AS we have before remarked, a mathematical or logically incontrovertible certainty is, with respect to our subject, impossible. Hence no proofs can be adduced which will absolutely exclude all doubts. Nor are doubts by any means lacking; for while many modern theologians have merely taken up a sceptical position with regard to sinlessness, there are others who have stated reasons which are sufficiently plausible to make a discussion of them needful. Such a discussion we are the more inclined to enter upon in the following pages, because the questions hence arising have not as yet been treated in the full and connected manner which the subject demands.¹³²¹³²   For a more cursory view of these questions, see Lutz. Biblische Dogmata, pp. 294-299; and Schumann, Christus, vol. i. pp. 289-296.

The objections which have been raised may, in a general way, be classed as follows:—One class rests on a denial of the actual sinlessness of Jesus; the other on a denial of the possibility of sinlessness at all in the sphere of human life. In the former case the sinlessness of Jesus is impugned, partly on the ground of its being inconsistent with that law of development which is applied to Him in reference both to His character and His work; partly as at variance with the 108idea of temptation and partly on the ground of distinct utterances and facts recorded of Him.. In the second case, the objections to the sinlessness of Jesus are drawn, on the one hand, from experience on the other, from the very nature of the idea of sinlessness and the mode of its realization. These last objections are therefore partly empirical, and partly speculative, in their nature.

Adopting this classification, we shall proceed from that which is special to that which is general,—from that which is less important to that which is more so. That doubt is of less moment, and does not directly assail the character of Jesus, which hints that if He passed through a development at all, He must have begun in imperfection, and have risen gradually to perfection. We shall find it harder to reconcile with our idea of sinlessness, the notion that Jesus could have felt inwardly drawn towards evil when exposed to temptation while the strongest objection of all would be a really immoral utterance or deed. But, even supposing all that might be urged under these heads were answered, this would be of no avail, if it could be proved that sinless perfection is altogether impossible in the region of human existence, if experience or the nature of the moral idea witnessed unanswerably against its realization in a human being.

These are the difficulties which meet us here. In endeavouring to surmount them in the order above given, we shall of course labour to keep duly separate that which is essentially distinct but since objections of both kinds glide to a certain degree into each other, many difficulties must needs be touched upon in the first part, the more complete solution of which must be reserved to the second.