Moral Glory of Jesus Christ 63 The very greatest men are unable to free themselves from the influences amid which they have been born and educated. Peculiarities of race and the spirit of the age leave in their characters traces that are imperishable. To the last fiber of his being Luther was German, Calvin was French, Knox was Scotch;' Augustine bears the unmistakable impress of the Roman, and Chrysostom is as certainly Greek. Paul, with all his large heartedness and sympathies is a Jew, always a Jew. Jesus Christ is the only One who is justly entitled to be called the Catholic Man. Nothing local, •transient, individualizing, national, or sectarian dwarfs the proportions of His won drous character. “He rises above the parentage, the blood, the narrow horizon which bounded, as it seemed, His life; for He is the archetypal man in whose presence distinctions of race, intervals of ages, types of civilization and degrees of mental culture are as nothing” (Liddon). He belongs to all ages, He is related to all men, whether they shiver-amid the snows of the arctic circle, or pant beneath the burning heat of the equator; for He is the Son of Man, the Son of mankind, the genuine offspring of the race. UNSELFISHNESS AND DIGNITY 3. The Lord’s moral glory appears in His unselfishness and personal dignity. The entire absence of selfishness in any form from the character of the Lord Jesus is another remark able feature of the Gospels. He had frequent and fair oppor tunities of gratifying ambition had His nature been tainted with that passion. But “even Christ pleased not himself;” He .“sought not his own glory;” He came not “to do his own will.” His body and His soul with all the faculties and activities of each were devoted to the supreme aims of His mission. His self-sacrifice included the whole range of His human thought and affection and action; it lasted throughout His life; its highest expression was His ignominious death on the cross of Calvary.
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