not be historic nor the historic
absolute.

Surely the claim that Jesus was free from error in intellectual
conception is unnecessary, from the point of view of the saving
influence upon character which Schleiermacher had asserted. It is in
contradiction with the view of revelation to which Schleiermacher had
already advanced. It is to be accounted for only from the point of view
of the mistaken assumption that the divine, even in manifestation, must
be perfect, in the sense of that which is static and not of that which
is dynamic. The assertion is not sustained from the Gospel itself. It
reduces many aspects of the life of Jesus to mere semblance. That also
which is claimed in regard to the abstract impossibility of sin upon the
part of Jesus is in hopeless contradiction with that which
Schleiermacher had said as to the normal and actual development of
Jesus, in moral as also in all other ways. Such development is
impossible without struggle. Struggle is not real when failure is
impossible. So far as we know, it is in struggle only that character is
made. Even as to the actual commission of sin on Jesus' part, the
assertion of the abstract necessity of his sinlessness, for the work of
moral redemption, goes beyond anything which we know. The question of
the sinlessness of Jesus is not an _a priori_ question. To say that he
was by conception free from sin is to beg the question. We thus form a
conception and then read the Gospels to find evidence to sustain it. To
say that he did, though tempted in all points like as we are, yet so
conduct himself in the mystery of life as to remain unstained, is indeed
to allege that he achieved that which, so far us we know, is without
parallel in the history of the race. But it is to leave him true man,
and so the moral redeemer of men who would be true. To say that, if he
were true man, he must have sinned, is again to beg the question. Let us
repeat that the question is one of evidence. To say that he was, though
true man, so far as we have any evidence in fact, free from sin, is only
to say that his humanity was uniquely penetrated by the spirit of God
for the purposes of the life which he had to live. That heart-broken
recollection of his own sin which one hears in _The Scarlet Letter_,
giving power to the preacher who would reach men in their sins, has not
the remotest parallel in any reminiscence of Jesus which we possess.
There is every evidence of the purity of Jesus' conscio