indulge His delusions without doing any harm to Himself. They wish to
excuse His eccentricities on the ground that He is not quite
responsible--scarcely Himself; and so to blunt the point of the more
hostile explanation of the Pharisees that He is in league with
Beelzebub.

Conceive of that! The Incarnate Wisdom shielded by friends from the
accusation that He is a demoniac by the apology that He is a lunatic!
What do you think of popular judgment?

But this half-pitying, half-contemptuous, and wholly benevolent excuse
for Jesus, though it be the words of friends, is like the words of His
enemies, in that it contains a distorted reflection of His true
character. And if we will think about it, I fancy that we may gather
from it some lessons not altogether unprofitable.

I. The first point, then, that I make, is just this--there was
something in the character of Jesus Christ which could be plausibly
explained to commonplace people as madness.

A well-known modern author has talked a great deal about 'the sweet
reasonableness of Jesus Christ.' His contemporaries called it simple
insanity; if they did not say 'He hath a devil,' as well as 'He is
mad.'

Now, if we try to throw ourselves back to the life of Jesus Christ, as
it was unfolded day by day, and think nothing about either what
preceded in the revelation of the Old Covenant, or what followed in
the history of Christianity, we shall not be so much at a loss to
account for such explanations of it as these of my text. Remember that