OUR purpose of treating in an apologetic point of view the sinlessness of Christ, leads us to consider this as manifested by the actual facts of His history. Hence our first task will be to establish these as historical facts in general are wont to be established,—on the one hand by credible testimony; on the other, by the undeniable effects resulting therefrom. With respect to the first point, we shall not confine ourselves to the testimony of others, but shall adduce that of Jesus Himself. For in this case we need for our full assurance the indissoluble concurrence of the two facts, that Jesus made upon others an inevitable impression that He was sinlessly perfect, and also that He was Himself both conscious of being absolutely free from sin, and ever ready unhesitatingly to affirm the same. With respect to the effects produced, moreover, all will depend upon our being able to exhibit such historical phenomena as can only be satisfactorily explained upon the supposition that the Lord Jesus was sinless; for it is evident, on the one hand, that if one perfectly pure and free from all sin did actually appear in the midst of an otherwise universally sinful race, so unique an occurrence could not fail to produce effects of an utterly peculiar, nay, of a unique kind; and, on the other, that if such historical phenomena actually exist, we are justified in inferring the reality of the cause from that of the effects.

These, then, are the chief points which we have to discuss in the following chapters. We start from the evidence, and draw inferences by referring to effects. With respect to evidence, moreover, we distinguish not merely between the testimony of others and the self-testimony of Christ, but also, as far as the former is concerned, between expressions of a general kind and that portraiture of the Lord Jesus, exhibiting as it does the minutest details of His character, delivered to us by the circle most intimately connected with Him.