the New Testament. The early Christians could not but be influenced by the language of their time, and understand it in accordance with the ideas of the time. They may, indeed, to some extent, have deliberately adopted current phrases, while they infused into them a higher and more spiritual sense, and placed Christ in opposition to the emperors. He was their Lord and Saviour, come to be the Saviour of the world, but by means far other than those of imperial power. His throne had been a cross, his crown a crown of thorns, and his imperial sway was one, not of grasping, but of self-emptying. To him alone could the religious language which was bestowed on the emperors be justly applied; for he it was who truly enshrined the Spirit of the holy and righteous and loving God, and the Divine ideal of human life. These two ideals still confront one another in the world; and the Christ, wearied with cries. of Lord, Lord, waits for the heart-felt homage of a kingdom which is nominally his.

From all that has been said it is apparent why the thought of God and the thought of Christ are inseparable in the Christian mind. Not only does he illustrate the ascent of the human soul in adoration, and the perfect obedience of a surrendered will, but he shows the descent of heavenly love. into the conditions of mortality, in order to seek and save the lost. With the great mass of Christians it is the latter aspect of his life that has wrought with the most powerful fascination. He is loved less as the heroic example than as the one who has brought near the Divine sympathy and compassion; and God is thought of, not only as the infinite and incomprehensible Creator, but as the Father whose Spirit was manifested in Christ, and is ever close to the heart of man.

Certain questions still remain, which we must not pass over. It is commonly said that Christ was sinless. This statement may be understood in two very different ways. If it be understood in the absolute sense which is usual in modern

discussions, and it be asserted that no shadow of moral evil ever touched his inmost thought or feeling during all those thirty years of which we know nothing, it is obvious that this lies beyond our natural means of knowledge, and we may be content without either affirming or denying it. It is a purely speculative question, which hardly entered the range of the earliest Christian thought, and has no practical bearing. Passages in the New Testament which refer to his sinlessness are not of a kind to support a dogma on the subject; for they are the natural assertions of his righteousness, in opposition to those who traduced him, and might be used of any true man in similar circumstances. To take a casual example: Garrison was accused of being an infidel, and a violator of all law, both human and divine. In defending him against such charges Francis Jackson wrote, in a private letter, 'His character is not only spotless, but has never been impeached." So, when Christ asks, 'Which of you convicteth me of sin? '2 he simply asserts the purity and uprightness of his motives in his public work; and when the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says that Christ was ' tempted in all things like us, without sin,'3 he is not laying down a metaphysical dogma, but maintaining Christ's superiority to the temptations which are common to mankind. It is, indeed, sometimes said that, as he was man, he must have had experience of sin; but if, as we saw reason to believe, sin is a perversion, and not of the essence of humanity, this does not follow, and, for my own part, I should have no difficulty in believing that one transcendent soul was lifted clear above the common infirmity, and lived from the first in undisturbed communion with God. We need not, however, perplex ourselves with difficulties we cannot solve. If we understand the doctrine in a large and practical sense, we surely need not hesitate to accept it. There is in Christ's

1 A Short Biography of William Lloyd Garrison, by V. Tchertkoff and F. Holah, pp. 89 sq.

history no trace of any experience of conversion. Teaching a religion which more than any other has awakened the sense of sin, he seems quite unconscious of it himself. He lives serenely in a Divine atmosphere, with no confessions and no repentances. One fact indeed seems opposed to this statement. John preached in the wilderness 'the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins,'1 and to this baptism Jesus came. This event has, from early times, perplexed theologians, and they have imagined reasons for Christ's action, of which there is not a trace in the Gospels. It is certainly not necessary to suppose that he was conscious of any guilty course of life which he was called upon to renounce. But unless he had some consciousness of weakness and dependence, some of those feelings which belong to us only as imperfect and liable to sin, as beings who must be humble before the infinite holiness of God, it is difficult to understand his submission to an ordinance so expressly implicated with an acknowledgment of moral infirmity. At the same time the recorded objection of John to administer the rite may describe quite truly the impression of a pure and lofty character which Jesus made upon others; and his desire for baptism may have sprung only from his own delicate. sense of inward want.

This view, that, apart from any sense of guilt, he felt the need of inward renewal and uplifting, is confirmed by his habit of solitary prayer; for prayer is an aspiration after fuller and deeper life, a seeking for refuge from our own frailties in the Divine strength. In connexion with prayer we must ask, is it certain, or even probable, that he himself never used the prayer which he taught to his disciples?

One other incident is appealed to as showing traces of the sense of sin. He disclaimed the title 'good'—'Why callest thou me good? None is good save one, even God.'2 Here

1 Mark i. 4; Luke iii. 3.

2 Mark x. 18; Luke xviii. 19. The reading in Matt. xix. 17, according to the best authorities, is different.

we have the unmistakable language of humility and dependence, but not necessarily of the sense of sin. The questioner is referred to the highest, or rather to the only source of goodness. Goodness is not of human creation, and no man can claim it as his own; and therefore the easy and thoughtless address of the rich man repelled Jesus, who felt always that his high endowments were given to him by God, and were therefore no fitting object for empty compliments. We have only to add that the charges which were brought against him by his enemies accuse him of nothing which is wrong in our eyes, and simply betray the mistaken views of bigotry or malice; and on his followers he left an impression of holiness which led them to describe him as the holy and just one." This impression has remained, and most even of those who have subjected his history to the severest criticism gladly admit the supreme saintliness of his character.

And now we must ask, in concluding this portion of our subject, whether the view which has been presented is consistent with our enlarged knowledge of the universe. I think it is entirely so; for it brings Jesus before us, not as an exceptional portent in the boundless realms of being, but as the highest instance of the operation of a great spiritual law. If the Divine energy is everywhere present, even in the meanest insect, if the Divine Spirit animates the soul of man, if there are ascending grades of character and of spiritual illumination, then there is no reason why the manifestation of God's holiness and love in a man should not reach in some instance a supreme splendour, and become through him a source of spiritual light to others. So understood, the union of God with Christ becomes, to use the current phraseology, exceptional in degree, and not in kind.

But still it may be asked why this exceptional manifestation came so late in the world's history, and has made so little progress in the redemption of the world.' We can only answer that it seems to be a law of providence that

1 Acts iii. 14.

mankind should advance by very slow degrees, and ages of progress were needed before such a spiritual religion as Christianity could take any root in the hearts of men. We must recognize it as one of many factors in the world's growth; and it is in accordance with the whole analogy of human evolution that in proportion to the purity of its idea and the sublimity of its aim it should work slowly, and only after millenniums subdue and transform the whole reluctant mass, and turn the kingdoms of the world into the kingdom of God and of his Christ. In all this, we may observe, there is nothing which we cannot imagine repeated in ten thousand worlds; and in gazing upon Christ we see not an abnormal and solitary being in this vast universe, but an illustration of the cosmic law of spiritual growth, and the Divine glory which awaits all faithful souls.