e to the enemy, holiness and humility, gentle patience in
suffering, and cheerful submission to the holy will of God is the
crowning excellency of moral greatness. 'If thy brother,' he says,
'trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day
turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.' 'Love
your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,
and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.' This is
a sublime maxim, truly, but still more sublime is its actual exhibition
in his life.

Christ's passive virtue is not confined to the closing scenes of his
ministry. As human life is beset at every step by trials, vexations, and
hindrances, which should serve the educational purpose of developing its
resources and proving its strength, so was Christ's. During the whole
state of his humiliation he was 'a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief,' and had to endure 'the contradiction of sinners.' He was poor,
and suffered hunger and fatigue. He was tempted by the devil. His path
was obstructed with apparently insurmountable difficulties from the
outset. His words and miracles called forth the bitter hatred of the
world, which resulted at last in the bloody counsel of death. The
Pharisees and Sadducees forgot their jealousies and quarrels in opposing
him. They rejected and perverted his testimony; they laid snares for him
by insidious questions; they called him a glutton and a winebibber for
eating and drinking like other men, a friend of publicans and sinners
for his condescending love and mercy, a sabbath breaker for doing good
on the sabbath day; they charged him with madness and blasphemy for
asserting his unity with the Father, and derived his miracles from
Beelzebub, the prince of devils. The common people, though astonished at
his wisdom and mighty works, pointed sneeringly at his origin; his own
country and native town refused him the honor of a prophet. Even his
brothers, we are told, did not believe in him, and in their impatient
zeal for a temporal kingdom, they found fault with his unostentatious
proceeding. His apostles and disciples, with all their profound
reverence for his character and faith in his divine origin and mission
as the Messiah, of God, yet by their ignorance, their carnal Jewish
notions, and their almost habitual misunderstanding of his spiritual
discourses, must have constituted a severe trial of patience to a
teacher of far less