2. He was full of Sincerity. — This is one of the chief impres- sions made on all readers of the Gospels, that Jesus of Nazareth was perfectly honest, that He was not a conscious impostor, that He spoke with a strength and depth of sincerity which raised Him far above the level of ordinary witnesses. The frank and pene- trating beam of His holy eye rests on every one who contemplates Him in the mirror of the gospel history. The goodness of His nature was a pledge of His honesty.
^ Perhaps no warmer encomium was ever passed upon faulty man than this of Mrs. Hutchinson upon her husband, who was Governor of Nottingham Castle during the English Civil War: "He never professed the thing he intended not, nor promised what he believed out of his power, nor failed in the performance of anything that was in his power to fulfil."
3. He was full of truth in being full of Instruction. — He made human nature appear to be what it is, a grand and solemn thing. He made human life in its moral aspects seem an arena where issues of infinite importance are at stake. He made the soul of man seem an awfully real existence within him. He made right and wrong seem as distinct as noon and midnight. He made the Almighty appear a Being real and near, overshadow- ing the earth with His excellent glory. His countenance blazed like the sun with the splendour of God. Aforetime the Deity had been faintly revealed in events, in descriptions, in institutions,
* R. E. Speer, TJie Marks of a Man, 24.
6o THE INCARNATION OF THE WORD
in nature ; but in Him God became visible. " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." He caused the invisible world to appear to the soul as real as the visible. He was in manifest communion with the unseen. He opened the Scriptures, and the world of the present, and the realms of the dead, and the future eternity, and compelled men to feel that these bursts of supreme inspiration were but the first outbreakings of a fountain which would flow through eternity.^
^ Truth lives and thrives in her fair house of Learned Theory. But its grand, pillared front is too high, its wide doors too rich and ponderous; her form as she moves within is too fair and proud and queenly for common men to dare to come and enter her great gates and ask to learn of God and Nature and their own humanity from her lips. Eather will they stand without for ever, looking from far away upon the towers of her wondrous home and see the great Mistress walking with a few bold scholars through the greenness of her trees, deeming it all a thing in which there is no part for them. So then, fair Truth, that she may claim her right to govern from her readiness to help all men, lays by her gorgeous robes, takes the plain white mantle of most simple faith, comes down from her great house, and goes along the crowded street and close lanes of poor men's homes, with a lesson and a smile for each, a soothing touch for the sick child's forehead, a helping word for the poor working woman, a passing look that makes the strong man's heart more strong and happy, long after she has passed back to her house.^
T[ This inner admonition which compels us to the thought of God, to the thirst for Him, to the search after Him, comes to us from the source of all Truth. It is the sun which shines within our souls. It is the truth which we divine when, our eyes being too feeble, or too suddenly opened, we are afraid to look it in the face. It is none otlier than God Himself, in His changeless perfection. So long as we persist in seeking to satisfy our thirst elsewhere than at this fountain, we must admit that we have not attained our proper goal, and therefore, though God be for us, we are neither wise nor happy. Complete satisfaction of soul, the truly happy life, is to know purely and fully what Truth itself is, what conducts in the search after it, and by what relations it connects us with the supreme perfection. These three demon- strate to purified souls the one only God, the one only Reality, in distinction from the self-contradicting fables of superstition.^
1 E. White, Tlie Mysterij of Growth, 91. 2 piiiHipg Brooks, 73.
' St. Aujifiistine, Soliloquies, xxxvi.
ST. JOHN I. 14
Despised ! Eejected by the priest-led roar Of the multitude ! The imperial purple flung About the form the hissing scourge had stung, Witnessing naked to the truth it bore ! True Son of Father true, I Thee adore, Even the mocking purple truthful hung On Thy true shoulders, bleeding its folds among, For Thou wast king, art king for evermore ! / knoio the Father : he knows rfie the truth. Truth- witness, therefore the one essential king, With Thee I die, with Thee live worshipping! 0 human God, 0 brother, eldest born, Never but Thee was there a man in sooth. Never a true crown but Thy crown of thorn ! ^
III.
Divinity discovered in Humanity.
" We beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father."