Try the principle by any test of him. For example, he teaches us that forgiveness is a duty and that revenge is a sin. What does he mean? What he did. You remember his last prayer: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” He teaches us to love our enemies. What does he mean? What he did; always blessing them when he could. He teaches that we best serve God by doing good to men, and that the best proof and only proof of loving God is in loving men. What does he mean? What he did. He was always doing good. And so his life expounds his teachings, and is the one safe and true commentary upon his words. Contemplate that life for a moment. Begin at Bethlehem and follow him to Bethany, where, it is said, he ascended to heaven. That life is blameless, flawless. He did not lack abuse, denunciation, defamation, persecutions. Men called him a drunkard and a glutton because he was not an ascetic; they said he “had a devil” because they could not understand how any man would do a thing only because it was right. Some called him a lunatic; “he is beside himself,” they said, because he was unworldly, was what they considered “unbusinesslike,” because they, with their selfishness and pride, could not imagine themselves living as he did unless they had lost their reason. Many hated him then, as they do now, because he was, as he is, in the way of their self-seeking and their sins. Bad men cannot be at rest where he is. No wonder the perfect teaching of a blameless man has power upon the human conscience. To this hour good men indorse Pilate’s verdict; bad men can find no error in it. When we look more closely into his innermost character we will find qualities that difference him from mere men broadly and unmistakably. We see in him no fault that we can name as attaching to his life; but we do see in him two manifestations of all others most marvelous and out of the range of mere human life. 1. There does not appear in him any, the very least, consciousness of fault. 2. In his religion there is no effort. Now these things appear in no others who are sincere--who know what they are and what goodness is. The best men and women are conscious of faults, and the best are most conscious of them. If a man should say, “I am faultless,” we would question his sincerity, his sanity, or his knowledge of words, or his conception of goodness. And we would be right. No sane man, with any high ideal of goodness and knowing the meaning of words, ever yet used of himself words that fit only Jesus.