XXIII.

CHRIST AS SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD.

HEBREWS Vii. 26.--" Separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens."

WITH us of to-day, it is the commendation of Jesus that he is so profoundly humbled, identified so affectingly with our human state. But the power he had with the men of his time moved in exactly the opposite direction, being the impression he made of his remoteness and separateness from men, when he was, in fact, only a man, as they supposed, under all human conditions. With us, it is the wonder that he is brought so low. With them, that he could seem to rise so high; for they knew nothing, as yet, of his person considered as the incarnate Word of the Father. This contrast, however, between their position and ours is not as complete as may, at first, seem to us; for that which makes their impression, makes, after all, a good part of ours. For when we appeal thus to his humiliations under the flesh, and as a man of sorrows, we really do not count on the flesh and the sorrows, as being the Christly power, but only on what he brought into the world from above the world, by the flesh and the sorrows, the holiness, the deific love, the self-sacrificing greatness, the everlasting beauty; in a word, all that most distinguishes him above mankind and shows him most transcendently separate from sinners. Here is the great power of Christianity—the immense importation it makes

from worlds of glory outside. Hence the intimation of the text, that it became our Lord, as the priest of our salvation, to be not only holy, harmless, and undefiled, but separate also from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; that so he may be duly qualified for his transcendent work and office.

What I propose, then, for my present subject, is,—The separateness of Jesus from men; the immense power it had and must ever have on their feeling and character.

I do not mean by this that Christ was separated as being at all withdrawn, but only that in drawing himself most closely to them, he was felt by them never as being on their level of life and character, but as being parted from them by an immense chasm of distance. He was born of a woman, grew up in the trade of a mechanic, was known as a Nazarene, stood a man before the eye, and yet he early began to raise impressions that separated him, and set him asunder inexplicably from the world he was in.

These impressions were not due, as I have said, to any distinct conceptions they had of him as being a higher nature incarnate; for not even his disciples took up any such definite conceptions of his nature, till after his death and ascension. It was guessed, indeed, that he might be Elias, or some one of the old prophets, but we are only to see, in such struggles of conjecture, how powerfully he has already impressed the sense of his distinction, or separateness of character; for such guesses or conjectures were even absurd, unless they were instigated by previous impressions of something very peculiar in his unearthly manner, requiring to be accounted for.

His miracles had undoubtedly something to do with the impression of his separateness from ordinary men, but a great many others, who were strictly human, have wrought miracles, without creating any such gulf between them and mankind as we discover here.

It is probably true also that the rumor of his being the Messiah, the great, long-expected prince and deliverer, had something to do in raising the impressions of men concerning him. But their views of the Messiah to come had prepared them to look only for some great hero and deliverer, and a kind of political millenium under his kingdom. There was nothing in their expectation that should separate him specially from mankind, as being a more than humanly superlative character.

Pursuing then our inquiry, let us notice, in the first place, how the persons most remote and opposite, even they that finally conspired his death, were impressed or affected by him. They deny his Messiahship; they charge that only Beelzebub could help him do his miracles; they are scandalized by his familiarity with publicans and sinners and other low people; they arraign his doctrine as a heresy against many of the most sacred laws of their religion; they charge him with the crime of breaking their Sabbath, and even with excess in eating and drinking; and yet we can easily see that there is growing up, in their minds, a most peculiar awe of his person. And it appears to be excited more by his manners and doctrine and a certain indescribable originality and sanctity in both, than by any thing else. His townsmen the Nazarenes, for example, were taken with surprise, by his discourses in the synagogue and elsewhere,

knowing well that he had never received the aids of learning. Is not this the carpenter's son? they inquired. Do we not all know his brothers and sisters, living here among us? Whence then these gracious words that we hear him speak? When his wonderful sermon on the mount was ended, what said the multitude? The very point of their astonishment was that he spoke with such an original and strong authority, and not as the Scribes; who were, in fact, the Sophists of Jewish learning, but were held in high respect as a learned order. The expressions made use of by these hearers of Jesus indicate, in fact, a raising of their own thoughts by what they had heard, and the sense they had of some sacred and even celestial freshness in his manner and doctrine. Without including the centurion at Capernaum among his enemies, we may gather something from him, in respect to the probable impression made by the bearing and discourse of Jesus. He was a Roman, but appears withal to have been a man of religious worth and culture. He had even built a synagogue for the people of Capernaum, at his own expense. In that synagogue he had probably been rewarded in hearing Jesus speak; for the Saviour had been making Capernaum a kind of center for some time past. But we observe that when he sends to Jesus to obtain the healing of his servant, he has been so deeply impressed with the Saviour's manner, that he does not presume on his military position as keeping guard over a vanquished country, takes on no high airs of negotiation, but even requests that Jesus will not think it necessary to come under his roof, for he is really not worthy of so great honor. He may have apprehended that Christ might have some religious scruples in respect

to the implied defilement of such intercourse with a nominal pagan. If so, there was the greater respect in his delicacy.

Beginning with impressions like these, we can easily see that the public mind is gradually becoming saturated with a kind of awe of his person; as if he might be some higher, finer nature come into the world. This was the feeling that shook the courage of the traders and money-changers in the temple and made them fly, in such feeble panic before him. For the same reason it was that a band of officers sent out at an early period, to arrest him, returned without having executed their commission; for, they said,— Never man spake like this man. Such words of clearness and repose and purity fell on them, as excited their imagination, starting the conception apparently of one speaking out of eternity and worlds unknown. He put them under such constraints of fear, in short, by his words and manner, that they did not dare to arrest him. And just this kind of feeling grew upon the people, as his ministry advanced, till it became a superstition general; for it is the way of minds infected by any such tendencies, to make ghosts of the fancy out of mere impressions of superior dignity, and even goodness. Hence, so far from supposing that he could be captured as safely as a lamb, and with less of resistance, they appear to have had a kind of suspicion that he would strike blind, or annihilate the first man that touched him. Indeed one reason why they wanted to get him in their power, apparently was, that he was reported to have given out his determination to shake down the temple, and they were even much concerned lest he might do it. Hence the problem with them was, not how to arrest any common man, or sinner of man