"But Thee, but Thee, O Sovereign Seer of time, But Thee, O poet's Poet, wisdom's tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labor writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King or Priest,-- What _if_ or _yet_, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, thou crystal Christ?" 4. _Christ's Double Uniqueness._--It seems hardly possible to do justice to the facts now passed in review, without recognizing, at least, that they point to a double uniqueness on the part of Christ in his relation to God, reflected in his own language concerning himself and in the spontaneous confessions of his disciples in all times. He alone, in the emphatic sense, is _the_ Son. The contrasts between Christ and other men, which the simple facts of the life and consciousness of Christ have compelled us to make, naturally, then, demand recognition from thought. The recognition of the facts _is_ the vital matter, but thought can hardly see them unmoved. How are we to _think_ of Christ? With clear remembrance, now, that Christian teaching itself insists upon the kinship of God and men; that absolute barriers, therefore, cannot anywhere be set up; that a revelation unrelated to all else could be no revelation; and that Christ himself often pointed out the likeness between his own life and work and those of his disciples;--still we may not ignore actual differences, and must honestly strive to do justice to them in our own conception of Christ. One may not forget that there is much here that we can hardly hope ever to fathom; and that into this secret of Christ's relation to the Father theology has often tried to press with a precision of statement that was quite beyond its possible knowledge, and that damaged rather than helped the religious consciousness; but one may try to think in simple, straightforward fashion what the facts mean. Now these actual and momentous moral and spiritual differences already pointed out seem, at least, to assert, I say, a genuine double uniqueness in Christ. Christ's relation to God is absolutely unique, that is, in two senses: in the absolutely unique purpose of God concerning him; in the absolutely perfect response of Christ to that purpose. If one chooses to use the language, he may say, that the first uniqueness is metaphysical; the second, ethical.[101]