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LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON. N.’J. 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 TN Saghe oN, cXe\ ode. 
 
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 LECTURES IN DEFENCE 
 
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 OF | - 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 
 
PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB, 
 FOR 
 T. &.T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. 
 LONDON, . . . . . HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO, 
 
 DUBLIN, . . . . . \GEORGE HERBERT. 
 NEW YORK, . . . . SCRIBNER AND WELFORD. 
 
LECTURES IN DEFENCE 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 
 
 Jay X/ 
 PROFESSOR F. GODET, 
 
 AUTHOR OF COMMENTARIES ON ST, LUKE, ST. JOHN, AND ROMANS, ETC, 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 Wed. “LYTTELTON MEAS 
 
 RECTOR OF HAGLEY AND CANON OF GLOUCESTER, 
 
 Second Hvition, 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET 
 1883. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/lecturesindefencOOgode_0 
 
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 ie add another to the many excellent books on 
 
 “Christian Evidences” already current amongst 
 us, may seem to require some justification. But, 
 unless I am much mistaken, the Lectures which I 
 here offer to English readers are specially fitted for 
 usefulness in this country at this time. With the 
 exception of the last, they were written by their able 
 author in reply to attacks upon the Christian Faith, 
 made by able Lecturers, in Neuchatel, the town in 
 which he lives. Professor Godet felt himself called 
 upon to meet their challenge on the spur of the 
 moment; and he delivered the following addresses 
 almost immediately, with excellent effect upon the 
 audiences who assembled to hear him. In their present 
 form they make up a small book, which may be read 
 through in a few days: even by the busiest; but their 
 
 substance is the matured result of the lifelong, com- 
 
vi Translator’s Preface. 
 
 prehensive, and reverent study of the deep subjects of 
 which they treat by their very competent author. 
 Professor Godet is well known all over Europe as 
 one of the ablest and most trustworthy of living 
 Biblical scholars. It is not, I venture to think, too 
 much to say that he combines in himself many of the 
 most valuable characteristics of the best German, 
 French, and English theologians. He has much of 
 the depth of thought, and of the comprehensive 
 knowledge of the whole literature of his subjects, of 
 the Germans, much of the lucidity, compactness of 
 style, and epigrammatic point of the French, and of 
 the sobriety and practical mind of the English. The 
 adversaries whose arguments he selects to meet are, 
 it will not be denied, not the feeblest, but the ablest 
 and most learned on their side—such as Strauss, 
 Baur, and others of their stamp—in these vital 
 controversies. And his mind is so richly furnished 
 with the best kind of knowledge of the Bible and of 
 Christian Theology, that the collateral interest and 
 suggestiveness of these Essays, and of the Professor’s 
 obiter dicta upon the subjects of which he treats, is, it 
 
 seems to me, great. So that, even when one may not 
 
Transtator’s Preface. Vil 
 
 be able to agree with his views, one can hardly fail to 
 learn something from what he says. 
 
 Perhaps it may be thought that knowledge of 
 French is now so common amongst us, that it is 
 needless to translate French books. But besides that 
 such knowledge is by no means universal among 
 Christian ministers and teachers, there are, I think, 
 many, even of those who read French with ease, who 
 would much prefer, as I do myself, to read books 
 upon sacred subjects, and specially the Bible, in their 
 native English. 
 
 I trust, therefore, that if I have succeeded in 
 rendering Professor Godet’s thoughts into idiomatic 
 and readable English (I can warrant that the transla- 
 tion is strictly faithful), this book may prove a really 
 valuable contribution to our English popular litera- 
 ture upon the great questions of which it treats. In 
 these days, when so many have drifted to sea on the 
 shoreless ocean of a boundless scepticism; when some 
 are ready to erect altars, not only “to the Unknown,” 
 but even—alas that it should be so !—to One whom 
 they think the “Unknowable” God—for some 
 
 strangely think they know there is an “Unknow- 
 
Vill Transtator’s Preface. 
 
 able” God; when one man of noble mind and nature, 
 who had once been a devout Christian, sadly told us, 
 at the end of his short life, that he had arrived at 
 believing that he saw “an empty heaven looking 
 down upon a soulless earth,’—so that “we” loving, 
 hoping, fearing persons, “are the offspring” of a huge 
 unconscious machine, grinding on from eternity, till 
 it stumbled into producing us, and the human mind 
 is the highest in existence !—in such days, one may 
 indeed be thankful if one can contribute any thoughts, 
 such as these of Professor Godet, whereby any souls 
 may, by the blessing of God, be saved from the 
 miseries of blank and hopeless unbelief. 
 
 May this book now give its readers some of the 
 great pleasure and edification which its translation 
 has afforded me during a painful illness which un- 
 fitted me for other work, and bring some gratitude, 
 and some new readers of his other valuable works, to 
 
 my honoured friend, Professor Godet. 
 
 W, HoGYTTELTON. 
 
 THE CLOISTERS, 
 GLOUCESTER, May 1881. 
 
Lranslator’s Preface. Ix 
 
 P.S.—I venture here to draw attention to two other 
 books by Professor Godet, which I, in company with 
 one now withdrawn “beyond the veil,” translated 
 some years ago, namely, Biblical Studies on the Old 
 and New Testaments (published by Hodder and 
 Stoughton). 
 
 The earlier parts of this book were originally pub- 
 lished in The Expositor, which I regret that I forgot 
 
 ~ to mention in the First Edition. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 . The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 
 
 . The Hypothesis of Visions, 
 
 . The Miracles of Jesus Christ, 
 
 . The Supernatural, 
 
 . The Perfect Holiness of Jesus Christ, 
 
 . The Divinity of Jesus Christ, 
 
 . The Immutability of the Apostolic Gospel, 
 
 PAGE 
 
I 
 
 PEO KE SURREC TION: OF (JESUS 
 GET Ra Sil 
 
iG 
 LHE RESCRRECTION OF JESCS CHRIST 
 
 Nae question of miracles is to be decided primarily 
 
 by experience. We have not sufficient know- 
 ledge of the essential nature of God, of the world, and 
 of ourselves, to enable us without presumption to 
 affirm, on the authority of reason alone, that miracles 
 are impossible. We must look ‘to facts; we must 
 investigate. If the supernatural makes its appear- 
 ance undeniably in history, we must accept it. To 
 show that anything is real, is to show that it is 
 possible. “ Nothing,” Napoleon is reported to have 
 said, “is so obstinate as a fact.” Perhaps it would 
 have been better to say, “ Nothing is so sacred as a 
 fact.” The sum total of all established facts—that Is 
 the infallible, unimpeachable code of Science. It is 
 upon this principle that the study of nature proceeds. 
 The man of science cannot claim a right to create a 
 natural world according to his own fancies. He 
 
 observes, he ascertains, he repeats his experiments; 
 cays 
 
4 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatrth. 
 
 then, upon the basis of the materials so collected, he 
 carries on his investigations. Neither, again, has 
 Reason a right to fashion history after her own fancies ; 
 in this domain also she must proceed upon observation ; 
 and for this purpose she makes use of testimony, which 
 is to the study of history what experiment is to that of 
 nature. As the student of nature repeats, as often as 
 is needful, the experiments which are to ascertain first - 
 facts, then laws, so does the historian cross-examine 
 the witnesses upon whose testimony he bases his 
 conclusion, and pass their testimony through the 
 sieve of his criticism. Its validity having been once 
 established, he submits; and his reason has nothing 
 more to do but to discover the how and the wherefore 
 of the events that have been established. And the 
 more strange and exceptional is the fact he arrives at, 
 the more securely will historical Science expect to 
 discover in it one of her most important secrets. 
 
 It is this experimental method, adopted now by all 
 sound minds, which we are about to apply to the 
 cardinal fact of the Christian faith, the Resurrection 
 of Jesus Christ. We are not now asking, Is the 
 supernatural possible? Is the assertion that God 
 raised a dead man to life admissible? We are not 
 
 about to proceed by way of & priori decrees of Reason, 
 
Lhe Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 5 
 
 which would be in the highest degree anti-scientific. 
 We prefer to inquire whether, according to the laws 
 of historical criticism, the fact of the resurrection can 
 be considered ascertained. Then, after that has been 
 done, it will be time to look into the questions how 
 and why such an event has been possible, and has 
 actually taken place. 
 
 It will be seen that I identify the question of the 
 resurrection of Jesus with that of the supernatural 
 generally. As a fact, we know that when the subject 
 in debate is the miracles of healing said to have been 
 worked by Jesus Christ, and it is found to be impos- 
 sible altogether to deny their reality, an attempt is 
 made to explain them by the help of certain influences 
 of an exceptional nature— by the magical power 
 exerted over the nerves of the sufferer, by the exqul- 
 site personality of the Nazarene Rabbi. But such a 
 solution of the problem is inadmissible when we come 
 to deal with cases of men raised from the dead by 
 Jesus Christ. Dead men have no nerves to be set 
 vibrating; and how can His own resurrection be 
 explained by such a hypothesis? What personality 
 —what human agency— interposed its action within 
 the mysterious precincts of that sepulchre? Between 
 God and that dead body there was nothing. Either, 
 
6 Lectures in Defence of the Christian faith. 
 
 then, the fact is unreal, or if it is real, we have here 
 a miracle properly so called,—the supernatural, in the 
 strict sense of that expression,—and St Peter has a 
 complete right to say, “God raised Jesus from the 
 dead.” 
 
 This, then, is the point in history at which we 
 may apply a decisive test to the question of the 
 existence of the supernatural. 
 
 I. We will begin by establishing the fact of the 
 testimony of the apostles. II. We shall investigate 
 the validity of their testimony. III. We shall inquire 
 into the degree of importance to be attached to the 
 resurrection itself. 
 
 Were it, in fact, to come to pass that the religious 
 importance of this fact could no longer be demon- 
 strated, we should always feel tempted, notwith- 
 standing the solidity of the historical proof, to call 
 in question its reality. An assumed fact which had 
 the appearance of a purposeless display of the Divine 
 
 Power would, after all, remain under suspicion. 
 
 T.—TuHE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Our investigation must take its start from some 
 
 point of undeniable certainty, and unanimously con- 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 7 
 
 ceded. And we have such a starting-point ; it is the 
 fact that the apostles testified to the resurrection of 
 Jesus. We can verify for ourselves the reality of this 
 testimony by the speeches of St. Peter and St. Paul, 
 reported in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. 
 The resurrection of Jesus occupies the central place 
 in all these speeches. But we may be met with the 
 objection that these speeches are perhaps no more 
 than literary compositions of the author of this book. 
 We appeal, then, in the second place, to the fact of 
 the foundation of the Church, and to the unanimous 
 conviction of the Christians of the first ages. These 
 two great historic facts make it impossible to doubt 
 that the proclamation of the resurrection formed part 
 of the testimony of the founders of the Church. 
 
 But, still further, of this apostolic testimony we 
 are in possession; we read it with our own eyes ; 
 we are still hearing it, so to say, with our own ears, 
 It les before us in the writings which came from 
 the hands of the apostles, or of the men who worked 
 with them. 
 
 Of these testimonies the one which we shall study 
 first, because it is the most ancient in date, and com- 
 prehends in itself, by its very tenor, all the rest, is that 
 
 * Acts ii, 24-82, iii, 15, iv. 10, etc., xiii. 30, xvii. 41, etc. 
 
8 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 of St. Paul. In all his Epistles he speaks of the 
 resurrection of the Saviour. But there is one in 
 which he directly faces this question—the First 
 to the Corinthians. The authenticity of this Epistle 
 has never in any age been disputed by any one, 
 neither is it disputed in our own day by any person 
 whatever. There is an equal consensus of belief 
 respecting the time and place of its composition. It 
 was written at Ephesus, in the year 58 of our era, 
 in the spring of that year, twenty-five years after 
 the Lord’s death. Here is the passage referring 
 to the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. xv. 
 Bet): “For I delivered unto you, first of all, that 
 which I also received, how that Christ died for our 
 sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was 
 buried, and that He rose again the third day accord- 
 ing to the Scriptures: and that He 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 some 
 are fallen asleep. After that He was seen of James; 
 then of all the apostles. And last of all He was 
 seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. 
 For I am the least of the apostles, that am’ not 
 meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the 
 
Lhe Resurrection of Fesus Chrost. 9 
 
 church of God. But by the grace of God I am what 
 I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me 
 was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly 
 than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which 
 was with me. Therefore, whether it were I or they, 
 so we preach, and so ye believed.” 
 
 These words were written by St. Paul in answer to 
 the doctrine taught by some in the Church of Corinth, 
 that when once the body had returned to dust, it 
 would never rise again. The soul alone, according to 
 them, was to benefit by the salvation procured for man 
 by Jesus Christ. St. Paul’s answer is (in substance) as 
 follows: “The salvation is to be realized in the believer 
 in the same way in which it was accomplished in the 
 person of the Christ, our pattern. Now the unanimous 
 testimony of the apostles and of a great number of 
 brethren, to which I may add my own, proves that Jesus, 
 after His death, rose again, not only in soul, but in 
 body also. This is the fact established by each of the 
 appearances recorded by those who witnessed them. 
 The salvation therefore for which we look compre- 
 hends our body as well as soul. As we have borne, 
 by physical death, the image of the first Adam, we 
 shall also bear, by the resurrection of the body, that 
 of the second—of the Christ.” 
 
10 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 Such is the occasion which leads St. Paul to 
 enumerate the various testimonies on which rests the 
 faith of the Church in the resurrection of her Head. 
 Of these he mentions six :— 
 
 1. That of St. Peter, to whom Jesus showed Him- 
 self alive on the very day of His resurrection, in an 
 appearance alluded to, but not described, in our 
 Gospels. The inner details of this event had, no 
 doubt, remained a secret between the Lord and His 
 disciple. 
 
 2. That of the Twelve, in the midst of whom Jesus 
 had appeared, as our Gospels record, on the very 
 evening of the day of the resurrection, whilst they 
 were still at Jerusalem. 
 
 3. That of the five hundred brethren, to whom 
 Jesus showed Himself at one time. St. Paul does not 
 tell us where this appearance took place. It is prob- 
 able that it was in Galilee, for it was from thence 
 that Jesus had brought to Jerusalem the whole 
 multitude of His disciples, and it was there also that 
 He had resolved to reconstitute His flock, which had 
 been scattered by His death. Already, on the eve 
 of His Passion, He had expressed that intention.1 
 Immediately after His resurrection He takes up again 
 
 1 Matt. xxvi. 31, 82; Mark xiv. 27, 28. 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. Il 
 
 the same thought, and invites the whole multitude of 
 His disciples, including the women who formed part of 
 the multitude who followed Him, to meet in Galilee, 
 when He would once more appear in the midst of 
 them.' It is, then, probable that the great and solemn 
 reunion, spoken of by St. Paul in this place, was 
 the result of this rendezvous determined upon so 
 long before, and that it was under these circum- 
 stances that the Lord took leave of His assembled 
 Church. 
 
 4, The testimony of James the brother of Jesus. 
 During the ministry of the Lord, His own brethren 
 did not recognise Him as the Messiah.’ But after the 
 ascension we find them assembled with the disciples 
 in the upper chamber, where they are together, await- 
 ing the Day of Pentecost.? There must then have 
 occurred some decisive event to put an end to their 
 hesitations, and to silence their objections. That 
 event, no doubt, was this appearance of Jesus to 
 James, the eldest of His brethren. St. Paul had made 
 the personal acquaintance of St. Peter and St. James 
 
 at Jerusalem, as we know from the Epistle to the 
 
 1 Matt. xxviii. 10; Mark xvi. ih 
 ea Mark lig 2ly° 2330 ODN Vile De 
 Sr Acts i. 14: 
 
12 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 Galatians, which, like 1 Corinthians, is of undisputed 
 authenticity." It was probably directly from the lips 
 of these men that he had gathered their testimony 
 with regard to the appearances that had been granted 
 them. 
 
 5. The testimony of all the apostles together. This 
 refers, without doubt, to the last appearance of Jesus, 
 on the day of the ascension, which is described in 
 Luke xxiv. 50-53, and which was the special leave- 
 taking of Jesus from His apostles. 
 
 6. That of Paul himself; for he, too, saw Jesus 
 risen from the dead, and it was this appearance to 
 him which made him at once a believer and an 
 apostle. It is true, it has been questioned whether 
 Jesus did appear in the body to St. Paul after His 
 departure from the earth. Some have begun by giving 
 a negative answer to this question, then gone on to 
 assert that it is evident we are dealing with a mere 
 vision, and finally, have made an attempt to apply 
 the same method of exegesis to all the appearances 
 previously mentioned by the apostle? We shall 
 examine this hypothesis later on. For the present, we 
 will confine ourselves to proving that it contradicts the 
 
 thought of the apostle himself. For in this passage his 
 
 1 Gal. i. 18, 19. 2 Strauss. 
 
the dead rise not. 
 
 Lhe Resurrection of Sesus Christ. 13 
 
 object is to prove the doctrine of the bodily resurrec- 
 tion of believers, by that of Jesus; and it is therefore 
 clear that the appearance granted to him would have 
 no bearing upon the question before him, if he had be- 
 lieved it to have been a mere vision. St. Paul declares, 
 in the Epistle to the Colossians, ‘that “all the fulness 
 of the Godhead dwelleth bodily” in the glorified Jesus. 
 Jesus, therefore, in His glorified state, possesses still 
 our human nature, and can therefore appear to us in a 
 bodily form. Did not Jesus Himself foretell that, as 
 the lightning shineth from one end of heaven to the 
 other, so the Son of Man will appear visibly, and 
 simultaneously to all eyes, in His day? “Whether it 
 were they (the apostles) or we,” adds St. Paul, after 
 this enumeration, “so we preach. And if Jesus was 
 not really risen, we should be found false witnesses of 
 God, since we have testified against God that He 
 raised up Christ: whom He raised not up, if so be that 
 ” “ Against God,”? says the apostle ; 
 for it is indeed to testify against any one to attribute 
 to him any work, good or bad, which he did not do. 
 This expression shows how clearly St. Paul realized 
 
 to himself the moral gravity of his own position and 
 
 Bee CoruxValie 15: 
 * [So it is in the original Greek.—Tr. ] 
 
14 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 of that of the other apostles, as witnesses to the fact 
 of the resurrection of Jesus. 
 
 The whole of this passage absolutely proves the fact 
 that the apostles, and with them the whole multitude 
 of the first believers, witnesses of the ministry of 
 Jesus, and finally, St. Paul, His persecutor before he 
 was His apostle, testified to His resurrection. The 
 written testimony of the other apostles is included in 
 
 | our evangelic records. Our three first Gospels do not, 
 | according to the most recent critical investigations, 
 | date later than a few years subsequent to the Epistle 
 | of St. Paul which I have just cited ; from 60 to 80 A.D., 
 | according to Holtzmann, the free-thinking theologian 
 | of the Grand Duchy of Baden." 
 
 That of St. Matthew mentions two appearances of 
 the risen Jesus: (1) That which was granted to the 
 women who came to the sepulchre on the morning of 
 the resurrection; (2) That which took place “ wpon a 
 mountain of Galilee, where Jesus had appointed,” and — 
 where He gave to the eleven apostles the commission 
 to evangelize the world and to baptize all nations.’ 
 This appearance is probably the same as that which 
 took place in the presence of the five hundred, men- 
 
 1 Die synoptischen Evangelien, 1863. 
 * Matt. xxviii. 16-20. 
 
Lhe Resurrection of Sesus Christ. 15 
 
 - tioned by St. Paul. St. Matthew speaks only of the 
 Eleven, because it was to them alone that the great 
 Messianic mission was entrusted, with reference to 
 which the first Gospel records this scene. 
 
 St. Luke mentions four appearances :—(1) That to 
 Peter, mentioned by St. Paul; (2) That to the two 
 disciples going to Emmaus, at two leagues’ distance 
 from Jerusalem, in the afternoon of the day of the 
 resurrection (this is narrated in detail by St. Luke 
 only); (3) That to the Twelve on the evening of the 
 day of the Resurrection, alluded to by. St. Paul; 
 (4) That on the day of the ascension, also mentioned 
 by St. Paul. 
 
 St. Mark refers to three appearances: those which 
 were granted to Mary Magdalene, that to the two 
 on the way to Emmaus, and finally, that to the 
 Twelve. 
 
 It is to St. John in this case, as in go many others, 
 that we owe the fullest and the most exact account. 
 His narrative comprehends four appearances. (1) He 
 describes in inimitable traits that which was granted 
 to Mary Magdalene at the sepulchre; ( 2) That granted 
 to the apostles in the absence of Thomas; (3) That 
 which took place eight days after, in presence of 
 Thomas; and (4) That granted to seven disciples on 
 
16 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 the banks of the Lake of Gennesareth. The two 
 latter are recorded by John alone. 
 
 Let us note in these evangelic records two charac- 
 teristics: the variations in the details, the agreement 
 in the substance of the story. The substance is the 
 fact of the resurrection. On this the accounts are 
 unanimous. The diversity in the details is the con- 
 sequence of that between the witnesses who communi- 
 cated the facts to the writers, or who themselves 
 drew up these records. It proves that no previous 
 agreement, no ingenious calculation, guided them in 
 drawing them up. 
 
 It is, on the other hand, very easy to combine the 
 narratives of all these various appearances, distributed 
 among the Gospels, into a complete and consistent 
 picture. They are like the scattered fragments of the 
 pictures which children delight in putting together 
 again by fitting them into each other. Accordingly, 
 when we reduce to order all these records of appear- 
 ances, we perceive that Jesus began by acts of which 
 the object was to administer comfort and reassurance. 
 That was the first task to be accomplished ; for were 
 not these hearts all trembling and fearful? That was 
 the work of the first day. He fulfilled it in succession 
 
 in regard to Mary Magdalene, to the two Emmaus 
 
Lhe Resurrection of $esus Christ. 17 
 
 disciples, to Peter and the Twelve. “ Peace be unto 
 you!”—that was the burden of the whole. After 
 that, Jesus sets Himself to bring back to the fold the 
 one sheep which had gone astray, and was in danger 
 of perishing—Thomas. That is the task of the follow- 
 ing days. When the flock had been reconstituted in its 
 completeness, He sent them back to Galilee, where He 
 had already appointed to meet them. There, on the 
 mountain which he had indicated to them, He once 
 more gives His apostles their commission ; He explains 
 it to them, and adds the promise that He will help 
 them. Lastly, He brings them back to Jerusalem, 
 where they are to await His return in the Spirit at 
 Pentecost; and in a final appearance He bids them 
 adieu. 
 
 On looking back upon the whole, we easily perceive 
 how wonderfully the several fragments of the picture 
 fit into each other. But the records themselves give 
 not the slightest hint respecting this mutual inter- 
 connection and this natural progress of the advancing 
 steps of the story. 
 
 What a proof is this of the perfect faithfulness, 
 as well as intrinsic truthfulness, of these primitive 
 records ! 
 
 Let us, in conclusion, notice in passing the testimony 
 B 
 
18 Lectures tn Defence of the Christian Fazth. 
 
 of St. Peter in his first Epistle (i. 3), “Blessed be God, 
 the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according 
 to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a 
 lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from 
 the dead ;” and that of St. John in the Apocalypse 
 (i. 18), “I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, 
 behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the 
 keys of hell and of death.”* 
 
 We have, then, here a sevenfold testimony, of which 
 we have ourselves examined the solidity: that of the 
 three evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke; that of 
 the three principal apostles, Peter, John, and Paul; 
 and finally, that of the whole primitive Church, as 
 represented by the five hundred mentioned by St. 
 Paul, and of whom the greater part were still living 
 at the time at which he did not hesitate to make his 
 appeal to their testimony. 
 
 We are now about to examine the validity of this 
 testimony, or, in other words, to inquire whether it 
 would be possible to account for the fact that the 
 apostle bore witness to the resurrection on the 
 
 hypothesis that the event itself did not take place. 
 
 1 How could Strauss venture to question the reference of this passage 
 to the resurrection? What would be the meaning of the words, ‘‘ I was 
 dead,” if no more was meant than the continued existence of Jesus in 
 the spirit 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 19 
 
 IJ.—VALIpvITY oF THE APOSTOLIC TESTIMONY. / 
 
 The first doubt that might arise in our minds 
 would regard the sincerity of the apostles, and sug- 
 gest a suspicion that their witness was a deliberate 
 imposture. For after they had made the cause of 
 Jesus their own, must they not do all they could to 
 sustain it? And even if falsehood was necessary for 
 this end, had they not gone too far to draw back? It 
 would not be the first time in history that pious fraud 
 was employed in support of a cause that had become 
 desperate. 
 
 It was by the aid of this charge of deliberate fraud 
 that the Jews attempted to paralyse the effect of the 
 preaching of the apostles. At the time at which the 
 first Gospel was drawn up, some thirty years after the 
 death of Jesus, the report, originally spread by the 
 Sanhedrim, that the apostles had secretly carried off 
 the body of Jesus and made away with it, to enable 
 them to announce His resurrection, was still believed 
 by a large part of the Jewish people.’ 
 
 But this assertion could not have gained much 
 credit among the men then living, since it did not 
 
 1 Matt, xxviii. 18-15. 
 
20 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fath. 
 
 prevent a Church of many thousands of believers being 
 immediately formed in Jerusalem, extending itself 
 through the whole of Palestine and into Gentile 
 countries, so that, twenty-five years after the death 
 of Jesus, St. Paul could write letters to Christian 
 Churches, very numerous and very active, scattered 
 through Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. The Epistle 
 to the Romans, written in the winter of a.D. 58-59, 
 implies that the Church was then already founded in 
 the capital of the world. The great persecution which 
 raged in A.D. 64, thirty years after the death of Jesus, 
 against the Christians in Rome, and of which the 
 heathen historian Tacitus has preserved for us a 
 terrible picture, would in itself suffice to prove the 
 rapidity and the power with which the preaching of 
 the resurrection had spread through the world, and 
 the credit it had everywhere gained. 
 
 We prove, then, by a manifest fact, that the charge 
 brought by the Jews against the sincerity of the 
 apostolic testimony has failed, and that it has remained 
 without effect upon the minds of impartial men in the 
 whole world—and for what reason? Because the 
 human conscience possesses the instinct of moral 
 truth, and in consequence of that instinct it has 
 
 never been able to make up its mind to attach the 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 21 
 
 epithet of false witnesses to the apostles of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Those men were judged by the conscience of their 
 contemporaries to be upright, faithful, even holy men; 
 and that judgment, pronounced upon them by their 
 contemporaries, in view of themselves, is accepted by 
 the conscience of mankind now, in view of. their 
 writings. Let any one read a few lines of the Epistle 
 of St. James, or of the First of St. Peter, he wixl feel 
 himself in an atmosphere of truth and holiness which 
 excludes imposture, 
 
 This remark applies still more evidently to St. Paul. 
 It cannot be said of him that his past life biassed 
 him; or, if it did, it was in a direction precisely 
 opposed to the gospel. To preach the resurrection 
 was for him to give the he to the whole of his past 
 life, to his whole career as a Pharisee. In receiving 
 baptism in the name of Jesus, he sacrificed all the 
 hopes of honour, of power, of riches, which he could 
 have built upon his immense talents, and upon the 
 influence which he had already gained, though still so 
 young, among his own people. Now, how is it possible 
 to question the sincerity of a man who prefers to the 
 most brilliant of future destinies, that of a simple 
 
 craftsman, earning his daily bread by the labour of his 
 
22 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 hands, exposed to all kinds of privation, subject to the 
 fiercest hatred of his former admirers? We possess 
 some words written by this man, at the very time 
 when he was preparing to lay his head upon the 
 block. “The time of my departure is at hand. I 
 have finished my course, I have fought the good fight, 
 I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for 
 me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the 
 righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to 
 me only, but unto all them also that love His appear- 
 ing.”* Reading these words, the human conscience 
 will always affirm that the writer of them was, at any 
 rate, an honest man. 
 
 And, besides, the triumphant energy with which 
 St. Paul and the Twelve laid the foundations of the 
 Church, and with which they were enabled to inspire 
 it, would be inconceivable in men who had to bear 
 the burden of remorse, the crushing weight of the 
 sense that they were bearing false witness before the 
 world. 
 
 What I am now saying is so manifestly true, that 
 the most advanced modern infidelity will ‘not dispute 
 it. Strauss and Baur, these two coryphei of modern 
 scepticism, reject, both of them, as morally impossible, 
 
 1 2 Tim, iv. 6-8, 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 23 
 
 the hypothesis of imposture on the part of the apostles. 
 “History,” says Baur, “ must hold to the assertion 
 that to the faith of the disciples the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ was a fact, certain and indisputable. ~ It 
 is in this faith only that Christianity found a ground 
 solid enough to erect upon it the superstructure of its 
 
 whole historic development.”' 
 
 “The historian,” says 
 Strauss, “must acknowledge that the disciples firmly 
 believed that Jesus was risen.” And, once more, 
 “The fact that the Apostle Paul heard from the 
 mouth of Peter, of James, and of others besides, 
 that Jesus had appeared to them, and that they 
 all, and the five hundred brethren also, were 
 absolutely convinced that they had seen Jesus living 
 after He had died, is one which we will not call in 
 question.” ? 
 
 The suspicion of deliberate imposture being cleared 
 out of our way, a second possible hypothesis presents 
 itself, which has been advocated by some in our day.* 
 Might not that which the apostles mistook for a 
 resurrection have been nothing more than a simple 
 reawakening after a long swoon, a perfectly natural 
 convalescence, following upon a state of lethargy ? 
 
 1 Drei ersten Jahrhunderte, 2d ed. pp. 39, 40. 
 2 Leben Jesu, 1864, p. 289. 3 Schleiermacher. 
 
24 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 Jesus had hung but for six hours upon the cross. 
 Now, as a rule, two or three days passed before a 
 criminal, condemned to this kind of death, breathed 
 his last breath. The soldiers, believing Jesus to be 
 dead, had not broken His legs, as they had those 
 of the two malefactors; but He had really only 
 fainted. He had been laid as dead in the sepulchre, 
 and the fresh air in that new tomb, together with the 
 reviving effects of the spices with which He had been 
 embalmed, soon brought Him back to life, and gave 
 Him strength to-reappear amongst the disciples on the 
 third day. | 
 
 Let us begin our examination of this hypothesis by 
 recalling a fact which may throw some light upon 
 that before us. The Jewish historian, Josephus, tells 
 us that during the siege of Jerusalem he received an 
 order from the Roman General, Titus, to whom he was 
 a prisoner of war, to direct a reconnaissance. On his 
 road he saw some of his unhappy fellow-countrymen 
 whom the Romans had made prisoners, and had 
 crucified by the road-side. On his return to the camp, 
 he begged of Titus an order of release for three of 
 them whom he had recognised; this was granted 
 him. Notwithstanding the utmost medical care, two 
 
 of them soon died ; persevering efforts saved the life 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 25 
 
 of the third. We see by this case, that even after 
 a man had escaped out of this horrible kind of death, 
 it was no easy matter for him to recover life, and the 
 use of his powers. 
 
 Now Jesus, before His crucifixion, had already 
 suffered much, both in body and soul. He had passed 
 through the anticipation of His death in Gethsemane. 
 He had undergone the frightful pain of a Roman 
 scourging, which left deep scars upon the back of the 
 sufferer, and which is almost equivalent to capital 
 punishment. Then they had pierced His hands and 
 feet with nails. The small amount of strength which 
 He might still have had left had been worn away by 
 the six hours of frightful suffering which He had 
 already passed through. Consumed with thirst and 
 completely exhausted, He had at last breathed out 
 His soul in that last ery recorded by the evangelists. 
 Again, a Roman soldier had pierced His heart with 
 a spear. With no food or drink, with no one to dress 
 His wounds or alleviate His sufferings in any way, He 
 had passed a whole day and two nights in the cave in 
 which He was laid. And yet, on the morning of the 
 third day behold Him reappearing, active and radiant! 
 On His feet, which had been pierced through and 
 through only two days back, He walks without diffi- 
 
26 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 culty the two leagues between Emmaus and Jerusalem. 
 He is so active, that during the repast He disappears 
 suddenly from out the sight of His fellow-travellers, 
 and when they return to the capital to announce the 
 good news to the apostles, they find Him there again ! 
 He has overtaken them. With the same quickness 
 which characterizes all His movements, He presents 
 Himself suddenly in the room in which the disciples 
 are assembled. .. . Are these the actions of a man 
 who has just been taken down half-dead from the 
 cross, and who has been laid in a grave in a condition 
 of complete exhaustion? No; the alternative is that 
 these supposed facts are inventions; and if so, what 
 becomes of the good faith, already conceded by our 
 adversaries, of those who affirmed them to be true? 
 Or else they are true, and the restoration of Jesus to 
 life was something different in kind from a mere con- 
 valescence after a swoon. Here again Strauss has 
 done homage to the truth: “A man_half-dead, 
 dragging himself in languor and exhaustion out of his 
 tomb, with wounds requiring careful and continuous 
 medical treatment,—could He, in such a state, have 
 produced upon the minds of the disciples the im- 
 pression that He was the victor over death and 
 
 the grave, the Prince of Life——an impression which 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 7 
 
 nevertheless was the source and spring of all their 
 subsequent activity? Such a return to life could 
 only have served to weaken the impressions which 
 Jesus had in His former life made upon’ their minds 
 by His life and death, and could never have turned 
 their sorrow into enthusiasm, and intensified their 
 admiration into adoration.” * 
 
 And finally, how are we to suppose that Jesus 
 ‘ended a life so recovered? We must suppose that, 
 withdrawing Himself from the notice of His apostles, 
 He retired privately into some remote region; and 
 that while life gradually decayed, as in the case of 
 all other mortal men, from the effects of sickness or 
 old age, He allowed them to publish to the world the 
 news of His resurrection, and of His glorious ascen- 
 sion! What should we think of such conduct? If 
 the suspicion of deliberate imposture proved inadmis- 
 sible in the case of the servants, is it not still more so 
 in that of the Master ? 
 
 The testimony of the apostles presupposes a real 
 conviction in their minds, as our adversaries them- 
 selves allow. This conviction cannot have been pro- 
 duced by the sight of one half-dead crawling out of 
 his sepulchre. This second point of the argument has 
 
 1 Leben Jesu, 1864, p. 298. 
 
28 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 been reached, and is conceded. How then, here again 
 we must ask, are we to account for the triumphant 
 faith of the apostles in the resurrection of Jesus, 
 unless we grant the reality of that fact? Infidelity 
 has but one resource left—the third and the last: it 
 is to affirm that the appearances of Jesus risen were 
 but mental visions produced in the minds of the 
 believers by their state of excitement. It is into this 
 way of accounting for the facts that modern infidelity 
 has generally settled down; and it is reduced into 
 shape as follows :— 
 
 Mary Maedalene was the first who believed she 
 saw Jesus risen, near the sepulchre. It was a 
 mere hallucination, an effect of the mental disease, 
 not yet completely conquered, of which Jesus had 
 formerly cured her. This morbid state of mind 
 spread amongst the first Christians, and became a 
 kind of epidemic ; especially when the apostles, on 
 their return from Galilee, where they had lived with 
 their Master, were continually coming upon places and 
 objects which reawakened in their minds memories 
 so dear to their hearts. 
 
 From that time they began to imagine that they 
 saw Jesus everywhere,—on the sea-shore, on the roads, 
 
 on the tops of mountains; everywhere His image 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 29 
 
 haunted them. It was thus quite honestly that they 
 believed that their Master was risen again, though 
 these apparitions were but reflections of their own 
 inner belief. It was the same with the Lord’s appear- 
 ance to Paul on the way to Damascus. Paul believed 
 that he saw and heard all he said he did, but he 
 really saw and heard only what was passing within 
 him. 
 
 Let us confront this hypothesis, as we have the 
 others, with the facts,—those, I mean, of which the 
 
 reality 1s conceded by our adversaries themselves. 
 
 I. This hypothesis might seem admissible, if in 
 these apparitions of Jesus the apostles thought they 
 had only seen a celestial form hovering between them 
 and earth, But they heard discourses, rebukes, com- 
 mands, promises, proceeding from the mouth of Him 
 whom they thought they saw. He said to them, “O 
 slow of heart to believe!” He said to them again, 
 
 ? 
 
 “Go ye and teach all nations ;” and again, “ Wait in 
 Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on 
 high.” And not only did He speak to them, but 
 He ate and drank with them, and that on purpose 
 to prove to them that He was no mere phantom or 
 
 dream of their imagination. 
 
30 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fath. 
 
 Does not all this surpass even the extremest effects 
 of hallucination 2? We are driven, then, to set down all 
 these assertions as deliberate falsehoods. But what 
 becomes then of the good faith of those who filled the 
 
 mind of the Church with these fictitious stories ? 
 
 Il. Hallucinations, whether affecting the sense of 
 sight or of hearing, are a phenomenon of disease,—a 
 symptom of some grave physical or moral derange- 
 ment, the prelude of a nervous fever, perhaps, or of a 
 state of mental alienation. But we hear of nothing of 
 the kind in the subsequent lives of the apostles. St. 
 Paul, it is true, speaks of a “thorn in the flesh "—of 
 some suffering which he had painfully to bear. But 
 none the less during a period of thirty years does he 
 carry on a mighty mission through the whole world, 
 labouring through the night to earn his living, through 
 the day in winning souls for Jesus Christ, till the 
 sword of the Roman Emperor puts an end to his life 
 on the road from Rome to Ostia. We look in vain for 
 this nervous fever, which the strange illusion on the 
 way to Damascus portended. And as to madness, 
 read his Epistles! One could wish that many men of 
 sense reasoned with a logic as close and a judgment as 
 
 sound. Besides, St. Paul was not the only person who, 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 31 
 
 on the road to Damascus, saw and heard something. 
 According to the two accounts given us in the Book of 
 the Acts, the companions of St. Paul did not distinguish 
 the words of Him who spoke to him, but they heard 
 a voice. Neither did they see the form of the speaker ; 
 but they were smitten with a marvellous light. If 
 any one thinks these reports deliberate falsehoods, we 
 understand his position. But then we are once more 
 landed in the hypothesis of imposture, from which we 
 thought we had escaped. 
 
 The career of St. Peter and of the other apostles 
 lasted from thirty to fifty years, during which, so far 
 as we know, their sanity was unimpeachable. At 
 their death they left, already established over the 
 whole world, a Church of about 500,000 believers, 
 the fruit of their missionary labours. | With regard to 
 St. Peter in particular, we know that he underwent 
 martyrdom at Rome during the persecutions of Nero, 
 about the year 64, after a ministry of thirty years. 
 Such a work is undeniably sufficient evidence of sanity. 
 Besides which, we are still in possession of his prin- 
 cipal Epistle, written a short time before his death ; it 
 forms part of our New Testament. Anything more 
 sober-minded and composed it would be impossible to 
 write. 
 
32 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 III. But suppose we granted that the apparitions of 
 Jesus were an effect of delusions of sight and hearing 
 in the cases of one, or two, or even three of the per- 
 sons who declared that they saw Him after He was 
 risen. Yet this moral phenomenon, strange enough in 
 itself, is far from sufficient to account for the facts. 
 Were we to admit its possibility in the cases of Mary 
 Magdalene, of St. Peter, of St. Paul, we should have, 
 further, to accept it in that of James and of the two 
 disciples going to Emmaus, though a walk together 
 and a conversation lasting for two hours is difficult to 
 harmonize with such an hypothesis. We must further 
 extend this supposition of hallucination to the Twelve, 
 including cautious Thomas, who believed that he 
 saw, heard, and even touched Him, when, according to 
 this hypothesis, there was absolutely nothing external 
 to his own mind! Well, suppose we grant all this. 
 Still, what shall we say of the five hundred? Five 
 hundred persons under a simultaneous delusion, five 
 hundred who persuade themselves that they see One 
 who is not there, that they hear Him speak and bid 
 them farewell. Physicians would do well to take a 
 note of these facts, unique surely in the annals of 
 science !, 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. an 
 
 IV. When one under a hallucination believes that 
 he sees and hears things which have no existence 
 outside of his own brain, these illusions usually refer 
 to matters bearing upon his favourite topics of thought 
 and interest; they are reflections of fears and hopes 
 which occupy his mind. But this condition does not 
 exist in the case before us. The disciples enter- 
 tained no hope, no idea, of seeing that dead body 
 which they had laid in the sepulchre reappear among 
 them. They treated as madness the idea of the women 
 who first asserted that they had seen Him risen from 
 the dead. To these very women, going to the 
 sepulchre, such an expectation was so utterly foreign, 
 that they carried with them spices to embalm the 
 body of the Lord. That was the express purpose of the 
 visit of Mary Magdalene to the sepulchre. It is not 
 difficult to persuade oneself that one sees and hears 
 something which one fervently wishes for, or is eagerly 
 expecting ;——but something which one never dreamed 
 of—it is a moral impossibility. 
 
 Now, what the disciples seem to have expected 
 was this: they figured to themselves Jesus descending 
 once more in glory from the heaven into which they 
 thought He had entered at His death, in accordance 
 
 with the words which He had spoken to them: “I go 
 C 
 
24 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 unto my Father.” It was under this idea, natural 
 enough from the point of view of the Jews, that the 
 penitent thief said to Jesus, “ Lord, remember me when 
 Thou comest into Thy kingdom,’—that is to say, when 
 Thou shalt return from heaven as King Messiah. It 
 was probably this idea possessing the minds of His 
 disciples, standing in the way of their acceptance of 
 the idea of His having risen again, which Jesus wished 
 to clear away when He said to Mary Magdalene, 
 “T am not yet ascended to my Father.” If, then, 
 the disciples had imagined to themselves anything in 
 accordance with the ideas with which they were 
 possessed, it would have been an appearance of their 
 Master from heaven, but certainly not a return to life 
 of that infirm body which they believed He had left 
 behind Him for ever. 
 
 But perhaps some one will suggest that they had 
 retained the memory of the words in which Jesus had 
 foretold His resurrection. Strauss had too much ability 
 to involve himself in any plea of that sort. In fact, 
 if rationalism were to adopt such a profession of belief, 
 it could only be at a great cost to its own credit. 
 
 To extricate themselves from this terrible network 
 of difficulties, two of the best philosophers of Germany, 
 
 7St. John xx. 17, 
 
Lhe Resurrection of Fesus Christ. aS 
 
 ‘Weisse and Lotze, have acknowledged that one is 
 driven ultimately to admit that something did take 
 place, but that that something may well have been no 
 more than some influence exerted by the spirit of 
 Jesus, after He had entered the world of spirits, upon 
 the spirits of the disciples, to give them such an 
 apprehension of the reality of His existence, and to 
 communicate to them such “springs of energy as 
 were needful to fit them to be propagators of His 
 religion.” This, to put it in other words, is an attempt 
 to put a faith in ghosts in the place of faith in the 
 resurrection. If one must make a choice between 
 these two, I think the decision will be easy,, If it 
 is not so, call to mind that the spirit of Jesus, which 
 we are to believe showed itself to the spirits of the 
 disciples, is recorded to have spoken, acted, eaten and 
 drunk in their presence, expressly in order to prove to 
 them that He was no mere spirit or bodiless phantom ! 
 That, indeed, would be an act of malice prepense, such 
 as we are told spirits sometimes indulge in. And after 
 all, we have not yet faced the greatest difficulty which 
 besets the hypothesis of visions, whether imaginary or 
 real, the question what became of the body of Jesus ? 
 
 As to this, there are but two alternatives open to 
 us: either the body remained in the hands of the 
 
36 Lectures m Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 disciples, or else it was given up to the Jews. In the 
 first case, it is clear that, by the act of proclaiming the 
 fact of the resurrection of their Master while they had 
 His dead body before their eyes, the disciples would 
 have involved themselves in the guilt of wilful and 
 deliberate imposture. Now that hypothesis has been 
 recognised as inadmissible, as we have seen, by the 
 leaders of the modern rationalism. We must then 
 take refuge in the second of the alternative theories, 
 and suppose that the body of Jesus remained in the 
 hands of the Jews. Let us accept this theory for a 
 moment. But, we then ask, how, in this case, did it 
 happen that the Jews did not produce this piece of 
 absolutely conclusive evidence when the apostles began 
 to proclaim the resurrection at J erusalem? Why - 
 should they have had recourse to imprisonment or to 
 scourging, to silence these poor deluded men? They 
 had a simpler resource at hand: the dead body is in 
 their hands; exhibit it to view! But, no! They 
 reason, they dispute, they imprison, they scourge the 
 witnesses ; they show nothing. 
 
 What answer is made to this argument by the 
 unbelievers in the resurrection? Baur, in answer, 
 stammers out: “What really happened at that which 
 
 we call the resurrection, remains outside the sphere of 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 37 
 
 historical investigation.” How so? What ?—that 
 outside the sphere of historical investigation which, if 
 it is a fact, is the central one of the world’s history! 
 Strauss, a brother Pantheist of Baur’s, calls him over 
 the coals for that expression of his, and charges him, 
 with much reason, with evading by this means the 
 key-point of the controversy. And what does he him- — 
 self say? He talks tous about a dead body thrown 
 by the Jews to the dust-heap, so that no remains of it ~ 
 were to be recovered. But between the feast of the 
 Passover and that of Pentecost, in which the resur- 
 rection of Jesus was publicly proclaimed in Jerusalem 
 by St. Peter and the Twelve, only a few weeks had 
 elapsed ; and during that interval a dead body does not 
 become lost or unrecognisable. 
 
 But why talk of weeks passed away? It was but 
 on the morning of the third day that, according to all 
 the accounts, and to the concordant witness of St. Paul, 
 the disciples convinced themselves of the resurrection 
 of their Master. Now, if the body was thrown to the 
 dust-heap, the friends of Jesus would have been very 
 quickly disabused of their delusion by its exhihition 
 in public. 
 
 In using this argument, we have for the moment 
 
 granted that the body had been given up to the Jews. 
 
38 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 But that could not be; for, according to Roman law, 
 the dead bodies of those who had been executed 
 were given to those who claimed them. Now, if our 
 evangelic records are not fictitious, it was Joseph 
 of Arimathaea who put in this claim, and who, 
 after having obtained from the Roman governor the 
 body of Jesus, buried it in his own sepulchre. This 
 account agrees with what we are told of the women,— 
 that, in going to the sepulchre, their intention had been 
 to embalm the body. They were therefore sure that 
 they should have the disposal of it; which proves that 
 it had remained in the hands of the friends of Jesus, 
 
 Besides, did not the Jews, when they charged the 
 disciples with having stolen and made away with the 
 body, themselves thereby confess as clearly as possible 
 that it had not remained in their hands ? 
 
 So, then, this body, so precious both to the love of 
 one party and to the hatred of others, is not in the 
 hands of either! Friends and enemies alike, we are to 
 suppose, look for it and cannot find it. What, then, 
 really became of it? The only possible explanation 
 of this mysterious disappearance is that it reappeared 
 as the body of Jesus risen.' 
 
 1 The question has been asked, What was the nature of that risen 
 body ? Was it a material body like ours? If so, how could Jesus 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 39 
 
 No success, then, has yet attended any of the 
 attempts made to account for the fact of the testimony 
 of the apostles, while suppressing that of the resur- 
 rection itself. The apostles did not invent the story 
 of the resurrection; their good faith is acknowledged. 
 They did not mistake one fact for another, confounding 
 a mere awakening out of sleep with a resurrection ; 
 that is conceded. Nor, lastly, were they the dupes of 
 their imagination, fancying that they saw and heard 
 things which really took place only in their minds; 
 the very nature of the appearances, the number and 
 character of the witnesses, the mysterious disappear- 
 ance of the body, shut out the third hypothesis. And 
 with this the list of rationalistic attempts at explana- 
 tion is exhausted. 
 
 What has been my purpose in this discussion of a 
 
 have appeared in it, in a room with the doors closed? Or was ita 
 body of some non-material nature? If so, how could it eat, or allow 
 itself to be handled? In any case, the reality of the resurrection can- 
 not be compromised by the obscurity which hangs over the new body 
 of Jesus. We are here in a region which altogether transcends our 
 experience. The whole condition of Jesus at that period was one of 
 transition. ‘I am not yet ascended,” He says in John xx. 17,... 
 ‘“but I ascend.” His body also, then, was in process of transforma- 
 tion. On the one hand, it participated in the nature of the former 
 body; on the other, it had in some measure the attributes of the 
 spiritual body—that is to say, it was perfectly under the command of 
 the soul, and subject to its will. The ascension marked the terminal 
 point of this time of development. 
 
40 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 purely scientific nature? Has it been to afford to my 
 readers a basis for faith in the resurrection of Jesus ? 
 By no means; faith cannot be founded upon argu- 
 ment; all that science can aspire to do, is to dissipate 
 doubts that have been suggested by science. To beget 
 faith is the work of the testimony of the apostles, . 
 displaying itself before our conscience in its noble, 
 holy simplicity. The divine characteristics that dis- 
 tinguish it are immediately seized by all minds which 
 possess in their purity the instincts of the true, the 
 good, the divine. Out of these is born Faith. If she 
 should happen to meet on her way with the objections 
 of Science which threaten to bar her passage, she is 
 not troubled ; she waits and leaves Science to act by 
 herself. The latter soon sets herself to her proper 
 work; she re-tests the argument she has used, and 
 soon with her own hands sweeps away the difficulties 
 she has accumulated. When Science has accomplished 
 this task, in the way in which we have just been 
 endeavouring to do, Faith, seeing thenceforth the way 
 clear before her, marches on again in peace, with the 
 feeling of one more victory won, and of a more assured 
 
 , possession of the treasure in which she rejoices. 
 
The Resurrection of $esus Christ. 4I 
 
 IIJ.—Tue IMporTANCE OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 But what, then, is there in the fact of the resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus which is so precious to faith? Is this 
 prodigy different in its nature from so many others 
 recorded in our sacred books ? 
 
 Twice, when Jesus was asked for a miraculous 
 attestation to His claim as Messiah, He referred those 
 who so pressed Him to the miracle of the resurrec- 
 tion, and He added that “no other sign should be 
 given them.” In fact, His other miracles have some- 
 thing of an accidental character about them; but this 
 is an essential part of the divine plan in the working 
 out of our salvation. It is one of the great redeeming 
 acts of God. It has, then, a character of necessity, and 
 it was for that reason that Jesus could speak of it 
 beforehand as the true sign. He could not have so 
 spoken of any of His ordinary miracles. 
 
 To bring into clear light this special importance of 
 the resurrection, I will begin with two preliminary 
 remarks :— 
 
 1. If the resurrection is a fact, it cannot be an 
 isolated one; this divine act must contribute some- 
 thing essential to the ensemble of a great work of 
 God. Considered apart from that which went before 
 
42 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 and that which followed it, such a miracle would seem 
 even stranger and more out of harmony with reason 
 than it is in its own nature. It is in virtue of the 
 place which it occupies in a homogeneous whole, that, 
 without ceasing to be supernatural, it becomes at the 
 same time logical and natural. It is thereby freed 
 from that character of abruptness which it would 
 otherwise wear. It is a mountain-top in the middle 
 of the chain of which it forms one of the main con- 
 necting links. And this chain, if we wish to discern 
 it, is not difficult to make out; it is the sacred history, 
 —that of the Old Testament, which in all its lines con- 
 verges upon this great fact, and that of the New, which 
 wholly flows from it. As the existence of the fruit 
 proves that of the tree which bare it, and as from it 
 one may argue the nature of that which is to be its 
 product ; so, by the divine fact of the resurrection, the 
 divine character of that Israelitish history which 
 culminates in it is demonstrated, and the divine 
 renewal of the whole condition of humanity which 
 dates from that moment finds its explanation. 
 
 2. It is not more possible for the miracle of the 
 resurrection, if it was a reality, to have been an 
 isolated fact, than it is for the part which that miracle 
 
 plays in the divine history to which it belongs to 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Chrost. 43 
 
 have been a secondary part. By the fact of the 
 absence of any human agent as its instrument, it takes 
 its place on a level with the most prodigious of 
 miracles, that of the creation. This analogy holds good 
 even to the very fundamental nature of the two facts: 
 to summon into life and to recall to life—are not these 
 two acts of the same nature? Creation is the victory 
 of Omnipotence over nothingness; the resurrection is 
 the victory of this same power over death, which is 
 the likest thing to nothingness known to us. As the 
 creation is the primordial fact in the history of the 
 universe, the resurrection of Jesus Christ must be its 
 central fact. It is that or nothing. 
 
 Let us now endeavour to penetrate into the essence 
 of the fact. 
 
 First of all, it is proper to give a hearing upon this 
 subject to those who were commissioned to proclaim 
 the resurrection, and to present this work of God to 
 the faith of mankind. Now the apostolic comment 
 upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ is briefly sum- 
 marised for us by the greatest of the founders of the 
 gospel: “ Christ was delivered because of our offences, 
 
 ° ° . ° ° y | 
 and was raised again for our justification.” 
 
 1 Rom. iv. 25. We use the expression ‘‘ because of,” and not ‘‘ for,” 
 because the latter term is ambiguous. It impossible to misunder- 
 
44 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 ' In the same way, St. Paul means that all the 
 offences of mankind came to a head and culminated in 
 ba single unique fact, the death of the Christ; and so 
 
 did the acquittal, which was purchased by that death 
 
 for these myriads of offences, culminate in another 
 crowning fact of an opposite nature, the resurrection 
 of the Christ. 
 
 This is not the place to develope the work of expia- 
 tion referred to in the first proposition of this apostolic 
 saying, or to set forth its wisdom, its holiness, its 
 moral sublimity, even its justice. We confine our- 
 selves to showing that, according to the first half of 
 the verse, three facts appear to the apostle to be 
 inseparable :—-Man sins; God condemns; Christ dies. 
 This Christ, the Son of man, and as such the normal 
 representative of His whole race, dies under the con- 
 demnation that falls upon it. 
 
 And, similarly, according to the second proposition 
 of this verse parallel with the first, three other facts 
 are quite as closely bound together in the view of St. 
 Paul:—Christ expiates; God absolves; Christ rises 
 again, 
 
 The glance of God has a divine power,—that of 
 
 stand it in the Greek, provided one keeps close to the words used by 
 the apostle, 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 45 
 
 inflicting death, when it is a glance of condemnation ; 
 that of raising to life again, when it changes into a 
 glance of absolution, The filial heart of Jesus felt 
 to the full this twofold power, which fails of its effect 
 upon our stony heart. Under this glance of condem- 
 nation which fell upon His whole family, the heart of 
 the Son, become our brother, broke; and in breaking 
 morally, it ceased to beat physically. But when once 
 the reparation was completed, this same filial heart 
 became the primary object of the glance of absolution 
 cast upon us; it regained life, power, warmth; and 
 being divinely reanimated, this heart communicated 
 its life even to the body in which it had beaten, and 
 raised it into a new state. 
 
 You see how profound is the solidarity, how close 
 is the interconnection, which unites the destiny of 
 each man to that of the Son of man, the living centre, 
 the palpitating heart of our race: I sin; Christ 
 dies—I am absolved; my Christ rises again. Jesus 
 made of my condemnation death to Him; my being 
 forgiven—the grace granted to me—becomes life to 
 Him. Similarly (even while holding fast the con- 
 sciousness of the wide distance which separates these 
 two moral facts, and which I shall by no means lose 
 
 sicht of), Paul said to the Thessalonians, as having in 
 
46 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 him the bowels—the heart of Jesus Christ, “Ye stand 
 fists), delive.’* 
 
 You have a friend; he is to you more than a 
 brother, he is a second self. He has made himself 
 surety for you; you find yourself insolvent. The law 
 lays hold of him. If he succeeds in liberating you, — 
 does he not thereby feel liberated himself? He was 
 a debtor only with your debt. That once paid off, how 
 should he not thereby recover his liberty? And 
 when he comes forth from the prison into which his 
 love for you had cast him, is it not your acquittal 
 which has brought him out? Just so it is from our 
 being absolved that the resurrection of Christ results. 
 The sentence which brings Him out of the sepulchre 
 is the same with that which delivers us from con- 
 demnation and proclaims our absolution; and when, 
 with the eye of faith, we meet on our road Jesus 
 risen again and glorified, we can say: I have looked 
 upon my salvation. As it was my sin which had 
 slain Him, so it is the declaration of my acquittal 
 which restores Him to life. ; 
 
 Do you wish to see yourself as you are in truth, 
 and to know all that you are, for good or ill? Itisin 
 
 Jesus dead and risen again that you must contemplate 
 
 11 Thess. iii. 8, 
 
The Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 47 
 
 yourself and study yourself. In Him crucified, for- 
 saken of God, expiring, you behold yourself such as 
 you are in fact—a malefactor, condemned, under a 
 curse. In Him risen again, radiant, triumphant, you 
 behold yourself saved as you are by right, freely for- 
 given, blest, adopted of God. 
 
 What, then, does the resurrection of Jesus leave 
 for us to do? One thing, and one thing only: to 
 change, in our condition as before God, the state, in 
 which we are standing already by right, into fact; to 
 substitute this real new state—a state of sweetness, of 
 holiness, of glory——for our former state of bitterness, 
 pain, ignobleness; in a word, to become in ourselves 
 what we already are in Jesus, This is the miracle 
 worked by faith ; a second miracle, worthy of the first, 
 and one which, in completing that of the resurrection, 
 sets the seal to our personal salvation, 
 
 This position of solidarity with us, which the love 
 of Christ could work out only on one side,—that is, 
 on His part,—our faith is to complete on our part. 
 Faith is, as it were, our act of reciprocity answering to 
 the grace of God, the response of men to the overtures 
 of God. It lays hold of the forgiveness which has 
 been won for us and offered to us, by seizing it in its 
 
 palpable pledge—Jesus risen. By it every man comes 
 
48 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fanth. 
 
 in turn to bury himself in the death of the Son of 
 man, that so we may become, in this abyss, one with 
 “Him in a mysterious fellowship of suffering and of 
 condemnation, and with Him to come forth from it, 
 justified in Him, risen with Him.’ ' 
 
 Do not then look upon faith as a fancy theory, a 
 caprice of the understanding, standing in no connection 
 with the moral life we have lived, and shall live, 
 whether preceding it or subsequent to it. Faith is to 
 your life that which to the life of a tree is that 
 profound incision which opens access to the ovaft— 
 to that new principle which is to change the nature 
 of its juices and the quality of its sap. So does 
 aith open our heart' to the holiest and most potent 
 of principles. By it Jesus can establish Himself in 
 us, and work henceforth at substituting Himself for 
 our condemned and perverse selves. And how should 
 not such a living principle, once admitted into our 
 souls, and so long as access to it is kept open, have 
 the power of transforming everything in us, from the 
 sap even to the fruit ? 
 
 As it needs but a fresh breeze from the east to 
 sweep the mountains clear of the clouds gathered over 
 our heads, and to restore to us, after a rainy season, 
 
 1 Rom. vi. 3-5. 
 
Lhe Resurrection of Fesus Christ. 49 
 
 the azure sky and the life-giving rays of the sun; 
 so does it need but the manifestation in our troubled 
 consciousness of Jesus risen, and of our justifica- 
 tion accomplished in Him, to scatter the thick clouds 
 which had interposed themselves between our hearts 
 and God, and which were darkening our lives. It 
 opens the way for the face of a "Father, just and holy, 
 but at the same time reconciled and full of tender 
 compassion, to shine upon us; and this divine look is 
 the beaming of the sun, which makes every faculty to 
 blossom and bud in the world within us. By means 
 of it we become united ain ine celestial life of the 
 risen Saviour. | 
 
 A man who did not start from the ground of gospel 
 faith, but who approaches it by degrees, under the 
 influence of a moral logic more powerful than that 
 of Aristotle——Professor Keim,—has made use of this 
 expression: “It is upon an empty tomb that the 
 Christian Church is founded.” ‘Yes, a tomb emptied 
 not only of the dead body which had been laid in it, 
 but also of the curse upon us which had descended 
 at the same time into it; emptied of the power of 
 death itself, which triumphed by means of this curse, 
 and of the divine right of the law which proclaimed 
 
 it. “The sting of death is sin, and the strength of 
 | . D | 
 
50 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 sin is the law.” ! 
 
 Emptied of that which constitutes 
 our death, this tomb is in exchange filled with that 
 which constitutes our life——filled with the invisible 
 presence of Jesus risen; filled with the glory of the 
 Father, which broke forth in this sanctuary, into 
 which no eye of man pierced, and where, in a 
 conflict, of which God alone knows the mysteries, 
 death was swallowed up of life. “Thanks be to God, 
 which giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ our 
 bord 
 
 Let us often visit this spot; it is not necessary for 
 this end to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem; the 
 entrance into the holy sepulchre opens in the depths 
 of the heart of each one of us. Let us descend into 
 it, to find there the pledges of our adoption, the shreds 
 of the letter of acknowledgment of debt, which bore 
 witness against us, and which the hand of our 
 Heavenly Creditor has torn up; the fragments of the 
 sceptre of Death, which the foot of our deliverer has 
 broken to pieces; and lastly, the helmet of hope, 
 which His hand has deposited there in order that 
 each believer may go thither to put it on his head. 
 Ah! what good such a visit does to the overwhelmed 
 
 soul! She returns out of it as John came out of 
 
 Cor. xv. 56. 2 1 Cor. xv. 57. 
 
The Resurrection of ‘Fesus DT a | 
 
 the sepulchre after seeing in it the linen clothes 
 wrapped together, and the napkin folded and laid 
 by in a place by itself. “He saw and believed,’ he 
 tells us himself ; summing up in these two words the 
 deepest experience of his life. Let us believe in the 
 testimony of those who saw, in that which authenti- 
 cates itself to our hearts as holy, and therefore true, 
 and then we too shall see; we shall behold, even here 
 
 on earth, the glory of God. 
 
7 y, i 
 
 ro 
 
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 ELV 2 Oi Tis on © Dae LOIN Sa 
 
iA 
 THE HVPOTHESIS OF VISIONS. 
 
 HERE is one fact, the proclamation of which has 
 renewed the face of the world, founded upon 
 earth the holiest of religions, and given shape to the 
 highest hopes of the noblest portions of humanity. 
 This fact is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
 
 After such long-continued and great services done 
 to humanity, this fact might have seemed to have 
 established a claim upon our faith. It is not so, 
 however; the truth of it is now disputed. I do not 
 complain of this. Even the best established claims 
 must pass through opposition before they can become 
 incontrovertible. 
 
 In attacking the reality of the resurrection, M. 
 Réville evidently had before him the lecture which I 
 lately published on this subject; for he has followed 
 the argument of it point by point. This circumstance 
 gives to the discussion all the advantages of a formal 
 
 debate,—attack, defence, reply—without its incon- 
 BS 
 
56 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 veniences. You see that I am here speaking only of 
 the second lecture of M. Réville. With regard to 
 the first, perhaps it is my fault; but I have found 
 
 nothing in it deserving of an answer. 
 
 I. In the lecture in which he has examined the 
 proofs of the resurrection, M. Réville has introduced 
 his subject with some general reflections upon the 
 supernatural, which have, I fear, from the outset 
 given a distorted view of the point from which this 
 great question should be regarded, and turned the 
 discussion ‘aside from its normal path. He has, in 
 fact, begun by laying down as an axiom the impossi- 
 bility of miracles. 
 
 That in a question of metaphysics one should lay 
 a foundation in an abstract principle, is quite legiti- 
 mate. The nature of the subject requires this method 
 of dealing with it. But in studying a question of 
 fact, to begin by a metaphysical axiom is not a very 
 philosophical procedure. For evidently, such a 
 principle having been once laid down, an impartial 
 study of the facts becomes impossible. The result to 
 be arrived at having been settled beforehand, one must 
 reach it at all costs, even were it necessary for that end 
 
 to do violence to truth and to pervert facts. But to 
 
The Hypothesis of Vistons. — 57 
 
 grant such conditions is to put an end to all truly 
 scientific inquiry, to all impartial and disinterested 
 search for truth. et 
 
 And upon what grounds, then, are miracles from 
 the outset declared impossible ? to 
 
 1. “Because an experience, verifiable at every 
 moment, has impressed upon our minds the sense of 
 the inviolability of the laws of nature.” But is this 
 experience perfectly well established 2? And, above 
 all, is it complete? May not that which is no 
 longer to be seen in our day, have taken place never- 
 theless under a different state of things? Do we, for 
 instance, in our day, see men come into existence who 
 were not born from other human beings,—as must 
 nevertheless have happened in the case of the first 
 human pair? Or, if some of you prefer so to state 
 the question, do we now see monkeys in process of 
 metamorphosis into men ? 
 
 Neither of these two alternatives takes place in our 
 age of the world; and yet it is a fact, as certain as our 
 own existence, that one of the two must of necessity 
 have once occurred. 
 
 Therefore it is neither philosophical, nor in con- 
 formity with experience, to say that that can never 
 
 have happened which we do not see happening now. 
 
58 Lectures an Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 And that sense of the inviolability of the laws of 
 nature which is impressed upon us by the experience 
 of all our lives, may well be nothing more than illusion 
 due to the force of habit. 
 
 2. Again, M. Réville says: The order of nature can 
 neither be suppressed nor contradicted. For it is one 
 and the same thing with the will of God. The super- 
 natural would be the swperdivine,—in other words, an 
 impossibility. Now, that the laws of nature are a 
 manifestation of the will of God, is undeniable. But 
 to say that that will has passed complete into the laws 
 of nature in such a way that they are, so to say, co- 
 extensive with it, and that it retains nothing proper 
 to itself and overpassing these laws, is an assertion 
 which reason has no right to make, and which seems 
 in the highest degree improbable. The artist does not 
 merge himself altogether in his work. 
 
 M. Réville seems still to hold to that old and 
 defective definition of a miracle which made it to be a 
 suspension of the laws of nature. When I throw any 
 object into the air, the law of gravity still continues to 
 act. For, that the object has weight, is proved by the 
 fact that we soon see it falling again to the ground. 
 But the impulse communicated to it by my free-will 
 
 has, as it were, enveloped in itself, and carried away 
 
The Hypothesis of Visions. 59 
 
 with it, the force of gravity. How much more is God 
 able, while still maintaining the laws of nature, to 
 produce effects resulting from greater forces, and of 
 ~ which Nature was not in herself capable! 
 
 3. According to M. Réville, a miracle would be a 
 suspension not only of the laws of nature, but also 
 of the laws of logic. To affirm a miracle, he says, is 
 as if one should speak of a circular triangle, or to say 
 that 2 and 2 make 5. The miraculous is the absurd. 
 that is 
 
 But if a miracle were really an absurdity, 
 to say, a contradiction in terms,—none but diseased 
 brains would ever have admitted—I will not say 
 the reality, but even the possibility of them. Now, 
 in this case, how could M. Renan—no friend of 
 miracles, as we know—himself say: “ We do not say 
 a miracle is impossible; we say there has been no 
 instance up to this time of a proved miracle” ?* Is M. 
 Renan, then, the kind of man to regard the absurd as 
 possible? And how could he make the suggestion 
 that, in case of an asserted resurrection from the dead, 
 a commission of scientific men should be appointed 
 to decide upon the facts? A commission of men 
 of science to decide as to the reality of a circular 
 
 triangle! Surely M. Réville himself would not have 
 
 1 Vie de Jésus, p. 57. 
 
60 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 paused to spend an hour in refuting the testimony of 
 men, even the best accredited, who should have come 
 forward to declare that they had seen a circular tri- 
 angle, or that they had visited a country where 2 and 
 2 made 5. The orator has in this case evidently 
 allowed himself to strike a blow, which he does not 
 
 himself intend in real earnest. 
 
 II. From these general observations, M. Reville 
 passes to the examination of the testimony upon which 
 rests the belief of the Church in the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 The earliest written testimony which we possess 
 respecting the appearances of the risen Jesus, is that 
 of St. Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians.’ 
 M. Réville does not positively call it in question ; 
 only he reminds us that even this is separated from 
 the event it records by a considerable space of time 
 —about twenty-five years. But as to the fact of 
 the resurrection itself, every one knows that its pro- 
 clamation took place immediately after the day of 
 Pentecost—that is to say, a few days after it had 
 taken place. The whole preaching of the apostles 
 
 at Jerusalem, in the first days of the Church, 1s 
 
 14 Cor, xv. 3 sqq. 
 
The [Hypothesis of Vesions. 61 
 
 thus summed up by the author of the Acts: “And 
 with great power gave the apostles witness of the 
 resurrection of the Lord Jesus.”! This, then, was 
 the primary object of the first preaching of the 
 apostles. 
 
 Thus much for the fact in itself; the preaching of 
 it followed as the thunder-clap follows the lightning. 
 But if we inquire as to the particular appearances 
 of the risen Jesus enumerated by St. Paul, since 
 that apostle met Peter, John, and James, the three 
 principal leaders. of the flock,? at Jerusalem, after 
 his conversion, he could hardly have gathered from 
 other than their own lips the account of the appear- 
 ances of which he gives the list in 1 Cor. xv. 
 Now, it matters little whether he drew up this list 
 one year or twenty years after he had heard this 
 narrative. That which perverts a tradition is its 
 passing through the lips of a great number of persons 
 before it is stereotyped in writing. 
 
 To the testimony of St. Paul we have now to 
 add that of the Gospels. But, says M. Reéville, the 
 end of St. Mark’s Gospel, from the 9th verse of the 
 last chapter, was added later, and it is there that 
 ‘the appearances are mentioned. Matthew's Gospel 
 
 1 Acts iy. 33. 2 Gal. i, 18, 19, ii. 9. 
 
62 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 was not definitively drawn up till towards 100 AD., 
 and the whole of the historical part of it is only a 
 reproduction of that of Mark. The Gospel of St. 
 Luke is of still later date, and its author is so ill 
 informed that he places the ascension on the same 
 day as the resurrection. Lastly, that of John was 
 only written towards the middle of the second century, 
 and has no historical authority. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this, M. Reville does not 
 dispute the intrinsic trustworthiness of the narratives ; 
 he only throws vague suspicions upon our evangelic 
 writings, and does not positively rest his case upon 
 these objections. 
 
 It is true that the end of Mark is missing in a 
 certain number of ancient manuscripts; but this is 
 evidently the result either of an accidental injury 
 to one of the oldest documents, or perhaps of an 
 interruption which occurred to the author while 
 engaged upon his work. In fact, in the first part 
 of this chapter (which is not missing in any of the 
 documents) the angel announces to the women that 
 Jesus is risen, and that they, as well as the disciples, 
 will see him in Galilee. The author then certainly 
 intended to find a place in his work for the account 
 
 of this appearance. It is enough to call to mind 
 
The [Lypothests of Vestons. 63 
 
 that, according to the most ancient traditions, this 
 Gospel was composed at Rome, at the time when 
 Mark was there with Peter, and when this apostle 
 suffered martyrdom during Nero’s persecution of the 
 Church, to understand how there might have been 
 much to disturb the drawing up and the preservation 
 of this document. 
 
 With respect to the Gospel of St. Matthew, it is 
 quoted about the year 100,’ in one of the oldest 
 Christian writings which have been preserved to us? 
 and with the form of words, J¢ ds written, with 
 which it was usual to quote the books of the Old 
 Testament. This fact proves that the authority of 
 this book was already established at that time. The 
 composition of it, therefore, must be referred to a 
 much earlier date. And, in fact, most of the critics 
 regard it as anterior to the destruction of Jerusalem 
 (70 AD.). The latest writer on the subject, Holtz- 
 mann, a theologian of a very liberal school, places it 
 in the years immediately before that event.® 
 
 Luke’s Gospel, according to the same Holtzmann, 
 
 is only a few years later in date than the preceding, 
 
 ’ Hilgenfeld acknowledges the reality of the quotation, Der Canon, 
 D.wt0. 
 
 * Epistle of Barnabas, chap. 4 (Matt. xx. 16, xxii. 14); 
 
 ° Die synopt. Evangelien, p. 407. 
 
64 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 and was composed at all events before the year 80." 
 If he seems to connect the ascension directly with 
 the resurrection, the reason is simply that the author, 
 coming now to the end of his narrative, abridges it, 
 with the intention of taking it up again in greater 
 detail at the beginning of his second volume—the 
 Acts of the Apostles. Closely connected as he was 
 with Paul, he could not have been unacquainted 
 with the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and all 
 the appearances which are there mentioned. Now 
 that in itself would have made it impossible for him 
 to place the ascension on the same day with the 
 resurrection. Call to mind the appearances to Peter 
 and to the Twelve, then to James, then to the five 
 hundred, then again to the Twelve—all alluded to by 
 Paul. These could not certainly have taken place 
 in a single day ! 
 
 M. Réville places the composition of the fourth 
 Gospel in the middle of the second century. But 
 even critics of the negative school have now given 
 up this late date. Hilgenfeld places it about 180 
 A.D.; and Keim, who on this point belongs still to 
 that school, since he rejects the authenticity of this 
 Gospel, puts it as far back as about 110 a.D.; and 
 
 1 Ibid.; and Diction. Biblique de Schenkel, art. ‘‘ Acts.” 
 
The [1ypothests of Viszons. os 
 
 so only ten years after the death of John. But how 
 could it be possible that at a time when so many 
 of those who had personally known John were still 
 living, they themselves, and the whole Church, should 
 have allowed a forger to impose upon them a book 
 not really written by the apostle with whom they 
 had been in close intercourse up to the time of his 
 death? At all events, the Apocalypse, of which 
 the composition by the Apostle John is admitted by 
 the rationalistic school, is in our hands to give us 
 the testimony of that apostle upon the resurrection 
 of his Master." M. Reéville is silent upon this 
 point. 
 
 III. After having endeavoured to throw discredit 
 upon the evidence, M. Réville goes on to the objections 
 to the fact in itself. He asserts that Jesus never 
 intended to rest the divine character of His mission 
 upon His miracles, and that consequently the miracles 
 and the resurrection, even if real, would have served 
 to no purpose; that if in St. Matthew’ Jesus says 
 that the Son of man will become by His resurrection 
 a sign like the prophet Jonas, these words are not 
 
 accurately reported by this evangelist. The true 
 
 eevai, 17,18, ii. 8 ? xii. 39-41; cf. Luke xi. 29, 39. 
 E 
 
66 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 meaning of them, according to him, is to be found 
 ‘n the narrative of St. Luke, when Jesus says that 
 He zs—at that very moment, and by His preaching 
 —a sign to the Jews, as Jonas was to the Ninevites. 
 In thus citing St. Luke, M. Réville has, doubtless by 
 mistake, positively altered the text. St. Luke makes 
 use, as well as St. Matthew, of the future tense shall 
 be, “The Son of man shall be a sign” .. » not 1s. 
 Therefore in St. Luke also, Jesus makes allusion to a 
 future event by which He should be marked out in the 
 sight of all men as a supernatural apparition. The 
 meaning is thus identical in both the evangelists, 
 although it is given in a more explicit and circum- 
 stantial manner in St. Matthew. 
 
 How is it possible to maintain that Jesus did not 
 appeal to the authority of His miracles when He thus 
 answers the messengers sent by John the Baptist, 
 “Qo and shew John again those things which ye 
 do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and 
 the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed... . blessed 
 
 23 ands 
 
 is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me ; 
 when he exclaims, on leaving Galilee, “Woe unto 
 thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the 
 mighty works, which were done in you, had been 
 
 1 Matt. xi. 2 sqq. 
 
Lhe fLypothesis of Viszons. 67 
 
 done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented 
 long ago in sackcloth and ashes;”1 when He says to 
 the Jews in Jerusalem, “Though ye believe not me, 
 believe the works; that ye may know and _ believe 
 that the Father is in me;”* and to His disciples, 
 “ Believe me for the very works’ sake” 2° 
 
 M. Réville asks why, if the resurrection was a real 
 fact, Jesus only appeared to His friends, and not rather 
 to His enemies, in order to convince them? Jesus 
 had explained this by anticipation, when, in the parable 
 of the rich man and Lazarus, He put into the mouth 
 of Abraham that answer to the entreaties of the 
 unhappy man on behalf of his five brothers: “ They 
 have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. 
 If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will 
 they be persuaded though one rose from. the dead.” 4 
 Miracles, as manifestations of the glory of Jesus, may 
 indeed develope faith in those who have the sense of 
 that which is divine; they cannot. create this sense in 
 those who are without it. For this sense is of a moral 
 nature; it is the hunger and thirst after holiness, 
 Miracles have not the power to create this disposition 
 of mind. 
 
 ‘Matt, xi.21- * John x. 38, 
 3 John xiy. 11. * Luke xvi. 29, 31. 
 
68 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faath. 
 
 IV. Finally, M. Réville has revealed to us the 
 method by which he believes he can explain the asserted 
 uppearances of the risen Jesus. He grants that the 
 testimony of the apostles was quite sincere, and 
 that it is impossible to make of the establishment 
 of Christianity a work of imposture. He also con- 
 cedes that the resurrection cannot have been a mere 
 return to life after a state of lethargy or trance. But 
 he holds to the third of the rationalistic ways of 
 solving the problem which we have endeavoured 
 to refute ; which consists in regarding the appear- 
 ances of the risen Jesus, not as real facts, but 
 as visions. Only he substitutes for the word hal- 
 lucination, of which the meaning is too much akin 
 to madness, the more courteous expression ecstasy. 
 Ecstasy consists, according to M. Réville, in a sudden 
 rapture in which the mind gives an external reality 
 to the subjunctive idea of the object. which fills it. 
 Altogether possessed with the thought of Jesus, the 
 apostles, in their state of. exaltation, really believed 
 they saw and heard Him, whilst. it was, in fact, 
 nothing but an idea or image of Him which they 
 tigured to themselves. 
 
 M. Réville first finds proofs of this hypothesis in 
 
 certain details of the narratives in which the ap- 
 
The [Lypothests of Viszons. 69 
 
 pearances of Jesus are related. As, for instance, 
 when it is said of the two disciples at Emmaus, that 
 “their eyes were holden,” and that for that reason 
 they did not recognise Jesus." Had He been really 
 there in flesh and bone, how could they, who had 
 lived with Him, have failed to have recognised Him ? 
 We will take this into consideration presently, and 
 we shall see that it is precisely this circumstance 
 which renders M. Reéville’s explanation absolutely 
 inadmissible. 
 
 It is said that at the sight of Jesus, some of the 
 disciples doubted.” How could they possibly have 
 doubted, had they seen him in bodily form before 
 their eyes? But were M. Reville to find himself in 
 presence of so improbable a fact as that of the 
 existence of a circular triangle, he would doubtless 
 look twice at it before believing in its reality. Was 
 it not allowable for the more thoughtful among the 
 disciples to ask themselves for an instant, on seeing 
 again one whom they knew to be dead, whether they 
 were not the victims of an illusion,—consistently with 
 their convincing themselves immediately afterwards of 
 the full reality of the being who showed Himself to 
 them alive ? 
 
 1 Luke xxiv. 16. ' 2 Matt. xxviii. 17. 
 
70 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 Jesus appeared in the room where the disciples 
 were assembled, the doors being shut.’ “That proves 
 clearly enough that we are dealing with a vision. A 
 creature of flesh and bone does not make his way 
 through closed doors.” True, not a creature of flesh 
 and bone. But St. Paul says that “flesh and blood” 
 cannot enter into glory, because these are corruptible 
 elements.”. The body of Jesus had, by means of the 
 resurrection, undergone a transformation. Resurrection 
 had not been in His case, as in that of Lazarus or of 
 Jairus’ daughter, a mere return to the previous state 
 of existence. This event is the entrance of humanity, 
 in the person of its Head, into that state of glory 
 and incorruptibility for which it is destined. “There 
 is,’ says St. Paul, contrasting our present with our 
 future body, “a natural body, and there is a spiritual 
 body.”*® The former is only the masterpiece of the 
 terrestrial creation, of animate organization ; the latter 
 belongs to that higher order of things in prospect of 
 which we develope our nature here below; it is the 
 free manifestation of the spirit. Thus it is that it 
 will be possible for Jesus at the last day to be mani- 
 fested visibly and simultaneously to the eyes of all 
 mankind. Now the state of existence of the risen 
 
 1 John xx. 19, 26. # 1COr, XV ib. $1 -Cors xy. 44, 
 
The FLypothests of Viszons. aX 
 
 Jesus was one of transition between the terrestrial 
 condition, which had just been put an end to by 
 death, and that celestial one into which He was about 
 to enter by His ascension. His risen body might 
 well therefore be already subjected—in a manner 
 quite different from that in which our natural body 
 is—to the will of the spirit. This difference between 
 His present and His former state explains at the 
 same time how it was that He was not immediately 
 recognised by His disciples. 
 
 The two disciples at Emmaus said one to another, 
 after Jesus had vanished from their sight, “Did not 
 our heart burn within us?” Here we have, according 
 to M. Réville, an indication of a state of ecstasy! But 
 would you conclude, from the feeling of secret satis- 
 faction which you have sometimes experienced while 
 conversing with a friend upon your highest interests, 
 that the presence of that friend was but an illusion, 
 and that your conversation with him was nothing but 
 a soliloquy ? 
 
 But again, M. Réville draws attention to the fact 
 that Thomas did not really touch the body of Jesus. 
 It is true that it is not expressly stated in the 
 narrative that he did so, and it is possible that the 
 act of homage which he offered to the Lord was the 
 
72 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 result of the proof of omniscience He had just given 
 him, in repeating the words uttered by the disciple 
 in his state of unbelief. But that which is not 
 positively affirmed of Thomas, is expressly said of the 
 women, “And they came and held Him by the feet, 
 and worshipped Him.” ? 
 
 We find, then, that these arguments, drawn by M. 
 Réville from the narratives themselves of the appari- 
 tions of Jesus, are of no weight. We are now about 
 to oppose to them proo/s—of which we have to 
 show the force—of the falsehood of this attempt at 
 
 explanation. 
 
 V. 1. And first, is it possible, by the help of this 
 supposed ecstasy of the disciples, to explain the 
 appearances of the risen Jesus—their origin, their 
 course and development, and finally their cessation ? 
 
 The origin of them is not psychologically explicable. 
 For, on the third day as on the first, the apostles were 
 in a state of the deepest depression. “ What manner 
 of communications are these that ye have one to 
 another, as ye walk, and are sad?” asks Jesus of the 
 two disciples when He accosts them on the way to 
 Emmaus. There was in them, then, at that moment 
 
 1 Matt. xxviii. 9. 
 
The Hypothesis of Viscous. jis 
 
 no predisposition to raptures or to ecstasy. We are 
 told, in reply, that the sight of the empty tomb had 
 excited the imagination of the women, and by con- 
 tagion that of the disciples. But Mary Magdalene, on 
 seeing the empty tomb, had no thought of a resurrec- 
 tion. She explains the event in a much more simple 
 and prosaic manner, “They have taken away the 
 Lord, and we know not where they have laid Him.” 
 And the two disciples at Emmaus were already aware 
 of this fact of the empty tomb; they mention it 
 expressly.” None the less are they still lost in sadness 
 and depression. Some external and positive fact is 
 needed to restore them to a joyous faith, to a lively 
 hope. Without such an occurrence, visions have no 
 psychological foundation; according to M. Reéville’s 
 view, the ecstasy and the visions produced the faith, 
 whereas, in fact, nothing but faith could have produced 
 these phenomena. 
 
 Notice next the following circumstance, which 
 seems to me conclusive against the explanation which 
 we are combating. Neither the women nor the 
 disciples, on seeing the risen Jesus, recognise Him 
 at first sight. Mary Magdalene takes Him for the 
 gardener; the two disciples in the walk to Emmaus, 
 
 Ee John xx. 2. 2 Luke xxiv. 22, 23. 
 
74 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 for a stranger walking with them; St. Peter, on the 
 Lake of Gennesareth, only recognises Him when St. 
 John says to him, “It is the Lord!” St. Paul, on the 
 road to Damascus, asks Him, “ Who art Thou, Lord?” 
 Now, according to M. Réville, the state of ecstasy 
 makes us see as an external reality the person the 
 thought of whom fills our hearts. But was it then the 
 gardener who thus filled the heart of Mary ? For it 
 was he whom she at first thought she saw. Was it 
 the image of a stranger which preoccupied the hearts 
 of the two disciples going to Emmaus, and of St. 
 Peter? Was it the apparition of some celestial being 
 which the agonized heart of St. Paul demanded ? 
 
 When ecstasy causes us to see as if he were present 
 one whom we love, we know his name before we see 
 him. For his apparition to us is but the effect pro- 
 duced by our having ourselves evoked him. 
 
 Neither does ecstasy account for the course of the 
 appearances any more than for their origin. Let us 
 at this point define accurately the nature of a state of 
 ecstasy. The scientific definition given by Nysten’s 
 dictionary, edited and corrected by M. Littré,’ is as 
 follows: “ Ecstasy is an affection of the brain in which 
 
 1 Dictionnaire de Medicine, by P. H. Nysten ; the edition amended 
 and corrected by E. Littré and A. Robinson. 
 
The £7 'ypothests of Viszons. 75 
 
 the exaltation of certain ideas so absorbs the attention 
 that sensation is suspended, voluntary movement 
 arrested, and even the vital actions often retarded.” 
 Voluntary movement arrested, and yet the disciples 
 at Emmaus walk a distance of six miles with their 
 companion! Sensation suspended, yet the disciples 
 cast the net, draw it in, return to the shore with 
 their boat, and having drawn in the net, count the 
 153 fish ! 
 
 Not only do these men in an ecstasy move about 
 like other men, but they hold very detailed conversa- 
 tion. The two on the road to Emmaus enter into 
 discussion with their companion. St. Peter hears the 
 announcement of his future martyrdom from the lips 
 of Him who addresses him, “ When thou wast young, 
 thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou 
 wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt 
 stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, 
 and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.”* He 
 receives, with reference to his colleague John, that 
 mysterious oracle which appeared inexplicable to the 
 first ages of the Church, and which is still an enigma 
 to us, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is 
 that. to thee ?” 
 
 1 John xxi, 18. 
 
“6 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 And we are to believe that all this was but the 
 effect of inspirations of their own hearts, soliloquizing 
 in a state of ecstasy! And that the Eleven gave 
 themselves the command to go and baptize all nations, 
 while yet their ideas were still so far from having 
 reached the height of that sublime conception. 
 
 As Keim says, “The disciples had not yet pene- 
 trated deeply enough into the spiritual life of Jesus, 
 and had not arrived at a sufficiently vivid conscious- 
 ness of the task which they had personally to fulfil, 
 to enable them thus to draw from what would in that 
 case have been but a passing vision, a certain and 
 well defined solution of the great problem of their 
 mission.” * 
 
 The propagation of such a condition of waking 
 dream amongst the disciples is also very difficult to 
 understand. The state of ecstasy must have commu- 
 nicated itself from Mary Magdalene to St. Peter, from 
 St. Peter to the other disciples, from these latter to the 
 whole community—to the five hundred. Here let us 
 first notice a singular fact, that there is no mention 
 made of any special appearance to St. John; and yet 
 if there was one rather than another of the disciples 
 who would have been predisposed to a state of mystic 
 
 * Der geschichtliche Christus, 3d edition, p. 136. 
 
The [Hypothesis of Visions. | 77 
 
 ecstasy, it would have been the disciple whom Jesus 
 loved. Next, remark that the two Emmaus disciples, 
 at the time when they are supposed to have fallen 
 into ecstasy, had not yet heard of the appearance of 
 Jesus to Mary Magdalene. They announce it them- 
 selves, and they return in haste to Jerusalem to tell 
 the good news to their brethren. There was there- 
 fore no contagion in their case. But is it possible 
 for the state of ecstasy, from its very nature, to be 
 caught by contagion? That a religious excitement 
 manifesting itself in nervous affections—cries, cramps, 
 convulsions, as has sometimes been seen in sudden 
 “revivals” affecting a whole population—should take 
 an epidemic character is conceivable. But the state 
 of ecstasy is rather introverted; it is the effect of a 
 profound concentration of the spirit upon one absorb- 
 ing idea. It would be difficult, it seems to me, for 
 such a state to become epidemic. 
 
 There were five or six hundred of us here the other 
 day, listening to M. Réville speaking from this pulpit ; 
 what should we say to anybody who asserted that we 
 were collectively under an illusion—together seeing a 
 vision which was the effect of a vivid state of expecta- 
 tion, produced in us by the news of his approaching 
 
 arrival, and by the state of over-excitement due 
 
78 Lectures in Defence of the Christian faith. 
 
 to the religious movement of which our city is the 
 scene ? 
 
 How well I understand, in presence of such an 
 explanation, that exclamation of a French savant, 
 '«<Tn truth, I am not credulous enough to be an un- 
 "believer !” 
 
 Another fact which the hypothesis of the state of 
 ecstasy does not account for, is the cessation of the 
 apparitions of the Risen One. This. cessation took 
 place not only very soon, but very suddenly. There 
 was one appearance, designated as the last, and which 
 is said to have occurred six weeks after the first—the 
 one which is called the ascension. From that moment 
 the appearances cease abruptly in the Church at 
 Jerusalem. Only one other is mentioned, several 
 years afterwards, granted to a single individual in an 
 exceptional condition—that which was the means of 
 converting St. Paul, and of which we shall speak 
 presently. How are we to explain this sudden and 
 abrupt cessation of such a phenomenon, if it were the 
 result of a state of ecstasy? “ Psychology,” says M, 
 Keim, “ would rather conclude that the action of that 
 vibration, once set in motion by the Twelve in the 
 whole body of the Church, would continue with increas- 
 
 ing intensity, producing a life of enjoyment altogether 
 
The Hypothesis of Visions. 79 
 
 ecstatic, than that it should have suddenly stopped, 
 and given place toa life of healthy practical, moral 
 activity.” ? 
 
 If at least it could be said that this cessation of the 
 visions corresponded with a gradual weakening of the 
 enthusiasm of the Church, one might then suppose 
 that the visions ceased when the religious excitement 
 began to decline. But the very opposite of this is 
 shown by history to have been the case. 
 
 The moment when the Church set herself to pro- 
 claim her faith, must certainly have been that at which 
 the spiritual impulse had reached its culminating 
 point. But that day, the Day of Pentecost, is ten 
 days posterior to that of the ascension—that is, to 
 the time of the last apparition. The visions, there- 
 fore, stopped exactly at the moment when enthusiasm 
 was at its height, and when we should have expected 
 them to have increased in number, and to have con- 
 tinued for months and years. 
 
 The explanation suggested by M. Reville cannot 
 therefore account either for their origin, contents, or 
 progress; nor yet for the cessation of the appearances 
 of Jesus. 
 
 2. We pass on to the appearance which determined 
 
 1 Der geschichtliche Christus, p. 136. 
 
80 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 the conversion of St. Paul. If Jesus appeared in a 
 bodily form, it is asked, how was it that the apostle’s 
 companions did not see Him ? (this ‘particular fact is 
 specially mentioned in the narrative). And if Jesus 
 did not appear in a bodily form, then it was not a real 
 apparition, but only a vision. And, moreover, does not 
 St. Paul himself thus characterize the event, when he 
 says, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision 
 
 . when it pleased God to reveal His Son in me” ?* 
 And how, as a fact, even according to the orthodox 
 opinion, could Jesus, once ascended into heaven, have 
 reappeared in a bodily form on earth? Such are the 
 objections that have been raised. © | 
 
 The first point to be noticed is, that St. Paul himself 
 does not regard this appearance as a mere vision. He 
 places it at the end of the list of those appearances 
 to the apostles, which were certainly believed by the 
 Church and by himself to have been bodily. He 
 makes use of it to prove our own bodily resurrection, 
 which he could not have done had he regarded it as 
 only a spiritual vision, If it was, in his view, only a 
 vision, the whole reasoning of 1 Cor. xv. collapses, 
 The expression 7 me, in the Epistle to the Galatians, 
 cannot then mean what it is thought to mean, What 
 
 2 Acisixxvi. 19°; Gal. 1,16: 
 
Lhe [Typothesis of Visions. 81 
 
 St. Paul surely intends to indicate by that expression 
 is, that the external appearance of Jesus was accom- 
 pamed in him by a spiritual revelation of the glory of 
 the Son of God. 
 
 Granting that, in relating this event to King Agrippa 
 and to the governor Festus, he uses the expression 
 heavenly vision, yet the word made use. of (drracia) is 
 not the same as that by which purely internal visions 
 are designated in the New Testament (¢payua). The best 
 Greek dictionary in German, that by Passow, trans- 
 lates it sight, spectacle (Anblick Schauspiel). And what 
 sufficiently proves that St. Paul did not intend by this 
 expression to describe a purely internal event is, that 
 he introduces the narrative by this question, “King 
 Agrippa, why should it be thought a thing incredible 
 with you that God should raise the dead?” To make 
 this apparition a proof of the possibility of the resur- 
 rection of the dead, it was clearly necessary that it 
 should have been in his view a bodily one. | 
 
 And Paul was not mistaken in thinking of the 
 event in this way. In this same discourse addressed 
 to King Agrippa, in the presence of numerous wit- 
 nesses, he declares that his fellow-travellers fell to the 
 ground with him, struck down by the brilliancy of a 
 
 supernatural light. In another discourse, that which 
 F 
 
82 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 St. Paul addressed to the multitude from the steps of 
 the temple, he also mentions this fact of an extra- 
 ordinary light, which was noticed by his companions.’ 
 There must therefore have occurred some objective 
 fact. The event did not all take place in the depths 
 of St. Paul’s soul. 
 
 Doubtless his companions did not discern the very 
 person of Jesus Christ. But a glorified body is not 
 an ordinary body; it does not fall within the cogniz- 
 ance of the senses, like a stone or a piece of wood ; 
 it is only perceptible so far as it allows itself to be 
 perceived. 
 
 St. Paul expressed himself with the utmost cireum- 
 spection upon questions of this kind, which stood in 
 such close relation with the supreme interests of 
 humanity. In 2 Cor. xii. he speaks of a vision in 
 which he was transported into the third heaven. And 
 he declares that he does not himself know “ whether 
 it was in the body or out of the body.” If he will 
 not pronounce in a case in which he is not certain, 
 must we not conclude that he is certain in a case 
 on which he does positively pronounce, and when the 
 subject is an event upon which his whole mission 
 rests @ 
 
 1 Acts xxii. 9, 
 
Lhe [Hypothesis of Visions. 83 
 
 3. We have insisted, in our first lecture, upon a 
 point which seems to us to involve an insurmountable 
 difficulty with regard to the hypothesis which we are 
 now combating :—if the reappearances of Jesus were 
 only visions, what became of His body, which had 
 been left in the grave? M. Réville reminds us of the 
 answer made by certain Jews, in the early ages of the 
 Church, who said that Joseph of Arimathea’s gardener 
 had destroyed the body for fear the partisans of Jesus, 
 in making pilgrimages to the sepulchre, should trample 
 his borders, M. Réville himself would certainly not 
 see in this suggestion anything but a bad joke. He 
 himself inclines to the opinion that it was the Jews 
 who, in order that the body should not become an 
 object of worship, and the sepulchre a shrine for 
 pilgrimages, either destroyed the body or threw it into 
 the dust-heap. But in this case why did they not 
 proclaim aloud what they had done? What would 
 have been the harm of destroying the body after 
 having killed the person ? Why fall back rather upon 
 a charge against the apostles that they had carried 
 It away? Why, instead of exclaiming against the 
 disciples: “Impostors! you have carried away the 
 body,” did they not say, “Visionaries that you are! 
 we burnt it” ? 
 
84 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 M. Réville feels, indeed, the inadequacy of the 
 explanation which he suggests. Even were I unable, 
 he says, to account satisfactorily for the disappearance 
 of the body, nobody would have the right to conclude 
 that it had risen again. For to give such an ex- 
 planation is to explain a difficulty by an impossibility. 
 Suppose, he adds, a grave is found open and empty ; 
 an investigation is instituted to ascertain how the 
 erave has been violated; some one comes before the 
 judge and says, I saw the dead body rise up, and 
 walk away on its feet. Who would believe him ? 
 says M. Réville. Yes indeed, we answer,-—who 
 would believe him? Who would believe him without 
 some stronger proof than a simple assertion? But the 
 world has believed in the resurrection of Jesus! And 
 the Greeks, the keenest-witted of the nations of - 
 antiquity, and the Romans, the most practical of the 
 nations of the world, and a large part of the Jewish 
 nation, the most scrupulous of all races on matters of 
 religion, have believed that this dead body did come 
 forth from the tomb, and walk away on its feet! 
 They have believed the impossible! They must then 
 have had some better reasons for their belief than the 
 chimerical visions and vain assertions by which men 
 
 ' With M. Rosselet. 
 
The Hypothesis of Vastons. 85 
 
 pretend to account for this belief. The reappearance 
 of this body risen again is the sole explanation of its 
 disappearance which seemed satisfactory to those who 
 
 lived at the time of the event. 
 
 VI. Lastly, M. Réville has cited some analogous 
 stories in the religious history of the world to show 
 the possibility of the explanation in question. 
 
 The early Christians, it has been said, were inclined 
 to states of ecstasy, as is proved by the gift of tongues. 
 But from the fact that a state of ecstasy may have 
 followed upon faith, it does not follow that it could 
 have produced faith. Besides, as M. Keim has 
 remarked, we do not find, either in the history of the 
 Acts or at Corinth, that this gift is ever brought into 
 any special connection with a vision or an apparition 
 of the Lord. 
 
 Again, men have cited the story of the disciples of 
 St. Francis of Assisi, who assert that they saw him 
 lifted into the air while praying. But it is only one 
 of his disciples who declares he saw this event and 
 related it to the others. These are the words of 
 the contemporary history: “And as he continued 
 praying, according to the narrative of brother Leo, who 
 
 was present, he rose so far above the earth, that, 
 
86 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 almost touching the clouds, he was no longer visible.”! 
 It is easier to see the points of difference between this 
 pretended event and the appearances of the risen Jesus, 
 than those of resemblance. 
 
 To prove that it is possible to have hallucinations 
 without mental aberration, M. Réville quotes the case 
 of Luther, who thought he saw before him the devil, 
 with flesh and bones, and was none the worse for 
 it afterwards. But what similarity is there between 
 Luther’s circumstances, shut up alone in a cell in the 
 ancient castle of Wartburg, and firmly convinced, like 
 al] the men of his time, of the possibility of appari- 
 tions of the enemy of souls, and the circumstances, not 
 of one man, but of two, walking in broad daylight in 
 the open country, and fancying themselves convers- 
 ing for two hours with a person who has no existence ; 
 or those of twelve, of five hundred, all believing them- 
 selves to have held intercourse with a person who was 
 in fact but the offspring of their pious réveries, and 
 in the existence of whom on earth they no longer 
 believed? Must we not distinguish between the 
 effect of a momentary panic and the hallucinations of 
 a persistent delirium ? 
 
 Lastly, men have cited the case of those French 
 
 * Gregory VII., by Delécluze, i. p. 352, 
 
The fLypothests of Vistons. 87 
 
 Protestants who for some time heard psalms sung in 
 the air above their closed or destroyed temples. I 
 have read over again the stories, and I would ask you 
 to read them over for yourselves, as you find them at 
 the end of vol. ii. of 1? Histoire de la Réformation 
 Francaise, de M. Puaux. If, after that, you have 
 courage to decide upon the question, you are bolder 
 than Iam. When one finds oneself face to face with 
 documents drawn up in due legal form, and even with 
 decrees of a parliament and of the provincial magistrates, 
 it seems the best course to abstain from passing any 
 judgment. At any rate, in answer to what M. Réville 
 said to us about the credulity of those times, and the 
 progress of modern philosophy, I prefer to quote to you 
 the following words from a writer of that time, who has 
 handed down to us a portion of the facts to which 
 allusion has been made: “He must be a bold man in 
 this century ”—it is not of the nineteenth, but of the 
 seventeenth century that our author is speaking— 
 “who has the courage to speak of prodigies. . . 
 There was a time when men believed everything; in 
 our day they believe nothing. I think we should 
 take a middle course; we should not believe every- 
 thing, but we ought to believe some things. For 
 
 this spirit of incredulity and of strong-mindedness 
 
88 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 answers no good purpose, and I have not yet dis- 
 covered its use... There is a providence, we all 
 confess. Nothing can happen without God. Is it 
 possible that God has so hidden Himself behind the 
 creatures of His hand, and under the veil of secondary 
 causes, that He will never lift the curtain at all?.. . 
 Let us conclude that the credulity of our ancestors 
 caused many fictions to be received as good history 
 but also that it causes good history to pass in our day 
 for worthless stories . . . I think it is for the public 
 good that the truth should be ascertained as to all 
 these events”... 
 
 What could be said more in conformity with sound 
 
 reason by modern criticism ? 
 
 VII. In bringing this discussion to a close, we have 
 but one more consideration to set before you. itis 
 the healthy and practical character of the religious life 
 as seen in the apostles of Jesus Christ, and in the 
 Church generally. 
 
 “It would be difficult to understand,” says Pro- 
 fessor Keim, “how from a society held together by 
 over-excitement, issuing in visions, could have pro- 
 ceeded the Christian Church, with its lucidity of 
 
 thought and earnestness of moral activity.” The sup- 
 
The [ypothesis of Vistons. 89 
 
 posed state of exaltation is entirely inconsistent. both 
 with the calm practical character of the life and teach- 
 ing of Jesus Christ, and with that of the normal Christian 
 life in all times; and a band of poor deluded vision- 
 aries could never have constituted the bond of union 
 between the Jesus of the Gospels, who said, “Go, and 
 do thou likewise,” and that Christian Church. which, 
 in the course of history, has impressed a stamp so pro- 
 foundly serious, moral, and judicial in character upon 
 the most vigorous nationalities of the modern world. 
 You must feel, on reflection, that the hypothesis we 
 have been considering is not the fruit of a fair and 
 calm-minded contemplation of the facts. It is an 
 attempt to elude them,—an attempt which those are 
 obliged to make who begin by assuming the non- 
 existence of the supernatural. By this method they 
 are shut up to a negative result, cost what it may. 
 But history holds its ground. The wave with its 
 
 froth passes away ; the rock stands firm. 
 
 VIII. Hitherto I have spoken to you only of the 
 historical certainty of the resurrection of Jesus ; permit 
 me, in concluding, to call your attention to the deep- 
 seated correspondence between this fact and the needs 
 
 of our souls. 
 
90 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 M. Réville has spoken to us in words unquestion- 
 ably eloquent of his belief in personal immortality, 
 founded upon the direct certainty felt by the religious 
 soul of the existence of a personal God. But these 
 thoughts,—personal immortality, a personal God,—do 
 they speak of nothing but what is joyful to your 
 hearts? Does not conscience, which proclaims within 
 us with sovereign authority the moral law, also with 
 equal authority reproach us for our infractions of that 
 law? Among those infractions, can we fail to per- 
 ceive that a great number are purely voluntary, and 
 constitute us rebels and criminals in the sight of God 2 
 With all this burden to carry with us into the next 
 world, all is not, it seems to me, cheerful, in the 
 thought of a personal immortality to be faced, and of 
 a personal God to be met,—not at least unless we 
 have another thought to add to it, that of a Saviour 
 and of an assured salvation. 
 
 And, further, with regard to this twofold conviction 
 of God and of immortality, which you affirm now with 
 so much assurance, will it hold good to the end 
 against the force of certain facts which from time to 
 time oppose their brute negation to it ? 
 
 “There is,” says M. Keim, “one prospect held up 
 
 before us . . . that which foreshows for every living 
 
The Fypothests of Visions. gI 
 
 creature the absolute end of all things in the grave ; 
 and sometimes this prospect threatens to swallow up 
 the hope of the perfect state in the future, and further 
 still, the faith in the reality of the love of God for the 
 world and for mankind, and the faith in the existence 
 of God Himself. For this failing faith, which threatens 
 altogether to faint away at sight of physical dissolu- 
 tion, the Lord’s resurrection is a spectacle of triumph. 
 _ It opposes one sight to another. It is indeed true 
 that Christ rose in a different manner from that in 
 which we can ourselves rise; He rose as in the 
 spring, and full flight of victory, while we on our 
 part have to pass through dissolution. But there is 
 nothing that need disquiet us in this difference 
 between Him and ourselves, because Jesus remains 
 none the less owrs; and we can easily understand 
 that the career of the spiritual hero who has opened 
 to us the way to glory, must be in advance of all 
 others.” * 
 
 This example is sufficient to show to the eye of 
 faith that the gate of the sepulchre opens for the 
 believer not upon condemnation or annihilation, but 
 upon life and glory. 
 
 ; Again, I was rejoiced to hear M. Reville declare 
 1 Der geschichtliche Christus, pp. 211, 212. 
 
92 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 that “the foundation of Christianity and of the Church 
 is laid in communion with Christ.” But with what 
 Christ 2 With a Christ who left this world at His 
 death upon the cross, and has never been seen in it 
 since? Such a Christ would be dead—altogether dead. 
 He would be but a man who perished like all others, 
 and who would now be far away from us in those 
 eternal worlds into which He disappeared from the 
 moment of the close of His earthly existence. It is no 
 more possible to be in spiritual contact with Him than 
 with any others of the dead. Nothing of Him remains 
 to us but His memory ; and memory is not communion. 
 Memory is absence felt; communion is presence felt- 
 Memory leaves us an example, an obligation which 
 imposes itself upon us. Communion is a power which 
 supports us. Doubtless if one believes, as M. Réville 
 has somewhere said, that Christ in us is nothing 
 else but “the upright heart, the loving spirit, the 
 active and devoted will,’—in a word, our better 
 mind, then, indeed, memory and communion are no 
 longer to be distinguished; for the Christ in us is 
 nothing more than ourselves, in whatever we hold 
 to be good in us. 
 
 But when once our true moral nature has shown 
 
 itself to us in its hideous unsightliness, this confusion 
 
The Hypothesis of Visions. 93 
 
 is cleared away; we feel that the Christ in us and 
 we ourselves are two very different beings. We then 
 desire to have Him—Himself in His own person— 
 living within us. Before we can claim to live like 
 Him, we feel the need of drawing our life from Him. 
 We cease making ourselves the vine; we become 
 branches. Thus is formed in us a fellowship with 
 Him worthy of the name. It rests, on the one side, 
 upon His resurrection, through which he has been 
 restored, and continues to belong, to the world of the 
 living; on the other, upon the sense of the profound 
 void left in our hearts by the separation from God, 
 which is the consequence of our guilt, and upon the 
 feeling of our powerlessness in presence of the holiness 
 which we have to realize. 
 
 There are facts which, however surprising and out 
 of place they would be in an ordinary life, become 
 quite. natural in one of an altogether exceptional 
 character. Realize to yourself the unique character 
 of the person of Jesus, that life which was “sound 
 right through, and which strikes so completely at 
 the root of the perversity and moral feebleness of 
 the whole race,”! and the resurrection will seem to 
 you to be just as natural a close to such a Ife, as 
 
 1 Keim. 
 
94 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 death is of ours. In a life such as that of Jesus, 
 it is death which is against nature; the resurrection 
 is the return to the normal state of things which had 
 been momentarily interrupted. 
 
 For the natural growth and flowering of velineds 
 is life and power; whereas the end to which sin 
 naturally leads is exhaustion and death. 
 
 As the resurrection of Jesus may be explained 
 by the exceptional character of His past life, it also 
 accounts for the future of the human race of which 
 it was the inauguration. Christ risen became the 
 spring of sanctification to the whole race. That holy 
 life which Jesus had realized now flows, by virtue 
 of His resurrection, in the veins of all believers. 
 As Jesus Himself said in His sublime promise, 
 “ Because I live, ye shall live also.” And the many 
 who affirm that they have experienced, and still to 
 this day experience, in themselves the fulfilment of 
 these words, are nevertheless neither visionaries nor 
 madmen. On the contrary, they were never com- 
 pletely masters of themselves till the day when they 
 consented to renounce their own life in order that 
 the risen Christ might gradually substitute His life 
 for it. 
 
 Lastly, as His life on earth prepared for His 
 
Lhe Hypotheses of Visrons. 95 
 
 spiritual manifestation in our hearts, and for the 
 work of sanctification which He is now carrying on 
 in them; so does this inner work, which He is 
 accomplishing in the Church, prepare for His visible 
 reappearance and His advent hither for the consum- 
 mation of all things. Thus it is that everything is 
 linked together in God’s plan—“this purpose- fore- 
 intended before the foundation of the world for our 
 glory.” The resurrection of Jesus is its luminous 
 central point. 
 
 You who possess the risen Jesus, this living friend, 
 could you make up your minds to lose Him? For 
 that end it would be enough to deny His resurrection ; 
 then at once would the link be broken which connects 
 you with Him; and nothing would be left you but 
 to maintain existence before God, depending solely 
 upon your own strength, and to save yourself by the 
 power of your- own soul! Do you think that a 
 desirable fate ? 
 
 You who do not possess Him, say is there not 
 in your hearts any void that needs to bet filled up ? 
 Will you not make one more effort? A living Christ, 
 an all-powerful friend, if such exist, is not nothiny 
 during the course of life, or in the catastrophe of 
 
 death. If you feel that there is something wanting 
 
96 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fazth. 
 
 to you, may it not be precisely this bond of con- 
 nection with a living Saviour? Try to create such 
 a bond. Grasp the hand of the invisible Risen One. 
 He holds it out to you as He did to Thomas. And 
 if you cannot yet say to Him with that disciple, 
 “My Lord and my God,” say only, “My friend! my 
 brother!” and you will awake from the painful dream 
 of your former life in the arms of a heavenly Friend, 
 of the living Christ. There it is well for us both to 
 
 live and to die. 
 
 SUPPLEMENT. 
 
 Tue lecture which M. Réville gave at Néufchatel 
 on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and to which 
 I have replied in the above pages, has evidently been 
 modified before it was printed, in accordance with 
 notes transmitted to him by some one who heard 
 mine. These changes, suppressions, and additions 
 compel me to add some supplementary notes. 
 
 % 
 
 Note J.—-MEtTHOD. 
 
 What M. Réville says (Note A, p. 37) in justification 
 of the method he has adopted, does not in any way 
 attenuate the force of my criticisms. It remains true 
 
Supplement. 97 
 
 that the first necessity in the treatment of a question 
 of history, is that it should be treated historically. 
 
 But what most surprises me is that M. Réville 
 persists in making miraculous synonymous with absurd, 
 and to identify the supernatural with the self-con- 
 tradictory. We had hoped that this was but a sally 
 of sauciness on his part; but he puts forward this 
 view seriously, and adopts it in print. If one who 
 denies the existence of any being whatever above 
 Nature—a professed materialist—says: “From my 
 point of view the supernatural is equivalent with the 
 absurd,’ he is logically within his rights. But that 
 M. Réville, who denies that he is an Atheist, should 
 reason like such a materialist, and say that the 
 miraculous is the absurd, so applying, without observ- 
 ing that he is doing so, a materialistic conclusion to 
 . deistic prernisses, this is a first slip in logic. 
 
 He falls into another. If he were really an Atheist, 
 M. Reville would not have a right to impose this view 
 of his upon his adversary, and to impute to another 
 as a logical contradiction the admission of the miracu- 
 lous, which for him would be so. In other words, he 
 assumes as proved precisely the point in question, and 
 we all know the name given to that sort of fallacious 
 reasoning. But other mstances besides this show that 
 logic is not among M, Réville’s strong points. 
 
 Instance the first: The defenders of the resurrection 
 ask M. Reville to explain how the vision of Jesus 
 risen could have formed itself in the minds of men 
 so prostrate, terrified, discouraged, as the apostles were 
 at the time of the death of their Master. M. Réville’s 
 reply is as follows (p. 20): “In the first place, I 
 
 G 
 
98 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 might answer that the very fact that they had these 
 ecstasies, these visions, so soon after that death, goes 
 to show that this prostration, this state of terror, this 
 discouragement, was not so profound as some would 
 have us believe it was.” One can hardly believe 
 one’s eyes in reading these words. The very fact 
 which is in question—that of these visions—alleged 
 as if it was proved, in order to show that the disciples 
 might have had visions! It is evident that the “vicious 
 circle” did not figure among the paralogisms indicated as 
 such in the course of logic gone through by M. Réville. 
 
 Instance the second: M. Reville has to explain 
 how the disciples could have been brought to hope 
 that their Master was risen, when, without such an 
 expectation, the visions would be inconceivable. 
 Amongst the grounds for such hope, upon which the 
 minds of the disciples might rest, M. Réville mentions 
 the following (p. 27): “The disciples themselves, if 
 we accept the orthodox theory, had witnessed at. least 
 three resurrections.”  “ Lf we accept the orthodox theory,” 
 says M. Réville ;—he does not then himself believe in 
 these three resurrections. And, in fact, he has actually 
 explained that of Lazarus (Revue Germanique, Dec. 1, 
 1863, p. 613) as a myth, the drift of which is to 
 picture the pariahs of the Israelitish world rising 
 again, under the preaching of Jesus, out of their 
 spiritual death. And these three resurrections, which 
 have no existence except in the theories of orthodoxy, 
 —that is to say, in the thoughts of the ages which 
 followed,—were, we are to believe, among the causes 
 which predisposed the disciples to believe in the 
 resurrection of Jesus! <A false belief among the 
 
Supplement. 99 
 
 orthodox, which arose subsequently, formed a com- 
 ponent element in the series of real events which 
 took place on the morning of the resurrection! M. 
 Réville believed himself to be here making use of a 
 good argumentum ad hominem with which to puzzle 
 the orthodox ; he has only succeeded in furnishing an 
 instance of a piece of reasoning . . . miraculous (in 
 the sense of the phraseology of M. Réville), see p. 43.1 
 
 And this is the logician who takes upon himself 
 to throw contempt upon the logic of St. Paul, in the 
 style of p. 18 of his lecture. 
 
 Note IJ.—Tuer Acts oF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 In the opinion of M. Réville, this book of the Bible 
 is In such a sense a book of fables, that it would be 
 an act of childish simplicity to pretend to prove a 
 fact by the help of St. Peter’s speech on the Day of 
 Pentecost (Note B, p. 33). On reading these words 
 of M. Réville’s, a saying of one of the keenest-witted 
 and most learned men of our acquaintance recurred to 
 our memory: “What I can least understand any one 
 entertaining a doubt upon, is the authenticity of the 
 
 ' If M. Réville replies to us, that he meant to say that these three 
 resurrections were in reality nothing more than simple cases of cures 
 mistaken by the disciples for resurrections, we shall answer, in the 
 first place, that he has expressed himself strangely, and then we shall 
 ask what in this case we are to think of the moral character of Jesus 
 Christ, who allowed this great delusion to exist in the minds of His 
 disciples. Should we be able any longer to absolve Him of the charge 
 of imposture brought against Him by M. Renan, and which M. 
 Réville, unless we are mistaken, is not more willing than ourselves to 
 accept ¢ 
 
100 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 Book of the Acts of the Apostles.” But “de gustibus 
 non disputandum.” I will only adduce on this subject 
 two facts. 1. That even after the severest criticism, 
 it has been acknowledged in the latest rationalistic 
 treatises (Zeller, Avpostel-Geschichte, p. 516) that the 
 most probable author of the passages in which the 
 first person plural is used (“ we,” “us”) is none other 
 than St. Luke, the companion of St. Paul. 2. That the 
 whole book is the work of one and the same author, 
 who also wrote the third Gospel (2bid. pp. 387 and 
 414, etc.). We are aware of the hypotheses by which 
 the consequences are evaded which seem to follow from 
 these two facts, in favour of the credibility of the 
 Book of the Acts.’ This is not the place to examine 
 them. It is enough to have adduced these two results 
 of criticism, which appear to us significant. M. Reville 
 refers the composition of the Acts to a date subsequent 
 tothe year 100. M. Holtzmann, a learned free-thinker, 
 assigns it to the year 80 at the latest (Schenkel’s Dic- 
 tionnaire Biblique, “ Acts of the Apostles ”). 
 
 We see that the critical opinions of M. Réville are 
 far from being generally accepted, even by writers 
 whose views are closely allied to his own. 
 
 Note II].—TuHE TESTIMONY OF THE APOCALYPSE TO 
 THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 M. Reville (Note B, p. 38) presumes “that his 
 opponents will not meet him with objections drawn 
 ' According to Zeller, some author of later date inserted these 
 
 fragments of Luke into his treatise, modifying them so as to suit his 
 own narration. 
 
Supplement. 10] 
 
 from the visions of the author of the Apocalypse, 
 which would give him too great an advantage.” But, 
 just because the Apocalypse is a book of visions, we 
 can discern by it what were the ideas which occupied 
 the mind of its author, and formed the articles of 
 belief which he most valued. If, then, the author 
 expresses, even in his vision, a firm belief in the fact 
 of the resurrection, and if, as rationalistic criticism in 
 our day affirms, this author is the Apostle John, we 
 shall surely be allowed to allege, upon the faith of the 
 Apocalypse, the testimony of this apostle in favour of 
 the resurrection of his Master. Now, since the two 
 passages which we have cited (i. 18: “I was dead; 
 and behold I am alive for evermore, and have the keys 
 of death and of hell,”——or the place of departed spirits; 
 and u. 8: “He who was dead and is alive”) imply 
 in the writer of them the conviction of the fact 
 of the resurrection, we certainly have a right to cite 
 them as records of the faith of the apostles in this 
 fact. 
 
 Notre IV.—THE GOSPEL OF JOHN AND JUSTIN MARTYR. 
 
 In order to prove the non-authenticity of the 
 fourth Gospel, M. Reville adduces (Note B, p. 38), as 
 certain, the fact that Justin Martyr,, writing in the 
 middle of the second century, does not quote from, or 
 know, this book; which proves that this Gospel could 
 not have been written by St. John in the course of 
 the second century. But that which M. Reville here 
 puts forward as an undeniable fact is positively denied 
 by M. Keim, who, although he does not recognise, any 
 
102 Lectures n Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 more than M. Reville, the authenticity of this book, 
 does nevertheless acknowledge with praiseworthy im- 
 partiality the use made by Justin of St. John’s Gospel. 
 Here are his words (Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, p. 138 
 et seq.): “It is easy to see that Justin Martyr had 
 under his eye a series of the discourses in the Gospel 
 of St. John” (here follows a proof in detail, citing each 
 passage). But the case does not rest upon isolated 
 instances ; it is quite impossible not to see that the 
 ideas of Justin, taken as a whole, are drawn from those 
 of St. John. And to refute the suggestion which has 
 been made, that perhaps the author of the Gospel was 
 here copying Justin, he adds, “Who could seriously 
 entertain the idea of making an author of such spirit- 
 uality and originality as the writer of the fourth 
 Gospel, a disciple of one so mediocre, so unoriginal, 
 and so poor in style as Justin Martyr notoriously is ?” 
 
 M. Keim thinks the composition of the Gospel 
 cannot be referred to a later date than a.p. 110-115. 
 (M. Réville makes it near 160.) But this date of 
 Keim’s is itself inadmissible; if so much as this be 
 once granted, one finds oneself compelled to ascend 
 higher still, to the first century, according to the 
 unanimous tradition of the Fathers. (See above, p. 12.) 
 
 Note V.—Tue Tuerory or Ecstrasirs. 
 
 M. Réville’s definition of ecstasy is different not 
 only from ours, but also from that of physicians and 
 of M. Littré. Beit so. But even granting him his 
 definition, I do not see how he will account for the 
 facts he has to explain. He reminds us that a man 
 
Supplement. 103 
 
 absorbed in thought can walk for a long time without 
 being conscious that he has travelled far. No one 
 doubts it. But does it follow that ¢wo men could 
 walk together, and both of them believe that they 
 saw the same objects and heard the same words? as 
 the two disciples going to Emmaus must have done on 
 his hypothesis. If each of them separately is in an 
 ecstasy, they cannot converse ; and how can they have 
 in common the same waking dream? If they converse 
 and argue, the glamour of the ecstatic state is dissi- 
 pated, and the condition of mind of one in a waking 
 dream is no longer possible to either of them. 
 
 But, we repeat, what always remains unintelligible 
 in the hypothesis for which M. Réville pleads in this 
 discussion, is that these waking dreamers do not 
 recognise at first sight the person whom their exalté 
 imagination has conjured up. What! the thought of 
 Him has so taken possession of their minds, that for 
 the moment the external world has no existence for 
 them; and when this being who so absorbs their 
 attention incarnates Himself suddenly to their mind’s 
 eye, they have to ask Him His name! M. Reville, 
 unless we are mistaken, has not even attempted to 
 solve this difficulty. Will he be able to find in the 
 annals of magic or of madness, ancient or modern, 
 any case at all parallel ? 
 
 M. Réville has cited (Note C, p. 39) as instances 
 of the phenomena of ecstasy, apparitions of figures in 
 the air, or of visionary cities pictured against the blue 
 sky. But what have such still, unmoving apparitions, 
 suspended between earth and sky, in common with 
 those of Jesus risen, as they are described to us in the 
 
104 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 evangelic records? In the first place, in the latter, 
 Jesus is in the midst of His disciples; He acts, He 
 speaks to them, He gives them their instructions, He 
 promises them some things, forbids others. Besides, 
 what analogy is there between the artificial and con- 
 templative lives of the saints in the convents of the 
 Middle Ages, and the perfectly natural, everyday way 
 of living of the disciples, at the time when they see 
 these apparitions of Jesus? They are in the midst of 
 ordinary practical life; they make their preparations 
 for embalming the body; they are sitting at their 
 meals; they are walking in the high roads, and enter 
 an inn; they are busy fishing. An ordinary matter-of- 
 fact way of life such as this is incompatible with 
 the ecstatic state which would fit the hypothesis of 
 visions. This contrast is especially striking in the 
 case of Mary Magdalene. This woman, whom we are 
 asked to consider as a visionary, is so little under the 
 influence of the “propensity to the marvellous,” that 
 the first suggestion she makes to account for the 
 disappearance of the body is simply this: The enemies 
 of Jesus or some other persons have carried it. off. 
 Even the sight of the angels cannot lift her out of 
 this incurably matter-of-fact turn of mind. We must 
 suppose it is the counterpart of the case of St. Peter, 
 whom his plunge into the water (John xxl) did not, 
 it seems, wake out of the state of ecstatic dreaming 
 into which St. John’s exclamation, “It is the Lord,” 
 had thrown him. No; either these stories are fables, 
 and if so, let M. Réville no longer use them to 
 establish his theory of ecstasy, but simply deny their 
 reality—we can then reason with him upon the 
 
Supplement. oh 105 
 
 eround of this hypothesis,—or else, if he admits their 
 reality, let him give up an explanation which, just in 
 proportion as it is realized, must wear the appearance 
 of a poor jest. 
 
 With regard to the sudden cessation, from the day 
 of the ascension, of the ecstasies relating to the Risen 
 One, M. Réville attempts to,account for them by saying 
 (Note ©, p..40) that “the apparitions of the risen 
 Jesus would, after a certain time, have given place to 
 excitements of mind of another sort. When once the 
 reality of the heavenly existence of Jesus had been 
 authenticated by His resurrection from the dead, the 
 disciples would naturally surrender themselves to an 
 inflamed state of mind, fired with inspirations of the 
 new spirit, of which His person was the source and 
 spring.” So here was a second delirious attack grafted 
 upon the first. We hold, on the contrary, with Keim, 
 that a sound physiology would lead us to believe that 
 when once the impulse to visions was given, it was 
 sure to continue acting in the same direction. When 
 once the belief in the resurrection had become firmly 
 established, the visions of the Risen One were sure to 
 go on increasing as the square of the belief itself, if I 
 may use such an expression. If the visions had the 
 power to create the faith, how much more might the 
 faith have tended to multiply the visions! It 1s 
 impossible to discover a vera causa of which the result 
 would .have been to substitute, at the end of six 
 weeks, the visions of the descent of the Spirit for 
 those of the glorified Son of man. 
 
106 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 Nore VI.—TueE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE Bopy. 
 
 M. Reville says (p. 29) that the Jews perhaps cast 
 the body of Jesus to the dust-heap, and he adds, as 
 if he were appealing to a well-known fact, “as was 
 generally done with the bodies of executed criminals.” 
 Where is this to be found? Such a custom was not 
 in conformity with Jewish or Roman law. According 
 to the former, the body was to be delivered up as 
 soon as it was claimed (Ulpian, xlviii. 24. 1). Now 
 the evangelic records tell us expressly, both that the 
 body of Jesus was claimed, and by whom. As to 
 Jewish law, it gave express directions that the body 
 of an executed criminal was to be buried before sun- 
 set (Deut. xxi. 23); and it appears from the Talmud 
 (Sanhedr. vi. 5) that there was a difference between 
 the ways of burying malefactors and honest people, 
 which disproves M. Réville’s bold assertion, that it was 
 usual to cast the former to the dust-heap.! 
 
 Note VII.—Tuer Action oF THE APOSTLES OUTSIDE 
 OF PALESTINE. 
 
 M. Réville affirms (Note C, p. 41) that the twelve 
 apostles did not effect any very great things in the 
 pagan world: “The Twelve, or, at any rate, Peter 
 and John, the only ones of whom we know anything, 
 remained in Judea.” Paul alone and his fellow- 
 labourers travelled about the world to preach the 
 gospel. The jealousy of the Jewish Christians in 
 later times led them to attribute to the Twelve the 
 
 ‘See Langen, Die letzten Lcbenstagen Jesu, 1864. 
 
Supplement. 107 
 
 conquests of Paul. Paul laboured, it 1s true, more 
 than they all, as he himself says (1 Cor. xv. 10). 
 But he himself speaks of the apostles and the brethren 
 of the Lord as going on missionary journeys (1 Cor. 
 ix. 5); and we have the facts required to prove the 
 truth of this assertion of St. Paul in favour of the 
 Twelve, whom it is here attempted to make his rivals. 
 When, in the second century, the missionary Panteenus 
 went into Judea (perhaps the word here means 
 southern Arabia), he found the Gospel of St. Matthew, 
 which had been brought there by the Apostle Bartho- 
 lomew. This apostle, then, had reached the southern 
 extremity of Asia; he had not “remained in Judea.” 
 St. Matthew, according to tradition, wrote his Gospel 
 “when the moment arrived for him to preach to other 
 nations.” Has any one a right to relegate such an 
 assertion by itself to the domain of fable? St. John, 
 according to the Apocalypse and the testimony of 
 ecclesiastical history (see Clement of Alexandria, 
 Ireneus, Polycrates of Ephesus), exercised his mini- 
 stry in Asia Minor, where he died, under Trajan, 
 towards the end of the first century. Neither, then, 
 did he remain in Judea. St. Peter, according to 
 Gal. ii. 11, was before a.p. 56 at Antioch—therefore 
 in Syria. He was then travelling outside of Palestine. 
 He wrote his First Epistle (of which the authenticity 
 has been only disputed by one school of modern 
 criticism, and that on grounds exceedingly weak) in 
 Babylonia, and therefore at a great distance eastwards, 
 or, if we take the name Babylon (1 Pet. v. 13) ina 
 figurative sense, in Rome. According to traditions 
 which it is not easy to explain away, he perished at 
 
108 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth, 
 
 Rome,’ a victim to persecution; and in the second 
 century the members of the college of presbyters in 
 that capital could still point out the place in the 
 Vatican in which he was buried. Neither, then, did 
 Peter remain in Judea. When St. Paul arrives for 
 the last time in Jerusalem, in the year 59, James 
 alone is at the head of the Church (Acts xxi. 18). 
 Not being an apostle, but only a brother of Jesus, he 
 was free to accept the position of head of one parti- 
 cular flock; the apostles were absent; they did not 
 therefore remain within the borders of the Holy Land. 
 
 But what then is the cause, in the interest of which 
 M. Reville maintains this thesis against the evidence 
 of history? Only in order to give the lie to this 
 saying which Jesus is said, according to the first 
 Gospel, to have addressed to the Twelve, “Go ye and 
 teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” 
 M. Réville wishes to maintain that this saying is a 
 later invention of the Church, with the object of 
 glorifying the Twelve. We have just demonstrated by 
 facts that history is in harmony with this saying. 
 We will go further, and affirm that had it not been so, 
 no one would have ventured, on the supposition that 
 they allowed themselves to forge sayings of Jesus, to 
 attribute to Him one so evidently contrary to the 
 real course of events. With regard to the baptismal 
 formula, upon the authenticity of which M. Réville 
 wishes in this way to cast suspicion, we will limit 
 ourselves to the following remarks. 
 
 That it was the custom to baptize in the name of 
 the Father, needs no proof. That they baptized in 
 
Supplement. 109 
 
 the name of Jesus, is clear from Acts ii, 38 and 
 1 Cor. i. 13. And lastly, that the name of the Spirit 
 had its place in the celebration of baptism, is proved 
 by Acts xix. 2, 3, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost 
 since ye believed? We have not so much as heard 
 whether there be any Holy Ghost. Unto what then 
 were ye baptized?” The word “then” in the sentence 
 implies that the name of the Holy Ghost, as well as 
 those of the Father and of Jesus, already formed part 
 of the baptismal formula in the apostolic times. To- 
 eether with the sacrament of baptism itself, this 
 formula must clearly have been derived from Jesus 
 Christ. One cannot conceive a sacrament instituted 
 without a sacramental formula. What would the 
 Lord’s Supper be without the words of its institution ? 
 It is certainly upon the basis of this baptismal formula 
 uttered by the lips of the Master, that the numerous 
 Trinitarian passages which we meet with in the apos- 
 tolic writing rest (1. Cor. xii 4-6; 2 Cor. xi. 14; 
 fePet 1.1.2 Rev 14, .5)7 o The names of God) of 
 which mention is so frequently ‘made in the Old 
 Testament, and which stands for the manifestation of 
 the Divine Being, has been unfolded by Christ to the 
 consciousness of believers in this threefold name, the 
 invocation of which is made to rule the baptism of all 
 those who enter His Church. 
 
 1 It is clear how false is the assertion recently cast at us, that the 
 passage (really spurious according to the most ancient manuscripts) 
 1 John vy. 7 is the only one in the New Testament upon which the 
 doctrine of the Trinity can be rested. 
 
110 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 Note VIII.—THE JEWIsH AUTHORITIES AND THE 
 PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 
 
 The Jews, it 1s asserted by M. Réville (Note D, 
 p. 42), did not trouble themselves so much as has 
 been commonly believed with that small and obscure 
 sect the Christians. That remains to be proved. The 
 Acts of the Apostles do not produce that impression 
 upon us. The Sanhedrim, on the contrary, appears to 
 be much disturbed at what takes place in Jerusalem. 
 The fervent Saul is sent to Damascus by the Sanhe- 
 drim, on a special mission to prosecute the members 
 of this sect. Herod Agrippa, the last great sovereion 
 of the Jewish nation, thinks fit to put to death James 
 the son of Zebedee; and to please the Jews, he pre- 
 pares the same doom for Peter (Acts xii. 3). Proof 
 sufficient, one would say, that the progress of the 
 Church was not a matter of much indifference to them. 
 The fury of the people against St. Paul during his last 
 visit to Jerusalem, the ambushes set for him by the 
 Sanhedrim, the vow of the forty men to murder him, 
 are, on the other hand, a proof that the progress of 
 the obscure sect was livelily occupying attention in 
 high quarters in the Jewish world. But it may be 
 said that I am overlooking the fact that, in the opinion 
 of M. Réville, the history of the Acts is a mere 
 romance. Well, at any rate he will give credit to a 
 contemporary historian, Josephus, who tells us that 
 after the death of the Roman governor Festus, and 
 before the arrival of his successor, the high priest 
 Ananias eagerly availed himself of that interregnum 
 to cause James, the brother of Jesus, surnamed Christ, 
 
Supplement. Ti! 
 
 and after him some other supposed members of the 
 Jerusalem Church, to be stoned. Whereupon the 
 new governor, who was on his way to Jerusalem, 
 addressed letters to him full of indignation, and 
 threatened him with severe punishment. Shortly after- 
 wards Ananias was deposed. Would this high priest 
 have exposed himself to such consequences if there had 
 been any truth in what is said by M. Réville (p. 43), 
 “ With the usual blindness of clergy . . . the religious 
 leaders felt nothing but contempt for the obscure 
 sectaries, who at one time had made them tremble!” 
 
 Note [X.—THE SENTIMENTS OF JESUS RESPECTING HIs 
 MIRACLES AND His RESURRECTION. 
 
 M. Reville has suppressed in his printed lecture 
 the inaccurate quotation of the passage in St. Luke 
 into which he had fallen in its delivery ; see above, 
 p. 13. But he nevertheless still persists in contrast- 
 ing as contradictory to each other, St. Luke xi. 30 
 and St. Matt. xu, 39, 40. And yet if once we accept 
 the future “shall be,” in St. Luke (and it is impossible 
 not to do so, since all the manuscripts agree upon it), 
 the interpretation of this expression, as referring to an 
 event then future, which can hardly be other than the 
 ‘resurrection, is as good as forced upon us. With 
 regard to the comparison of Jesus and Jonas, in which 
 M. Réville finds no meaning, if the resurrection forms 
 the principal point of the comparison (Note E, p. 43), 
 the following is, it seems to us, the Lord’s meaning: 
 “ As it was after he had escaped from death, and had 
 received miraculously a renewed life, that Jonah 
 
112 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 brought about by his preaching the repentance and 
 the salvation of the heathen inhabitants of Nineveh ; 
 so it will be as one delivered from death, and in His 
 character of a risen man, that the Messiah will extend 
 His empire beyond the limits of the people of Israel, 
 and will make the preaching of the Gospel to resound 
 among the Gentiles.” 
 
 M. Réville speaks (p. 44) of “the exquisite purity 
 of the religious genius of Jesus, which enabled Him to 
 rise to a height at which miracle becomes needless.” 
 Miracles needless in the eyes of Him with whom the 
 working of miracles formed, according to the saying 
 of the learned Ewald, “a part of His everyday occu- 
 pations”! Perhaps it will be said that He worked 
 them from motives of compassion, not as a support to 
 His preaching. But did He not say, “Jf ye believe 
 not me, yet believe me for the very works’ sake”? And 
 He once exclaimed, “If the mighty works which were 
 done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they 
 would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.” 
 And yet we are to say He did not believe in the 
 utility of miracles! Either let M. Réville write us a 
 new Gospel more trustworthy than the ancient ones, 
 or let him acknowledge that the exquisite instincts of 
 Jesus, upon which he lavishes his praises, needed still 
 to make great progress before they could reach the 
 level of his own. 
 
 Note X.—MISCELLANEOUS REMARKS. 
 
 From the fact that Joseph recognised in two of his 
 dreams inspiration from Divine Providence, it does not 
 
Supplement. 113 
 
 follow, as M. Réville insists, that he was so supersti- 
 tious as to see a revelation in every dream. There 
 are some thoughts which we cannot help believing 
 come tous from on high. Does it follow that we believe 
 all our thoughts to be divine inspirations ? 
 
 M. Réville thinks the identification which we have 
 suggested of the apparition of Jesus to the five 
 hundred brethren (1 Cor. xv.), and that to the eleven 
 disciples upon the mountain in Galilee (Matt. xxvii), 
 improbable. We have adduced our reasons in favour 
 of that identification, but we do not hold to them at 
 all strongly. If Réville’s opinion is accepted, we shall 
 only have one apparition the more, and it is not to 
 us that that addition can be a difficulty. 
 
 We think we have sufficiently refuted the assertion 
 of M. Réville, that the ascension is made by St. Luke 
 to have occurred on the same day as the resurrection. 
 
 As to his assertion, “Never did Jesus say that in 
 order to be saved, it is necessary to believe in the 
 resurrection” (p. 32), what is the meaning of the 
 warning of Jesus in St. John xx. 27? Jesus said that 
 to be saved by Him, we must believe in Him. But 
 when do we lay hold on Him as the supreme object 
 of our faith, if not in His resurrection? Apart from 
 that, we may have the faith of Jesus, as M. Réville 
 wishes us to have, but not the faith in Him. 
 
 CONCLUSION, 
 
 A rationalist, Charles Heinzen (in Le Pionnier), has 
 lately reproached another rationalist, A. Ruge, bitterly, 
 Ja! 
 
114 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 for having accounted for Christianity by the theory of 
 ecstasy, and not by that of madness. 
 
 The hypothesis of madness is, in reality, the legiti- 
 mate child of that of visions; and the daughter will 
 soon, at least in France, where minds are logical, 
 replace the mother. | 
 
 Then we shall have a council of free-thinkers, 
 branding, by a decree more infallible than those of 
 the Pope, all persons who can believe in the resur- 
 rection of a dead man as out-and-out madmen; all 
 those also who, in the course of history, up to our day, 
 have maintained that they have felt Jesus living and 
 working in them, out-and-out madmen ! 
 
 This is what we are coming to, since the belief in 
 miracles is absurd, and to believe in absurdities is to 
 be mad: Christians, with the apostles at their head, 
 and Jesus Christ at the head of the apostles, are 
 therefore madmen. The Church is a society of 
 madmen. 
 
 And holding this view, men claim the right never- 
 theless to class themselves with us, to worship in the 
 same temples with us, to preach in our pulpits, to 
 gather round the same communion tables, when a 
 much more fit place for us would be a lunatic asylum! 
 Come! manage your own affairs, and leave us to 
 manage ours,—unless, indeed, seeing the impossibility 
 of being trees, you have adopted the noble ambition 
 of being morbid cacrescences in trees. 
 
iat 
 
 ere vilRAGE ES Olt PoUo Chins. 
 
ai 
 yo 
 
III. 
 TH EOMIRACLE SOR JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 AM not about, in what I shall now write, to 
 offer a spontaneous challenge to Scepticism. 
 Scepticism is an adversary from whom we may 
 accept a challenge when it is offered us, but with 
 whom it is never wise to take the aggressive. I only 
 desire at this time, in which the atmosphere is 
 saturated with doubts, and in which we are exposed 
 to breathing them in, as we do particles of dust that 
 fill the air, to induce my readers to realize to 
 themselves more clearly what it is that they believe 
 upon this particular subject. 
 
 In former times, the miraculous events recorded 
 in the Gospels were considered the principal sup- 
 ports of the Christian Faith. In our day, many 
 regard them principally as difficulties of faith. Both 
 these ways of viewing the subject appear to me 
 to be exaggerations, in opposite directions. I could 
 
 not make miracles the principal support of my 
 
 117 
 
118 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 faith,’ but I am still less able to see in them a serious 
 difficulty which can be brought to bear effectively 
 against Christianity. Miracles form a part of the 
 | riches of the faith; that appears to me to be their 
 “true character. It is their claim to that distinction 
 Which it will be the object of the following lecture 
 to vindicate for these exceptional facts. 
 
 We shall first seek in history for evidences to 
 the reality of the miracles of Jesus Christ. We 
 shall then investigate nature, in order to discover 
 in it the conditions of the possibility of such facts. 
 Lastly, we shall ask of Holy Scripture to reveal to 
 us their purpose in the divine plan. 
 
 The miracles of Jesus are facts; how and why do 
 they exist? These are the three points of which I~ 
 propose to treat. 
 
 I—Tue REALITY oF THE MIRACLES OF 
 JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 The more exceptional a fact is, the stronger will 
 be the evidences required to prove its reality. Have 
 we then sufficient historical proofs of the reality of 
 
 ‘T am not here speaking of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which, 
 
 while it is indeed a miracle, and the principal miracle, is also some- 
 thing different from, and more than, a miracle. 
 
The Miracles of Fesus Christ. 119 
 
 the miracles which the Christian Church attributes 
 to its Founder ? 
 
 Outside of our Biblical writings, we have but one 
 testimony bearing upon these extraordinary facts,— 
 it is that of the Jewish historian Josephus, who 
 commanded the Jewish army in its heroic struggle 
 against the Romans, and who, being made a prisoner, 
 was in that character present at the fall of Jerusalem, 
 in the year 70 of our era. “At that time,” he 
 tells us in his History of the Jews, “lived Jesus, a 
 wise man,—if indeed he is to be called a man,— 
 for he worked wonderful works, and was the Master 
 of those who receive the truth with pleasure.” In 
 addition, Josephus records how Pilate, yielding to 
 the solicitations of the chiefs of the people, caused 
 Jesus to be crucified; then he adds that the faith 
 in his resurrection still prevailed among the Chris- 
 tians, at the time when he was writing. 
 
 M. Renan has not questioned the authenticity, on 
 the whole, of this passage;’ but he denies the 
 supernatural character of these wonderful works. 
 Josephus wrote his book about fifty years after the 
 death of Jesus. 
 
 What is most notable here is that Josephus speaks 
 
 1 Vie de Jésus, p. 10. 
 
120 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 also, and in still greater detail, of John the Baptist, 
 of his ministry, his baptism, his influence, his death: 
 he attributes a great defeat of Herod to the murder 
 of that prophet, and all this without speaking of a 
 single miracle as worked by John the Baptist. In 
 this respect Josephus is in complete accord with 
 our evangelists, as he is also with regard to the 
 miracles of Jesus Christ. If we supposed that there 
 existed, as has been asserted, in the spirit of those 
 times, a disposition to attribute miracles to great 
 religious geniuses, would not this tendency have 
 shown itself above all with regard to John the 
 Baptist, whose person and work produced, by its 
 strange and novel character, an impression upon the 
 popular imagination perhaps more considerable than 
 did even those of Jesus Himself? But no docu- 
 ments ever spoke of a single miracle as worked by 
 the forerunner. 
 
 Let us pass on to the testimony of our Gospels. 
 
 1. Critics have endeavoured, in these latter days, 
 to discredit the authority of the evangelic records by 
 maintaining that they were written at a date con- 
 siderably removed from that of the events which 
 they record. At one time lt was even attempted to 
 
 bring the composition of these writings as far down 
 
The Miracles of Fesus Chrest. TI 
 
 as to the second century of our era—to 120 years 
 after the death of Jesus. This bold attempt has 
 failed. 
 
 The writer who, in these last years, has treated 
 with the greatest thoroughness the question of the 
 origin of our first three Gospels, Professor Holtz- 
 mann of Heidelberg, who is not suspected of 
 partiality, since he is at the head of the free- 
 thinkers in the Grand Duchy of Baden, concludes 
 his study by declaring the results of modern labours 
 on this subject to be in perfect agreement with the 
 traditions of the most ancient ecclesiastical writers, 
 namely, in affirming the writings which form the 
 basis of our first three Gospels—and these Gospels 
 
 themselves—to have been drawn up between the ~ 
 
 years 60 and 80 of our era—that is to say, no more 
 
 than from thirty to fifty years after the Lord’s 
 death.t Oy De tuettied re ; 
 
 Vt 
 
 The fourth Gospel was composed later, towards ,. ye. . 
 
 the end of the first century,—the term of the life 
 of the Apostle St. John. 
 
 At the time, then, at which our Gospels came 
 into existence, a very large number of the con- 
 temporaries of our Lord were still living. Accord- 
 
 1 Die synoptischen Evangelien, pp. 412, 414. 
 
122 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 ingly when, two or three years before the date just 
 given, St. Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, 
 written in the year 58, speaks of five hundred 
 brethren assembled together to whom the risen 
 Jesus had appeared, he adds, “of whom the greater 
 part remain unto this present, but some are fallen 
 asleep.” * 
 
 In the presence of a whole generation of contem- 
 poraries, and of eye-witnesses still living, it is difficult 
 to understand how accounts of miracles so circum- 
 stantial as those contained in our Gospels, accompanied 
 with the proper names of places and of persons, could 
 have got themselves accredited, if the facts had not 
 been recognised as real. It is even impossible to 
 conceive to oneself how men could have dared to 
 publish fictions of such a nature, so soon after the 
 supposed event. “To have made it possible,” says 
 Holtzmann, “for such narratives to have been put 
 into circulation and generally received, if they were 
 mere fictions, it would have been necessary for as 
 many decenniums to have passed away as there did in 
 fact pass years, between the time of the life of Jesus 
 and the composition of our Gospels.” ? 
 
 The fact, then, that our Gospels were published 
 
 * WCowexy: 26, 2 Die syn. Evang. p. 504. 
 
The Miracles of $esus Chrest. 12G 
 
 under the very eyes of the generation which witnessed 
 the events—this is the first plea we adduce. The 
 second is the following :— 
 
 2. Which of us, when comparing the account of the 
 same miracle as given in our first three Gospels, has 
 not been struck by differences which mark the three 
 narratives 2? The substance is, no doubt, the same in 
 all, but, generally speaking, how great is the difference 
 in the details! The three narratives coincide perfectly 
 only in regard to the words of our Lord and of those 
 who speak with Him. One might fancy oneself 
 listening to three messengers arriving from different 
 directions, and recounting, each in his own way, some 
 event which they have all three just witnessed. 
 Imagine a case: A shipwreck has.just occurred, in the 
 presence of a whole population. Three eye-witnesses 
 give an account of it; one heard the sound of the . 
 breaking of the mast under the blows of the tempest ; 
 another saw the sail fall upon the deck and envelope 
 the ill-fated sailors in its folds; the third saw the 
 waves force their way into breaches in the ship’s sides. 
 Each tells of the particular fact which happened to 
 strike his own mind. The three accounts do not 
 coincide perfectly, except when they report some 
 
 energetic order of the captain, or some heartrending 
 
124 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 cry of one of the victims. In this case, do not even 
 the discrepancies between the three narratives demon- 
 strate the reality of the facts reported? Now, just 
 such is the testimony of our first Gospels. Their 
 harmony regards the substance of the narrative, and 
 their discrepancies prove that this harmony is not of 
 an artificial nature—not the result of calculation. 
 They are first hand, original narratives, which, comple- 
 menting as they do, and even at times correcting one 
 another, are mutually corroborative. 
 
 3. A third argument may be drawn from the words, 
 so eminently characteristic, with which Jesus accom- 
 panies His miracles, and which the three evangelists 
 generally report perfectly harmoniously. It is im- 
 possible to question the authenticity of such words; 
 they are so original, so profound, so novel in character, 
 that one might say that if they were inventions, Jesus 
 Himself must be an invention.—“ Daughter, be of good 
 cheer, thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace... . Fear 
 not, only believe. . . . Go, and sin no more, lest a worse 
 thing come upon thee. . . . Said I not wnto thee, that of 
 thou wouldst believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God ? 
 
 Whether ts easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, 
 or to say?”—and here Jesus, suddenly interrupting 
 
 Himself, turns towards the sick man, and completes the 
 
Lhe Miracles of Fesus Chrest. 125 
 
 unfinished sentence with this triumphant command, 
 “ fase, take up thy bed, and walk.” Can one conceive 
 such sayings invented? But they are inseparable 
 from the miracle to which they refer; they form an 
 integral part of it. They stand in the same relation 
 to the miracle as the inscription stamped upon the 
 coin does to the coin itself. 
 
 If the saying is authentic, the miracle, without which 
 the saying would be unmeaning, is so too. 
 
 4. We draw a fourth argument from the close 
 connection which exists between the teaching of Jesus 
 as a whole, and His miraculous working. Attempts 
 have of late been made to disconnect Jesus the 
 preacher of morality, from Jesus the worker of miracles. 
 Men have offered to accept Him in the former, but only 
 on condition of giving Him up in the latter character. 
 It is upon this basis that the work of M. Renan rests. 
 
 But this hypothesis is unworkable. M. de Pres- 
 sensé observes with reason, in his Vie de Jésus, that 
 as we follow the course of the gospel narrative, the 
 teaching and the miracles are so interwoven the one 
 with the other, that unless we mutilate history in the 
 most arbitrary matter, we find ourselves compelled to 
 accept or to reject the two together.’ 
 
 1 Vie de Jésus, p. 373, 
 
126 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 Let us take a few instances. The Pharisees once 
 took occasion, by the healing of a demoniac, to charge 
 Jesus with casting out devils by the help of the 
 prince of the devils. To this outrageous accusation 
 He replies, “A kingdom divided against itself rs brought 
 to desolation; if Satan cast out Satan, how shall his 
 kingdom stand?” In connection with this perfectly 
 reasonable saying we have a discourse of some length, 
 one of the most striking delivered by Jesus, and of 
 which no one, not even Strauss, has questioned the 
 authenticity. But what is the meaning of this dis- 
 course, if the charge said to have been made by the 
 Pharisees against Jesus never was made? and what 
 would have been the meaning of that charge, if the 
 miraculous cures which are said to have given occasion 
 to it never took place? It is evident that the 
 miraculous act which serves as text to the discourse 
 is inseparable from it. Plainly, one must accept or 
 reject the two together. 
 
 Take another instance. Jesus is accused of having 
 broken the Sabbath by healing the impotent man on 
 that day of rest. He replies by this ery of His filial 
 heart, “ My Father worketh hitherto, and I work”—that 
 is to say, “I cannot leave my Father to work alone; 
 
 so long as a Father continues to work, it is impossible 
 
Lhe Miracles of Fesus Christ. 127 
 
 for a devoted son to stand by with folded arms.” 
 Whereupon He is charged with blasphemy, for having 
 made Himself equal with God; and He refutes this 
 accusation by setting before us a picture of all the 
 phases, present and future, of His miraculous working, 
 —the complete representation of that work of raising 
 to life from the dead, which He came to work out in 
 the human race. How are we to sever the connection 
 between this discourse, the accusation of the Pharisees, 
 and the miracle which gave occasion to it 2 Suppress 
 this miracle worked on the Sabbath day, and all this 
 discourse remains suspended in air. 
 
 A third example. The Sermon on the Mount is 
 acknowledged as the chef d’wuvre of the moral teach- 
 ing of Jesus; to such a degree, that the adversaries 
 of the gospel would wish to limit the whole of His 
 teaching to this discourse. But what do we there 
 read? In its concluding words Jesus says, “ Many 
 will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not 
 prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name cast out devils, 
 and done many wonderful works? But I will answer 
 them, I know you not.” 
 
 Had it not been an acknowledged fact that Jesus 
 Himself worked miracles,—that He worked them daily, 
 
 would it have been possible for Him, without cover- 
 
128 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 ing Himself with ridicule, to have spoken to this 
 multitude of the miracles which His disciples should 
 work in His name ? 
 
 But some one may answer: If the case is as you 
 say,—if the miracles and the discourses are indeed in 
 the life of Jesus two elements so inseparable the one 
 from the other, we have a simple means ready to our 
 hands for getting rid of the former—it is to reject 
 both. But in that case what means will you have 
 left yourself whereby to account for the greatest 
 moral revolution hitherto witnessed by mankind ? 
 M. Renan, in his book on the life of Jesus, lays down 
 this axiom: “Great events have always great causes.” 
 Have we not then a right to demand some great cause 
 for the origin of Christianity—of that fact which 
 M. Renan himself in the first lines of his book declares 
 to be the principal one in the religious history of the 
 world ? 
 
 Cut out of the life of the Lord Jesus His miracles ; 
 then, in order to defend this first excision, effect 
 another—omit the discourses. To what will you thus 
 have reduced the gospel history? To a single line, 
 which a German critic wittily summarized thus: “ At 
 this time it happened, that nothing happened.”* Then 
 
 1 Ebrard. 
 
Lhe Miracles of F$esus Chrtst. 129 
 
 we are to believe that out of this vacuum came forth 
 the greatest event in the history of the world, that 
 from which the human race took a new era whence to 
 date its historic years! “Without the daily miracles 
 of healing worked by Jesus Christ,” says Ewald, the 
 author of the most learned history of the Jews which 
 we possess, “there is no gospel history left.” But 
 without the gospel history, how are we to account for 
 the renovation of the world by the gospel, and for 
 the history of the Church and of modern times 2 
 
 We may conclude—and this is our fourth argument 
 —by saying: The miracles are not, as they are often 
 believed to be, a mere embroidery upon the tissue of 
 the evangelic history ; they form a part of the tissue 
 itself. 
 
 o. We draw a concluding argument from the nature 
 of the miraculous stories contained in our Gospels. In 
 respect of form, how great is their simplicity—their 
 candour! An honest man bears upon his countenance 
 and manner of speaking the stamp of his sincerity. 
 Do our evangelists need a certificate of honesty or of 
 good faith? Suppose in some evil hour you have 
 seen, heaped up before you, mountains of objections— 
 of difficulties— ... open one of our Gospels, read over 
 
 one or two lines in the book itself ; these mountains 
 I 
 
130 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 will seem to you mere clouds which go off in vapour ; 
 you feel yourself in contact with the divine reality. 
 When man invents a marvel, the excessive emphasis 
 of the tone of his writing betrays the unreality of his 
 facts; it is the prerogative of truth alone to be at once 
 so grand and so simple. 
 
 And as to their substance itself, what a difference 
 is there between the gospel miracles and those which 
 fill the Jewish legends and the pagan mythologies! 
 The contrast is so striking that it forced from M. 
 Renan, in one of his first works, this confession: “The 
 marvellous in the Gospels is but sober good sense 
 compared with that which we meet with in the Jewish 
 Apocryphal writings, or in the Hindoo-European 
 mythologies.” * We must add, “and even in Christian 
 books composed at a later date than our Gospels.” 
 
 There are in existence some accounts of the life of 
 Jesus called the Apocryphal Gospels, which were com- 
 posed in the second century of our era, inspired by 
 that love of the marvellous which is inherent in our 
 nature; what is the character of the miraculous which 
 we find in them? We are told of the child Jesus 
 manufacturing, in company with other Nazareth 
 children, birds made of ordinary clay, and by breath- 
 
 1 Btudes d’ histoire religieuse, pp. 177 and 203. 
 
Lhe Miracles of Fesus Christ. 137 
 
 ing upon them He conferred upon those which He 
 made the power of flight; or, again, of the child Jesus 
 when He had accidentally spilt upon the stairs the 
 contents of a jug which He had just filled at the 
 well, gathering it up in a handkerchief, and presenting 
 it to the astonished Mary. Such are some invented 
 miracles. One easily recognises their origin. And 
 by what characteristics? By this—the element of 
 miraculous power has been given to them; but that 
 of holy charity, which is the stamp of works truly 
 divine, has been left out. But it is just this peculiar 
 stamp which marks all the miracles of Jesus reported 
 by our Gospels. 
 
 Or if, in the second century, and in the Church 
 itself, men were so unskilful at inventing fictitious 
 history, even with the Gospels before them as models, 
 what would the Gospel itself have been, if it had been 
 composed a century earlier, and had been inspired 
 by the instincts of the natural man, without being 
 fashioned after a divine and living model ? 
 
 From the study which we have now given to this 
 subject, it would appear that historic criticism cannot 
 refuse to recognise the reality of the miraculous works 
 attributed to Jesus Christ; and we may conclude 
 this first part of our task with the assertion that the 
 
132 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 miracles of Jesus are as deeply and _ inseparably 
 imbedded in His history, as that history itself is in 
 the development of mankind. 
 
 IJ.—TuHE POSSIBILITY OF THE MIRACLES OF 
 JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 But can we give any rational account of facts of 
 this nature? Are they not in plain contradiction, as 
 we are so constantly told, with the fixity of the laws 
 which govern Nature? And if in former times events 
 of this kind did really occur, why do they never 
 happen in our day? And if such things did come 
 to pass under our eyes, should we not have to believe 
 the Creator to be a clumsy workman, who, after 
 having finished His work, finds Himself obliged to 
 meddle with it again, to correct its faults? Such are 
 the questions which may arise in our minds as we 
 contemplate the miracles of Jesus Christ. We are 
 about to make an attempt to answer them, while at 
 the same time reminding our readers that in all that 
 relates to matter and to Nature, we are met by 
 obscurity and mystery to a much greater degree than in 
 that which belongs exclusively to the world of spirit. 
 
 We must first notice in Nature, alongside of a 
 
Lhe Miracles of Fesus Christ. -° 133 
 
 system of fixed laws, an element of freedom, The 
 very existence of matter rests upon a free act, at 
 least it does so to the eyes of every one who has not 
 broken with that fundamental article of our faith, the 
 first word of Holy Scripture: “Jn the beginning God 
 created the heaven and the earth.” It is true that, after 
 having accomplished this creative act, God seems to 
 have abdicated His sovereignty over Nature. This 
 great whole, like a well-made clock, proceeds peaceably 
 in the course that has been prescribed to it. But, 
 even if we supposed that the orderly state of things 
 which we see before us had always existed, and that 
 Geology did not prove to us the mighty transforma- 
 tions by means of which it has come to be what 
 it is, none the less should we detect in Nature, even 
 in her present state of repose, a constant tendency to 
 emancipate herself from the law of physical necessity, 
 and to lift herself by degrees into the sphere of 
 liberty. The lower domains of Nature are absolutely 
 subject to the sovereignty of the law of gravity, the 
 universality of whose power is visible even to our 
 eyes in the spherical form of bodies. The singular 
 phenomena of crystallization exhibit even in metals a 
 tendency to set themselves free from this law. By 
 
 the variety and multiplicity of the operations which 
 
134 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 constitute vegetable life, plants raise themselves into 
 a mode of existence very much freer and more 
 incalculable still. In animals with their free move- 
 ments, regulated only by their will, we see the first 
 glimmerings of the reign of liberty. The real 
 sovereignty of Will over Nature makes its first 
 appearance in man. Still subject in many respects 
 to physical law, man is none the less able to act 
 independently of it, and even, in very many cases, he 
 is able to overcome and defy it. In every act of free 
 obedience, or of self-dedication, do we not see man 
 tread under his feet the law of physical instincts in 
 the name and in the service of a higher law, that 
 of moral obligation, of duty, the law which Scripture 
 calls by the fine name of the “law of liberty,’ because 
 it 1s of its essence that it can only be truly obeyed by 
 the deliberate and voluntary acquiescence of him who 
 submits himself to it 2 
 
 From mere matter, then, up to men, we observe in 
 Nature an ever-ascending tendency towards freedom ; 
 it is, as it were, a return, step by step, to that 
 principle of intelligent Will to which Nature owes its 
 existence originally. Matter tends to spirit, because 
 it is the creation of spirit. 
 
 1 St. James ii. 12. 
 
The Miracles of Fesus Christ. 135 
 
 Matter carefully studied appears by no means 
 materialistic; we find it everywhere impregnated with 
 intelligence and freedom, those two essential attributes 
 of spirit. Nature isin truth spiritual by origin, spiritual 
 by aspiration, spiritual by its everyday working; she 
 is from, by, and for spirit. 
 
 Such is Nature. And upon this essentially spiritual 
 and free character of its being rests the possibility in 
 the abstract of miracles. Are we not all of us on 
 this point possessed of a great fact of experience ? 
 Do we not know by our own personal experience, that 
 in virtue of this characteristic which we have now 
 indicated as belonging to matter in general, it is 
 capable of being so specially organized, as immediately, 
 and without the use of any intervening means, to 
 obey a purely moral agent—the Will? Is not this 
 the phenomenon of the existence of which we become 
 conscious within that special domain which we call 
 our body? Your eyes are shut; you wish to see; 
 you lift your eyelids, and you do see. Is it the law of 
 gravitation which has produced this result? No; the 
 physical law has been overborne by a different force. 
 What is that force? The moral force of the Will. 
 You have here repeated the first of the creative 
 
 miracles; within your own small domain you have 
 
136 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 said, Let there be light! and light has come. No 
 doubt, in so doing, you have not worked a miracle, and it 
 by no means follows that you can operate upon Nature 
 by the naked force of your will. It is the body only 
 which is organized with a view to bringing about such 
 direct obedience to the will of man; Nature is not so. 
 
 Here, then, we are met by a new question: Under 
 what conditions will the human will be able to cross 
 the limits assigned to its immediate action upon the 
 external world, so as to act upon it as it does upon 
 its own body? The condition of this possibility is 
 evidently that of the miraculous, properly so called ; 
 the condition is, that by some means men should gain 
 access to, and set in motion, that sovereign Will 
 which has created Nature, and which rules it as com- 
 pletely as we by our will sway the movements of 
 our body. By means of this creative Will men will 
 govern matter in the same way as by the power of his 
 own will he governs the physical organs given him by 
 the Creator. 
 
 But will such a case ever occur? Will such access 
 to the Supreme Will ever be granted to men? We 
 are here within the domain of freedom, of that of 
 the divine freedom on the one hand, and of human 
 
 freedom on the other. 
 
Lhe Miracles of Fesus Christ. 137 
 
 And first, of the divine freedom. The axiom of the 
 theology of paganism was this: “It is the characteristic 
 of all Deities to be jealous.” Jealousy, in fact, was 
 natural in gods, who were always tottering on their 
 thrones ; but the God of the Gospel is a God for ever 
 firmly seated upon His. And of Him it is written, 
 God 1s love—which is as much as to say that His 
 happiness consists in giving, and that without limit. 
 And why so? Because He is secure of remaining 
 sole master under all possible circumstances. 
 
 If, then, He has really created man to be sovereign 
 over Nature, no sooner will the time have arrived 
 when it will be possible without risk to admit him to 
 a share in His omnipotence, than He will rejoice in 
 doing so. Such are the conditions of the freedom of 
 God in regard to the question before us. What, on 
 the other hand, are those of the freedom of man? In 
 other words, What must be the character of man’s 
 will, in order that God may be able to grant him the 
 prerogative in question ? 
 
 What would be the result, if to us——proud, 
 jealous, vindictive, egotistic, as we are—were handed 
 over, by the will of God, the sceptre of omnipotence ? 
 We should employ it in the service of our ambition, 
 
 of our evil passions, of our spite. Consider the 
 
138 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 detestable use we so often make of the powers, 
 physical and intellectual, with which we are endowed ! 
 You remember the day mentioned in the fable, on 
 which the god of the Sun, in a moment of weakness, 
 agreed to give up the reins of the chariot of the Star 
 of Day into the hands of a feeble child. The child, 
 in his inexperience, guided it at one moment too high 
 aloft, and everything froze on the earth; at another 
 too low down, and everything was burnt up. A 
 striking image of the use we should make of omni- 
 potence, if, wicked as we are, we were made partakers 
 of it with God. 
 
 But let there appear a man who wills that which 
 God wills,—the perfect Good,—who wills it as God 
 wills it, without diminution or reserve; might not 
 God, in the case of such a being, give the reins to 
 the empressement of His love, and dealing with him as 
 with a second self, give him a share in His own 
 sovereign power over Nature ? 
 
 And have we not here the secret of the miracles of 
 Jesus Christ? The miracle of holiness having once 
 been realized in Him, all others flow from it; and His 
 will, made perfectly obedient, becomes, in virtue of 
 that obedience itself, all-powerful; for by this absolute 
 
 submission of the powerless will to that which is all- 
 
Lhe Mrracles of Fesus Christ. 139 
 
 powerful, the union of the two consummates itself, 
 and by this union the weaker becomes a sharer in all 
 the attributes of the more powerful. 
 
 It is precisely this idea of the miraculous which 
 Jesus Himself puts into shape, when He explains (in 
 St. John v.).the healing of the impotent man by 
 saying, “ Verily I say unto you, The Son can do nothing 
 of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do.’ Here 
 we see the perfect submission of the instrument; He 
 can do nothing of Himself. “ Hor what things soever 
 He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.” Here we 
 see omnipotence granted to the instrument absolutely 
 submitting itself. “or,” yet once more continues 
 Jesus, “the Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all 
 things that Himself doeth.’ Here we see the ground 
 and motive for this supreme gift; the complete satis- 
 faction felt by the Father in this Being who has con- 
 sented perfectly to identify His free will with His 
 own. 
 
 And how should the great workshop of the hidden 
 forces of the universe not be laid open to Him whom 
 God so loves that He Himself brings Him into it ? 
 How should not Nature be subject to Him, with all 
 her laws and ‘all her forces? How should not this 
 
 Being govern the universe with as much ease as we 
 
140 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 by our will govern our body ? A man completely 
 subject to His will, and associated with Him and His 
 working,—this was what the Father waited for, 
 that He might entrust to Him His power over all 
 Nature. 
 
 That a miracle may be scientifically admissible, the 
 following are, according to M. Renan, the requisite 
 conditions :—The fact must be ascertained by a meet- 
 ing of experts. The person who claimed to be able, 
 for instance, to raise the dead, must be summoned 
 before an assembly of doctors and men of science; a 
 dead body must be laid before him, and he must 
 operate upon it—M. Renan in this case overlooks, 
 just as the forger of the Apocryphal Gospels did, two 
 things :—the first, that every true work of God is a 
 holy work, and that to do holy work a man must him- 
 self be holy; a condition not to be met with every 
 day. And, secondly, the holy man, when he has been 
 found, will only act in a holy manner, and therefore in 
 dependence upon God; he will, just because of his 
 holiness, refuse to work his miracles as acts of parade, 
 as mere coups de thédtre, or experiments in physics ; 
 he will not consent to work a miracle except for the 
 promotion of the work of God upon earth, and in 
 
 obedience to a command from on high——In the 
 
Lhe Miracles of Fesus Christ. 14! 
 
 absence of such conditions he will make the same 
 reply that Jesus made when He was asked for a sign 
 from heaven. 
 
 If so understood, could we say that miracles were 
 infringements upon the fixity of the laws which 
 govern Nature? But in what respect can the con- 
 tinual intervention of acts of our will among the free 
 movements of our body be said to be an infringement 
 upon the regular working of our bodily organs? Does 
 it not, on the contrary, conform itself to it with the 
 utmost gentleness and ease? And could not God do, 
 with regard to Nature, which He has created, and of 
 which He has a perfect knowledge, what our will can 
 so well do with regard to our body, which we know so 
 imperfectly 2 
 
 A physician introduces into the body a substance 
 which gives to the course of a disease a direction 
 altogether contrary to that which it would have taken 
 without the action of this remedy. Has he, by this 
 intervention of his, imported the slightest disturbance 
 into the working of the laws of our physical organiza- 
 tion? Not at all. This foreign element is no sooner 
 introduced into the body than it behaves there in 
 conformity with the laws of the body itself. And 
 
 we are to suppose that God could not so regulate His 
 
142 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 intervention in the machinery of Nature, as not to 
 dislocate its wheels! A musician draws out of his 
 instrument tones infinitely superior to those which its 
 strings could have produced had they been left to 
 their natural vibrations, without thereby in the 
 slightest degree violating the laws of acoustics and of 
 mechanics; are we to believe that God could not 
 draw from that vast musical instrument, the material 
 world, of which He knows all the secret springs, effects 
 far superior to those which that instrument could 
 have produced had it been left to itself, without at all 
 violating its laws? “That is true,’ it will be said, 
 “but this intervention is contrary to the idea which 
 we ought to form to ourselves of the perfection of God 
 Himself. Would it not be unworthy of the great 
 Heavenly Worker to intervene in this way, to add 
 touches to His work as after-thoughts?” There are, it 
 seems to me, two cases in which a perfect workman 
 might be called to retouch his work, we. first, if, after 
 he had finished it, a clumsy pupil had meddled with 
 and spoilt it; or, secondly, if he had himself only 
 intended to make in the first instance a rough model, 
 destined to be perfected afterwards. Now, precisely 
 these two cases meet in the great event now before us. 
 
 When God, in creating, had planned harmony, man, 
 
Lhe Miracles of Fesus Christ. 143 
 
 His disobedient pupil, planted the seeds of disturbance, 
 of division. Where God had planned normal de- 
 velopment, growing freedom, life, man brought in 
 disease, slavery, death. When, then, God intervenes 
 with miracle, He does not do so as an artist who cor- 
 rects himself; but as one who restores his work 
 which another has spoilt for him—-He brings back, by 
 His miraculous acts, His world into the pathway of 
 normal development from which the being who was 
 created free made it deviate. What is there in such 
 an act unworthy of His wisdom, of His power, of 
 His goodness ? 
 
 But could He not have so created this world as to 
 make it from the first secure against all possibility of 
 being spoilt ? This is to ask whether God might not, 
 instead of creating man free, have made him perfect ? 
 This demand is self-contradictory. For to have made 
 man incapable of sinning, would have been to suppress 
 freedom, and, by the same act, holiness also. 
 
 The free and deliberate acceptance of God by man 
 is for him the pre-requisite condition of all real 
 moral goodness. Man, then, could not have been 
 created holy. He must himself co-operate in the 
 production of a holy man, The transformation of a 
 
 free man into a holy man was the first task of 
 
144 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 humanity. Accordingly, the primitive man could only 
 have been a provisional man. The first Adam was 
 but the rough sketch of the final man whom God 
 planned. The appearance in existence of the true 
 man, such as God had purposed, before He created 
 the world, to call into being, could only be the crown- 
 ing act of the development of the first Adam. This 
 design was the only one worthy of the wisdom and 
 love of God, even while it left this world exposed to 
 be invaded by sin and suffering by the miseries of 
 freedom. 
 
 And if you take your stand at this point of view, it 
 will become at last easy for you to understand why 
 the prodigies which signalized the advent of Jesus 
 Christ upon earth do not occur in our day. There 
 was an hour fixed in the history of humanity for the 
 advent of the second Adam,—of the final man and 
 the new mankind, who are His spiritual descendants, 
 just as there was an hour fixed in the course of 
 development of Nature for the advent of the first 
 humanity. Such epochs have an exceptional character, 
 and are signalized by phenomena which do not repro- 
 duce themselves in the same manner, when once the 
 solemn moment of their occurrence is past. The 
 
 appearance of the perfectly holy man was so trenchant 
 
Lhe Miracles of Fesus Christ. 145 
 
 a break in the life of humanity up to that moment, 
 that from the shock it produced there resulted conse- 
 quences which have not repeated themselves at any 
 other period. As necessarily as the daily contact of 
 riches with poverty in human society produces alms- 
 giving, so equally necessarily, so to say, did the 
 meeting between Jesus, the holy One, to whom the 
 treasury of almighty power lay open, with sinful and 
 suffering humanity, produce miracle. No doubt, since 
 the departure of Jesus, His holiness and His power 
 have not disappeared from the earth; the second 
 Adam, in ascending to heaven, left behind Him a 
 posterity like to Himself, a humanity sanctified ; just 
 as the first Adam, in descending into the grave, left 
 behind him a race of descendants like to himself, 
 soiled and mortal. But the present being of this 
 sanctified humanity is but the continuation and de- 
 velopment of the new state of things inaugurated by 
 the presence in the world of Jesus. The advent of 
 the second Adam was the crisis of birth of the new 
 humanity. That is the reason why it is signalized by 
 incomparable miracles. 
 
 Let us sum up. Miracles are possible, because matter 
 is the work and the born instrument of spirit. If this 
 
 possibility, in the abstract, of miracle was to be realized 
 K 
 
146 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 through the agency of a man, one condition was 
 requisite, namely, that there should exist a man fit to 
 be associated with the exercise of the creative Omnipo- 
 tence—a man whose will should be at one with that 
 of God. This condition, the advent in the world of 
 the holy man, prepared for by the whole course of the 
 Old Testament, only realized itself perfectly once in 
 the history of the world, and that hour was, in the 
 strict sense of the words, the hour of miracle. 
 
 IJI.—TuHE UTILITY OF THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 _ What is the object of these events, of which we have 
 been just establishing the reality and analysing the 
 cause ? 
 
 The object of the miracles is made clear by the name 
 so often given to them in holy Scripture—signs. 
 They signify to the sight of the blindest the greatness 
 of Him who works them, the pre-eminence of the work 
 which He is come to accomplish, and the perfection of 
 the final restoration in which this work is to issue. 
 
 Above all, they reveal to us the greatness of the 
 person of Jesus, the object of our faith. The miracles 
 of Christ are the signs of His divine glory. Doubt- 
 
 less a man may work miracles without being a divine 
 
 i rt at — 
 
The Miracles of Fesus Christ. 147 
 
 personage, the Son of God. Elias raised a dead man 
 to life; but he did not upon that ground claim the 
 right to say, “I am the resurrection and the life.” 
 Moses called manna from heaven, water from the rock ; 
 but he did not therefore call himself “the bread of 
 life,’ “the water springing up into life eternal.” We 
 go further; we have seen that it is not as Son of God, 
 and by His own personal power, but as the Son of 
 man, and by the power of God, that Jesus worked His 
 miracles. He Himself uses the expressions, “The works 
 which the Father hath given me to do;” “Father, I 
 know that Thou hearest me always.”! And the multi- 
 tudes were clearly conscious of this, when, at the sight 
 of one of these wonderful works, they marvelled that 
 “God had given such power wnto men.” * 
 
 But if the power by which Jesus worked His 
 miracles was a borrowed power, the manner, on the 
 other hand, in which He used it was not that of a 
 servant, but ofa son. “Father, I know” ... Would 
 Elias, the most perfect of servants, have spoken so ? 
 There was in all the miraculous action of Jesus a 
 freedom, an ease, an overflowing power, an assurance, 
 which manifested a more intimate relation, and, as it 
 were, a kind of familiarity between Him who asked 
 
 St. John v. 36, xi, 42. 2St. Matt. ix. 8. 
 
148 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 and Him who answered in this manner. Even in the 
 life of a prophet, the working of miracles is a rare 
 occurrence; in the life of Jesus it is, according to the 
 happy expression of Ewald, “an everyday occupation.” 
 Miracles worked by a prophet are accompanied by effort. 
 Elias stretches himself three times on the body of the 
 child whom he wishes to recall into life. Jesus brings 
 Lazarus out of the grave, as we wake a friend, by 
 calling him by his name. The characteristic of the 
 working of the prophet is reverential fear. That of 
 the working of Jesus is filial confidence. These are, 
 to use the expression of St. John, the signs of “the 
 glory as of the Only-begotten of the Hather.” 
 
 The miracles may be regarded, in this first connec- 
 tion in which we contemplate them, as a magnificent 
 compensation granted to Christ by His Father for 
 having divested Himself of His divine glory in be- 
 coming incarnate. Having been rich, Jesus “ became 
 poor;”' in this condition of poverty God puts into 
 His hands some gold pieces of incalculable value, 
 which reveal that state of riches and of nobility out 
 of which He came. Jesus had voluntarily exchanged 
 the “form of God” for the dependent condition of a 
 created being, the state of mendicity of human nature, 
 
 12 Cor. vill. 95 
 
 a 
 
The Miracles of Fesus Chrost. 149 
 
 possessing nothing, and unable to do anything except 
 by prayer. The Father is pleased in return to place 
 the treasures of His Omnipotence into His hand; He 
 says to Him: Take-—draw from out of my treasures 
 what you please, not as a servant, but asa Son! God 
 forestalls by these miracles that which He will grant 
 completely by the ascension, when, as a recompense 
 for what He has renounced of His divine status, 
 He will cause to break forth, even through His 
 humanity itself, “the glory which He had before the 
 world was.” * 
 
 The miracles then are, in consequence of the unique 
 way in which Jesus works them, the signs of a glory 
 belonging to Himself personally; they are, moreover, 
 the visible symbols of the work which He came to 
 accomplish here below. They are the signs, not only 
 of what Jesus is, but also of what He does. When 
 Jesus opened the eyes of the blind, for what purpose 
 did He do it? Did He purpose to put an end to 
 physical blindness on the earth? Certainly not; had 
 that been His intention, He must have gathered round 
 Him all the blind, and healed them; whereas for one 
 whom He heals, there are thousands whom He leaves 
 in darkness. What, then, is the object of such 
 
 1 St. John xvii. 5, 24. 
 
150 Lectures in Defence of the Chrestian Faith. 
 
 miracles? He wishes to make the world understand 
 the moral work which He is come to accomplish. 
 He says by these actions what He expressed in words 
 when He adds, “I am the Light of the world. 
 He makes Himself known as He who is come to 
 scatter the moral darkness into which sin has plunged 
 mankind—When Jesus raises the dead man to life, 
 are we to think that the object of this work of power 
 is to destroy here below the empire of death? No; 
 for that it would be necessary to raise from the dead, 
 not one dead man only, but all the dead. To this 
 mighty undertaking He will one day give Himself, 
 but later on in time. When he raised Lazarus, it 
 was to manifest Himself to the eyes of men dead in 
 trespasses and sins, as He who was come to bring 
 to our souls resurrection and life. Every miracle is 
 the visible type, the speaking pledge and earnest of a 
 spiritual miracle, greater and still more saving than 
 the external one. These spiritual prodigies, of which 
 the miracles were emblems, He intended to accom- 
 plish at a later period, by the instrumentality of 
 believers, and by the action of the Holy Spirit; and 
 therefore He does not fear to address to His disciples, 
 during His earthly life, these astonishing words, “J 
 
 1 St. John ix. 5. 
 
 ew oni : 
 ee: ee oes 
 
The Miracles of Fesus Christ. 151 
 
 say unto you, he that believeth on me shall do greater 
 works than these.”* The saving of a soul, is it not a 
 greater work than the raising of a dead man? After 
 some years the grave claimed once more the prey that 
 Jesus had rescued from it at Bethany. But a sinner 
 converted by the gospel—a prodigal, of whom the 
 Father has said, “ He was dead, and is alive again ”— 
 shall live for ever. 
 
 This consideration will completely explain why the 
 miracles of Jesus were not to be continued to the 
 end here below. These external miracles were, as 
 we have said, emblems of moral works of still greater 
 importance. The emblem once shown, its purpose 
 was attained; it was to give place to the reality of 
 which it was a figure. This was what Jesus sought 
 to make. the Jews understand the day after the 
 multiplication of the loaves. The whole multitude 
 came together to Him at Capernaum; and what are 
 they seeking? More bread,—material bread,—only 
 of a higher kind than that of the preceding day,— 
 bread from heaven, like the manna which Moses 
 obtained for the Israelites. Jesus answered them, 
 “You have then understood nothing of what I did 
 
 for you yesterday. You come to me not because. you 
 1. St. John xiv, 12. 
 
152 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 witnessed a sign of what I am, and of what I 
 am come to do for you, but only because you ate 
 of the loaves and were filled.” Is it then the belief 
 of these carnal-minded men that the object of the 
 advent of Jesus upon earth was to relieve men for 
 the future from the necessity of cultivating the 
 ground, of sowing their crops, and of eating their 
 bread in the sweat of their face? His object in 
 multiplying the loaves was to reveal Himself to 
 their perishing souls as the bread that can give life 
 eternal, through the holy agency of the eating of 
 faith, They understood nothing of the miracle; 
 they did not rise in thought to the true miracle 
 towards which all the desire and all the travail of 
 His soul was tending. In the sign they saw nothing 
 but the prodigy; whereas they should have recognised 
 This thought respecting the object of His miracles 
 continually occupied the heart of Jesus. When the 
 disciples returned from their first missionary expedi- 
 tion, they reported to Jesus with joyful wonder the 
 works of healing, particularly of demoniacs, which 
 they had worked in His name. Jesus, hearing their 
 words, raises His thoughts to a higher subject of 
 1 Lange, Life of Jesus. 
 
The Miracles of Fesus Christ. 153 
 
 contemplation, and recognising in these partial victories 
 signs of the imminent fall of the kingdom of Satan, 
 He answers, “J beheld Satan as lightning fall from 
 
 heaven.” 4 
 
 It was the coming destruction of paganism, 
 —of that “ possession on a great scale,’ as it has been 
 called, which, on occasion of these single acts of 
 casting out of evil spirits, presented itself to His 
 mind’s eye in all its grandeur. 
 
 Is there not here a consoling lesson for us? My 
 body suffers, and Jesus is not present to heal me. 
 Oh, how I am tempted to wish for His visible pre- 
 sence! But in indulging such a feeling, should I not 
 be following the example of the Jews, who, the day 
 after the miracle of the loaves, prayed for—what ? 
 More loaves ;—instead of rising to the wish for the 
 living Bread. Let, then, the records of the miracles 
 of healing which I read in the Gospel induce me 
 rather to seek a healing of a higher kind; for that 
 is the divine work intended by Christ, of which the 
 bodily healings were but signs. That which Jesus 
 did bodily, He did only with the object of making 
 me understand the work He wishes to accomplish 
 in me morally, and to induce me to associate my 
 will with. His. Touching the hand of the leper He 
 1 St.. Luke x, 18; 
 
154 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 cleanses him, and communicates to him His own 
 purity. By that act He tells me what He wishes 
 to do for my soul. His hand laid upon my heart 
 will take away its hidden leprosy, and communicate 
 heavenly health. Multiplying the loaves in the 
 wilderness, He gives me this assurance: I come to 
 nourish thy soul with myself, in order to fill thee 
 with my strength, and so to remove for ever that 
 depression—that spiritual phthisis under which thou 
 art suffering. By recalling from the grave him 
 whose body was already the prey of corruption, He 
 says to me, more eloquently than by any words, Take 
 courage, my son; even though thy heart were already 
 delivered over to the corruption of the worst passions, 
 the deliverer of Lazarus is here, ready to lift thee 
 out of this moral death, and to bring thee back to 
 life, and to the light of God. Once He bid the 
 winds be still, and the waves subside. My distress 
 is at this moment great, my anguish mortal; but I 
 know,—lI see it,—let Him but arise,—let His voice 
 resound amid the trouble of my soul and the agitation 
 of my life—forthwith shall tumult give place to 
 silence, and once more shall there reign within me a 
 great calm. 
 
 So is it that faith finds in each miracle of Jesus 
 
The Miracles of Fesus Chrest. 155 
 
 a sign; and that quite legitimately. This allegorical 
 method of interpretation is not only permissible, it 
 is intended; it is the legitimate, authentic use of the 
 miracle; it is the very thought of Him who worked 
 it. If each word of Jesus is an act—-a miracle, 
 each miracle, on the other hand, may translate itself 
 for us into a word, and become to us a rich personal 
 promise. 
 
 The miracles, again, are signs, in this way, that 
 while they tell us what Jesus 7s, and what He is 
 ceaselessly doing, they represent to us in figure what 
 He one day will do. We await a renewal of all 
 Nature. “ The whole creation,” says St. Paul, “ groaneth 
 together,’ and God will listen to these groans—grant 
 these desires; then will be a “restitution of all 
 things.” Nature will share in the incorruptibility of 
 the Spirit, which is its vital principle, and the Church 
 of Christ will be introduced into the glorious sphere 
 of the divine freedom, and of the perfect life, in that 
 kingdom “ which God prepared for them that are His 
 before the creation of the world ”—that is to say, that 
 of which the idea presided over that of the present 
 creation. 
 
 _ Let us look once more at the miracles from this, 
 
 point of view. They are, if I may so express myself 
 
156 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 samples of that final restoration and consummation.— 
 “ The last enemy that shall be destroyed,” St. Paul tells 
 us, “is death.” * 
 
 It was as a prelude to this destruction of death— 
 of death itself—that Jesus worked the three resurrec- 
 tions, that of the daughter of Jairus, of the son of 
 the widow of Nain, and of Lazarus. As Jesus, then, 
 restored the son to his mother, the daughter to her 
 parents, the brother to his sisters, so on the last day 
 will He restore to one another, in the fulness of 
 spiritual and bodily life, those beings whom love had 
 united in Him on earth, and whom death had momen- 
 tarily separated. What a waking! what an Easter! 
 All the storms which overturn society, and families,— 
 all the national and domestic wars which are the 
 product of egoism, are one day to cease, and to give 
 place to the smile of the Divine Love shining forth 
 upon human society brought into peace. It is of 
 this final harmony that the stilling of the tempest 
 on the Lake of Gennesareth is the emblem and 
 the pledge. This re-establishment of the universal 
 harmony is to be preceded by a final sorting,—pre- 
 pared for by a judgment, of which the object will be 
 
 to beat down powers that oppose themselves, and to 
 11 Cor. xy. 26. 
 
The Miracles of Fesus Christ. 15% 
 
 exclude wills which persist in rebellion. We see 
 before us a sample of that awful | consummation in 
 the cursing of the barren fig-tree, and in the castings 
 out of devils, effected by the Lord Jesus.—The 
 whole life of humanity, set free from sin, will then 
 by the power of the Holy Spirit become possessed 
 of a new force, a savour hitherto unknown, a divine 
 efficacy ; it will be pervaded by a celestial force and joy. 
 Look at Cana,—there we see the pledge of that final 
 transformation of our natural life into eternal glory. 
 Some miracles, such as that of the marriage feast 
 of Cana, and that of the multiplication of the loaves, 
 which do not bear the stamp of any actual necessity, 
 have been called miracles of luxury.’ I do not 
 object to this expression. Luxury — splendour — is 
 to be seen in the house of every great prince; could 
 it be missing in the grand household management of 
 the Sovereign Lord, Creator of heaven and earth ? 
 Is there not luxury even in Nature, as we see it 
 here on earth? The thing necessary in the kingdom 
 of God is holiness; that which answers to luxury— 
 to superfluity—is glory. God be praised a thousand 
 times for the fact that some “ miracles of luxury,” in 
 the life of Jesus Christ prefigure the glorious magni- 
 
 1 Strauss. 
 
158 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 ficence which is to pervade the mansion of His Father 
 and our Father ! | 
 
 From the point which we have now reached, we 
 can survey at one glance the whole of that miraculous 
 action of Jesus Christ, of which the miracles which 
 He worked during His sojourn here below are but 
 the first and least important phase. The view unfolds 
 itself in three distinct and successive forms. 
 
 There are first the miracles, properly so called, 
 which marked His earthly career, and which culminated 
 in His own resurrection as the greatest of all; we call 
 it so, because Jesus was its object, not its instrument, 
 and the more His personal co-operation was withdrawn 
 from prominence in this great act, the more manifestly 
 did the action of God display itself in it. Then 
 follow, as forming a second phase, the spiritual miracles, 
 which, since the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at 
 Pentecost, are continually being worked in the Church, 
 and which constitute the work of the spiritual resur- 
 rection and sanctification of humanity. This second 
 form of the miraculous action of Jesus pervades the 
 whole of the present divine economy. Lastly, at the 
 close of this essentially spiritual work, we contemplate 
 in hope the epoch of the supreme and definitive 
 
 miracles;—our bodily resurrection, the renewal of 
 
The Miracles of ¥esus Christ. 159 
 
 nature, the apparition of the new heavens and new 
 earth, the ascension of the Church into glory. That 
 will be the crowning consummation of the work of 
 Jesus, which will be at the same time the final accom- 
 plishment of the thought of God with reference to 
 men: God in us. 
 
 This magnificent setting forth of the miraculous 
 working of Jesus you will find drawn out by the 
 hand of the Lord Himself in the fifth chapter of St, 
 John, on occasion of a simple miracle of healing —that 
 of the impotent man of Bethesda.! 
 
 There exists, we are told, among the Jews a super- 
 stitious belief. They imagine that the man who shall 
 have the happiness of discovering the true pronuncia- 
 tion of the name of Jehovah in the sacred language of 
 the people of God, will possess in this word, correctly 
 pronounced, the talisman by the help of which all 
 things will become possible to him. Under this 
 puerile fable there lies hidden sublime truth. The 
 man who knew the true way of pronouncing the 
 divine name has existed, and everything has been 
 possible to Him by virtue of that name. Did not 
 Jesus say, “No man knoweth the Father, but the Son” ? 
 and did He not upon that ground justify this other 
 
 1 St. John v. 19-29, 
 
160 Lectures in Defence of the Christran Farth. 
 
 assertion, “All things are delivered to me of my 
 Father” 2+ Jesus alone has known the true name of 
 God,—* Abba, Father ;” Jesus alone has understood 
 the art of uttering it in the true filial accent,— 
 that of tender trustfulness, of the complete self- 
 surrender of love, of perfect adoration ; and, accordingly, 
 nothing was impossible to Him. This name, thus 
 uttered, laid nature at His feet, and mankind at His 
 knees. The power of this name, filially invoked, at 
 last awoke, in favour of this earth, Almighty Power, 
 which had fallen asleep; reopened the channels of 
 communication between heaven and earth that had 
 long since been blocked up, and laid the founda- 
 tions of the renewal of all things. Now the work 
 which the only-begotten Son thus began must be 
 continued, and it is the children of God adopted in 
 Him who must accomplish this task. They, and they 
 only, are capable of fulfilling it. Has He not revealed 
 to them His secret? “ No man knoweth who the Father 
 is, but the Son and he,’ adds Jesus, “to whom the Son 
 will reveal Him.” As He Himself, by His confident 
 appeal to His Father, brought down healing into 
 bodies suffering from disease, so is it for us, who have 
 learnt from Him to cry, “Abba, Father,” to call 
 
 1 St. Luke x. 22. 
 
The Miracles of $esus Christ. 161 
 
 down, by an invocation similar to His own, the pardon 
 of sin and the peace of heaven into souls travailing 
 and burdened, disquieted and suffering,—into our own, 
 above all. As Jesus cleansed the lepers, cast out 
 devils, raised the dead, by the finger of God; so is it 
 ours to call down, by the power of the Holy Spirit, 
 the new life, and holiness, into souls,—into our own, 
 above all! Let us in this way become workers of 
 miracles in ourselves and in our brethren, and we 
 shall have no more difficulty in believing in those of 
 Jesus Christ; for we shall find in the sacred records 
 that which answers to something which we shall have 
 actually experienced, or performed, ourselves, A 
 single prayer answered, a single case of living contact 
 with the power of the Father, a single exertion of the 
 power of Christ over the weakness that is in us, will 
 teach us more upon the subject of the miracles than 
 all that I have been able in this lecture to say to you 
 upon this great subject. Let us all lay hold of the 
 talisman! Learn from Jesus and from His Spirit to 
 say with the heart and with the tone of a son, “ Abba, 
 Father”! Then will greater works than those of 
 Jesus be worked by you! May men able to do such 
 works become among us a very great army ! That is 
 
 the most pressing need of our times. 
 bs 
 
Lia’ 
 UT EeS UP ERIN AD UA. 
 
IV. 
 THE SUPERNATURAL, 
 
 HE question whether we know that God exists 
 
 cannot appear a matter of indifference to any 
 
 of us. God added to, or deducted from, the sum of 
 
 existence ; this, we all feel, is existence altered in 
 character. 
 
 The question whether we know that God intervenes 
 in the life of man, is not less important. Of what 
 importance, in fact, is the existence of God to me, if no 
 direct relation connects Him with me, and if N ature, 
 like a wall of separation which cannot be crossed over, 
 rises between Him and me, and leaves me only the 
 _ power of sighing after Him whom it conceals from me ? 
 Here, again, we must say, God added to, or subtracted 
 from, the sum of life, is life altered, 
 
 In the present study of what in our day is called 
 the Supernatural, we shall investigate the following 
 three questions :— 
 
 165 
 
166 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 L Is an intervention of God in the history of the 
 world conceivable ? 
 
 Il. Has such an intervention actually taken place ? 
 
 III. What may be the part played by this element 
 of the Supernatural in the history of humanity ? 
 
 I. As soon as we begin to speak of the Supernatural, 
 the spirit of man raises this objection: Is not the 
 universe a complete whole? and is not this whole 
 governed by its own laws, which rule all that happens 
 in it? Would not an interference from without be 
 violence done to it? Would it not constitute a sort 
 of faithlessness on the part of the Supreme Being to 
 Himself? Was not Strauss right in saying, “To main- 
 tain that God does anything against the laws of Nature, 
 is to maintain that He acts against His own nature ” ? 
 
 This great whole, which we call N ature, compre- 
 hends within itself beings towards whom we stand 
 related through our senses, through forces which set 
 them in motion, and through laws which regulate the 
 exercise of these forces. The Supernatural, then, will 
 mean any modification in beings in Nature which is 
 not the effect of the forces with which it is endued, 
 and of the laws under whose command these forces 
 
 act. Is such a modification conceivable ? 
 
The Supernatural. 167 
 
 1. We become aware, in the first place, of the 
 existence of two supernatural beings: the one existing 
 in Nature itself—man; the other above Nature,— 
 God. That which characterizes both the one and the 
 other as supernatural beings, is their freedom. 
 
 In Nature, each being has in himself the law of his 
 development. The force which in the animal we call 
 his freedom, is but the instrument of the law of his 
 instincts; and in the plant we cannot even discover 
 this phantom of freedom ; accordingly, the august idea 
 of duty is inapplicable to animal or vegetable life. 
 Is that the case with man also? Are the decisions of 
 his will nothing more than the products of certain 
 unconscious influences which determine his conduct, 
 as by a fate, and without his being able to account for 
 them? Only by consenting to erase out of our life 
 everything which constitutes its dignity, its nobleness, 
 its truly human character, can we maintain such a 
 thesis. Conscience, which establishes so marked a 
 distinction, and even contrast, between good and evil, 
 which issues its imperious commands to us to choose 
 the first, yet without forcing us to do so; moral 
 responsibility—that heavy burden which is at the 
 same time our crown of royalty, and from which we 
 
 should endeavour in vain to free ourselves; remorse, 
 
168 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 which all our efforts fail in reducing to silence,—all 
 these facts bear undeniable testimony to the moral 
 freedom with which we are endowed. Make of these 
 mere delusions, you by the same stroke destroy man ; 
 you have left yourself nothing but a sort of brute 
 creature. Without moral freedom there is an end of 
 moral obligation, of duty; you can only talk of satis- 
 faction, of gratification, of selfish interest, of pleasure. 
 
 If natural law rules tyrannously over the human 
 will, the assassin who lodges a bullet in the head of 
 another man is neither more nor less culpable than 
 his victim ; for in killing him, he, like the bullet itself, 
 has but obeyed the law of his nature: Lincoln and 
 Booth are on a par morally. We must no longer 
 punish malefactors as if they were really culpable; 
 we must confine ourselves to restraining them from 
 doing mischief, by depriving them of their liberty, like 
 wild beasts we keep in a cage. The legislation of our 
 day is already following this course. 
 
 The human conscience will never in the long run 
 accept these degrading decrees of materialism ; and if it 
 did so for a time, society would, before long, recoil in 
 the presence of the practical consequences which would 
 flow from these principles. The inner voice, which 
 before each of our acts says to us: “Thou art free to 
 
The Supernatural, 169 
 
 do or not to do it,’ and which, after each of our acts, 
 cries to us: “Thou art responsible for what thou hast 
 done,” may distress us and give us pain; it neverthe- 
 less persists as the spontaneous expression, not to be 
 silenced, of our free nature. 
 
 Now, if man is free, he is superior to Nature, where 
 everything moves in obedience to necessary law; he is 
 _ @ being in some sense supernatural. Each act he does, 
 which, whatever be its motives, springs nevertheless 
 from the free decision of his will, and all that world 
 of existing things in which he is compelled to recog- 
 nise his own creation, attest the sovereignty which he 
 exercises over himself and over the forces with which 
 he is endowed,—his freedom, and, as a consequence, 
 his affranchisement from the blind, lower empire of 
 Nature. 
 
 To this supernatural ingredient in the midst of 
 Nature,—free man, answers the Supernatural above and 
 outside of Nature,—God. 
 
 The indications of intelligence and of goodness which 
 strike us at every step we take through creation, 
 bear witness to the Creator full of wisdom and of good- 
 ness to whom it owes its existence. But the existence 
 of a free and personal God is only distinctly revealed 
 by the presence, in the midst of Nature, of man, a 
 
170 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 person, and free. In an effect, there cannot be that 
 which is greater or better than is to be found in its 
 cause. And if Nature ascends up to the free Being as 
 her chef d’wuvre, it is because she springs from the free 
 Being as her author. If the free God did not exist, 
 neither could free man. For, in that case, the world, not 
 
 having been created, would be eternal; being eternal, 
 
 it would carry in itself the law of its own being, a law | 
 
 which would be sovereign and immutable, and which 
 nothing could modify, because nothing would exist 
 above it. And that which would be true of the 
 whole, would be true also of each part. Everything 
 in existence, man included, would obey, by an irresis- 
 tible fate, the law of eternal Nature; there would be 
 an end of freedom. Every one, then, will see this,— 
 human freedom rests upon the fact of the being of a 
 free God as its basis. God, duty, freedom, these three 
 ideas form an inseparable trinity, revealed directly to 
 the human consciousness, and of which each member 
 stands or falls with the two others. 
 
 The world is the creation of God; man is at the 
 same time His image. God has placed man at the 
 summit of Nature, as the chef @euvre at which He 
 was aiming from the beginning, and as the sample of 
 
 His own being. He made him capable of determining 
 
 a ae, ee eee 
 
The Supernatural. | 17a 
 
 himself in favour of good, in the full light of his own 
 personal conscience; and by so doing, He elevated 
 him into the same sphere of moral life in which He 
 Himself moves. 
 
 Thus soar, in a region above the blind domain of 
 matter and its laws, these two supernatural beings, 
 the one relatively supernatural, who gradually gets 
 himself free from nature, as a child does from his 
 cradle; the other absolutely supernatural, out-topping 
 Nature by the whole height of His spiritual being. As 
 soon as, like a child awaking and happening to meet 
 the eye of its mother, man lifts his head above Nature, 
 and discovers and recognises God, the supernatural in 
 him springs upward towards that from which it derives 
 its being, joins itself to the supernatural which is 
 divine, and enters into an indissoluble treaty of union 
 with it. 
 
 2. These two supernatural beings, free man and the 
 free God, can be in direct rapport, the one with the 
 other ; for they are spiritual, and spirit can act upon 
 spirit, as body upon body. No doubt the spirit of one 
 man acts upon the spirit of another only through ‘the 
 medium of the body. There must be a gesture, a look, 
 a word which strikes upon the ear,—some written sign 
 
 expressive of the sound, and which strikes the eye of 
 
172 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fazth. 
 
 the person with whom we wish to communicate. 
 These material means are necessary, because the spirit 
 of him who wishes to act upon the other is bound to 
 a body, and the spirit upon which he wishes to act is 
 enclosed in a body of the same nature. But, in the 
 communications between the infinite and the finite 
 spirit, this condition does not exist. 
 
 “ The God of the spirits of all flesh,’ as Scripture calls 
 God, the living God, can place Himself in immediate 
 contact with the spirits which have emanated from 
 Him. He can, without the instrumentality of any 
 visible sign, bring them into fellowship with His 
 thoughts, and reveal Himself to them; He can, with- 
 out any word outwardly spoken, communicate to them 
 an impulse, and give them a direction. 
 
 And if such intercourse is possible, is it not prob- 
 able that it will in fact take place? With what 
 other object can the infinite Spirit have created finite 
 spirits, but with that of entering into communication 
 with them? Is a father satisfied with merely giving 
 food to his children? Is it not his purpose to initiate 
 them into the enjoyment of all the spiritual gifts which 
 he himself enjoys? And if God is the absolutely free 
 Being, and if His absolute freedom, as soon as we 
 
 endeavour to form any concrete conception of it, takes 
 
The Supernatural. 172 
 
 the name, Love, how should He not enter into contact 
 with every created spirit up to the measure of its 
 capacity, and in such a way as gradually to enlarge 
 that measure, with a view to that complete initiation 
 which is the natural aim proposed to itself by His 
 love in the act of creation ? 
 
 So is it that between these two supernatural beings 
 there is a possibility and probability of communica- 
 tions, and that God has an open door in the history of 
 the world, by His direct action upon the spirit of man, 
 who is the principal agent in that history. Revelation 
 and inspiration are the two higher forms of this con- 
 tact, which is altogether spiritual, and consequently 
 supernatural. 
 
 3. Willit ever be possible for Nature to be involved 
 in this direct relation of God with man, and to be acted 
 upon by God in any way that will form a link in this 
 connection between these two supernatural beings ? 
 With regard to this question, everything depends upon 
 the purpose with a view to which Nature exists, 
 If it exists for itself—if it constitutes a complete, 
 firmly enclosed whole, having its end in itself, 
 miracle has in that case no raison Wétre, and it 
 is impossible to conceive with what object God 
 
 could bring about, in one part of this whole, any 
 
174 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 modification which should not be the result of its 
 own laws. 
 
 But is it true that Nature contains its end in itself ? 
 Is it not evident that it leads up to man,—that the 
 several beings who together make it up, form the steps 
 of a ladder of which the highest, foreseen and fore- 
 intended from the beginning, was man? Does not 
 experience confirm the truth, of which science has 
 collected the proofs, namely, that Nature is but a means 
 to an end, and that man is the being destined to 
 benefit by it? In applying Nature, as he does, to his 
 own purposes, man fits in with the destination of 
 the several beings which compose it, in such a way 
 that it is only under his care that many of them attain 
 to the perfection of which they are capable. The 
 horse trained by man reaches a higher perfection in 
 all respects than does the horse in the state of nature ; 
 and every day we find by experience the superiority 
 of the fruit-tree grafted by the hand of man, over that 
 which grows wild in the forest. 
 
 As Nature has not its cause, so neither has it its 
 end, in itself. Its cause is God, its end is man. 
 Nature is but a means for the education of the latter 
 by the former. Would it be conceivable that, under 
 these conditions, God should have created Nature in 
 
Lhe Supernatural. 175 
 
 such a manner as not to reserve to Himself a means 
 of access through which He might act upon it and by 
 it, with a view to the object which He proposes to 
 Himself, that is, the moral education of humanity ? 
 
 Look at this powerful machine which draws a whole 
 train of carriages after it,—it does not work for itself. 
 This combination of various forces has been invented 
 for the service of those whom it carries forward with 
 lightning-speed. Accordingly, man has reserved to 
 himself certain means of acting upon it, of accelerating 
 or retarding its speed, and even of making it move 
 forwards or backwards at his will. Though this 
 arrangement would be a violence done to the machine 
 if that machine existed for itself, it appears no more 
 than reasonable when it is viewed as an instrument 
 existing for a purpose beyond itself, that is, for the 
 good of the living and free creature, man. 
 
 Listen to the strains of harmonious sound which 
 proceed from this organ. It is the hand of the 
 player which sets its secret springs in motion. For 
 in constructing it he has reserved to himself access 
 into the interior of this instrument, a means whereby 
 the blast which is to breathe the breath of life into it 
 can penetrate into all its parts. There would be 
 
 something in this inconsistent with the essential 
 
176 Lectures in Defence of the C. hristian Faith. 
 
 nature of this machine, if the machine existed only for 
 itself. Such a manner of working is, however, reason- 
 able, if this machine exists for the good of a superior 
 being, to whose pleasure it is intended to minister. 
 
 Should we not expect the case to be the same with 
 Nature, since that, too, exists for the good of an object 
 outside of and above itself? Would the artist who 
 has constructed this vast piece of machinery have 
 given it over entirely to a sort of self-guidance,— 
 would he not have reserved to himself some means 
 of making it minister in varying ways to the ever- 
 changing needs of the free being for whom he has 
 created it ? 
 
 Nature, no doubt, must have her laws—her obedience 
 to rule—her fixed path of progress. It must be so, as 
 it is destined to the service of man; for, if the latter 
 found himself in presence of a power absolutely capri- 
 cious and irregular in its movements, how could he 
 direct or systematize his work? If I did not know 
 whether the sun would or would not rise to-morrow, 
 what steps could I take to-day to prepare for that 
 morrow ? If I could not count beforehand with certainty 
 upon the regularity of the march of the seasons, how 
 could I set myself to the work of cultivating the ground ? 
 
 Human freedom would be suppressed just in proportion 
 
Lhe Supernatural. ery 
 
 as caprice reigned in the life of Nature. Man has free- 
 dom in laying his plans, only on condition of his being 
 . able to count upon the regularity of the laws which 
 govern the sphere in which he works. 
 
 But, on the other hand, man is a moral being, 
 and as such called to realize good. Now the realiza- 
 tion of this, his destination, could not have been 
 subjected to the fixed regularity of physical laws; 
 since to speak of a being as moral, is to speak of 
 him as free. As a ‘free being, then, man has the 
 power of turning his back upon the destiny intended 
 for him; and it is important that God, who is ever 
 bringing all things back into the state to which they 
 are destined, should have the power to make Nature 
 —that great instrument for developing and educating, 
 which He has interposed between man and Himself 
 —concur in the work of bringing about that result. 
 This new function of co-operating in the cure of 
 moral evil did not enter, any more than did evil 
 itself, into the original design, or into the normal 
 organization of Nature. And in this way it becomes 
 possible that God, with a view to producing effects 
 upon the free being, should sometimes introduce modi- 
 fications into the condition of the creatures existing in 
 
 Nature which are not the results of the ordinary laws 
 M 
 
 ; 
 
178 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 of their being, but which, at the same time, do not 
 annihilate those laws. Regularity remains in force, but 
 a superior power operates in such a way as to draw 
 from the working of these laws a result of an excep- 
 tional kind, and which has no sooner made its appear- 
 ance than it falls completely under their dominion. 
 
 4. But by what means can the divine power act 
 upon matter so as to impress upon it a modification 
 which is not the result of its own laws ? 
 
 I must here put the question, What is matter,— 
 the substance of which bodies are composed? When 
 one takes a body to pieces, one obtains from it 
 smaller particles, which again can be divided into 
 others smaller still, so that our minds can see no 
 end to this process of decomposition. But, never- 
 theless, in order to put a lmit to this infinite 
 divisibility of matter, it has been agreed to give the ~ 
 name of atoms (that is to say, indivisible particles) 
 to the infinitely small corpuscles, which are supposed 
 to be incapable of being further divided. 
 
 What idea are we to form to ourselves of these 
 atoms? No one has ever seen or touched them. 
 The hypothesis of their existence is nevertheless 
 almost a necessity to our minds, if we admit the 
 
 reality of matter. Are they material? But every- 
 
The Supernatural. 179 
 
 thing that is material is composed of parts, and 
 everything that is composed of parts, however small 
 it may be, can be divided. Are they immaterial ? 
 But how can an aggregate of things in themselves 
 immaterial ever form a material whole—a body ? 
 
 You see that Nature and the existence of matter 
 present to every reflecting mind a problem absolutely 
 unsolved and unsolvable, a problem far more im- 
 penetrable than the existence and origin of the simple 
 being—the soul or spirit. 
 
 And can man, who is compelled to confess his 
 absolute ignorance of the essential nature of matter, 
 claim the right to lay down the law in this domain 
 in which all is obscurity to him, and in which every 
 assertion is found soon to lead up to a contradiction 
 in terms? In a region in which our knowledge is 
 nu, absolutely non-existent, should we allow ourselves 
 to cry, “This or that is impossible—impossible to God 
 Himself!” Men of science, too, have their dogmas, 
 and before they mock at those of theology, they would 
 do well to get rid of their own, lest, offering to take 
 the mote out of their brother’s eye, they be met with 
 the rebuke, “First take the beam out of your own.” 
 
 Nature must be compared, not to a bag hermetically 
 
 sealed on all sides, but to a net open in all its meshes, 
 
180 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 and penetrable in every part of its surface. These 
 meshes are the mysterious atoms which constitute 
 the essence of Nature, and of which we cannot reason- 
 ably affirm the material, or immaterial, nature. Who 
 can tell us that there is not here a door always 
 open to the action of God?' And is it really con- 
 ceivable that God has been in vital relation with 
 Nature only for one moment,—that in which it came 
 into being by an act of His will,—and that after that 
 He withdrew, never again to make His appearance in 
 it? This conception, which would relegate the action 
 of God to a time absolutely past, will soon arrive 
 at finding this action of His also superfluous, deny 
 
 creation, affirm the eternity of the world, identify 
 
 1 We find in the writings of one of the most eminent philosophers 
 and severe logicians of modern Germany, Lotze, the following lines, 
 which express an idea respecting the miraculous, perfectly in accord- 
 ance with our own: ‘‘The power which works miraculously does not 
 oppose itself directly to the law with which it deals so as to suspend its 
 working ; but it first modifies the interior condition of things by virtue 
 of its intimate connection with them, and by that means it modifies 
 indirectly the effects produced by the working of-the law even while 
 allowing that working still to be continued, and while still availing 
 itself of its agency.’ No doubt the domain in Nature which is subject 
 to mechanical necessity is not immediately accessible to the miracle- 
 working power ; but the interior nature of the things which compose 
 that domain, and obey that necessity, is by no means the product of 
 that necessity itself; it is the result simply of the creative idea.” — 
 Der Sinn der Welt (Lotze). And this is the point which is, as it 
 were, the open door through which a power working in the name of 
 this idea can always assert its influence over the course of things, . 
 
 ie 
 a 
 
Lhe Supernatural, 181 
 
 God with the creationn—in other words, it will deny 
 the existence of God Himself. The logical connection 
 which binds these propositions together is so close, 
 that, willingly or unwillingly, the mind will have to 
 surrender to it; and the final consequence, as we 
 said at the commencement, will be that negation of 
 human liberty and responsibility which would say, 
 “God and the world are identified, and man is 
 free !”? 
 
 If miracle is not conformable with the internal 
 laws of Nature, so much the more is it so with the 
 supreme law of this great whole, which is that of 
 depending directly upon God only, and of minister- 
 ing in His hands to the work of educating mankind. 
 
 By these reflections upon the possibility of the 
 supernatural, | have only wished to clear the way in 
 the minds of my readers, for the facts of experience 
 and of history to find access to their belief. For the 
 road along this path has been so barricaded, men have 
 cried out so loudly, though without alleging the 
 slightest proof of what they have said, that the science 
 of the 19th century has made it impossible to believe 
 
 in miracle, that it was needful to attempt to clear 
 
 1 Raphael Hirsch, Der Pentateuch tibersetzte und erlaiitert, 2ter 
 Theil, Exodus, p. 28. 
 
182 Lectures n Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 this prejudice out of the minds of my readers before 
 I brought them to face facts and history. I hope 
 that nothing will now stand in the way of their giving 
 
 these an impartial hearing. 
 
 II. Does history prove the reality of supernatural 
 events? Do not the stories of miracles and Divine 
 interventions, which have come down to us, belong 
 to dark ages, to uncritical times, in which the very 
 idea of Nature and her laws was unknown? How 
 can we put any confidence in testimony never sub- 
 jected to any scientific tests, especially when it is 
 contradictory to our own experience, which has never 
 made us witnesses of any miracle ? 
 
 1. The miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 
 which we have been studying in our first two lectures, 
 is clear of all the objections we have now been citing. 
 The age of Augustus and Tiberius, in which the 
 advent of Jesus Christ took place, was the most 
 enlightened of antiquity. It was the age in which, 
 under the attacks of philosophy, the ancient pagan 
 
 superstitions crumbled to dust.’ It was the age in 
 
 1 Mythology is only treated in the manner of Ovid in the Meta- 
 
 morphoses, by one who has ceased to believe init. One feels strongly 
 enough that Virgil has no longer any belief in that Olympian world 
 in which the faith of the Homeric age moves so naively. As for 
 
 te 
 
The Supernatural. 183 
 
 which Lucretius was writing his completely rationalistic 
 poem on Nature, and identified its laws, aS men are 
 doing now, with the divine nature. The Epicureans 
 attempted to account for matter by atoms and the 
 forces inherent in them, as do our modern materialists ; 
 and the Stoics, who affirmed that they found in their 
 own moral goodness power sufficient to fulfil the 
 law of duty in their own strength, without help 
 from God, were not very different from our liberal. 
 Christians. 
 
 And it was in such an age that the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ was preached, and believed in the whole 
 world! What! it was at the time when all the ancient 
 superstitions were falling to pieces under the blows of 
 the battering-rams of emancipated Reason, that we are 
 to believe that that which of all others was the most 
 repugnant to the way of thinking of the men of that 
 age, lifted up its hand and conquered the world i 
 
 What we have been now saying of the resurrection 
 applies equally to the innumerable miracles attributed 
 in the New Testament to our Lord Himself and to His 
 
 apostles. That age is not the, dimly-lighted dawn of 
 
 Horace, when he makes use of mythological conceptions, it is merely 
 an effort of rhetoric. 
 
 1 See the reception given to the preaching of the resurrection in St. 
 Paul’s sermon at Athens, Acts xvii. 32. 
 
184 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth, 
 
 the history of humanity, but much more truly its full 
 mid-day." 
 
 2. This miraculous character of the life of Jesus 
 Christ is made all the more prominent by the fact 
 that by the side of His figure there stands out 
 another, closely connected with His, mysterious like 
 that, and one which made an impression upon the 
 contemporary Jewish imagination perhaps even more 
 vivid and more universal than did that of Jesus. We 
 mean John the Baptist, of whom a Jewish historian of 
 that age—Josephus—speaks to us in a very circum- 
 stantial manner, whilst he has only devoted to Jesus a 
 single short paragraph, of which many critics even 
 question (either wholly or in part) the authenticity. 
 The appearance of John the Baptist, by its similarity 
 to that of the ancient prophets, and the sombre and 
 threatening character of his preaching, produced an 
 immense sensation in the heart of the Jewish people. 
 His disciples spread themselves in all directions ; even 
 in the time of St. Paul we hear of some of them in 
 Asia Minor.’ All the people were ready to take him 
 for the Messiah ;* and his adherents are still found in 
 
 1 See on the miracles of Jesus Christ, the lecture specially treating 
 of that subject. 
 * Acts xix. 1 et seq. _ 3 St. Luke iii. 15, 
 
The Supernatural. 185 
 
 our day existing in the East, as a distinct religious 
 community, very hostile to Christianity. And yet 
 neither his disciples, nor the Jewish people, nor 
 Josephus, ever attributed a single miracle to him. We 
 find the inhabitants of Persea, struck with this difference 
 between John and Jesus Christ, making this remark 
 in our Gospels: “ John did no miracle; but all things 
 that John spake of this man (Jesus) were true.”! John 
 the Baptist himself never put in any claim to the power 
 of working miracles; while Jesus, on the other hand, 
 professes it, and attributes it to Himself continually. 
 If the Jewish Rabbis of after times are led to 
 mention this marvellous personage, and are unable to 
 deny His miracles, they are driven to account for 
 them by His use of certain talismans, which they say 
 He brought from Egypt...; but it does not occur 
 to them to make any such assertion respecting John 
 the Baptist. Could this be so if the records of the 
 miracles in the life of Jesus were nothing but 
 the product of the over-excited imagination of the 
 people? If, as is asserted, that age had a bias to- 
 wards crowning great men with the awreole of the 
 supernatural, why should this superstitious tendency 
 have concentrated itself upon Jesus, and Jesus only ? 
 1 St. John x. 41, 
 
186 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith, 
 
 There must surely have been something in His life 
 which gave an opening for so doing. And let no one 
 say that it was only in passing over to the soil of 
 paganism that the life of Jesus received the legendary 
 accretions. St. Matthew’s Gospel is purely Jewish in 
 its sources, and it contains quite as many miracles as 
 the others. Neither let any one say that Jesus may 
 well have had the power of effecting wonderful works 
 of healing by the natural influence exerted by an 
 elevated soul and powerful will over the nerves of 
 the sick. The miracles worked upon Nature, such as 
 the stilling of the tempest and the multiplication of 
 the loaves, are in all respects as well attested as the 
 miracles of healing. Our four Gospels record them 
 unanimously and with the same words, characteristic 
 of Jesus, which stamp with so undeniable an impress 
 of reality the miracles of healing. 
 
 This contrast which exists between the life of Jesus 
 and that of John the Baptist, may equally be dis- 
 cerned between that life and the character of the 
 whole age to which it belongs. The four centuries 
 which preceded the advent of Jesus are, according to 
 the Jewish historians themselves, devoid of all Divine 
 manifestations ; they form an epoch absolutely with- 
 
 out prophets or miracles. And it is upon this 
 
The Supernatural. 187 
 
 commonplace and prosaic background that history 
 suddenly pictures the radiant form of Jesus. To the 
 profound silence of Heaven there succeeds the most 
 holy revelation; and to its apparent inactivity the 
 richest development of all its benedictions and of all 
 its powers. If it is true that there is no such thing 
 as an effect without a cause, it is clear enough that 
 something exceptional must have signalized the arrival 
 of this personality into the world. 
 
 3. The contrast which we have just indicated be- 
 tween the person and the age of Jesus Christ leads us 
 to remark a third point: it is that of the unequal 
 apportionment of the miraculous events through the 
 sacred history. It is the ordinary idea, that the 
 miracles are uniformly distributed over the whole 
 field of that history. But this is a mistake. You 
 may perhaps be surprised when you hear the asser- 
 tion made, and you will hardly believe it, but 
 you may verify its truth for yourselves:—from the 
 creation of the world up to the time of Moses—that 
 is to say, during the first twenty-five centuries of the 
 history of mankind—there is no mention of a single 
 miracle, properly so called,—of a single instance of 
 a modification introduced into a natural object by 
 
 a supernatural cause; for I could not attribute that 
 
188 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 character to the disappearance of Enoch?! or to the 
 death of Lot’s wife; secondary causes are suggested in 
 the latter case by the history itself. The appearances 
 of the Eternal to the patriarchs are not signalized by 
 any prodigy. The first miracles, properly so called, 
 are those which accompany the call of Moses. It was 
 at that time that God, who had till then only revealed 
 Himself as Zlohim,—the invisible power which is 
 above Nature,—clorified Himself in the sight of His 
 servant and of His people, as Jehovah, the absolute 
 Being, the absolute Lord of all creatures. 
 
 Suppose the records of miracles in Scripture were 
 the product of the imagination of the first ages, still 
 plunged in infancy, how are we to account for these 
 2500 first years of the history of the world being 
 completely void of miraculous events? Is it not 
 precisely that time, which corresponds to the mytho- 
 logical age of the pagan nations, that ancient legends 
 ought to figure to us full of the marvellous ? 
 
 After the Divine Power had, in the days of Moses 
 and of his successor Joshua, displayed itself in Nature, 
 the age of the Judges presents to us the spectacle of a 
 falling off in this kind of manifestation. We do not 
 
 * The record says simply: ‘‘ He was not,” without defining the 
 cause of that disappearance further than by the words : ‘God took him.” 
 
The Supernatural, 189 
 
 find during this period more than a few miracles ; and 
 the age of Saul, of David, and of Solomon, in which it 
 ends, is nearly, if not entirely, without them. And 
 yet this is the culminating point of Jewish history, its 
 period of splendour. If there is any age which should 
 serve for a canvas on which should be worked the 
 embroidery of miracle, it is, without doubt, that of 
 the brilliant reigns of David and of Solomon. 
 
 Will any one say that was an epoch too much under 
 the light of history ; that the age of fables had passed 
 away, and that of plain prose had begun for Israel ? 
 So be it. But I come down two centuries later, and 
 here I find a new period of miracles not less rich than 
 the first—that of Elijah and Elisha. It is the time 
 when the ravens bring flesh to the prophet, when the 
 oil is reproduced in the widow’s cruse, when a dead 
 child is-restored to life by the embrace of the man of 
 God, when the fire falls at his call upon Carmel from 
 the midst of a blue sky. And yet, with the epoch of 
 David we were to have passed from the reign of fable 
 to that of history ! 
 
 Will any one object that these prodigies belong to 
 the history of the ten tribes, upon which we perhaps 
 have not such secure information as upon the king- 
 
 dom of Judah? I-will accept the statement,—let us 
 
190 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 come back then to Jerusalem, A whole century has 
 elapsed; we have come to the time of Hezekiah, to 
 the age of Sennacherib and of Shalmanezer, to a time 
 so completely historic, that by the help of modern dis- 
 coveries we are perhaps better acquainted with these 
 kings than with many personages of our own day; 
 and here we find ourselves face to face with the most 
 prodigious, the most inconceivable of all miracles, the 
 retrograde movement of the shadow on the dial of 
 Hezekiah! It is the last, or rather the only miracle 
 in the whole period of the kings of Judah. 
 
 The catastrophe of the ruin of Jerusalem takes 
 place ; the captivity, which had been foretold, becomes 
 an actual fact. When it draws near to its conclusion, 
 and the return is being prepared, the miracle-working 
 power breaks forth for a last time in the person of 
 Daniel, to disappear then finally till the time of the 
 advent of Him whose whole Person is, according to 
 the name given to Him beforehand by Isaiah, Miracle.’ 
 
 So, then, we have indicated four prominent epochs 
 of development of supernatural forces: the age of 
 Moses and of Joshua, that of Elijah and Elisha, that 
 of Daniel, that of Jesus and His apostles. And 
 in the intervals between these we find either a few 
 
 1 Wonderful. —Tr. 
 
The Supernatural. IQI 
 
 isolated miracles, few and far between, or else a com- 
 plete absence of the marvellous. We ask, in presence 
 of these facts: Would the miracles be distributed in 
 this way, if they were but the product of legend ? 
 Would they not have been sprinkled over the whole 
 field of this history indiscriminately? Would they 
 not occur in swarms, above all, in the ages of anti- 
 quity, and diminish gradually, and at last disappear, 
 in proportion as we enter farther into historic times ? 
 4, But the feature which indicates perhaps in the 
 most striking manner the perfect truthfulness of the 
 miraculous stories contained in our sacred books, is 
 the fact that these exceptional events stand for the 
 most part in close relation with the sins of those who 
 are either their instruments or their objects. It is 
 the murmuring, and the obstinate rebellions of the 
 people against the Eternal, and against Moses His 
 servant, which give occasion to the greater part of 
 the miracles of the wilderness, and especially to that 
 humiliating and terrible plague of the fiery serpents, 
 of which the removal was effected by the miraculous 
 agency of the brazen serpent. Would the historian 
 have invented this conduct on the part of the people, 
 in order to make it the occasion of the miracle which 
 
 was to follow? And if he had done so, would the 
 
192 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 people have accepted this calumny in contradiction 
 with notorious facts, for the pleasure of adding one 
 more miracle to his history? It is then impossible 
 to believe that this story is only a myth sprung out 
 of the national consciousness, or out of the imagination 
 of some impostor, 
 
 The ministry of Moses, moreover, begins with an 
 act of unbelief. He refuses the call which God 
 addresses to him in the wilderness, and holding 
 obstinately to his belief in his own want of power, 
 he says, “Send him whom Thou wilt send.” And it 
 is in connection with this culpable act of resistance to 
 the divine will that the two miracles occur of the 
 rod turned into a serpent, and of the hand first smitten 
 with, and then cured of leprosy, which formed the 
 starting-point of his ministry. But not even these 
 miracles were sufficient to overcome the resistance of 
 Moses; he persists in his discouragement, till at last 
 the sacred history says, “And the anger of the Eternal 
 was kindled against Moses!” And we are asked 
 to believe that these two miracles were invented, either 
 by Moses himself, or by one of his admirers, after- 
 wards, with the view of bringing into notice—what ? 
 The unconquerable unbelief and obstinacy of Moses ! 
 
 One miraculous fact only is recorded in the reign 
 
The Supernatural, 193 
 
 of David: the appearance of the Destroying Angel in 
 the threshing-floor of Araunah, to smite Israel with a 
 plague which destroys thousands of persons in the 
 course of a few days. And for what purpose? To 
 punish one of David’s great sins, into which he had 
 been led by pride. 
 
 The miracle by which Elijah is fed on his entrance 
 into the wilderness, and the magnificent vision which 
 is granted him on Horeb, are occasioned by a want 
 of faith on his part, in his flight from Jezebel,—an 
 act of his which is spoken of in the history in these 
 terms: “And he fled, giving way to the promptings 
 of his own heart.” It is in consequence of this act 
 of weakness on the part of the prophet that dis- 
 couragement seizes him, and he cries, “Take away 
 my life, for I am not better than my fathers,’—and 
 God, moved with compassion to His servant, draws 
 near to him, and comforts him by a new revelation 
 of Himself. And we are to think that this flaw in 
 the character of the most illustrious of the prophets 
 was invented in order to bring in the miracles which 
 are connected with it in the history ! 
 
 Certainly, if these things are so, we shall have to 
 admit that the Jewish character, or that of the writers 
 
 of that nation, was of a strange nature. For the 
 N 
 
194 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 greater glory ot God they draw up a fictitious history 
 which is all to their shame. Where shall we find an 
 analogous case in ancient or modern history ? 
 
 5. Notwithstanding these reasons, we must allow 
 that if the miracles in the history of Israel were only 
 isolated facts, the doubts which had for a moment 
 been overcome could not fail soon to reappear. If 
 these extraordinary facts are to gain full credence 
 from us, they must be rested upon a wide basis, 
 durable and supernatural as themselves. The whole 
 history of Israel must have an exceptional character. 
 When I have got sight of the whole chain, I shall be 
 able to believe that what appear to be grey mountain- 
 tops on the horizon are so indeed, and not clouds. 
 This postulate is legitimate, and does not seem to me 
 difficult to meet. 
 
 An extraordinary revelation certainly underlies the 
 whole Israelitish history.. This idea of the God who 
 is altogether distinct from the world, the source and 
 the absolute Master of everything that exists, and of 
 His own being, which finds expression in this defini- 
 tion, “I ‘am® that) disam)” vor, -¢ that) le willetomue. 3 
 must be the product of a supernatural communication, 
 —of a direct contact between the Spirit of God and 
 
 1 Hirsch, Der Pentateuch, 2ter Theil, Exodus, p. 27. 
 
Lhe Supernatural. 195 
 
 the spirit of Moses, not only because it entirely 
 transcends everything to which the human conscious- 
 ness could raise itself by its own power, but because 
 he who cast this verity into the world, and who made 
 it the foundation of the life of his nation, tells us 
 that he received it directly from God; and the holiness 
 of his character does not permit us to doubt the truth 
 of his testimony. 
 
 Under the influence of this ray of light which fell 
 from on high, Israel, notwithstanding its propensity 
 towards idolatry, which was common to it with all 
 other nations, took up an exceptional position in the 
 history of the world; it became the vehicle of the 
 religious progress which was to take place; and 
 sustained in this work, in itself contrary to its nature, 
 by a higher hand, it arrived in its entirety, and as a 
 nation, at the firmest monotheistic belief. 
 
 This was its salvation. Many Oriental nations 
 have, like it, been doomed to an enforced emigration 
 into a foreign land. That was the fate of all the 
 little nations which became the prey of those kings 
 of the great monarchies of the earth, who are com- 
 pared by Israelitish prophecy to wild beasts. But 
 among all these nations it was not given to any one 
 
 to tread once more the soil of their native land. 
 
196 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 Tsrael, on the other hand, the bearer of the divine 
 revelation, of which it is the apostle, receives the 
 exceptional permission to return into its own country, 
 after sixty years of captivity, and to reconstitute 
 itself into an organized nation. Cyrus, the conqueror 
 of Babylon, which had swallowed up Israel, compels 
 this monster to cast up upon the sands of the sea- 
 shore this prophet-nation, this new Jonah. No one 
 can tell what passed in the mind of the young 
 conqueror, or what induced him to restore to Israel its 
 native land and its altars. But such was the fact— 
 history attests it. Jerusalem rose out of her ruined 
 state, which had seemed eternal. To Israel, this time 
 of exile, which appeared destined to be a deadly blow 
 to its national existence, proved as a crucible wherein 
 it might complete the work of its purification. It 
 returned to its mountain-home radically cured of that 
 tendency to idolatry against which God had had to 
 contend ever since the time of its call in Abraham 
 —that is, for a period of 1500 years. 
 
 An exceptional illumination from on high, an 
 exceptional restoration,—is that the whole of its 
 privileges? No; to these we must add an exceptional 
 spirit of aspiration in the national mind. The other 
 
 nations are wrapped up in the present; Israel lives 
 
 . 
 : 
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The Supernatural. 197 
 
 in the future,—a fixed idea, to which it is as it were 
 suspended, attracts and draws it upwards incessantly. 
 A higher religion, a new covenant, is one day to 
 take the place of the present religion, the covenant 
 of Sinai A second David, a descendant of the first, 
 but greater than he, as the master is greater than 
 the servant, is one day to come forth from Sion to 
 effect the conquest of the world at the head of a 
 willing people, an army of priests arrayed in their 
 priestly garments.” He will, it is true, be struck 
 dead, smitten for the transgressions of mankind. But 
 after He has offered up His life, interceding for the 
 transgressors, it will be restored to Him, and the 
 kingdom of God will prosper in His hands.” Thus 
 did a religion, one only in the world’s history, pro- 
 claim itself—and that at the time of its glory—de- 
 fective and insufficient, and by the mouth of its 
 prophets announced one superior to itself, pointing its 
 disciples to that higher era wherein alone the ideal 
 state shall be reached. If the self-abnegation of John 
 the Baptist, voluntarily giving the precedence to Him 
 whom he had announced as coming after him, is a 
 fact not explicable psychologically, that of the Jewish 
 religion in its entirety, inviting Israel to hope for 
 
 1 Jer, xxxi. 31 et seq. 2 Ps. cx. 1-3. 5° Isa. lin; 
 
198 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 something still better than itself, is equally inexplic- 
 able by the influence of any merely natural powers of 
 religion over man. 
 Our progress in this history is from one surprise 
 to another; one might have thought that this Jewish 
 religion, while announcing that which was to succeed 
 it, would have pictured the chosen people as throwing 
 itself with a whole heart and with eagerness into this 
 religion of the future. Far from it! Israel maintains 
 to the last its character as “the stiff-necked people.” 
 Its instinctive desires after earthly greatness will come 
 into collision with the humility of Him in whom 
 this great future will be realized. Only a small 
 number will submit themselves to Him. A judicial 
 blindness will prevent Israel from recognising Him, 
 
 and after “seventy weeks” of years of duration of 
 
 the restored nation, the temple will be once more 
 
 destroyed, and the land of Canaan smitten as by an 
 interdict.— Such are the announcements of the 
 prophets.’ Is it so that any nation, speaking under 
 the impulses of its own merely natural previsions, has 
 ever pictured its future ? 
 
 And yet, finally,—and this is the greatest marvel,— 
 this singular foretold future is realized. After 400 
 
 1 Isa, vi. 13, liii.’1, Ixv. 2; Dan. ix. 26; Mal. iv. 6. 
 
 ; 
 ; 
 ; 
 7 
 
The Supernatural. 199 
 
 years of waiting, the germ committed to the soil by 
 the hands of the prophets at last shows itself above 
 ground. A Being makes His appearance, who in an 
 exceptional life realizes that ideal of holiness which 
 had floated before the minds of the prophets. Re- 
 jected by His nation, He dies, and after death pro- 
 longs His days; and behold He is seen going forth 
 to the conquest of the world at the head of His 
 redeemed, arrayed in a holiness like to His own.— 
 This is surely the retinue of the priestly King, the 
 army of the “willing people,” foretold by the Psalmist. 
 And while Jerusalem falls into ruins, the kingdom of 
 God expands under the sceptre of Jesus, and the 
 knowledge of the living God, of the God of Love, 
 fills the earth, “as the waters cover the sea.” And 
 we are to be told that this unique result is not the 
 legitimate fruit of this unique tree! that we are to 
 see in this termination, compared with this beginning, 
 no more than an accidental coincidence, a happy 
 chance ! 
 
 No, the impartial historian must confess that the 
 supernatural flows in full stream through this history, 
 from its beginning, through all its phases, to its 
 termination. Note the exceptional call of Abraham ; 
 
 the exceptional monotheism of the nation sprung from 
 
200 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 him; the exceptional aspiration towards a sublime 
 future ; the exceptional restoration of the nation, after 
 the first great catastrophe; the appearance of an excep- 
 tional personage ; the exceptional terribleness of the 
 fall of Jerusalem ; and, finally, the exceptional pre- 
 servation, up to our own day, of this people dispersed 
 amongst the nations, and manifestly reserved for some 
 further great destiny ;—there occur surely in this history 
 SO many exceptional circumstances, that it must itself 
 constitute a great exception in the history of the 
 world. The true name of this people is that of its 
 Messiah— Wonderful. Here we have that permanent 
 foundation for which we were in search, and in accord- 
 ance with which all the single miracles of its history 
 become natural. 
 
 Before leaving this subject of the reality of the 
 supernatural in history, I wish to offer a remark with 
 reference to an idea sometimes thrown out by our 
 rationalistic writers, namely, that the Bible cannot 
 be a witness in favour of miracles, because it does not 
 itself contain the idea of Nature and its admirable 
 system of laws. Were this reproach cast upon the 
 pagan mythologies—the Theogony of Hesiod, for 
 instance—I could understand it. Were the deities of 
 Olympus, or of Hades, the Titans, the Naiads, etc., 
 
 | 
 : 
 
The Supernaturat. 201 
 
 substituted for the forces of Nature, then, indeed, the 
 system of Nature would be suppressed to make room 
 for the reign of changeable, personal caprice. But to 
 bring such a charge against the Bible implies a levity 
 of assertion not easy to account for. Is it not the 
 burthen of the story of the creation, that God made 
 each plant and each animal “ after ats kind,” in such a 
 way that each kind contained its seed in itself? 
 Have we not here the idea of a law, and that of the 
 highest order? For what constitutes the basis of the 
 laws of Nature, if not the distinctness and the per- 
 manence of species? And must not science revert in 
 our day on this point to the principles of the first 
 chapter of Genesis? Similarly, when God says after 
 the Deluge, “ While the earth remaineth, seed-time 
 and harvest, cold and heat, day and night, shall not 
 cease, is that, let us ask, the motto of a mythological 
 history? Is not homage done in these words to the 
 idea of that submission to order to which the march 
 of natural phenomena is subjected? If the Deluge is 
 attributed to the agency of God, yet is not reference 
 at the same time made to its natural causes—to “the 
 windows of heaven, the fountains of the great deep”— 
 in other words, to the floods of rain and the rising 
 
 of the water of the sea, which produced this grand 
 
202 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 phenomenon? The Bible so completely recognises 
 the reign of law in Nature, that miracle does not, 
 according to the Biblical idea, deserve to be so called 
 except on account of the exceptional contrast which 
 it presents to the reign of law; since it is what it 
 claims to be,—a sign of divine power,—only as it is 
 an exceptional manifestation, overruling the law of 
 
 Nature. 
 
 III. What is the object for which God intervenes 
 in this way in the history of the world, acting upon 
 the spirit of man by His Spirit, and upon Nature by 
 His almighty will ? 
 
 There is a work of God going on in the world; a 
 work of education and of salvation, of which Nature 
 is the instrument and man the object, and in which 
 man himself is to co-operate. On the one hand, we 
 have to be led up to the highest point of our destined 
 progress, and on the other hand, and at the same time, 
 to be drawn out of the abyss into which we fell at the 
 first step we took in that progress. The whole world 
 is the subject of this working of God; Israel is the 
 instrument called to effect it. The starting-point of 
 this education of man is the knowledge of the living 
 and free God. 
 
 : 
 : 
 , 
 | 
 ; 
 | 
 : 
 q 
 
The Supernaturat. 203 
 
 It is upon this revelation of the only true God 
 that His access to the heart of man rests. “ Hallowed 
 be Thy name,” Jesus prayed, before “Thy kingdom 
 come.” 
 
 Man might well, by the religious study of Nature 
 and of himself, have arrived at the idea of this infinite 
 and free God. But in order for this, it would have 
 been necessary that his heart and his intellect should not 
 be under the dominion of covetousness and selfishness. 
 Man as he is, instead of making of Nature a ladder by 
 which to climb up to God, has made it a wall of 
 separation between his benefactor and himself. In 
 proportion as he learns to value his blessings and to 
 be absorbed in their enjoyment, he becomes indifferent 
 to the Giver of them, and even to be disturbed at the 
 thought of Him. It is this state of things which 
 compels God, at the moment at which He is about to 
 take a step towards the establishment of His kingdom 
 here below by setting up Israel as a nation, to reveal 
 Himself in a completely new way—by miracle. 
 Miracle reveals to man, when the ordinary course of 
 Nature no longer speaks to him loud enough of the 
 Almighty Creator, and when he is tempted to identify 
 Him with Nature itself, the God whose will and 
 power are not bound to, or limited by, any one con- 
 
204 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fazth. 
 
 dition of things. It is not the miraculous event only, 
 it is the order of Nature itself, of which the divinity 
 is thus manifested to the eyes of the beholders; for 
 miracle proves not only that God is the maker of the 
 world, but also that He is its preserver and sustainer, 
 since that maintenance depends from moment to 
 moment upon His free will. As says the eminent 
 Jewish commentator whom we have already cited, 
 “To reveal the divine origin of the order of Nature, is 
 the object of miracle.”* Miracle is the reappearance 
 of the divine will as such, in the midst of a natural 
 world of which the regularity threatened to hide from 
 view this supreme source of all being. 
 
 That is the reason why miracles begin here below 
 with the ministry of Moses. They are, as it were, the 
 illustration of that new revelation of which Moses is 
 to be the bearer, “JT aM THATI Am. Thus shalt thou 
 say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto 
 you.”* “T appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and 
 unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty, but by 
 my name of Jehovah was I not known to them.”? 
 “Jehovah” signifies He who 7s, or rather who will be, 
 the Being who alone 7s, who holds all being in His 
 possession, and who will dispose of it in the future as 
 
 1 Hirsch, wbi supra, p. 33. 2 Ex. iii, 14, S Nix Vis Sy 
 
The Supernatural. 205 
 
 He does in the present. He is not only H/-Schaddaa, 
 the Almighty God, the most powerful of beings; He 
 is, speaking absolutely, the Being; all that we call 
 being apart from Him is nothingness, and only parti- 
 cipates in existence so far as He deigns to bestow 
 upon it that participation. This sublime conception, 
 after it was revealed, as we have just seen, to Moses 
 in words, God makes clear to him by a fact, and that 
 fact is miracle. What is the meaning of this rod 
 turned into a serpent, this serpent turned into a rod, 
 unless it be that no being exists over against God, 
 that all beings are themselves the creations of His 
 will, and have no existence save that which he is 
 pleased to lend them; that every creature is only 
 that which He who alone truly 7s, is pleased to 
 make it ? 
 
 Or what, again, is the meaning of the hand of Moses 
 first smitten with leprosy, and then cured of it? The 
 same truth, but with special application to human 
 nature, which God is able at will to destroy or to 
 save. There are words which are acts; there are acts 
 which are words. The miracles are a course of 
 preaching. They witness to the free and living God. 
 They exhibit monotheism in action. The miracles of 
 
 Joshua, of Elias and Elisha, have no other significance. 
 
206 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 They in a manner reinstall Jehovah in the Israelish 
 consciousness. That was indispensable in face of the 
 Canaanitish idolatry, which was but Nature deified, as 
 well as in face of that of the ten tribes, which had 
 taken the place, among this people, of the worship of 
 Jehovah. Where ears can hear no longer, eyes must 
 see—it is to the deaf that God speaks by miracle. 
 And it was by that means that Israel itself was 
 preserved as a monotheistic people. 
 
 And when the hour of the supreme revelation has 
 struck, when God the Creator purposes to make 
 Himself completely known, to reveal Himself as a 
 Father, and to add to His character as the absolute 
 Being, that of the infinitely good Being, then, too, it 
 is by miracle that He speaks to this deaf and stiff- 
 necked people. From the hands of Him who is 
 Himself the living gift of the divine love, there falls 
 a shower of miracles of beneficence and deliverance 
 and the revelation is completed. The name of the 
 Father is hallowed on the earth; it only remains for 
 each individual man to hallow it for himself, by 
 reproducing it living in his own person. This final 
 work is the miracle of the Holy Spirit ; it begins with, 
 the consummation in Jesus of the historic work 
 
 inaugurated by Moses. Where the external revelation 
 
The Supernatural. 207 
 
 closes, there the regeneration, the internal and personal 
 work, begins. 
 
 We are asked why, if miracles were worked in 
 ancient times, they are not worked now. The answer 
 is to be drawn from the fact we have just been indi- 
 cating. The miracles belong to the historic work, 
 to the development of the revelation; they are signs, 
 as Scripture speaks. Now, in Jesus the development 
 of revelation has reached its term; revelation is but 
 the commentary upon redemption; and when once 
 the work of redemption is consummated, revelation 
 has but one task left to do—to give the interpretation 
 of its last acts; it then ceases, and miracles cease 
 also. Redemption, Revelation, Miracle—these are 
 facts which are correlative and contemporaneous. 
 
 Again, we are asked what view we take of the 
 miracles of the Middle Ages, and by what character- 
 istic we claim to distinguish between true and false 
 miracles. Since the day of Pentecost, the real 
 miracles are the spiritual ones; they are the internal 
 workings of the Spirit of God, of which the object is 
 to enlighten us on the divine revelations, to apply to 
 us the salvation that is in Jesus Christ, and to asso- 
 ciate us with His holiness. In fact, one consequence 
 
 of the close connection of soul and body is, that when 
 
208 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 the spirit of man is in this way vivified by the power 
 of God, it can sometimes exert upon the body which 
 is its organ, and through it upon other bodies, an 
 influence which is marvellous. This kind of miracle 
 is therefore possible in every age of the Church’s 
 history ; it was possible in the Middle Ages, and it 
 is so still. That which would seem to be no longer 
 possible, is the miraculous action of the divine power 
 upon external nature. The age of such miracles seems 
 to have closed with the work of revelation, of which 
 they were but the auxiliaries. 
 
 It is, then, only miracles of one sort which it is 
 still open to us to desire and to pray for. They are 
 the miracles which belong to the spiritual sphere. 
 “When the Comforter is come,’ said Jesus, “He will 
 glorify me in you; He will take of mine and show it 
 unto you.” That is the miracle which is being worked 
 in the earth, in thousands of hearts since Pentecost ; it 
 is owr miracle, if I may so express myself, which com- 
 prehends within itself thousands of special instances,— 
 the whole work done by the Spirit, with a view to the 
 revelation and application to each individual soul of 
 Jesus, His work, His words, His sufferings, His glory. 
 
 I seem to myself, from the point of view which 
 we have now reached, to see the history of mankind 
 
 a ee 
 
The Supernatural. 209 
 
 arranging itself in three successive stages—that of 
 Nature, that of history, that of the Church; and it is 
 when we understand the succession and interconnec- 
 tion of these three stages, that we catch sight of the 
 true law of progress in humanity. 
 
 In the first place, in the work of the creation, 
 God has man in view as the object at which He 
 aims. This long and elaborate development, of 
 which geology unfolds to us the picture, is but 
 the mysterious embryonic evolution of man. The 
 bowels of the earth contain the monuments of 
 this divine travailing in birth. During myriads 
 of ages, a succession of creatures, ever new, 
 appeared upon the stage of this globe, and their 
 buried remains only reveal themselves to us by slow 
 degrees. The law which governs this procession of 
 strange creatures is pointing from beginning to end 
 towards man. The creatures become less and less 
 strange; as the process continues, they assume a 
 character more and more distinctly human. When at 
 last man appears, this process ceases; the species of 
 animals which are already in existence continue to 
 exist, but no new ones come into being. These facts 
 are only to be explained by assuming that the object 
 
 in view through the whole process from the beginning 
 O 
 
210 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 was man, and that this object has been reached. The 
 first series of divine operations in Nature—that which 
 was destined to produce man—is completed. 
 
 But no sooner has man appeared than a new object 
 of pursuit, more remote, higher in its nature, reveals 
 itself. The goal of all the preceding process of 
 creation, the creature endowed with personal freedom, 
 becomes the starting-point of a new one; the moral 
 order superimposes itself upon the physical order. The 
 free being is to become the holy being, and man 
 created in the image of God is to realize completely 
 that glorious likeness. From that moment there is no 
 more progress, no more development, in the sphere of 
 Nature. Like a wheel which revolves upon itself, she 
 follows changelessly the cycle of her seasons and of 
 her revolutions. Nature has the peculiarity of unfold- 
 ing only to fold herself back again upon herself; she 
 is not a spiral, she is a circle. The process of develop- 
 ment has now passed over from Nature into history, 
 from a blind life into one that is self-conscious and 
 free. Nature is now only the soil upon which grows 
 the tree of history; and the goal of history is the 
 perfect man, the God-man. | 
 
 In order to bring this about, God reveals Himself to 
 
 man as a father to his child; and as soon as this 
 
The Supernatural. pie 
 
 development is interfered with by a criminal act 
 which separates man from God, and would have 
 plunged him, had he been left to himself, into in- 
 evitable ruin, the work of initiation, begun by God, 
 transforms itself into a work of redemption. God no 
 longer only reveals Himself; He works at saving; and 
 His self-revelation is now but the commencement of 
 that work of saving which He carries on with regard to 
 man—a work of long duration in one sense, since it has 
 continued through centuries, but which really is short 
 when compared with the myriads of years occupied by 
 the development of Nature up to man. The promise 
 of the victory of the human race over Satan, on 
 the threshold of Paradise, is its starting-point. The 
 advent of Jesus Christ is its goal. It is to this 
 second course of divine action, of which history is the 
 theatre, that the miracles of which we have been 
 speaking belong. In all the decisive moments of this 
 great course, they are its auxiliaries. The miracles 
 are like the pedal to the playing of the divine musician. 
 God does not by these means correct His instrument, 
 Nature; He makes it subservient in an exceptional 
 manner to the superior needs of man. 
 
 This second phase of the progress of humanity 
 reaches its goal in Jesus, who is, in relation to the 
 
212 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fazth. 
 
 historic development of humanity, that which the ~ 
 advent of man had been in relation to the develop- 
 ment of Nature. As it was man whom God had in 
 view during the creation and progressive develop- 
 ment of Nature; so it was man, as we behold him in 
 Jesus, whom He had in view during the creation and 
 progressive development of man. The object up to 
 which He was working was man made holy by 
 freedom, and all-powerful by free obedience. 
 
 But this one Man is unique; He is but one, and 
 the existence of such an One is not the highest aim of 
 a God of love. As it is true that Jesus is the perfect 
 man, the ideal of man realized, so it is also true that 
 the purpose of God is not attained in one Jesus; He 
 desires many thousands of such. He desires as many 
 as there are men. He desires a Jesus-like humanity, 
 —the reproduction of this perfect and glorious type in 
 each believer, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Such 
 is the high ulterior aim which comes into view, after 
 the advent upon the earth of that One who cannot be 
 surpassed. Each member of the Church, the spiritual 
 body of Christ, ought to become like Him, in order 
 that at last the day may arrive when He will appear 
 but as the first-born among many brethren.’. The 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 29. 
 
The Supernatural. 213 
 
 coming into being of such a humanity begins at 
 Pentecost. Its creation is a continuous miracle, a 
 work of God, though implying the free self-oblation of 
 man; a work as radical as is the evil which has to be 
 destroyed in us; as profound as is the heart of man 
 which has to be regenerated; as high as is that per- 
 fection of Jesus which has to be reached; as rich as 
 is the love of Jesus which has to be unfolded! But 
 this continuous miracle of the sanctification of humanity 
 is a work altogether internal and individual. That 
 which has to be effected is the realization in each 
 individual of the type of character which was realized 
 as a historical fact in the person of Jesus Christ. The 
 scene, then, of this new series of miracles is the soul 
 of man, not external Nature. Nevertheless, this series 
 of miracles surpasses those of the sacred history, as 
 much as these surpassed those of the creation. When 
 Jesus said to His apostles, “You will work greater 
 works than these (¢.e. than these external miracles 
 which I am now working), because I go to my Father 
 (and will send you the Spirit from the Eternal Throne),” * 
 He clearly gave us to understand by this declaration 
 that the smallest operation of the Holy Spirit, accom- 
 
 plished in us or by us, is, in the judgment of Heaven, a 
 
 P Si. onn xiv. 12,13. 
 
214 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 greater work than all the miracles worked in the world 
 of sense. 
 
 Such is the third series of miracles ; it occupies the 
 whole present economy; it is destined to culminate 
 in the complete incarnation of Jesus in His Church. 
 When the heavenly Christ reappears completely in 
 His body on earth, then His visible return will close 
 that age of spiritual miracles which His first advent 
 inaugurated. In this perfect state of things, progress 
 will have reached its term, for unlimited progress is 
 not God’s idea; rather it is one which destroys itself. 
 In a sphere of being in which there is no such thing 
 as an end, there may be movement, but there is no 
 progress. 
 
 To create man, to realize the true man, to call into 
 being the perfect man—such is the design, such are the 
 principal steps, of the divine scheme. Each of these 
 phases is marked by a series of miracles distinct from 
 the others in their nature, and loftier in character as 
 the work is which they accomplish. It is ours now to 
 discover and to claim for ourselves those which are 
 proper to the age in which we find ourselves placed, 
 that so we may be fitted to enter into the perfect state 
 
 in which it is to culminate. 
 
V. 
 
 THE PERFECT HOLINESS OF 
 JESUS CHRIST. 
 
MW 
 THE PERFECT HOLINESS OF JESUS CHRIST: 
 
 hee Supernatural in its highest form is not the 
 miraculous, it is holiness. In the miraculous 
 
 we see Omnipotence breaking forth to act upon the 
 material world in the interests of the moral order. 
 But holiness is morality itself in its sublimest manitfes- 
 tation. 
 
 What is goodness? It has recently been said, with 
 a precision which leaves nothing to be desired, “ Good- 
 ness is not an entity—a thing. It is a law determining 
 the relations between things,—relations which have to 
 be realized by free wills.’ . 
 
 Perfect good is therefore the realization, at once 
 normal and free, of the right relations to one another 
 of all beings; each being occupying, by virtue of this 
 relation, that place in the great whole, and playing 
 that part in it, which befits it. 
 
 Now, just as in a human family there is one central 
 
 1 Ernest Naville, Le Probléme du Mal, p. 17. 
 
 217 
 
218 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 relation on which all the rest depend,—that of the 
 father to all the members of this little whole——so is 
 
 there in the universe one supreme position which is 
 the support of all the rest, and which, in the interest 
 of all beings, must be above all others preserved intact 
 —that of God. And just here, in the general sphere 
 of good, is the special domain of holiness, 
 
 Holiness in God Himself is His fixed determination 
 to maintain intact the order which ought to reign 
 among all beings that exist, and to bring them to 
 realize that relation to each other which ought to bind 
 them together in a great unity; and consequently to 
 preserve above all intact, and in its proper dignity, His 
 own position relatively to free beings. The holiness 
 of God thus understood, comprehends two things: the 
 impartation of all the wealth of His own divine life 
 to each free being who is willing to acknowledge His 
 sovereignty, and who sincerely acquiesces in it; and 
 the withholding or the withdrawal of that perfect life 
 from every being who either attacks or denies that 
 sovereignty, and who seeks to shake off that bond 
 of dependence by which he ought to be bound to 
 God. 
 
 Holiness in the creature is its own voluntary ac- 
 
 quiescence in the supremacy of God. The man who 
 
The Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 219 
 
 with all the powers of his nature does homage to God 
 as the supreme, the absolute Being, the only One who 
 veritably is; the man who in His presence voluntarily 
 prostrates himself in the sense of his own nothingness, 
 and seeks to draw all his fellow-creatures into the 
 same voluntary self-annihilation, in so doing puts on 
 the character of holiness. 
 
 This holiness comprehends in him, as it does in 
 God, love and righteousness ; love by which he rejoices 
 in recognising God and all beings who surround God 
 as placed where they are by Him—he loves them and 
 wills their existence, because he loves and wills the 
 existence of God, and, at the same time, of all that 
 God wills and loves; and righteousness, by which he 
 respects and, as much asin him lies, causes others to 
 respect God, and the sphere assigned by God to each 
 being. Such is holiness as it exists in God and in 
 man; in God it is His own inflexible self-assertion ; 
 in man it is his inflexible assertion of God. 
 
 This supreme form of virtue was wanting to the 
 heathen. The Divine Being was not so understood by 
 them as to occupy so high a place in their conscious- 
 ness. Their gods were not worthy to stand in such a 
 relation to man. In Israel there existed a presenti- 
 
 ment and imperfect realization of holiness. For Jehovah 
 
220 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 was recognised among them as the Being of Beings, 
 and man was able to annihilate himself in humility 
 before Him. But it never was realized but in Jesus 
 Christ, and it is, indeed, only from His person and 
 life that we gather our ideal of holiness. It is in 
 Jesus that human nature sees how man can assert 
 God, and all that God asserts, not only humbly, but 
 joyously and filially, with all the powers of. his being, 
 and even to the complete sacrifice of himself. 
 
 In Christ, man, by the voluntary annihilation and 
 consecration of himself, became a medium so trans- 
 parent that the glory of God could shine forth in it to 
 perfection. It is in this way that the life of Christ 
 was the advent of the kingdom of God. 
 
 But a question presents itself—Did this self- 
 consecration of Himself to God by Jesus Christ really 
 take place perfectly? Did no alloy of human imper- 
 fection, sin, egoism, evil desires, pride, impatience, 
 mingle with it? Did it continue perfect through 
 every moment of His life, from the cradle to the 
 grave? Was the body of Jesus always kept completely 
 subject to His soul? and His soul, with its various 
 faculties, always completely subject to the spirit, — 
 that higher faculty through which man holds fellowship 
 with God, and voluntarily subordinates himself to 
 
The Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 221 
 
 Him ?—This is the question we have now to consider ; 
 it is fundamental for Christianity. If the answer is 
 in the negative, Christ differs from us only in degree, 
 and we are called to live dike, not by Him. If in the 
 affirmative, His condition differs specifically from ours ; 
 and in order that we may be able to be like Him, we 
 must first be i Him, and derive our life from 
 Him. 
 
 Three objections are raised against this fundamental 
 point of the Christian faith :— 
 
 I. The perfect holiness of Christ is incapable of 
 proof, because neither we nor any of those who lived 
 with Him, have been able to read His heart deeply 
 enough to know if everything in it was always 
 in perfect accordance with the law of right. The 
 adversaries of our faith even cite some words and 
 some acts in the life of Jesus, from which they think 
 they can infer that He, like others, was not free from 
 sin. 
 
 II. Granting that the perfect holiness of Christ 
 could by some means be proved, it is objected that a 
 state of being so sublime would be something super- 
 human, and that this perfect Jesus would no longer be 
 a true man. 
 
 III Such a holiness, specifically different from 
 
222 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 ours, were it real, would be unprofitable to us, since it 
 could be no model for us to copy, being at a height 
 inaccessible to our weakness. 
 
 In view of these objections, my task will be to 
 inquire with you— 
 
 I. Whether the perfect holiness of Jesus Christ 
 cannot be in our day perfectly proved. 
 
 II. Whether, perfect as it is, it does not still remain, 
 none the less, a haman holiness. 
 
 III. Whether, as such, it is not still, nevertheless, 
 
 accessible to each of us. 
 
 I. Are we qualified, asks M. Pécaut, to pronounce 
 upon the perfection of one of our fellow-creatures, 
 when we do not know all the particulars of his life, 
 and cannot see to the bottom of his heart?.... The 
 difficulty becomes greater when the object of our 
 examination is a historic personage separated from us 
 by eighteen centuries." M. Pécaut goes further; he 
 affirms that we are able to establish, even in the small 
 portion of His life which is known to us, the existence 
 of real moral imperfections. For instance, at the age 
 of twelve years, He pleads as an excuse for His having 
 allowed His parents to leave Jerusalem alone, that He 
 
 1 Le Christ et la Conscience, p. 237. 
 
The Perfect Floliness of Fesus Christ. 223 
 
 must be about His Father’s business, which implies 
 some want of obedience to His parents. At thirty 
 years old He allows Himself to be baptized by John 
 with the baptism of repentance, which sufficiently 
 proves that He did not feel Himself completely free 
 from the malady of sin under which we all suffer. 
 Soon after, He drives the buyers and sellers out of the 
 Temple with a scourge of small cords,—which, it is 
 asserted, is evidence of a certain degree of passion. 
 He refuses, on one occasion, to one of His disciples, 
 permission to go and bury his father, saying to him, 
 “Let the dead bury their dead.” Is not this a want 
 of recognition of the sacred bonds of the family ? 
 When He allowed the Gadarene devils to precipitate 
 the herd of swine into the sea, did He not dispose of 
 the property of another? Is there not harshness in 
 the way in which He answers the woman of Canaan, 
 when He calls her a dog compared with the Jews, 
 whom He classes with the children of the house? At - 
 Gethsemane it is difficult not to see in His words a 
 certain deficiency of submissiveness with regard to the 
 sufferings that await Him. In His cry, “My God, 
 my God,” on the Cross, is there not something like a 
 failure of faith? Did not He Himself answer the 
 young man who called to Him, “ Good Master ;” “Why 
 
224 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 callest thou me good? there is none good but One, 
 that is, God” ?—a saying which implies that He did 
 not feel Himself to be perfect. 
 
 We shall begin by examining these particular facts, 
 before proceeding to the general question. 
 
 When Jesus found Himself for the first time in 
 Jerusalem at the age of twelve years, it was easy for 
 Him to become separated, by no fault of His own, 
 from His parents ;—for the children formed a sort of 
 troop or choir by themselves, and did not always stay 
 with their parents. Jesus, replying to His mother, 
 who had just found Him again, did not say to her, 
 “JT stayed here because I must be about my Father’s 
 business,” but, “How is it that ye sought me? wist 
 ye not that I must be about my Father’s business ? ” 
 or, more literally, “in my Father’s house?” This 
 was His reply to this saying of Mary’s, “Son, why 
 hast Thou thus dealt with us? behold, Thy father and 
 I have sought Thee sorrowing.” Jesus meant, then, 
 “You would not have sought me so long and with so 
 much anxiety, you would have come straight hither, 
 had you remembered that a child should be found in 
 his father’s house.” One must not consider the saying 
 of Jesus apart from that of His mother. 
 
 The baptism of Jesus was so far from a confession 
 
Lhe Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 225 
 
 of sinfulness on His part, that immediately after St. 
 John the Baptist had conversed with Him, as he was 
 in the habit of doing with all those who came to him 
 for baptism,’ John said to Him, “I have need to be 
 baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?” Was not 
 this to say, clearly enough, that Jesus had at that very 
 moment been manifested to him in all His holiness, 
 and as worthy, on account of His own personal charac- 
 ter, even as compared with him, to fulfil that office 
 which he, John, only performed by virtue of a divine 
 commission, but of which he felt himself to be per- 
 sonally unworthy ? And when, soon after the baptism 
 of Jesus, the same John the Baptist cried, on seeing 
 Him come to him, “Behold the Lamb of God, which 
 taketh away the sin of the world,” ? does he not then, 
 too, bear witness to His perfect personal holiness ? 
 How else could he think Him able to effect the 
 purification of humanity? This salvation of the world 
 is precisely the work to which He dedicates Himsel 
 by His baptism. In this solemn act He places in 
 the hand of John, as God’s messenger, the solemn 
 
 engagement, not to purify Himself, but to purify 
 
 1 «And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins,” S. 
 Matt. iii. 6. 
 
 2 St. John i. 29, 
 
 See 
 
226 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 the world, even at the cost of His death, of which 
 that immersion in the water was the figure and the 
 pledge. 
 
 | Jesus in the Temple made a scourge of small cords ; 
 | but, as the context shows, only to make use of it on 
 the lower animals, not on human beings; He used it 
 only as a symbol of His power and an emblem of 
 judgment. Do, then, the objectors hold that He 
 should have pushed the oxen out of the temple courts 
 with His hand? Jesus is so completely master of 
 Himself, that in dealing with those who sold doves, 
 instead of overturning their cages, He simply orders 
 them to take them out of the sacred precincts. We 
 cannot, as Keim remarks, find fault with this act, 
 which might have been, and ought to have heen, the 
 inauguration of His reign, except by denying that holy 
 anger is a divine attribute.’ 
 
 There occur in human life decisive moments, in 
 which the issues of eternity hang as it were on a 
 thread. Such was that in which Jesus said to a 
 certain man, “Let the dead bury their dead: but go 
 thou and preach the kingdom of God.” Jesus was 
 
 then leaving Galilee never to return.” He saw plainly 
 
 1 Der geschichtliche Christus, p. 111. 
 2 St. Luke ix. 60 compared with ver. 51. 
 
 a ae ee es 
 
Lhe Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ, 227 
 
 that for this man to hold back at that moment would 
 be for him to perish. Ag one might say to a defender 
 of his country, who, in a time of danger, should hesi- 
 tate to go out against the enemy: “Run to the front 
 at once ;” so in the name of a cause higher even than 
 that of patriotism,—that of the kingdom of God,—of 
 salvation,—He alls upon this man to follow Him. 
 When salvation is at stake, the saving of the soul 
 must overrule “ convenance.” 
 
 By keeping herds of swine, the dwellers in the 
 country to the east of the Lake of Gennesareth were 
 adopting a way of living in flagrant contradiction with 
 the law which forbade to Jews the eating of the flesh 
 of those animals. The loss inflicted upon them was, 
 therefore, only a just punishment of their disloyalty. 
 Jesus appears here again in His character of Messiah, 
 as Lord and Judge. If He has authority to send back 
 the devils into the deep, so must He have authority 
 to make use of that miracle of healing, for the pur- 
 pose of reawakening, by a chastisement suited to the 
 offence, the paralysed conscience of a large part of the 
 nation, whose salvation is committed to His care. 
 
 The harshness of Jesus to the woman of Canaan is 
 but apparent. It hides, as go often do the refusals 
 with which God meets our requests, the greatest love, 
 
228 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 This woman was by birth a pagan ; and it would have 
 been a direct infringement on the part of Jesus of the 
 commission He had received from His Father to 
 extend His ministry to pagans during His life on 
 earth. It was not till after His death and resur- 
 rection that Jesus, no longer limited to His earthly 
 nationality, was to give Himself to the whole world. 
 It was for that reason that from the first He made 
 answer to this Canaanitish woman, when she prayed 
 for a miraculous cure for her daughter, “I am not sent 
 but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ To 
 heal was in His mind to preach. For His acts of 
 healing were not with Him simple acts of mercy and 
 charity. They always stood in the closest relation 
 to the work of founding the kingdom of God. Now 
 Israel was that divinely prescribed sphere within 
 which His ministry of preaching was to be confined." 
 But He soon found Himself forced to recognise in the 
 faith of this woman a plant which the hand of His 
 Father had planted. And then He determined to 
 grant her prayer. Only in order to make her under- 
 stand the immense condescension of which she was 
 the object, and in order that she might receive the 
 
 gift of God with a gratitude as exceptional as the 
 
 1 St. John xii. 20 compared with vv. 24 and 32. 
 
Lhe Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 229 
 
 gift itself would be, He described to her in a word 
 the true state of things. It was not then in order 
 arbitrarily to humiliate her that He compared her to 
 the dogs, but in order to make her feel that there 
 was indeed matter for her astonishment and gratitude. 
 God alters His course of action for her, a poor pagan 
 woman ! 
 
 Never was a profounder or holier expression of 
 submission pronounced by the mouth of a man than 
 that prayer in Gethsemane which scandalizes M. 
 Pécaut: “If it be possible, let this cup pass from 
 me!” It is, in the first place, the simple and naive 
 expression of natural feeling. Was not Jesus truly 
 man? Must not physical and moral pain have been 
 as repugnant to Him as it is to us? But such 
 repugnance is not rebellion. It is simply the opposite 
 of fanatical insensibility. Sin would begin from the 
 moment in which the feeling of repugnance against 
 this fearful suffering emancipated itself in the least 
 degree from submission to the divine will, or in 
 which the voice of Nature should allow itself to say, 
 or to whisper,—not, “I could wish,’ which is the cry 
 of filial submission,—but, “I will,” which would be 
 the cry of revolt. 
 
 But this limit Jesus did not cross. He, on the 
 
230 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 contrary, compelled His human nature, shuddering, as 
 was permissible, at the work before Him, to submit 
 itself to the yoke of obedience; and thus sets before 
 us an example of submission the more complete in 
 proportion as it is truly painful. The more Nature 
 resists, the more is holiness manifested. 
 
 One saying of our Lord will probably occupy our 
 thoughts often and through long periods in the future 
 life, an expression which the angels, according to the 
 words of St. Peter, desire to look into: “My God, 
 
 my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” M. Pécaut 
 | sees in it a failure of faith, When we shall have 
 explored to the bottom the mystery of atonement, of 
 the Christ made a curse for us, we shall be able more 
 | fitly to judge of this point. Meantime, this “why” 
 is rather a revelation of a consciousness which searches 
 its depths in vain,—which cannot discover there the 
 memory of any personal fault, which could afford a 
 eround for so marvellous an abandonment. Such a 
 “why,” asked in the midst of such a judgment, implies 
 a conscience as pure as that of a little child. 
 
 Jesus refused to be called “good,” and expressly 
 reserved that title for God only. But when He used 
 this language, Jesus was still in the midst of the battle 
 of life; He had still before Him—and He knew it— 
 
Lhe Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 231 
 
 the greatest of His trials. How should He have 
 appropriated to Himself a title which, in its absolute 
 sense, expressed for Him the goal which He had still 
 to reach? The word “good” in its full meaning is 
 not applicable to Him who has not yet sinned, but 
 to Him who cannot sin. Now Jesus, according to 
 the passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, was only 
 made perfect by His last sufferings. It was at Geth- 
 semane and at Golgotha that He learned obedience to 
 perfection." His holiness, therefore, full though it 
 was of humility, saturated with the spirit of watchful- 
 ness, refused a title which it could not yet accept 
 fully and securely. 
 
 It would be useless to carry further this discussion 
 of matters of detail, which M. Keim well characterized 
 when he said, “MM. Pécaut and Renan make painful 
 efforts to extract from the records of this life some 
 appearance of the stain of human imperfections.”* No 
 positive result can be reached by this road, because we 
 are in part ignorant of the circumstances which, in 
 each of these cases, may have influenced the conduct 
 of Jesus. Let us ascend, then, to the general question. 
 It may appear at first sight insoluble; and yet it 
 
 1 Heb. ii. 10, vv. 8 and 9. 
 * Keim, Der geschichtliche Ohristus, p. 111. 
 
a ae 
 
 232 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 seems to me that we possess, just on this point, some 
 data sufficiently positive to enable us to reach a certain 
 result. 
 
 Who could ever have believed that we should one 
 day arrive at measuring the distances which separate 
 the earth from the moon, the sun, the fixed stars, 
 without leaving the surface of our globe? We have, 
 however, succeeded in doing so. It has sufficed to 
 measure upon the soil of the earth a base and two 
 angles, and the problem has been solved with all the 
 rigour of mathematical evidence. We shall be able to 
 obtain a result no less certain with regard to the 
 problem which is now before us, by analogous means. 
 By the help of two undeniable facts and of a principle 
 which connects them, we shall succeed in establishing 
 the perfect holiness of Christ. 
 
 The first of the two facts to which we refer is the 
 relative holiness of Jesus. Even those who dispute 
 the perfection of Jesus, do not deny that He was one 
 of the best, if not absolutely the best, among men. 
 
 We may here adduce the testimonies of the 
 contemporaries of Jesus, which, though no doubt 
 insufficient to demonstrate His absolute holiness, are 
 nevertheless enough to prove His relative purity and 
 goodness. The declaration of Pilate, His judge: “I 
 
The Perfect Holwness of Fesus Christ. 233 
 
 find no fault in this man;” the confession of His 
 companion on Calvary: “ We, indeed, receive the due 
 reward of our deeds ; but this man hath done nothing 
 amiss;” the exclamation of the Roman centurion, who 
 had presided at His execution: “ Certainly this was a 
 righteous man;” the cry of despair of the treacherous 
 disciple who had delivered Him up: “I have betrayed 
 the innocent blood,’—all these words tell us clearly 
 enough the impression which Jesus had produced upon 
 all those who had been brought into contact with Him. 
 
 We know also the impression made by His life 
 upon His nearest companions, who had observed Him 
 closely during three years. One of them calls Him 
 simply “Jesus Christ the righteous ;”’ another: “The 
 Lamb without blemish and without spot.” ? 
 
 Their loyalty to Him, which they retain unto death, 
 the place of Mediator and Advocate which they attri- 
 bute to Him between the holy God and their sinful 
 souls, prove that in their eyes Jesus was at any rate 
 the best of men, a man without sin. They had not 
 seen all, it is true; their sight had not penetrated 
 into the secret intents of the heart; but this im- 
 pression, which was produced upon them all, does 
 leave no room to doubt the eminent moral qualities of 
 
 1} John ii. 1. 2 he Pete 1219) 
 
234 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 the life and the heart of Jesus. His teaching even, 
 the ideal of purity which is therein set before us, the 
 law of charity which it inculcates, are also a demon- 
 stration of the personal character of Him who can so 
 speak. None but a good heart can reveal good in a 
 manner so admirable. This is the acknowledgment 
 made by Strauss himself, the greatest adversary whom 
 Christianity has encountered in our time, and which 
 he sets forth in the following words. After recalling 
 that sublime passage in the Sermon on the Mount, in 
 which Jesus portrays the heavenly Father making 
 His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and 
 sending rain on the just and on the unjust, he adds: 
 “This intuition of a God good to all, Jesus could only 
 have drawn out of His own being; it could only have 
 emanated out of that universal benevolence which was 
 the fundamental characteristic of His own nature, and 
 by which He felt Himself in perfect harmony with 
 God. To be able, like God Himself, to stand firm 
 against the irritation which is produced by wickedness, 
 to conquer an enemy only by conferring benefits upon 
 him, and to overcome evil only with good,—these were 
 principles of conduct which He derived from the 
 disposition of His own heart. He pictured God to 
 Himself such as He felt Himself to be in the best 
 
Lhe Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 235 
 
 moments of His life. The dominant feature of His 
 character was the love which embraces all creatures, 
 and He makes of that the fundamental characteristic 
 of the Divine Essence.” ? 
 
 The same author says again, in the chapter with 
 which he concludes his work: “Every person. of 
 eminent moral character, every thinker. who has 
 occupied himself with the subject of the moral acti- 
 vity of man, has contributed, within a circle more or 
 less extended, to purify, to complete, to develope, 
 the moral ideal. Among the personages to whom 
 humanity owes the perfecting of its moral consciousness, 
 Jesus occupies, at any rate, the foremost rank. He 
 introduced into our ideal of good some features which 
 were wanting to it up to His time. By the religious 
 tendency which He imprinted upon morality, He 
 endowed it with a higher consecration; and by incar-: 
 nating goodness in His own person, He communicated 
 to it a living warmth. In regard to everything which 
 concerns the love of God and of our neighbour, to 
 purity of heart and to the life of the individual man, 
 nothing can be added to that moral intuition which 
 has been bequeathed to us by Jesus Christ.” ” 
 
 You see that if I call Jesus one of the best of men, 
 
 1 Leben Jesu, 1864, pp. 206, 207. 2 Ubi supra, p. 625 et seq. 
 
236 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 I am not open to the suspicion of partiality. The 
 avowals of Strauss, which I have just cited, could only 
 have been extorted from him by the irresistible force 
 of historic truth. | 
 
 This is the fact which we take for our starting- 
 point ; for its truth is granted by the most decided 
 adversary of the gospel: Jesus was eminently good. 
 But between this quality and that of perfect holiness, 
 there remains still undoubtedly a vast chasm. This 
 chasm—shall we be able to cross it? Yes, we shall ; 
 and it is a principle to which moral experience has 
 led us, which will serve us for a bridge in so doing. 
 The principle is this: The holier a man is, the clearer 
 is his perception of moral evil. The nearer he lives 
 to God, the more does he recognise, the more vividly 
 does he become conscious of that which separates him 
 from God. 
 
 At every step forward which we make in good, our 
 inner tact becomes more sagacious in detecting sin, 
 and our heart more honest in deploring it. You can, 
 all of you, verify every moment this law of our moral 
 life. A child accustomed to lying, lies without being — 
 any longer conscious of it, and without feeling any 
 remorse for it; whereas, in the case of a truthful 
 
 child, a first lie imprints itself like a red-hot iron on 
 
The Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 237 
 
 the conscience and leaves a deep scar. A girl who is 
 light-minded, and thinks only of her pleasures, is a 
 disappointment to her mother all day long by her 
 conduct and her talk; and yet she would be quite 
 surprised if some one who observed her were to tell 
 her at night that she had been blameworthy ; whilst a 
 conscientious girl who had fallen into some slight act 
 of inconsiderateness, or a somewhat hasty word to one 
 of her companions, which no one else would have 
 even noticed, will shed bitter tears in solitude, and 
 will not forgive herself. 
 
 The more honourable is a man of business, the 
 deeper is the uneasiness he feels under the conscious- 
 ness of the smallest act of injustice into which he 
 may have been betrayed ; whilst the most dishonourable 
 speculations will not cost a sigh to the man who has 
 begun to allow himself in transgressing without scruple 
 the boundaries of common honesty. A man who has 
 made progress in holy living will not fail to take 
 notice of a sinful thought, or a movement of self-love, 
 which may pass across his soul; whilst one at a lower 
 stage of spiritual progress will live from morning to 
 night under the inspiration of pride, of jealousy, or of 
 some other criminal passion, without even a suspicion 
 that so it is. 
 
238 Lectures tn Defence of the Christian Fazth. 
 
 On a dress which was dirty to begin with, a 
 thousand stains may escape notice; whilst on a 
 perfectly clean one the slightest spot draws attention. 
 Strauss has himself expressed this law in the following 
 words: “In proportion as man makes progress towards 
 moral perfection, the instinctive sense by which he 
 
 is detects in himself the slightest deviations from such 
 
 perfection becomes more and more acute.” ? 
 
 4 
 vt 
 ‘SY with reference to the subject now before us? It 
 
 What would be the natural result of this principle 
 
 / \ ~? would be, that if Jesus was one of the best, or actually 
 As the best of men, He must have perceived in Himself, 
 ___Xwmore clearly than any one else could, the smallest 
 
 ae / fault, if any fault really existed. In vain would sin 
 
 ‘8 
 
 ie > have concealed itself within the deepest folds of his 
 2 heart, in vain would it have been reduced in such a 
 ‘ vex “heart to the feeblest minimum; still that conscience, 
 2 4 -! delicate and perspicacious above all others, would not 
 <3 j Ny -have failed to have detected it as it passed, and that 
 SS x } “}sensitive and filial heart would have suffered under 
 os “A eS ‘that consciousness to a degree in which ours does not, 
 
 even under the greatest sins. 
 Well,—and here we have the other fact upon which 
 we rest our case: Do we find such a state of feeling 
 
 1 Op. cit. p. 195. 
 
The Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 239 
 
 revealed in the life and in the words of Jesus? Does 
 
 He ever accuse Himself of the smallest sin. Do you 
 | ever see fall from His eyes one of those tears of 
 penitence which have bedewed the cheeks of the 
 greatest saints of the Old Testament times, and which 
 to this day have not ceased to flow from the eyes of 
 the most fervent Christians? Do you ever see Jesus 
 smiting upon His breast, crying, like the publican, 
 “God be merciful to me, a sinner”? TI hear St. Paul 
 exclaim with sorrow: “The good that I would I do 
 not; but the evil which I would not, that I do;—who 
 shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Can 
 your ear catch a single note of this kind in the words 
 of Jesus ? 
 
 Socrates, the wisest and best of men outside the 
 people of Israel, seeing his disciples deriding a 
 physiognomist who affirmed himself to have discovered 
 in his face indications of all the vices, told them that 
 he had in fact in his heart the germs of all these evil 
 inclinations :—did ever any confession at all analogous 
 to this break from the lips of Jesus Christ 21 
 
 No, the cries of a contrite heart are completely 
 foreign to His being. Could it be that He was igno- 
 rant of that which His disciple, St. Paul, knew so 
 
 1 Cicero, De Fato, c. 5. 
 
240 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 well,—that sin exists in man chiefly in lust,—in the 
 secret movements of the heart,—and that He allowed 
 Himself to be caught in the snare of the Pharisees,— 
 that of resting contented in a righteousness merely 
 external? So far from it, that it is He who uttered 
 those ineffaceable sentences, according to which a 
 single impure glance is equivalent to a beginning of 
 adultery ; a movement of anger, a word of scorn, to a 
 beginning of murder; a sacramental affirmation, added 
 without necessity to the simple yes or no, to a first 
 movement of perjury. Is it not He, again, who makes 
 us recognise in an act of ostentation, of self-exaltation, 
 an abomination in the sight of God, and in a lie an 
 act of homage to the diabolic power? Or will any 
 one perhaps say that, understanding to the degree in 
 which He did the goodness of God, He did not charge 
 upon Himself as sins imperfections which He knew 
 would be immediately forgiven Him? But if so, why 
 did He blame others so severely for that which He 
 blamed so little in Himself ? 
 
 You see how Jesus judged of sin. He who un- 
 veiled it to the sight of the world in its most spiritual 
 and subtile forms, and who, by so doing, has over- 
 turned once and for ever upon earth the throne of 
 
 Pharisaism, never dreams of accusing Himself of it. 
 
Lhe Perfect Floliness of Fesus Christ. 241 
 
 He speaks of sin.—He is always speaking of it,—but 
 never as of something which belonged to Himself. 
 alive, He says, “ being evil ;” not: “If we, being” so. 
 Or again, “Ye”—not we—‘“must be born again.” 
 Or consider this: “When ye pray, say, Our Father, 
 which art in heaven, .. . forgive us our trespasses ;” but 
 never does He say, “ Father, forgive me,’ or utter es 
 exclamation at all similar to this. Further still, He 
 once threw out this challenge to the Jews: “ Which of 
 you convinceth me of sin?” No doubt the silence 
 of His hearers under’ that question proves nothing ; 
 they might not know of the secret faults, the inward 
 sins, of Him who thus challenged them. But the 
 question itself asked by Jesus proves much—proves all. 
 How, with a conscience so delicately sensitive as His, 
 could He, if He had felt Himself burdened with the 
 smallest sin, have, without hypocrisy, put to others a 
 question which, as between Himself and God, He must 
 have, answered in a manner different from them, and 
 triumphed nevertheless in their silence ? 
 
 It is in the same sense of His own perfect sinlegs- 
 ness that, addressing the women of Jerusalem on His 
 way to the Cross, He uttered this piercing saying: “If 
 they do these things in a green tree, what shall be 
 
 done in the dry?” which can only mean, “If the 
 Q 
 
2 
 | 
 | 
 
 | 
 | 242 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 | | bes vg judgment of God weighs so heavily upon the righteous, 
 
 | 
 
 | acanuly u uae what a weight will it not one day fall upon 
 1 eerie “Sinners !” 
 
 if ao Not only does He feel Himself guiltless of any 
 OA Ue reprehensible act, of any culpable or even idle word, 
 | ape of every sinful feeling, of every evil desire which may 
 | i defile the heart, of every wish opposed to the divine 
 will; but He has the certain consciousness of never - 
 having neglected the good which He was called to do, 
 or been guilty of the smallest omission in the fulfil- 
 ment of the task which had been entrusted to Him by 
 His Father. “I have glorified Thee on the earth,” He 
 says, at the moment at which all other mortals breathe 
 a sigh to heaven in memory of a life which contains so 
 many moments, if not sinfully misused, yet at least 
 wasted,—*“ I have finished the work which Thou gavest 
 me to do.” At these supreme moments His consola- 
 tion is this: “My Father has not left me alone, because 
 
 I do always such things as please Him.” 
 
 As He draws nigh to Gethsemane, there to meet that 
 invisible foe of whose approach He is already conscious 
 in Himself, He utters the words, “The prince of this 
 world cometh, and hath nothing in me.” Such was 
 the consciousness which Jesus had respecting Himself. 
 
 1St. John xvii. 4, xvi, 32, viii. 29. 
 
 __- - 
 Se 
 
Lhe Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 243 
 
 This consciousness of Jesus is indeed, as says Keim, 
 the only one without a scar in the whole history of 
 mankind. In presence of this unprecedented moral fact, 
 we have but two alternatives open to us: either Jesus 
 is in reality a perfect saint, as His consciousness testi- 
 fies, or else He is the blindest and most hardened of 
 mankind, since His consciousness has not made Him 
 aware of the most elementary fact of moral life,—the 
 fact of which every child is already inwardly aware, 
 even before his attention is drawn to it,—the presence 
 of sin in him. Between these two alternatives we 
 shall not, I imagine, find it difficult to decide. 
 
 Do not free-thinkers themselves recognise in Jesus 
 one of the most moral men whom the earth has 
 produced? They themselves, therefore, absolutely 
 exclude the second alternative, and in conformity with 
 those laws of logic to which free thought, free though 
 it be, holds itself bound to submit, they have no choice 
 but to grant to us the first alternative, and to say with 
 us, the morally miraculous is here before us,—Jesus 
 was absolutely holy, 
 
 The result to which we are led by these testimonies 
 of the consciousness of Christ is altogether in harmony 
 with the nature of the mission with which He claims 
 
 to be charged to the human race. He calls Himself 
 
244 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 the physician of humanity, sent to those who are sick ; 
 could He have been so, had He been sick Himself ? 
 He calls to Him those who are “ weary and heavy- 
 laden,” and promises to give them rest; could He do 
 so, if He did not feel Himself free from the burden 
 which was oppressing them? He came to seek and to 
 save, “that which was lost ;” how could He fulfil that 
 mission had He been lost Himself ?—unless we will 
 say that none are really lost, which would annul from 
 another side the testimony of Christ respecting the 
 moral condition of mankind. 
 
 He is not only the physician of sick humanity, He 
 is the victim whose blood makes atonement for it. 
 “He came,” He says Himself, “to give His life a 
 ransom for many.”? Could He do so had He needed to 
 be Himself ransomed? <A few hours before His death, 
 He utters this sacramental saying, “This is my blood, 
 shed for the remission of sins.” The law would accept 
 no victims but such as were without blemish and 
 without spot. Would Jesus have thought it per- 
 missible to offer Himself upon the altar of atonement, 
 had He discerned in Himself the smallest taint of 
 sin? To claim for Himself the office of a victim 
 offered for the sins of the world, while not conscious 
 
 St. Luke xxi. 36:4 
 
The Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 245 
 
 of perfect holiness, would have been the extreme of 
 madness, 
 
 But how can I say the extreme? There would have 
 been in His life a height of madness stranger still. 
 Jesus announces in many of His discourses that He 
 will return to judge the world, and to bring all man- 
 kind before His bar. “ Watch,’ He says, “and pray 
 always, that ye may be able to ... stand before the 
 Son of man. * 
 
 He claims for Himself this office of judge of the 
 world in that very Sermon on the Mount which, 
 the free-thinkers affirm, contains the whole of His 
 teaching. Itis there that we read, “ Not every one that 
 saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven. ... Many will say to me in that day, 
 Lord, Lord, have we not done many wonderful works 
 in Thy name? and then will I profess unto them, I 
 never knew you: depart from me, ye that work 
 iniquity.” ? 
 
 And He who thus represents Himself as the repre- 
 sentative of the holiness of God, and the organ of the 
 perfect righteousness in the solemn scene of the uni- 
 versal judgment, is it conceivable that He should not 
 
 have felt Himself clear from all sin? Would not the 
 
 1 St. Luke xxi, 36. 2 St. Matthew vi. 21-23. 
 
246 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 sentence have died upon the lips of the judge whose 
 conscience convicted Himself of sin? Taking His 
 place once more in the ranks of the creatures from 
 whom scarce a shade of difference distinguished Him, 
 would He not, instead of passing judgment upon them, 
 have rather said to them, “ Let us together fall on our 
 knees and pray for forgiveness!” Once more logic 
 claims its rights, to which free thought is compelled 
 to submit. Either, it affirms, Jesus must be insane, 
 or He is perfectly holy.’ Let us conclude this division 
 of the subject with these words of Keim, the author of 
 the most recent and most learned book upon the life 
 of Jesus: “ Any one who has given himself to the 
 contemplation of the words and acts of our Lord 
 receives from it irresistibly this impression,—here we 
 
 have before us a conscience which has never felt the 
 
 1 We are aware of the attempts which have been made to explain 
 away by critical devices and hypotheses the words in which Jesus 
 declares Himself the Judge of all men. But when this has been done, 
 we shall still have to get rid of the words in which He declares Himself 
 the Victim, the Physician, the Saviour of mankind ; and then those in 
 which He testifies to His own moral perfection. And what will then 
 be left to account for the faith of the apostles and the foundation of 
 the Church,—to say nothing of the entire arbitrariness of the critical 
 methods by which these excisions have been effected? An imaginary 
 Jesus, such as is demanded by the hypothesis, is first drawn, then the 
 documents are treated like a piece of cloth, to be cut and hacked to a 
 required shape, and thus the teaching of Jesus is brought out in con- 
 formity with the desired pattern. And then men say: There is the 
 history. Is not this a true feat of legerdemain ? 
 
The Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 247 
 
 sting of the sense of guilt. And this is not a case of 
 a moralist of a low or easy standard of morality. Oh, 
 no! it is He who branded with the character of sin a 
 bare look—an idle word—and, behind the veil of the 
 outward actions, all impurity of the heart and motives. 
 He sternly rebuked His age; He made His disciples 
 blush for their weaknesses ; He made them pray for 
 the forgiveness of their sins. But He, the man of the 
 most absorbing vocation, of the vastest mission, He 
 who was called upon every day to make His sublime 
 spirit bend to the requirements of the engagement by 
 which He had bound Himself to a life of humility and 
 of self-renunciation, of gentle endurance, and of silent 
 submission,—He never prayed for pardon for Himself, 
 not even at Gethsemane or Golgotha. He walks with 
 perfect constancy in the sunshine of the paternal love 
 of God; He compels other men to believe in His 
 perfect goodness; He pronounces forgiveness upon 
 sinners in the name of God; He dies for them, and 
 ascends to heaven to take His place upon the judg- 
 ment-seat of the all-holy God.” * 
 
 II. But would it then be true to say that by thus 
 establishing the perfect holiness of Jesus Christ, we 
 
 1 Der geschichtliche Christus, p. 109 et seq. 
 
248 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 break the limit which binds Him to our humanity, 
 and that this characteristic which stamps Him with 
 such greatness in our eyes, takes away another 
 characteristic even more precious to our hearts,— 
 that by that very fact He becomes no longer one 
 of us, our brother, the Son of man, in the complete 
 sense of that expression ? 
 
 By no means; for this holiness, perfect as it is, 
 bears, none the less unmistakeably, stamps of humanity 
 such as distinguish it clearly from the holiness of 
 God. 
 
 1. The holiness of God is unchangeable; it is 
 incapable of growth. Like God Himself, it ¢s. 
 That of Jesus, on the other hand, rose step by step 
 till it reached the final perfection. Is it not said 
 of Him when a child, and again as a young man, 
 that He “increased in wisdom, and in favour with 
 God and man”? This apparent growth was not 
 a mere illusion; it was a profound moral reality, 
 since it is declared that this advance took place 
 not only in the sight of men, but in that of God too. 
 
 Does the thought perhaps occur to you, that this 
 idea of progress involves that of sin? No; it is 
 possible to grow in pure good, to ascend, like the 
 
 angels, without ever falling, up the luminous ladder 
 
The Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 249 
 
 which ascends to the divine glory. So was it that 
 Jesus grew. He took possession, in the name of His 
 Father, of the several domains of human life as they 
 opened one after another before Him; first, of that of 
 the family, which was the first to present itself 
 to Him, and which He pressed to His loving heart, 
 watering it with His infantine prayers and _ inter- 
 cessions; then at the age of adolescence, when the 
 sentiments of patriotism make their appearance 
 in a young and noble heart, of that of His nation, 
 which presented itself to Him in its entirety as 
 His family. His determination to labour at realizing 
 the great promises of which He was the depository, 
 henceforth became the vocation of His heart. Finally, 
 at the age of thirty, at the time of His baptism, 
 when He had reached the culminating-point of His 
 life, He saw opening before Him a domain vaster 
 still. The world itself was the field which he felt 
 it His vocation to cultivate by His words, to water 
 with His blood, and to fructify to the glory of God 
 by His spirit. 
 
 Thus did love grow in Him, thus devotion 
 developed itself in the heart of Jesus, but without 
 there having ever existed in Him any germ of 
 
 hatred needing to be extirpated, any egotistic 
 
250 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 inclination needing to be rooted out. To open 
 His heart, with ever-growing sympathy, to the ever 
 new creatures of God’s hand, whom His Father 
 presented to His love, till at last He felt the burthen 
 of the whole human race laid upon His heart, 
 conscious of having become its living centre,—such 
 was the form of development of which He was the 
 subject, one altogether positive, and of which the goal 
 was marked by His title of the Son of man, which he 
 adopted in preference to all others, and which He 
 drew out of the depths of the tenderest sympathy for 
 that human race whom He had made His family. 
 
 In proportion as the mission with which He was 
 entrusted for mankind revealed itself more distinctly 
 to His inward eye, He consecrated to its service 
 more and more exclusively His person and His 
 life. And in this we see another aspect of the 
 progress which was to take place in Him,—Jesus 
 -uttered in His last prayer this remarkable expression, 
 —which certainly no forger, above all no forger 
 putting arbitrarily into the mouth of his hero his 
 theory of the Logos, would ever have invented for 
 him: “I sanctify myself for their sakes.”! How, 
 
 it has often been asked, could He have been called 
 
 1St. John xvii. 19. 
 
The Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 251 
 
 upon to sanctify Himself, had He been in no way 
 defiled 2 The answer is, that to sanctify does not 
 mean to purify, but to consecrate. Holy is not to 
 be contrasted with impure, but with profane, ordinary, 
 unconsecrated, natural. Jesus sanctified Himself by 
 offering to God step by step all the elements of His 
 being, as they successively unfolded themselves; all 
 the faculties of His body and of His soul, as they 
 came into play; every domain of His existence, as 
 soon as He set His foot in it. 
 
 In His childhood He played, no doubt, like other 
 children; for “as our children are partakers of flesh 
 and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of 
 the same. ... He became like to His brethren 
 
 re) AL 
 
 in all things, yet without sin. But the sports of 
 childhood, without being in themselves impure, at 
 the same time do not reach to the nature of holiness. 
 The sportive faculties disappeared, later on in the 
 life of Jesus, as they generally do out of that of 
 every earnest man, in proportion as the greatness of 
 life’s work opens upon him. 
 
 This is an instance of the manner in which all 
 the activities of our nature, all the physical or moral 
 forces of our being, set themselves gradually in 
 
 2 Heb, ii, 14, 17,-iv. 15. 
 
252 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 Jesus to the service of that task into which He 
 grew, and successively received by means of this 
 free consecration the seal of holiness. It was by 
 this His ceaseless and free working upon Himself 
 (“I sanctify myself”) that He became, in the full 
 sense of that expression, the Holy One of God. 
 
 In this holiness of Jesus all is, if you will, divine, . 
 in this sense, that it is continually drawn from God, 
 the alone Good. But all is nevertheless human too, 
 inasmuch as that communion with God, which was 
 the source from which it flowed, was entered upon 
 by Jesus freely, and was maintained equally freely. 
 In himself, and without the fall, every man might 
 have developed himself in the same way. 
 
 2. The holiness of Jesus was human, not only 
 because it was subject to the law of progress, but 
 also because it had to submit to the still far heavier 
 law of temptation and of conflict. 
 
 Conflict—effort—have no place in God—* God can- 
 not be tempted of evil.”” But Jesus had a conflict to go 
 through. The wilderness and Gethsemane were two 
 fields of battle which the Church will not forget, and 
 which were watered by His sweat. They are not the 
 only ones.’ 
 
 1 Compare St. Luke xii. 50; St. John xii. 27. 
 
Lhe Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 253 
 
 Men ask in what way Jesus could have been 
 tempted, and go through a conflict, if He was without 
 sin. Do we not then know of any moral conflicts 
 save only such as are occasioned by sin? You 
 have, let us suppose, a taste for study, or you delight 
 in science. But being the elder brother in your 
 family, and having lost your parents, you have 
 younger brothers and sisters to educate; You are 
 called to forsake your books, and, by labour of quite 
 another kind, to earn a living for those whom 
 Providence has entrusted to your care. There is 
 a conflict to which you are called, but not between 
 moral good and evil, but between one kind of good, 
 of a lower order, and another of a higher order, that 
 of duty. You delight in the fine arts, and you give 
 yourself up wholly to the cultivation of the fine 
 talents with which you are yourself gifted. But your 
 native land is in danger from its enemies, and 
 demands the help of the strong right arms of her 
 children. You hear, in the distant country in which 
 you have lost yourself in the world of art, your 
 native land’s cry of distress. You have to leave the 
 scene of your first efforts and to rush to the field 
 of battle. Is there here no conflict,—not between 
 
 moral good and evil, but between two kinds of good, 
 
254 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith 
 
 which occupy different ranks ‘in the moral _hier- 
 archy ? 
 
 It is in this sense that Jesus, though without sin, 
 might be exposed to conflict, accessible to temptation. 
 He had the most generous instincts, the most dis- 
 tinguished gifts of mind. As a_ philosopher, He 
 would have surpassed Socrates; as an orator, have 
 eclipsed Demosthenes. The substance and the form 
 of His teaching both prove it. He had a heart 
 capable of enjoying, more deeply than any one else, 
 the tender affections of family life; and the high 
 inspirations of patriotism would have found in Him, 
 could He have given Himself up to them, the most 
 heroic organ for their exercise. It is enough to recall 
 His last words to His mother, and to the beloved 
 disciple, and His tears over Jerusalem, on the day of 
 His own triumphal entry! He had to suppress all 
 these innocent instincts of His nature, to hold in 
 check these noble impulses, to sacrifice these legiti- 
 mate indulgences of lawful inclinations, in order to 
 give Himself altogether to the task which had been 
 assigned to Him from on high, to His work as 
 Redeemer, offering, in His own person, to His Church 
 a pattern of what the expressions mean,—“ to cut off 
 the right hand,” “to pluck out the right eye,” “to give 
 
Lhe Perfect Floliness of Fesus Christ. 255 
 
 His life that He might take it again;” and just as 
 truly as ourselves, He felt physical sufferings, and 
 the sorrows and woundings of the heart. For love to 
 His work as Mediator, He had to submit voluntarily 
 to all the sufferings from which our human flesh and 
 heart most legitimately revolt. But this submission 
 was made each time at the cost of a struggle. We 
 see that clearly at Gethsemane. So was it, as says 
 the admirable Epistle to the Hebrews, that He was 
 made perfect and learned obedience by the things which 
 He suffered." Progress, conflict,—are not these the 
 marks of a holiness truly human? In the wilderness, 
 at Gethsemane, it was perfectly possible to be in 
 the forecourts of heaven, but assuredly not in heaven 
 itself. 
 
 III. And this is precisely the reason on account 
 of which the holiness of Jesus, perfect as it was, is 
 nevertheless accessible to man, to every believer who 
 aspires after it; not, certainly, apart from Him, or in 
 a manner parallel with His, as the free-thinkers imagine, 
 
 who hold that it suffices for them to represent to 
 
 Heb. ii. 10, v. 8, 9. No book of the New Testament brings out 
 so powerfully, together with the Divinity of Jesus Christ (chap. i.), 
 His complete humanity (chaps. iii, and v.). 
 
256 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 themselves Jesus as their model, in order forthwith 
 to be able to imitate Him. No, the distance between 
 Him and us is too great for it to be possible for 
 our sanctification to accomplish itself in the way in 
 which His does. It must work itself out by means 
 of His. 
 
 There is in us the germ of sin, which was not to 
 be found in Him, as we have perceived. He had 
 but to learn; we have not only to learn, but also 
 to unlearn, if J may use the expression. He had but 
 to grow; we have contemporaneously to grow and to 
 diminish. He had to fill His heart with God; we 
 have, at the same time as we fill ours with God, to 
 empty it of ourselves. 
 
 This twofold task surpasses the moral power of 
 man; whoever will seriously attempt it, will not 
 fail to discover it to be so. It is necessary, then, 
 that the holiness. of Jesus should become for us 
 something more than a model. It is necessary that 
 this holiness, which He has realized freely in His 
 own person, during His human existence, should 
 become ows. Did not Jesus Himself say, “ For their 
 sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sancti- 
 
 fied through the truth” ?* (“in truth” or “in reality ” in 
 
 1 St. John xvii. 19. 
 
Lhe Perfect Holiness of Fesus Christ. 2 57 
 
 the French edition). In sanctifying Himself, it was 
 human life, it was ourselves, that He sanctified. In 
 preventing, each moment of His life, sin from being 
 born within His own person, He passed sentence of 
 death upon it in ours too. He thereby demonstrated 
 that sin is an intruder in human nature, and He 
 planted in the consciousness of humanity the germ 
 of the possibility, and therefore also the duty, of 
 expelling it. By His life, perfectly human, and yet 
 at the same time pure and holy, clear of every stain, 
 and perfectly consecrated, He annulled sin, and laid 
 the foundations of holiness, that is, of the kingdom 
 of God, upon this sin-stained earth. 
 
 But before this kingdom could begin to spread, it was 
 needful that the holiness which is its essence should 
 pass from the King to its subjects. Such a transition 
 presupposes some link of connection between the two; 
 and this link Jesus described in the expression, “I am 
 the Vine, ye are the branches.”1 It was by His 
 ascension that He put Himself in the position to 
 effect this work, and by Pentecost that He actually 
 accomplished it. 
 
 The pure sap which flowed in the Vine was to pass 
 from it into the branches, and to take the place of 
 
 1$t. John xv. 5. 
 R 
 
258 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 the poisoned sap which was flowing through them 
 in abundance. By His elevation to the right hand 
 of God, which signifies into the manner of existence 
 of God Himself, to His omnipresence, His omni- 
 science, His omnipotence, Jesus received the power to 
 descend Himself into the hearts of believers, to come 
 and live in them, and to realize in them that same 
 humanity which He had already realized in His own 
 person, Associated thenceforth with the sovereign 
 power of God, He disposes of His Spirit, and can, by 
 His instrumentality, reproduce in believers all the 
 lineaments of His own moral physiognomy. 
 
 You know that art—one of the most marvellous 
 discoveries of our day—by means of which we are 
 all become artists of as great ability as the most 
 consummate portrait painter: our likeness, reproducing 
 itself, down to its most delicate traits, on a plate 
 suitably prepared and placed for the purpose, our 
 lineaments multiply themselves in a thousand copies, 
 facsimiles of their prototype. It even succeeds in 
 communicating to them something of the life which 
 vivifies themselves. 
 
 Just so, by the power of the Divine Spirit, Christ 
 reproduces Himself in the hearts and lives of believers. 
 
 If we place ourselves assiduously before Him, in the 
 
Lhe Perfect Hloliness of Fesus Christ. 259 
 
 attitude of absorbed attention, the Holy Spirit, through 
 whom He offered Himself without spot to God, 
 imprints upon us, as does the light of the sun, the 
 characteristic traits of the model we are contem- 
 plating; He Himself begins to live in our soul. He 
 promised it in the words, “The Spirit will glorify me 
 in you;”* and St. Paul verifies it in that saying which 
 sums up his most sublime experiences, “ We, with open 
 face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed 
 into the same image, from glory to glory” (i.e. from 
 His glory to ours), “even as by the Spirit of the 
 Lord.” ® 
 
 Under those conditions, it is possible to begin with 
 success the great work of our moral renewal, and to 
 spring forward upon the pathway of sanctification 
 which leads up to heaven, without being troubled 
 with the fear of succumbing in the middle, or even on 
 the lowest step, of the ascent. 
 
 By His death, Christ our righteousness and our 
 peace; by His life on earth and in heaven, Christ 
 our sanctification and our strength; thus we have 
 salvation offered to the soul of man. To receive 
 Christ in this twofold character by the mighty recep- 
 
 1 Heb. ix. 14. 2 St. John xvi. 14. 
 & 2 Cor, is 18: 
 
260 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 tivity of faith, is what Jesus calls, in His symbolic 
 language, “to eat His flesh and drink His blood.” } 
 You all know that it is to these two acts combined 
 that He has Himself attached the possession of life. 
 
 1 St. John vi. 53, 54. 
 
Vel? 
 
 iE DIVINITY OF JESUS CENT oe 
 
Ne 
 LAL DIVINIEY Of JESOS CHRIST. 
 
 A iene at the end of His ministry in Galilee, one 
 
 day taking His disciples into a solitary place, 
 addressed to them this question: “Whom do men say 
 that I, the Son of man,am?” The disciples had just 
 completed their first missionary journey among the 
 plains of Galilee. There they had heard the opinions 
 expressed by various men respecting their Master, and 
 they brought Him a true report of them. Some said 
 He was John the Baptist risen from the dead; others, 
 that He was one of the prophets, Jeremiah or Elijah ; 
 all held Him not a mere man, but an extraordinary 
 personage. Jesus afterwards drew the apostles into 
 an expression of their own belief as to His person ; 
 and Simon Peter expressed it in a saying which has 
 lived on as the confession of faith of the Church 
 universal: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
 God.” This profession of faith Jesus received with 
 
 joy, and gave it His sanction in the words: “ Blessed 
 
 263 
 
264 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not 
 revealed itself unto thee; but my Father which is in 
 heaven.” ? 
 
 In the same way that these various opinions of the 
 contemporaries of Jesus rose one above the other, and 
 that the last alone reached to the full height of the 
 subject, so also, in our day, the most diverse opinions 
 stratify themselves, if I may so speak, over each other 
 respecting the person of Jesus; and that one alone 
 will have the right to claim to be recognised as the 
 truth—at least within the Church—of which it can 
 be demonstrated that it is the exact expression of the 
 consciousness of Jesus Christ Himself respecting His 
 own being. 
 
 Strauss, and the whole group of thinkers who 
 gravitate around him, see in Jesus nothing more than 
 the greatest religious genius who has appeared among 
 men, the purest and most exquisite product of that 
 moral consciousness of which we are all of us deposi- 
 taries; which, however, does not amount to saying 
 that He is its highest possible expression. From this 
 point of view, the door remains ever open to still 
 further steps of progress. Jesus has been hitherto the 
 most excellent of men—that is all one could say; but 
 
 1 St. Matthew xvi. 13-16. 
 
Lhe Divinity of ¥esus Christ. 265 
 
 at any moment another more excellent still might yet 
 make His appearance. You are acquainted with this 
 way of thinking; we have recently heard it expounded 
 here. 
 
 Some scholars of the first rank, who at the starting- 
 point of their career shared this view, have found 
 themselves compelled by an irresistible moral logic to 
 leave it, and to rise to a higher conception of the 
 Person of Jesus Christ. Profoundly impressed with 
 the contemplation of this singular moral life, sound 
 in every part, and so completely contrasted with the 
 corruption and spiritual marasmus of all other human 
 beings, they have said to themselves:—There exists 
 between this man and ourselves a difference, not in 
 quantity and degree only, but in kind. He is not 
 only the best of men, He is the man,—the absolutely 
 good man,—a man such as God alone could have 
 conceived, and than whom He could not Himself have 
 desired a better. It would be impossible to aim 
 higher than at loving God with all the heart, and our 
 neighbour as ourselves; and it would be impossible 
 to realize this twofold love more perfectly than did 
 Jesus. How are we to explain to ourselves the 
 existence of such a being making His appearance in 
 
 the midst of a race scarred all over with the canker 
 
266 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 of sin? <A special law must have presided over His 
 birth ; a phenomenon so exceptional must surely have 
 had an origin equally exceptional. What if it be 
 indeed the fact that this apparition among men was 
 specially decreed by God: if this being was predes- 
 tinated to a great mission to be fulfilled towards the 
 whole race of man? ‘This is the elect of God, chosen 
 to accomplish the mission of missions in the midst of 
 humankind. 
 
 Such is the conclusion to which the earnest exami- 
 nation of the facts has led many scholars of our day, 
 specially M. Keim, who has expressed it in the 
 following manner: “There has appeared amongst us a 
 true man, in whom that divine seed which is deposited 
 in the heart of human nature did, by a miracle of 
 the divine power, blossom to perfection. The inborn 
 communion of man with God reached its consummation 
 in Him, in a manner that was unique and eternally 
 valid. In Him we have the ideal man, foreseen and 
 beloved of God from all eternity, as the crowning fruit 
 of the creation; in the contemplation of whom all 
 the loving desires of God the Creator were satisfied, 
 because in the heart and in the countenance of this 
 
 human person He sees Himself.” ’ 
 
 1 Der geschichtliche Christus, p. 198. 
 
Lhe Divinity of Fesus Christ. 267 
 
 This conception is sufficient—is it not ?—to justify 
 us in embracing in Christ a Saviour, and even in 
 our doing homage to Him as the Lord. And when I 
 remember that it has been reached by the hard toil of 
 personal labour; that, in order to attain to it, it has 
 been necessary for its author to shake off a thousand 
 prejudices, natural and scientific; that it has been 
 gained at the point of the spear, in the face of all the 
 dogmas of unbelief and all the assertions of proud 
 reason,— my heart feels moved at the sight of this noble 
 wrestler, who, with the sweat on his brow, brings me 
 this profession of his faith ; I cannot resist the impulse 
 to shake him warmly by the hand, and calling to mind 
 this saying of our Master: “He who is not against us 
 is for us,” to hail him as a brother. 
 
 Nevertheless, have we understood that with this, 
 and no more, we have all the fulness of that which 
 is given us in Jesus Christ? Have we measured the 
 height and depth, length and breadth of that gift ? 
 Whilst you are climbing a mountain, you can stop 
 half-way up, on one of the landing-places which make 
 a flight of stairs of the ascent, and even from there 
 you behold an admirable picture. Is this as much as 
 to say that one can climb no higher? No; begin 
 
 your advance once more, courageous lover of the 
 
268 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 beautiful! At the highest summit only will the 
 whole horizon be clear, and you will behold in all 
 their majesty the works of your God. It is the 
 same with the believer. Many times over it is said 
 of the disciples: “And they saw and believed.” And 
 each time the step thus gained became a stepping- 
 stone from whence to ascend to some still higher 
 point. Remember again the case of the man born 
 blind. He at first recognised in Jesus a righteous 
 man: “We. know,” he says, “that God heareth not 
 sinners.” “What sayest thou of Him, as to His 
 having opened thine eyes?” “He isa prophet.” But 
 from this stage of conviction‘ he soon mounted to a 
 higher: “Dost thou believe in the Son of God?” 
 Jesus asks Him. “Who is He, that I might believe 
 on Him?” “Thou hast both seen Him, and it is 
 He that talketh with thee.” “Lord, I believe. And 
 he worshipped Him.” * 
 
 When He whom we have recognised as a_ prophet 
 Himself declares to us that He is more than a prophet, 
 it is clear that we are then compelled to move from 
 the position we have taken up one step farther, either 
 forwards or backwards, to rise to the height of the 
 new title which He claims for Himself, or to descend 
 
 1§t. John ix, 38. 
 
The Divinity of Fesus Chrest. 269 
 
 and withdraw from Him that title of prophet, and 
 even that of righteous man, which we had at first 
 conceded to Him. 
 
 In the subject upon which we are entering, every- 
 thing therefore depends on the testimony of Jesus 
 respecting His Person. 
 
 I. The testimony of Jesus respecting His Person— 
 is 1t valid testimony ? 
 
 II. What are the real contents of this testimony 2 
 In other words: Did Jesus really affirm His own 
 
 divinity ? 
 
 III. Supposing He did so, is this divine cha- 
 racter which He claims for Himself compatible 
 with His human nature, as that is both proved by 
 the facts of the history, and affirmed also by Him- 
 self ? 
 
 IV. From the practical point of view: By discover- 
 ing in Jesus a God, do we not lose a brother? And 
 is not this another case of the better being an enemy 
 of the good ? 
 
 I. The testimony of a sinful man respecting his 
 person could never be absolutely valid, since it may 
 be falsified by two causes: the illusions of pride, and 
 
 the calculations of ambition. 
 
270 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 But take the case of a holy man, wholly devoted to 
 the promotion of the glory of God and the good of 
 his neighbour. Having this disposition of heart, he 
 is neither exposed to the danger of over-estimating 
 himself in his own estimation, nor of leading others 
 astray by exaggerating his own merits in speaking 
 to them. Such was Jesus; His humility and His 
 charity are guarantees to us of the truth of His 
 assertions respecting His Person. This is the senti- 
 ment which He Himself expresses in this saying, at 
 once simple and profound: “He who seeks the glory 
 of him that sent him is worthy of credit, and there is 
 no unrighteousness in him;” and in this other decla- 
 ration: “My testimony is true, for I know whence 
 I came and whither I go.”+ When a man contem- 
 plates himself in the full light of the communion with 
 God, and in the mirror of a conscience perfectly pure, 
 he runs no risk of being dazzled by the misleading 
 reflections of self-love; and when one speaks of 
 himself being actuated by the motive of the most 
 disinterested charity, lying is naturally excluded: 
 Looking, then, at the subject from the point of view 
 of morality, the validity of the testimony of Jesus 
 rests upon His profound humility on the one hand, 
 
 1 St. John vii. 18, viii. 14. 
 
Lhe Divinity of Fesus Christ. 200 
 
 and on His tender charity on the other; or, to sum 
 up all in one word, upon His holiness. 
 
 But God has stamped with a second seal the testi- 
 mony of Jesus,—an external seal, and one still more 
 visible to the majority of mankind: His resurrection. 
 We believe that we have demonstrated upon the 
 ground of history the reality of this event; we have 
 established the fact that the witness which the 
 apostles bore to it, and which formed the basis of 
 their first preaching, is not explicable except upon the 
 ground of the reality of the event which is its main 
 subject.” If this be so, the resurrection is as certain 
 as the founding of the Church itself by the preaching 
 of the apostles. Now God would certainly not have 
 raised from the dead an impostor or a madman; 
 and if the resurrection of Jesus is a fact, His testi- 
 mony respecting Himself cannot be other than 
 true. 
 
 We argue, then, the validity of the testimony from 
 two facts: namely these,—their source is pure,—it is 
 the pure heart of Jesus; their seal is divine,—it is the 
 
 divine act of the resurrection. 
 
 See, with regard to the perfect holiness of Jesus Christ, the pre- 
 ceding lecture. 
 ? See upon this the two first lectures. 
 
272 Lectures tn Defence of the Christian Faith, 
 
 II. What are the contents of the testimony of Jesus 
 respecting His Person? They may be summed up in 
 the two titles which Jesus often gave Himself: the 
 Son of man and the Son of God. 
 
 The first is a testimony rendered to His humanity, 
 not only in regard to what it has in common with 
 ours, but also to what it had that was exceptional ‘in 
 its nature. If Jesus had only entitled Himself a Son 
 of man, as God so often entitles the prophet Ezekiel, 
 He would have thereby declared Himself a member of 
 the human race, true man, and nothing more. But 
 He called Himself the Son of man, and by so doing 
 He takes up the position of the normal representative 
 of that whole human race to whose welfare He dedi- 
 cated Himself,—the true man. 
 
 If the title of “Son of man” indicates the partici- 
 pation of Jesus in humanity, it is natural to think 
 that, if only by virtue of the contrast of the two 
 expressions, the title of “Son of God” indicates His 
 participation in divinity. 
 
 This, however, is denied ; we are reminded that this 
 title is sometimes in the Old Testament applied to all 
 the faithful; and it is maintained that when applied 
 to Jesus it is, as we are told is the case already 
 
 in the Psalms and in the Prophets, synonymous 
 
Lhe Divinity of Fesus Christ. oe 
 
 with the title of Messiah, that is, of “ King of 
 Israel.” | 
 
 Let us then examine, first of all, the precise signifi- 
 cation of this designation, “the Son of God,” in the 
 first three evangelists. 
 
 It might doubtless be the case that this title should 
 signify nothing more than a mysterious personal 
 relation between the invisible God and the visible 
 being who bears it. It is in this sense, more or less 
 clearly defined, that it is applied to the angels and to 
 the faithful. But observe, that as Jesus does not call 
 Himself only a Son of man in general, but the Son of 
 man, so also neither does He call Himself a Son of 
 God, like so many others, but the Son of God, and 
 even, more briefly, the Son. From this in itself it 
 follows that He knows Himself to be the Son of God 
 in a sense which is exceptional, and superior to that 
 in which any other personage can bear that title, 
 
 This is the conclusion which follows still more 
 expressly from the following declarations: “But of 
 that day” (that of His final advent) “knoweth no 
 man, no, not the angels that are in heaven, neither the 
 Son, but the Father only.”! Is it not manifest that 
 in this passage Jesus, by using this name, “the Son,” 
 
 1 St. Mark xiii, 32, 
 S 
 
274 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fath. 
 
 in the context in which it stands, claims for Himself 
 a position superior to that of the angels, and that 
 consequently this term is taken in a sense different 
 from that in which it is applied to these celestial 
 beings? So also from the baptismal formula: “Go ye 
 and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and 
 the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” does it not clearly 
 follow’ that by this title: the Son, thus interposed 
 between the two terms: the Father and the Holy 
 Spirit, Jesus places Himself at a height incommensur- 
 ably above all the beings who are to be baptized in 
 this name of Son, as well as in that of the Father, and 
 that He takes up His position in the very central 
 throne of Deity ? 
 
 Jesus claims, then, for Himself the name of Son in 
 a sense that is special, unique. What is this sense ? 
 Can this title designate, as we are told it does, His 
 office of Messiah? Can it be synonymous with that 
 of “ King of Israel” ? 
 
 Make the attempt, in the two passages which we 
 have just quoted, to substitute the title of “King of 
 Israel” for that of Son: “Of that day knoweth no 
 man, not the angels, neither the King of Israel, but 
 
 1 We believe we have established, against M. Réville, the authen- 
 ticity of this formula in general. 
 
The Divinity of Fesus Christ. 275 
 
 the Father only!” “Go ye and baptize all nations in 
 the name of the Father, and of the King of Israel, and 
 of the Holy Ghost!” What do you think of this 
 substitution? Let us add to it this third saying 
 of Jesus, modified in the same manner: “No man 
 knoweth the King of Israel, but the Father ; neither 
 knoweth any man the Father, but the King of Israel, 
 and he to whom the King of Israel will reveal Him!” 
 That surely shocks our good sense. Why so? Be- 
 cause we instinctively understand that there is a close 
 correlation between these two terms taken, each of 
 them, absolutely: the Father, the Son. This juxta- 
 position of the two proves to us that the second title 
 cannot here designate a mission, or any kind of office, 
 —that it can only refer to a personal relation, to a 
 communion of life and being, like that which binds 
 together a father and a son. If, as Jesus affirms, the 
 profundity and intimacy of this relation are unfathom- 
 able by any other person but these two beings, so 
 closely united, who share it) it is certain enough that 
 
 the dignity of King-Messiah is something totally 
 
 ' We beg to suggest to those of our readers who wish to know by 
 what means one may get rid of an awkward passage, to read the ex- 
 planation which M. Réville gives of this declaration (St. Matt. xi. 
 27, and St. Luke x. 22): Histoire du Dogme de la Divinité de Jésus- 
 Christ, p. 17, note. 
 
276 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 foreign to the significance of the word Son in this 
 passage. 
 
 But some passages are alleged in which the title of 
 Son is joined to that of Christ in such a manner that 
 it seems to be its equivalent—as, for instance, in the 
 confession of St. Peter: “Thou art the Christ, the Son 
 of the living God;” and in the question of the chief 
 priest: “Tell us, art thou the Christ, the Son of 
 God?” When one title is subjoined to another, it 
 can only be for the purpose either of explaining the 
 first, on account of some obscurity in it, by the help 
 of a second, better understood and less ambiguous, or 
 else of adding, by means of the second, a new idea to 
 those which were expressed by the first. The first of 
 these two alternatives is not applicable in this case; 
 for the title of “Son of God,” which is placed second, 
 is much more mysterious and obscure than that of 
 “ Christ” which precedes it, and which was much in 
 use among the Jews, and perfectly intelligible to them 
 all. The title of “Son of God” has therefore been 
 added in the above passages to that of Christ, not in 
 order to explain the latter, but to complete it, by adding 
 to the ideas which it contains of itself one other. And 
 the gradation between the one and the other is easy 
 
 1 St. Matt. xvi. 16, xxvi. 63. 
 
Lhe Divinity of Fesus Christ. 279 
 
 to seize. The title of Christ is a title of office; it 
 refers to the office of Jesus, that of Messiah. The 
 title of “Son” refers to His person; it designates His 
 special, personal relation with God, which is the basis 
 upon which reposes His character as the Messiah. 
 Peter, then, when he said: “Thou art the Christ, the 
 Son of the living God,” makes not one assertion only, 
 but two ;—one, that Jesus is that King-Messiah whom 
 Israel expects; the other, that there exists between 
 His person and God a bond of a living and mysterious 
 nature, which He does not seek to define. And so 
 also the chief priest, in adjuring Jesus, before the 
 Sanhedrim, to say whether He was “the Christ, the 
 Son of God,” questions Him not upon one point, but 
 two: “ As to thine office, art thou the Messiah? and 
 as to thy person, dost thou claim to be anything 
 more than a mere man, as many of thy words seem 
 to imply 2?” 
 
 What sufficiently proves that such is the meaning 
 of the question is the report of Luke, in which the 
 two questions, which in Matthew are combined into 
 a single one, are completely distinct and even sepa- 
 rated from each other. “Art thou the Christ?” is 
 first asked by Caiaphas. Jesus gives His answer, and 
 
 finishes it by this declaration: “Henceforth thou 
 
278 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fazth. 
 
 shalt see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of 
 the power of God.” And as this saying implies His 
 participation in Deity, the high priest then adds this 
 second question: “Art thou, then, the Son of God?” 
 This word “then” clearly proves that this new question 
 is called forth by the last words of Jesus in the pre- 
 ceding question, and thus demonstrates the distinct- 
 ness of the meanings of the two terms, “ Christ” and 
 “Son of God.” What completes the proof of the true 
 meaning of the title of “Son of God” in this passage, 
 is the burst of indignation which the answer of Jesus, 
 “T am,” calls forth, and the sentence of death which, 
 upon the utterance of these words, is immediately 
 pronounced upon Him as a blasphemer. There was 
 no blasphemy in the act of a man who called Himself 
 the Messiah; for this office of the Messiah was of 
 divine institution, and the man who should hold it 
 was expected in Israel. To claim it falsely would 
 therefore be an imposture, but no blasphemy. 
 
 The charge of blasphemy could then only refer to 
 the title of “the Son of God,” and to. the divine 
 dignity. which Jesus thereby claimed for Himself. 
 That alone could have seemed to the Jews an in- 
 fringement upon the majesty of God. | 
 
 If, on His own part, Jesus had not attributed this 
 
The Divinity of Fesus Chrost. 279 
 
 significance to the title which He gave Himself, it 
 would have been for Him a sacred duty to put an 
 end, by a prompt and categorical explanation, to so 
 serlous a misunderstanding between Him and the 
 representatives of His nation. Was it not on account 
 of this title, “the Son of God,’ misunderstood, that 
 they were about to condemn Him to death, and there- 
 by to pronounce sentence of death upon themselves ? 
 Jesus ought then to have hastened, if not for His own 
 sake, at least that of His judges, to have prevented 
 the evil consequences of this false interpretation of the 
 title which He claimed for Himself. He did nothing 
 of the kind; He therefore certainly took this title in 
 the sense in which His judges took it, that is, in that 
 in which we ourselves understand it. 
 
 There is another saying of Jesus, reported uniformly 
 by our three first evangelists, and of which we must 
 here weigh the whole significance. It was uttered 
 some days before His Passion, and probably it bore a 
 relation, in the mind of Jesus, to the charge with 
 which He knew He was threatened. It is the’ 
 
 1 Is it right that M. le Blois should have rested his argument pre- 
 cisely upon this passage of Luke in his attempt to prove the synony- 
 mousness of the two terms, ‘‘ Christ’ and ‘‘the Son of God”? No 
 doubt in the passage which follows (xxiii. 1 et seq.) mention is again 
 made of ‘‘ the King of the Jews,” but it is before Pilate. To a politi- 
 cal judge it was evidently necessary to present a political indictment. 
 
' 280 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 question which He addressed to the scribes: “What 
 think ye of Christ? whose son is He? They say 
 unto Him, The son of David. He saith unto them, 
 How then doth David in spirit call Him Lord, saying, 
 The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on my right 
 hand, till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. If 
 David then call Him Lord, how is He his Son?”? 
 The scribes, with all their sagacity, were in difficulties 
 in answering this question. Jesus evidently wished 
 to make them understand that, though He was 
 descended from David according to the flesh, and by 
 virtue of the link which bound Him to human nature, 
 His existence had, at the same time, a higher origin, 
 by virtue of which He was the Lord of that David 
 from whom He descended. This is the truth which 
 the Apocalypse expresses in its symbolical language, 
 when it calls Jesus at the same time the “Root” and 
 the “ Branch” of David.? Jesus wished by this saying 
 to plead in advance, from the point of view of the 
 Scriptures, the cause of His divinity. For He knew 
 well that that would be the pretext for His condem- - 
 nation; and He made use of this time in which it 
 was still open to Him to argue and discuss, foreseeing 
 that in which He would be only free to make asser- 
 
 18t. Matt. xxii. 41. 2 Rey. xxii. 16; cf. Micah v. 2. 
 
The Divinity of Fesus Chrest. oor" 
 
 tions and then hold His peace.! But above all, He 
 continually claims the right to be addressed in terms 
 which, according to the whole of Scripture, it is only 
 lawful to use when speaking to God Himself. So it 
 is that He claims for Himself a greater love than that 
 which exists between the beings who are bound 
 together by the closest of bonds. “If any man love 
 father, or mother, or child, or wife, or himself more 
 than me, he is not worthy of me.” Imagine a mere 
 man interposing himself between a mother and _ her 
 child—between us and ourselves! Then, together 
 with the highest love, He demands or authorizes 
 absolute trust in Himself. He says: “Ye believe in 
 God, believe also in me.” He says: “Come unto me, 
 
 all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 
 292 
 
 rest unto your souls. Have any of the greatest 
 
 of the prophets ever said anything like this? They 
 
 1M. Réville (Histoire du Dogme de la Divinité de Jésus-Christ, 
 p. 14) asserts, with some other rationalistic writers, that what Jesus 
 wishes to prove by this manner of reasoning is not that He is the Son 
 of God, but that as the Messiah ‘‘He is not necessarily the Son of 
 David.” There are some objections, to argue with which it would 
 be to do too much honour. We refer the objectors to all the passages 
 in the New Testament (Matthew, Paul, the Apocalypse), to the genea- 
 logies in particular, where Jesus is mentioned expressly as the Son of 
 David. And yet we are asked to believe that Jesus meant by these 
 words to prove that He was not so! 
 
 2 St. John xiv. 1; St. Matt. xi. 28. 
 
282 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 referred man to God; they would have considered it a 
 blasphemy to call them to come to themselves. 
 
 Lastly, the functions which Jesus attributes to Him- 
 self are not less remarkable than the sentiment with 
 which He claims to be regarded by men. He is in 
 such sense the Truth incarnate, that to be persecuted 
 for Him is equivalent to being so for the Truth itself : 
 “ Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and per- 
 secute, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, 
 for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding 
 glad: for great is your reward in heaven.”* He is 
 even more than the Truth; He is Good—Good, incar- 
 nate and personified, in such sort that every good 
 action upon earth refers itself to Him personally. He 
 is its real object ; He constitutes Himself its debtor in 
 eternity. The covenant into which Jehovah entered 
 in the Old Testament, “He who lendeth to the poor 
 lendeth to the Eternal, who will render unto him the 
 good he has done,’* He takes without hesitation 
 upon Himself: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto 
 one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it 
 
 23 
 
 unto me. And when He formulates the judicial 
 
 sentence which will separate for ever the wicked from 
 
 1 St, Matt. v. 11 and the parallel passages. 
 2-Proy, Rix: dis 3 St. Matt. xxv. 40, 45. 
 
The Divinity of Fesus Chrost. 283 
 
 the sphere of Light and of Good, how does He express 
 it? “Depart from Mg, ye that work iniquity!” ? 
 Could God speak otherwise ? 
 
 Imagine a mere man making himself thus the inter- 
 mediary between God and the human soul; a man 
 posing as the Truth and the Good incarnated in the 
 midst of humankind ; a man pronouncing this sentence: 
 “ Depart from ME, ye that work iniquity!” In truth, 
 I do not understand how the free-thinkers can hold 
 for long the position they have taken up with regard 
 to Jesus—that of a respectful admiration. There are 
 two alternatives open to us—either (1) He is no more 
 than man, and, being such, He has drawn mankind into 
 a gross idolatry, and has but added one more form 
 of paganism to those of antiquity. If so, He, appa- 
 rently the humblest of men, has been in reality the 
 proudest. Far from meriting our admiration, He 
 ought to become the object of our indignation, our 
 execration, as He did become to the Jews, who in that 
 case quite justly condemned Him. And the only 
 course open to us is to take their side against Him, 
 not His against them—that is the new anti-evangelical 
 alliance which is forming itself before our eyes. Or 
 
 1 St. Matt. vii. 23, xxv. 41. I owe this last observation to M. le 
 Pasteur Louis Burnier. 
 
284 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fazth. 
 
 else (2) the position which He claimed is His—He is 
 really what He claimed to be; and if so, it is evident 
 admiration will no longer suffice; we must pass on 
 to faith, in the religious sense of the word—to that 
 faith which is due only to God; we must give our- 
 selves up to a love of Him which is due only to God. 
 We must advance even to adoration. From the mind 
 of a Thomas who disbelieves, a Thomas who doubts, we 
 must rise to that of a Thomas who, at a single bound, 
 springs at once to the highest point, and has the 
 courage to address Jesus as his Lord and his God. 
 
 We have been led to this result solely by the study 
 of our first three Gospels. It is fully confirmed and 
 corroborated by the Gospel of St. John. It is there 
 that we find brought into relief, in the testimony of 
 Jesus, the great thought which forms the substratum 
 of all the sayings we have already cited from the first 
 three Gospels: we mean the idea of the eternal pre- 
 existence of Jesus Christ as the absolute object of the 
 Father’s love. “Father, glorify Thou me with the 
 glory which I had with Thee before the world was, 
 . . . for Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the 
 world.” “ What and if ye shall see the Son of man 
 ascend up where He was before?” “Before Abraham 
 
 was, Iam.” Jesus here speaks like Him who, in the 
 
The Divinity of Fesus Christ. 285 
 
 Old Testament, says, “I am that I am.” These words 
 are, I know, regarded with suspicion in these days; 
 it is asserted that the author of the fourth Gospel has 
 here put into the mouth of Jesus his own thoughts. 
 Put his own thoughts into the mouth of Him who is 
 the object of his faith! What a moral contradiction ! 
 
 But even if we were no longer in possession of any 
 of the words of Jesus in which is expressed the con- 
 sciousness that He had in Him of His divinity, none 
 the less might we draw safe conclusions upon this 
 point, by taking as our starting-point the idea enter- 
 tained by His apostles of what He was. 
 
 There exists in every Israelitish heart an innate 
 horror of everything which tends to identify the 
 creature with the Creator. And before the apostles 
 could have been brought to concede to their Master 
 divine titles and attributes, they must have been 
 driven to it by peremptory reasons, among which the 
 only decisive one must have been the manner in 
 which they had heard Him express Himself respecting 
 His person. Nothing external to this His testimony 
 respecting Himself could have brought them to cross 
 the limit which separates docility and admiration 
 
 from adoration. Besides, had He not lived familiarly 
 
 1 St. John xvii. 5, 24, vi. 62, viii. 58 ; Ex. iii, 14, 
 
286 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 with them for three years, and eaten at the same table? 
 Had they not walked by His side as His travelling 
 companions? Had they not seen Him fainting, suffer- 
 ing from hunger and thirst, asking questions, praying, 
 weeping, groaning, dying ...? What amount of 
 proof did it not require to bring these Jews, brought 
 up in the purest monotheistic orthodoxy, to recognise 
 in such a being Jehovah Himself, to invoke Him, to 
 preach Him as such! Yet this conviction respecting 
 Him we can prove to have been held by those of the 
 apostles whose writings have been preserved to us. 
 The Apocalypse is in our day in favour among 
 rationalistic writers. They almost all of them recog- 
 nise it as the work of the Apostle John, written in the 
 year 68." What do we find in this book? Jesus is 
 therein called “the First and the Last, the Alpha 
 and the Omega, the Beginning and the Ending.” 
 He is described as “He who searcheth the reins 
 
 and hearts;” as “the Lamb who has the seven 
 
 1 Rationalist criticism is not at ease with reference to this book. On 
 the one hand, it has occasion for it in order to establish the supposed 
 antagonism between the Twelve and St. Paul (though in fact this book 
 by no means establishes anything of the kind). And, on the other 
 hand, it is to them a source of perplexity ; for, as we shall presently 
 see, we find in it already the whole of the Christology of Paul, and of 
 John himself? Accordingly, we shall soon see it rejected, together 
 with the fourth Gospel. 
 
Lhe Divintty of Fesus Christ. 287 
 
 eyes and the seven horns,” de. the plenitude of 
 omniscience and omnipotence. He is there called “the 
 Beginning (i.e. the source and spring) of the creation 
 of God.” The Lamb seated upon the throne shares 
 with God Himself the worship of the celestial intelli- 
 gence, and of the saints in glory; and that in the same 
 book in which an angel says to John when He falls 
 down before him, “Worship Gop.” Finally, Jesus 
 bears in the Apocalypse the same distinctive title as in 
 the Gospel—that of “the Word of God,’ which implies 
 in the one book as in the other, His divinity. 
 
 M. Réville replies that what is here implied is no 
 more than an acquired divinity. As if Jesus was not 
 called the First as well as the Last, the Beginning as 
 well as the Ending! As if, again, these epithets were 
 not the same by which Isaiah describes the glory of 
 Jehovah! Besides, the idea of an acquired divinity is 
 irreconcilable with the monotheistic intuition of the 
 Scriptures. “A God become a man,” says M. Gess 
 with reason, “is a miracle; but a man become God is 
 a wild idea” (Abentheuer, a magical event). 
 
 St. Peter, in the first verses of his First Epistle, unites 
 
 1 Rev. i. 11, ii. 23, it, 145.v, 611-13, xix, 13, xxii. 3, 9; 13520; 
 (‘*I come ”), compared with i. 8 (6 the Lord, which is, and oo was, 
 and which is to come”), 
 
288 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 Jesus with the Father and the Holy Spirit in a manner 
 which expressly reminds us of the institution of 
 baptism, and which can only rest upon the same con- 
 viction of His divinity upon which that institution 
 itself rests. 
 
 St. Paul expresses himself exactly like St. John in 
 the Apocalypse. According to Him, Jesus, “7s before 
 all things: He is the first-born of every creature, or 
 before all creation; He it is by whom and for whom 
 are all things.” He is that “Rock of Israel” who led 
 His people in the wilderness. Before He appeared here 
 below, He existed “in the form of God,” that is to say, 
 in a state of Deity; it was by His own will that He 
 became man, after He had “emptied Himself,’* to 
 take upon Him the form of a servant. It is by Him 
 that all things, visible and invisible, subsist.” 
 
 The Epistle to the Hebrews, which must date from 
 before the fall of Jerusalem, since it implies that the 
 Temple is still standing, and announces as a coming 
 event the fall of the theocratic constitution, dedicates 
 an entire chapter—the first—to establishing the full 
 and complete divinity of Jesus Christ. And this does 
 not mean that it denies His humanity. No book of the 
 
 1 Translated in our Bible, made Himself of no reputation. —TR. 
 2 Col, i, 15-17 ; 1 Cor. viii. 6, x. 4; Phil. ii, 5-7; Col. i. 16. 
 
Lhe Divinity of Fesus Christ. 289 
 
 New Testament, on the contrary, affirms it more ener- 
 getically, or applies it with a consistency apparently 
 more heterodox. These are testimonies, clear enough, 
 to the conviction which prevailed within the apostolic 
 circle from which these books came. 
 
 But it is objected that mention is often made, both 
 in the Gospels and Acts, of Jesus as a mere man; as 
 when St. Peter, in his denials, says of Him, in one 
 of his first discourses in the Acts, “I know not this 
 man ;”* or when, in one of these discourses, Jesus is 
 called “a man approved of God by the miracles, signs, 
 and wonders which God did by Him.” But ought then 
 St. Peter, when he was speaking to the servants of the 
 high priest, to have said to them, and that at the 
 moment when he was denying Jesus, “I know not this 
 God”? And later on, when the apostles deliver their 
 first discourses before the Jewish people, ought they 
 to have begun by proclaiming His divinity ? No; for 
 this doctrine is that which has always most offended 
 Jewish ears. And more, it is a truth which can only 
 be accepted by one who has already received Christ as 
 the Messiah or the Saviour. For it is only on the faith 
 of His own testimony that His divinity is accepted ; 
 
 * An argument seriously urged by M. Le Blois in his lecture given at 
 Neuchatel upon this subject! Ps 
 
 Ah 
 
290 Lectures in Defence of the Chirstian Faith. 
 
 and before His testimony can be received respecting a 
 truth so difficult to believe, He must have been recog- 
 nised as One sent of God. This is the reason on 
 account of which the apostles had to begin their work 
 by the proclamation of the historical facts of His death 
 and resurrection, which they could each of them attest, 
 and which were sufficient to establish His Messiahship. 
 So was the faith to be founded in Israel; the rest was 
 to be reserved for later development. 
 
 Besides, the apostles themselves, even when they had 
 attained to the consciousness of the fact, had not yet 
 reached to its correct formula. The feeling of the 
 divinity of Him who was the object of their faith filled 
 their hearts; had it not been so, how could Stephen 
 have prayed to Him for the forgiveness of his enemies ? 
 how could he have addressed to Him, with his latest 
 breath, the same prayer which Jesus, in death, 
 addressed to His Father? But the memory of the 
 earthly life of Jesus, of His career as simply the servant 
 of the Eternal, was still so vividly present to their 
 minds, that the thought of His divinity did not as yet 
 detach itself distinctly in their consciousness from that 
 of His earthly manifestation, and presented itself rather 
 to their spirits under the form of a glorification granted 
 
 by God to His human personality. Nothing, then, 
 
Lhe Diwinity of Fesus Christ. 291 
 
 could be more in conformity with historic truth than 
 the manner in which Jesus is set before us in the first 
 discourses in the Acts. Had they been composed at a 
 
 later period, they would have presented a very different 
 
 _ appearance. 
 
 It is interesting to compare, as counterparts of the 
 thought of the apostles, the belief of the churches 
 founded by them, as it is expressed in the most ancient 
 Christian writings, composed in the age which followed 
 immediately upon that of the apostles. We have but 
 a very small number of these left to us, but these are 
 sufficient to attest the faith of the churches on this 
 cardinal point. 
 
 In the Epistle of Clement of Rome, written probably 
 toward the end of the first century, or, according to 
 some authorities, a little later, Jesus is called “ the 
 sceptre of the Divine Majesty.” * In one of the epistles 
 of Ignatius, which have the greatest evidence of 
 authenticity, and therefore date from before the year 
 115, we come upon such expressions as the following: 
 “the love of Jesus Christ owr God ;” “the blood of 
 God.” ? In an epistle attributed, no doubt erroneously, 
 to Barnabas, the companion of St. Paul, but which 
 must have been composed by an Alexandrian Christian 
 
 1 Chap. xvi. 2 Eph. i,, Rom. i, 
 
292 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 towards the end of the first, or the beginning of the 
 second century, Jesus is spoken of as the being with 
 whom the Father conversed when, at the moment in 
 which He was creating man, He said, “ Let us make 
 man after our image.”! In the Pastor of Hermes, 
 written a little later, towards 140-150, it is said 
 that the Son of God is anterior to every creature ; 
 in such sense that He co-operated with the Father 
 in the creation of the world.? Lastly, in the Epistle 
 to Diognetus, the chef d’ewvre of ancient Christian 
 literature, we find these words: “ As a king sends his 
 royal son, so did God send Him to us as God.” 3 Are 
 we perhaps moved to ask if all these writings do not 
 come from the same country, and express the belief of 
 only one Church? We answer, not at all: Ignatius 
 represents Asia Minor; the unknown author of 
 Barnabas’ Epistle, Alexandria and the Aigyptian 
 Church; Clement and Hermes, Rome; the Epistle 
 to Diognetus, probably Greece. 
 
 So, then, we find the same way of thinking about 
 Christ in all parts of the Church. How are we to 
 
 account for this general belief unless it rested upon 
 
 1 Chap. v. 
 2 Book iii., Similitude 9, chap. xii. 
 3 Chap. vii. 
 
Lhe Divinity of Fesus Christ. 293 
 
 the preaching of the apostles? And how are we to 
 account for this preaching of the apostles, if it was 
 not founded upon the teaching of Jesus Himself ? 
 
 Even a pagan, a man eminent in science and litera- 
 ture, Pliny the younger, born in the year 62, bears 
 witness to the belief of the Christians on this cardinal 
 point of faith, He had been appointed by the 
 Emperor Trajan governor of one of the principal 
 provinces of Asia Minor. There he finds himself 
 face to face with a numerous Christian population; 
 he is in doubt in what way he is to put into execu- 
 tion the law which condemns them. In a letter 
 which has been preserved to us, he asks directions of 
 his sovereign and friend, Trajan; and on this occasion 
 he speaks of the lives of the Christians, which are at 
 the time before him. In this description we find this. 
 remarkable expression, “They sing hymns to Jesus as 
 God 
 
 Facts, then, disprove the assertion that the belief 
 in the divinity of the Saviour only sprang up in 
 
 the Church in the course of the second century as a 
 
 * We must observe that this expression forms part of the confessions 
 extorted by Pliny from the Christians when about to be executed ; it 
 is therefore the faith of the Church itself which is expressed in these 
 words, Carmen Christo, quasi Deo, dicere secum invicem (to recite 
 antiphonally a hymn to Christ as God). 
 
294 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 consequence of the spontaneous exaltation of the 
 ideas of the Christians. 
 
 The feeling of the Christian community upon this 
 point was unchangeably fixed from the earliest times. 
 But it took shape in various ways among those who 
 were its organs. The formula of Peter is not that 
 of Paul; that of Paul is not that of John, nor is this 
 latter the same as that of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 This diversity of forms of expression shows that they 
 are not mere copies one of another, but that one and 
 the same consciousness of the truth expresses itself 
 through all these forms, freely and independently. 
 So it was also, later on in the history of the Church, 
 with regard to the dogmatic formula, which it so 
 laboriously sought to put into shape. In vain were 
 disputes stirred up in the Council of Nicea. Every 
 one in that Council admitted the divinity of the 
 Saviour. Such difference as existed had reference only 
 to the way in which the doctrine should be stated. 
 
 M. Réville will have it, again, that the general 
 law of the development of the doctrine is as follows: 
 “Of the two parties to any controversy which arose, 
 that which wins the victory is always that which 
 
 han k 
 
 most glorifies the person of Jesus. This supposed 
 
 1 Histoire du Dogme de la Divinité de Jésus-Christ, p. 94. 
 
The Dwinity of Fesus Christ. 295 
 
 law he draws from his imagination, not from history. 
 The highest idea which arose respecting the person of 
 the Saviour, was that of those called the Docetw, who, as 
 early as the last year of the first century, taught that 
 the body of Jesus was no more than a mere phantom, 
 and who upon that ground denied all objective reality 
 to His human nature. But so far was this extrava- 
 gant doctrine from establishing itself in the Church, 
 that, on the contrary, it was energetically repudiated 
 by it. We find it already condemned in the First 
 Epistle of St. John, in the words, “He that denieth 
 that Jesus the Christ came in the flesh, is an anti- 
 christ.” This sentence is cited by Polycarp, the 
 disciple of John, in his Epistle to the Philippians. 
 The Church expelled from her communion, in the 
 course of the second century, the followers of Basilides, 
 Valentinus, Marcion, and all other partisans of this 
 doctrine which attacked the true humanity of Jesus. 
 A little later the Church no less vigorously repudiated 
 the doctrine of Apollinaris, who, though he did attri- 
 bute to Jesus a real human body, denied Him a 
 human soul; and next, that which would only recog- 
 nise in Him one nature, the divine nature (this is the 
 Monophysite doctrine); lastly, that which attributed 
 
 to Him but one will, the divine will (the doctrine of 
 
296 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 the Monothelites). All these facts prove how little 
 the Church was disposed to give herself up, with 
 regard to the person of Christ, to headlong impulses of 
 speculation; how it remained, on the contrary, firmly 
 fixed on the immoveable rock of the witness of history, 
 both with regard to the humanity and divinity of its 
 Head. Springing originally from the consciousness 
 of Jesus, the affirmation of His divinity was repeated 
 by the apostles, reproduced by the doctors of the 
 Church, embodied in the hymns of the whole Church, 
 in the midst of the fires of persecution and martyr- 
 dom; and this testimony of Jesus is re-echoed to us 
 to this day, reaching us from all the voices of Chris- 
 tian antiquity, to confirm us in our faith, and to 
 make us conquerors in the great crisis into which we 
 are about to enter. “Who is he that overcometh the 
 world,” says St. John, “but he that confesseth that 
 
 Jesus is the Son of God 2” 
 
 III. But is so great a prodigy as that of the union 
 of the divine and human natures in one only person 
 possible? Can the divine perfections dwell together 
 in one and the same life with human imperfection ? 
 The omniscience of the Infinite Spirit with the igno- 
 
 rance which belongs to finite beings,—omnipotence 
 
Lhe Divinity of Fesus Christ. 297 
 
 with weakness—omnipresence with that localization 
 by virtue of which everything that is bodily can 
 only occupy one place at one time ? 
 
 The Divine manner of being, I must acknowledge, 
 is not compatible with our present human manner of 
 existence. But that is precisely the reason on account 
 of which Scripture teaches two things: first, That 
 Jesus had to lay down His Divine manner of existence 
 —His “form of God,’'—in order to become man; 
 second, That in order to regain His Divine condition, 
 a glorious transformation was effected in His humanity 
 by means of the ascension. 
 
 I say, a laying down, a stripping of Himself. St. 
 Paul describes this supreme event in these words, 
 “He who was in the form of God emptied Himself? 
 and took upon Him the form of a servant.” ® 
 
 Nowhere is it said that, during His earthly exist- 
 ence, Jesus possessed omniscience. The gospel history 
 attributes to Him a knowledge that was supernatural, 
 equal, or even, doubtless, superior to that possessed by 
 the prophets. We see proofs of this in the conversa- 
 tions with N athanael and with the woman of Samaria, 
 
 we Phils 1.6. 
 
 * Such is the precise meaning of the Greek words translated in our 
 
 English version, ‘*‘ humbled Himself,”—Tr. 
 3 Phil. ii. 6-8, 
 
298 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 as well as in many other passages in His life. But 
 omniscience He does not seem, to judge from the 
 sacred narrative, to have possessed. Did He not ask 
 for information, and that sincerely, when He said, 
 “Where have ye laid Him?” “Who touched me?” 
 Finally, does He not declare that He does not Him- 
 self know the day of His second advent?* Now, 
 omniscience is not partial. Either a person has 
 it—and in that case he has it entire—or he has 
 it not. That supernatural knowledge which Jesus 
 possessed was then specifically different from omni- 
 science. It might well be a divine kind of know- 
 ledge, in this sense, that it was constantly and freely 
 derived from God; but it was not the divine 
 attribute of omniscience. 
 
 The sacred record, again, recognises in Jesus, during 
 His abode here below, a miraculous power. But was 
 this power omnipotence? Had it been so, would 
 Jesus have had to obtain everything by prayer? 
 Would He have said, “Father, I thank Thee, for I 
 know that Thou hearest me always”?? Or would 
 He have said, “The works which my Father hath 
 given me the power to do”? No, His supernatural 
 
 18t. John xi. 34; St. Mark v. 30 and xiii. 32. 
 2 St. John xi. 41, 42. 
 
Lhe Divinity of Fesus Christ. 299 
 
 power, though superior to that of the prophets, does 
 not seem to have been omnipotence.’ 
 
 Jesus, during His earthly existence, could exert 
 power at a distance; but, nevertheless, He did not 
 possess omnipresence. He really bore His body from 
 one place to another; He walked till He was ex- 
 hausted with fatigue; and His friends could say of 
 Him, “ Lord, if Thou hadst been here.” ? 
 
 We may even extend what we have here said 
 further, and apply it to His moral qualities, His wis- 
 dom, His holiness, His love. Divine perfections 
 neither grow nor diminish. But Jesus “increased” in 
 wisdom as well as stature. “Though He were a Son, 
 yet learned He obedience by the things which He 
 suffered.”* He Himself does not shrink from thus 
 expressing Himself, “I sanctify myself,’* which no 
 doubt means: I impress by degrees upon all that 
 constitutes my human existence the seal of a perfect 
 consecration. His love, again,—did it not grow from 
 the time of His infancy, during which His affection 
 extended no farther than to those nearest Him,— 
 through His youth, in which His whole nation became 
 the object of His fervent love,—up to His maturity, 
 
 1 Compare the third lecture, ‘‘ The Miracles of Jesus Christ.” 
 Pot. JOhn xi oli o2: * Heb. vs. 8: 4S8t. John xvii. 19, 
 
300 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 when His heart opened itself to the sense of the 
 miseries of the whole world, and He voluntarily 
 offered Himself to bear the sins of whatever calls itself 
 by the name of man? This is not the unchangeable 
 wisdom, holiness, love of God; it is the growing 
 wisdom, holiness, charity of a man, which grows 
 by trial and conflict, and advances gradually to per- 
 fection. 
 
 Even while maintaining the identity of His per- 
 sonality, Jesus so stripped Himself of His divine 
 state of being, that in order to make Himself room to 
 live a truly human life, He had to lose, during the 
 first portion of His earthly existence, the consciousness 
 or PEs divine life, and, if I may venture the expres- 
 sion, of His glorious past. Otherwise how could He 
 have been really, as Holy Scripture says He was, a 
 child, a young man, like to all others, differing from 
 them only in the absence in Him of sin? No doubt 
 He must soon have perceived, by this very difference, 
 that He stood in a quite peculiar relation to God; 
 and it is in this sense that at the age of twelve years 
 He could already call Him His Father. But if we 
 carefully weigh the expressions used in Holy Scripture, 
 we are led to believe that it was not till the hour of 
 
 His baptism that, by a divine communication then 
 
Lhe Divinity of Fesus Christ. 301 
 
 made to His Spirit, the consciousness of His eternal 
 origination, and of the personal relation in which He 
 stood to God, was given Him. The divine declaration, 
 “Thou art my Son,” was not a superfluous assurance. 
 It revealed Jesus to Himself, and became the founda- 
 tion of the revelation which He made of Himself to 
 the world. He returned, at that moment, once for 
 all, in regard to His personal consciousness, into the 
 bosom of His Father. He was not yet, it is true, 
 restored to the divine manner of being. But He 
 entered into the clear perception of what He was to 
 God, as the eternal object of His love, and of how 
 God was to Him the Father, in a unique sense. And 
 even while remaining in voluntary humility in the 
 human condition, which He had freely accepted, He 
 could from thenceforth utter such words as these, 
 “No man knoweth the Son but the Father, nor the 
 Father but the Son.”* “ Before Abraham was, I am.” 2 
 I beg leave here to reproduce the admirable words of 
 M. le Pasteur Verny, which M. de Pressensé lately 
 quoted in the very interesting pages which he dedi- 
 cated to him: “If every generation of men, conceived 
 and born in sin, begets, and forms to live after it, a 
 
 hew generation tainted with sin; and if the Saviour 
 
 1St. Matt. xi. 27, 2 St. John viii, 58, 
 
302 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 came in order to break this chain of an evil tra- 
 dition, He must have been Himself more than a 
 link in that chain. That He might lay hold of it 
 with firm hand, and break it off in the midst of its 
 course, He had to take up a position, and to have a 
 standing ground, outside and above it. “That He 
 might heal the diseased tree of humanity, it was 
 necessary that He should be Himself more than one of 
 its branches, or one of the fruits of that tree,—even 
 the noblest and sweetest of those fruits; for even the 
 noblest and sweetest still has within it a worm gnaw- 
 ing at its core. It was not enough that He should 
 arrive, without deliberate purpose, borne upon those 
 waves of time which bear upon their bosom the gene- 
 rations of mankind; it was not for Him to submit 
 Himself to that state of life imposed upon us in 
 virtue of which we are born in this or that age of 
 the world’s course, and are, whether we wish ib MOF 
 ‘not, the children of that age. No, it was necessary 
 that He should be a fresh spring, introduced from 
 without,—the Head and Father of a new humanity 
 and new history,—a second Adam, as St. Paul calls 
 Him; that He should come freely because he willed 
 it, and only because he willed it.” ' 
 
 1 Verny et Robertson, p. 16. 
 
Lhe Divinity of Fesus Christ. 303 
 
 This testimony He gave to Himself, not with a 
 view to any vain pleasure in glorifying Himself,—on 
 the contrary, He knew that it was the very thing 
 which would cost Him His life,—but that He might 
 accomplish His mission, which was to glorify God in 
 the earth. In order to make the world understand 
 how good is God, He had to reveal Him in His 
 character as a Father; and in order to reveal Him 
 fully as a Father, He must reveal Himself as a Son, 
 To make men understand how God loves them, He 
 must make them appreciate at its true value the 
 Sreatness of the gift which God was making them ; 
 and for that end it was evidently necessary to tell 
 them who He Himself was, and what He was in 
 relation to His Father: “God so loved the world, that 
 He gave His only-begotten Son.”! In order, finally, 
 to make us appreciate what we are to God, and how 
 precious we are to Him, it was evidently necessary 
 to lift the veil which hides His own greatness, and to 
 tell us that in His person mankind are become the 
 family of the eternal Son, the dwelling-place of Deity 
 itself. The revelation of Himself was the sole means 
 of completely revealing God to us. 
 
 But this putting off of His divine manner of life 
 
 1 St. John iii. 16, 
 
304 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fath. 
 
 was not to be for ever. Destined to give place to a 
 real human existence, it was to come to its end as 
 soon as the latter had reached its perfection. For this 
 humanity, brought to its maturity in the person of 
 Jesus Christ, was becoming fitted to be raised in Him 
 into the possession of that glory which He had en- 
 joyed before He became incarnate. . 
 
 This return into His divine manner of being we 
 see before us in the ascension. Already in the 
 moment of transfiguration the elevation of Jesus into 
 glory was nearly consummated. But He would not 
 accept it then. He had still a task to fulfil,—that 
 which was the subject of His conversation with Moses 
 and Elias upon the mountain-top. He was indeed 
 willing to mount up again into the heavenly life, but 
 not so that He should leave the human race behind 
 Him, as would have happened had He re-entered 
 heaven at that time. 
 
 This was the reason why He refused to return with 
 Moses and Elias to the Father, who seemed to be 
 calling Him from out of the cloud. He descended 
 from the mountain in order that He might go and 
 “die at Jerusalem,’ as He said to the heavenly 
 messengers. This painful necessity interrupted for 
 
 a moment the progress of His glorification, upon which 
 
Lhe Divinity of Fesus Christ. 305 
 
 He had entered; but when once this condition 
 of our salvation was fulfilled, His upward journey 
 began once more. The resurrection and ascen- 
 sion were its two decisive moments. Jesus was 
 restored to that divine manner of life which He 
 had quitted. This is that for which He prayed 
 in these words: « Father, glorify Thou me with 
 the glory which I had with Thee before the world 
 was,” } 
 
 But do not believe that, in order to recover the 
 divine condition, He had first to put off His human 
 nature. Rather than separate Himself from that, He 
 raised it into a higher condition, and rendered it 
 capable of being elevated in His own person to the 
 throne. Was it not as the Son of man that Stephen 
 saluted Him from the threshold of the kingdom of 
 glory? Was it not as “the Lamb that had been slain” 
 that St. John contemplates Him, seated on the throne 
 of the Divine Majesty, in. the Apocalyptic vision 2 
 Did not St. Paul know, in his own personal experience, 
 and by virtue of having seen the Lord Himself on the 
 way to Damascus, that it was indeed « bodily” that 
 “the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Him” 22 Lastly, 
 does not Jesus Himself say that it is as the Son of 
 
 1 St. John xvii. 5. ? Col. ii. 9. 
 U 
 
306 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 man that He will return to judge the quick and the 
 dead ?* | 
 
 How can our human life be in this way raised in 
 Christ to the dignity of an organ of the divine per- 
 fection? Behind the veil of that cloud with which 
 God enshrouded Jesus at the moment of His 
 ascension, there passed over Him a transformation, 
 by virtue of which it became possible for His 
 humanity to be associated with the divine glory. 
 Not till then was the Creation of Humanity com- 
 pleted, and God’s plan respecting man realized. He 
 had, no doubt, created him in His image; but this 
 first man was but a sketch in outline. The true man, 
 whom He definitively willed to call into being, was 
 born at Bethlehem, was growing into the perfection 
 of moral stature up to the crucifixion, and was con- 
 summated in the ascension. “Ye shall be as Gods,” 
 the Tempter had said. Such was indeed the divine 
 intention; but the object of the Tempter in holding 
 out that prospect was but to make man turn aside 
 from the true path. Jesus rediscovered that true 
 path—obedience ; and by faithfully following it, He 
 realized for us the divine purpose. Holiness was the 
 
 condition of glory. 
 
 1Cf. St. Matt. xxvi. 64; St. Luke xxi. 36; St. John v. 27. 
 
 4 + oa rae 4 
 Se a i oe 
 
Lhe Divinity of Yesus Christ. 307 
 
 God’s plan once realized in one man, what re- 
 mained but that that which had been effected in the 
 One should be accomplished in all? Now that iS 
 precisely the work which began immediately upon the 
 elevation of Jesus. It opened on the day of Pente- 
 cost, and it lasts throughout the economy in which 
 we are living, which in the purpose of God is but a 
 permanent Pentecost. The Spirit of Jesus associates 
 us with His holiness, and thereby prepares us to share 
 His glory. He communicates to each believer that 
 sanctified and glorified humanity which was realized 
 in the person of Jesus, and He substitutes it for our 
 own, which had become soiled and corrupted. Thus 
 the Spirit creates in Jesus, upon this earth, a spiritual 
 body, an ensemble of living organs—the Church. And 
 when this body shall have reached the amount of 
 spiritual growth which is proportioned to the celestial 
 greatness of its Head; when it shall have come, as 
 St. Paul said, to “the measure of the stature of the 
 Sulness of Christ,” then this its Head will raise it up 
 to Himself, and will associate it with Himself in His 
 divine manner of existence. It is to effect this that 
 Christ is to return. His advent will be for the whole 
 Church what the ascension was for His own person. 
 
 'Eph. iv. 13. 
 
308 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 We ask that the self-contradiction with which this 
 plan is charged should be pointed out to us, and the 
 supposed internal inconsistencies between the elements 
 of which it is composed should be stated. When once 
 it is granted that God is love,—that a love truly divine 
 cannot but be admirable in counsel and magnificent in 
 the means which it employs,—that the essence of love 
 is its self-sacrifice to the utmost degree possible,—and 
 that the measure of possibility for God is infinite, 
 what is left to object to? Humanity has only to 
 humble itself and give thanks. What floods of light 
 does this view shed over our earthly existence! How 
 holy, how grand, it becomes in the light of that final 
 result which is held out to it——God wholly m us, as 
 He had once grown to be wholly in Christ ! God 
 became man in One man, in order that by faith in 
 this One all others might be raised into the closest 
 
 and most direct union with God Himself ! 
 
 IV. The purpose of God, then, in the incarnation 
 of His Son is no longer a mystery: and we can now 
 orasp the practical side of this great fact, the cardinal 
 event of the history of the world. 
 
 In establishing the truth of the divinity of Jesus 
 Christ, we are told we lose a brother. The truth 
 
The Divinity of Fesus Chrost. 309 
 
 rather is, that by establishing this fact of the divinity 
 of our Saviour, we gain God Himself for our brother, 
 and that by our union with this brother we become 
 fit to share in the state of Deity. 
 
 One man added to the sum of humanity like all 
 the rest,—could we account that a great gain for man- 
 kind? One branch more added to a tree already 
 crowded with similar ones,—could that effect any 
 change in the nature of the tree? But, on the other 
 hand, a graft inserted into it,—that might transform 
 both the sap and the fruits. If Jesus was no more 
 than one other man added to the sum of those that 
 had been born of woman, whose body was brought in 
 as a new contribution to earth’s clay, I do not clearly 
 see what this life should have contained that could 
 be in any way decisive for the destiny of mankind, or 
 for my own. But if in Him a being of a superior 
 order, and even divine, assimilated Himself to us in 
 nature, then the great thought of God with regard to 
 humanity and to myself discovers itself to my sight. 
 
 What was the purpose of God in creating Nature ? 
 It was to arrive ultimately at bringing into existence 
 the free being, man. What was His purpose in 
 creating man? ‘To produce at last the holy being,— 
 
 capable of standing in a moral relation to Him, to 
 
310 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fath. 
 
 become the organ of His will, His visible representa- 
 tive, His free and glorious living agent. And in 
 whose interest did He conceive this His purpose? In 
 the interest of one man only? No, but of all men. 
 There has existed a God-man, in order that in Him 
 we all, becoming His brothers by His incarnation, 
 might be transformed into a family of creatures in 
 whom the paternal love of God might shine forth in 
 its glory ;—even in a certain sense a family of God- 
 men. I should not dare to use such an expression, if 
 St. Paul himself had not, in speaking of the Son, 
 written the words: “That He might become the first- 
 born among many brethren.” ' 
 
 Ah! we cannot, any more than “liberal Christi- 
 anity,” sed? to men this title of “Son of God,” at a 
 price. No, but yet it is a title which seems to us too 
 sacred to be given away or thrown heedlessly to the 
 first comer. We could not find it in our heart to 
 address the first man we met, with great words used 
 in a vague, indefinite way, to flatter his pride: “ You 
 are a son of God!” But yet, with humble and pro- 
 found gratitude, we can say to each one of you, in the 
 name of the Word made flesh, God calls you to become 
 His children—His sons and daughters. That which 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 29. 
 
Lhe Divinity of Fesus Christ. 311 
 
 you all are by calling, you may all become in reality. 
 Only, if your sin is not to put an obstacle in your 
 path, and if your glorious destination is to be actually 
 reached by you, you must suffer Him who by right of 
 His own nature is in truth the Son of God, to be born 
 and live in you; and for that, all that is required of 
 you is to apprehend Him by faith, by whom you have 
 been apprehended as members of the human race. 
 Father, Thou understandest the art by which to lift 
 Thy child to the level of Thine own moral life; that 
 is, by Thyself descending to the level of his, and by 
 so humbling Thyself as to share ‘his thoughts, his 
 interests, his pleasures. So dost Thou gradually 
 raise him into moral fellowship with Thyself. It is 
 love which has taught to thee the secret of that art. 
 It is that which God exercises towards thee. He 
 humbled Himself to thee, in order to raise thee to 
 Himself, Aim not then at being a son of God, but at 
 becoming such. Aim at becoming so, not as Christ 
 did,—as if thou couldst climb up with Him, and on 
 thy two feet, the steps of the divine throne! No, 
 become so zm Him, who is the Way, the Truth, and 
 the Life; in Him who wills to realize in thee the 
 union of the divine and human natures as He has 
 
 realized it in Himself. Jesus summed this up in 
 
312 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 these words: “Thou in me, Father, and I in Thee.” } 
 Such is the Christianity of Jesus Christ. Christ is 
 the living ladder which carries us up to the throne. 
 In His incarnation, His death, His resurrection, His 
 ascension, there is offered to each of us the power of 
 reaching to where He is. Go thou, and let the work 
 of thy life be to change this glorious’ possibility into a 
 sublime, an eternal reality! Accept Pentecost, and 
 
 thou shalt reach the ascension. 
 
 1St. John xvii. 23. 
 
MoE 
 
 THE IMMUTABILITY OF THE 
 APOSTOLIC GOSPEL 
 
 WITH REFERENCE TO THE PERSON OF (CHRIST 
 
 BEING A REPORT PRESENTED TO THE SEVENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 
 ' 
 OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE AT BASLE, 
 
VEE 
 
 LAE SUMUTABILITY, OF THE APOSTOLIG 
 GOSPEL. 
 
 E read in St. Mark iii. 32 the following words : 
 “And the multitude sat about Him.” It is 
 just in this light that I like to consider the present 
 assembly. I see in spirit the Lord sitting in the 
 midst of us, and the representatives of the churches, 
 at once one and diverse, who make up His Body here 
 below, gathered around Him, ready to receive all that 
 He will have to say to them. And the watchword 
 which He seems to me to be giving us at this moment 
 is this: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my 
 words shall not pass away.” 
 
 My colleague, M. d’Orelli, has just been speaking 
 to us on the Immutability of the Apostolic Gospel 
 with reference to the work of Christ. 
 
 But, in this redemptive work, there is one point of 
 cardinal importance to which the thesis of the immu- 
 
 tability of the Gospel as preached by the apostles 
 
 315 
 
316 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 applies more especially, and that is, the doctrine of 
 the person of the Redeemer. From the first, that 
 which Christ was personally to the apostles deter- 
 mined the idea which they formed to themselves of 
 the importance of His mission. This point was, how- 
 ever, at first wrapped up, as it were, and involved in 
 His work as a whole. But by degrees it was brought 
 out distinctly, and it at last stood out as the culmi- 
 nating point of the Apostolic Gospel in such sort, that 
 the absolute worth of the Christian salvation never 
 fully shone forth upon the eyes of the world till the 
 moment at which Christ was presented to it as “the 
 Word made flesh.” 
 
 To deny this central verity, the essential and 
 personal divinity of our Lord, is therefore, ipso facto, 
 to condemn oneself to modify the Apostolic Gospel in 
 two important particulars; it is to run the risk of 
 lowering the level of its religious and moral efficacy, 
 if I may so express myself, along the whole line. And 
 if so, this will in fact be—even though many affirm 
 the precise opposite—to deliver Christianity, weakened 
 and, as it were, disarmed, into the hands of the hostile 
 powers which are at this moment more than ever 
 threatening it. 
 
 And yet this is what, nevertheless, a great number 
 
LIinmutabelity of the Gospel. EAN, 
 
 of very earnest thinkers and writers are doing. I am 
 not thinking of those who recognise no difference but 
 of degree between Jesus and ourselves,—who see in 
 Him no more than a man, holier than we are, whose 
 beneficent appearance amongst us has served to perfect 
 in our consciousness the moral ideal, in such a way 
 that those who come after Him, and even His contem- 
 poraries, could arrive at confounding this ideal with the 
 personage in whom it had been manifested to them in a 
 more radiant light. No; I am now thinking of those 
 men, whether theologians or others, who, in ever-increas- 
 ing numbers, recognise in Jesus the predestined Saviour 
 of the human race, the elect of God, the central man, 
 raised up to lead mankind to the realization of 
 their destiny, but who, notwithstanding all this, think 
 of Him as no more than a mere man who had no 
 existence any more than we had, previously to His 
 coming to earth. So that if they accord Him the title 
 of God, it is not as a God made man that the Church 
 adores Him; it is as a man whom God has associated 
 with Himself in His universal sovereignty. Here ig 
 the lmit beyond which men have determined not 
 to pass. As to the opposite conception, that which 
 has prevailed in the Church up to our day, men see in 
 
 it only a metaphysical theory of Alexandrian origin 
 
318 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 which has broken into Christian theology in the 
 wake of a great movement of thought stirred by the 
 appearance of the Christ amongst us. Men declare 
 this dogma of the divinity of the Christ to be entirely 
 without importance for the religious and moral life, 
 whether of individual men or of the Church. It 
 would even, it is affirmed, be advantageous to clear 
 away this importation, foreign to the mind of Jesus 
 Christ Himself, out of the Apostolic Gospel. For it 
 is but a weight hampering the progress of His religion 
 in the world and hindering its action, especially in a 
 generation such as ours, which is far less disposed to 
 recelve superstitious elements into its faith than were 
 former ones. 
 
 With reference to the declarations of the Bible, the 
 procedure of the adversaries of the essential and 
 personal divinity of Christ has gradually modified 
 itself. Formerly, their efforts were directed rather to 
 the work of bringing down the meaning of the apos- 
 tolic expressions to the level of their conceptions. 
 But now they show themselves rather disposed to 
 acknowledge the true sense of the Biblical terms, but 
 to deny all binding authority to these declarations. 
 
 Our task, in presence of this great contest, will be, 
 in the first place, to sum up the teaching of the 
 
Lmmutabilty of the Gospel. 319 
 
 apostles upon the person of Jesus Christ ; then to 
 inquire whether the thesis of the essential and per- 
 sonal divinity of the Lord Jesus is in reality a notion 
 of which it would be beneficial to disburden Chris- 
 tianity ; in order, finally, to examine what would be the 
 position which we should have given to the Gospel, 
 
 thus transformed, in the world as it now is. 
 
 I. Though we did not ourselves hear the apostles 
 declare what were their thoughts respecting the person 
 of their Master, we possess their writings, in which 
 they express themselves more or less exphcitly upon 
 this subject; above all those of St. Paul, which are 
 the earliest in date. 
 
 In his first Epistles, those to the Thessalonians, and 
 then in those to the Galatians, the Corinthians, and 
 Romans, this apostle treats rather of the work than of 
 the person of the Redeemer. This was a result to 
 which the then condition of the Church naturally led. 
 But yet, even while setting forth the work of salva- 
 tion and its effects, he cannot help travelling upwards 
 in thought, from time to time, to the person of Him 
 who carries it on. Thus, in the Epistle to the 
 Romans, he declares that “ God has sent His own 
 
 ' viii, 3. 
 
320 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, to condemn sin in 
 the flesh.” All these expressions: His own Son, to 
 send, to send in the flesh, leave no room for doubt 
 respecting the thought of the apostle. In the First 
 Epistle to the Corinthians he attributes to Christ the 
 work of the creation of all things, and that of the 
 leading of the children of Israel through the wilder- 
 ness;! all which evidently implies that Christ possessed 
 antecedently to His earthly life a real existence, and 
 one divine in nature. In the Second Epistle to the 
 Corinthians the following is the way in which he 
 draws the picture of the charity of the Christ: “He 
 who, being rich, made Himself poor, that ye through 
 His poverty might be rich.”’ Riches, then, in His 
 case preceded poverty, and the fruit of His charity 
 was a voluntary laying aside of His riches. He 
 renounced the divine state of existence that He might 
 with us share in the indigence of our human condi- 
 tion, so that by this union with our poverty He might 
 raise ourselves into participation in His divine riches. 
 
 This way of looking at the person of Christ is still 
 more clearly seen to have been entertained by the 
 apostle in his subsequent Epistles, those to the 
 Colossians, the Ephesians, and Philippians. As these 
 
 1 viii. 6, x. 4. 2 vill. 9. 
 
Lumutability of the Gospel. B27 
 
 Epistles are addressed to more advanced Christians 
 who had to be sustained in the way of sanctification, 
 the apostle directs his attention and that of his 
 brethren more profoundly to those “ unscarchable riches 
 of the Christ” which he had but superficially touched 
 upon in his former letters. Even in these he had 
 made allusion to that higher kind of teaching, a proof 
 that he was already in intimate possession of its 
 whole contents. Thus he spoke to the Corinthians of 
 “wisdom which he preached,” but only “among them 
 that are perfect,” that is, among the more advanced 
 Christians. He compared this wisdom to the meat 
 with which full-grown men are fed, and he contrasted 
 it with the simple teaching of the way of salvation 
 and justification by faith, which he called milk for 
 babes.” 
 
 Wherein, then, consisted this higher wisdom of which 
 he thus spoke in covert words even in his earliest 
 letters? We can make this out by these Epistles, 
 written at a later date, which we have just mentioned. 
 It relates to the full knowledge of the dignity of 
 the Christ, the Author of salvation, the Head of the 
 Church. In the Epistle to the Colossians he exhibits 
 to us, in the person of this redeeming Christ, the 
 
 1 Eph, iii, 8. , #1 Core il, 64 iis, 
 X 
 
322 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fath. 
 
 Creator of all things, of things visible and invisible, 
 heavenly and earthly ; He by whom all things consist 
 even at this moment, in such sense that the founda- 
 tion of the Church is but the crowning act of the 
 creation of the universe, and that these two works of 
 one and the same Author make up, in fact, but one 
 continuous whole. In Philippians, exactly as in the 
 passage in 2 Corinthians quoted just now, he speaks 
 of Christ as having by nature “the form of God,” the 
 divine manner of being, and then, at the moment of 
 His appearing here below, renouncing this equality 
 with God to which He had the right, taking upon 
 Him, voluntarily, “the form of a servant,’—that is, the 
 human condition, and then continuing still further 
 the process of self-humiliation, and of putting off His 
 divine manner of being by rendering Himself, as 
 man, obedient, and obedient unto death, even the death 
 of the cross. 
 
 By this we learn the impression which St. Paul had 
 retained of the apparition of Christ as he had for a 
 moment seen Him on the road to Damascus, and of 
 the internal revelation which God had given him of His 
 Son, as a sequel to that apparition. The effect of 
 this double revelation had been so great, that St. Paul 
 
 1 Gal. i. 15, 16. 
 
Lmmutability of the Gospel. 303 
 
 had been led by it to sacrifice, without hesitation, all 
 the prejudices and all the repugnances with which his 
 Jewish monotheism must have inspired him against 
 the deification of a man. 
 
 We see the same thing in the case of St, J ohn, and 
 that in a still more striking manner. ‘This disciple 
 had spent two or three years in intimacy with J esus, 
 who had deigned to call him His friend. It was not, 
 then, only the severity of the Israclitish monotheism, 
 it was also the very familiarity of this daily intercourse 
 with Jesus Christ, which must have opposed itself in 
 his mind to every self-willed apotheosis. 
 
 And yet, in memory of the life of his Friend, and 
 particularly of such words as these, which he had 
 heard from His lips—*«TZ am the Lesurrection and the 
 Life... . I am the true Bread which came down from 
 heaven... . What f ye shall sce the Son of man ascend 
 up where He was before? . . . Lefore Abraham was, 
 Lam. .... H ethat hath seen me hath seen the Father. 
 ... Hather, glorify Thou me with the glory which I had 
 with Thee before the world was,” \—in memory, I say, 
 of such declarations, he cannot prevent himself from 
 recognising in Him a being completely exceptional, of 
 divine origin and nature,—* we beheld His glory, the glory 
 
 'St. John xi, 25, vi. 51, 62, viii. 58, xiy, 9, xvii. 5, 24, 
 
324 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fath. 
 
 as of the Only-begotten of the Father,” or from calling 
 Him “the Word which was in the beginning . . . which 
 was with God, and was God.” He describes Him as 
 «the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world ;” as “ the Eternal Life which was with the Father, 
 and was manifested wnto us ;” as that “ Adonai” whom 
 Isaiah had beheld in vision, when he had heard the 
 Seraphim crying before the throne, * Holy, holy, holy 1s 
 the Lord of Hosts.” * 
 
 The teaching of the other apostles has not come 
 down to us in so detailed a way. But we can still 
 perceive clearly the sentiment of adoration which they, 
 with the whole primitive Church, entertained towards 
 the person of their Master. Do we not find the 
 Christians of those early ages designated as “ those who 
 call on the name of the Lord Jesus” 2? If we recollect 
 the austerity of the Jewish monotheism in that age, this 
 belief, according to which at the sound of one only 
 name men are called upon to fall on their knees, one 
 only can be uttered in adoration without blasphemy— 
 this simple expression, “ those who call on the name of 
 the Lord Jesus,’ will suffice to reveal to us the feeling 
 
 entertained towards the person of Jesus by the 
 
 1gt, John i. 9 ; 1 Johni. 2; St. John xii. 41. 
 2 Acts ix. 14, 21; cf. Rom. x. 12, 14; 1 Cor. i, 2; 2 Tim. ii. 19. 
 
Immutability of the Gospel. 425 
 
 Apostolic Church. And, besides, we know what this 
 feeling was from the pen of a pagan who wrote at 
 the beginning of the second century, the governor 
 Pliny, who, from a province of Asia Minor then 
 already full of Christians, wrote to the Emperor Trajan, 
 describing their worship: “They sing a hymn te 
 Christ, as God.” 
 
 The personal divinity of Him through whom God 
 has accomplished our redemption is then clearly the 
 doctrine that was taught by the apostles; it is the 
 faith which the Church received from their lips, and 
 it is by this faith that she has conquered all the powers 
 leagued against her. Has the time arrived, as some 
 thinkers of note would persuade her, for her to give 
 up this faith as an unprofitable or even mischievous 
 extravagance of belief, and to cast it from her like an 
 old rusty sword? This is what we must now inquire 
 into more closely. 
 
 II. Every time that I consider this question before 
 God, three convictions seize me, laying hold at the 
 same time of my mind and heart. 
 
 First, that it is impossible to detract anything from 
 the doctrine of the essential and personal divinity of 
 
 the Christ, without at the same time infringing equally 
 
326 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 upon the belief in the intimacy of the relation between 
 God and man. 
 
 _ Secondly, that whatever detracts from the essential 
 | and personal divinity of our Lord, detracts equally 
 - from the horror which we feel at that which separates 
 
 * us from God, that is, sin. 
 
 Thirdly, that whatever we detract from the essential 
 and personal divinity of our Lord, detracts zso facto 
 equally from the glorious reality of Christian holiness. 
 
 I will now attempt to justify in a few words this 
 threefold conviction. 
 
 I. The intimacy of the relation between a superior 
 and one below him depends even more upon what the 
 former is to the latter, than upon the converse. So is 
 it in regard to the relation between God andus. This 
 depends primarily upon what God is to us, and only 
 secondarily upon what we are to God. 
 
 But now cut out from the Gospel the gift which 
 God bestows upon us of Jesus His own Son, in the 
 full and apostolic meaning of that expression, and you 
 will by so doing have blotted out the revelation of 
 the perfect—the infinite—love of God for us. We 
 can no longer exclaim, “God so loved the world!” ? 
 The real, the perfect, gift of God is that of Himself. 
 
 1 St. John iii, 16. 
 
Lmmutability of the Gospel. 327 
 
 But deny to Jesus His essentially divine nature, and | 
 the gift which God makes us in Jesus is no longer the | 
 gift of Himself. The argument of St. Paul, in Rom. v.! 
 7, 8, is thenceforth without validity: “ Scarcely jor 
 a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a 
 good man some would even dare to die. But God com- 
 mendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet 
 sinners, Christ died for us!” But if Christ was not 
 God, what parallelism is there between the act of God 
 in giving Him for us, and that of a man who offers 
 for another his own life? And how in that case 
 could one draw from this gift the magnificent 
 conclusion, which the apostle draws from it in 
 chapter viii. of the same Epistle: “He who spared 
 not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, 
 how shall He not with Him also freely give us all 
 things?” Suppose Abraham had offered upon Moriah 
 only one of the sheep of his flock, or even the most 
 faithful and most valued of his servants, could the 
 angel of the Eternal have said: “Now I know”. . 2 
 I know that thou art mine,—thou thyself and all that 
 thou hast! And in the case of God and ourselves, 
 would the gift even of the holiest of human beings, or 
 even of the highest of the angels, suffice to draw from 
 
 1 Gen. xxii. 12. 
 
328 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 our hearts, ever troubled and anxious, and in which 
 the “yes” and “no” succeed each other so ceaselessly, 
 the unhesitating cry to God: “Now I know”... ! 
 —Thou art mine, and with Thee all things.—If Christ 
 is not personally God, it may indeed still remain true 
 that a man, the perfect man, the central man, as the 
 phrase is, has so loved his race as to sacrifice himself 
 for it, in order to bring it to its highest destination. 
 But in what way is the love of the Father properly 
 implied in the sacrifice of Himself made by one of 
 ourselves? What of His own (é« tod idtov) does God 
 offer for us, in such a case? I see indeed then in 
 the Gospel a brother man who loves his brethren; but 
 I no longer see in it the Father who loves His 
 children. It seems to me that in such an act man 
 would outshine God! And God, who puts nothing of 
 His own into the gift, nevertheless avails Himself of 
 it to claim all in return for Himself! Was, then, the 
 servant in the parable right who charged his master 
 with reaping where he had not sown 2? Jesus, on the 
 contrary, gives Himself, and asks nothing in return 
 but for God. Whose is the noble act? Where the 
 
 generosity ? Such a scheme of salvation binds me to 
 
 | the creature, if Christ is only a created being, more 
 
 1St. Matt. xxv. 24. 
 
Lmmutabrlity of the Gospel. 329 
 
 than to the Creator. It is in that case man who 
 issues in triumph from the drama of redemption. 
 Thus our human nature is not then so bad as it is 
 represented, since out of it can grow so admirable 
 a fruit. Do not talk to me of faith as the link 
 which binds man to God. It is to man that my faith 
 binds me. 
 
 And it is not only the love of the Father which 
 pales in the light of this method of interpretation. 
 The charity of Jesus Himself loses all that is most 
 striking and pointed in the picture of it, as it pre- 
 sented itself to the minds of the apostles. When 
 St. Paul wishes to extirpate from the heart of the 
 Philippians the last remaining roots of the self-conceit 
 and vanity of the natural mind, what does he say to 
 them? “Let this mind be in you, which was also in 
 Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, . . . made 
 Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form 
 of a servant, and was made in the Irkeness of man.” } 
 This voluntary putting off of His glory by Him who, 
 being in possession of the divine splendours, made 
 Himself man from mere love,—that is the point of the 
 arrow which the apostle drives into our heart, naturally 
 so egotistic and full of vanity, in order to put an end 
 
 1 Phil, ii. 5-7, 
 
330 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 to the reign of self in it. “Self,” it has been said, 
 “can only be dethroned in the heart of man by a 
 ”1 And this revolution—the hardest of 
 all that are worked in the history of the world,—a 
 prodigy,—there is but One who has the power to effect, 
 He whom St. Paul places before the eyes of the 
 Philippians. Blot this out,—this prodigy,—the life 
 of the Christ, and there is, indeed, left to you a Christ, 
 
 who passes out of nothingness into existence, who out 
 
 revolution. 
 
 of ordinary existence raises Himself into holiness, and, 
 finally, out of holiness into universal sovereignty ; who, 
 through a course of agonized struggles, through many 
 a—no doubt, painful— phase of human existence, 
 mounts and ever mounts ...; but I do not find in 
 this a principle of movement powerful enough to over- 
 turn the idol in my heart. J have in me a man whose 
 aspiration it is to make himself God. And if this 
 proud one is to be struck dead, it can only be by the 
 right of the God who makes Himself man, a man who 
 worships, who obeys, who serves with me,—a man to 
 draw me with Him into the self-annihilation which 
 He Himself practises. 
 
 He, then, had reached to the truth,—yes, to the 
 utmost depths of the truth,— our revered brother, 
 
 1 The periodical L figlise libre. 
 
Lmmutabrlity of the Gospel. 331 
 
 present in this assembly, from whose lips I once heard 
 this saying: “No man ever gave himself to God, 
 independently of the gift which God has made us of 
 Himself in Jesus Christ.”! Ah! do not call this 
 assertion, I beseech you, a metaphysical subtlety! Do 
 not call it a mere assertion !—it is a fact,—the cardinal 
 fact in the history of our race,—it is the perfect revela- 
 tion of the divine, paternal and fraternal, love. It is 
 the foundation on which rests our eternal adoption, at 
 the same time that it is the overturning of our 
 spurious and unreal greatness. It is the ultimate 
 spring which God has set in action in order to 
 replace the moral universe on its true basis, to restore 
 Him to His sovereign place in the universe, to bring 
 back the creature to its own place, to its own nothine- 
 ness, to make love triumph over pride, God over 
 Satan. 
 
 II. I have asserted, in the second place, that every- 
 thing which infringes upon the doctrine of the pre- 
 existence of Jesus Christ, infringes equally upon the 
 degree of horror with which we feel bound to regard 
 sin. 
 
 Assuredly the death of the Redeemer, looked upon 
 
 1 Words of M. le Pasteur Fisch addressed to the students of the 
 Faculty of Theology of the Free Church of Neuchatel. 
 
332 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 as no more than the death of an innocent man, might 
 to a certain degree reveal to us the depth of human 
 perversity, and inspire us with horror of it. The sight 
 of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and of ambition 
 combined with laxity, allied together to accomplish the 
 greatest crime of history, is something too revolting 
 not to exert a certain influence upon every human heart 
 endowed with any moral sensibility. A deeper feeling 
 will not fail to be stirred in me, and to this general 
 and merely human feeling there is added the more 
 personal one of humiliation and repentance which will 
 be called forth in my heart by the mysterious “I for 
 thee!” of which Holy Scripture speaks to me,— 
 even if I see in Him no more than a man. He, my 
 sinless brother, given for my sinful self! Catching, 
 then, some glimpse of the mercies of God towards 
 repentant mankind, and of His future judgments upon 
 those who continue in sin, I shall feel in my heart, as 
 it were, an echo of the indignation of God against 
 moral evil. But if, receiving into my mind the whole 
 fulness of the apostolic teaching upon this unfathom- 
 able fact, I finish by recognising in this brother, so 
 full of love, in this sinless victim, in this Lamb of 
 God, “foreordained before the foundation of the world,”* 
 +1) Pet.. 1, 20. 
 
Immutabrlity of the Gospel. 538 
 
 the Son Himself—the eternal well-beloved Son, the 
 Word through whom I received my being, who will 
 ere long return to be my judge; if I see this Divine 
 Word in Him in whom God has chosen to give me, by 
 the death upon the cross, the living exhibition of the 
 punishment I merited,—of what will infallibly await 
 me if I continue in my sin,—then trembling seizes my 
 soul. I understand, then, that the God who has thus 
 acted, on no account makes any terms with sin; sin 
 ceases to be in my view a pardonable weakness; I see 
 in it a deadly enemy, and there is no choice but that 
 one of us, he or I, should perish! A rending of the 
 heart takes place in me like that between two friends 
 of whom one breaks for ever with the other. The 
 mysterious expressions of St. Paul, to die to sin, to be 
 crucified with Christ, to be baptized into His death} 
 become to my mind mighty realities. It is the faith 
 in the Son of God sacrificed for me, and it is that 
 alone, which could produce that effect in me! Nothing 
 less could have had the power to snatch me out of the 
 unclean embraces of sin. 
 
 III. The believer dies in Christ to sin, to his own 
 individual life; but he dies, like Christ, not to remain 
 dead, but to rise again. Holiness, the holy life of 
 
 1 Rom. vi. 2; Gal. ii: 20; Rom. vi. 3. 
 
334 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Farth. 
 
 Christ Himself, lays itself open to him as the sanctuary 
 
 through which he passes, by this grave and gate of | 
 
 death, to Himself. “JZ am crucified with Christ,’ says 
 St. Paul, “nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ 
 liveth in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh, 
 I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and 
 gave Himself for me.” * 
 
 These words of St. Paul express in incomparable 
 language the substance of the third of those convic- 
 tions of which I spoke just now; namely this,—that 
 whatever we detract from the essential and personal 
 divinity of the Christ, detracts also from the reality of 
 the holiness which constitutes your glorious distinc- 
 tion. Two expressions strike me in the words I have 
 just quoted, and their correlation is instructive to me: 
 “The Son of God loved me,” and “the Christ liveth in 
 me.’ I see here two inseparable things—the Son of 
 God, and Christ in me. One man could not live in 
 another. .A man leaves us a legacy of his memory, 
 his example, his teachings. But he does not himself 
 ‘live again in us. If Jesus is no more than a holy 
 man, a perfected man, the normal man, the Christian 
 sanctification will be reduced quite naturally to the 
 sincere effort to follow and to imitate Him. And 
 
 1Gal. ii. 20. 
 
 a et 
 
Lmmutability of the Gospel, 335 
 
 then the Church will be nothing more than an 
 association of well - disposed persons, who combine 
 together to do good in the common contemplation of 
 their pattern, Jesus Christ. Such is the level to 
 which immediately descend the highest and most 
 glorious ideas of what the Gospel is, as soon as men 
 have struck away from off the head of the Christ 
 His crown of divinity. But—trust Scripture and 
 experience—the true Christian holiness is something 
 other than an effort, an aspiration of man; it is a 
 communication of God to man; it is Christ in person 
 who comes to dwell in us by the Holy Spirit. 
 Accordingly, St. Paul calls Christ not only “our 
 righteousness,” but also “our sanctification.” * And, in 
 St. John, Jesus expresses Himself thus: «J will not 
 leave you orphans ; I will come to You, Ine hat 
 day” (that of the coming of the Holy Spirit) “ye 
 shall know that I am in the Father, and ye im me, and 
 Lim you;” “he that loveth me shall be loved of my 
 Father... and we will come unto him, and make our 
 abode with him;” “because I live, ye shall live also.” 
 Who must He be who not only comes to dwell in us 
 by the Holy Spirit, but whose dwelling in us is at the 
 same time the indwelling of the Father! « Without 
 
 Aa Cor, 90, 
 
336 Lectures wn Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 me ye can do nothing,” continues Jesus; “JZ am the 
 Vine, ye are the branches ; he that dwelleth in me, and 
 Lin him, the same bringeth forth much fruit ;” “the 
 
 ”} The Divine Spirit does not 
 
 Spirit will glorify me. 
 communicate a man to other men. The Divine Spirit 
 does not glorify a man in the heart and in the life of 
 other men. The Divine Spirit glorifies a Divine Being, 
 the Son, who in turn glorifies the Father. Such is 
 the requirement of the Christian monotheism, summed 
 up in the Baptismal formula. And that is at the 
 same time the secret of the Christian sanctification : 
 Holiness is Christ, and God in Christ, dwelling in us 
 by the Holy Spirit. And the Church, what is that? 
 It is not only a voluntary association of sincere 
 followers of Jesus Christ. It is the body of Christ, 
 the living organ which He fills with His fulness, 
 —His “in whom dwells all the fulness of the God- 
 head.” ” 
 
 Oh, how God’s thought overpasses the poor narrow 
 limits within which man’s thought tries to crib and 
 confine it! A few days before his death, the man in 
 whom above others Switzerland glories, and who made 
 to shine into this same city the first beamings of that 
 
 1 St, John xiv. 18, 20, 21, 23, and 19, xv. 1, 5, xvi. 14. 
 2 Eph. i, 28; Col, ii. 9. 
 
I[mmutabrlty of the Gospel. 3317 
 
 light which he was afterwards to make to break forth 
 upon the world with so great a brilliancy,—Vinet,— 
 said to one of the brethren here present: “There is a 
 strange baseness on the part of man in his refusal of 
 the gift which God makes us of a Christ-God.” This 
 word “ baseness” here has in it a great severity. It 
 expresses what such a refusal would have been for him 
 who uttered this sentiment, when looked at from the 
 point of view of his own convictions. It would be 
 unfair to make use of it to condemn any individual 
 person, There may exist—facts prove it—a sincere 
 piety, an earnest love of Jesus Christ, an enthusiastic 
 admiration for His person and His work, even in a 
 man who cannot bring himself to see in Him more 
 than the perfect man. There are even many men who 
 _ only refuse Him any higher dignity, because they fear 
 to lose Him in His character of true man, perfect man. 
 Wherever such a loyal devotion to Him exists, it 
 cannot fail to produce beneficial impressions. When 
 Jesus was living on earth, was it not enough to touch 
 the border of His garment, in order to experience a 
 virtue coming forth from Him? Every contact of the 
 heart with the person of Jesus communicates to the 
 sincere soul some holy power. | 
 
 But observe particularly that we are not now treat- 
 ¥ 
 
338 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 ing of the conditions of individual salvation. We are 
 just now speaking of the conditions of Christianity 
 itself—of the maintenance of its function as a 
 humanitarian religion. We are thinking of what 
 would become of the gospel if we imported into it so 
 considerable a modification as that of reducing the 
 dignity of the Christ to the level of merely the normal 
 representative of mankind. Could Christianity then 
 still retain for any length of time that position of the 
 universal religion which it has conquered for itself 
 during, now, eighteen centuries ? 
 
 From all that I have been saying, it seems to me to 
 follow that, from the moment in which the Church 
 should give her consent to this lowering of the Person 
 of her Head, would infallibly date the darkening of 
 the revelation of God on earth, as well as the setting 
 up again of the pride of man, a marked enfeeblement 
 of the dread called forth in the conscience of man by 
 sin, and, as it were, a vaporization of the sanctifying 
 power of the Gospel; and, consequently, a decline, in 
 all respects, of the moral and religious influence of the 
 Gospel upon society and the Church. 
 
 In conclusion, it only remains for me to inquire 
 what would be the inevitable fate of Christianity when 
 thus deprived of a large part of its internal force, and 
 
Lumutabrlity of the Gospel. 339 
 
 cramped in its effectiveness. Could one reasonably 
 entertain the hope of seeing it reigning still for any 
 length of time as the leading power of civilisation 
 retaining its moral supremacy, and victoriously resist- 
 ing the enemies it has in former times conquered, but 
 who would rise again then from the battlefield, and 
 threaten it with one final -wrestle—even that unto 
 death ? 
 
 III. Who are these adversaries ? They are, it 
 seems to me,—for I beg you to notice that here, since 
 throughout this discussion I am speaking in the name 
 of no one but myself, I alone am responsible for the 
 Judgments to which I am about to give utterance,— 
 these adversaries are, it seems to me, on the one hand, 
 pagan materialism, on the other, Jewish Deism, 
 
 Assuredly the greater part of those who see in Jesus 
 Christ nothing more than the normal man, morally 
 perfect, are entirely free from all sympathy with 
 modern materialism. It is not the less true that if 
 one looks, not at their own personal beliefs, but at the 
 drift of the ideas by which they are possessed, there 
 exists a closer connection than they imagine between 
 their point of view and the tendency which ig at 
 present swaying the thoughts of this age. 
 
340 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 There are—is it not true ?—two ways of conceiving 
 
 of the manner of development of the universe. Accord- 
 | ing to one of these, everything rises to higher levels— 
 grows,—progresses, by its own inherent force. From 
 this point of view the whole process is summed up in 
 a course of becoming. According to the other view, 
 the only cause why all things ascend, is that they all 
 first descended. And according to this, the idea which 
 governs the whole is that of being,—being as the 
 governing principle of becomeng. 
 
 ‘From the first point of view, the highest term of 
 the progressive development of all things—at least 
 hitherto—is man, the perfect man, if he exists. This 
 consummate man makes his appearance, on this view, 
 as the perfected fruit of the tree of humanity. The 
 human race itself, again, is viewed as the culminating 
 point of organized life upon our globe. And what 
 else is organized life itself but the admirable product 
 of a happy combination of the physical and chemical — a 
 forces? And these, again, can only be the manifold 
 manifestations of the force that exists in Nature, 
 inherent from the beginning in matter. This view, a 
 one can see, forms a whole firmly bound together. It 4 
 is a history of the universe in which all things ascend, 
 
 nothing descends. Its starting-point is matter, con- 
 
Lmmutability of the Gospel. 341 
 
 sidered as eternal, and its terminal product is man,— 
 first, man simply, and then the perfect man, the 
 Christ. 
 
 How, then, can such a conception of Christianity 
 contend successfully with the materialistic conception 
 of the universe, since, as we have just seen, it is—or, 
 at least, it may be—only its last expression. Once 
 more, let me here say, I am pointing out what seems 
 'to me the drift and tendency of the theory, not a 
 deliberate conclusion which I have any idea of imput- 
 ing to any one. 
 
 According to the opposite conception of universal 
 development, everything proceeds from a Being, not 
 who becomes, but who is, God. And it is only by a 
 series of communications proceeding from Him that 
 everything becomes and progresses. By a first act of 
 His will, He calls forth matter with its various 
 attributes. When this matter has been sufficiently 
 elaborated, He Himself deposits in it the germ of life ; 
 for life is the product only of a living being. From 
 that moment, the organic molecule works out its 
 development through all the successive spheres of 
 growth, both of vegetable and animal life. Then when 
 the hour of a new movement of ascent has struck, in 
 
 the heart of organic life, God, by a new communication 
 
342 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. 
 
 from Himself, causes to bud forth that higher principle 
 of free and intelligent existence,—spirit,—a breath 
 from Himself. Man appears upon the scene with a 
 will, self-conscious, and mistress of itself,—an image of 
 that of God Himself. And when, at last, this free ° 
 will, instead of making progress in the direction of 
 holiness, by supporting itself upon the will of God, 
 takes up a position of complete rebellion against its 
 Creator, God draws new resources out of the inner 
 treasures of His love, and brings forth yet one supreme 
 eift, which He doubtless would not have refused to 
 humanity had it remained obedient and faithful, but 
 which in that case would have taken a different form. 
 He gives to the world a second Self; He grafts Him 
 upon the stock of the fallen race; and by His life, 
 death, and resurrection, He not only lifts humanity out 
 of its fallen state, but by the same act He raises it to 
 its sublime destination by lifting it into personal and 
 perfect union with Himself, first, in the person of the 
 Christ, and then, through Him, in ours. 
 
 This was the goal foreseen and intended from 
 eternity. The incarnation of the Son of God is the 
 last word of that monotheistic idea of the universe, 
 according to which each of the great phases of pro- 
 
 egress has been called forth by the divine initiation. 
 
Linmutabelty of the Gospel. 343 
 
 On one side we see a Man who becomes God: such 
 is the Christ who corresponds with the spirit of this 
 
 age. This has been well called a bold assertion. 
 
 On the other side we see the God who of His . 
 
 own will makes Himself man. Such is the Christ 
 of the living monotheism. It is the prodigy of love. 
 But supposing that the former of these two con- 
 ceptions succeeds in liberating itself from its alarming 
 “solidarity” with the modern spirit, it will have 
 immediately to encounter a second enemy still more 
 formidable to it—the Jewish Deism. : 
 On hearing this word, Jewish, many of you perhaps 
 smile. That which bears that title does not seem to 
 them very dangerous for the Church. They do not 
 say: “Can there any good thing come out of 
 Nazareth ?” but, “Can anything dangerous to us 
 come from thence?” ‘To this contemptuous smile I 
 will oppose another, that of the Israelites themselves, 
 —TI mean, the intelligent Israelites——when they see 
 us Christians bestirring ourselves for the propaga- 
 tion of the Gospel, founding societies and building 
 houses for missions, sending preachers of Christianity 
 to the Mahometans and the heathen, and carrying the 
 religion of the Bible to the ends of the earth. This 
 
 religion, they say quietly, is our religion. All these 
 
344 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 pains you take are taken for us. These sums of 
 money laid out, these lives sacrificed,—it is ourselves 
 who will reap the fruit of them. For the God of the 
 Christians is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
 the God of the Jews. The doctrine of Jesus is none 
 other than that of our prophets. One thing only 
 separates us from these Christians: the worship of 
 the Christ. Let this absurd dogma of the divinity 
 of a Man,—one that is contrary to the most elemen- 
 tary principles of monotheism,—let this last remnant 
 of the ancient paganism living on in Christianity fall 
 to the ground, and the Gospel, thus purified, is 
 Judaism! Christians, we are waiting for you! It 
 is not we who are coming to you; it is you who are 
 coming quietly over to us. Not so quick, my friends ! 
 —sSo think, and so sometimes speak, clear-sighted 
 Jews. What is it, then, that those among our teachers 
 who labour to lower the person of the Christ to the 
 level of a mere man, of the normal man, are doing ? 
 They are fulfilling, without being conscious of it, the 
 expectations and fervent wishes of Judaism ; they 
 are labouring, without intending it, to give over 
 Christianity to it. And that would indeed be the 
 right way to pacify this ancient enemy; but not to 
 triumph over him. Proceed, ye blind leaders of the 
 
Immutability of the Gospel. 345 
 
 blind! Undermine, amongst our populations, the 
 faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the ground 
 will soon be cleared for the advent of the final 
 monarchy,—of the Israelitish Empire,—and for the 
 appearance of the carnal Christ in whom it will 
 
 personify itself. 
 
 IV. At the end of the first century of the Church, 
 St. John, witnessing the first acts of hostility of the 
 pagan power and the first successes of heresy, addressed 
 to the Christians about him these words: “ Who is 
 he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth 
 that Jesus is the Son of God?”* This watchword, 
 coming to us from the apostle who had leaned on the 
 breast of the Lord,—can it have lost its value in our 
 day? Can the secret of the victory of the Church 
 have ceased to lie in the faith in the divinity of its 
 Head ? 
 
 The eminent writer who has just been retracing — 
 in France the story of the first three centuries of 
 the Church,” was saying to us recently : “If Arianism 
 had won the victory, there would have been an end of 
 Christianity.” This saying applies as much to contem- 
 porary Socinianism, as to the Arianism of former days. 
 
 1} John v. 5. 2M. de Pressensé. 
 
346 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 The moment you deny to the Christ His divine 
 nature, you take away from Christianity its definitive 
 character. Christianity becomes then, according to 
 the expression of a French philosopher,! no more than 
 “one of the days of humanity ;” it becomes only one 
 of the stages on the onward march of the world’s 
 progress, which cannot fail to be followed, sooner or 
 later, by another stage. You thereby open the door 
 to that “Other” whom the carnal heart of man 
 demands, and whom Jesus foretold in these words: 
 “Lam come in the Name of my Father, and ye receive 
 me not: uf another shall come in his own name, him ye 
 will receive !” (éxeivov AmppecOe).” An ominous saying, 
 pregnant with a dark future! 
 
 We are warned, dear brethren,—warned by our 
 Master! Let us then watch ! 
 
 We have already been reminded that this city, 
 which receives us all hospitably in our day, witnessed 
 in former times another assembly which, speaking 
 officially, was of greater importance than ours. It 
 was convoked with the object of driving back within 
 its proper limits that usurping power which was 
 tyrannizing over the Church, and of restoring to the 
 
 latter her immemorial right of self-government. 
 
 1 Lerminier. 2 St. John v. 43. 
 
 % 
 A 
 -— 
 ; 
 UL 
 
Lmnutabtlity of the Gospel. SAG 
 
 Representing, as we that are here gathered together 
 do, the different churches which form the body of 
 Christ on earth, our task is more modest, and very 
 different. We have no official decisions to arrive 
 at in order to impress a different direction upon the 
 onward march of Christianity. We are not called 
 to depose, or to emancipate any man. But we have 
 a work to do, a work purely personal to ourselves, an 
 inward work, to be done immediately, and to which 
 I invite you at this moment; it is to place ourselves, 
 each one of us, individually and all together, before the 
 Head of the Church, and to say to Him: “ My Lord 
 and my God! Behold me here at Thy feet! I adore 
 Thee! Make use of me in the work of maintaining 
 this Gospel which Thou hast given to Thine apostles, 
 and which they have transmitted to Thy Church! 
 Make use of my voice, of my life, of my whole 
 person, to render homage to Thy supreme Love, by 
 proclaiming till the end Thine eternal divinity !” 
 
 To Him, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, 
 be glory in the Church, as in the past, so now, and 
 
 to all eternity ! 
 
348 Lectures in Defence of the Christian Fatth. 
 
 THESES. 
 
 1. The immutability of the Apostolic Gospel holds 
 especially with regard to the teaching of the apostles 
 respecting the Person of Christ. 
 
 2. It is impossible to attack the doctrine of the 
 personal divinity of the Saviour, in the form in which 
 the apostles teach it, without bringing about the result 
 of an enfeeblement of the religious and moral power 
 of the Gospel. | 
 
 3. Thus enfeebled, Christianity would be powerless 
 to contend victoriously against its ancient enemies, 
 pagan Materialism, and Jewish Deism. 
 
 4. The pressing duty, then, of evangelical Christians 
 is to bear open testimony to the personal divinity of 
 the Head of the Church. 
 
 MORRISON AND GIBB, EDINBURGH, 
 PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY’S STATIONERY OFFICE. 
 
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 NEW TESTAMENT GREEK, 
 
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 SYNTAX OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE OF 
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 tion.’—Princeton Review. \ 
 
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