I have sought to gather from the Gospels the scattered facts that constitute the life of Jesus. I have searched for them in his acts, his precepts, his words: in his different relations in life. I have added nothing, exaggerated nothing; on the contrary, the life of Jesus is infinitely grander and more sublime than I have made it; his words are infinitely more profound and admiral than I have described them. And I have said nothing of the seal affixed to _his work_ and _his mission_ by his Passion; nor have I shown Jesus at Gethsemane and upon the Cross. {291} According to the Bible, God is without parallel--ever the same. Jesus is also so according to the Gospel. The most perfect, the most constant unity reigns in Him: in his life as in his soul; in his language as in his acts. His action is progressive, and proportionate to the circumstances which call it forth and in the midst of which He lives; but his progress never entails any change of character or purpose. As He appears at the age of twelve, in the Temple, already full of the sentiment of his divine nature, in his reply to his mother who was searching for Him with disquietude, "Knowest thou not that I must be about my Father's business?" the same He remains and manifests himself in the whole course of his active mission--in Galilee and at Jerusalem, with his apostles and with the people, amongst the Pharisees and the Publicans, whether they be men, or women, or children who approach Him; alike before Caiaphas and Pilate, and under the eyes of the crowd pressing around to listen to Him. {292} Everywhere and in every circumstance, the same spirit animates Him; He diffuses the same light, proclaims the same law. Perfect and immutable, always at once Son of God and Son of Man, He pursues and consummates amidst all the trials and all the sorrows of human existence his divine work for the salvation of mankind. What need to add more? How speak in detail of Jesus himself when one believes in Him, when one sees in Him God made man, acting as God alone can act, and suffering all that man can suffer to ransom mankind from sin, and save it by bringing it back to God? How sound closely the mysteries of such a person and such a purpose? What passed in that divine soul during that human existence? Who shall explain those cries of agony of Jesus in the bosom of the most absolute faith in God his father and in himself, and those moments of horror at the approach of the sacrifice without the slightest hesitation in the sacrifice, without the smallest doubt as to its efficaciousness? {293} This sublime fact, this intimate and continual intermixture of the divine and human finds no competent, no adequate expression in human speech, and the more we consider it the more difficult we find it to speak of it.