JESUS CHRIST, viewed simply as a sinless and holy being, is undoubtedly a phenomenon of extreme significance, and must be admitted, on this account alone, to be invested with incomparable dignity and unimpeachable majesty.²²⁹²²⁹   The immeasurable pre-eminence of Jesus, as the absolutely perfect One, is shown especially in the fact that no delineation of His life and character can possibly exhaust its subject, and that His moral greatness does but appear the more exalted in proportion to the elevation attained in a moral sense by him who contemplates it. It might be said that, in this case, as in that of lofty mountains, the whole altitude is not apparent until the observer stands upon an opposite height. The comparison, however, fails, because it deals with an elevation which, after all, it is possible to attain and to measure while the moral eminence of Jesus, on the contrary, is a height ever unattainable by us. The absolute and majestic pre-eminence of the morals phenomenon presented by the life of Christ, as bearing on it the direct impress of the Divine, has been well brought forward by Ph. A. Stapfer in his Versuch eines Beweises der göttlichen Sendung and Würde Jesu aus seinem Charakter, Bern 1797, rendered into French in Vinet’s Mélanges Philosophiques par Stapfer, Paris 1844, vol. ii. pp. 464-514: see especially pp. 467 and 493-95. To the two sublimities asserted by Kant, viz. the starry heavens above, and the moral law within us, Stapfer beautifully adds a third, viz. the fulfilment of the moral law without us, in the Person of Jesus Christ (p. 494, note 1). I would also refer the reader to Dandiran sur la Divinité du Caractère Moral de Jesus Christ, Geneva 1850. But when this fact of sinless perfection is admitted, it is directly felt that this cannot, like many other qualities, be present only in one or in another condition of the mental life, but that 181it necessarily presupposes a totality of this life, from which it then springs forth as its best and loveliest blossom. Sinless perfection, being itself extraordinary, either requires, in the person in whom it is manifested, something else which is extraordinary, or will produce this as its natural consequence. If we would, however, know what this something else is, we must first of all learn it from the lips of Him who is Himself sinlessly perfect. For, apart from the consideration that, even in this respect, He alone could know with certainty who or what He was, His own statement on the matter must have, à priori, decided authority for us. Even in the case of a person distinguished for mental and moral eminence in a general sense, we should lay special stress upon such disclosures as he was pleased to make concerning himself; how much more, then, upon His, who is so supremely preeminent! But while, in the former instance, a claim to be somewhat extraordinary might seem to justify us in questioning and investigating the fact, the case is altered when this claim is made by one who, whether in living, dying, or suffering, proved Himself to be sinlessly perfect. When He who is holiness calls Himself also the Truth, and when He who has proved Himself to be the true Son of Man, represents Himself to be at the same time the Son of God, and ascribes to Himself a relation entirely peculiar with respect both to God and man, such a statement commands a reverential 182and believing acceptance, by virtue of the holiness of Him who makes it. It is in this sense that we may well lay down the axiom, that a perfectly holy being is that which He plainly and decidedly declares Himself to be. It is not, however, our purpose to appeal, in this case, to the sayings of Christ alone as valid authority, apart from any other consideration. On the contrary, we shall endeavour, at the same time, to prove that those inferences on which faith in Jesus Christ, in the sense intended, is grounded, are the natural consequences of His sinlessness.

It must be always in a measure detrimental, in the case of a personality of essential unity, to represent it according to the several elements of which it is composed. The impression of dismemberment thus given is at variance with that organic connection with a common centre which really exists. And yet it is only by viewing an object, first in one, then in another, of its individual aspects, that we arrive at a comprehension of the whole. This method, then, must be pursued even in our contemplation of the Person of Jesus Christ, yet in such wise as to maintain our consciousness of the ever vital connection existing between its separate components. In this sense, but in this sense only, do we propose to contemplate, each by itself, the different sides of His Person, for the purpose of considering what light is thrown upon it by His sinless perfection. Our remarks, then, as is self-evident, will relate to those two chief sides of His nature, according to which our whole subject is divided,—to the human and the Divine, the Son of Man and the Son of God.