speaking, acting, suffering, and dying like a man, surrounded by sinners
in every direction, with the keenest sense of sin and the deepest
sympathy with sinners, commencing his public ministry with the call:
'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;' yet never touched in the
least by the contamination of the world, never putting himself in the
attitude of a sinner before God, never shedding a tear of repentance,
never regretting a single thought, word, or deed, never needing or
asking divine pardon, never concerned about the salvation of his own
soul, and boldly facing all his present and future enemies in the
absolute certainty of his spotless purity before God and man!

HIS ABSOLUTE HOLINESS.

A sinless Saviour surrounded by a sinful world, is an astounding fact
indeed, a sublime moral miracle in history. But this freedom from the
common sin and guilt of the race is, after all, only the negative side
of his character, which rises in magnitude as we contemplate the
positive side, namely, absolute moral and religious perfection. It is
universally admitted, even by deists and rationalists, that Christ
taught the purest and sublimest system of ethics, which throws all the
moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the
shade. The Sermon on the Mount alone is worth infinitely more than all
that Confucius, Socrates, and Seneca ever said or wrote on duty and
virtue. But the difference is still greater if we come to the more
difficult task of practice. While the wisest and best of men never live
up even to their own imperfect standard of excellency, Christ fully
carried out his perfect doctrine in his life and conduct. He both _was_
and _did_ that which he _taught_; he preached his own life, and lived
his own doctrine. He is the living incarnation of the ideal standard of
virtue and holiness, and is universally acknowledged to be the highest
model for all that is pure and good and noble in the sight of God and
man.

We find Christ moving in all ordinary and essential relations of life,
as a son, a brother, a friend, a citizen, a teacher, at home and in
public. We find him among all classes of society, with sinners and
saints, with the poor and the wealthy, with the sick and the healthy,
with little children, grown men and women, with plain fishermen and
learned scribes, with despised publicans and honored members of the
sanhedrim, with friends and foes, with admiring disciples and bitter
pers