The character revealed in His words and deeds is beautiful beyond comparison. The most outstanding feature of it is His love for God and the perfect and unbroken serenity of His intercourse with Him. Love for man also shines out everywhere. But the most extraordinary point is this, that He in whom the moral ideal was so lofty, so deep and so broad, He who was so keenly conscious of sin in others, and had such power to make them feel it, betrays absolutely no consciousness of sin Himself, never asks for pardon, and never speaks of having repented, or of having passed through any crisis of the nature of conversion.[194] On the other hand the perfect balance of His character is almost as marvellous as His sinlessness: judicial severity controlled by perfect love; supreme authority that is also supreme gentleness; strength filled with tenderness; regal dignity shown in acts of lowliest service; holiness that led Him among the unholy;(sublimest self-consciousness, never leading to anything but self-effacement and self-sacrifice.) And yet again, is there anything about Him so wonderful as His power of winning human love? The Gospels are full of instances of it, and to-day how many millions of men, women and children would count it a supreme joy to die for His sake! His teaching is a perfectly articulated and unified whole, as may be seen from the scientific studies of it that have been published during the last twenty years.[195] But we must not attempt to deal with that fascinating subject here, except in so far as the whole is implied in what He says about Himself. For it is only that part of it, namely, His account of Himself and His mission, that we propose to touch on. We shall understand it best, if we begin with what happened at His crucifixion; for it was only at the end of His life that He made perfectly clear to the whole world what His claims were. People often wondered whether He were not THE CHRIST, _i.e._, _The Messiah_, the Anointed One, the great national deliverer whom the Jews were so earnestly expecting and praying for;[196] but during the three years of His public life He seldom openly made the claim.[197] When, however, He went to Jerusalem for the last time, He made a royal entry into the sacred city,[198] cleansed the Temple from the desecration of its cattle-market,[199] and began to teach in the Temple courts,[200] thus by both word and act publicly claiming recognition as the Christ.