. Very
frequently the failings and vices of great men are in proportion to
their virtues and powers, as the tallest bodies cast the longest
shadows. Even the three leading apostles are models of piety and virtue
only as far as they reflect the image of their Heavenly Master, and it
is only with this limitation that Paul exhorts his spiritual children:
'Be ye followers of me even as I am also of Christ.'

What these representative men are to particular ages or nations, or
sects or particular schools of science and art, Christ was to the human
family at large in its relation to God. He and he alone is the universal
type for universal imitation. Hence he could, without the least
impropriety, or suspicion of vanity, call upon all men to forsake all
things and to follow him. He stands above the limitations of age,
school, sect, nation, and race. Although a Jew according to the flesh,
there is nothing Jewish about him which is not at the same time of
general significance. The particular and national in him is always duly
subordinated to the general and human. Still less was he ever identified
with a party or sect. He was equally removed from the stiff formalism of
the Pharisees, the loose liberalism of the Sadducees, and the inactive
mysticism of the Essenes. He rose above all the prejudices, bigotries,
and superstitions of his age and people, which exert their power even
upon the strongest and otherwise most liberal minds.

Witness his freedom in the observance of the Sabbath, by which he
offended the scrupulous literalists, while he fulfilled, as the Lord of
the Sabbath, the true spirit of the law in its universal and abiding
significance; his reply to the disciples, when they traced the
misfortune of the blind man to a particular sin of the subject or his
parents; his liberal conduct toward the Samaritans, as contrasted with
the inveterate hatred and prejudices of the Jews, including his own
disciples at the time; and his charitable judgment of the slaughtered
Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, and the
eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them. 'Think ye,'
he addressed the children of superstition, 'that these men were sinners
above all the Galileans, and above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem,
because they suffered such things? I tell you, nay: but except ye
repent, ye shall all likewise perish.'

All the words and all the actions of Christ, while they were fully
adapted to t