Our Lord’s perfect meekness and humility need no human comment.  They shine forth with serene brightness through all his words and actions.  He described himself as “meek and lowly in heart,” and his life was a perpetual illustration of these qualities.  “When he was reviled, he reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.”  But the point to be particularly noticed is the wonderful harmony of this meek and lowly mind with claims more lofty than were ever conceived of by any man before him—­claims everywhere boldly asserted, and which, as we shall see hereafter, implied the possession of a divine nature.  It is not that he claimed and exercised power over nature or outward power over men, even power to raise the dead, that fills us with awe and amazement; but that he went within the spirit, and offered inward life, light, strength, peace—­in a word, life eternal—­to all who would come to him; and that he asserted, in a way as decisive as it was calm, his absolute control over the everlasting destinies of all men.  When we read the account of these superhuman claims, we have no feeling that they were incongruous or extravagant.  On the contrary, they seem to us altogether legitimate and proper.  And yet, as has been often remarked, were any other person to advance a tithe of these pretensions, he would be justly regarded as a madman.  The only possible explanation is, that this meek and lowly Jesus made good his claim to be the Son of God by what he was and by what he did.

Another quality very conspicuous in our Lord’s character is his perfect elevation above this world.  “Ye are from beneath,” said he to the Jews; “I am from above:  ye are of this world; I am not of this world.”  It was not in his origin alone, but in his spirit also that he was from above.  As he was from heaven, so was he heavenly in all his affections.  His own precept to his disciples, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,” was the law of his own life.  He had no treasures here below but the souls of men; and these are not earthly, but heavenly treasures.  Satan plied him in vain with the offer of “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.”  In him “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” could find no place for a single moment.  He kept the world always and perfectly under his feet.  Yet this perfect elevation above the world had in it no tinge of stoicism or asceticism.  He made no war upon the genuine passions and affections of human nature, but simply subjected them all to his higher spiritual nature; in other words to the law of God.  Except temporarily for meditation and prayer, he never withdrew himself, nor encouraged his disciples to withdraw themselves from the cares and temptations of an active life, under the false idea of thus rising to a state of superhuman communion with God.  He did not fast himself systematically, nor enjoin upon his disciples systematic fastings, but left fastings for special emergencies.  In a word, he ate and drank like other men.  His heavenly mind lay not in the renunciation of God’s gifts, but in maintaining his affections constantly raised above the gifts themselves to the divine Giver.  It took on a human, and therefore an imitable form.