term of fretfulness and folly has
expired? Of this race Christ himself was a member, and to this day
is it not the best answer to all blasphemers of the species, the
best consolation when our sense of its degradation is keenest,
that a human brain was behind his forehead, and a human heart
beating in his breast, and that within the whole creation of God
nothing more elevated or more attractive has yet been found than
he? And if it be answered that there was in his nature something
exceptional and peculiar, that humanity must not be measured by
the stature of Christ, let us remember that it was precisely thus
that he wished it to be measured, delighting to call himself the
Son of Man, delighting to call the meanest of mankind his
brothers. If some human beings are abject and contemptible, if it
be incredible to us that they can have any high dignity or
destiny, do we regard them from so great a height as Christ? Are
we likely to be more pained by their faults and deficiencies than
he was? Is our standard higher than his? And yet he associated by
preference with the meanest of the race; no contempt for them did
he ever express, no suspicion that they might be less dear than
the best and wisest to the common Father, no doubt that they were
naturally capable of rising to a moral elevation like his own.
There is nothing of which a man may be prouder than of this; it is
the most hopeful and redeeming fact in history; it is precisely
what was wanting to raise the love of man as man to enthusiasm. An
eternal glory has been shed upon the human race by the love Christ
bore to it And it was because the Edict of Universal Love went
forth to men whose hearts were in no cynical mood, but possessed
with a spirit of devotion to a man, that words which at any other
time, however grandly they might sound, would have been but words,
penetrated so deeply, and along with the law of love the power of
love was given. Therefore also the first Christians were enabled
to dispense with philosophical phrases, and instead of saying that
they loved the ideal of man in man, could simply say and feel that
they loved Christ in every man.

We have here the very kernel of the Christian moral scheme. We
have distinctly before us the end Christ proposed to himself, and
the means he considered adequate to the attai