The Character of Jesus

by Charles Edward Jefferson

But notwithstanding his disappointment, his trust in God was unbroken. In the midst of the tempest his torch kept on burning, and he cried, “Be o...

He was persecuted as no other man before his day or since; he was malign...

He was accused of blasphemy, of treason — but his hea...

he said, “The cup which my Father has given me to drink, sha...

but it should never be forgotten that his life on the day of his death was a terrible and heart-breaking failure. Injustice was stronger than justice, unrighteousness was mightier than righteousness, hate was stronger than love. He had tried to induce the world to accept a beautiful truth, but the world spurned him. In the hour of his great defeat he still looked to God saying, “Not my will but thine be done.” Defeat itself could not daunt him or make him draw back. If it is necessary, he said, that I should be sacrificed,

that I should be trodden under the feet of the men who are thirsting for my blood, if that is the will of the Infinite Father, then to that I gladly submit.

Never was there a man like this man. Other great and strong men have lived and labored, but never ...

But Jesus of Nazareth, in the midst of the wildest storm that ever blotted out the heavens and caused the earth to quake, looked steadily toward God, saying, “Not my will but thine be done.”

Look down across the ages and see the great men, how they are swayed and tossed by the winds and storms; but there above them all there rises this man of Galilee like some majestic mountain, his peaceful head outlined against the blue.

THE BROTHERLINESS OF JESUS “First be reconciled to thy brother.” — Matthew v: 24.

We have found that the secret of his joy and strength lay in his implicit trust in God,

Brotherliness carries in it not only a sense of kinship but likewise a disposition to render help. There is a relationship and likewise a helpfulness, and both of these blended into one constitute the quality to which I invite your attention now.

“He went about doing good.” What more beautiful eulogy has ever been written about a man than that?

“He went about doing good” — we get eloquent testimony to the fact that Jesus had a brotherly heart.

They belonged to him and he belonged to them. They were members of the human race, children of the great family of God, and therefore in spite of all that they had done, and notwithstanding all that they were, he treated them as brothers.

it has blinded us to a fact that should never be forgotten — that Jesus was the brother of everybody.

It should never be forgotten that Jesus was brotherly toward good men as well as bad men, rich men as well as poor men, respectable

men as well as disreputable men — he was the brother of every man.

Pain in its every form appealed to him, misery drew virtue from his heart. A large proportion of all the recorded miracles are miracles of healing. He could not look upon the deaf or dumb, the palsied, the blind, without putting forth his power to help them. No finer illustration of this brotherliness is afforded in the New Testament than that which St. John gives in the story

of the impotent man at Bethesda. Here was an invalid who for thirty-eight years had lain in helplessness without a friend in all that great city. He needed only a lift in order to bring him within the reach of influences that were healing, but no one would lend a lifting hand. No other incident in the Bible throws such a strong light upon the inhumanity of the world nineteen hundred years ago. We are living in a day when the spirit of Jesus is working everywhere. Everywhere there is an outstretched hand, and everywhere human hearts are beating in sympathy with the helpless and the sick. Travelers

through the Orient tell us that we people of the West have no conception of the indifference of the Oriental heart to human woes and miseries. Jesus, by being brotherly, has set an example after which the life of the world is being patterned, and in every land through which his name has been ca...

His brotherliness is also manifested in his teaching. He could not look into men’s faces without being pained by their confusion,...

to him brotherliness is the very essence of religion.

when they laid their plots to

kill him, he went bravely forward giving help, saying: “If I cannot help them with my life I will help them with my death. By dying I will convince them that I wanted to do them good. I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. When hanging on the cross they will understand me as they cannot understand me now. When they hear me praying for them with my dying breath, they will be convinced that I am indeed their brother.”

THE OPTIMISM OF JESUS “Be of good cheer.” — John xvi: 33.

Never were eyes wider open than his. He saw everything. He saw things which the world had passed by unnoticed. He saw suffering in its every form — it tugged at his heart strings. The tired, sad faces

of human beings haunted him, they spoke to him of the tragedy of the world’s disordered heart. He had ears which caught every shriek of agony, every cry of distress, every sigh of want. He saw with eyes which pierced. Underneath the tragedy of suffering he

saw the blacker tragedy of sin. Down underneath the surface of the world’s life he saw the cancer which was eating up its strength and its hope and its joy. He recognized as none other the tremendou...

lead to death. He knew, as no other has ever known so well, that evil must be resisted, that sin must be faced and grappled with, that it is only by struggle, suffering, and death that the victo...

He never loses heart. He sees all, and he hears all, but he never gives up hope. He faces facts as they are, and he predicts grander facts which are to be. He sees both sides — the bright side and the dark...

it. He sings and he also sobs. His singing is sometimes broken by his sobbing, but he is never overwhelmed, he never surrenders, his head is always up, and his u...

This is the dominating note of the N...

“Be of good cheer, I have overcome

the world.” The New Testament is a gospel, a bit of glorious news, because at the centre of it there lives and works the world’s greatest optimist.

Here is the optimist whom we have been looking for. This is the ma...

confidence and give...

Give us a man who feels the fury of the storm, and is also certain of the calm which is going to follow.

Give us a man who can measure accurately the dimensions of the night, and who also sees the dawning of a glorious morning. Jesus is the prince of optimists — his optimism is the optimism of God Himself.

Let us try to find the secret of Jesus’ optimism. The secret is written large across the pages of the Gospel. It was a secret too good to keep — he gave it to everybody who had ears to hear. It was an a...

Our faith is clouded and it is intermittent. It floods and ebbs like the tide. Jesus never doubted. His vision was unclouded. His trust was absolute. To him God was an everpresent Father. T...

of Israel had only seldom ventured to think of God as father, and then only by way of dim surmise. With...

“Have faith in God!” This was the exhortation with which he braced the hearts of those who wished to live his life and do his work.

Along with unswerving trust in God there went an unshakable confidence in man. Jesus believed in human nature. He saw

the possibilities and capacities of the human heart. He saw men’s littlenesses, frailties, vices, sins, but underneath all these he saw a soul created in God’s image. The deepest thing in man he saw to be not animalism but Godlikeness.

Man, in spite of his aberrations and stumblings and fallings, is a being on whom you can rely, he has in him the very essence and nature of God.

His life was one long-drawn crucifixion.

they never broke down his confidence in the divinity of the human heart.

Hell itself can produce nothing viler than sugar-coated treachery.

We measure men too much by their powers, and not