And if all this were original in Jesus, it was as bold as it was original. The humble, unostentatious, unselfish, Jewish peasant declares Himself the One Eternal God. If it was assumption only, it deserved the death which was its consequence. But just let us consider it for a moment. Was it fanaticism? I have already pointed to the calmness, self-possession, soberness of Christ. No character in history exhibits these qualities so markedly. There is not a symptom of restlessness, excitement, intemperance, of any kind in one of His discourses. His eloquence--and no one can doubt His eloquence who has read, "Consider the lilies of the field," who has heard "Come unto Me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden"--but His eloquence, though more heart-thrilling than any human eloquence, was never rhetorical, never emotional. It carried conviction because it sounded like _truth uttered by love_. In fact, fanaticism or insanity are charges that cannot be made against Him on any ground whatever, except on the ground that He believed what He taught, and that no reasonable man could believe it. And if so, I think the charge must be abandoned, for Bacon, Locke, Leibnitz, Newton have believed it, and it is still believed by the most reasoning minds in Christendom. Imposture is another charge. I have reminded you that the great principle of Christ's teaching was truth. If there was one point on which it could with some colour of probability be said that He was an enthusiast, it would be in His love of truth, and His scorn for all that was false and hypocritical. It would be strange indeed that such a teacher should lay the foundation of His teaching in falsehood. And be it remembered, that the supposed falsehood was not to please popular tastes, or to take advantage of popular prejudices, but to run counter to and offend them all, having apparently no purpose, but the purely disinterested purpose of mending men's manners against their wills, and having evidently no earthly end but persecution, suffering, and death. The fanaticism is the most inexplicable, the imposture the most improbable ever heard or thought of. III. And now let us see what the teaching of this so-called fanatic or impostor has done.