3. The law of His life, its ultimate value. — It is objected that an essential imperfection cleaves to the individual, however balanced the elements of humanity in him may be. He belongs to one age and people ; and the ideal of his day, which is only in a state of becoming, and is surely passing away into some higher, fuller ideal, as the thought and experi- ence of the race widen, inevitably bounds his spirit. Growth is the mark of all things human. The ideal of the good man grows ; it draws to itself elements from difierent nations and different times ; it passes through subtle changes and permutations. God speaks to men at sundry times and in divers manners ; and not only great men, but nations, are His prophets to the spirit of the wide world which is travailing with the perfect ideal of man. So the individual can never have permanent or universal value. As the Abbe Galieni says, ' One century may judge another century, but only his own cen- tury may judge the individual.' That may be true of the ordinary man, or even of national heroes and saints, whose character ever seems strange and partially distasteful or even unintelligible to men of other races and times ; it is conspicuously untrue of Jesus. He stands not at the bar of His century. He judges it and all times : He judges His own people and all peoples. He took their highest ideas of God and of moral duty and purified these, making them the light of to-day. Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, became the Father in heaven whose name is Love ; and the chosen people of God, all the immortal spirits God has made in His own image. And that idea wrought itself out perfectly in His teaching and conduct. It is in particulars that the prophet's insight is tested. Jesus identified the will of God with the good of men ; and He found that good in the universal elements of human life. He emptied religion of all national and accidental elements. He passed by all customs and observ-
ances that were of His day and race ; He removed all barriers and limits which men put to human brotherhood. And so, though born among the most exclusive of nations, a son of Abraham after the flesh, He is no Jew : He is the first Citizen of the world ; in Paul's revealing phrase, ' the last Adam.'
Nor is the ideal of Jesus subject to time. There is progress in all things, but not in the same way. Knowledge moves from point to point. In mathe- matics and in all the mechanical sciences we pass with sure foot from one thing gained to another. But as we enter the region of personality, all that is changed. The art of to-day, whether in litera- ture, painting, sculpture, architecture, is not neces- sarily better than the art of even a distant yester- day. There are creative times in the world's history when a great idea is expressed, and it becomes the task of centuries to understand and assimilate it. Jesus is the Creator of a new spiritual era. His work was to found a Kingdom, spiritual in nature, world-wide in extent. That Kingdom is based on what is ultimate in our nature — the Fatherhood of God, whose name is Love, and the brotherhood of men. Such a Kingdom is the finer breath and inspiration, the inner meaning and end, of all the imperfect, transient societies of earth. And such alone will satisfy the individual ; for the end of personality is love. The ideal of Jesus may gather content in and through all the experiences and relations and offices of those who live in this Kingdom. His spirit will bear fruit within the Kingdom beyond what it could bear during the days He lived on earth, revealing its infinite riches. But never will the mind of the world pass beyond the bounds of that ideal, or draw light from any further source.
Jesus is the Lord of the new society, not only because He enunciated with perfect clearness its ultimate law, but because He Himself followed this law unerringly in His own life ' without being let or hindered, as we are, by the motions of private passion and by self-will ' (M. Arnold, St. Paul, p. 45). The absoluteness of this obedience is attested by the trials to which it was put. The perfectly good man must not merely show flawless, joyful obedience ; he must be sifted as wheat ; he must meet trial and temptation in their extremest rigour and subtlest form. Only so can the supremacy of goodness in him be affirmed. Jesus was thus tried. And the trial served only to make clear the perfect identification of His mind with the heart and will of the Father. (For the possibility of the tempta- tion of a sinless Being, see art. Temptation).
(1) Filial relation to God. — In the wilderness Jesus met the trials of the future. He had there to come to an understanding with Himself, to know precisely what His mission was and what were the means of its accomplishment. One suggestion was to turn stones into bread. The loving soul will be tempted from the side of pity. To the heart of Jesus His countrymen's need of bread and of help to a better social state would always be present. But He turned aside to His task, which was to feed them with the words that proceed out of the mouth of God.