Let us remember first, that, unlike the icy stoics in their unnatural and repulsive pseudo-virtue, he had the keenest sensibilities and the deepest sympathies with all human grief, that made him even shed tears at the grave of a friend and in the agony of the garden, and provide a refuge for his mother in the last dying hour. But with this truly human tenderness and delicacy of feeling, he ever combined an unutterable dignity and majesty, a sublime self-control and imperturbable calmness of mind. There is a solitary grandeur and majesty in his deepest sufferings, which forbids a feeling of pity and compassion on our side as incompatible with the admiration and reverence for his character. We feel the force of his words to the women of Jerusalem, when they bewailed him on the way to Cavalry: 'Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and your children.' We never hear him break out in angry passion and violence, although he was at war with the whole ungodly world. He clearly and fully foresaw and repeatedly foretold his sufferings to his disciples.
And yet never murmured, never uttered discontent, displeasure, or resentment. He was never disheartened, discouraged, ruffled, or fretted, but full of unbounded confidence that all was well ordered in the providence of his Heavenly Father. His calmness in the tempest on the lake, when his disciples were trembling on the brink of destruction and despair, is an illustration of his heavenly frame of mind. All his works were performed with a quiet dignity and ease that contrasts most strikingly with the surrounding commotion and excitement. He never asked the favor, or heard the applause, or feared the threat of the world. He moved serenely like the sun above the clouds of human passions and trials and commotions, as they sailed under him. He was ever surrounded by the element of peace, even in his parting hour in that dark and solemn night, when he said to his disturbed disciples: 'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.' He was never what we call unhappy, but full of inward joy, which he bequeathed to his disciples in that sublimest of all prayers, 'that they might have his joy fulfilled in themselves.' With all his severe rebuke to the Pharisees, he never indulged in personalities. He ever returned good for evil. He forgave Peter for his denial, and would have forgiven Judas, if in the exercise of sincere repentance he had sought his pardon. Even while hanging on the cross, he had only the language of pity for the wretches who were driving the nails into his hands and feet, and prayed in their behalf: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' He did not seek or hasten his martyrdom, like many of the early martyrs of the Ignatian type, in their morbid enthusiasm and ambitious humility, but quietly and patiently waited for the hour appointed by the will of his Heavenly Father.
But when the hour came, with what self-possession and calmness, with what strength and meekness, with what majesty and gentleness did he pass through its dark and trying scenes! A prisoner before Pilate, who represented the power of the Roman empire, he professes himself a king of truth, and makes the governor tremble before him. Charged with crime at the tribunal of the high priest, he speaks to him with the majesty and dignity of the judge of the world. And in the agony of death on the cross he dispenses a place in paradise to the penitent robber. In the history of the passion, every word and act are unutterably significant, from the agony in Gethsemane, when, overwhelmed with the sympathetic sense of the entire guilt of mankind, and in full view of the terrible scenes before him—the only guiltless being in the world—he prayed that the cup might pass from him, but immediately added, 'Not my but thy will be done,' to the triumphant exclamation on the cross, 'It is finished!' Even his dignified silence before the tribunal of his enemies and the furious mob, when 'as a lamb dumb before his shearers he opened not his mouth,' is more eloquent than any apology. Who will venture to bring a parallel from the annals of ancient or modern sages, when even a Rousseau confessed: 'If Socrates suffered and died like a philosopher, Christ suffered and died like a God!' The passion and crucifixion of Jesus, like his whole character, stands without a parallel, solitary and alone in its glory, and will ever continue to be what it has been for these eighteen hundred years, the most sacred theme of meditation, the highest exemplar of suffering virtue, the strongest weapon against sin and Satan, the deepest source of comfort to the noblest and best of men.
SUMMARY—CHRIST'S CHARACTER THE GREATEST MORAL MIRACLE IN HISTORY.
Such was Jesus of Nazareth—a true man in body, soul, and spirit, yet differing from all men, a character absolutely unique and original, from tender childhood to ripe manhood moving in unbroken union with God, overflowing with the purest love to man, free from every sin and error, innocent and holy, teaching and practising all virtues in perfect harmony, devoted solely and uniformly to the noblest ends, sealing the purest life with the sublimest death, and ever acknowledged since as the one and only perfect model of goodness and holiness! All human greatness loses on closer inspection; but Christ's character grows more and more pure, sacred, and lovely, the better we know him.
No biographer, moralist, or artist can be satisfied with any attempt of his to set it forth. It is felt to be infinitely greater than any conception or representation of it by the mind, the tongue, and the pencil of man or angel. We might as well attempt to empty the waters of the boundless sea into a narrow well, or to portray the splendor of the risen sun and the starry heavens with ink. No picture of the Saviour, though drawn by the master hand of a Raphael or Dürer or Rubens—no epic, though conceived by the genius of a Dante or Milton or Klopstock, can improve on the artless narrative of the gospel, whose only but all-powerful charm is truth. In this case certainly truth is stranger and stronger than fiction, and speaks best itself without comment, explanation, and eulogy. Here and here alone the highest perfection of art falls short of the historical fact, and fancy finds no room for idealizing the real. For here we have the absolute ideal itself in living reality. It seems to me that this consideration alone should satisfy the reflecting mind that Christ's character, though truly natural and human, must be at the same time truly supernatural and divine.
Even Göthe, the most universal and finished, but at the same time the most intensely worldly of all modern poets, calls Christ 'the Divine Man,' the 'Holy One,' and represents him as the pattern and model of humanity. Thomas Carlyle, the great hero-worshipper, found no equal in all the range of ancient and modern heroism; he calls his life a 'perfect ideal poem,' and his person 'the greatest of all heroes,' whom he does not name, leaving 'sacred silence to meditate that sacred matter.' And Ernest Renan, the celebrated French orientalist and critic, who views Jesus from the standpoint of a pantheistic naturalism, and expels all miracles from the gospel history, calls him 'the incomparable man, to whom the universal conscience has decreed the title of Son of God, and that with justice, since he caused religion to take a step in advance incomparably greater than any other in the past, and probably than any yet to come;' and he closes his 'Life of Jesus' with the remarkable concession: 'Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without ceasing; his legend will call forth tears without end; his sufferings will melt the noblest hearts; all ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus.'
The whole range of history and fiction furnishes no parallel to such a character. There never was anything even approaching to it before or since, except in faint imitation of his example. It cannot be explained on purely human principles, nor derived from any intellectual and moral forces of the age in which he lived. On the contrary, it stands in marked contrast to the whole surrounding world of Judaism and heathenism, which present to us the dreary picture of internal decay, and which actually crumbled into ruin before the new moral creation of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. He is the one absolute and unaccountable exception to the universal experience of mankind. He is the great central miracle of the whole gospel history, and all his miracles are but the natural and necessary manifestations of his miraculous person, performed with the same ease with which we perform our ordinary daily works.
In vain has infidelity, in ever-changing shapes and forms, assailed the everlasting foundation of this greatest and sublimest character that ever blessed or will bless the earth. He arises brighter and stronger from every fiery ordeal of criticism, and stands out to every beholder as the greatest benefactor of the race and the only Saviour from sin and ruin.
Yes! he still lives, the Divine Man and incarnate God, on the ever fresh and self-authenticating record of the Gospels, in the unbroken history of eighteen centuries, and in the hearts and lives of the wisest and best of our race. Jesus Christ is the most certain, the most sacred, and the most glorious of all facts, arrayed in a beauty and majesty which throws the 'starry heavens above us and the moral law within us' into obscurity, and fills us truly with ever-growing reverence and awe. He shines forth with the self-evidencing light of the noonday sun. He is too great, too pure, too perfect to have been invented by any sinful and erring man. His character and claims are confirmed by the sublimest doctrine, the purest ethics, the mightiest miracles, the grandest spiritual kingdom, and are daily and hourly exhibited in the virtues and graces of all who yield to the regenerating and sanctifying power of his spirit and example. The historical Christ meets and satisfies our deepest intellectual and moral wants. Our souls, if left to their noblest impulses and aspirations, instinctively turn to him as the needle to the magnet, as the flower to the sun, as the panting hart to the fresh fountain. We are made for him, and 'our heart is without rest until it rests in him.' He commands our assent, he wins our admiration, he overwhelms us to humble adoration and worship. We cannot look upon him without spiritual benefit. We cannot think of him without being elevated above all that is low and mean, and encouraged to all that is good and noble. The very hem of his garment is healing to the touch; one hour spent in his communion outweighs all the pleasures of sin. He is the most precious and indispensable gift of a merciful God to a fallen world. In him are the treasures of true wisdom, in him the fountain of pardon and peace, in him the only substantial hope and comfort of this world and that which is to come. Mankind could better afford to lose the whole literature of Greece and Rome, of Germany and France, of England and America, than the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Without him, history is a dreary waste, an inextricable enigma, a chaos of facts without meaning, connection, and aim; with him it is a beautiful, harmonious revelation, the slow but sure unfolding of a plan of infinite wisdom and love: all ancient history converging to his coming, all modern history receiving from him his higher life and impulse. He is the glory of the past, the life of the present, the hope of the future. We cannot even understand ourselves without him. According to an old Jewish proverb: 'The secret of man is the secret of the Messiah.' He is the great central light of history as a whole, and at the same time the light of every soul; he alone can solve the mystery of our being, and fulfil our intellectual desires after truth, all our moral aspirations after goodness and holiness, and the longing of our feelings after peace and happiness.