But if the things about Himself whieli He says in this connexion are less striking than might have been expected, all the more impressive are the things about Himself which He does not .say. He never makes any confession of personal sin. This is one of the cardinal facts of the Gospels. It is not as if He had l>een one of those religious teachers who, whether deliberately or inadvertently, pass by the subject of sin. Not only did He spend a great deal of His activity in the denunciation of sin, but He taught His own intiiiiate disciples to pray habitually for deliverance from it ; no fewer
than three of the petitions of the Lord's Prayer being to this effect. Yet what He advised others to do He never, as far as we can learn, did Himself. Of His intimate life of prayer we possess pretty ample records ; but in none of these are there any confessions of sin. This omission is all the more remarkable when the practice of other conspicuous figures in Holy Writ is noticed. The most promi- nent names of the OT are all remarkable for their frequent and ample confessions of jjersonal guilt. Thus the Psalmist says : ' Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me ' (Ps5P); Isaiah says: 'Woe is me; for I am un- done ; for I am a man of unclean lips ' (G') ; Job groans : ' I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes ' (42") ; Ezra prays : ' O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God : for our iniquities are increased over our heads, and our guiltiness is grown up unto the heavens ' (9"). AVith the corresponding figures of the NT it is not diflerent. Thus, St. Paul cries : ' O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?' (Ro 7^^) ; and even the saintly St. John confesses : ' If we say that we have no sin, w^e deceive oui'selves, and the truth is not in us ' (1 Jn 1^). Thus, both the worthies of the OT, from whom Jesus learned, and the worthies of the NT, who learned from Him, speak on this subject Avith one consent ; and it may be added that the more of religious genius any of them had, the more poignant were their cries for jiardon. Jesus, however, differs in this respect radically from them all, and science must assign a reason for the contrast. If it was a defect, it was a serious one. If He sinned, like the other children of Adam, but failed to be humbled and to confess His fault, tliis brings Him down beneath the re- ligious heroes of the race ; for what feature of religious genius is more essential than humility ? But if it was no defect, what other explanation of it can there be but sinlessness ?
i. Objections. — Ever since the time of Celsus there have been objections raised to the sinlessness of Jesus, and excejjtions, more or less specific, taken to His moral character. During the greater portion of Christian history, however, it has been taken for granted that He was without sin ; this being the very least that has been spontaneously conceded by any aftiecting to believe on Him in any sense. Even the early Socinians were ardent defenders of this doctrine. It was not till the age of Deism and Rationalism that to express doubts on this sub- ject became a common characteristic of unbelief. The revival of evangelical faith in the nineteenth century raised up a host of defenders, not only those in the full current of the revival being on this side, as a matter of course, but many distinguished scholars who stood somewhat aside, such as Schleier- macher, Schweizer, Hase, Keim and Weizsticker being forward in tlie same cause. On tiie contrary, Strauss, in his books on the Life of Jesus, advanced furtlier and further in the direction of denial ; and Pecaut in Le Christ ct la Conscience, 1859, disjilayed a zeal worthy of a better cause in heaping up every conceivable objection to the Saviour's conduct. On the whole, the gTeat series of Lives of Christ, which liave formed a leading feature of the tlieology of the last two generations, have been loyal to the conviction and testimony of Christendom ; but, in tlie very latest i)roductions which have appeared in tills field, an uncertain sound is heard (see, e.g., O. Holtzmann, Leben Jesn, esp. p. 34 ; Weinel, Jesus im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, esp. pp. 61 fi'. and 274 ff.), .so that it is quite within tiie bounds of possiliility, or even probability, tiiat this belief may liave to be earnestly contended for in the not distant future.
The objections alleged are either [a) of a more
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general and philosophical order, or (b) relate to actions of Jesus in the Gospels which are con- sidered inconsistent Avith a perfect character.
(a) In the days of the Old Rationalism the commonest objec- tion was that sinless perfection is inconsistent with moral development : man has to raise himself from matter to spirit, and from imperfection to perfection. Kant held that virtue consists solely of moral conflict ; and many, appealing to him, concluded that Jesus could not be a genuine man unless He began in imperfection and fought His way up to sinlessness. Similar to this is the well-known position of Strauss, that it is not the way of the idea, in fulfilling itself in actuality, to pour all its fulness into one specimen, which is thereby enabled to boast itself over all the rest ; but that, on the contrary, it likes to display its riches in a multiplicity of specimens, which mutu- ally supplement and complete one another. Such objections formed part and parcel of the intellectual world in which they were excogitated ; and, as that world has long ago passed away, it is hardly necessary now to attempt the refutation of them.