(4) And even that is not all. Jesus has such a character that we can transfer it feature by feature to God, not only with no sense of blasphemy, not only with no sense of his coming short, but with complete satisfaction. I do not now ask at all as to any man's metaphysical theory about Jesus Christ; I only ask that it be noticed that those who question common theories altogether still get their ideal of God from Jesus Christ; and that this is the wonderful thing that has happened on our earth: that there has once lived a man—daily moving about among men, a concrete circumstantial account of whose life in many particulars we have—the features of whose character one can transfer absolutely to God and say, That is what I mean by God. One simply cannot add anything to the character of God himself in the highest moments of his imagination, that is not already revealed in Jesus Christ. I take it that the words of Fairbairn are literally true: he was "the first being who had realized for men the idea of the Divine." When, therefore, Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us," he could only reply as he might any day to us, "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
(5) And one cannot stop here. Jesus is consciously able to redeem all men. With such sense of the meaning of sin and of moral conduct as no other ever had, understanding, therefore, the sin and need of men as no other ever did, and having such a vision of what it is perfectly to share the life of God as no other ever had, still, facing the masses of men, he could say to himself, "I am able to take these men and lift them into the very presence of God and present them spotless before the throne of his glory." Have we taken in what it means, that, in the consciousness of a man in form like ourselves, there could be, even for a moment, the actual belief that he was the one that was to take away the sin of the world, and had power to redeem men absolutely unto God? In another's words: "Jesus knows no more sacred task than to point men to his own person." He is himself God's greatest gift, himself "the way, the truth, the life,"—not only fighting his own battles, but consciously able to redeem all men.
(6) This simply implies, as Dr. Denison has suggested, that Jesus has such God-consciousness and such sense of mission as would simply topple any other brain that the world has ever known into insanity, but which simply keeps him sweet, normal, rational, living the most wholesome and simple and noble life the world has ever seen. How are we to explain that fact? On the one hand, the sense of being of even a little importance in the kingdom of God proves singularly intoxicating to men. How often, when one is strongly possessed by the idea that he is a special channel of manifestation for God, do moral sanity, influence, and character all suffer! On the other hand, there is no burden of suffering that men can bear so great as suffering in the sin of one loved—thus bearing the sin of another. But here is one who can believe that, when men come to him and simply see him as he is, they catch their best vision of God; here is one who bears consciously the sin of all men, and who can believe that he has absolute power to revolutionize the lives of other men and make them what they were meant originally to be, children of God; and yet, believing this, can, under that consciousness, keep sweet and normal, wholesome and simple, energetically ethical and thoroughly rational,—can keep sane. Indeed, he lives a life so sane, that, to pass even from some of our best religious books into the simple atmosphere of the story of his life often seems like passing from the super-heated, artificially lighted, heavily perfumed and exhausted atmosphere of the crowded drawing-room into the open fresh air of day under the heaven of God. In the very act of the most stupendous self-assertion, Jesus can still characterize himself as "meek and lowly of heart," and we feel no self-contradiction—so completely has he harmonized for even our unconscious feeling his transcendent self-consciousness and his humble simplicity of life. Has the world anywhere a phenomenon comparable to this?
(7) In consequence of all this, Jesus is in fact the only person in the history of the race who can call out absolute trust. As little children, we knew something of what it meant to have complete trust. There were a few years when it seemed to us that there was nothing in either power or character that was not true of our fathers and mothers. We soon lost such trust, even as children. Is there any way back to the childlike spirit? Let us ponder these golden words of Herrmann: "The childlike spirit can only arise within us when our experience is the same as a child's; in other words, when we meet with a personal life which compels us to trust it without reserve. Only the person of Jesus can arouse such trust in a man who has awakened to moral self-consciousness. If such a man surrenders himself to anything or any one else, he throws away not only his trust, but himself." There has been one life lived on earth, in whose hands one may put himself with absolute confidence and have no fear as to the result. Jesus, and Jesus alone, can call out absolute trust.
(8) Moreover, Jesus is the only life ever lived among men in whom God certainly finds us, and in whom we certainly find God. And, once again, I am not now asking whether one is able to come to any theory of the nature of Christ. That is a matter of comparative indifference. The great fact is this: That there has been lived among us men such a life that, if a man will simply put himself in the presence of it and stay there, he will have brought home to him with unmistakable conviction the fact that God is, and is touching him and that he is touching God; that, coupled with such a sense as he never had before of his sin, there will be also the sense of forgiveness and reconciliation with God, and so, such evidence of the contact of God with his life as he can find nowhere else. So Harnack believes: "When God and everything that is sacred threaten to disappear in the darkness, or our doom is pronounced; when the mighty forces of inexorable nature seem to overwhelm us, and the bounds of good and evil to dissolve; when, weak and weary, we despair of finding God at all in this dismal world,—it is then that the personality of Christ may save us."
(9) And all this means, finally, that Jesus is for us the ideal realized. Let not the commonplaceness of the words rob us of their meaning. The fact is far enough from the commonplace. Philosophy must always tell us that we have no right to expect anywhere a realized ideal, except in the absolute whole of things. Certainly, we never find in any of the inferior spheres a fully realized ideal. What does it mean, then, that in this highest of all spheres, the sphere of the moral and spiritual life, we have the ideal realized; that our very highest vision is a fact? What is there that one would add to, what, that one would take away from, the life of Christ, that it might be more completely than it is the ideal realized?
"But Thee, but Thee, O Sovereign Seer of time, But Thee, O poet's Poet, wisdom's tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labor writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King or Priest,— What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, thou crystal Christ?"
4. Christ's Double Uniqueness.—It seems hardly possible to do justice to the facts now passed in review, without recognizing, at least, that they point to a double uniqueness on the part of Christ in his relation to God, reflected in his own language concerning himself and in the spontaneous confessions of his disciples in all times. He alone, in the emphatic sense, is the Son. The contrasts between Christ and other men, which the simple facts of the life and consciousness of Christ have compelled us to make, naturally, then, demand recognition from thought. The recognition of the facts is the vital matter, but thought can hardly see them unmoved. How are we to think of Christ? With clear remembrance, now, that Christian teaching itself insists upon the kinship of God and men; that absolute barriers, therefore, cannot anywhere be set up; that a revelation unrelated to all else could be no revelation; and that Christ himself often pointed out the likeness between his own life and work and those of his disciples;—still we may not ignore actual differences, and must honestly strive to do justice to them in our own conception of Christ. One may not forget that there is much here that we can hardly hope ever to fathom; and that into this secret of Christ's relation to the Father theology has often tried to press with a precision of statement that was quite beyond its possible knowledge, and that damaged rather than helped the religious consciousness; but one may try to think in simple, straightforward fashion what the facts mean. Now these actual and momentous moral and spiritual differences already pointed out seem, at least, to assert, I say, a genuine double uniqueness in Christ. Christ's relation to God is absolutely unique, that is, in two senses: in the absolutely unique purpose of God concerning him; in the absolutely perfect response of Christ to that purpose. If one chooses to use the language, he may say, that the first uniqueness is metaphysical; the second, ethical.[101]
First, then, God has a purpose concerning Christ, that he has concerning no other, for he purposes to make in him his supreme self-manifestation. This sets him apart from all others. His transcendent sense of God and sense of mission only correspond to the absolute uniqueness of this eternal purpose of God concerning him. We are utterly unable to see that they could be borne by any being that we know as man. He is the manifested God—"the visible presentation of the invisible God." This cannot be said, in the same sense, of any other. Now, our only adequate statement of the inner reality—the essential meaning—of any being, can be given only in terms of the purpose which God calls that being to fulfil. To see, then, that God's purpose concerning Christ is absolutely unique, and that God's purpose is, to make in Christ the completest possible personal manifestation of himself, is to see that Christ's essential relation to the Father is absolutely his own, unshared by any other. And, it may be added, there is no reason why this purpose of God concerning Christ should not be regarded as an eternal purpose, eternally realized.
But Christ is as clearly unique in his simply perfect response to this purpose of God. Our facts seem to point directly to the conclusion, that in him there was no moral hindrance to the fullness of the revelation God would make through him. His life is perfectly transparent, allowing the full glory of the character of God to shine through it. The harmony of his will with God's will is complete. If it be said that this last uniqueness is, after all, only difference in degree from other men, it must be answered, first, that degree here is so vast as to be practically kind. This is the perfect of Christ set over against the varyingly imperfect of all other men. Moreover, to ask here for difference in kind in any other sense, is probably to make an unintelligent and impossible demand; for, in the nature of the case, the relations involved are spiritual and personal, and there cannot be, in strictness, in the fulfilment of such relations any real differences in kind.