rvant eye for all the life
around Him. To every appeal He responded with an insight and delicacy of
consideration which betokened that He Himself had sounded the depths of
human experience and knew what was in man. Humour, irony, and pathos in
turn are revealed in His human intercourse.

But while Jesus delighted to give of Himself freely He knew also how to
withhold Himself. There can be no true {150} sympathy without restraint.
The passive virtues--meekness, patience, forbearance--which appear in the
life of Christ are 'not the signs of mere self-mortification, they are
the signs of power in reserve. They are the marks of one who can afford
to wait, who expects to suffer; and that not because he is simply meek
and lowly, but because he is also strong and calm.'[4]

The New Testament depicts Jesus as made in the likeness of men, whose
life, though unique in some of its aspects, was in its general conditions
normal, passing through the ordinary stages of growth, and participating
in the common experiences of mankind. He had to submit to the same laws
and limitations of the universe as we have. There was the same call, in
His case as in ours, to obedience and endurance. There was the same
demand for moral decision. Temptation, suffering, and toil, which mean
so much for man in the discipline of character, were factors also in the
spiritual development of Christ. Trust, prayer, thanksgiving were
exercised by the Son of Man as by others; confession alone had no place
in His life.

3. The question has been seriously asked, Can the example and teaching
of Jesus be really adopted in modern life as the pattern and rule of
conduct? Is there not something strangely impracticable in His Ethics;
and, however admirably suited to meet the needs of His own time, utterly
inapplicable to the complex conditions of society to-day? On the one
hand, Tolstoy would have us follow the example of Jesus to the letter,
and rigidly practise the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, even to the
extent of refusing to resist wrong and possess property, and of holding
aloof from all culture and enterprise, and the interests of life
generally. On the other hand, philosophers like Paulsen and Bradley,
perceiving the utter impracticableness of Tolstoy's contentions, yet at
the same time recognising his attitude as the only consistent one if the
imitation of Christ is to have vogue at all, are convinced that the
earthly life of Jesus is not