ing, and value of His life of obedience unto death, is manifest from His own words, e.g., in Jn 16'"".
But, secondly, the same conclusion follows from His attitude of resistance to the whole system of IcgriHsm which He found Judaism had developed and set up, as an order of fixed and unchangeable conditions, in the relations between God and men — between Him and them as individuals, and between Him and the ■Itwish nation at large as His own peculiar co\eiuuit ]ieople. Tlie eliect of this system, as being both theoretically and ad- ministratively legal, ^^ as conceived and opposed by our Lord as subversive of that moral order of things in which inward, direct, universal, and eternal relations are established between God and men (Mk 7'"^). And it is a fact written broadly and deeply in all the Gospels, that if there was any- thing that He ever attempted more manifestly, strenuously, uncompromisingly, and more per- sistently than another, it was this, viz. : to over- throw completely and for ever the entire order of ideas which rested upon the stupendous error that the direct relations between God and men are legal, that they are founded on legal conditions, that they are to be maintained, administered, and mediated by legal means, and that, therefore, they are not inward but external (Mt 5-7. 15'"^ 23, Lk 11^-^, Jn 5»-" 1^-^ 8="-='« 12='-*). What, then, does His attitude of unreserved and bold antago- nism to the legal system of Judaism implj^ in the point of view here considered ? (1) It implies that in His position in the moral order of the world He stood on the eternal fact and truth that the direct relations between God as a Moral Being and men as moral beings are inward and therefore essenti- allj' moral. (2) It implies, again, that He stood upon the predestined fact and truth that His position and work of mediation within the domain of these relations were also essentially moral and therefore anti-legal.
3. But, further, it follows from the nature of our Lord's earthly task that the achievement of it in the manner in which He lived and died was a moral unity. His personality or moral individu- ality was a unity. His will was a moral unity, and the entire series of the manifold inward and outward free moral activities of His life until His last moment on the cross, were related to one another as a perfectly consistent order of moral unity. He came into the world, as He Himself always represented, on one entirely homogeneous moral undertaking ; and when this undertaking was fulfilled, He spoke of it in terms which show that He regarded the finished task as one homo- geneous moral result (Jn W 19=*). In other words, our Lord's obedience in His manner of living and dying followed the law of moral continuity. His obedience unto death was regulated, on His part, by one determinative moral principle ; but there was diversity of incidental moral significance and value in the various positions in which His moral vocation summoned Him to act, and to be faithful and loyal to this principle.
(1) What was the principle which constituted the perfect moral unity or His obedience unto death ? It was perfect love, manifesting itself in perfect self-sacrifice and sen'ice, and, in doing this, ever paying perfectly wise and loyal regard to the moral requirements of human life and destiny on the one hand, and to the moral requirements of God's holy will and purpose in relation to those human requirements on the other (Mt 20=« 26^», Mk 10*=, Jn 10"- " 13'-" 3"--' i^ S''-" S"- ™- =*• " n'-'- M. 5ii)_ j?i-om such sayings of our Lord's us un; hi'i 1; referred to, it is obvious that the piiin ijlc whuh regulated all the moral acti^dties of Hi- litr «:i-, in etlect, of the nature and compass ju-t cIclin.Ml. There are no words of His reported in any of the
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Gospels which justify the making of any essential distinction between the nature of His obedience or moral achievement during the time of the Passion, and the nature of it prior to tlie hour when He allowed Himself to fall into the power of His enemies. The period of His Passion was indeed unique in tM'o things as regards His own part in it. From the moment that He began to pray in Gethsemane till the moment when He said ' It is finished,' on the cross. He endured unspeakable suflering, physical and moral, altogether un- paralleled in His antecedent experience. Again, it was precisely during this period of Hisextremest suffering that all His powers of moral activity were subjected to their severest strain, and that they, under this strain, reached the highest pos- sible point of their morally victorious, triumphant achievement. But these two facts, so distinctive of His Passion, made no real breach in the moral continuity and unity of the moral achievement of His life as a whole. His moral suffering did not begin with the last tragic hours of His life. There was an element of moral suffering in the com-
Eassion with which He was so often moved. He ad looked forward to His predestined ' hour ' ; and His word.s, ' I have a baptism to be baptized with ; and how am I straitened till it be accom- plished !' (Lk 12^°), suggest that, in anticipation of His cross. He may have spent many an hour in painful moral wrestling, in view of His destiny, long before His anticipations began actually to be realized. In any case, it may be taken as certain that there was no form of inward moral activity called forth in Him during the liours of His Passion, which had not been evoked many times over in previous situations of His life. But on the cross these moral activities of His, in the superla- tive degree of their strenuousness and in the tran- scendent magnitude of their victory over sin and temptation, eclipsed all the moral achievements of His past life. And yet in reality He died, in the sense of all that was essentially moral, as He had lived. He lived and died determined by the same moral principle, in the same spirit of love and self- sacrifice and service, and in the same spirit of per- fectly wise and loyal regard to all the demands of God's will and purpose on Him, and to all the demands on Him of the world's moral needs.