have an internal harmony.  It could not be for nothing that this exceptional personage was sent into the world.  That he was intended as head of the human race, in one or more senses, would be a plausible opinion; nor should I feel any incredulous repugnance against believing his morality to be if not divinely perfect, yet separated from that of common men so far, that he might be a God to us, just as every parent is to a young child.

This view seems to my friend a weakness; be it so.  I need not press it.  What I do press, is,—­whatever might or might not be conceded concerning one in human form, but of superhuman origin,—­at any rate, one who is conceded to be, out and out, of the same nature as ourselves, is to be judged of by our experience of that nature, and is therefore to be assumed to be variously imperfect, however eminent and admirable in some respects.  And no one is to be called an imaginer of deformity, because he takes for granted that one who is Man has imperfections which were not known to those who compiled memorials of him.  To impute to a person, without specific evidence, some definite frailty or fault, barely because he is human, would be a want of good sense; but not so, to have a firm belief that every human being is finite in moral as well as in intellectual greatness.

We have a very imperfect history of the apostle James; and I do not know that I could adduce any fact specifically recorded concerning him in disproof of his absolute moral perfection, if any of his Jerusalem disciples had chosen to set up this as a dogma of religion.  Yet no one would blame me, as morose, or indisposed to acknowledge genius and greatness, if I insisted on believing James to be frail and imperfect, while admitting that I knew almost nothing about him.  And why?—­Singly and surely, because we know him to be a man:  that suffices.  To set up James or John or Daniel as my Model, and my Lord; to be swallowed up in him and press him upon others for a Universal Standard, would be despised as a self-degrading idolatry and resented as an obtrusive favouritism.  Now why does not the same equally apply, if the name Jesus is substituted for these?  Why, in defect of all other knowledge than the bare fact of his manhood, are we not unhesitatingly to take for granted that he does not exhaust all perfection, and is at best only one among many brethren and equals?

II.  My friend, I gather, will reply, “because so many thousands of minds in all Christendom attest the infinite and unapproachable goodness of Jesus.”  It therefore follows to consider, what is the weight of this attestation.  Manifestly it depends, first of all, on the independence of the witnesses:  secondly, on the grounds of their belief.  If all those, who confess the moral perfection of Jesus, confess it as the result of unbiassed examination of his character; and if of those acquainted with the narrative, none espouse the opposite side; this would