III. In order to do justice to the significance of our Lord’s

9 St. John v. 17, 18. Ἢ Ibid. viii. 58, 59. ® Ibid. x. 30, 31, 39.
h Tbid. vi. 42. 1 St. Matt. ix. 3; St. Luke v. 20, 21.
k Salvador, Jésus-Christ, ii, pp. 132, 133, 195: ‘La question avait un cété politique ou national juif: c’était la résistance du Fils de Marie, dans Jérusalem méme, aux ordres et avertissements du grand Conseil. Au point de vue religieux, selon la loi, Jésus se trouvait en cause pour s’étre déclaré égal ἃ Dieu et Dieu lui-méme.’ See also the Rev. W. Wilson’s Illustration of the Method of Explaining the New Testament, p. 77, sqq. Mr. Wilson shews that the Sanhedrin sincerely believed our Lord to be guilty of the crime of blasphemy, as inseparable, to a Jewish apprehension, from His claim to be Divine. This is argued (1) from the regularity of the proceedings of the Sanhedrin, the length of the trial, and the earnest- ness and unanimity of the judges. The false witnesses were considered as such by the Sanhedrin: our Lord was condemned on the strength of His Own confession; (2) from the language of the members of the Sanhedrin before Pilate: ‘By our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God;’ (3) from the fact that the members of the Sanhedrin had no material object to gain by pronouncing Jesus guilty, without being persuaded of His criminality in claiming to be a Divine Person. Mr. Wilson fortifies these considerations by appealing to our Lord’s silence, to St. Peter’s address to his countrymen in Acts iii. 14-17, and to the general conduct of the Jewish people,
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Christ's Self-assertion and Fits character. 195
language about Himself, let us for a moment reflect on our very fundamental conceptions of His character. There is indeed a certain seeming impropriety in using that word ‘character’ with respect to Jesus Christ at all. For in modern language character’ generally implies the predominance or the absence of some side or sides of that great whole, which we picture to ourselves in the background of each individual man as the true and complete ideal of human nature. This predominance or absence of particular traits or faculties, this precise combination of active or of passive qualities, determines the moral flavour of each individual life, and constitutes character. Character is that whereby the individual is marked off from the presumed standard or level of typical manhood. Yet the closest analysis of the actual Human Life of Jesus reveals a moral Portrait not only unlike any that men have witnessed before or since, but especially remarkable in that it presents an equally balanced and entirely harmonious representation of all the normal elements of our perfected moral naturel Still, we may dare to ask the question: What are the features in that perfectly harmonious moral Life, upon which the reverence and the love of Christians dwells most constantly, most thankfully, most enthusiastically ? 1. If then on such a subject I may utter a truism without irreverence, I say first of all that Jesus Christ was sincere. He possessed that one indispensable qualification for any teacher, specially for a teacher of religion: He believed in what He said, without reserve; and He said what He believed, without regard to consequences. Material error is very pardonable, if it be error which in good faith believes itself to be truth. But evident insincerity we cannot pardon; we cannot regard with any other sentiment than that of indignation the conscious propagation of what is known to be false, or even to be exaggerated. If however the sincerity of our Lord could be reasonably called in question, it might suffice, among the various facts which so irresistibly establish it, to point to His dealings with persons who followed and trusted Him. It is easy to denounce the errors of men who
1 Young, Christ of History, p. 217: ‘The difficulty which we chiefly feel in dealing with the character of Christ, as it unfolded itself before men, arises from its absolute perfection. On this very account it is less fitted to arrest observation. A single excellence unusually developed, though in the neighbourhood of great faults, is instantly and universally attractive. Per- fect symmetry, on the other hand, does not startle, and is hidden from common and casual observers. But it is this which belongs emphatically to the Christ of the Gospels; and we distinguish in Him at each moment that precise manifestation which is most natural and most right.’
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196 Stucerity of Fesus Christ.
oppose us; but it is difficult to be always perfectly outspoken with those who love us, or who look up to us, or whose services may be of use to us, and who may be alienated by our out- spokenness. Now Jesus Christ does not merely drag forth to the light of day the hidden motives of His powerful adversaries, that He may exhibit them with so mercifully implacable an accuracy, in all their baseness and pretension. He exposes, with equal impartiality, the weakness, or the unreality, or the self- deception of others who already regard Him with affection or who desire to espouse His cause. A disciple addresses him as ‘Good Master.’ The address was in itself sufficiently justifiable ; but our Lord observed that the speaker had used it in an unreal and conventional manner. In order to mark His displeasure He solemnly asked, ‘ Why callest thou Me good? There is none good but One, that is, God ™,” A multitude which He has fed miracu- lously returns to seek Him on the following day; but instead of silently accepting this tacit proof of His popular power, He observes, ‘Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled 2.’ On another occasion, we are told, ‘there went great multitudes with Him.’ He turns, warns them that all human affections must be sacrificed to His service, and that none could be His disciple who does not take up the cross®. He solemnly bids men ‘count the cost’ before they ‘build the tower’ of discipleshipP. He is on the point of being deserted by all, and an Apostle protests with fervid exaggeration that he is ready to go with Him to prison or to death. But our Lord, instead of at once welcoming the affection which dictated this protestation, pauses to shew Simon Peter how little he really knew of the weakness of his own heart49. With the woman of Samaria, with Simon the Pharisee, with the Jews in the temple, with the rich young man, it is ever the same; Christ cannot flatter, He cannot disguise, He cannot but set forth truth in its limpid purity". Such was His moral attitude throughout: sin- cerity was the mainspring of His whole thought and action; and when He stood before His judges, He could exclaim, in this as in a wider sense, ‘To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth ®.’ Surely this sincerity of our Holy Saviour is even at this hour a main secret of His attractive power. Men, we know, may
m St. Mark x. 18. » St. John vi. 26. ο St. Luke xiv. 26, 27.
P Thid. ver. 28. a St. John xiii. 37, 38.
τ Cf. Newman, Parochial Sermons, vol. v. p. 37, serm. 3: ‘Unreal Words.’ ᾿ 5. St. John xviii. 37.
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flatter and deceive, till at length the soul grows sick and weary of a world, which Truth in her stern simplicity might some- times seem to have abandoned. But Jesus Christ, speaking to us from the Gospel pages, or speaking in the secret chainbers of conscience, is a Monitor Whom we can trust to tell us the un- welcome but wholesome truth; and could we conceive of Him as false, He would no longer be Himself in our thought; He would not be changed; He would simply have disappeared t.
2. A second moral truism: Jesus Christ was unselfish. His Life was a prolonged act of Self-sacrifice; and sacrifice of self is the practical expression and measure of unselfishness. It might have seemed that where there was no sin to be curbed or worn away by sorrow and pain, there room might have been found for a lawful measure of self-satisfaction. But ‘even Christ pleased not Himself” He ‘sought not His own glory;’ ‘He came not to do His Own will¥” His Body and His Soul, with all the faculties, the activities, the latent powers of each, were offered to the Divine Will. His friends, His relatives, His mother and His home, His pleasure, His reputation, His repose, were all abandoned for the glory of God and for the good of His brethren. His Self-sacrifice included the whole range of His human thought and affection and action; it lasted throughout His Life ; its highest expression was His Death upon the Cross. Those who believe Him to have been merely a man endowed with the power of working miracles, or even only with the power of wielding vast moral influence over masses of men, cannot but recognise the rare loveliness and sublimity of a Life in which great powers were consciously possessed, yet were never exercised for those objects which the selfish instinct of ordinary men would naturally pursue. It is this disinterested- ness; this devotion to the real interests of humankind; this radical antagonism of His whole character to that deepseated selfishness, which in our better moments we men hate in our- selves and which we always hate in others ;—it is this complete
* Félix, Jésus-Christ, p. 316; Channing, Works, ii. 55: ‘When I trace the unaffected majesty which runs through the life of Jesus, and see Him never falling below His sublime claims amidst poverty, and scorn, and in His last agony, I have a feeling of the reality of His character which I cannot express. I feel that the Jewish carpenter could no more have con- ceived and sustained this character under motives of imposture, than an infant’s arm could repeat the deeds of Hercules, or his unawakened in- tellect comprehend and rival the matchless works of genius.’
ae XV. 3; St. John v. 30, vi. 38; St. Matt. xxvi. 39.
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renunciation of all that has no object beyond self, which has won to Jesus Christ the heart of mankind. In Jesus Christ we hail the One Friend Who loves perfectly; Who expresses perfect love by the utter surrender of Self; Who loves even unto death. In Jesus Christ we greet the Good Shepherd of humanity; He is the Good Shepherd under Whose care we can lack nothing, and Whose glory it is that He ‘giveth His Life for the sheep*.’
3. Athird moral truism: Jesus Christ was humble. He might have appeared, even to human eyes, as ‘One naturally con- tented with obscurity ; wanting the restless desire for eminence and distinction which is so common in great men; hating to put forward personal claims; disliking competition and dis- putes who should be greatest; ... fond of what is simple and homely, of children, and poor people . It might have almost seemed as if His preternatural powers were a source of distress and embarrassment to Him; so eager was He to economize their exercise and to veil them from the eyes of men. He was particularly careful that His miracles should not add to His reputation%. Again and again He very earnestly enjoined silence on those who were the subjects of His miraculous cures®. He would not gratify persons whose motive in seeking His com- pany was a vain curiosity to see the proofs of His power >. By this humility is Jesus Christ most emphatically distinguished from the philosophers of the ancient world. Whatever else they may have been, they were not humble. But Jesus Christ loses His individuality if you separate Him in thought for one moment from His ‘great humility.’ His humility is the key to His whole life; it is the measuring-line whereby His actions, His sufferings,-His words, His very movements must be meted in order to be understood. ‘Learn of Me,’ He says, ‘for I am meek and lowly of heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls¢,’
But what becomes of these integral features of His character if, after considering the language which He actually used about Himself, we should go on to deny that He is God?
Is He, if He be not God, really humble? Is that reiterated Self-assertion, to the accents of which we have been listening this morning, consistent with any known form of creaturely humility? Can Jesus thus bid us believe in Him, love Him,
x St. John x. 11, Υ Ecce Homo, pp. 178, 179. * St. Luke viii. 51. 5 St. Matt. ix. 30: ἐνεβριμήσατο: xii. 16: ἐπετίμησεν αὐτοῖς. > St. Mark viii. 11, 12; St. Matt. xvi. 1, 4; St. Luke xi. 16; St. John vi. 30. © St. Matt. xi. 29. [ LECT.
Is Fesus Christ humble, tf Herts not Gop? 199
obey Him, live by Him, live for Him; can He thus claim to be the universal Teacher and the universal Judge, the Way, the Truth, the Life of humanity,—if He be indeed only man? What is humility but the honest recognition of truth respecting self? Could any mere man claim that place in thought, in society, in history, that authority over conscience, that rela- tionship to the Most High; could he claim such powers and duties, such a position, and such prerogatives as are claimed by Jesus Christ, and yet be justly deemed ‘meek and lowly of heart’? If Christ is God as well as Man, His language falls into its place, and all is intelligible; but if you deny His Divinity, you must conclude that some of the most precious sayings in the Gospel are but the outbreak of a preposterous self-laudation; they might well seem to breathe the very spirit of another Lucifer 4,
If Jesus Christ be not God, is He really unselfish? He bids men make Himself the centre of their affections and their thoughts; and when God does this He is but recalling man to that which is man’s proper duty, to the true direction and law of man’s being. But deny Christ’s Divinity, and what will you say of the disinterestedness of His perpetual self-assertion®?
4 Mr. F. W. Newman, Phases of Faith, p. 154: ‘When I find his high satisfaction at all personal recognition and bowing before his individuality, I almost doubt whether, if one wished to draw the character of a vain and vacillating pretender, it would be possible to draw anything nearer to the purpose than this.’ (p. 158), ‘I can no longer give the same human reverence as before to one who has been seduced into vanity so egregious [as to claim to be the Son of Man].’ So our Lord’s parabolical sayings are said (p. 153) to ‘indicate vanity and incipient sacerdotalism ;’ (p. 157), His tone, in deal- ing with the rich young man, is ‘magisterial, decisive, and final,’ so as to keep up ‘his own ostentation of omniscience;’ His precept bidding men receive those whom He sent (Matt. x. 40) suggests the observation that inasmuch as the disciples ‘had no claims whatever, intrinsic or extrinsic, to reverence, it appears to me a very extravagant and fanatical sentiment thus to couple the favour or wrath of Gop with their reception or rejection’ (p. 157). Compare Félix, Jésus-Christ, pp. 301-322.
9 M. Renan accounts for our Lord’s self-assertion in the following manner: ‘Tl ne préchait pas ses opinions, il se préchait lui-méme. Souvent des ames tres-grandes et trés-désintéressées présentent, associé & beaucoup d’élévation, ce caractére de perpétuelle attention ἃ elles-mémes, et d’extréme suscepti- bilité personnelle, qui en général est le propre des femmes. Leur persuasion que Dieu est en elles et s’occupe perpétuellement d’elles est si forte qu’elles ne craignent nullement de s’imposer aux autres.’ (Vie de Jésus, p. 76.) Accordingly, we are told that ‘Jésus ne doit pas étre jugé sur la régle de nos petites convenances. L’admiration de ses disciples le débordait et l’en- trainait. I] est évident que le titre de Rabbi, dont il s’était d’abord content ne } suffisait plus; le titre méme de prophéte ou d’envoyé de Dieu ne ré- Iv
200 Ls Fesus Christ unselfish, if Herts not Gov?
What matters it that He teaches the ‘enthusiasm of humanity,’ if that enthusiasm was after all to centre in a merely human self, and to surround His human presence with a tribute of superhuman honour? What avails it that He proclaims the law of self-renouncement, if He is Himself thus guilty of its signal infraction? Nay, for what generous purpose can He still be held to have died upon the Cross? The Cross is indeed for Christians the symbol and the throne of a boundless Love; but it is only such to those who believe in the Divinity of the Crucified. Deny the truth of Christ’s account of Himself; deny the over- - whelming moral necessity for His perpetual Self-assertion ; and His Death may assume another aspect. For He plainly courted death by His last denunciations against the Pharisees, and by His presence at a critical moment in Jerusalem. That He was thus voluntarily slain and has redeemed us by His Blood is indeed the theme of the praises which Christians daily offer Him on earth and in paradise. But if He be not the Divine Victim freely offering Himself for men upon the altar of the Cross, may He not be what Christian lips cannot force themselves to utter? You urge that in any case He would be a man freely devoting himself for truth and goodness. But it is precisely here that His excessive self-assertion would impair our confidence in the purity of His motive. Is not self-sacrifice, even when pushed to the last extremity, a suspected and tainted thing, when it goes hand in hand with a consistent effort to give unwarranted prominence to self? Have not men ere now even risked death for the selfish, albeit unsubstantial, object of a posthumous renownf? If Jesus was merely man, and His death no more than the fitting close, the supreme effort of a life consistently devoted to the assertion of self, has He not ‘succeeded beyond
pondait plus & sa pensée. La position qu'il s’attribuait était celle d’un étre surhumain, et il voulait qu’on le regardat comme ayant avec Dieu un rap- port plus élevé que celui des autres hommes.’ (Vie de Jésus, p. 246.) £ Newman, Phases, p. 158: ‘When he had resolved to claim Messiahship publicly, one of two results was inevitable, if that claim was ill-founded :— viz., either he must have become an impostor in order to screen his weak- ness ; or he must have retracted his pretensions amid much humiliation and have retired into privacy to learn sober wisdom. rom these. alternatives there was escape only by death, and upon death Jesus purposely rushed.’ (p. 161.) ‘Does my friend deny that the death of Jesus was wilfully in- curred? The “orthodox” not merely admit but maintain it. Their creed justifies it by the doctrine that his death was a “‘sacrifice’* so pleasing to Gop as to expiate the sins of the world. This honestly meets the objec- tions to self-destruction ; for how better could life be used than by laying it down for such a prize.’ [ LECT.
Is Fesus Christ sincere, f Hers not Gop? 201
the dreams of the most delirious votary of fame? If the blood of a merely human Christ was the price which was deliberately paid for glory on Mount Calvary, then it is certain that the sufferer has had his reward. But at least he died, only as others have died, who have sought and found at the hands of their fellow-men, in death as in life, a tribute of sympathy, of ad- miration, of honour. And we owe to such a sufferer nothing beyond the compassionate silence wherewith charity would fain veil the violence of selfishness, robed in her garments, and seeking to share her glory and her power, while false to the very vital principle which makes her what she is8.’
Once more, if Jesus Christ is not God, can we even say that He is sincere»? Let us suppose that it were granted, as it is by no means granted, that Jesus Christ nowhere asserts His literal Godheadi. Let us suppose that He was after all merely man, and had never meant to do more than describe, in the language of mysticism, the intertwining of His human Soul with the Spirit of God, in a communion so deep and absorbing as to obliterate His sense of distinct human personality. Let this, I say, be supposed to have been His meaning, and let His sincerity be taken for granted. Who then shall anticipate the horror of His soul or the fire of His words, when He is once made aware of the terrible misapprehension to which His language has given
& Félix, Jésus-Christ, p. 314; Young, The Christ of History, p. 229.
h Newman, Phases, p. 154: ‘It sometimes seems to me the picture of a conscious and wilful impostor. His general character is too high for this ; and I therefore make deductions from the account. Still I do not see how the present narrative could have grown up, if he had been really simple and straightforward and not perverted by his essentially false position.’ Mr. Newman is complaining that our Lord ‘does not honestly and plainly renounce pretension to niracle, as Mr. Martineau would,’ but his language obviously suggests a vider application. (p. 158.) ‘I feel assured, & priori, that such presumption [85 that of claiming to be the Son of Man of Dan. vii.] must have entangled tim into evasions and insincerities, which naturally end in crookedness of conscience and real imposture, however noble a man’s commencement, and however unshrinking his sacrifice of goods and ease and life.’
1 M. Renan indeed says, ‘Jésus n’énonce pas un moment l’idée sacrilége quil soit Dieu.’ (Vie de Jésus, p. 75.) Yet, ‘on ne nie pas qu'il y edt dans les affirmations de Jésus le germe de la doctrine qui devait plus tard faire de lui une hypostase divine.’ (Ibid. p. 247.) M. Renan even explains our Lord’s language as to His Person on the ground that ‘1’idéalisme trans- cendant de Jésus ne lui permit jamais d’avoir une notion bien claire de sa propre personnalité. Jl est son Pére, son Peére est lui. (p. 244.) In other words, our Lord did affirm His Divinity, but only because He was, πα τὰ perhaps, a Pantheist |!
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202 Did Christ explain away Hts claims ἢ
rise in the minds around Him? ‘Thou being a man, makest Thyself God.’ The charge was literally true: being human, He did make Himself God. Christians believe that He only ‘made’ Himself that which He is. But if He is not God, where does He make any adequate repudiation of a construction of His words so utterly derogatory to the great Creator, so necessarily abhorrent to a good man’s thought ?
Is it urged that on one occasion He ‘explained His claim to Divinity by a quotation which implied that He shared that claim with the chiefs of the theocracy?’ It has already been shewn that by that quotation our Lord only deprecated immediate violence, and claimed a hearing for language which the Jews themselves regarded as not merely allowable, but sacred. The quotation justified His language only, and not His full meaning, which, upon gaining the ear of the people, He again proceeded to assert. Is it contended that in such sayings as that addressed to His disciples, ‘My Father is greater than I*, He abandoned any pretension to be a Person internal to the Essential Life of God? It may suffice to reply, that this saying can have no such force, if its application be restricted, as the Latin Fathers do restrict it, and with great apparent probability, to our Lord’s Manhood. But even if our Lord is here speaking, as the Greeks generally maintain, of His essential Deity, His Words still express very exactly a truth which is recognised and re- quired by the Catholic doctrine. The Subordination of the Everlasting Son to the Everlasting Father is strictly compatible with the Son’s absolute Divinity; it is abundantly implied in our Lord’s language; and it is an integral element of the ancient doctrine which steadily represents the Father as Alone Unoriginate, the Fount of Deity in the Eternal Life of the Ever-blessed Trinity!
κ St. John xiv. 28: πορεύομαι πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα’ ὅτι ὃ Πατήρ μου μείζων μου ἐστί. For Patristic arguments against the Arian abuse of this text. see Suicer, Thes. ii. p. 1368. The μειζονότης of the Father is referred by St. Athanasius, St. Chrysostom, St. Basil (who, however, Ep. viii. gives the Latin int.), St. Hilary, to the Son’s being the Only-begotten: cf. also Pearson on Cr. i. 243; Newman, Par. Serm. vi.60. By St. Cyr. Alex. (de
Recta. Fide, 28; Thes. p. 91, and in loc.); St. Ambrose (in Conc. Aquil. § 36; de Fid. ii. 61); St. Augustine (in loc.; de Trin. i. 7; Enchir. x.) ; St. Leo (Ep. xxviii. ad Flav. c. 4; and in the Ath. Creed, to the Son’s humiliation as incarnate. St. Augustine unites both explanations in De Fide et Symb. 6.9. St. Th. Aq. gives both: Summ. Theol. i.g3. 15 i. 43. 7.
1 Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. iv. i. 1: ‘Decretum illud Synodi Niczenz, quo statuitur Filium Dei esse Θεὸν ἐκ Θεσῦ, Deum de Deo, suo calculo com- probiarunt doctores Catholici, tum qui ante cum qui post Synodum illam
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But surely an admission on the part of one in whom men saw nothing more than a fellow-creature, that the Everlasting God was ‘greater’ than himself, would fail to satisfy a thoughtful listener that no claim to Divinity was advanced by the speaker. Such an admission presupposes some assertion to which it stands in the relation of a necessary qualification. If any good man of our acquaintance should announce that God was ‘greater’ than himself, should we not hold him to be guilty of something worse than a stupid truism™? Would he not seem to imply that he was not really a creature of God’s hand? Would not his words go to suggest that the notion of his absolute equality with God was not to be dismissed as altogether out of the question? Should we not peremptorily remind him that the life of man is related to the Life of God, not as the less to the greater, but as the created to the Uncreated, and that it is an impertinent irreverence to admit superiority of rank, where the real truth can only be expressed by an assertion of radical difference of natures? And assuredly a sane and honest man, who had been accused of associating himself with the Supreme Being, could not content himself with admitting that God was greater than himself. Knowing himself to be only human, would he not insist again and again, with passionate fervour, upon the incommunicable glory of the great Creator? Would not a purely human Christ have anticipated the burning words of the indignant Apostles at the gate of Lystra? Far more welcome to human virtue most surely it would have been to be accused of blasphemy for meaning what was never meant, than to be literally supposed to mean it. For indeed there are occasions when silence is impossible to a sincere soul, Especially is this the case when acquiescence in false- hood is likely to gain personal reputation, when connivance at a
scripsére, Nam illi omnes uno ore docuerunt naturam perfectionesque divinas, Patri Filioque competere non collateraliter aut coordinat®, sed sub- ordinate; hocest, Filium eandem quidem naturam divinam cum Patre com- munem habere, sed & Patre communicatam; ita scilicet ut Pater solus naturam illam divinam a se habeat, sive ἃ nullo alio, Filius autem ἃ Patre; proinde Pater, Divinitatis que in Filio est, fons, origo ac principium sit,’ See Bull’s remarks on the error of calling the Son αὐτόθεος, as though He were not begotten of the Father, Ibid. iv. i. 7. Also Petavius, De Deo Deique proprietatibus, ii. 3, 6. Compare Hooker’s Works, vol. i., Keble’s Preface, p. lxxxi. When St. Athanasius calls our Lord αὐτοσοφία (Orat. ii. 78, iv. 24), αὐτός has the sense of ‘full reality’ as distinct from that of ‘Self-origination ;’ the idea is excluded that He had only a measure of Wisdom or Divinity. See Petavius de Trin, vii. 11.
™ Coleridge, Table-talk, p. 25.
‘ See Dean Alford on St. John xix. 9. Iv
204 Lnsincerity of the Christ of M. Renan.
misapprehension may aggrandize self, ever so slightly, at the cost of others. How would the sincerity of a human teacher deserve the name, if, passively, without repudiation, without protest, he should allow language expressive whether of his moral elevation or of his mystical devotion to be popularly construed into a public claim to share the Rank and Name of the great God in heaven ?
It is here that the so-termed historical Christ of M. Renan, who, as we are informed, is still the moral chief of humanity 9, would appear even to our natural English sense of honesty to be involved in serious moral difficulties. M. Renan indeed assures us, somewhat eagerly, that there are many standards of sincerity? ; that is to say, that it is possible, under certain circumstances, to acquiesce knowingly in what is false, while yet being, in some
© Renan, Vie de Jésus, p. 457: ‘Cette sublime personne, qui chaque jour préside encore au destin du monde, il est permis de l’appeler divine, non en ce sens que Jésus ait absorbé tout le divin, ou lui ait été adéquat (pour employer |’expression de la scolastique) mais en ce sens que Jésus est Vindividu qui a fait faire ἃ son espéce le plus grand pas vers le divin, L’humanité dans son ensemble offre un assemblage d’étres bas, égoistes, supérieurs ἃ l’animal en cela seul que leur égoisme est plus réfléchi. Mais, au milieu de cette uniforme vulgarité, des colonnes s’élévent vers le ciel et attestent une plus noble destinée. Jésus est la plus haute de ces colonnes qui montrent ἃ ’homme d’ovt il vient, et ot il doit tendre. En lui s’est condensé tout ce qu'il y a de bon et d’élevé dans notre nature.’ On the other hand, M. Renan is not quite consistent with himself, as he is of opinion that certain Pagans and unbelievers were in some respects superior to our Lord. ‘L’honnéte et suave Marc-Aurele, humble et doux Spinoza, n’ ayant pas cru au miracle, ont été exempts de quelques erreurs que Jésus partagea.’ (Ibid. p. 451.) Moreover, this superiority to our Lord seems to be shared by that advanced school of sceptical enquirers to which