hom I have known was an
eminently good man, I command a certain amount of respect to my
opinion, and I do him honour. If I celebrate his good deeds and report
his wise words, I extend his honour still farther. But if I proceed
to assure people, _on the evidence of my personal observation of him_,
that he was immaculate and absolutely perfect, was the pure Moral
Image of God, that he deserves to be made the Exclusive Model of
imitation, and is the standard by which every other man's morality
is to be corrected,--I make myself ridiculous; my panegyrics lose all
weight, and I produce far less conviction than when I praised within
human limitations. I do not know how my friend will look on this
point, (for his judgment on the whole question perplexes me, and the
views which I call _sober_ he names _prosaic_,) but I cannot resist
the conviction that universal common-sense would have rejected the
teaching of the Eleven with contempt, if they had presented, as the
basis of the gospel their _personal testimony_ to the godlike and
unapproachable moral absolutism of Jesus. But even if such a basis
was possible to the Eleven, it was impossible to Paul and Silvanus and
Timothy and Barnabas and Apollos, and the other successful preachers
to the Gentiles. High moral goodness, within human limitations, was
undoubtedly announced as a fact of the life of Jesus; but upon this
followed the supernatural claims, and the argument of prophecy;
_without_ which my friend desires to build up his view,--I have thus
developed why I think he has no right to claim Catholicity for his
judgment. I have risked to be tedious, because I find that when I
speak concisely, I am enormously misapprehended. I close this topic
by observing, that, the great animosity with which my very mild
intimations against the popular view have been met from numerous
quarters, show me that Christians do not allow this subject to be
calmly debated, end have not come to their own conclusion as the
result of a calm debate. And this is amply corroborated by my own
consciousness of the past I never dared, nor could have dared, to
criticize coolly and simply the pretensions of Jesus to be an absolute
model of morality, until I had been delivered from the weight of
authority and miracle, oppressing my critical powers.

III. I have been asserting, that he who believes Jesus to be mere man,
ought at once to believe his moral excellence finite and comparable
to that of other men; and