11 - Chapter 11

XI. WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?

What think ye of Christ? (Matthew 12:42).

Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16).

WHAT we think of Christ must depend, in some measure, on what we ourselves are: our mental and spiritual characteristics. This was true of those who saw Christ in the flesh, and to a greater extent it is likely to be true of those who can only see Christ through the eyes of others.

Most intelligent Christians are now so accustomed to see the Divine in the orderly uniform course of nature that they are surprised when they are re-minded that in the distant past there may perhaps have often been in nature vast upheavals and over-whelming catastrophes. So prone are they now to see the Divine in ordinary human nature that they do not know what to think of that marvellous manifestation of the Divine which was made in Jesus Christ. But there are still many with whom it is far otherwise. They can see the Divine most clearly, if not solely, in the unusual and startling, and they do not know very well what to make of those passages in Scripture which bring before us the human nature of Christ.

Take, for example, the attitude of Christian people towards those narratives in Scripture which give us the genealogy of Jesus.

Some Christians, full of the thought of the Divinity of Christ, are perplexed when they read the genealogies given in St. Matthew and St. Luke.

Why, they ask, should so much stress be laid on the earthly origin of the Virgin-born Son of God? And why should the descent of Christ be traced through Joseph, who is, according to common belief, merely the legal or putative father of Jesus? But this difficulty never presents itself to those who seek for the natural explanation of what seems to be supernatural, and who, perceiving that earthly evolution means heavenly involution, do not find it hard to believe that Jesus may well have been at once Heaven-begotten and Earth-born. Even to be born of a virgin is after all to be born of a woman, and to be born of a woman is to be born of humanity. But to be born of humanity is, we must remember, to be made in the image of God and to be closely related spiritually to our Father who is in heaven. Many people, accordingly, ask the question: Is not St. Luke a true evolutionist? for in tracing the genealogy of Jesus does he not go back to Adam, ’ which was the son of God ’? And do not the genealogies of St. Matthew and St. Luke remind us of the divine care with which at every stage the evolutionary process which ended in Christ was carried on? Does not the name of Abraham bring up before our mind the man who was to be the father of the faithful people in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed? And do not the other names in these genealogies lead us backward into the most distant past, and do they not remind us at every step of the fact brought out so clearly in the Old Testament, that the stock from which Jesus came was a spiritual stock, wisely selected, carefully tended, thoroughly trained, strictly disciplined, and so made capable after many centuries of producing One who was born not for His own nation only, but for all the world? And are not some good Christians perplexed when they are told that physically, intellectually, and spiritually Christ had a development from infancy to manhood similar to our own? Thinking con-stantly of the Divinity of Christ they are prone to imagine that He must always have been what He only afterwards became, and they know not what to think when they are referred to passages of Scripture which are as the breath of life to other Christians.

’ And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man.’ ’ And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.’ These words tell us that Christ grew up gradually under the influence of His home and natural surroundings: and that as His eyes opened to all that was around him, so did His mind gradually awaken to those divine truths which afterwards he uttered with authority and not as the scribes.

’ And when the devil had completed every temptation, he departed from him for a season.’ These words remind us that the Sinless One was made perfect in holiness by temptation that temptation had upon Him as He grew to maturity something like the effect which it has upon all who conquer it by the grace of God and who feel themselves “ lifted to a loftier moral greatness, a surer and more commanding strength than would have been possible without the struggle.”

’ It became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.’ ’ Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.’ These words tell us that suffering in a sense did for Christ as His powers and faculties developed, what it does for all who meet it and pass through it in the right spirit, and who feel that their sense of God’s nearness is intensified, their humility deepened, and their sympathy quickened by the process. And what are we to think of Christ as He went out and in among men in the full exercise of His ministry?

Many people find no difficulty in the wonders and marvels ascribed to Christ in the Gospels. To them, indeed, Christianity would probably be incredible if it were not believed to be supported by the miracles of Him who is Lord in the physical as well as in the moral domain. The miraculous in the Person and work of Christ is to them a revelation of the presence and of the power of God a reminder that God still lives and works even in the ordinary processes of nature where our sin-darkened eyes are only too often unable to behold Him. But the position of many Christians is greatly different from this. To them the spiritual content of the Gospel is the main thing, and it is by Christ that they have thus been taught. They perceive the importance of the usual, the spiritual significance of the material, the supernaturalness of the natural, and it is Christ who hath opened their eyes to these truths. Can we be surprised when we find such people thinking and speaking as much about spiritual law in the natural world as about natural law in the spiritual world? Can we wonder that to them the uniformity of nature is a revelation of the presence and power and wisdom of God, and that they find it difficult to think of what seems a failure in God’s plan of the world a failure whose consequences require to be prevented by methods which seem to be irregular if not lawless? The tendency to think after this latter fashion has been strengthened and deepened in modern times not merely by our increasing knowledge of nature’s laws, but also by the conviction now almost everywhere prevalent that in the distant past the Christian Church in her legitimate desire for the confirmation and advancement of moral and spiritual truth was only too often careless and indifferent with regard to what may have seemed to her to be morally unimportant matters, viz., the facts of history and science.

Great would appear to have been the credulity of men in what are called “ the ages of faith.”

Whatever supported or illuminated the claims of Holy Church did not to the great majority require proof. It carried within it the evidence of its own truthfulness. And so beautiful legends were no sooner imagined than believed; no sooner believed than they were written down as facts of history.

Wonders and marvels will never cease in the world or in human life; but miracles in the sense of violations of the laws of nature or arbitrary interferences with the established order of nature do not happen now.

They have gradually ceased, people assert, as men have become more careful with regard to their facts, and as they have required more exact and severe proofs in order to believe. As was to have been expected, some say, the supply of miracles ceased with the demand for them; and the demand gradually became a thing of the past as people came to see that there is law and order everywhere in nature, and as they refused to believe in a world guided by isolated acts of arbitrary inter-vention. And so multitudes of intelligent and earnest people are now inclined to think that the so-called Church miracles of the early and middle ages were only pious frauds, or ordinary natural phenomena which were mistaken for miraculous events. And some going backward further still are not afraid to ask even in reference to the Gospels, Is there nothing but history here? Is there not also an element contributed by the imagination of men, or due to their affection for a long lost friend, or to be accounted for by hopes and expectations which they fondly cherished and which they wished to see in some wise fulfilled? Even with regard to the question immediately before us the nature and character of the life lived by Christ the modern critical spirit suggests questions which would have startled our forefathers, and which must be very perplexing to ordinary believers.

It is true that some in these days do not put much stress on the historical truthfulness of the Gospels. They tell us that the Gospels are authori-tative for us even supposing them to be merely works of imagination utterly destitute of an histori-cal basis; for the authority of the Gospels is, they say, the authority of a moral ideal which need not be historical in order to be true. Even when we take it for granted, what few would venture to assert, that the Gospels are wholly imaginary, they still present us with an ideal of a morally perfect life. But a moral ideal once formed is certainly authoritative for man’s moral nature. “ Simply because it has constructed such an ideal it is morally bound to aspire to realise it” But although a man is bound to try to realise the ideal which he may have formed or adopted, surely the general historical truthfulness of the Gospel narrative its truthfulness in its main out-lines is a matter of much more serious importance than some people seem inclined to believe.

It must always be of great practical importance for man to know whether and to what extent his ideal has been realised in ordinary human life. For whatever man has done man may aspire to do, and whatever man has been that may man hope to become. “ We needs must love the highest when we see it “; but if the highest has never actually been seen by man, and if we are only possessed of idle fancies and of vague dreams with regard to it, then, however beautiful and uplifting our ideal may be, it is not likely to have for us that solemnising awe, that commanding authority, that constraining power which a religion must have if it is to be of any great use to us. We may be subdued before the grace and grandeur of a moral superior; but is it possible for us to venerate our own idea? A fundamental element in religion is a sense of absolute dependence, but how can we have a sense of absolute dependence on a merely abstract ideal?

Moreover, we must remember how apt our fancies are to mislead us, and how prone we are to imagine things which have no existence. We may give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name, but it does not thereby cease to be airy nothing. We may speak as if the baseless fabric of a vision were some-thing real and substantial, but our words do not transform the vision into a reality.. It is true that spiritual truths may be taught by fancies and ideas as well as by parables and fables, for they as well as parables or fables may help to open our eyes to the existence of spiritual facts which at present we do not see. But when a man wishes to assure himself of God’s presence and working, he must have more than words about God, however attractive they may be; more than fancies about divine things, however beautiful they may be; more than the ebb and flow of subjective feelings, however lively they may be.

If we wish to have anything like certainty on the matter we must be able to find outside ourselves facts through which God plainly reveals Himself unto us. We must go to nature, history, and human life for the confirmation of what we seem inclined to believe. If God is to reveal Himself to us it must be through facts which are an actual part of human knowledge and experience.

Now, it is just after this fashion that God comes to us in Christianity. Christianity is an ideal, but it claims to be an ideal revealed through a fact. It is a spirit, but a spirit revealed through a body. God is revealed to us in Christ, not through Christ’s words merely, but also and more especially through His person and character, through His deeds of love and mercy, through His sufferings and death, through the love that was revealed in His passion the love that was stronger than death; for death itself could not keep Christ from His purposes of love to man.

But, a religion that thus comes to us through facts and transactions within the domain of historical knowledge cannot afford to be indifferent to his-torical evidence.

Doubtless the eternal truths taught us by our religion are all-important. But the contingent truths of history, in which they are realised and through which they are revealed, can never be un-important, but must always have for us “ an abiding and inexhaustible value and vitality,” not merely on account of what they are in themselves, or in the im-portant consequences that directly flow from them, but also, and more especially, because they reveal to us eternal truths about God, and about His purposes towards the children of men. What God is once, He is for ever: for with Him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. And every act of God is not only important in itself, but precious also in the inferences which it enables us to draw with regard to the character and the purposes of God. Just as a very small arc of a circle enables us to determine the whole circle, so any act of God in the past is a sure foundation for our faith in God in all the future. The coming of Christ into the world, therefore, is more than a contingent fact of history, whose tem-porary importance has long since been exhausted. It is a guarantee of God’s continued love for His children and of His present strenuous efforts for their salvation. And the death of Christ is more than a great work done once for all. It is a pledge of all that God is now doing, and will yet do, in and for and by the children of men. ’ He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? ’

Now, it is just here that the intelligent Christian in our days finds a chief difficulty. Does the historical evidence of which we are possessed suffice by itself to bring home to us the reality and truthfulness of certain things generally believed by Christians? Christ’s life, for example, was, we are told, stainless, perfect; and therefore a moral miracle as great as any physical miracle can be. But when we look closely into the matter we are at once con-fronted by a difficulty which may be expressed in the words, Can we, so far away from the time referred to, trust such human testimony as we have when it asserts that Christ was sinless and perfect? We are told that Christ’s Personality made a marvellous impression on many of those who were brought into contact with Him; but to see our Saviour as He lived on earth, and merely to hear of the effect which His Personality had on those who saw Him, are two quite different things. “ No mathematical fact is doubtful: no historical fact is certain.” But if these words are true, there are many things in the Gospels which from their very nature cannot, on the mere ground of such historical testimony as we have, be regarded as more than highly probable. And so we are scarcely surprised when we meet with men who speak to us after this fashion: “ The spiritual senses of fallible men cannot suffice to certify the fact of absolute sinlessness any more than their physical senses can certify the perfect sphericity of a ball.” To all who take up a position of this kind it must, of course, be said that the testimony of a few fallible men is far from being as we have seen and shall see all that we have to found upon when coming to a conclusion on this subject.

It is impossible to accept the main Gospel facts in such a way as to pass under the power and pressure of them unless we read the New Testament with the necessary preconceptions and prior convic-tions. A whole series of prior convictions with regard to God, the slavery of sin, and the reason-ableness of redemption must be present with us if we are to feel the full force and power of the Gospel narratives. But we do not require to be ashamed of such preconceptions, for, as we have seen, they may be perfectly rational and in accord-ance with the facts of ordinary human experience. And is it not always possible for us to reason backward from an effect to its cause? How, for example, are we to account for Christendom except by pointing to Christianity? and how are we to account for Christianity apart from Christl Unless we postulate the existence of a unique personality pre-eminent in love, goodness, and truth, and as like as may be to the Jesus of whom we read in the Gospels, it is impossible for us to explain satis-factorily the origin of Christianity or the existence of Christendom. The facts, therefore, through which God reveals Himself unto us are of great importance, and so we must give due weight to the evidence which helps to assure us of their reality.

All that we know of Christ comes to us through the minds and memories of others. Why Christ Himself abstained from writing we are not told, but we may easily conjecture. He foresaw that His own written words would be of little avail without a perpetual miracle to preserve them from corruption: and He knew how apt men are to be brought into bondage to the letter which killeth. But Christ came to bring in the Dispensation of the Spirit: ’ The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.’ And so Christ chose to be remembered in the world and to live on in the world, not by verbatim reports of His words or photographic pictures of His deeds, but by begetting His own mind and spirit in others by the mar-vellous impression which, as He knew, the Son of God must produce on those who had the eye to see and the ear to hear. And so it was enough for Christ to form a society which was to bear witness to Him found a living Church which, by His Spirit, was to be guided into all truth.

St. Paul is the earliest witness to Christianity; for many of his Epistles are, without doubt, older than the oldest of the Gospels. But in none of these Epistles is there any reference to the signs, wonders, mighty works of Christ. Strange to say, it is only in Acts ii. 22 and x. 38 that, outside the Gospels, there is any such reference in the New Testament. And this silence of the other parts of the New Testament on the subject of the miracles of Christ has induced some men to believe that the Gospels were written at a late date, and when there had arisen a desire to make Christ like unto the heroes and founders of other religions a tendency to decorate the story of Christ’s life with “ fictitious miracles.” But when we are inclined to theorise on this subject, it will be well for us to remember that St. Paul believed in the greatest of all the miracles recorded in the Bible the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it would not be right for us to say that he had no real grounds for his belief.

Doubtless, the appearance of the glorified Christ may have at once suggested this belief to him, and have confirmed him in it. But evidence in support of it was quite within his reach, and we may be perfectly sure that it was not overlooked. When St. Paul went up to Jerusalem about three years after his conversion, it was we are told in Galatians 1:18 to see Peter: with whom, we are further informed, he abode fifteen days. But St. Peter, in the opinion of St. Paul, was a witness to the resur-rection, for did he not see Christ 1 Corinthians 15:5 after that He had risen from the dead? Can we believe that such a man as St. Paul could remain with such a man as St. Peter for such a lengthened period of time without discussing the subject of the resurrection? And if there had been any serious difference in their beliefs, would it not have been somewhere stated by St. Paul? The fact that St. Paul is silent as to differences between him and St. Peter ought surely to make us feel certain that about eight years after the resurrection St. Peter and those \.ho were associated with him at Jerusalem believed on this all-important subject exactly as St. Paul believed: and as, according to St. Luke, the Christians of Jerusalem believed a few days after the death of Christ. The Gospel according to St. John was written at a comparatively late date. But even the Synoptic Gospels, in point of time, come after many, if not all, of the Epistles of St. Paul. From this, however, it is not necessary to infer that the Synoptic Gospels have been seriously coloured by the later notions of men with regard to Christ. For, strange to say, we do not find in them many of those thoughts, ideas, phrases, methods of statement, and argu-ment which are to be met with in the Epistles, and which seem to have grown up in the minds of the Apostles and of the first Christians in the twenty or thirty years which followed the death of Christ.

“ Each Evangelist,” says Dr. Chase, “ edited and arranged the materials on which he worked, sometimes interpreting them, sometimes giving them greater point or fulness, sometimes adding informa-tion which he derived from some authority unknown to or unused by the others.” But what were the materials on which the Evangelists worked? Even when we think of the Gospel that was second in point of time as indebted to the one that was first, and of the third as indebted to the first and second, it is necessary for us to think of one, if not all, of them as depending upon a Gospel narrative that was oral in its beginning a well known and gen-erally received verbal or written account of the life of Christ, together with a record of His sayings. But even this ancient substratum this earliest form of the Gospel is likely to have contained narratives with regard to the miracles of our Lord: for miracles nature miracles as well as miracles of healing are to be found in the common tradition of the Synoptic Gospels, the matter which is to be found in all the three Evangelists, and which may be regarded as exhibiting “ the closest approxima-tion we possess to some parts of the original narrative from which our Gospels are derived.” When writing the Gospels, therefore, St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke seem to have done their utmost to give us in its simplest form the Gospel Story which was taught in the first Christian Churches. In their well-arranged and orderly narra-tives they tell us those things which were most surely believed and most firmly established in the early Church, ’ even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word.’

“ Whatever may have happened at the grave, and in the matter of the appearances one thing,” says Harnack, “ is certain: this grave was the birth-place of the indestructible belief that death is vanquished, that there is life eternal.” But if this belief took possession of the followers of Christ very shortly after the death of our Saviour, how are we to explain its origin apart from the resurrection and “the matter of the appearances”? We may say that Christ had displayed before human eyes “ the witness of a spiritual and ageless existence,” and had so powerfully impressed the disciples that they could not for more than a moment believe that all was over with Him when He was laid in the grave. When they pondered over His words of Promise, thought of all that He had been, and realised the power wherewith the remembrance of Him acted upon them still, it may have been easy for them to believe that Christ was risen, yea, that He had actually been seen by them. But if we can believe in a Personality so unique and so powerful in spiritual influence, why should we take it for granted that in every conceivable way He must of necessity have been holden of death? And why should we find an insuperable difficulty in our path when we think of accepting the emphatic and doubtless well-tested testimony of St. Paul, who assures us that Christ ’ was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve; after that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present ’? But whatever we may think on this subject, it is well for us to remember that what the Gospels tell us about Christ is worthy of the most careful attention, for their words express the convictions of those who knew Christ best of all. And special confidence ought we to have in the words of the Gospels when the character of Christ is concerned, for in the moral and spiritual domain the disciples were as competent as witnesses can be. They knew Christ well; they had been chosen by Him; they had been taught by Him; they had become imbued by His Spirit.

They had been with Him in all circumstances of familiarity, and they must have been swift to detect any signs of imperfection or moral frailty in Him, for whose sake they had given up so much, and on whom their future so greatly depended. Their con-victions, therefore, are not to be lightly set aside. And yet, when we come to think of it, is it not difficult, in some respects, to distinguish between their convictions and the beliefs of many in these days, who are generally regarded as severely critical? “ The fact,” says Dr. Mackintosh in the Natural History of the Christian Religion, “ that men who were in hourly intercourse with him, while placed in the most trying and testing circumstances, could discern no evil in him, could even derive from his behaviour the strangely novel idea of a perfectly sinless being, is enough to establish his claim to a position in the history of mankind abso-lutely peerless... If already during his lifetime they formed such an estimate, it can only be regarded as a confession that there was in his character and conduct a phenomenal depth and beauty which baffled comprehension and rivalry.”

Men who think and speak after this fashion are, in one respect at least, not very far removed from the ordinary Christian position. To them has been granted a perception, indistinct and imperfect, per-haps, but still real, of that unique characteristic of Christ which believers call His Divinity a charac-teristic which does not mar or distort His humanity, but which is revealed to us in and through His humanity, and which permeates, exalts, transfigures, and transcends His humanity. Not seldom has it happened that hesitating minds have been led forward to a fuller faith by looking closely at the marvellous portrait of Christ which is given to us in the Gospels, and by thinking of the way in which our Saviour is represented by the Evangelists as living and acting before the eyes of men. “ The Gospel,” says Rousseau, “ has marks of truth so great, so striking, so perfectly inimitable that the inventor of it would be more astonishing than the hero.”

It would not have been a difficult thing for the Gospel writers to have told us that Jesus was a wonder-worker, by whom miracles of all kinds were continually being worked. But the chief charac-teristic of Christ as He comes before us in Scripture, is the severe restraint He imposes on Himself in the use of His supernatural powers, the moral and spiri-tual purpose underlying the use of them, and the love and mercy made manifest in and through them.

It would have been an easy thing for the Evangelists to say that the character of Christ was flawless, perfect. But a chief feature in the character of Christ as He is presented to us in the Gospels is the balance and proportion of excellences which seem so contradictory. He is at once tender and severe: tender to all who are unfortunate, and severe in His attitude towards the insincere. He is a hater of evil, and yet He was merciful to its victims. He is loving and gentle, yet withal in-vincibly resolute. He is patient, and yet He is full of holy zeal. He is humble and meek; but look at the assertions He makes with regard to Himself and the claims which He puts forth in behalf of Himself.

It would have been a comparatively simple thing for the Gospel writers to have contented themselves with telling us that Jesus was Divine. But instead of doing this they bring this Divine Man down into the arena of ordinary human life, and depict Him as He went out and in amongst men, speaking, working, sympathising, sorrowing, suffering in the various situations in which He found Himself. The Gospels bring Christ graphically before us, and show us vividly how He demeaned Himself in all the varying circumstances of His changeful lot, whether believed in or rejected, followed or persecuted, loved or hated, revered or execrated; and in all they give us a life-like and consistent portrait of a singularly unique Personality. “ If,” says Rousseau, “ the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God.”

Now, the ablest of those who have attempted the task know how difficult it is to idealise a character, and how well-nigh impossible it is to keep that character distinct, clear-cut, and life-like, unless it has been suggested by a life that has really been lived, and which is to a greater or less extent known to them. How, then, is it possible for us to believe that the Fishermen of Galilee could succeed in a task infinitely more difficult than had ever been attempted before? How could they have imagined such a life as that of Jesus Christ, and how without innumerable inconsistencies and blunders could they have depicted the Divine Man as living, working, suffering, dying for and at the hands of sinful men? Only one explanation would seem to be possible. They had in their minds a real character a life that was actually lived. They produced a distinct, true, living likeness of Christ, not so much because “Heaven held their hand,” as because they had before their eyes “ the great original “ one with whom they were acquainted, or whose life was well known to them. “ It is,” says J. S. Mill, “ of no use to say that Christ is not historical, and that we do not know how much of what is admirable has been super-added by the tradition of His followers. The tradition of His followers may have inserted all the miracles He is reputed to have wrought. But who among His disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imaging the life and character revealed in the Gospels?

Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee: as certainly not S. Paul whose character and idiosyncracies were of a totally different sort: still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good that was in them was all derived, as they always professed that it was derived, from the higher source.”

1 When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.’ When we think of the way in which events happened and affairs shaped themselves in the ages immediately preceding the coming of Christ, how apt many of us are to think and speak after this fashion: Christ was merely the creature of His age and circumstances, and any greatness which may be claimed for Him is due to the fact that He seized upon ideas which were already in cir-culation, and by speech and act expressed them more clearly and powerfully than others had done.

There is no new element in Christianity: it is simply “ the reproduction in collective form of the ideas contained in the religious and in the philosophical and ethical systems of antiquity.”

Now, when we are inclined to think and speak after this fashion it will be well for us to remember the facts and reflections which show us how impossible it is to account in this way either for Christ or for Christianity. In the first place, no truly great man is or can be merely the creature of his age and circumstances.

It is true that famous men often do owe much some very much indeed to their circumstances, and to those who have lived before them and prepared the way for them. Very often men seem to be great because they are standing on the shoulders of others, or because they have been able to complete that which others have nearly finished. But the real greatness of a man is to be measured not by what circumstances have made him, but by what he has been able to do in his circumstances or in spite of them. And judged by this standard, who can be compared with Jesus? His circumstances were not favourable to greatness or to reputation, or to the rise and increase of His influence. Never, indeed, was there a man who in many respects owed so little to His birth, His surroundings, His country, His time. And yet, who has made such a distinct contribution to the religious knowledge and to the spiritual life of the world? Who has made such a powerful impression, morally and spiritually, on his own age and on succeeding ages? Christ was born into an humble home in an obscure village of an unimportant country in which dwelt an isolated and exclusive people. But in Him there is not the slightest taint of class-feeling, provincial narrowness, or national exclusiveness. When He comes forth before the eyes of men He is full of grace and truth, the chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely, so that in Him alone all men can find the true ideal of what a human life should be. And when He speaks all can listen, all are constrained to listen, for His words are applicable to all, con-taining as they do the eternal principles in accord-ance with which human life should at all times be regulated. In the second place, however closely connected with the past Christianity may be, it is not either as a theological or as a moral system the mere repro-duction in a collective form of the ideas contained in the religious, philosophical, or ethical systems of antiquity. The God of Christianity is not “ the First Cause “or “ the Almighty Creator and Governor of the World “ of whom the philosophers spoke. On the contrary, He is a self-revealing Spirit who, while He transcends the world, is immanent in it and at once realises Himself in and reveals Himself to humanity. Christianity thus brings down the divine into the form of an individual life lived under ordinary human conditions in order that humanity may perceive its own true character and be enabled to rise to the divine.

Even the more particularly Jewish conceptions are transformed by the magical touch of Christianity. “ The sense of alienation and distance from God which had grown upon the pious in Israel just in proportion as they had learned to look upon Him as no mere national Divinity, but as a God of justice who would punish Israel for its sin as certainly as Edom or Moab is,” says Dr. Edward Caird, “ declared to be no longer in place; and the typical form of Christian prayer points to the abolition of the contrast between this world and the next which through all the history of the Jews had continually been growing wider: ’as in heaven, so on earth.’ The sense of the Division of man from God, as a finite being from the Infinite, as weak and sinful from the Omnipotent Goodness, is not indeed lost; but it can no longer overpower the consciousness of oneness. The terms ’ Son ’ and ’ Father ’ at once state the opposition and mark its limit. They show that it is not an absolute opposition, but one which presupposes an indestructible principle of unity, that can and must become a principle of reconciliation.” And the Christian Ethical System is different from all the systems that preceded it. It may be possible to collect from the pages of pre-Christian Pagan writers isolated passages which have a greater or less resemblance to some of the precepts of Christianity, but even a very considerable amount of success in this work cannot make us blind to the fact that there is in Christianity something which is distinctive and peculiar. “ Ancient morality, like ancient astronomy, concerned itself,” says W. L.

Watkinson, “ with a narrow sky and a few stars; the morality of Christ, like the astronomy of Copernicus and Newton, lets us into the infinite heaven, with some constellations not seen before, and with new possibilities of character ever glowing into sight.”

Before Christ’s time intelligent men had their ideas more or less vague of duty, and their classi-fication, more or less defective, of the virtues. But Christianity enlarged to a marvellous extent the range of duty, extending it to the minutest details of life, and demanding the highest principles in the ordinary work and commonplace affairs of our life.

Moreover, Christianity assigns great importance to many virtues which were inadequately realised or not recognised at all in pre-Christian Ethics.

Everyone will admit that the originality of an ethical system depends less on the elements of which it is composed, and which must in a sense and to a certain extent be the same in all, than on the value or importance assigned to the various virtues, and on the way in which they are “ fused into a symmetrical whole.”

Now, we all know that Christianity lays special stress upon virtues which were ignored or over-looked by the ancient philosophies.

Love to God and man is at the centre of the Christian system; and here a virtue to be great, yea, to be worthy of the name, must be penetrated by a spirit of love. And hence it comes about that reverence, devotion, purity, righteousness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, pity, mercy, unselfishness, self-denial, self-sacrifice, have a position in the Christian system of morals which they have in no other. Doubtless, all true virtues that were in the old systems such as wisdom, courage, temper-ance, justice, patriotism, bravery are to be found in Christianity; but here they are so inspired by the divine spirit of love, and so broadened out in their meaning and significance, that it is difficult for us to recognise the old in the new. How different Patriotism, for example, becomes, when, instead of looking upon the people of other countries as enemies whom we are bound to hate, we are possessed of that humane spirit which leads us beyond the bounds of our own country and enables us to see our brethren in all the children of men, and especially in those who are ignorant, superstitious, downtrodden, oppressed, and in all those who stand in need of such help as we can render. How different bravery becomes when it ceases to be identified with the virtue of the soldier who will die on the field of battle rather than desert at the approach of the enemy, and includes the virtue of the soldier of the Cross who withstands principalities and powers for the sake of Christ’s cause, who resolutely fights against evil wherever he may find it, and who in heathen and barbarous lands proclaims the gospel of God’s love even when he has to face loss, tribulation, suffering, death.

No; Christ’s circumstances did not make Him what He was, nor did the Religions and Philosophies of the ancient world make Christianity what it is.

It is true that the Old Philosophies had educated men on moral and spiritual subjects, and so well had they done this that people had become conscious of the imperfections of even the best philosophies. The Old Religions led up to Chris-tianity and prepared men for it; and in nothing was this more apparent than in the fact that the old religious beliefs were perishing because people had outgrown them and were already feeling after something higher and better. But to prepare the way for something better and to discover or produce it are two quite different things. There is some-thing in Christianity that was not in the religions and philosophies of the ancient world, and we do not account for Christianity when we say that it is a combination of pre-existent elements. We might as well try to account for the light of day by saying that it is the sum total of the light of all the stars, with an element of light contributed by the sun. The sun does make a contribution to the light of day, but it is a great one so great as to obscure the united contributions of the stars. And so Christ is the greatest Teacher the world has seen, not because He learned and reproduced all the wisdom of the wise who lived before His day, but because He dwelt in God and God in Him, and because He was thus the Revealer of God to man, the Light of the World, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Word made flesh and dwelling among us.

He now shines alone in the Spiritual Heavens, not because he has united in Himself the feeble twinklings of innumerable spiritual stars, but because He is the great Sun of Righteousness, shining by His own inherent light, and causing all other luminaries to pale their ineffectual fires.

“ Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be, They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.”

It has been said that the ideal of duty and of human excellence given us in Christianity are perfect and final. If this be, as we believe, true, is it not difficult for us to think of its origin apart from its realisation in Jesus Christ?

Before Christ’s time men had their ideals, which became nobler as the years passed by, higher and fuller conceptions of excellence taking, in the course of time, the place of those that were lower. Why did not this gradual evolutionary process go on for ever? Why at a certain period in the history of the race did a perfect and final ideal of duty and human excellence dawn upon the world?

Before Christ’s time many had endeavoured to answer the question, ’ Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? ’ No one had found out the Almighty unto perfection, but some had met with a certain amount of success in their attempts. It was reserved for Him who came in the fulness of time to be com-pletely successful where others had failed. To His clear vision God and the other world were as truly visible as to His outward eye were the most obvious objects which lay before Him. What a marvellous revelation of Divine things comes to us from the words of Him who could speak with authority and not as the scribes from the life of Him who was able to say, ’ He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.’

Now, as we all know, character is the condition of moral insight. The pure in heart, and they only, shall see God. “ Increasing purity,” says Dr. D.

W. Forrest, “ alone brings increased vision; but the increase is merely relative. Absolute insight implies absolute inner harmony of nature.” If, therefore, Christ gives us, so far as circumstances permitted and human speech allowed, a full, true vision of God and divine things, a perfect and final ideal of duty and of human excellence, are we not going beyond the facts of the case when we say that the Jesus of History is essentially and fundamentally different from the Christ of Faith, and that the one was transformed into the other solely by the excited imaginations of credulous men? When we draw nigh to Jesus to learn of Him, do we not, as it were, feel God drawing us to Himself and making us possessors of the life divine?

“ It is this that makes faith quite certain that this Jesus is not a human invention.” “ As surely as everything depends on the soul finding God and becoming one with Him, so surely is He the true Saviour, Guide, and Lord who leads the soul to God.”