Gospel. Divine revelation as a system is inexplicable without it. Christianity is the great world-power that it is only by virtue of it. The character of Christ refuses to conform itself to any merely human measurements. Napoleon Bonaparte never spoke more wisely than when he said: "I think I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these [the heroes of antiquity] were men, and I am a man; but not one is like him: Jesus Christ was more than man."* The teachings of Christ, aside from his explicit claims, can be rationally interpreted on no other hypothesis than that of his essential oneness with God.

The deity of Christ, moreover, is a truth that is necessary to a genuine revelation of God to men, and to a true doctrine of atonement. The incarnation of the God-nature, both as a physical and a psychological fact, is the basis of all rational hope of redemption for sinners. We can apprehend God as a Savior only as he comes within our range, and, in some real sense, put himself on a level with us.

While the foregoing is true and vastly important, it is also true, and equally important, that Christ was man. As we could apprehend God in the attitude and relations. of Savior only as he descended into our human condition, so, we may say, God could get a real and saving hold upon men only as he united himself with them in the person of Christ. Christ is thus the God-man, the mysterious link by which God and man are brought into vital union. furnishes the point of contact between deity and humanity.

He

In our representations of Christ, both to ourselves and to others, we are apt, through a false fear of dishonoring him, to talk of his humanity in a timid, gingerly way. We fear to speak of Jesus as human, having all the essential characteristics and sensibilities of our own nature. Yet he was human, as truly and tenderly human as John or Paul or Mary. There is great comfort for us in the fact that Christ was man. It is by virtue of this fact that we * Napoleon to Count Montholon, Bertrand's "Memoirs."

can draw near to him, enter into his deepest sympathies, and feel a kinship with him that sanctifies and ennobles our lives. We are attracted and lifted up by the mighty magnetism which has its source in his essentially human nature.

It is to be observed, further, that Christ, while he is the revealer of God to man, and by his propitiatory and mediating work, the reconciler of man to God, is also man's great teacher and exemplar, declaring to men, and illustrating for them, the true way of life. It is only as man that Christ can be our exemplar; not as a man, but man, the man, who stands forth to the world as the embodiment and representative of perfected manhood.

In various passages of Scripture Christ is set before us as the exemplification of the ideal Christian life in respect of his complete, voluntary subjection to the Father. this aspect of his life that I purpose now to treat.

It is

I. CHRIST'S SUBJECTION TO THE FATHER WAS COMPLETE.

Throughout the whole range of his life the will of the Father was his law-not law in the sense of arbitrary decree, but law as furnishing the lines of direction along. which flowed all his activities.

When the Jews came to John baptizing in the Jordan with their inquiries as to his name and the source of his authority, his answer was: "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord." It was as if he denied his own personality. "I am but a voice," he says. His conception of his mission was such that he seemed utterly to have sunk his individuality, and become but the instrument or medium through which the divine message was delivered. It was inevitable from his nature, that Christ's individuality should be peculiarly prominent, and should impress itself upon all who came within the circle of his influence, yet his subjection to the Father was not less, but more, complete than John's.

This subjection was complete:

1. In the sphere of action.

"I do nothing from myself,"

are his words. His deeds were the above his own individual human will. mine own self do nothing.

expressions of a will

He says: "I can of

I seek not mine own

will, but the will of the Father who hath sent me." Again, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son of man can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."

The key-note of his life is struck in his own saying: "My meat is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work." Christ came into the world under a commission. That commission is expressed in the words: "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Whatever he did, from the cradle to the tomb, was in harmony with that commission. The activity of his boyhood and youth was as much under the direction of the Father's will as the activity of his public life. He was "obedient unto death." Not unto death merely, as if to die were the one obligation of his life, but up to death. The obedience was synchronous with his life. His dying on the cross was but the culminating act of obedience in a life-long subjection of himself to the Father's will. His childhood and education in the seclusion of home; his work in the humble shop at Nazareth; his labors among the benighted multitudes of Judea and Galilee; his deeds of mercy and healing on behalf of the sick and the weary and the oppressed who surrounded him; all that he did in the seclusion of the desert or the lonely mountain, or in the crowded streets of Galilean towns or the thronged area of the great temple, was wrought with an eye single to the realizing of the supreme will.

We never read of his working a miracle for himself, yet his ability to perform miracles was not a delegated power. He had immortal life and irresistible potency within his own breast. He never appears as a mere instrument or medium through which divine force is transmitted; yet

always power is put forth in the execution of a will which he ever recognizes as supremely authoritative.

Christ might have founded an empire. His intellect was surpassingly clear and penetrating; his comprehension was wide as the race; his knowledge of men and his power over them were unlimited. He might have organized them into pliant and irresistible instruments of his will. He was able to lay his hand controllingly upon all the complex elements of the Jewish nation. He had behind him the influence of great traditions. With a slight effort he could have kindled the inflammable enthusiasm of his countrymen to such a pitch that they would have swept the legions of Rome from Palestine as a tempest sweeps the dead leaves of the forest from the branches. More than once, as it was, the impulse rose in the hearts of the masses like a tidal wave, threatening to lift. him upon a throne even against his will; yet by no act of his life did he seek to avail himself of the opportunity, thus thrust upon him, of establishing an earthly kingdom. With high and unfaltering purpose he checked all the wild up-leapings of popular enthusiasm. A kingly personage, he yet abjured a crown. "My kingdom is not of this world," are his own calm, significant words. "I do nothing from myself." My mission is not to found an empire, to elaborate a state, to promulgate edicts, to marshal armies. "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father who sent me."

Thus, steadfast in his devotion to the one great aim of his life-the execution of the Father's will on behalf of men he did his work, and the cry that broke from his lips as the final pang shot through his suffering frame while he hung upon the cross, "it is finished," testified to the perfection of his obedience, the completeness of his subjection to the will of God.

We shall fail to get an adequate idea of Christ's entire self-devotion throughout the whole sphere of his activity, unless we realize how great and unceasing his activity was. Some one has spoken of him as "the toiling Christ."

There seems to have been scarcely a lull in his activity from the baptism to the crucifixion. So vast was his labor of love that even an inspired writer could give a just summary of it only in the startling hyperbole: "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." All these things which Jesus did," the humblest as well as the most conspicuous, were performed in unwavering fidelity to the Father's will.

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2. Not only was Jesus entirely subject to the Father in the sphere of action, in activities which are patent to the eyes of the world, he carried his subjection into the more occult sphere of feeling also. His sensibility, equally with his outward activity, was consecrated to the accomplishment of his great vicarious mission. All the appetites of his physical organism, all the natural desires of his profoundly human heart, all his capacities for pleasure or pain, all those shrinkings and apprehensions in the face of suffering or peril which are so characteristic of our human nature, were constantly held by him in entire subordination to the same will whose behests he executed in his deeds.

All

The subjection by Christ of all appetites and desires to the one dominant purpose of his life, is illustrated with particular clearness by the manner in which he met and overcame the threefold temptation that Satan brought to bear upon him at the very outset of his public ministry. natural appetites are, in themselves, sinless. Indeed, they have no moral quality, considered as the mere spontaneous affections of the physical nature. It is only when we contemplate the fact that man is a moral being, and as such, under moral obligation; that he is thus bound to keep a control over all his appetites and give them a right direction; that they are to be subjected to the spiritual instincts and faculties, and through these, to God-it is only when we contemplate this fact that the natural appetites become moral or immoral. Man, being sinful, may have appetites