I. Of these the first is mainly concerned with primary funda-

mental moral truth. It is in substance a call to repentance, and the proclamation of a new life. It is summarized in the words, ‘Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hands.’ A change of mind, both respecting self, and respecting God, was necessary before a man could lead the new life of the kingdom of heaven. Ina previous lecture we have had occasion to consider the king- dom of heaven as the outline or plan of a world-wide institution which was to take its place in history. But viewed in its relation to the life of the soul, the kingdom of heaven is the home and the native atmosphere of a new and higher order of spiritual exist- ence. This new life is not merely active thought, such as might be stimulated by the cross-questioning of a Socrates; nor is it moral force, the play of which was limited to the single soul that possessed it. It is moral and mental life, having God and men for its objects, and accordingly lived in an organized society, as the necessary counterpart of its energetic action. Of this stage of our Lord’s preaching, the Sermon on the Mount is the most representative document. The Sermon on the Mount preaches penitence by laying down the highest law of holiness. It con- trasts the externalized devotion, the conventional and worldly religion of the time, created and sanctioned by the leading cur- rents of public opinion, and described as the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, with a new and severe ideal of morality, embodied in the new law of Christian perfection. It stimulates and regulates penitence, by proposing a new conception of blessedness ; by contrasting the spirit of the new law with the literalism of the old; by exhibiting the devotional duties, the ruling motives, the characteristic temper, and the special dangers
5 St. Matt. iv. 17. [ LECT.
No confession of personal shortcomings. 165
of the new life. Incidentally the Sermon on the Mount states certain doctrines, such as that of the Divine Providence, with great explicitnesst; but, throughout it, the moral element is predominant. This great discourse quickens and deepens a sense of sin by presenting the highest ideal of an inward holi- ness. In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord is laying broad and deep the foundations of His spiritual edifice. A pure and loving heart; an open and trustful conscience; a freedom of communion with the Father of spirits; a love of man as man, the measure of which is to be nothing less than a man’s love of himself; above all a stern determination, at any cost, to be true, true with God, true with men, true with self ;—such are the pre-requisites for genuine discipleship; such the spiritual and subjective bases of the new and Absolute Religion; such the moral material of the first stage of our Lord’s public teaching.
In this first stage of our Lord’s teaching let us moreover note two characteristics.
(a) And first, that our Lord’s recorded language is absolutely wanting in a feature, which, on the supposition of His being merely human, would seem to have been practically indispensable. Our Lord does not place before us any relative or lower standard of morals. He proposes the highest standard; He enforces the absolute morality. ‘Be ye therefore perfect,’ He says, ‘even as your Father Which is in Heaven is perfect ἃ, Now in the case of a human teacher of high moral and spiritual attainments, what should we expect to be a necessary accompaniment of this teaching? Surely we should expect some confession of personal unworthiness thus to teach. We should look for some trace of a feeling (so inevitable in this pulpit) that the message which must be spoken is the rebuke, if not the condemnation, of the man who must speak it. Conscious of many shortcomings, a human teacher must at some time relieve his natural sense of honesty, his fundamental instinct of justice, by noting the dis- crepancy between his weak, imperfect, perhaps miserable self, and his sublime and awful message. He must draw a line, if I may so speak, between his official and his personal self; and in his personal capacity he must honestly, anxiously, persistently associate himself with his hearers, as being before God, like each one of themselves, a learning, struggling, erring soul. But Jesus Christ makes no approach to such a distinction between Himself
* St. Matt. vi. 25-33. a Ibid. v. 48.
166 The sense of sin commonly quickened by sanctity.
and His message. He bids men be like God, and He gives not the faintest hint that any trace of unlikeness to God in Himself obliges Him to accompany the delivery of that precept with a protestation of His own personal unworthiness. Do you say that this is only a rhetorical style or mood derived by tradition from the Hebrew prophets, and natural in any Semitic teacher who aspired to succeed them? I answer, that nothing is plainer in the Hebrew prophets than the clear distinction which is con- stantly maintained between the moral level of the teacher and the moral level of His message. The prophetic ambassador represents the Invisible King of Israel; but the holiness of the King is never measured, never compromised by the imperfec- tions of His representative. The prophetic writings abound in confessions of weakness, in confessions of shortcomings, in confessions of sin. The greatest of the prophets is permitted to see the glory of the Lord, and he forthwith exclaims in agony, ‘Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts ¥.’
But the silence of Jesus respecting any such sense of personal unworthiness has been accounted for by the unrivalled closeness of His life-long communion with God. Is it then certain that the holiest souls are least alive to personal sin? Do they whose life of thought is little less than the breath of a perpetual prayer, and who dwell continuously in the presence-chamber of the King of kings, profess themselves insensible to that taint of sin, from which none are altogether free? Is this the lesson which we learn from the language of the best of the servants of God? My brethren, the very reverse is the case. Those who have lived nearest to God, and have known most about Him, and have been most visibly irradiated by the light of His countenance, have been foremost to acknowledge that the ‘burden’ of remaining imperfection in themselves was truly ‘intolerable.’ Their eager protestations have often seemed to the world to be either the exaggerations of fanaticism, or else the proof of a more than ordinary wickedness. For blemishes which might have passed unobserved in a spiritual twilight, are lighted up with torturing clearness by those searching, scorching rays of moral truth, that stream from the bright Sanctity of God upon the soul that beholds It. In that Presence the holiest of creatures must own with the Psalmist, ‘Thou hast set our misdeeds before Thee, and
Υ Isa. vi. 5. [ ure.
SrentficanceofChrist’s senseof perfect sinlessness. 167
our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance*.’ Such self- accusing, broken-hearted confessions of sin have been the utter- ances of men the most conspicuous in Christendom for holiness of life; and no true saint of God ever supposed that by a con- stant spiritual sight of God the soul would lose its keen truthful sense of personal sinfulness. No man could presume that this sense of sinfulness, as distinct from the sense of unpardoned guilt, would be banished by close communion with God, unless his moral standard was low, and his creed imperfect. Any such presumption is utterly inconsistent with a true sight of Him Whose severe and stainless beauty casts the shadow of.failure upon all that is not Himself, and Who charges His very angels with moral folly.
Yet Jesus Christ never once confesses sin; He never once asks for pardon. Is it not He, Who so sharply rebukes the self-righteousness of the Pharisee? Might He not seem to ignore all human piety that is not based upon a broken heart? Does He not deal with human nature at large as the true prodigal, who must penitently return to a Father’s love as the one condition of its peace and blisst Yet He Himself never lets fall a hint, He Himself never breathes a prayer, which implies any, the slightest trace, of a personal remorsey. From no casual admission do we gather that any, the most venial sin, has ever been His. Never for one moment does He associate Himself with any passing experience of that anxious dread of the penal future with which His own awful words must needs fill the sinner’s heart. If His Soul is troubled, at least His moral sorrows are not His own, they are a burden laid on Him by His love for others. Nay, He challenges His enemies to convince Him of sin. He declares positively that He does always the will of the Father2, Even when speaking of Himself as Man, He always refers to eternal life as His inalienable possession. It might, so perchance we think, be the illusion of a moral dulness, if only He did not penetrate the sins of others with such relentless analysis. It might, we imagine, be a subtle pride, if we did not know Him to be so unrivalled in His great humility®. This consciousness
x Ps. xc. 8. Perowne observes that no New Testament writer ever ap~ plies Old Testament confessions of sinfulness to Jesus Christ. Psalms, i. p. 54. Cf. Mozley, Lectures, p. 125.
y Heb. vii. 27, where τοῦτο can only refer to ὑπὲρ τῶν τοῦ λαοῦ ἀναφέρειν : cf ὕσιος, ἄκακος, K.T.A., ver. 26.
5 St. John viii. 46, ibid. ver. 29, cf. ver. 26; cf. Lect. I. p. 23. note ἢ.
® Hollard, Caracttre de Jésus-Christ, p. 150. Cf. also Ullmann, Siind- a Th. I. Kap. 3. 84. The frivolous objections to our Lord’s ἐν
168 Authoritative character of Christ’s teaching.
of an absolute sinlessness in such a Soul as that of Jesus Christ, points to a moral elevation unknown to our actual human expe- rience. It is, at the very least, suggestive of a relation to the Perfect Moral Being altogether unique in human history», ©
sinlessness which are urged from St. Luke ii. 41-52, St. Matt. xxi. 12-17, and 17-22, and from His relation to Judas, are discussed in this work, Th. 1Π1, Kap. 1. § 4. This interesting writer however, while asserting non peccdsse of our Lord, falls short of Catholic truth in denying to Him the ‘non posse peccare. The objections advanced by M. F. Pecant in his Le Christ et la Conscience, 1859, are plainly a result of that writer’s Humani- tarianism., Our Lord’s answers to His Mother, His cursing the barren fig- tree, His sending the devils into the herd of swine, His driving the money- changers from the temple, and His last denunciations against the Pharisees, present no difficulty to those who see in Him the Lord, as well as the Son of Mary, the Maker and Owner of the world of nature, the Searcher and Judge of human hearts. Cf. also note C.
b Cf. Mr. F. W. Newman, in his Phases of Faith, p.143: ‘We have a very imperfect history of the Apostle James; and I do not know that I could adduce any fact specifically recorded concerning him in disproof of his absolute moral perfection, if any of his Jerusalem disciples had chosen to set up this as a dogma of religion. Yet no one would blame me as morose, or indisposed to acknowledge genius and greatness, if I insisted on believing Janes to be frail and imperfect, while admitting that I knew almost nothing about him. And why? Singly and surely, because we know him to be a man: that suffices. To set up James or John or Daniel as my model and my Lord; to be swallowed up in him, and press him upon others as a uni- versal standard, would be despised as a self-degrading idolatry, and resented as an obtrusive favouritism. Now why doés not the same equally apply if the name Jesus be substituted for these? Why, in defect of all other knowledge than the bare fact of his manhood, are we not unhesitatingly to take for granted that he does not exhaust all perfection, and is at best only one amongst many brethren and equals?’ The answer is that we have to choose between believing in Christ’s moral perfection, and condemning Him of being guilty either of spiritual blindness or hypocrisy (see Ullmann, ubi sup.); and that His teaching, His actions, and (Mr. Newman will allow us to add) His supernatural credentials, taken together, make believing Him to be sinless the easier alternative. But Mr. Newman’s remarks are of substantial value, as indirectly shewing, from a point of view much further removed from Catholic belief than Socinianism itself, how steadily a recognition of our Lord’s moral perfection as Man tends to promote an acceptance of the truth that He isGop. ‘If,’ says Mr. Newman, ‘I were already convinced that this person [he means our Lord] was a great Unique, separated from all other men by an impassable chasm in regard to his physical origin, I (for one) should be much readier to believe that he was unique and unapproach- able in other respects ; for all God’s works have an internal harmony. It could not be for nothing that this exceptional personage was sent into the world. That he was intended for head of the human race in one or more senses, would be a plausible opinion; nor should I feel any incredulous repugnance against believing his morality to be, if not divinely perfect, yet separated from that of common men so far that he might be a God to us, just as every parent is to a young child,’ Ibid. p. 142. [
LECT.
Tis claim to revise the Sinartic Revelation. 169
(8) The other characteristic of this stage of our Lord’s teach- ing is the attitude which He at once and, if I may so say, naturally assumes, not merely towards the teachers of His time, but towards the letter of that older, divinely-given Revelation which they preserved and interpreted. The people early remarked that Jesus ‘taught as One having authority, and not as the Scribes¢. The Scribes reasoned, they explained, they balanced argument against argument, they appealed to the critical or verifying faculty of their hearers. But here is a Teacher, Who sees truth intuitively, and announces it simply, without con- descending to recommend it by argument. He is a Teacher, moreover, not of truth obvious to all, but of truth which might have seemed to the men who first heard it-to be what we should call paradoxical. He condemns in the severest language the doctrine and the practice of the most influential religious au- thorities among His countrymen. He takes up instinctively a higher position than He assigns to any who had preceded Him in Israel. He passes in review, and accepts or abrogates not merely the traditional doctrines of the Jewish schools, but the Mosaic law itself. His style runs thus: ‘It was said ¢o them of old time, ... but I say unto youd’
Here too it is necessary to protest against statements which imply that this authoritative teaching of Jesus was merely a continuation of the received prophetical style. It is true that the prophets gave prominence to the moral element in the teaching of the Pentateuch, that they expanded it, and that so far they anticipated one side of the ministry of Jesus Himself. But the prophets always appealed to a higher sanction; the prophetic argument addressed to the conscience of Israel was ever, ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ How significant, how full of im- port as to His consciousness respecting Himself is our Lord’s customary phrase, ‘ Verily, I say unto youe.’ What prophet ever set himself above the great Legislator, above the Law written by the finger of God on Sinai? What prophet ever undertook to ratify the Pentateuch as a whole, to contrast his own higher morality with some of its precepts in detail, to imply even remotely that he was competent to revise that which every Israelite knew to be the handiwork of God? What prophet ever
© St. Matt. vii. 29.
4 Ibid. v. 27. For the translation of τοῖς ἀρχαίοις, see Archbishop Trench on Auth. Vers. of New Testament, p. 79.
5 ἀμὴν λέγω, «.7.A. occurs forty-nine times in the Synoptic Gospels; in St. i ohn ἀμὴν, ἀμήν, twenty-five times. IV
170 Why Christ provoked unfriendly scrutiny.
thus implicitly placed himself on a line of equality, not with Moses, not with Abraham, but with the Lord God Himself? So momentous a claim requires explanation if the claimant be only human. This impersonation of the source of moral law must rest upon some basis: what is the basis on which it rests ?
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus Christ does not deign to justify His lofty critical and revisionary attitude towards the ancient Law. He neither explains nor exaggerates His power to review the older revelation, and to reveal new truth. He simply teaches; He abrogates, He establishes, He sanctions, He unfolds, as the case may be, and in a tone which implies that His right to teach is not a matter for discussion.
It was inevitable that the question should be asked, anxiously, earnestly, fiercely, ‘Who is This Teacher?’ I say, it was inevit- able, for if you teach the lowest moral truth, in the humblest sphere, your right to do so will sooner or later be called in question. To teach moral truth is to throw down a challenge to human nature, human nature being such as it actually is, that is to say, conscious of more or less disloyalty to the moral light which it already possesses, and indisposed to become re- sponsible for knowledge of a yet higher standard of moral truth, the existence of which it may alr eady suspect. Accordingly the challenge which is thus made is generally met by a sharp counter- scrutiny into the claims, be they personal or official, of the teacher who dares to make it, This penalty of teaching can only be escaped either in certain rare and primitive conditions of society, or else when the teacher fails to do his duty. Mis- sionaries have described savage tribes whose sense of ignorance was too sincere, and who were too grateful for knowledge, to take umbrage at the practical bearings of a new doctrine. Poets have sung of ancestors
‘Qui preceptorem sancti voluere parentis Esse loco !,’ Generally speaking, however, an immunity from criticism is to be secured by signal inefficiency, feebleness, or disloyalty to prin- ciple, on the part of the teacher. A teacher of morals may have persuaded his conscience that the ruling worldly opinion of his time can safely be regarded as its court of final appeal. He may have forced his thought to shape itself with prudent docility into those precise conventionalities of expression which are understood tv mean nothing, or which have lost their power. In such a
£ Juv. vii. 209. [ LEcT.
Why Christ provoked unfriendly scrutiny. 17%
case too it may happen that the total failure to achieve moral and spiritual victories will not necessarily entail on the teacher complete social or professional obscurity, while it will certainly protect him against any serious liability to hostile interference.
Picture to yourselves, on the contrary, a teacher who is not merely under the official obligation to say something, but who is morally convinced that he has something to say. Imagine one who believes alike in the truth of his message and in the reality of his mission to deliver it. Let his message combine those moral contrasts which give permanency and true force to a doctrine, and which the Gospel alone has combined in their per- fection. Let this teacher be tender, yet searching; let him win the hearts of men by his kindly humanity, while he probes, aye to the quick, their moral sores. Let him be uniformly calm, yet manifestly moved by the fire of repressed passion. Let him be stern yet not unloving, and resolute without sacrificing the elasticity of his sympathy, and genial without condescending to be the weakly accomplice of moral mischief. Let him pursue and expose the latent evil of the human heart through all the mazes of its unrivalled deceitfulness, without sullying his own purity, and without forfeiting his strong belief in the present capacity of every human being for goodness. Let him ‘know what is in man,’ and yet, with this knowledge clearly before him, let him not only not despair of humanity, but respect it, nay love it, even enthusiastically. Above all, let this teacher be perfectly independent. Let him be independent of the voice of the multitude; independent of the enthusiasm and promptings of his disciples; independent even when face to face with the bitter criticism and scorn of his antagonists; independent of all save God and his conscience. In a word, conceive a case in which moral authority and moral beauty combine to elicit a simultaneous tribute of reverence and of love. Clearly such a teacher must be a moral power; and as a consequence, his claim to teach must be scrutinized with a severity proportioned to the interest which he excites, and to the hostility which he cannot hope to escape provoking. And such a Teacher, or rather much more than this, was Jesus Christ our Lord.
Nor is this all. The scrutiny which our Lord thus necessarily encountered from without was responded to, or rather it was anticipated, by self-discovery from within. ‘The soul,’ it has been said, ‘like the body, has its pores; and in a sincere soul the pores of its life are always open. Instinctively, uncon- ἀξ κου and whether a man will or not, the insignificance or ἘΥ
172 Second stage of our Lord’s Teaching.
the greatness of the inner life always reveals itself. In our Lord this self-revelation was not involuntary, or accidental, or forced ; it was in the highest degree deliberate. He knew the thoughts of those about Him, and He anticipated their ex- pression. He placed beyond a doubt, by the most explicit statements, that which might have been more than suspected, if He had only preached the Sermon on the Mount.