stand. According to Isaac Taylor, "Fanaticism is
enthusiasm inflamed by hatred." But Christ exaggerated nothing and
hated no man. He hated sin, but no sinner. His boundless, tender love
itself prevented such moral distortion. And, therefore, he is the ideal
or model of human life. We do not feel that in striving to imitate even
his most spiritual qualities we shall become impractical or unnatural.
We do not feel this in the case of most other holy men. They become
examples of one virtue by exaggerating it. But Christ never did this.
Lofty as the view of life was which he discloses in our text, sublime
as was its spiritual consecration, it existed in him in harmony with
the life which by its thoroughly human and practical features proves
that we too, in at least some measure, can make even his highest traits
our exemplars. Look, therefore, at this text which discloses his mind,
and mark its principal elements.

1. There is first disclosed the strong and constant consciousness
that he had a distinct errand in the world. He knew that he had
been born for a purpose, that a divine aim was in his coming, and
that a positive result would follow his life. This sense of a
definite errand was expressed by him on numerous occasions; in some
of them quite incidentally, and in others more directly. You
remember how, as a boy in the temple, he said to his mother, "Wist
ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" You remember
how, at the marriage in Cana, he said to her again, "My hour is not
yet come." So with that precious phrase which on several occasions
fell from his lips, "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save
that which is lost." He regarded himself as one sent from God; and
when his life was about over he lifted up his eyes to heaven and
said, "Father, the hour is come; I have glorified thee on the
earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do."

So in our text, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and
to finish his work." He was here on a special errand, and that
errand was always before his mind. Earth was but a place of
appointed work. Life was to him an office, a stewardship. He had
this consciousness, even when he seemed to be accomplishing
nothing. It gave unity to all his acts and words. To Galilean
peasants and to Jewish scribes he could speak with equal assurance,
because his errand was to b