and puerile has been virtually admitted by those who yet reject His claim to be Divine. This may be seen to be the case by two typical quotations which have been already cited by a thoughtful and candid writer,1 as representing the general consensus of opinion among Freethinkers in modern times. "Jesus Christ," says M. Renan, "is the highest of those columns which show to man his origin and his destiny. . . . In Him is centred all that there is in our nature of what is good and what is elevated." 2

About

31. Even more valuable is the testimony of the late Mr. John Stuart Mill. "Whatever else," he says, "may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left, a unique figure not more unlike all His precursors than all His followers. the life and sayings of Jesus there is [that] which ... must place [Him] in the very first rank of the men of sublimer genius of whom our species can boast. . . . This pre-eminent genius is combined with

...

1 The Gospel for the Nineteenth Century. Dr. Farrar (Witness of History to Christ, p. 82, note 1) truly says, "It should be definitely understood that if Christ were not sinless and Divine, He would be lower, not higher, than all who have lived holily on earth: for then His claims would be false, and His Personality stained with the poor vice of self-satisfaction."

2 Vie de Jésus, pp. 457, 458.

the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer . . who ever existed upon earth."

32. Thus we have the most impartial testimony to the exalted character of Christ—a testimony that practically sanctions His own tremendous claim to be free from sin.2

1 Essays on Religion, pp. 253-255.

2 It may be desirable to allude in passing to the great question which underlies this subject, namely, as to Christ's liability to temptation. The difficulties involved in this direction are a well-known theological topic. Put into plain English, they generally take the form of a Dilemma which may be thus stated: If Christ was liable to temptation, there must have been some inward response in His Nature to the allurements of evil; in which case He cannot be said to have been really sinless. If, on the other hand, He was not liable to such allurements, the reality of His manhood is impaired, so far at least as any real sympathy with the strength of our temptations is concerned. But the first of these inferences is by no means just. It can hardly be denied that the other actions of Christ's life prove that He possessed free will in its most absolute liberty of choice. This would surely involve liability to temptation, and full knowledge of sin's allurements, without in the least implying that consent of the will in which sin consists. But it may be admitted that on such a point, where the very border line of the Divine and human natures is under treatment, the mystery of the subject precludes any rash attempt at definition. A concise summary of the theology of this great question may be seen in Note C appended to Canon Liddon's Bampton Lectures, where the usual objections are minutely criticised. (See also Ullmann, Sinlessness, pp. 123, 144, 155; and especially pp. 264-291, where is a survey of the literature bearing upon this subject.) The Church teaches that in view of His sinless manhood, Christ was inaccessible to temptation ;

And we may be very sure that His enemies would not have left the challenge unanswered if they could have replied to it.

The fact then remains, that Christ claimed to be free from sin, and that His pretensions were undisputed in His life, as they are undisputed now. Never once does He exhibit any sign of shrinking from the full responsibility of such a challenge as our text contains.

Though it is He who rebukes the self-righteousness of the Pharisee with measureless indignation ; though He claimed to be meek and lowly in heart ; though He teaches that the deep penitence produced by a sin-stained conscience is the indispensable condition of returning to the Father-yet He Himself never once in the faintest degree betrays the slightest consciousness of guilt, the smallest trace of a personal remorse.1

but this does not impair the value of His redemptive work. "He is not less truly representative of our race because in Him it has recovered its perfection. His victory is none the less real and precious because, morally speaking, it was inevitable. Nay, this perfect internal sinlessness . . . was itself essential to His redemptive relationship to the human family" (Liddon, Bampton Lectures, p. 516). He "took our nature upon Him, precisely in order to repel sin altogether from it, and thus to show us of what it was capable, by showing us Himself" (Ibid.).

1 This negative testimony again appears in the constant

33. What, then, my hearers, is the logical outcome of such a claim as this?

What becomes of the sincerity, the unselfishness, the humility of Christ, if, "after considering the language which He actually used about Himself, we should go on to deny that He is God"?1

34. Is He humble-thus to assert His own sinlessness, if He be a man, even a very saintly man, and nothing more? Can He claim such an exalted position in philosophy and in morals as to point all men to Himself as sinless, and as the universal Teacher 2—if He be indeed only man? If He be also God, His language is intelligible; otherwise, as Dr. Liddon well observes,

antagonism to evil which pervades the life of Christ. "He drew [sin] forth to light, rebuked, opposed it to the uttermost. His whole life was devoted to maintaining a conflict against it."-Ullmann, Sinlessness, p. 70.

1 The writer is indebted to Canon Liddon for this threefold division of our Lord's moral characteristics (Bampton Lectures, pp. 192-205).

2 "One is your Master, even Christ." "Ye call Me Lord and Master and ye say well; for so I am." "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," etc. (Matt. xxiii. 8, 10; John xiii. 13; Matt. xi. 28, etc.). "The truth is," writes a great lay thinker, "that the pervading and deepest characteristic of Christ's language concerning Himself is the humility not of conscious unworthiness, like St. Paul's, but of conscious submission, of filial perfection." This absence of self-reproach, together with absolute filial submission, is, he urges, "a combination . . . unique in history" (R. H. Hutton, Theological Essays, i. 248, etc.).

"You must conclude that some of the most precious sayings in the Gospels are but the outbreak of a preposterous self-laudation, breathing the very spirit of another Lucifer." So, too, Mr. F. W. Newman is only logical when he speaks of the merely human Christ as not only a "vacillating pretender," but as exhibiting "egregious vanity," "blundering self-sufficiency," "vain conceit," and "ostentation." So, lastly, Mr. Greg is perfectly justified in denouncing the Jesus of St. John's Gospel as evincing "an overweening tendency to self-glorification.” 3

35. Again, what becomes of His unselfishness, 1 Liddon, Bampton Lectures, p. 196.

2 Phases of Faith, pp. 149–154.

M.

3 Creed of Christendom (4th edit.), vol. ii. p. 41. Renan admits, “Il ne prêchait pas ses opinions, il se prêchait lui-même (Vie de Jésus, pp. 76, 79, etc.). The true bearings of Christ's tremendous claims are well stated by Bushnell (Nature and the Supernatural, p. 200): "Certain it is that no mere man could take the same attitude of supremacy toward the race, and inherent affinity or oneness with God, without fatally shocking the confidence of the world by his effrontery." Referring to some of these claims, the writer well asks, “Was there ever displayed an example of effrontery and spiritual conceit so preposterous? Was there ever a man that dared to put himself on the world in such pretensions? ... What but mockery and disgust does he challenge as the certain reward of his audacity?" Christ "demands repentance from all, but never for a moment hints at any need of it Himself. With all His matchless lowliness, He advances personal claims which, in a mere man, would be the very delirium of religious pride" (Geikie, Life and Works of Christ, vol. i. p. 6).