3. Patience.— It is an error to describe patience as a 'passive' virtue, if by that epithet is indi- cated tne spirit which niakeg no resistance, becanse resistance is seen to be futile. Patience is rather the associate of courage, and springs from the same root, namely, identification of will with a great and enduring purpose. Jesus has made tlie eternal purpose of God for the redemption of man the controlling principle of His lite ; and therefore He is enabled to be patient, in the widest and deepest meanings of the terra. He patiently waits for God. This lesson He learned from the OT ;
tliis gift He acquired in that deep communion with God, which was the privilege of the OT believer, and is the heart of all tnie religion. Nothing is more remarkable in a man so intense, endowed, moreover, with supernatural powers, than His reserve. He is eager for the achieve- ment of His task, straitened till His baptism be accomplished (Lk 12*). Yet He is never betrayed into rashness of speech or action. He maintains His attitude of intent expectancy. The idea of an 'hour' for Himself, and for His work, and for His great victory, known to the Father, and made known at His discretion, lies deep in the heart of Jesus (>Ik 13^= 14«, Lk 10^', Jn 2^ 4=>- ^ SP-^ 7™ S* J03. 27 131 jijij fQ Him time was the measure of God's purpose; death, 'God's instant' He /xok-po- Bvixei, suffers long with raaywardor injurious persons. God hides Him in His pavilion from the strife of tongues, and from that sense of personal injury which enkindles temper and provokes unadvised speech. So identified is He witb God, that offences against Himself lose themselves in Divine forgive- ness. His meekness is not weakness, but that amazing strength which can take up a personal WTong, and carry it into the Divine presence with vicarious suffering. He wro/i^cfi, endures in undying hope the severest trial (He 12=- »). The idea that His death was unexpected by Jesus, and felt by Him to demand an explanation which He attempted to provide in obscure suggestions and laboured analogies, is most false to the profound unity of His character. The Cross is the key to His char- acter. This was the climax of His mission, the introduction to the victory which lay beyond ; and this, when it came. He endured with a ' brave patience ' which was rooted in His assurance that His vocation was from God and could not fail. This was His victory, even His patience (Rev 1").
i. Calmness. — The patience of Jesus has for its inner correlative deep serenity of soul. He lived in God ; and, therefore, He was completely master of Himself. We observe in Him, as a matter of course, that control of the so-called lower desires of our nature which was the Greek conception of .sober-mindedness or temperance. We .see, beyond this, a more remarkable proof of self-possession in His control over the very moti\'es and desires which impelled Him to devote His life to the serrae of God and man. There is no feeling of strain in the utterances of His soul as He speaks of or to His Father. The phenomena of excite- ment or rapture, which disfigure so many religious biographies, are whoUy absent from the record of His deepest experiences. In His attitude toward men, whom He regarded it as His mission to save, there is perfect sanity. The harsh or strident note, which is scarcely ever absent in the speeches of reformers, is never audible in His words. His love for men is not a mountain torrent, but a deep, calm current, flowing through all His acti^aties. We cannot, with verbal exactness, attribute to Him the 'enthusiasm of humanity,' which the author of Eece Homo regards as the essential quality of a Christian in relation to his fellow-men, if, at least, the phrase suggest even the slightest want of balance, or any ignorance of the issues of action, or any carelessness with respect to them. He is the minister of the Di\ine purposes, never of His own emotions, however pure and lofty these may be. Yet we are not to impute to Him any un- emotional callousness. He never lost His calm- ness ; but He was not always calm. He repelled temptation with deep indignation (Mk 8^). Hypo- crisj' roused Him to a flame of judgment (Mk 3* 1110-17^ Mt 23'-*'). Treachery shook Him to the very centre of His being (Jn 13=')- The waves of human sorrow broke over Him with a greater grief than wrung the bereaved sisters (Jn U^"").
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
295
There were times A\hen He bore an unknown agony, which could be shared by none, though He sought for liunian sympathy up to tlie very gates of the sanctuary of pain (Jn 12"'', Mk 14^'"^). Yet, whatever His soul's discipline might be, He never lost His self-control, was never distracted or afraid, but remained true to His mission and to His Father. He feels anger, or sorrow, or trouble, but these emotions are under the control of a will that is one with the Divine will, and therefore are comprehended within the perfect peace of a mind stayed on God.
3. Self-sacrifice. — 'Christ pleased not Himself (Ko 15^). These words, brief though they be, sum up the character of Christ as St. Paul conceived it. They convey, without doubt, the impression made by the record of His life. If this estimate is just, if Christ was an absolutely unselfish man, if He made a full sacrifice of Himself, His char- acter stands alone, unique in the moral universe. We cannot make this statement without raising problems of immense difficulty, which it is the business of theology to face. But no mystery beyond ought to restrict our acknowledgment of ethical fact. Christ had a self, like other men, and might have made it, in its intense individu- ality, His end, laying a tax upon the whole uni- verse in order to satisfy it. The ideal of self- satisfaction was necessarily present to His mind, inasmuch as it is inevitably suggested in all self- consciousness. It was definitely presented to Him in His temptation in the wilderness. But once for all in that initial conflict, and again and again in life. He beat back the temptation, rejected that ideal, surrendered Himself to His vocation, and sought no other satisfaction than its fulfilment. His life is a sacrifice. He set the world behind His back, and had no place or portion in it (Lk 9^*). The way He went was the path of self-denial and cross-bearing (Mk 8**, Jn 12"-s- =«). His death was a sacrifice. The death of one whose life was a .sacrifice must have had sacrificial significance for God and man. It could not be a fate to be ex- plained by an after-thought. It must have been essentially an action, a voluntary offering made to God, laid on the altar of liuman need. The story of the Passion, read from the point where He stead- fastly set His face to go to Jerusalem to tlie point where He went, ns He was wont, to tiie Mount of Olives, and so through every detail of suffering, portrays, indeed, one led as a lamb to the slaughter, but as certainly one who, liaving power to keep His life, laid it down, in free surrender, in deep love to the Father (Jn 10"- '«). He was endowed with powers which He might have exerted to deliver Himself from the hand of His enemies ; He did not so exert them. He did not even employ them to win one slightest alleviation of His sufferings. He might have saved Himself; yet, with deeper truth. Himself He could not save. The self-sacrifice of Christ is the foundation of the Kingdom of God, the purchase of man's redemption, the basis of that morality which finds in Him its standard and its example.