esus, a
greater than Jesus is here; and they are right. The oft-quoted challenge
of John Stuart Mill is as unanswerable to-day as ever it was. "It is of
no use to say," he declares, "that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels,
is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable
has been super-added by the traditions of His followers.... Who among
His disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the
sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character
revealed in the Gospels?"[4]

I

Assuming, therefore, without further discussion, the essential
trustworthiness of the Gospel records, let us pass on to consider in
this introductory chapter some general characteristics of Christ's
teaching as a whole.

Mark at the outset Christ's own estimate of His words: "The words that I
have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life;" "If a man keep My word
he shall never see death;" "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My
words shall not pass away;" "Every one which heareth these words of Mine
and doeth them "--with him Christ said it should be well; but "every one
that heareth these words of Mine and doeth them not"--upon him ruin
should come to the uttermost. Sayings like these are very remarkable,
for this is not the way in which human teachers are wont to speak of
their own words; or, if they do so speak, this wise world of ours knows
better than to take them at their own valuation. But the astonishing
fact in the case of Jesus is that the world has admitted His claim. Men
who refuse utterly to share our faith concerning Him and the
significance of His life and death, readily give to Him a place apart
among the great teachers of mankind. I have already quoted the judgment
of John Stuart Mill. "Jesus," says Matthew Arnold, "as He appears in the
Gospels ... is in the jargon of modern philosophy an absolute"[5]--we
cannot get beyond Him. Such, likewise, is the verdict of Goethe: "Let
intellectual and spiritual culture progress, and the human mind expand,
as much as it will; beyond the grandeur and the moral elevation of
Christianity, as it sparkles and shines in the Gospels, the human mind
will not advance."[6] It would be easy to multiply testimonies, but it
is needless, since practically all whose judgment is of any account are
of one mind.

But now if, with these facts in our minds, and knowing nothing else
about the teaching of Jesus, we could suppose ourselves turning for