THE SPIRIT OF JESUS His Purity. We have considered the character of Jesus in his relation to his fellows and to God. We need now to look at that character as a whole. "And first of all we note its purity. The taint of sin is upon all other lives. We turn to them, the greatest and the best, who climbed the steep ascent to heaven Through peril, toil, and pain.' They are the victors who overcame, whose names we cheer. But the marks of the conflict are upon them all; the stain of dust is on their garments, and they have all known defeat. His life too had its struggles, but he alone bears no scars and shows no stains. Our saints of earth are the last to speak of freedom from sin; the higher men rise spiritually the more sensitive the conscience, the deeper the feeling of guilt. No men have ever uttered a deeper note of contrition than Paul or Augustine or Luther. No man had so clear a vision of sin as Jesus. No man ever made it so clear as the dark and damnable thing that it is. And yet he never once betrays even a passing sense of penitence or suggests a single time a consciousness of the need of forgiveness." His Positive and Passionate Righteousness.—The word "purity," like the word "sinlessness," has a suggestion of the negative about it. That is far from its meaning, however, in the case of Jesus. The thought of the church and the pictures of the artists have sometimes been at fault here. They have laid the whole stress on the meekness and mildness and patience of Jesus; he stands before us as a patient sufferer removed from all the interests as from all the evil of life. But the impression that we get from a fair study of the Gospels is very different. It is the positiveness of his character that we feel. His morality is no negative, colorless thing. His life, like his teaching, has a note of power and authority. His righteousness is not an absence of sin, but a flaming passion for the good. The traditional saint is one who turned from evil; Jesus faced it and fought it. Sometimes men have even stumbled at the burning words which Jesus flung at the Pharisees, or at the thought of a scourge of cords in the hands of the man of love. All this is but the mark of the positiveness and power of his righteousness. Our reaction against evil as against good is wont to be weak and intermittent; his was always quick and strong. Wherever he saw good in men, in their earnestness or good will or penitence, there he responded at once with sympathy and appreciation and help. Where he saw evil, the reaction was just as sure. And he flamed out against evil just because his love was so strong. There was nothing passive or negative in him. And because he set forth righteousness so positively, men had to take sides for or against him, as they have done ever since. A Wholesome Holiness. With this positiveness of Jesus' spirit there goes his wholesomeness. One might call it the wholeness, or true holiness, of his life. There is a certain piety which fears the world and thrives only by running from it. To such saints the joys of common life are a matter of suspicion. A robust health does not point to the Kingdom, and the way to God seems to lead away from the common and the human. This spirit of worldfear and world-flight may be found in the Protestant Church as well as elsewhere. The spirit of Jesus points the other way. There is a sanity and poise about him. There is a simple humanness in his ways. There is even a joyousness in his spirit. All life interested him, childhood at play, motherhood and home, men at their business, nature in its beauty. Especially was he a good companion-sociable, we sometimes say. There were homes that looked for his coming, close friends who shared his days and nights, and festal occasions where he was the chief guest. Because he was pure, he could welcome all good things without peril, and yet he never lost the highest among these lesser goods. The Balance and Completeness of His Character.-And to this we must add the completeness of the character of Jesus. It is a simple thing to say, it is a wonderful thing to realize, that Jesus represents not one type of achievement, however great, but the highest in all human life and relations. Among men, even the greatest, we find one quality or another preeminent. Francis of Assisi is the type of boundless love and gracious service. Brave Martin Luther was born for days which called for hard blows and a doughty spirit. The spirit of both is found in Jesus, and all else besides. The most opposite virtues are perfectly expressed in him. His is the spirit of perfect humility wholly dependent upon God; his is the courage and independence that stands unshaken before the world. There is a sympathy and tenderness about him like that of a woman; by its side there is a virility, a masterfulness, that no man has surpassed. To-day he gathers into his arms the little children, on the morrow his flaming passion sweeps the temple of its defilers. What love and gentleness are in him, and yet how stern, how unyielding he can be with others and with himself! He is a comrade of joy in the fellowship with men, but he knows also the night of prayer and the perfect fellowship with God. He was the most friendly of men, the supreme Friend, and yet no man was ever more lonely than he. The Example and Inspiration of All.-"What wonder that he speaks to every land and age, to every type of this race of ours. All have found their inspiration and ideal in him. In him is the spirit of all kind and tender mothers, of all loyal friends, and lovers of men. He has been the inspiration of purity and truth, of all high and noble manhood that has quickened our lesser lives. His is the spirit of faith that has made men quiet and strong when all the world opposed them; the spirit of courage and chivalry, of all defense of weakness and all high hatred of wrong and oppression; the spirit of love and devotion that calls for men to-day to fight against ancient wrong and new abuse, against oppression and cruel lust and hardened greed, and all things that make earth foul and curse the children of men; the spirit of glad and confident service that loves men and fights evil, and knows derful est, we this for site vine irit of his is ken befir about virility To-day ' le moms TS. W tern, bis self! B , but that the kingdom of sin must perish and the rule of God must come." The Imitableness of Jesus.-Long ago the church declared its belief in the full and complete humanity of Jesus, as in his full divinity. But that is not enough. Jesus is not only a man, he is the man. In him has been shown once for all what man should be, what he might be. And so we come to the wonderful fact of the imitableness of Jesus. It might be thought that this perfect life would by that fact be wholly removed from us and our endeavor. The saints whom the church has set up and the heroes. whom men sometimes glorify are often so removed from our imitation. We cannot all flee the world, or become martyrs, or work other marvelous deeds. But the reason why we cannot imitate these men is just because they are one-sided; and the reason we can follow Jesus is just because he is so complete. We can see, every one of us,, our highest life in him. "O Christ! the tender, loving one, In whom all deathless graces blend- To mingle with the mother-breast, DIRECTIONS FOR STUDY Scripture references: Matthew 11. 25-27; 26. 39; Mark 15. 2-5; 11. 15-17; 14. 32-35. Here again we must not limit ourselves to a few passages. Read the lesson discussion and give illustrations from the Gospels of each of the aspects of Jesus' character as discussed above. What other qualities, if any, would you suggest as characterizing Jesus' relation to his Father? Does the thought of his love for God occur to you? Is that included in what is said about God as being the passion of Jesus' life? How do men usually show their sense of sin? What would you think if the finest and best man that you know should intimate to you that he was not only without sin, but that he never had sinned? Can you think of Jesus as ever having sinned? Why not? CHAPTER XXVI THE HEART OF JESUS' MESSAGE-A SUMMARY It would be of little value to review this course perfunctorily chapter by chapter. But it will be well worth our while to pause long enough to ask what the heart of Jesus' message is. The great philosopher Kant once said that all the searchings of man might be summed up in three questions: What can I know? What must I do? What may I hope for? We will let these three questions give us the outline for a summary of Jesus' teaching. THE CHRISTIAN FAITH ACCORDING TO JESUS What We Need Most to Know.-There are lesser questions and larger questions of knowledge. Man is curious about the earth and the heavens, about the history of the past, and about himself; but the greatest question is the question about God. Every study leads to this at last. We study geology and biology and botany and the rest, but when we have finished we are still face to face with the real questions: Whence did this world come? What does it mean? Where is it going? We ask the same questions about our individual lives and about the human race and about the worlds above us. And there is no answer to any of these ultimate questions until we find God. God as the Answer to All Questions.—We have found that for Jesus God was not only the supreme interest of his life, but it was the thought of God that decided everything in his teaching. When we ask him what our life is to be, he does not give us a set of rules, but simply says, |