If I celebrate his good deeds and report his wise words, I extend his honour still farther.

But if I proceed to assure people, _on the evidence of my personal observation of him_, that he was immaculate and absolutely perfect, was the pure Moral Image of God, that he deserves to be made the Exclusive Model of imitation, and is the standard by which every other man's morality is to be corrected,--I make myself ridiculous; my panegyrics lose all weight, and I produce far less conviction than when I praised within human limitations.

I do not know how my friend will look on this point, (for his judgment on the whole question perplexes me, and the views which I call _sober_ he names _prosaic_,) but I cannot resist the conviction that universal common-sense would have rejected the teaching of the Eleven with contempt, if they had presented, as the basis of the gospel their _personal testimony_ to the godlike and unapproachable moral absolutism of Jesus.

But even if such a basis was possible to the Eleven, it was impossible to Paul and Silvanus and Timothy and Barnabas and Apollos, and the other successful preachers to the Gentiles.

High moral goodness, within human limitations, was undoubtedly announced as a fact of the life of Jesus; but upon this followed the supernatural claims, and the argument of prophecy; _without_ which my friend desires to build up his view,--I have thus developed why I think he has no right to claim Catholicity for his judgment.