The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864

The perfect innocence of Jesus, however, is based not only, negatively, on the absence of any recorded word or act to the contrary and his absolute exemption from every trace of selfishness and worldliness, but, positively, also on the unanimous testimony of John the Baptist and the apostles, who bowed before the majesty of his character in unbounded veneration, and declare him 'just,' 'holy,' and 'without sin.' It is admitted, moreover, by his enemies: the heathen judge Pilate, and his wife, representing, as it were, the Roman law and justice, when they shuddered with apprehension and washed their hands to be clear of innocent blood; by the rude Roman centurion, confessing under the cross, in the name of the disinterested spectators, 'Truly, this was the Son of God;' and by Judas himself, the immediate witness of his whole public and private life, exclaiming in despair: 'I sinned in betraying innocent blood.' Even dumb nature responded in mysterious sympathy, and the beclouded heavens above and the shaking earth beneath united in paying their unconscious tribute to the divine purity of their dying Lord.

The objection that the evangelists were either not fully informed concerning the facts, or mistaken in their estimate of the character of Christ, is of no avail. For, in addition to their testimony, we have his own personal conviction of entire freedom from sin and unworthiness, which leaves us only the choice between absolute moral purity, and absolute hypocrisy; such hypocrisy would, indeed, be both the greatest miracle and the greatest moral monstrosity on record.

The very fact that Christ came for the express purpose of saving sinners, implies his own consciousness of personal freedom from guilt and from all need of salvation. And this is the unmistakable impression made upon us by his whole public life and conduct. He nowhere shows the least concern for his own salvation, but knows himself in undisturbed harmony with his Heavenly Father. While calling most earnestly upon all others to repent, he stood in no need of conversion and regeneration, but simply of the regular harmonious unfolding of his moral powers. While directing all his followers, in the fourth petition of his model prayer, to ask daily for the forgiveness of their sins as well as their daily bread, he himself never asked God for pardon and forgiveness, except in behalf of others. While freely conversing with sinners, he always does so with the love and interest of a Saviour of sinners. This is an undeniable historical fact, no matter how you may explain it. And to remove every doubt, we have his open and fearless challenge to his bitter enemies: 'Which of you convinceth me of sin?' In this question he clearly exempts himself from the common fault and guilt of the race. In the mouth of any other man, this question would at once betray either the height of hypocrisy, or a degree of self-deception bordering on madness itself, and would overthrow the very foundation of all human goodness; while from the mouth of Jesus we instinctively receive it as the triumphant self-vindication of one who stood far above the possibility of successful impeachment or founded suspicion.

The assumption that Christ was a sinner, and knew himself such, although he professed the contrary and made upon friends and enemies the impression of spotless innocency, is the most monstrous deception that can well be imagined. 'If Jesus was a sinner, he was conscious of sin, as all sinners are, and therefore was a hypocrite in the whole fabric of his character; realizing so much of divine beauty in it, maintaining the show of such unfaltering harmony and celestial grace, and doing all this with a mind confused and fouled by the affectations acted for true virtues! Such an example of successful hypocrisy would be itself the greatest miracle ever heard of in the world.'

It is an indisputable fact, then, both from his mission and uniform conduct and his express declaration, that Christ knew himself free from sin and guilt. The only rational explanation of this fact is, that Christ was no sinner. And this is readily conceded by the greatest divines—even those who are by no means regarded as orthodox. The admission of this fact implies the further admission that Christ differed from all other men, not in degree only, but in kind. For although we must utterly repudiate the pantheistic notion of the necessity of sin, and must maintain that human nature, in itself considered, is capable of sinlessness, that it was sinless, in fact, before the fall, and that it will ultimately become sinless again by the redemption of Christ; yet it is equally certain that human nature, in its present condition, is not sinless, and never has been since the fall, except in the single case of Christ, and that for this very reason Christ's sinlessness can only be explained on the ground of such an extraordinary indwelling of God in him as never took place in any other human being, before or after. The entire Christian world, Greek, Latin, and Protestant, agree in the scriptural doctrine of the universal depravity of human nature since the apostasy of the first Adam. Even the modern and unscriptural dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, of the freedom of the Virgin Mary from hereditary as well as actual sin, can hardly be quoted as an exception; for her sinlessness is explained in the papal decision of 1854 by the assumption of a miraculous interposition of divine favor, and the reflex influence of the merits of her Son. There is not a single mortal who must not charge himself with some defect or folly, and man's consciousness of sin and unworthiness deepens just in proportion to his self-knowledge and progress in virtue and goodness. There is not a single saint who has not experienced a new birth from above, and an actual conversion from sin to holiness, and who does not feel daily the need of repentance and divine forgiveness. The very greatest and best of them, as St. Paul and St. Augustine, have passed through a violent struggle and a radical revolution, and their whole theological system and religious experience rested on the felt antithesis of sin and grace.

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.

History exhibits to us many men of commanding and comprehensive genius, who stand at the head of their age and nation, and furnish material for the intellectual activity of whole generations and periods, until they are succeeded by other heroes at a new epoch of development. As rivers generally spring from high mountains, so knowledge and moral power rises and is ever nourished from the heights of humanity. Abraham, the father of the faithful; Moses, the lawgiver of the Jewish theocracy; Elijah, among the prophets; Peter, Paul, and John among the apostles; Athanasius and Chrysostom among the Greek, Augustine and Jerome among the Latin fathers; Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus among the schoolmen; Leo I. and Gregory VII. among the popes; Luther and Calvin in the line of Protestant reformers and divines; Socrates, the patriarch of the ancient schools of philosophy; Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton, Göthe and Schiller in the history of poetry, among the various nations to which they belong; Raphael among painters; Charlemagne, the first and greatest in the long succession of German emperors; Napoleon, towering high above all the generals of his training; Washington, the wisest and best as well as the first of American presidents, and the purest and noblest type of the American character, may be mentioned as examples of those representative heroes in history who anticipate and concentrate the powers of whole generations. But they never represent universal, but only sectional humanity; they are identified with a particular people or age, and partake of its errors, superstitions, and failings, almost in the same proportion in which they exhibit its virtues. Moses, though revered by the followers of three religions, was a Jew in views, feelings, habits, and position, as well as by parentage; Socrates never rose above the Greek type of character; Luther was a German in all his virtues and faults, and can only be properly understood as a German; Calvin, though an exile from his native land, remained a Frenchman; and Washington can be to no nation on earth what he is to the American. Their influence may and does extend far beyond their respective national horizons, yet they can never furnish a universal model for imitation. We regard them as extraordinary but fallible and imperfect men, whom it would be very unsafe to follow in every view and line of conduct. Very frequently the failings and vices of great men are in proportion to their virtues and powers, as the tallest bodies cast the longest shadows. Even the three leading apostles are models of piety and virtue only as far as they reflect the image of their Heavenly Master, and it is only with this limitation that Paul exhorts his spiritual children: 'Be ye followers of me even as I am also of Christ.'

What these representative men are to particular ages or nations, or sects or particular schools of science and art, Christ was to the human family at large in its relation to God. He and he alone is the universal type for universal imitation. Hence he could, without the least impropriety, or suspicion of vanity, call upon all men to forsake all things and to follow him. He stands above the limitations of age, school, sect, nation, and race. Although a Jew according to the flesh, there is nothing Jewish about him which is not at the same time of general significance. The particular and national in him is always duly subordinated to the general and human. Still less was he ever identified with a party or sect. He was equally removed from the stiff formalism of the Pharisees, the loose liberalism of the Sadducees, and the inactive mysticism of the Essenes. He rose above all the prejudices, bigotries, and superstitions of his age and people, which exert their power even upon the strongest and otherwise most liberal minds.

Witness his freedom in the observance of the Sabbath, by which he offended the scrupulous literalists, while he fulfilled, as the Lord of the Sabbath, the true spirit of the law in its universal and abiding significance; his reply to the disciples, when they traced the misfortune of the blind man to a particular sin of the subject or his parents; his liberal conduct toward the Samaritans, as contrasted with the inveterate hatred and prejudices of the Jews, including his own disciples at the time; and his charitable judgment of the slaughtered Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, and the eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them. 'Think ye,' he addressed the children of superstition, 'that these men were sinners above all the Galileans, and above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem, because they suffered such things? I tell you, nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.'

All the words and all the actions of Christ, while they were fully adapted to the occasions which called them forth, retain their force and applicability undiminished to all ages and nations. He is the same unsurpassed and unsurpassable model of every virtue to the Christians of every generation, every clime, every sect, every nation, and every race.

HARMONY OF ALL GRACES AND VIRTUES

It must not be supposed that a complete catalogue of virtues would do justice to the character under consideration. It is not only the completeness, but still more the even proportion and perfect harmony of virtues and graces apparently opposite and contradictory, which distinguishes him specifically from all other men. This feature has struck with singular force all the more eminent writers on the subject. It gives the finish to that beauty of holiness which is the sublimest picture presented to our contemplation.

He was free from all one-sidedness, which constitutes the weakness as well as the strength of the most eminent men. He was not a man of one idea, nor of one virtue, towering above all the rest. The moral forces were so well tempered and moderated by each other, that none was unduly prominent, none carried to excess, none alloyed by the kindred failing. Each was checked and completed by the opposite grace. His character never lost its even balance and happy equilibrium, never needed modification or re-adjustment. It was thoroughly sound, and uniformly consistent from the beginning to the end.

We cannot properly attribute to him any one temperament. He was neither sanguine, like Peter, nor choleric, like Paul, nor melancholy, like John, nor phlegmatic, as James is sometimes, though incorrectly, represented to have been; but he combined the vivacity without the levity of the sanguine, the vigor without the violence of the choleric, the seriousness without the austerity of the melancholic, the calmness without the apathy of the phlegmatic temperament.

He was equally far removed from the excesses of the legalist, the pietist, the ascetic, and the enthusiast. With the strictest obedience to the law, he moved in the element of freedom; with all the fervor of the enthusiast, he was always calm, sober, and self-possessed; notwithstanding his complete and uniform elevation above the affairs of this world, he freely mingled with society, male and female, dined with publicans and sinners, sat at the wedding feast, shed tears at the sepulchre, delighted in God's nature, admired the beauties of the lilies, and used the occupations of the husbandman for the illustration of the sublimest truths of the kingdom of heaven. His virtue was healthy, manly, vigorous, yet genial, social, and truly human, never austere and repulsive, always in full sympathy with innocent joy and pleasure. He, the purest and holiest of men, provided wine for the wedding feast, introduced the fatted calf and music and dancing into the picture of welcome of the prodigal son to his father's house, and even provoked the sneer of his adversaries that he 'came eating and drinking,' and was a 'glutton' and a 'winebibber.'

His zeal never degenerated into passion or rashness, his constancy into obstinacy, his benevolence into weakness, nor his tenderness into sentimentality. His unworldliness was free from indifference and unsociability, his dignity from pride and presumption, his affability from undue familiarity, his self-denial from moroseness, his temperance from austerity. He combined child-like innocence with manly strength, all-absorbing devotion to God with untiring interest in the welfare of man, tender love to the sinner with uncompromising severity against sin, commanding dignity with winning humility, fearless courage with wise caution, unyielding firmness with sweet gentleness.

He is justly compared with the lion in strength and with the lamb in meekness. He equally possessed the wisdom of the serpent and the simplicity of the dove. He brought both the sword against every form of wickedness, and the peace which the world cannot give. He was the most effective, and yet the least noisy, the most radical, and yet the most conservative, calm, and patient of all reformers. He came to fulfil every letter of the law, and yet he made all things new. The same hand which drove the profane traffickers from the temple, blessed little children, healed the lepers, and rescued the sinking disciple; the same ear which heard the voice of approbation from heaven was open to the cries of the woman in travail; the same mouth which pronounced the terrible woe on hypocrites and condemned the impure desire and unkind feeling as well as the open crime, blessed the poor in spirit, announced pardon to the adulteress, and prayed for his murderers; the same eye which beheld the mysteries of God and penetrated the heart of man shed tears of compassion over ungrateful Jerusalem, and tears of friendship at the grave of Lazarus.

These are indeed opposite, yet not contradictory traits of character, as little as the different manifestations of God's power and goodness in the tempest and the sunshine, in the towering alps and the lily of the valley, in the boundless ocean and the dewdrop of the morning. They are separated in imperfect men, indeed, but united in Christ, the universal model for all.

CHRIST'S PASSION

Finally, as all active virtues meet in him, so he unites the active or heroic virtues with the passive and gentle. He is equally the highest standard of all true martyrdom.

No character can become complete without trial and suffering, and a noble death is the crowning act of a noble life. Edmund Burke said to Fox, in the English Parliament: 'Obloquy is a necessary ingredient of all true glory. Calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph.' The ancient Greeks and Romans admired a good man struggling with misfortune as a sight worthy of the gods. Plato describes the righteous man as one who, without doing any injustice, yet has the appearance of the greatest injustice, and proves his own justice by perseverance against all calumny unto death; yea, he predicts that if such a righteous man should ever appear, he would be 'scourged, tortured, bound, deprived of his sight, and, after having suffered all possible injury, nailed on a post.' No wonder that the ancient fathers saw in this remarkable passage an unconscious prophecy of Christ. But how far is this ideal of the great philosopher from the actual reality, as it appeared three hundred years afterward! The great men of this world, who rise even above themselves on inspiring occasions, and boldly face a superior army, are often thrown off their equilibrium in ordinary life, and grow impatient at trifling obstacles. Only think of Napoleon at the head of his conquering legions and at the helm of an empire, and the same Napoleon after the defeat at Waterloo and on the island of St. Helena. The highest form of passive virtue attained by ancient heathenism or modern secular heroism is that stoicism which meets and overcomes the trials and misfortunes of life in the spirit of haughty contempt and unfeeling indifference, which destroys the sensibilities, and is but another exhibition of selfishness and pride.