We now come to consider the man,--yes, the man Christ Jesus. We have already said he was a Jew and lived and died one, with apparently no thought or purpose other than to reform and correct the abuses into which his people had lapsed, and revive and intensify the deep spiritual and ethical meaning of religion. Born of the most intensely religious race of all antiquity, he was the most intensely religious of his race. He perceived a new conception of God, not as the arbitrary ruler and vindictive judge of his people, but as the universal Father of all men, not anthropomorphic, but Infinite Spirit, whose greatest attributes were love, justice, mercy and truth, expressed in the great term Fatherhood; and that all men are children of the great Father, and therefore brothers. This expresses his fundamental philosophy and working basis of life. Upon it he undertook to build up and establish, not a new system of religion, but a new order of life. The central idea in this was man's direct relationship to God. In his own life he embodied a perfect example of his ideal. He thus became not God incarnate bodily in human flesh, nor the Son of God in any _different_ sense than all are sons of God--except perhaps in degree and not in kind--but the most complete reflection and interpretation of God in terms of human life that the world had ever known before his time, has ever known since, or perhaps ever will know. But this last statement is saying more than any man can know for certain. We know not what God may yet have to reveal to mankind, nor how He will reveal it. His course of life and teaching naturally brought him into direct conflict with the prevailing order of his time. We need not discuss that in detail. It soon led to a violent and tragic death, before he had fairly begun his work. We cannot form any guess what _might have been_ the result if he had been permitted to live out a normal life and continue his teaching. He only met the same fate that many prophets before him had met, and many more since. If he should appear today here in America and pursue the same course toward public institutions and popular beliefs and practices, he would meet with a reception little different from what he met in Palestine nineteen hundred years ago. He might not indeed be crucified on a cross; but he would stand a good chance to be cast into jail and sent to a penitentiary for a term of years for sedition and attempting to interfere with the established order. And no persons would be more active in his prosecution than some of the modern Pharisees who occupy high places in that great institution that bears his name. If he had appeared in Europe some four or five hundred years ago, he would have been almost dead certain to meet the same fate of John Huss, Savonarola and Giordano Bruno. But now, as then, the poor, down-trodden and oppressed would doubtless hear him gladly.