The Character of Jesus

by Charles Edward Jefferson

enough by their capacities, by what they are to-day and not by what they may become later on. It was because the eyes of Jesus swept the future that he could stand around the wreckage of a race in ruins and say, “Be of good cheer!”

This indomitable Optimist has confidence in you. You have no hope for yourself. He has. You see your weakness, sordidness, vileness; he sees deeper, and seeing deeper he has hope for you. He see...

you have come to yourself. He sees deeper also into God. You have no adequate conception of the patience or the mercy of the Infinite Father. He has. You do not know what Infinite Love can accomplish. He does. Because of your transgressions you have lost faith in yourself. He has not. Because you have failed a thousand times you say there is no use trying...

THE CHIVALRY OF JESUS “And touched him.” — Matthew viii: 3.

there are many kinds of courage. There is first of all bravery, an intrepid

sort of courage which has in it a certain daring which ordinary courage does not have.

If bravery rushes forward to attack,

fortitude holds its ground and endures.

there is valor which we have consecrated for service on the battlefield, and gallantry which is an adventurous and splendid variety of heroism — heroism as it ...

is rich or wide enough to express all that is in my mind when I contemplate a certain side of the courageous heart of Jesus. He was heroic but he was more than that. His heroism was a superb gall...

courtesy, a beautiful and gentle graciousness toward the weak and helpless. Possibly we can find no better word to cover this rich characteristic of th...

Woman especially was the object of his care. By her weakness she appealed to that which was deepest in his heart. By defending her and all others who like her were at the mercy of the brute powers of a barbaric world the knight won for himself a shining place in history and gave to chivalry a splendor which will never fade. Jesus of Nazareth was a knight. On foot he travelled forth, clad in the armor of a peerless manhood, to shield the weak, maintain the right, and live a life which should charm and win the world. At the head of the great company of knightly souls by whose bravery and prowess the world has been made better,

stands this knight of knights, this chivalric Man of Galilee.

his great soul yearned to identify himself with his countrymen, with the common race of men.

he will link himself at the very start with those who carry on their hearts the burden of transgression and who cry out day and night for deliverance. A knight he was at the beginning; a knight he will be to the end.

Mark how his soul goes out to those who suffer.

If there was a man in Palestine more dreaded than a maniac it was a leper. But even the leper was not beyond the reach of Jesus’ heart.

His courtesy to the

unchurched masses hastened the day of his crucifixion.

there was a group of men lower than all the others, known as Publicans.

Publicans were counted lower than street dogs.

But Jesus made friends of these men. They were friendless, and in many cases of unsavory character, but

he was a physician, and like all true physicians he was especially interested in those...

it is in his attitude to woman that Jesus’ chivalry reaches its finest expression.

it is tenfold more astounding that any woman in her right mind should ever turn her back on the one

man who has done more for woman than all the other men who have ever lived.

Marriage is ordained by God. It lies in the very structure and formation of human nature. The union is not one which can

be dissolved by Moses or anybody else. God intends that one man shall live with one woman and that they shall live together until death parts them. No greater words than those have ever been spoken on behalf of woman since the world began.

there rings the clear and authoritative tone of Jesus saying to men: “You have no right to

use women and toss them from you. Man and woman belong together, and after marriage the twain are one flesh.”

A woman has a mind, a conscience, a soul,

even though she lives in Samaria and has broken the moral law, and is worthy of careful instruction at the hands of the greatest of teachers. What a piece of gallantry it was — that conversation at Jacob’s well!

our knight of Palestine went forth in search of forlorn and friendless human beings.

this knight of Nazareth had no protection but the white innocence of an unspoiled heart.

This prince of knights, this king of all the hosts of chivalry, conquered on every field and came off without a stain.

In Jesus we have a revelation of the heart of God. In speaking of the chivalry of this man of Nazareth I have been speaking of the chivalry of the Eternal. God is knightly in His disposition, chivalric in His temper. It is His work from all eternity to protect the weak, maintain the right, and live a stainless life. His heart goes out unceasingly toward the weak, the helpless, and those who have no friend. If you are conscious of your weakness,

cry out to Him, for He is swift to answer such a cry. If you feel sometimes absolutely helpless, altogether forlorn and forsaken, do not despair, for the heart of Jesus is the heart which beats in and behind all this world, and you can never be forsaken so

long as God is God. In your moments of depression and in the days when the world seems cold and cruel, think of the chivalric God, whose heart beats in sympathy with wea...

gladness to meet every soul in ne...

THE FIRMNESS OF JESUS “Get thee behind me, Satan.” — Matthew xvi: 23.

Let us think to-night of the firmness of Jesus. Of his tenderness we think often,

Along with the sweetness there must go strength, and underneath the moods soft as velvet there must lie a resoluteness hard as steel.

when we come to Jesus of Nazareth we are in the presence of a man whom nobody swerved or dominated, who is so free from the bias of his race and so

clean of the spirit of his age that he seems to belong to all races and all ages. He is not the Son of David but the Son of Man, just genuinely, supremely human.

The nation hurled itself with frantic force against him, but he did not budge. He was the Rock of Ages.

The respect and good-will of neighbors are sweet indeed, but these must not be bought by bending.

no neighbor in Nazareth was ever so near to Jesus’ heart as his dear friend Simon Peter.

They are not to be swayed by current

opinion, but by the spirit of the Eternal in their heart. They are not to listen to the voices of time, but to live and work for eternity. We like this steadfastness in human character, and we also crave it in God. Men have always loved to think of Him as the

unchanging and the unchangeable, the one “with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.” And what we desire in God we find in Jesus of Nazareth. He also is unchanging and unc...