WHEN we compare the work Jesus proposed to do in the world with the   
schemes of earth’s greatest ones we cannot classify him with men.
 
What did he think he came into the world to do? What did he consider his 
 
mission to be?
 
We cannot be in the least doubt for the answer; there was no confusion in 
 
his thought, no in his words. If we ask what Jesus thought his 
 
mission was we will easily find the answer—unparalleled by the thought of 
 
any, absolutely unique, stupendous, but as unmistakable in meaning as 
 
simple in the form of expression.
 
We will answer in his own words: “The Son of man is come to seek and to 
 
save that which is lost.” “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners 
 
to .” “God sent not his Son into the world to the 
 
world, but that the world through him might be saved.” “I came not to 
 
judge the world, but to save the world.” More forcibly, if possible, than 
 
in his words, his conception of his mission is shown by his work, his 
 
living, and his dying. St. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, gives us in 
 
a simple statement the whole history; it is, in a line, the biography of 
 
the God-man, “He went about doing good.”
 
That Jesus should have seen in the world evil that needed to be remedied, 
 
that he should have tried to remedy the evil he saw, does not, in itself, 
 
difference him from good and wise men who have observed the facts of human 
 
life and have human . All the great teachers and 
 
reformers have recognized evil in the world, and many of them have 
 
distinctly recognized this evil as moral evil. The of Jesus is 
 
in this; all the evil that is in the world is moral evil, and all 
 
moral evil is, at its root, sin, and sin, considered as a quality in man’
 
s character, is a state of being that is out of harmony with God; 
 
considered as a fact, it is life in of God’s law. The bad man 
 
is, in his spirit, at enmity with God; in his life he breaks God’s law. 
 
He loves evil because evil is in him; his life is wicked because his heart 
 
is bad.
 
And Jesus comes to take away sin; to deliver men from it, its penalty, and 
 
its power. Said the angel to Mary: “Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for 
 
he shall save his people from their sins.”
 
In the view of Jesus sin is the one evil; deliverance from sin is 
 
deliverance from all evil; it is . He struck at sin as the root 
 
of all possible evil; he recognized no evil that was in man’s 
 
circumstances, as if his evil came out of fate or in some way invincible 
 
by him; it is all of sin.
 
Wherefore Jesus does not set about bettering man’s circumstances, by 
 
direct effort improving the , economic, political, or social 
 
conditions of life; he works upon man himself. Whatever improves man’s 
 
condition is, in the doctrine of Jesus, to be desired; but it is not 
 
enough to make man comfortable; he must be made good. He teaches that all 
 
that is truly good and needful will come to men who are delivered from 
 
sin, and that no real good can come to him whose sin in him. 
 
First, last, all the time, Jesus makes deliverance from sin the one thing 
 
needful—the chief good.
 
As his manner was, he does not argue about it; he states his doctrine 
 
, “with authority,” as one knowing the whole truth of the 
 
case. There is no qualifying word to tone down his statements and to leave 
 
place for retreat from possible mistakes.
 
His doctrine he taught and in every possible way. It is in his 
 
more formal , his briefest comments on men and things, his most 
 
occasional conversations and most incidental remarks. His doctrine is in 
 
all his efforts to do men good, as it is in every warning and every 
 
promise.
 
And there is never a shadow of doubt, a suspicion of . From his 
 
first word to the last, from the beatitudes to the prayer on the cross, it 
 
is always the same thing; man’s trouble is all in his sin; his only 
 
salvation is deliverance from sin.
 
It comes out in the most incidental way. When the Magdalene 
 
washed his feet with her tears, at Simon’s table, he said not a word 
 
about her lost social position or of its possible restoration. He said, “
 
Thy sins are forgiven; thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”
 
When the four kind and loving friends of Capernaum—whose names we would 
 
like to know—had brought their palsied neighbor to Peter’s house, and 
 
had at last, with much trouble, through the broken roof laid him down at 
 
the feet of Jesus, the first words were not about palsy and healing, but 
 
about sin and salvation: “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” This is what 
 
the story of the penitent publican, crying out, “God be merciful to me a 
 
sinner,” means. It is what the story of the means; it is what 
 
the whole life and teaching of Jesus mean.
 
We must notice particularly that the mere conception of a divine 
 
incarnation is not peculiar to the story of Jesus. The notion of 
 
incarnation, the idea of the gods taking a form of flesh and manifesting 
 
themselves to men, is in the traditions of almost every nation. It has 
 
been said, hastily, I believe, that there are some races, at least some 
 
tribes, so low in development as to have no idea of God whatever. It is 
 
easy to be mistaken in such matters; it is difficult for a cultivated man 
 
to find out what a really thinks about any subject, least of all 
 
his religion. Perhaps the language difficulty is the least bar to 
 
understanding in such a case; the differences between men are not measured 
 
by differences in speech only. It is certain that the conception of God 
 
is, in some form, in most nations. I believe it is in all. And in every 
 
nation there is some sort of notion of divine .
 
The attempt to represent the gods in stone, in metal, in wood, or even in 
 
rude drawings and paintings, comes after a traditional belief has long 
 
held its place in men’s thoughts of their manifestation in some visible 
 
and form.
 
It is not always a human form; it is generally not a human form, except as 
 
it is part of the conception: as in the eagle-headed Belus of Babylon, as 
 
in the winged bulls, with the head of a man and the feet of a lion, that 
 
Layard found in the ruins of Nineveh. These composite images represented 
 
ideas of the gods, not facts concerning them. Thus the image found in the 
 
ruins of Nineveh represented strength, swiftness, courage, intelligence. 
 
But the ideas expressed in these strange and forms grew out of 
 
traditions of divine manifestation, of incarnation.
 
All the tell us of incarnations; but the idea of divine 
 
incarnation in the story of the evangelists differs, not in some 
 
incidents, but in all essentials from all others. One unique fact, as has 
 
heretofore, in a different connection, been out, is that Jesus was 
 
simply a man who, as to his appearance, had absolutely nothing that was 
 
peculiar. Neither , beauty, swiftness, nor strength is attributed 
 
to Jesus.
 
We might speak of the limitations that go with other conceptions of gods 
 
. They are by race and localized by country. This 
 
thought has been illustrated elsewhere. It may answer now simply to remind 
 
you that Vishnu is Hindustanee, Isis and Osiris Egyptian, Odin and Thor 
 
Scandinavian. Not one of them has relations to the whole human race. But 
 
Jesus, who calls himself “the Son of man,” is of all, and belongs to 
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