And this is particularly manifested in Christ's views of life. His peerless spirituality did not make him an ascetic. His clear vision of the future did not lead him to despise the present. His love of God did not destroy his love of nature or of man. His hatred of sin did not cause him to shun the sinner. Hence, though our Lord was the model of a religious man, he was no enthusiast, still less a fanatic. The enthusiast is a man who sees but part of truth and magnifies it out of its proportion; and the fanatic is one who, in addition to this, hates what he cannot understand. According to Isaac Taylor, "Fanaticism is enthusiasm inflamed by hatred." But Christ exaggerated nothing and hated no man. He hated sin, but no sinner. His boundless, tender love itself prevented such moral distortion. And, therefore, he is the ideal or model of human life. We do not feel that in striving to imitate even his most spiritual qualities we shall become impractical or unnatural. We do not feel this in the case of most other holy men. They become examples of one virtue by exaggerating it. But Christ never did this. Lofty as the view of life was which he discloses in our text, sublime as was its spiritual consecration, it existed in him in harmony with the life which by its thoroughly human and practical features proves that we too, in at least some measure, can make even his highest traits our exemplars. Look, therefore, at this text which discloses his mind, and mark its principal elements. 1. There is first disclosed the strong and constant consciousness that he had a distinct errand in the world. He knew that he had been born for a purpose, that a divine aim was in his coming, and that a positive result would follow his life. This sense of a definite errand was expressed by him on numerous occasions; in some of them quite incidentally, and in others more directly. You remember how, as a boy in the temple, he said to his mother, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" You remember how, at the marriage in Cana, he said to her again, "My hour is not yet come." So with that precious phrase which on several occasions fell from his lips, "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost." He regarded himself as one sent from God; and when his life was about over he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, "Father, the hour is come; I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do."