ter, 'but to receive His spirit and make
it effective--which is the moral task of the Christian.'[10] Christ is
indeed our example, but He is more. And unless He were more He could not
be so much. We could not strive to be like Him if He were not already
within us, the Principle and Spirit of our life, the higher and diviner
self of every man.

What is meant, then, by saying that Christ is the ideal character or norm
of life is that He represents to us human nature in its typical or ideal
form. As we behold His perfection we feel that this is what we were made
for, this is the true end of our being. Every one may, in short, see in
Him the fulfilment of the divine idea and purpose of man--the conception
and end of himself.[11]

II

_The Christian Motive_.--Rightly regarded Christ is not only the model of
the new life, but its motive as well. All the great appeals of the
Gospel--every persuasion and plea by which God seeks to awaken a
responsive love in the hearts of men--are centred in, and find expression
through, the Person and Passion of Christ.

1. The question of motive is a primary one in Ethics. {153} If,
therefore, we ask, What is the deepest spring of action, what is the
incentive and motive power for the Christian? The answer is: (1) the
love of God, a love which finds its highest expression in _Forgiveness_.
Of all motives the most powerful is the sense of being pardoned. Even
when it is only one human being who forgives another, nothing strikes so
deep into the human heart or evokes penitence so tender and unreserved,
or brings a joy so pure and lasting. It not only restores the old
relation which wrong had dissolved; it gives the offender a sense of
loyalty unknown before. He is now bound not by law but by honour, and it
would be a disloyalty worse than the original offence if he wounded such
love again. Thus it is that God becomes the object of reverence and
affection, not because He imposes laws upon us but because He pardons and
redeems. The consciousness of forgiveness is far more potent in
producing goodness than the consciousness of law. This psychological
fact lay at the root of Christ's ministry, and was the secret of His hope
for man. This, too, is the key to all that is paradoxical, and, at the
same time, to all that is most characteristic in St Paul's Gospel. What
the Law could not do, forgiveness achieves. It creates the new heart,
and with it the new holiness. 'It is not