But in Christ we have the one solitary and absolute exception to this universal rule, an individual thinking like a man, feeling like a man, speaking, acting, suffering, and dying like a man, surrounded by sinners in every direction, with the keenest sense of sin and the deepest sympathy with sinners, commencing his public ministry with the call: 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;' yet never touched in the least by the contamination of the world, never putting himself in the attitude of a sinner before God, never shedding a tear of repentance, never regretting a single thought, word, or deed, never needing or asking divine pardon, never concerned about the salvation of his own soul, and boldly facing all his present and future enemies in the absolute certainty of his spotless purity before God and man!
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.
UNITY OF VIRTUE AND PIETY.
The first feature in this singular perfection of Christ's character which strikes our attention, is the perfect harmony of virtue and piety, of morality and religion, or of love to God and love to man. He is more than moral, and more than pious; he is holy in the strict and full sense of the word. There is a divine beauty and perfection in his character, the mere contemplation of which brings purity, brightness, peace, and bliss to the soul.
Piety was the soul of his morality, and lifted it far above the sphere of legality or conformity to law. Every moral action in him proceeded from supreme love to God, and looked to the temporal and eternal welfare of man. The groundwork of his character was the most intimate and uninterrupted union and communion with his Heavenly Father, from whom he derived, to whom he referred, everything. Already in his twelfth year he found his life element and delight in the things of his Father. It was his daily food to do the will of Him that sent him, and to finish his work. To Him he looked in prayer before every important act, and taught his disciples that model prayer which, for simplicity, brevity, comprehensiveness, and suitableness, can never be surpassed. He often retired to a mountain or solitary place for prayer, and spent days and nights in this blessed privilege. But so constant and uniform was his habit of communion with the great Jehovah, that he kept it up amid the multitude, and converted the crowded city into a religious retreat. His self-consciousness was at every moment conditioned, animated, and impregnated by the consciousness of God. Even when he exclaimed, in indescribable anguish of body and soul, and in vicarious sympathy with the misery of the whole race: 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!' the bond of union was not broken, or even loosened, but simply obscured for a moment, as the sun by a passing cloud, and the enjoyment, not the possession of it, was withdrawn from his feelings; for immediately afterward he commended his soul into the hands of his Father, and triumphantly exclaimed: 'It is finished!' So strong and complete was this moral union of Christ with God at every moment of his life, that he fully realized for the first time the idea of religion, whose object is to bring about such a union, and that he is the personal representative and living embodiment of Christianity as the true and absolute religion.
With all this, the piety of Christ was no inactive contemplation, or retiring mysticism and selfish enjoyment; but thoroughly practical, ever active in works of charity, and tending to regenerate and transform the world into the kingdom of God. 'He went about doing good.' His life is an unbroken series of good works and virtues in active exercise, all proceeding from the same union with God, animated by the same love, and tending to the same end, the glory of God and the happiness of man.
COMPLETENESS AND UNIVERSALITY OF HIS CHARACTER.
The next feature we would notice, is the completeness or pleromatic fulness of the moral and religious character of Christ. While all other men represent at best but broken fragments of the idea of goodness and holiness, he exhausts the list of virtues and graces which may be named. His soul is a moral paradise full of charming flowers, shining in every variety of color, under the blue dome of the skies, drinking in the refreshing dews of heaven and the warming beams of the sun, sending its sweet fragrance around, and filling the beholder with rapturous delight.