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such connections subordinate to what was higher, to the general good, to the glory of his Father. As the Messiah, his office was of greater moment to him, than all these relations; as the founder of the kingdom of God, he recognized in every one who did the will of God, his mother, his brother, his sister;-and he required of every one who entered into this great spiritual covenant, that he should be ready to sacrifice the most precious personal connections, whenever the law or the design of the new kingdom demanded it. So likewise Jesus was a pious Jew, and observed the religious customs and laws of his nation with as much scrupulousness as liberality of spirit; yet nothing at all of an unseemly national prejudice was mingled with his observances; not a shadow of that which pointed out a Jew, as such, to his disadvantage. He possessed the virtues of his theological nation, as it may not unfitly be called; but in such a way, that they could be generally appropriate to man in any relations whatever. And by this he distinguishes himself, in the most prominent manner, from all, even the greatest spirits of antiquity. All these great spirits have a thoroughly national stamp; their most praiseworthy virtue is the free obedience to the laws of their country; their highest enthusiasm is devoted to the interests of their own nation; their noblest sacrifice is death for the land of their fathers; the great work of their life is, to express the full spirit of their people; in this spirit to act, for this spirit, if need be, to give up all. In the strength of his endeavor, in his ability to make every sacrifice, Jesus stands second to none of the greatest heroes; but he performs his labors and makes his sacrifices not barely for his own nation, but for all mankind. Free from every impulse of that national feeling that stints the soul, he develops himself purely from within, from his own resources; and as he exhibits the image of a man in his whole, unspotted, perfect nature, and is the first by whom the idea of pure humanity, in the highest and at the same time the realized sense of that word, was presented to the human mind,—so is he the first who breaking over all the bounds of national predilection, embraces in his efforts, and with holy love, the whole race; ventures for the whole race to live and to die.

In general, the character of Jesus, though thoroughly individual

1 For examples, see John 2: 4. Mark 3: 32–35. Luke 11: 27, 28.

2 [See a lengthened examination of this topic in Reinhard's Plan, Part II.-TR.]

and unlike every other, has yet no such eccentric or peculiar feature, as results from a disproportional combination of the inward faculties. On the contrary, there is in his nature the most perfect harmony and completeness; and his acts bear the stamp of universal propriety and rectitude. Who can say, that the peculiar characteristic of Jesus was soundness of judgment, or tenderness of feeling, or richness of fancy, or power of execution? But all these excellences are found in him, just in their due proportion, and they work together in uninterrupted harmony. High fervor and gra

1 It seems to us altogether erroneous, to ascribe a temperament to Jesus in the ordinary sense of that word; as is done at large by Winkler, for example, in his Psychography of Jesus, p. 122 seq. He makes the Saviour to be a man of the choleric temperament, and remarks: "The choleric (choleriker, bilious) temperament is that of every great mind. If any mind be destitute of it, then it is a mind within itself, but not out of itself (!); it has a power for investigation, but wants elasticity of action, etc." A temperament always indicates a certain disproportion in the mingling of the internal powers, a preponderance of one part of the mental dispositions over another; but this was not the case with Jesus, for in him was found the purest temperamentum, in the old sense of that word; a thoroughly harmonious combination; a just, sound proportion of all powers and dispositions.

[It may be worthy of a quere, in passing, whether the popular apprehension of the Messiah does not deny him this completeness of character, and attach to him those excellences only which belong to a particular temperament, and are peculiarly appropriate to one of the sexes. Does not the tone of authority which Christ sometimes employed, of severe reproof, of highminded indignation, conflict somewhat with the prevailing ideas of his predominant virtues? Has not a partial view of his character, combined with an unfounded interpretation of certain passages of Scripture, led many fictitious writers, and many painters, both ancient and modern, to represent Christ's personal appearance as more effeminate than we need suppose it to have been? (We have indeed no means of determining what his personal appearance was, but from such passages as Luke 4: 15-30. Mark 11: 12— 19. John 18: 6, etc., we cannot think it so destitute of the manly, as it is of ten represented). Is not the same one-sided view which is often taken of Christ's personal character, taken also of his Gospel? The prevalent idea of the evangelical system is expressed perhaps in Paley's Evidences, Works, Vol. II. pp. 175, 176. Cam. Ed., but the representation there given will certainly not explain some of the phenomena in the conduct and the teachings of Christ and his apostles. To this habit of diverting the attention from the whole of Christ's excellences to one particular class of them, may be ascribed in part the disrepute into which several of the sterner virtues have sometimes fallen, and the association of something unchristian with all acts of self-defence. The remarks of such writers as Dymond, on War, Litiga

cious mildness; heavenly serenity and absorbing sadness; elevation above earthly pleasures and conditions, and a pure cheerful enjoyment of the same; regal dignity and self-denying humbleness; vehement hatred toward sin and affectionate forbearance toward the sinner, all these qualities are combined in his nature in one inseparable whole, in the most perfect unison; and they leave on the spectator the lingering idea of peace and perfect subordination. Never was Jesus driven out of his own path; it was a quiet path, and always even. All the manifestations of his spiritual life have one great aim; his whole character has a unity that is perfect, complete within itself. This unity and completeness in the spiritual life of Jesus depends on the unity of the principle from which all his manifestations of feeling proceed, by which they are pervaded and animated. And this principle is not in any respect the abstract moral law; not in any respect, a mere endeavor, in conformity with the judgment, to act right and perform duty; but it is the simple, great, fundamental purpose, born out of free-hearted love, to do the will of God. It is apparent from multiplied expressions of Jesus, and from all his acts, that the will of his Father, which he was entirely certain that he perfectly understood, was the only rule and the living power of his conduct. To God, as the source of his spiritual life, was his soul ever turned; and this direction of his mind was a matter of indispensable necessity to him. It was his meat and his drink to do the will of the Father. Without uniting himself to God wholly, consecrating himself to God unreservedly, feeling himself to be perfectly one with God, he could not have lived; he could not have been at peace in his spirit a single instant. By this means, the mo

tion, etc., in his Ess. on Mor. pp. 125-128. 404-424, etc., exhibit a kind of emasculated principle, which would have shrunk back from making "a scourge of small cords." As in listening to a choir of music, we choose to perceive the harmony of the whole choir, rather than the prominence of one particular voice; as in viewing a monument of architecture, we choose to see a due proportion in the whole, rather than a protuberance of one particular part, so in surveying the character of Christ, it is more grateful and more useful, to notice its symmetry and exquisite balance, than to see any one of his virtues disturbed in its nice adjustment and magnified at the expense of others. A healthy mind will regard the Saviour as the impersonation of all the excellences duly blended, rather than as one who allows an individual excellence to transcend its line of proportion, and to assume the character, which has been assigned by the poet to a "virtue out of place."-TR.]

rality of Jesus became perfectly religious; it was not merely something which flowed from a sense of duty, it was a holy sentiment of the heart.

It is indeed true, as a saint who knew Christianity from the life, once said in his heart-winning way, “One might well consent to be branded and broken on the wheel, merely for the idea of such a character as Christ's; and if any one should be able to mock and deride, he must be insane. Every man, whose heart is in the right state, will lie in the dust, and rejoice, and adore." It is true; even as a bare idea, the spiritual image of Jesus, which the Bible holds out to us, is the most dignified and the most precious, which is known to our race. It is an idea, for which one may well be justified in offering up his life. For, we may boldly assert, this idea is the most sublime to which, in the province of morality and religion, the human mind has been raised. It is the jewel of humanity, and whoever knowingly tarnishes or disfigures it, commits an outrage against the majesty of the heaven-born soul of man, in its most beauteous manifestations. Let it be a fable, it is still the most noble truth, which has been either received or communicated by the human mind, and preponderates, even as a fable, over a thousand verities of ordinary experience. But it is not a fable; it is not a bare idea; for the man who was able to produce, from his own invention, such a character, such a pattern, must himself have possessed this greatness of soul, if we deny that he observed it in another. We must transfer the spiritual and moral greatness of Jesus to his biographer, if we deny it to himself. If we glance at the greatest characters which have been exquisitely portrayed to us by the creative power and art of the most gifted poets, do we find in these

2

The Wandsbeck Messenger, in the excellent letters to Andres, Letter I. [The reader will perceive that this is the same idea with that of Rousseau in his celebrated eulogium on the character of Christ. May not a man, some will ask, conceive of virtues which he does not practise, and imagine an excellence of character far above that which he will ever attain? That such an operation does not exceed the original powers of the mind, Ullmann would be willing to admit; but he intends to deny strongly, that men like the evangelists would in fact have ever originated the idea of a character like Christ's, and to maintain that such an operation would be as contrary to the usual processes of the mind, as if it exceeded the constitutional capacity. The moral wonder in the one case would be as improbable as the natural miracle in the other.-TR.]

characters anything like that which is developed in Jesus? And these plain, uncultivated, Jewish evangelists, they forsooth desired to invent such a character! they forsooth were able to invent it! How far, as an unaided man, did each of these writers of Memorabilia stand below Xenophon and Plato; and yet how high, in its silent majesty, stands the simple image of Jesus, which the unlettered evangelists present, above the character that is given to the wisest Greeks by the two masters of language and rhetoric!

SECTION V.

Two objections to the reception of the apostles' testimony respecting the sinlessness of Christ, stated and answered.-Testimony of Christ himself respecting his own sinlessness -Particular explanation of some expressions which he used concerning himself.-Objections to Christ's testimony stated and answered.

If then we cannot deny that the apostles, with entire unanimity, supposed Jesus to possess a nature perfectly sinless and holy, and that they gave, as evidence of the correctness of their supposition, a most vivid and true history of his unimpeachable deportment, we are still met by another objection which needs to be briefly consid ered. It is said for instance, "that in the nature of the case, the testimony of the apostles concerning Jesus, so far as they give it as a result of their own observation, must be merely negative; it must be merely, that they knew no sin which he had committed. For, in the first place, they knew Jesus only during the three years of his public office as a teacher, but not during his earlier life; in the second place, the moral worth of actions depends on the motive which determines them, and which can be judged of only by God.”1

As to the first objection, that the acquaintance of the apostles with the mind and conduct of Jesus, was limited to the period of his public ministry, and that they could not have known what moral

This train of thought is pursued by Weber, in the Programma above mentioned: Virtutis Jesu Integritas neque ex ipsius Professionibus, neque ex Actionibus doceri potest. Viteb. 1796. Bretschneider coincides with him, Dogmatik. § 138.

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