We turn now from the words to the life of the great Teacher, in the endeavour to get a more definite idea of Duty, Discipleship, and Faith. The character of Jesus is the best, fullest, and truest interpretation of the words of Jesus. His life is his own translation of his own precepts into the language of action. We surely cannot be far from the true sources of Christianity when we first drink his words into our hearts, and then follow him with reverent steps and with gazing eyes, to watch his own illustrations of those words, to behold the spirit breathing in the life, and from the fulness of his character to learn the fulness of his precepts. Surely Christ embodied and impersonated his own teachings. Surely the life of Christ is undoubted Christianity. Surely his character is Christian Duty; and his destiny Christian Faith. Surely he knew and exhibited the practical tendencies of his own doctrines; and surely to set him up at the fountain-head of our moral being, as God’s image to the conscience, and to strive in all things to be like unto him, “whom we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus,”—cannot be to preach “another gospel,” or to mistake fatally the essentials of Discipleship. “If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”[26] The definition of a Christian, when deduced from the words and the life of the Christ himself, thus comes out to be—one who TRUSTS himself in all things to that God of whom Jesus was the image; and who CONFORMS himself in all things to that will of God of which Jesus was the perfect expression. “This is life eternal that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”[27]