HIS ABSOLUTE HOLINESS.
A sinless Saviour surrounded by a sinful world, is an astounding fact indeed, a sublime moral miracle in history. But this freedom from the common sin and guilt of the race is, after all, only the negative side of his character, which rises in magnitude as we contemplate the positive side, namely, absolute moral and religious perfection. It is universally admitted, even by deists and rationalists, that Christ taught the purest and sublimest system of ethics, which throws all the moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the shade. The Sermon on the Mount alone is worth infinitely more than all that Confucius, Socrates, and Seneca ever said or wrote on duty and virtue. But the difference is still greater if we come to the more difficult task of practice. While the wisest and best of men never live up even to their own imperfect standard of excellency, Christ fully carried out his perfect doctrine in his life and conduct. He both was and did that which he taught; he preached his own life, and lived his own doctrine. He is the living incarnation of the ideal standard of virtue and holiness, and is universally acknowledged to be the highest model for all that is pure and good and noble in the sight of God and man.
We find Christ moving in all ordinary and essential relations of life, as a son, a brother, a friend, a citizen, a teacher, at home and in public. We find him among all classes of society, with sinners and saints, with the poor and the wealthy, with the sick and the healthy, with little children, grown men and women, with plain fishermen and learned scribes, with despised publicans and honored members of the sanhedrim, with friends and foes, with admiring disciples and bitter persecutors; now with an individual, as Nicodemus or the woman of Samaria, now in the familiar circle of the twelve, now in the crowds of the people. We find him in all situations, in the synagogue and the temple, at home and on journeys, in villages and the city of Jerusalem, in the desert and on the mountain, along the banks of Jordan and the shores of the Galilean Sea, at the wedding feast and the grave, in Gethsemane, in the judgment hall, and on Calvary. In all these various relations, conditions, and situations, as they are crowded within the few years of his public ministry, he sustains the same consistent character throughout, without ever exposing himself to censure. He fulfils every duty to God, to man, and to himself, without a single violation of duty, and exhibits an entire conformity to the law, in the spirit as well as the letter. His life is one unbroken service of God, in active and passive obedience to His holy will—one grand act of absolute love to God and love to man, of personal self-consecration to the glory of his Heavenly Father and the salvation of a fallen race. In the language of the people who were 'beyond measure astonished at his works,' we must say, the more we study his life: 'He did all things well.' In a solemn appeal to his Heavenly Father in the parting hour, he could proclaim to the world that he had glorified him in the earth, and finished the work he gave him to do.