Purity in others has been cold and chaste as ice.  How strange that in Him purity had an irresistible fascination, so that the corruptest and wickedest felt drawn unto Him, and “depravity itself bowed down and wept in the presence of divinity.”  What all-forgiving love, what all-cleansing love, in one who by a mere look could dissolve in repentant tears men long hardened by vice and crime!  What an atmosphere of power He must have carried, that by one beam from His eye He could smite to the very ground the soldiers who confronted Him!

Did ever man have such a genius for noble friendship?  What bosom words He used!  What love pressure in all His speech!  How were His words laden with double meanings, so that hearing one thing, men also heard another, even as they who hear the sound of the distant sea, knowing that the sound they hear is but a breath of the great infinite ocean that heaves beyond in the dim, vast dark.  Among all the heroes of time He walks solitary by the greatness of His power, His beauty and the wonder of love His personality excited.  Standing in the presence of some glorious cathedral or gallery, beholding the Parthenon or pyramids, the rugged mountain or the beautiful landscape, emotion and imagination are sometimes so deeply stirred that men lose command of themselves and break into transports of admiration.  But the enthusiasm evoked by mountain or statue or canvas is as nothing compared to the rapturous devotion felt by the multitude for this One, who united in full splendor all those eminent qualities of mind and heart that all the ages and generations have in vain sought to emulate.  High over all the other worthies He rises like a star riding in untroubled splendor above the low-browed hills.

In all ages great men have educated themselves by reading the biography of ancient worthies, and emulating the example of the heroes of antiquity.  Great has been the influence of these reformers and philosophers, statesmen and poets, hanging in the heavens above men and raining down inspiration upon the human imagination.  Yet from all the worthies of the past, and all modern heroes, man has drawn less of inspiration and personal influence than from the single example of this ideal Christ.  Passing by His influence upon institutions, education, art and literature, we shall do well to consider how His example has instructed man in the art of a right carriage of the faculties in the home and market-place.  In the last analysis, Jesus Christ is the only perfect gentleman our earth has ever known—­in comparison with whom all the Chesterfields seem boors.  For nothing taxes a man so heavily as the task of maintaining smooth, pleasant and charitable relations with one’s fellows.  And Christ alone was able always to meet storm with calm, hate with love, scowls with smiles, plottings with confidence, envy and bitterness with unruffled tranquility.