and attach themselves to him; that he declared himself king, master, and judge of men; that he promised to give rest to all the weary and heavy-laden; that he instructed his followers to hope for life from feeding on his body and blood.

But it is doubly surprising to observe that these enormous pretensions were advanced by one whose special peculiarity, not only among his contemporaries but among the remarkable men that have appeared before and since, was an almost feminine tenderness and humility.  This characteristic was remarked, as we have seen, by the Baptist, and Christ himself was fully conscious of it.  Yet so clear to him was his own dignity and infinite importance to the human race as an objective fact with which his own opinion of himself had nothing to do, that in the same breath in which he asserts it in the most unmeasured language, he alludes, apparently with entire unconsciousness, to his humility.  “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart.”  And again, when speaking to his followers of the arrogance of the Pharisees, he says, “They love to be called Rabbi; but be not you called Rabbi:  for one is your master, even Christ.”

Who is the humble man?  It is he who resists with special watchfulness and success the temptations which the conditions of his life may offer to exaggerate his own importance....  If he judged himself correctly, and if the Baptist described him well when he compared him to a lamb, and, we may add, if his biographers have delineated his character faithfully, Christ was one naturally contented with obscurity, wanting the restless desire for distinction and eminence which is common in great men, hating to put forward personal claims, disliking competition and “disputes who should be greatest,” finding something bombastic in the titles of royalty, fond of what is simple and homely, of children, of poor people, occupying himself so much with the concerns of others, with the relief of sickness and want, that the temptation to exaggerate the importance of his own thoughts and plans was not likely to master him; lastly, entertaining for the human race a feeling so singularly fraternal that he was likely to reject as a sort of treason the impulse to set himself in any manner above them.  Christ, it appears, was this humble man.  When we have fully pondered the fact we may be in a condition to estimate the force of the evidence which, submitted to his mind, could induce him, in direct opposition to all his tastes and instincts, to lay claim, persistently, with the calmness of entire conviction, in opposition to the whole religious world, in spite of the offence which his own followers conceived, to a dominion more transcendent, more universal, more complete, than the most delirious votary of glory ever aspired to in his dreams.

And what is it that our Lord has done for man by being so truly man?