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TESTIMONY 
 
 OF 
 
 NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 TO 
 
 JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 AN UNRIVALLED AND UNIQUE COLLECTION OF 
 
 RARE AND REMARKABLE TRIBUTES FROM MANY COUNTRIES AND 
 
 CENTURIES, WHICH THE RESEARCH AND GENIUS, THE LEARNING 
 
 AND DEVOTION, OF MORE THAN THREE HUNDRED EMINENT 
 
 SCHOLARS, STATESMEN, ORATORS, PHILOSOPHERS, AND 
 
 DIVINES HAVE PAID TO THE FAULTLESS CHARACTER, 
 
 PEERLESS LIFE, AND SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE 
 
 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CAREFULLY COMPILED, WITHOUT SECTARIAN BIAS. FROM THE CHRISTIAN 
 LITERATURES OF EUROPE AND AMERICA. 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES HERMAN WHITMORE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE "DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY," ETC. 
 
 7^/T 
 
 ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 WITHDRAWN FROM 
 UNIVERSlTr ^r REDLAiNDS LIBRARY 
 
 NORWICH, CONN.: 
 THE HENRY BILL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
 
 & 1 5/22 
 
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 Copyright, i88S, 
 By the Henry Bill Publishing Company. 
 
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 ^A'A*>s>ja. 
 
 /!// rights reserved. 
 
 OLD 
 
 SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
 RANIl AVERY COMPANY. 
 
 PRINTERS. ELECTR0TYPER3, DlNDERa 
 
 BOSTON. 
 
To make Jesus better known is to make him better loved, 
 and the love of Jesus is the sanctity of the Church. 
 
 Frederick William Faber. 
 
 The great impulse which is to carry forward the human 
 race is the Character of Jesus, understood ever more clearly, 
 and ever more deeply felt. 
 
 William Ellery Channing. 
 
 Christ's character grows more pure, sacred, and lovely, the 
 better we know him. The whole range of history and fiction 
 furnishes no parallel to it. Christ is the glory of the past, 
 the life of the present, the hope of the future. We cannot 
 even understand ourselves without him. 
 
 Philip Schaff. 
 
 iVil24302 
 
I HAVE only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have 
 brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them 
 
 together. Montaigne, 
 
 Book III., Ch. 12. 
 
 A PARALLEL IS mcasurcd from east to west, or from north 
 to south ; but a book is measured from earth to heaven. 
 
 JOUBERT. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Never before has there been among all classes of 
 people such an interest in the life, character, words, and 
 influence of Jesus Christ, as now. Men everywhere are 
 coming more and more to recognize the important fact, 
 that Christ is Christianity, and that his character is its 
 central evidence. To emphasize and illustrate these great 
 cardinal truths, and to meet and increase the public interest 
 in them, to the end that the Master and his religion, as he 
 taught it to men, may be more loved, honored, and revered, 
 have been the objects aimed at in the preparation of this 
 volume. 
 
 In the prosecution of this aim, I have endeavored to 
 include as little extraneous and irrelevant matter as pos- 
 sible, and to avoid, as far as was practicable, the discussion 
 of controverted questions in theology. 
 
 I begin, as I thought it most suitable to do, with some 
 of the more remarkable passages from the Gospels, in 
 which Jesus bears witness to himself and to the character 
 and object of his mission. 
 
 These testimonies of Jesus form an essential part of 
 the Gospel record, and give us, in the light of his perfect 
 self-consciousness, the most authoritative statements con- 
 cerning himself and his religion that we possess. Taken 
 with their contexts, they form the basis of all Christian 
 literature, and are incomparably the most precious words 
 ever spoken to men. 
 
 Next I place selections from the testimonies borne by 
 the writers of the Four Gospels. The biographies of Jesus, 
 given by the Evangelists, though brief, and lacking nearly 
 every quality considered requisite by the best modern 
 biographers, are the despair of criticism, and the greatest 
 wonders in literature. Without a single word descriptive 
 of the personal appearance of the great Teacher, with no 
 direct or elaborate encomiums on his character, without 
 even mentioning the occurrence of any event during nine- 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 tenths of his life, with no exclamations of wonder at his 
 marvellous works, without denunciation of his enemies or 
 eulogies of his friends, they have portrayed the most dis- 
 tinctly conceived, the most clearly outlined, and incontest- 
 ably the most perfect character in history. No other 
 writings bear in themselves, and in the effects they have 
 produced in the world, such strong and convincing evidence 
 that their writers were inspired of God. 
 
 These testimonies from the Gospels, together with 
 selections from other books of the New Testament, are 
 thus given to show how a continuous reading of pertinent 
 passages from the only original sources of information rep- 
 resents the person, character, and mission of Christ, and 
 to serve as an appropriate introduction to what follows. 
 
 I anticipate and fully share the disappointment any 
 reader may feel at the meagre results of my studies of the 
 writers and preachers of the early centuries, and of those 
 preceding the Reformation, I obtained far less, too, than 
 I expected from the great theologians and writers of the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I have some very 
 good material from the eighteenth century ; but the litera- 
 ture of our own time is very rich in character studies of 
 Christ, and my selections from it have been correspondingly 
 numerous, and, I trust, satisfactory. 
 
 I am glad to be able to say, that denominationalism 
 has had no influence in determining the acceptability of 
 any witness. The writers have not been divided into schools 
 of theology, nor ranged under sectarian banners ; but who- 
 ever has had what seemed to me to be the wisest, bright- 
 est, truest, most inspiring witness to bear to the character 
 and inlhience of the Saviour, has been gratefully welcomed. 
 
 In a few instances I have quoted briefly some illustrious 
 writer, not so much for the intrinsic worth of his testimony, 
 as tor the evidence it gave that he was wholly and heartily 
 a believer in historical and s])iritual Christianity. 
 
 On the other hand, I have given not a few passages, 
 and some of them at considerable length, from writers not 
 widely known, whose names are not in Allibone or in any 
 other biographical dictionary, solely because of their great 
 excelK-nce. 
 
 I hope, however, it will not l)e inferred, that I value 
 these testimonies in' proportion to tlie space they severally 
 occupy; for, while I havc^ not in a single instance given a 
 passage of unusual length where I did not think its great 
 
PREFACE. 7 
 
 worth justified it, some of the most exquisite and intrinsic- 
 ally valuable tributes occupy but a single page, or less. 
 
 Knowing that the value of this collection depends not only 
 on the judiciousness with which its selections have been made, 
 but also largely upon the confidence that the reader may have 
 that they have been accurately quoted and fairly embody their 
 authors' sentinients, I would say that I have personally veri- 
 fied all the quotations, by carefully comparing them with the 
 books or other sources to which they have been credited, and 
 believe them to be not only substantially but verbally accurate 
 as given. 
 
 There have been evidently sincere eulogists of Christ, as 
 Strauss and Renan, who nevertheless were not believers in 
 historical Christianity. Their testimony to the beauty and 
 excellence of his character has. in some respects, greater 
 evidential value for this reason, though their consistency 
 cannot be defended. 
 
 I have included the testimonies ascribed to Flavins Jose- 
 phus and Napoleon Bonaparte, though accompanying them 
 with notes explaining that their genuineness has been 
 questioned. 
 
 As ministering directly or incidentally to the main design 
 of the work, there are three special uses that may be sub- 
 served by this collection. 
 
 1. As a book for devotional reading, it will have great 
 value. Not only are selections given from Augustine, A 
 Kempis, Tauler, Leigh ton, Jeremy Taylor, Law, and Scougal ; 
 but there are scores of others not less rich than these in 
 devotional thought. There are many masterpieces of sacred 
 oratory, eloquent summaries of Christian faith, and inspiring 
 exhortations to the imitation of Christ. 
 
 2. As a book of Christian evidences. ThouQfh it contains 
 no formal essays or elaborate treatises on the truth of Christi- 
 anity, yet it gives, in many forms of statement, the results of 
 the studies on this subject of some of the greatest think- 
 ers, profoundest scholars, and most learned theologians of 
 Christendom. 
 
 3. As a book of apt and striking illustrations of Christian 
 truth. This feature will prove one of great value to all 
 readers, but will be especially useful to those engaged in 
 religious teaching. There are a very large number of fresh, 
 forcible, and suggestive comparisons, contrasts, similes, meta- 
 phors, illustrative examples of the various virtues, and such a 
 variety of impressive studies of Christ's character, connecting 
 
8 PREFACE. 
 
 it with every genuine interest of life, that the book cannot 
 fail to be of great and constant use to writers, public speakers, 
 and teachers. 
 
 It may be interesting to the general reader, if not to the 
 student and the scholar, if I indicate some examples of 
 various special excellences to be found in this volume. While 
 nearly all of the writers deal more or less with the Christian 
 evidences in some form. — for the main object of the book 
 is to show and emphasize the evidential value of Christ's 
 character, — yet there are some passages chosen from the 
 writings of specially equipped scholars, bearing directly on 
 the genuineness and authenticity of the Gospels, that are so 
 suggestive, so fair, so comprehensive, so convincing, so pro- 
 found, that their value to the non-professional but tair-minded 
 and intelligent reader can hardly be over-estimated. 
 
 Among these may be mentioned the selections from 
 Hartley. Burgh, W'hately, Greenleaf, Verplanck, Miiller, 
 Barnes, Hopkins, Gibson, J. G. Palfrey, Row, Cairns, and 
 Wright. 
 
 For elaborate character studies : Newcome, John Harris, 
 Barrow, Furness, Bushnell, Young, Schaft, A. P. Peabody. 
 
 For devotional thought with warmth of expression : 
 William Law, Tholuck, Ware, Adams, Godet, Channing, 
 Ta\ler, Godman, E. P. Rogers, Vinet, Armitage, Brooke, 
 Dale, Spurgeon. 
 
 For spiritual insight : Isaac Taylor, Frances Power Cobbe, 
 Lange. Drummond. Caird, Hayward. 
 
 bor freshness of thought and illustration : Guizot, J. W. 
 Alexander, Browne, Chapin, Thompson, lohn Williams, 
 Blaikie, Hedge, Martensen, Cazneau Palfrey, Goldwin Smith, 
 Bartol, H. A. Abbott, F""owle, Arthur Brooks. 
 
 Vox comj)relKMisiven('ss : Reinhard, Trench, Coqucrel, 
 Stalker, Keim, (Griffith, Clarke, Lotze, Samuel Harris, Brace, 
 Bruce. 
 
 1^'or jjrofound thought, briefly expressed : Francis Bacon, 
 Hegel, biclue. Tischendorf, Bunsen, Ritschl, Faber, Sears. 
 Phillips Brooks, CJoodwin, Weiss, Foss, Lecky. 
 
 i'\)r j)()wer of el()(|U('nt statement : Bossuet, Rousseau, 
 Buckminslcr, I Icnry Rogers, Theodore Parker. King. Bayne, 
 Mozoomdar, Washburn, Simpson, Chadwick, bairbairn, 
 F'arrar. 
 
 I'or incisi\('iu-ss aiul terseness of exj^ressicMi : Plumptre, 
 11. r..Smit!i, Vincent, Joseph Parker, Lyman Abbott, Board- 
 man, 'iownsend. 
 
PREFACE. 9 
 
 For splendid imagery and rhetorical beauty : Richter, 
 Everett, Winthrop, Reid, Conder, Storrs, Martineau. 
 
 For clearness, fairness, and force : Neander, Norton, 
 Burnap, Robertson, Bougaud, Tyler, Seeley, Roussel, Mathe- 
 son, Monger, J. B. Walker, Chaffin, Lesley. 
 
 These classifications, embracing but a little more than 
 one-third of the writers, are only given as tentative and 
 illustrative examples of special excellence, and to indicate 
 the scope and attractiveness of the work as a whole. 
 
 My object being to win and increase men's love, honor, 
 and reverence for the great Teacher, and to show the eviden- 
 tial value of his character, I have carefully avoided every 
 thing that, in my judgment, would divert attention from him, 
 or lessen the force and effectiveness of my main theme. To 
 this end, the work has been arranged with great plainness 
 and simplicity. I give merely the name of the writer, with 
 no indication of his school or rank ; relying entirely on the 
 intrinsic merit of what he has to say, to recommend it to 
 the attention and appreciation of the reader. I then give the 
 title of the book or periodical quoted from, the place and 
 date of its publication, and the volume and pages necessary 
 to assist the reader who may care to verify any quotation 
 made. A carefully prepared topical index greatly enhances 
 the value of the work as a book of reference. Writers, 
 public speakers, and students will be sure to appreciate this 
 arrangement. 
 
 I have indulged the hope that these testimonies, gathered 
 from so many sources, and representing the learning and 
 devotion of nearly every denomination and country in Chris- 
 tendom, might, in some degree, tend to increase a true 
 catholicity of spirit, and thus promote Christian unity in the 
 world. It seems eood, as in this collection, to see Roman 
 Catholics and Protestants of many names, unconsciously 
 vying with one another in weaving garlands of praise for the 
 Redeemer's brow. It witnesses to the grateful fact that there 
 is something deeper and more vital in human nature and 
 human worship, than is expressed in the speculative questions 
 that divide men into sects and schools of belief. 
 
 It seems to me that the imitation of Christ is the only 
 practical Christianity, and that all who are sincerely seeking 
 to be guided by his Spirit, and to do their work in life so 
 as to meet his approval, are Christians. " If we walk in the 
 light, as he is in the light, w^e have fellowship with one 
 another." Let this be the basis of union. Such recognition, 
 
lO PREFACE. 
 
 honestly and openly expressed, and practically and consist- 
 ently carried out everywhere by the professed disciples of 
 Jesus, would lead to, if it did not constitute, the only Christian 
 unity possible or desirable. 
 
 The ethical spirit of the nineteenth century has caused the 
 character of Christ to be recognized in a greater degree than 
 in any preceding age, as the most important and influential 
 factor in the growth and permanence of historical Christianity. 
 It is true that the writers of the New Testament represent the 
 character of Christ as perfect, and therefore as including all 
 possible beauties and excellences: yet it is also true that it has 
 been reserved for the microscopic criticism and keen psycho- 
 logical analysis of our time, urged on by the ethical spirit of 
 the age, to bring to light and to emphasize the value of traits 
 and combinations of qualities in his life and character, un- 
 noticed or unemphasized in any preceding age. Elaborate 
 character-studies were almost unknown in the early centuries, 
 and during the Middle Ao^e the conditions \vere unfavorable 
 to the growth of ethical science. In the present century there 
 has been great progress in the science of morals, and in 
 the related studies of psychology and mental physiology. 
 Among the practical results of this progress may be noticed 
 the amelioration of the penal laws of Europe and America, 
 the greater humanity shown in the treatment of prisoners, the 
 rapid increase in the number of charitable institutions and 
 peace societies, and by the advance of humanization generally. 
 
 The ethical spirit of our age is also shown in its best 
 poetry and fiction, as may be seen in the poems of Tennyson 
 and Browning, Lowell and Whittier; and in the novels of 
 Hawthorne and Meredith, Charlotte Bronte, and George Eliot. 
 
 The life of Jesus Christ has furnished this character-study- 
 ing, anahsis-loving, ethics-regarding age, with an inexhaustible 
 subject of study and contemplation. No other character has 
 ever been subjected to such keen and long-continued scrutiny 
 and analysis, or to such severe and critical tests ; yet every 
 atlvance in the ethical standards of the age has only served 
 to bring into clearer relief and more resplendent beauty the 
 moral charactc.-r of Jesus of Nazareth. Th(^ twentieth and 
 each succeeding century, with their undoubted advance in 
 ethical science and rigid tests of character, in knowledge and 
 in s|)iritual insight, will doubtless discover " treasures of wis- 
 dom " in Ciirist that are now hidden from us; for is it not 
 written tliat ( iod "in the ages to coiii(> will show the exceeding 
 riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus " ? 
 
PREFACE. II 
 
 It is a priceless consolation to the Christian believer, to feel 
 that however great may be the advance of moral civilization 
 in the centuries to cgme, however wonderful the progress in 
 learning, science, art, ethics, and theology, however remarka- 
 ble the development of high character and goodness among 
 men, " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the 
 face of Jesus Christ " will never be eclipsed, or become less 
 bright than now. He has every reason to believe that at 
 each stage of progress in public and private morals, and in 
 the religious life of men, his Master will be more and more 
 widely honored and loved. He to whom God has given his 
 Spirit without measure, " in whom are all the treasures of 
 wisdom and knowledge hidden ; " to whom has been given 
 " a name which is above ever)- name," that in every thing great 
 and glorious, he might have the "pre-eminence," — will never 
 be outgrown, will never become a spent force in the world. 
 
 In the grandeur and scope of his mission, Jesus infinitely 
 surpasses all other religious teachers that the world has ever 
 known. It is precisely in this respect, that all comparisons 
 between him and other religious reformers and teachers of 
 morals are w^eak, futile, almost intolerable. 
 
 There is great pith and point in the incident related by Mr. 
 Picton, in his " Mystery of Matter." " A distinguished man 
 once ventured the assertion that Marcus Antoninus was a 
 nobler ideal of human character than was the object of human 
 reverence. To which a professed Positivist present replied, 
 ' he never heard that Marcus Antoninus ever conceived of 
 saving a world by the sacrifice of himself.' " But this just 
 distinction, instead of beinor confined to an individual, has a 
 universal application. Neither Socrates, nor Gautama, nor 
 Confucius, nor Mohammed, nor any other teacher of religion, 
 reformer, or leader of men, ever conceived the idea of saving 
 a world by the sacrifice of himself. Here, surely, Christ 
 stands alone. 
 
 Comparisons between the Founder of Christianity and the 
 founders of other religions are inevitable, and may be proper 
 and helpful if they are fahdy made, and on lines where com- 
 parisons are allowable ; but Jesus of Nazareth needs no foil 
 of human imperfection, to show off the beauty and grandeur 
 of his peerless life, or to heighten the sublimity of his unique, 
 and therefore incomparable, mission. 
 
 The intellectual supremacy, moral perfection, and unpar- 
 alleled spiritual insight of Jesus Christ, guarantee the absolute 
 truthfulness of his teaching. Certainly no other religious 
 
12 PREFACE. 
 
 teacher ever claimed to have, and none ever gave evidence of 
 having, such constant and close communion with the Eternal 
 Spirit ; no other great teacher ever clajmed for himself that 
 he was sinless, or challenged with calmest confidence the 
 keenest scrutiny and the severest tests of friends and foes. 
 
 There are, indeed, but two alternatives : unless Jesus was 
 all that he claimed to be, he was himself deceived, or he was a 
 wilful deceiver of others. But his unbroken self-conscious- 
 ness, incomparably the most perfect ever known, forbids the 
 acceptance of the possibility that he was self-deceived ; while 
 his divinely beautiful life, his spirit of universal love, his utter 
 sincerity, and his self-sacrifice for others, render absolutely 
 incredible and intolerable the other alternative. In other 
 words, the flawless character of Jesus Christ is the one 
 impregnable citadel of the Christian faith ; at once the most 
 delightful, the most persuasive, and the most convincing of 
 the Christian evidences. 
 
 But Christ is unspeakably more than what men mean 
 when they say he is a perfect character. He is a perfect 
 character ; but he is also a life-giving Spirit, an inspiring 
 presence, a guiding, protecting power. He who is the way, 
 the truth, the life, said to his disciples, " Lo, I am with )ou 
 alway, even unto the end of the world." His divine mission 
 is authenticated, not only by his unspeakably precious revela- 
 tion of God and man, not only by the holy Gospel he pro- 
 claimed, and the holy life he lived in Palestine, but also by 
 the glorious witness and sanctifying presence of his Spirit 
 through nearly nineteen centuries of Christian history. 
 
 The sincere and just praises of One whom millions love 
 better than life, must be to them sweeter than music ; and I 
 anticipate and share the joy that any of these may feci as they 
 read these orlowino- tributes which the love and devotion of 
 many centuries and countries have laid at the Redeemer's 
 feet. 
 
 My thanks arc due, and are hereby cordialh' given, to the 
 authors and jniblishers of recent books and periotlicals quoted 
 from, for their kind permission to use selections; to the othcers 
 of the various puljlic libraries in which I ha\e studied, lor 
 their courteous and considerate attentions ; and to all others 
 who have mven me eficctive aid and encoura<j"ement in the 
 preparation of this Christian anthology. 
 
 J. H. W. 
 
 Boston, Oct. i, iSSS. 
 
TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 [Matt. V. 17; vii. 21-27; x. 32, 33, 39; xi. 28-30; xii. 6, 8, 30; xvi. 13-17, 27; 
 xxvi. 63, 64; xxvii. II ; xxviii. 16-20.] 
 
 Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets : 
 I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. 
 
 Not every one who saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the will of 
 my Father who is in heaven. 
 
 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not 
 prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, 
 and by thy name do many mighty works ? And then will I 
 profess unto them, I never knew you : depart from me, ye that 
 work iniquity. 
 
 Every one therefore who heareth these words of mine, 
 and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built 
 his house upon the rock : and the rain descended, and the 
 floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house ; 
 and it fell not : for it was founded upon the rock. And every 
 one who heareth these words of mine, and doeth them not, 
 shall be likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon 
 the sand : and the rain descended, and the floods came, and 
 the winds blew, and smote upon that house ; and it fell : 
 and great was the fall thereof. 
 
 13 
 
14 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Ever}' one therefore who shall confess me before men, 
 him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven. 
 But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also 
 deny before my Father who is in heaven. 
 
 He that findeth his life shall lose it ; and he that loseth his 
 life for my sake shall find it. 
 
 Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
 I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of 
 me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest 
 unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is 
 light. 
 
 I say unto you that one greater than the temple is here. 
 . . . For the Son of man is lord of the sabbath. 
 
 He that is not with me is against me ; and he that gather- 
 eth not with me scattereth. 
 
 Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, 
 he asked his disciples, saying, Who do men say that the Son 
 of man is ? And they said. Some say John the Baptist ; 
 some, Elijah ; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. 
 He saith unto them. But who say ye that I am ? And Simon 
 Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
 living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed 
 art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah : for flesh and blood hath not 
 revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven. 
 
 The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father 
 with his angels ; and then shall he render unto every man 
 accordinof to his deeds. 
 
 The high priest said unto him, I adjure thee by the living 
 God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son 
 of God. Jesus saith unto him. Thou hast said : nevertheless 
 I say unto you, Henceforth ye shall see the Son of man sitting 
 at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of 
 heaven. 
 
 Now Jesus stood before the governor : and the governor 
 asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And 
 Jesus said unto him. Thou sayest. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 5 
 
 The eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain 
 which Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, 
 they worshipped him : but some doubted. And Jesus came 
 to them and spake unto them, saying-, All authority hath been 
 given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and 
 make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name 
 of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit : teaching 
 them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you : 
 and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. 
 
 MARK. 
 
 [Mark ii. 27, 28 ; x. 45 ; xiv. 61, 62.] 
 
 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, 
 and not man for the sabbath : so that the Son of man is lord 
 even of the sabbath. 
 
 The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. 
 
 The high priest asked him, and saith unto him, Art thou 
 the Christ, the Son of the Blessed ? And Jesus said, I am. 
 
 LUKE. 
 
 [Luke V. 32; xix. 10; xxii. 19, 20.] 
 
 I AM not com^ to call the righteous but sinners to repent- 
 ance. 
 
 The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was 
 lost. 
 
 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he 
 brake it, and gave to them, saying. This is my body which is 
 given for you : this do in remembrance of me. And the cup 
 in like manner after supper, saying, This cup is the new 
 covenant in my blood, even that which is poured out for you. 
 
1 6 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 [John ii. 18-22; iv. 25, 26, 31, 34; v. 19-22, 23, 25-27, 36, 37, 39; vi. 38, 51, 63; 
 viii. 12-14, 29,42,46; X. 9-11, 16-18, 27, 28; xi. 21-25; xii. 32, 45, 46; xiv. 
 2-1 1, 30; XV. 5, II, 26; xvi. 14, 28; xviii. 37.] 
 
 The Jews therefore answered and said unto him, What 
 sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these 
 things ? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this 
 temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews there- 
 fore said, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and 
 wilt thou raise it up in three days ? But he spake of the 
 temple of his body. 
 
 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples 
 remembered that he spake this ; and they believed the Scrip- 
 ture, and the word which Jesus had said. 
 
 The woman saith unto him, I know that Messiah cometh 
 (which is called Christ) : when he is come, he will declare 
 unto us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto 
 thee am he. 
 
 In the mean while the disciples prayed him, saying. Rabbi, 
 eat. But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know 
 not. The disciples therefore said one to another. Hath any 
 man brought him aught to eat? Jesus saith unto them. My 
 meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to accomplish 
 his work. 
 
 Verily, verily, I say unto you. The Son can do nothing of 
 himself, but what he seeth the Father doing: for what things 
 soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner. 
 For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things 
 that himself doeth : and greater works than these will he shew 
 him, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth the dead 
 and quickeneth them, even so the Son also quickeneth whom 
 he will. For neither doth the Father judge any man, but he 
 hath given all judgment unto the Son ; that all may honor the 
 Son, even as they honor the I\ather. Me that honoreth not 
 the Son honoreth not the Father who sent him. Verily, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 17 
 
 verily I say unto you. He that heareth my word, and believeth 
 him that sent me, hath eternal lite, and cometh not into judg- 
 ment, but hath passed out of death into life. Verily, verily, 
 I say unto you, The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead 
 shall hear the voice of the Son of God ; and they that hear 
 shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so 
 gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave 
 him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of 
 man. . . . 
 
 The witness which I have is greater than that of John : for 
 the works which the Father hath given me to accomplish, the 
 very works that I do, bear witness of me. that the Father hath 
 sent me. And the Father who sent me, he hath borne 
 witness of me. 
 
 I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but 
 the will of him that sent me. ... I am the living bread which 
 came down out of heaven : if any man eat of this bread, he 
 shall live forever : yea and the bread which I will give is my 
 flesh, for the life of the world. ... It is the spirit that quick- 
 eneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have 
 spoken unto you are spirit, and are life, 
 
 Jesus spake unto them, saying, I am the light of the world : 
 he that followeth me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall 
 have the light of life. The Pharisees therefore said unto him. 
 Thou bearest witness of thyself: th)- witness is not true. 
 Jesus answered and said unto them. Even if I bear witness of 
 myself, my witness is true ; for I know whence I came, and 
 whither I go. . . . He that sent me is with me ; he hath not 
 left me alone ; for I do always the things that are pleasing to 
 him. ... I came forth and am come from God ; for neither 
 have I come of myself, but he sent me. . . . Because I say 
 the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convicteth me of 
 sin ? If I say truth, \vh)" do ye not believe me ? 
 
 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be 
 saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture. The 
 thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: 
 
15 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 I came that they may have Hfe, and may have it abundantly. 
 I am the good shepherd : the good shepherd layeth down his 
 Hfe for the sheep. . . . Other sheep I have, which are not of 
 this fold : them also I must bring, and they shall hear my 
 voice ; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd. 
 Therefore doth the Father love me, because I lay down my 
 life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it away from 
 me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, 
 and I have power to take it again. . . . My sheep hear my 
 voice, and I know them, and they follow me : and I give unto 
 them eternal life ; and they shall never perish, and no one 
 shall snatch them out of my hand. 
 
 Martha said unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my 
 brother had not died. And even now I know that, whatso- 
 ever thou shalt ask of God, God will give thee. Jesus saith 
 unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto 
 him, I know that he shall rise aofain in the resurrection at the 
 last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the 
 life : he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live : 
 and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die. 
 
 I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto 
 myself. . . . He that beholdeth me beholdeth him that sent 
 me. I am come a light into the world, that whosoever 
 believeth on me may not abide in the darkness. 
 
 In my Father's house are many mansions ; if it were not 
 so, I would have told you ; for I go to prepare a place for 
 you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, 
 and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye 
 may be also. And whither I go, ye know the way. Thomas 
 saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest ; how 
 know we the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the wa)-, aiul 
 the truth, and the life : no one cometh unto the hather, but 
 by me. If ye had known me ye woukl have known my 
 Father also : from henceforth ye know him, and have seen 
 him. Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and 
 it sufficeth us. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 19 
 
 Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, 
 and dost thou not i<now me, Philip ? He that hath seen me 
 hath seen the Father; how sayest thou. Show us the Father? 
 Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in 
 me ? The words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: 
 but the Father abiding in me doeth his works. Believe me 
 that I am in the Feather, and the Father in me : or else believe 
 me for the very work's sake. . . . The prince of the world 
 cometh : and he hath nothino- in me. 
 
 I am the vine, ye are the branches : He that abideth in 
 me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit : for apart from 
 me ye can do nothing. . . . These things have I spoken unto 
 you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be 
 fulfilled. . . . When the Comforter is come, whom I will 
 send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, 
 which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of 
 me. . . . He shall glorify me : for he shall take of mine, and 
 shall declare it unto you. ... I came out from the Father, 
 and am come into the world ; again, I leave the world, and 
 go unto the Father. 
 
 Pilate therefore said unto him. Art thou a kino- then ? 
 Jesus answered. Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end 
 have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, 
 that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is 
 of the truth heareth my voice. 
 
20 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 TESTIIVIONY OF THE WRITERS, AND OTHERS, OF 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 [Matt. vii. 28. 29: ix. 35, 36: xi. 2-7; xiii. 54-57.] 
 
 And it came to pass, when Jesus ended these words 
 [the Sermon on the Mount], the mukitudes were astonished 
 at his teaching: for he taught them as one having authorit)", 
 and not as their scribes. 
 
 Jesus went about all the cities and the villages, teaching 
 in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the king- 
 dom, and healing all manner of disease, and all manner of 
 sickness. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved 
 with compassion for them, because they were distressed and 
 scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd. 
 
 Now when John heard in the prison the works of the 
 Christ, he sent by his disciples, and .said unto him. Art thou 
 he that cometh, or look we for another? And Jesus answered 
 and said unto them, Go your wa)' and tell John the things 
 which ye do hear and see : the blind receive their sight, and 
 the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, antl the deaf hear, 
 and the dead arc; raised up, and the poor ha\e good tidings 
 preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall find 
 none occasion of stumbling in me. 
 
 And coming into his own countr\- he tauglu iheni in iheir 
 synagogue, insomuch that they were astonislied, and said. 
 Whence hath this man this wisdom, and tliese mighty works? 
 Is not this the car|)enter's son ? is not his mcnher called 
 Mary? and his brc^thren, James, antl Jo.seph. and Simon, and 
 Judas?* And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence 
 then hath this man all these things? 
 
ro JESUS OF NAZARETH. 2 i 
 
 MARK. 
 
 [Mark i. i, 9-1 1 ; x. 13-16.] 
 
 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of 
 God. . . . Jesus came from Nazareth of GaHlee, and was 
 baptized of John in the Jordan. And straightway coming 
 up out of the water, he saw the heavens rent asunder, and 
 the Spirit as a dove descending upon him : and a voice came 
 out of the heavens. Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am 
 well pleased. 
 
 And they brought unto him little children, that he 
 should touch them : and the disciples rebuked them. But 
 when Jesus saw it, he was moved with indignation, and said 
 unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me ; forbid 
 them not : for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say 
 unto you. Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God 
 as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein. And he 
 took them in his arms, and blessed them, laying his hands 
 upon them. 
 
 LUKE. 
 
 [Luke i. 1-4; iv. 14-22; ix. 51-56.] 
 
 Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a 
 narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled 
 among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from 
 the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word, 
 it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all 
 things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in order, 
 most excellent Theophilus ; that thou mightest know the 
 certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed. 
 
 And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee : 
 and a fame went out concerning him through all the region 
 round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being 
 glorified of all. 
 
2 2 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought 
 up : and he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue 
 on the sabbath day, and stood up to read. And there was 
 dehvered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And he 
 opened the book, and found the place where it was written, 
 
 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. 
 
 Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the 
 poor : 
 
 He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, 
 
 And recovering of sight to the blind. 
 
 To set at liberty them that are bruised. 
 
 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. 
 And he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant, 
 and sat down : and the eyes of all in the synagogue were 
 fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, To-day 
 hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears. And all bare 
 him witness, and wondered at the words of grace which 
 proceeded out of his mouth. 
 
 And it came to pass, when the days were well-nigh come 
 that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to 
 go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face : and 
 they went, and entered into a village of the Saniaritans, to 
 make ready for him. And they did not receive him. because 
 his face was as though he were going to Jerusalem. And 
 when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, 
 wilt thou that we bid fire to come down from heaven, and 
 consume them ? But he turned, and rebuked them. And 
 they went to another village. 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 [John i. 1-4, 14-17. I John i. 1-5.] 
 
 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
 God, and the Word was God. The same was in the ])egin- 
 ning with God. All things were made b)- hini ; and without 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 -0 
 
 him was not any thing made that hath been made. In hini 
 was hie ; and the hfe was the hght of men. . . . And the 
 Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his 
 glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of 
 grace and truth. John beareth witness of him, and crieth, 
 saying, This was he of whom I said, He that cometh after me 
 is become before me : for he was before me. For of his ful- 
 ness we all received, and grace for grace. For the law was 
 given by Moses ; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. 
 
 That which was from the beofinninor that which we have 
 heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we 
 beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life 
 (and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear wit- 
 ness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was 
 with the Father, and was manifested unto us) ; that which we 
 have seen and heard declare we unto you also, that ye also 
 may have fellowship with us : yea, and our fellowship is with 
 the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ : and these things 
 we write, that our joy may be fulfilled. 
 
 PETER. 
 
 [John vi. 67-70. Acts iv. 8-13 ; x. 36-44. i Pet. ii. 21-24; "i- i8-] 
 
 Jesus said therefore unto the twelve, Would ye also go 
 away ? Simon Peter answered him. Lord, to whom shall we 
 go ? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have 
 believed and know that thou art the Holy One of God. 
 
 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said unto them, Ye 
 rulers of the people, and elders, if we this day are examined 
 concerning a good deed done to an impotent man, by what 
 means this man is made whole ; be it known unto you all, 
 and to all the people of Israel, that in the name of Jesus 
 Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from 
 the dead, even in him doth this man stand here before you 
 whole. He is the stone which was set at nought of you the 
 
24 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 builders, which was made the head of the corner. And in 
 none other is there salvation : tor neither is there any other 
 name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we 
 must be saved. 
 
 The word which he sent unto the children of Israel, 
 preaching good tidings of peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord 
 of all) — that saying ye yourselves know, which was published 
 throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee, after the bap- 
 tism which John preached ; even Jesus of Nazareth, how that 
 God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power: who 
 went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed 
 of the devil ; for God was with him. And we are witnesses of 
 all things which he did both in the country of the Jews, and 
 in Jerusalem ; whom also they slew, hanging him on a tree. 
 Him God raised up the third clay, and gave him to be made 
 manifest, not to all the people, but unto witnesses that were 
 chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with 
 him after he rose from the dead. And he charged us to 
 preach unto the people, and to testify that this is he which 
 is ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. To 
 him bear all the prophets witness, that through his name 
 every one that believeth on him shall receive remission of 
 sins. 
 
 Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that 
 ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile 
 found in his mouth : who, when he was reviled, reviled not 
 again; when he suffered, threatened not; but committed him- 
 self to him that judgeth righteously : . . . Christ also suffennl 
 for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might 
 bring us to God. 
 
2^0 JESUS OF NAZARETH. 25 
 
 PAUL. 
 
 [Acts XX. 35. Rom. v. 6-8; viii. 38, 39. i Cor. iii. 11. 2 Cor. v. 14-16; viii. 9. 
 Gal. V. I, 6. Eph. i. 3; ii. 4-8; iii. 14-20; iv. 11-14. Phil. ii. 9-12 ; iii. 8. 
 Col. i. 18-20: ill. 8-10. I Tim. i. 15, 16. 2 Tim. i. 10.] 
 
 In all things I gave you an e.xample, how that so laboring 
 ye ought to help the weak, and to remember the words of the 
 Lord Jesus, how he himself said, It is more blessed to give 
 than to receive. 
 
 While we were yet weak, in due sea.son Christ died for 
 the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die : 
 for peradventure'for the good man some would even dare to 
 die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, 
 while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 
 
 I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, 
 nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
 powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall 
 be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in 
 Christ Jesus our Lord. 
 
 Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, 
 which is Jesus Christ. 
 
 The love of Christ constraineth us ; because we thus judge, 
 that one died for all, that they which live should no longer 
 live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died 
 and rose again. 
 
 Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though 
 he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye 
 through his poverty might become rich. 
 
 With freedom did Christ set us free : stand fast therefore, 
 and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage. . . . For 
 in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor 
 uncircumcision ; but faith working through love. 
 
 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the 
 heavenly places in Christ. 
 
 God being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he 
 
26 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, 
 quickened us together with Christ (by grace have ye been 
 saved), and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with 
 him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus : that in the ages 
 to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in 
 kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 
 
 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom 
 every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he would 
 grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be 
 strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man ; 
 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith ; to the end 
 that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to 
 apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length 
 and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which 
 passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness 
 of God. 
 
 He gave some to be apostles ; and some, prophets ; and 
 some, evangelists ; and some, pastors and teachers ; for the 
 perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto 
 the building up of the body of Christ : till we all attain 
 unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the 
 Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of 
 the stature of the fulness of Christ. 
 
 God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name 
 which is above every name ; that in the name of Jesus c\ery 
 knee should bow, of thincfs in heaven and thinos on earth awA 
 things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess 
 that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 
 
 I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the 
 knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord : for whoni I suffered 
 the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I 
 may gain Christ. 
 
 He is the head of the body, the church : who is the begin- 
 ning, the firstborn from the dead ; that in all things he might 
 have the pre-eminence. For it was the good j^leasure of the 
 F'athcM- that in him slioiiKl all the fulness dwell. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 27 
 
 Take heed lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil 
 of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradi- 
 tion of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after 
 Christ : for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead 
 bodily, and in him ye are made full, who is the head of all 
 principality and power. 
 
 Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that 
 Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners ; of whom I 
 am chief ; howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me 
 as chief micrht lesus Christ shew forth all his lonpf-sufferino- 
 for an ensample of them which should hereafter believe on 
 him unto eternal life. 
 
 Our Saviour Christ Jesus hath abolished death, and brought 
 life and incorruption to light through the gospel. 
 
 THE WRITER OF THE BOOK OF HEBREWS. 
 
 [Heb. i. 1-5: ii.9-12; 17,18: iv. 15: vii. 26-28; xiii. 8.] 
 
 God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the 
 prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at 
 the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son, whom he 
 appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the 
 worlds ; who being the effulgence of his glory, and the very 
 image ot his substance, and upholding all things by the word 
 of his power, when he had made purification of sins, sat down 
 on the right hand of the Majesty on high ; having become by 
 so much better than the angels, as he hath inherited a more 
 excellent name than they. 
 
 We behold him who hath been made a little lower than 
 the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death 
 crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he 
 should taste death for every man. For it became him, for 
 whom are all thino-s, and throuo-h w^hom are all thino-s, in 
 bringing many sons unto glory, to make the author of their 
 salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sancti- 
 
28 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 fieth and they that are sanctified are all of one : for which 
 cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren. 
 
 . . . Wherefore it behoved him in all things to be made 
 like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful 
 high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation 
 for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath 
 suftered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are 
 tempted. 
 
 For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with 
 the feeling of our infirmities ; but one that hath been in all 
 points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. 
 
 Such a high priest became us. holy, guileless, undefiled, 
 separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens ; 
 who needeth not daily, like those high priests, to offer up 
 sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the 
 people : for this he did once for all, when he offered up him- 
 self. For the law appointeth men high priests having infirmi- 
 ties ; but the word of the oath, which was after the law, 
 appointeth a Son, perfected forevermore. 
 
 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and 
 forever. 
 
 JOHN THE BAPTIST. 
 
 [John i. 25-35; i''- 26-29, 30: 34. 35-1 
 
 And they asked him, and said unto him, Wh)- then bap- 
 tizest thou, if thou art not the Christ, neither Elijah, neither 
 the prophet ? John answered them, saying, I baptize with 
 water : in the midst of you standeth one whom ye know not, 
 even he that cometh after me, the latchet of whose shoe 1 
 am not worthy to unloose. These things were done in 
 Bethany beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. 
 
 On the morrow he seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith. 
 Behold, the Laml) of God, who taketh away the sin of the 
 world ! This is he of whom I said. After me cometh a man 
 who is become before me : for he; was Ijefore me. And 1 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 29 
 
 knew him not ; but that he should be made manifest to Israel, 
 for this cause came I baptizing with water. 
 
 And John bare witness, saying, I have beheld the Spirit 
 descending as a dove out of heaven ; and it abode upon him. 
 And I knew him not : but he that sent me to baptize with 
 water, he said unto me. Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the 
 Spirit descending, and abiding upon him, the same is he that 
 baptizeth with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen, and have 
 borne witness that this is the Son of God. 
 
 And they came unto John, and said to him. Rabbi, he that 
 was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou hast borne wit- 
 ness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him. 
 John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except 
 it have been given him from heaven. Ye yourselves bear me 
 witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but, that I am sent 
 before him. . . . He must increase, but I must decrease. . . . 
 He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God : for he 
 giveth not the Spirit by measure. The Father loveth the Son 
 and hath given all things into his hand. 
 
 SIMEON. 
 
 [Luke ii. 25-33.] 
 
 There was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon ; 
 and this man was riofhteous and devout, lookino" for the 
 consolation of Israel : and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 
 And it had been revealed unto him by the Holy Spirit, 
 that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's 
 Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple : and 
 when the parents brought in the child Jesus, that they 
 might do concerning him after the custom of the law, 
 then he received him into his arms, and blessed God, and 
 said. 
 
 Now lettest thou thy servant depart, O Lord, 
 
 According to th)- word in peace ; 
 
30 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, 
 
 Which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples ; 
 
 A light for revelation to the Gentiles, 
 
 And the glory of thy people Israel. 
 
 PHILIP AND NATHANIEL. 
 
 [John i. 43-50.] 
 
 On the morrow he was minded to go forth into Galilee, 
 and he findeth Philip : and Jesus saith unto him, Follow me. 
 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and 
 Peter. Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have 
 found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did 
 write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael 
 said unto him. Can any good thing come out ot Nazareth ? 
 Philip saith unto him. Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael 
 coming to him, and saith of him, Behold, an Israelite indeed, 
 in whom is no guile ! Nathanael saith unto him, Whence 
 knowest thou me ? Jesus answered and said unto him. 
 Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, 
 I saw thee. Nathanael answered him. Rabbi, thou art the 
 Son of God ; thou art King of Israel. 
 
 THE SAMARITANS OF SYCHAR. 
 
 [Jolm iv. 39-43-] 
 
 And from that city many of the Samaritans believed on 
 him because of the word of the woman, who testified. He 
 told me all thinofs that ever I did. So when the Samaritans 
 came unto him, they besought him to abide with them : and 
 he abode there two days. And many believed because of his 
 word ; and they said to the woman. Now we believe, not 
 because of thy speaking: for we have heard for ourselves, 
 and know that this is indeed the Saviour ot the world. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 3 1 
 
 NICODEMUS. 
 
 [John iii. 1-3; vii. 45-52.] 
 
 Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, 
 a ruler of the Jews : the same came unto him by night, and 
 said to him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come 
 from God : for no man can do these signs that thou doest, 
 except God be with him. . . . 
 
 The officers therefore came to the chief priests and Phari- 
 sees ; and they said unto them. Why did ye not bring him ? 
 The officers answered. Never man so spake. The Pharisees 
 therefore answered them, Are ye also led astray? Hath any 
 of the rulers believed on him, or of the Pharisees? But this 
 multitude which knoweth not the law are accursed. Nicode- 
 mus saith unto them (he that came to them before, being one 
 of them). Doth our law judge a man, except it first hear from 
 himself and know what he doeth ? 
 
 PONTIUS PILATE. 
 
 [Matt, xxvii. 24. Luke xxiii. 1-5; 13-16.] 
 
 When Pilate saw that he prevailed .nothing, but rather 
 that a tumult was arising, he took water, and washed his 
 hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the 
 blood of this righteous man : see ye to it. . . . 
 
 And the whole company of them rose up, and brought 
 him before Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, 
 We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding to 
 give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a 
 king. And Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou the King of 
 the Jews ? And he answered and said. Thou sayest. And 
 Pilate said unto the chief priests and the multitudes, I find no 
 fault in this man. . . . 
 
 And Pilate called together the chief priests and the rulers 
 and the people, and said unto them. Ye brought unto me this 
 
32 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 man. as one that perverteth the people : and behold. I. havincr 
 examined him before you. found no fault in this man touch- 
 ing those thing's whereof ye accuse him : no. nor yet Herod : 
 for he sent him back to us. 
 
 THE WIFE OF PONTIUS PILATE. 
 
 [Matt, xxvii. 19.] 
 
 While he [Pilate] was sitting on the judgment-seat, his 
 wife sent unto him, saying. Have thou nothing to do with 
 that righteous man : for I have suffered many things this day 
 in a dream because of him. 
 
 JUDAS ISCARIOT. 
 
 [Matt, xxvii. 3, 4.] 
 
 Then Judas, who betrayed him, when he saw that he was 
 condemned, repented himself, and brought back the thirty 
 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have 
 sinned in that I betrayed innocent blood. 
 
 THE ROMAN CENTURION. 
 
 [Luke xxiii. 47, 48.] 
 
 When the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, 
 saying. Certainly this was a righteous man. And all the mul- 
 titudes that came together to this sight, when they beheld the 
 things that were done, returned smiting their breasts. 
 
 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 
 
 [Luke xxiii. 39-42.] 
 
 One of the malefactors who were hanged railed on him, 
 saying. Art not thou the Christ ? save thyself and us. But 
 the other answered, and rebuking him said, Dost thou not 
 fc-ar God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation ? And 
 we indeed justly ; for we receive the due reward of our deeds : 
 but this man hath done nothino- amiss. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 33 
 
 TESTIMONY OF CHURCH FATHERS. 
 
 CLEMENT OF ROME. 
 
 [First Epistle, ch. xxxvi.] 
 
 This is the way, beloved, in which we find our Saviour, 
 even [esus Christ, the High Priest of all our offering's, the 
 defender and helper of our infirmity. By him we look up to 
 the heights of heaven. By him we behold, as in a glass, the 
 immaculate and most excellent visage. By him are the eyes 
 of our heart opened. By him our foolish and darkened 
 understanding blossoms up anew towards his marvellous light. 
 By him the Lord has willed that we should taste of immortal 
 knowledge, " Who, being the brightness of his majesty, is by 
 so much greater than the angels as he hath by inheritance 
 obtained a more excellent name than they." 
 
 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 
 
 [Works, vol. i. pp. 181, 183.] 
 
 Having now accomplished those things, it were a fitting 
 sequel, that our instructor Jesus should draw for us the model 
 of the true life, and train humanity in Christ. Nor is the 
 cast and character of the life he enjoins very formidable ; nor 
 is it made altogether easy by reason of his benignity. He 
 enjoins his commands, and at the same time gives them such 
 a character that they may be accomplished. . . . 
 
 The greatest and most regal work of God is the salvation 
 of humanity. The sick are vexed at a physician who gives 
 no advice bearing on their restoration to health. But how 
 shall we not acknowledge the highest gratitude to our divine 
 
34 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Instructor, who is not silent, who omits not those threatenings 
 that point toward destruction, but discloses them, and cuts off 
 the impulses that attend to them ; and who indoctrinates in 
 those counsels which result in the true way of living! We 
 must confess, therefore, the deepest obligation to him. For 
 what else do we say is incumbent on the rational creature — 
 I mean man — than the contemplation of the Divine ? I say, 
 too, that it is requisite to contemplate human nature, and to 
 live as the truth directs, and to admire the Instructor and 
 his injunctions, as suitable and harmonious to each other. 
 According to which image also we ought, conforming our- 
 selves to the Instructor, and making the word and our deeds 
 agree, to live a real life. 
 
 AUGUSTINE. 
 
 [Confessions, xii. 14.] 
 
 The teaching of Christ is a great sea whose smiling sur- 
 face breaks into refreshing ripples at the feet of our little 
 ones, but into whose unfathomable depths the wisest may 
 eaze with the shudder of amazement and the thrill of love. 
 
 [Letters, vol. ii. pp. 447, 44S.] 
 
 The Christ who is preached throughout the whole world 
 is not Christ adorned with an earthly crown, nor Christ rich 
 in earthly treasures, nor Christ illustrious in prosperity, but 
 Christ crucified. This was ridiculed, at first, by whole nations 
 of proud men, and is still ridiculed by a remnant among the 
 nations ; but it was the object of faith at first to a few and to 
 whole nations, because when Christ crucified was preached 
 at that time, notwithstanding the ridicule of the nations, 
 to the few who believed, the lame received power to walk, the 
 dumb to speak, the deaf to hear, the blind to see. and 
 the dead were restored to life. Hius at length the pride of 
 this world was convinced that, even among the things of this 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 35 
 
 world, there is nothing more powerful than the humility of 
 God, so that beneath the shield of a Divine example that 
 humility which it is most profitable for men to practise might 
 find defence against the contemptuous assaults of pride. 
 
 ORIGEN. 
 
 [Works, vol. i. p. 32.] 
 
 God is the primal goodness, doubtless, out of which the 
 Son is born, who, being in all respects the image of the 
 Father, may certainly also be called with propriety the image 
 of his eoodness. For there is no other second oroodness 
 existing in the Son, save that which is in the Father. And 
 therefore, also, the Saviour himself rightly says in the Gospel, 
 *' There is none good save one only, God the Father : " that 
 by such an expression it may be understood that the Son is 
 not of a different goodness, but of that only which exists in 
 the Father, of whom he is rightly termed the image because 
 he proceeds from no other source but from that primal 
 goodness, lest there might appear to be in the Son a differ- 
 ent goodness from that which is in the Father. 
 
 POLYCARP. 
 
 [Epistle to the Philippians, ch. viii.] 
 
 Let us, then, continually persevere in our hope and the 
 earnest of our righteousness, which is Jesus Christ, who bore 
 our sins in his own body on the tree, who did no sin, neither 
 was guile found in his mouth, but endured all things for us 
 that we miofht live in him. Let us, then, be imitators of his 
 patience ; and if we suffer for his name's sake, let us glorify 
 him, for he has set us this example in himself, and we have 
 believed that such is the case. 
 
36 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 CYPRIAN. 
 
 [Works.] 
 
 Jesus Christ ruled over his disciples not as servants in the 
 power of a master, but kind and gentle he loved them with a 
 brotherly love. He deigned even to wash the apostles' feet, 
 that, since the Lord is such among his servants, he might 
 teach by his example what a fellow-servant ought to be among 
 his peers and equals. Nor is it to be wondered at, that 
 among the obedient he showed himself such, since he could 
 bear Judas even to the last with a long patience, could know 
 the household foe, and not openly point him out, nor refuse 
 the kiss of a traitor. Moreover, in bearing with the Jews, he 
 showed great equanimity and patience in turning the unbe- 
 lieving to the faith by persuasion, in soothing the unthankful 
 by concession, in answering gently to the contradictors, in 
 bearing the proud with clemency, in yielding with humility 
 to the persecutors, in wishing to gather together the slayers 
 of the prophets, and those who were always rebellious against 
 God, even to the hour of his cross and passion. . . . 
 
 He was crowned with thorns, who crowns martyrs with 
 eternal flowers. He was smitten on the face with palms, who 
 gives the true palms to those who overcome. He was 
 despoiled of his earthly garment, who clothes others in the 
 vesture of immortality. He was fed with gall, who gave 
 heavenly food. He was given to drink vinegar, who ap- 
 pointed the cup of salvation. 
 
 [Vol. ii. pp. 26, 27.] 
 
 Even to the end all things are borne perseveringly and 
 constantly, in order that in Christ a full and perfect patience 
 may be consummated. And after all these things he still 
 receives his murderers, if they would-be converted and come 
 to him ; and with a saving patience, he who is benignant to 
 persevere, closes his Church to none. Those adversaries, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 37 
 
 those blasphemers, those who were ahvays enemies to his 
 name, if they repent of their sin, if they acknowledge the 
 crime committed, he receives not only to the pardon of their 
 sin, but to the reward of the heavenly kingdom. What can 
 be called more patient, what more merciful? Such and so 
 great is the patience of Christ. 
 
 JUSTIN MARTYR. 
 
 [Second Apology, p. 80.] 
 
 No one trusted in Socrates so as to die for his doctrine. 
 But in Christ, not only philosophers and scholars believed, but 
 also artisans, and people entirely uneducated, despising both 
 glory and fear and death ; since he is a power of the ineffable 
 Father, and not the mere instrument of human nature. 
 
 IGNATIUS. 
 
 [Epistle to the Philadelphians, ch. ix.] 
 
 The priests indeed are good ; but the High Priest is 
 better, to whom the holy of holies has been committed, and 
 who alone has been trusted with the secrets of God. He is 
 the door of the fold, by which enter in Abraham and Isaac 
 and Jacob, and the prophets and apostles and the Church. 
 
38 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 TESTIMONY OF UNCLASSIFIED WRITERS. 
 
 FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS. 
 
 (A.D. 37-100.) 
 [ANTiQUiTiEs)(yiii. 3>] oijJI^' \i'.%^>% 
 
 About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if it be proper 
 to call him a man. For he was a doer of surprising deeds, a 
 teacher of men who willingly receive what is true. And many 
 Jews and many of the Greek race he brought to his side. 
 This was the Christ ; and those who first loved him did not 
 cease to do so, when Pilate, on the accusation of the chief 
 men among us, punished him with the cross. For he appeared 
 to them on the third day alive again, the divine prophets 
 having spoken both this and many other wonderful things 
 concerning him. To this day the party of the Christians who 
 have been named from him have not ceased to exist. 
 
 Note. — The genuineness of the above passage from Josephus has been 
 much disputed. Many eminent scholars hold it to be undoubtedly spurious. Its 
 wide use in the earlier apologetic Christian literature, however, and its general 
 acceptance as the testimony of an eminent Jewish historian of the first century, 
 warrant me, perhaps, in giving it a place in this collection. 
 
 MARTIN LUTHER. 
 
 [Table-Talk. London: 1791. Ch. vii.] 
 
 Is it not a shame that we are always afraid of Christ ? 
 whereas there never was in heaven nor on earth a more 
 loving, familiar, and milder man, both in words, works, and 
 carriage, especially towards poor, sorrowful, and tormented 
 consciences. . . . 
 
 The chief study in divinity is, that we learn to know 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 39 
 
 Christ aright. Therefore says St. Peter, " Grow up in the 
 knowledge of Jesus Christ," namely, that he is the most 
 merciful, the most just and wise ; and if I might leave behind 
 me but only this lesson, which with great diligence I have 
 driven and taught, namely, that people would consider and 
 take good heed of speculations, and instead thereof would 
 comprehend and take hold of Christ only, in the most plain 
 and simple manner, then I should think myself happy, and 
 that I had accomplished much. 
 
 HUGO GROTIUS. 
 
 [Truth of the Christian Religion. London: 1840. Pp. 114, 115.] 
 
 Christ is described by his disciples to be without any 
 manner of sin ; nor could he ever be proved to have com- 
 mitted any, by the testimony of others ; and whatever he 
 commanded others, he performed himself, for he faithfully 
 fulfilled all things that God commanded him. He was most 
 sincere in the whole course of his life ; he was the most patient 
 of injuries and torments ; he was so great a lover of man- 
 kind, of his enemies, even of those by whom he was led to 
 death, that he prayed to God for them. And the reward that 
 he promised to his followers, he was possessed of himself, in 
 a most eminent manner, as is declared and proved by certain 
 testimony. Many saw, heard, and handled him, after his 
 return to life again. He was taken up into heaven in the 
 sight of twelve, and that he there obtained the highest power 
 is manifest from this : that he endowed his disciples with a 
 power to speak those languages which they had never learned. 
 All these things put together show that there is no reason to 
 doubt his faithfulness, or of his power to recompense us with 
 that reward he has promised. And hence it is we collect, that 
 this religion excels all others in this particular also : That the 
 Author of it performed himself as he commanded, and was 
 possessed of what he promised. 
 
40 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CEN2URIES 
 
 FRANCIS BACON. 
 
 [Works. Boston: 1861. Vol. xiv. p. 53.] 
 
 Jesus the Lord became a sacrifice for sin ; a pattern for 
 all righteousness ; a preacher of the word which himself was ; 
 a corner-stone to remove the separation between Jew and 
 Gentile; an intercessor of the Church; a Lord of nature in 
 his miracles ; a conqueror of death and the power of darkness 
 in his resurrection. He fulfilled the whole counsel of God, 
 performed his whole sacred offices and anointing on earth, 
 accomplished the whole work of the redemption and restitu- 
 tion of men to a state superior to the angels, and reconciled 
 or established all things according to the eternal will of the 
 Father. 
 
 THOMAS A KEMPIS. 
 
 [The Imitation of Christ, Book I. ch. i. ; Book II. ch. viii.] 
 
 " He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness," saith 
 the Lord. These are the words of Christ, by which we are 
 reminded that we must copy his life and conduct, if we wish 
 to be truly enlightened and to be delivered from all blindness 
 of heart. To meditate on the life of Jesus, should therefore 
 be our chief study. 
 
 His teaching surpasses all that the saints have taught, and 
 he who has the Spirit will find in it the " hidden manna." 
 But it happens that many who are offered the gospel, experi- 
 ence but little desire for it, because they do not possess the 
 Spirit of Christ. For, if you would completely and with 
 delight enter into the meaning of Christ's words, )ou must 
 take pains to bring your life into entire conformity with his. 
 
 When Jesus is present, all is well, and nothing seems 
 difficult ; but when Jesus is absent, every thing seems hard. 
 
 When Jesus does not speak to the soul, all other consola- 
 tion is of no avail. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 4 1 
 
 But if Jesus speaks only one word, there is a feeling of 
 great comfort. 
 
 Did not Mary instantly rise up from the place where she 
 wept, when Martha said to her, " The Master is come, and 
 calleth for thee " ? 
 
 It is a happy hour when Jesus calls you from tears to 
 spiritual joy. 
 
 If Jesus is with you, no enemy can hurt you. 
 
 He who finds Jesus finds a good treasure ; yes, good 
 beyond all good. 
 
 And he who loses Jesus loses very much, ah ! more than 
 the whole world. 
 
 -He is very poor who lives without Jesus : he is very rich 
 who has him for his friend. 
 
 It is a great art to know how to hold converse with Jesus, 
 and to know how to detain him in the soul is great wisdom. 
 
 Be lowly and restful, and Jesus will be present with you. 
 
 Be devout and quiet, and Jesus will remain with you. 
 
 BLAISE PASCAL. 
 
 [Thoughts. New York: 1S69. Pp. 257, 318, 319, 334.] 
 
 Jesus Christ is the object of all, and the centre whither 
 all tends. Whoever knows him knows the reason of all 
 things. . . . 
 
 Great geniuses have their empire, their renown, their 
 greatness, their victory, and their lustre ; and have no need 
 of material grandeurs, with which they have no relation. 
 They are seen, not with the eyes, but with the mind : that is 
 enough. The saints have their empire, their renown, their 
 victory, their lustre ; and have no need of material or intel- 
 lectual grandeur, with which they have no relation, for they 
 neither add to them nor take from them. They are seen of 
 God and angels, and not by body and curious intellect. God 
 is sufficient for them. 
 
42 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Archimedes, without material splendor, would be held in 
 the same veneration. He gained no battles for the satisfac- 
 tion of the carnal eye, but he furnished all minds with his 
 inventions. Oh, what splendor he had for minds ! 
 
 JESUS CHRIST, without wealth and without any out- 
 ward production of science, is in his order of holiness. He 
 gave no inventions; he did not reign: but he was humble, 
 patient, holy to God, terrible to demons, without any sin. 
 Oh, with what great pomp and with what prodigious magnifi- 
 cence did he come to the eyes of the heart, and eyes which 
 see wisdom ! It would have been useless for Archimedes 
 to affect the prince in his books of geometry, although he 
 mieht have done this. It would have been useless for our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, in order to appear with splendor in his 
 reign of holiness, to come as a king. But with what a splen- 
 dor of his own order has he indeed come! 
 
 Jesus Christ has said great things so simply, that it seems 
 that he has not thought of them ; and so precisely, neverthe- 
 less, that we see clearly what he thought of them. This 
 clearness, joined to this simplicity, is admirable. 
 
 He who does not know him knows nothing of the order 
 of the world, and nothing of himself. For, not only do we 
 know God by Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves by 
 Jesus Christ. In him is all our goodness, our virtue, our life, 
 our hope ; without him, there is for us only misery, darkness, 
 and despair ; and we shall see only obscurity and conlusion 
 in the nature of God, and in our own nature. 
 
 BENEDICT SPINOZA. 
 
 [Tractatus Thf.ologico-Politicus — Spinoza: His Likk and PHii.osoritY. London: 
 
 iSSo. Sects. 22, 24.] 
 
 Tiiou(;ii we clearly understand that Goi.1 can communicate 
 immediately with hkmi (for he communicates his nature to 
 our mintl without any bodily instrument), yet that a man 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 43 
 
 should purely in his mind perceive matters which be not con- 
 tained in the first principles of our knowledge, nor can be 
 deduced therefrom, his mind must be of surpassing excellence 
 and above man's capacity. Wherefore I believe not that any ■ 
 man ever came to that singular height of perfection but 
 Christ, to whom the ordinances of God that lead man to 
 salvation were revealed, not in words or in visions, but 
 immediately : so that God manifested himself to the apostles 
 by the mind of Christ, as formerly to Moses by means of a 
 voice in the air. 
 
 And therefore the voice of Christ may be called, like that 
 which Moses heard, the voice of God. In this sense we may 
 likewise say that the wisdom of God — that is, a wisdom 
 above man's — took man's nature in Christ, and that Christ . 
 is the way of salvation. 
 
 JACQUES BENIGNE BOSSUET. 
 
 [Select Sermons. London: 1880. Pp. 70, 72.] 
 
 It is not wonderful that the sentiment of compassion 
 should prevail in the bosom of our Redeemer. According to 
 Tertullian, the first development of the economy of God 
 towards man is benevolence, and the reason is sufficiently 
 clear; for, in order to trace the original inclination, we must 
 seek for that which is most natural, as nature is the root from 
 which all other tendencies and sensations spring. Having 
 the nature to bless, it is natural in God to diffuse the blessing. 
 As the fountain sends forth its waters, as the sun expands his 
 beams ; therefore it is that the Son of God, our Pontiff, our 
 Advocate, our Intercessor, is assimilated to the Father in the 
 characteristic feature of benevolence. This amiable disposi- 
 tion is strongly marked in those words of St. Peter to 
 Cornelius : " Jesus of Nazareth, who went about doing good." 
 Simple and unadorned but beautiful eulogium ! How differ- 
 ent from the insensate eloquence of the day, who, when she 
 
44 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 would extol some renowned soldier, tells us he marched 
 through the country of the enemy with victory at his side ! 
 Now, what means, in the language of the panegyrist, to 
 overrun the country of the enemy with victory at his side ? 
 Is it not to open the flood-gates of blood, and to commit 
 universal slaughter ? How different was the passage of the 
 victorious Jesus through Judaea ! Benevolence was the victory 
 that accompanied his steps. Afliiction, sickness, mental dis- 
 order, flew at his approach. Not only was the house where 
 he sojourned thus blessed by his active compassion ; every 
 impression of his steps may be said to have been accompa- 
 nied by the vestiges of his abundant goodness. As the 
 sower scatters the seed as he moves along, the Son of God, 
 wherever he went, diffused his divine favors. 
 
 Did any one inquire, why in that town, or in that hamlet, 
 no lame or blind person or miserable object appeared, the 
 answer was ready: The compassionate Jesus has just passed 
 through. 
 
 JEREMY TAYLOR. 
 
 [Works. London: 1S39. Vol. ii. p. 63.] 
 
 I CONSIDER that the imitation of the life of Jesus is a duty 
 of that excellency and perfection, that all are helped in it, 
 not only by the assistance of a good and great example, which 
 possibly might be too great, and scare our endeavors and 
 attempts ; but also by its easiness, compliance, and proportion 
 to us. For Jesus, in his whole life, conversed with men with 
 a modest virtue, which, like a well-kindled fire fitted with just 
 materials, casts a constant heat ; not like an inflamed heap of 
 stubble, glaring with great emissions, and suddenly stooi)ing 
 into the thickness of smoke. His piety was even, constant, 
 unblamable, complying with civil society without aflriglitment 
 of precedent or prodigious instances of actions greater than 
 the imitation of men. For, if we observe our blessed Saviour 
 in the whole story of his life, although he was without sin, yet 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 45 
 
 the instances of his piety were the actions of a very holy 
 but of an ordinary Hfe ; and we may observe this difference 
 in the story of Jesus, from ecclesiastical writings of certain 
 persons, whose life is told rather to amaze us, and to create 
 scruples, than to lead us in the evenness and serenity of a 
 holy conscience. 
 
 JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON. 
 
 [Sermons. Dublin: 1S76. P. 62.] 
 
 No man ever conferred such inestimable blessings on 
 mankind as Jesus. He has purchased for us an eternal peace ; 
 he has imparted to us happiness, justice, and truth ; he has 
 renewed the face of the whole earth. His favors are not con- 
 fined to one people or to one generation ; they are extended 
 to every nation and to every age ; and, what is more, those 
 inestimable blessings he purchased for us at no less a price 
 than that of his precious blood. If, therefore, gratitude 
 exalted the mere instruments of the mercies of God to the 
 rank of divinities, surely no one was more entitled to that dis- 
 tinction than Jesus. 
 
 THOMAS CHUBB. 
 
 [The True Gospel of Jesus Christ, pp. 55, 56.] 
 
 In Christ we have an example of a quiet and a peaceable 
 spirit ; of a becoming modesty and sobriety ; just, honest, 
 upright, sincere ; and, above all, of a most gracious and 
 benevolent temper and behavior. One who did no wrong, 
 no injury to any man ; in whose mouth was no guile ; who 
 went about doing good, not only by his ministry, but in curing 
 all manner of diseases among the people. His life was a 
 beautiful picture of human nature in its native purity and 
 simplicity, and showed at once what excellent creatures men 
 would be when under the influence and power of that gospel 
 which he preached unto them. 
 
46 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE. 
 
 [Treatise on Toleration, p. 95.] 
 
 Christ died die victim of envy. If we may compare 
 things sacred with things profane, and God with man, his 
 death greatly resembled that of Socrates. The Greek phi- 
 losopher perished by the hatred of sophists, the priests, and 
 the leaders of the people ; the Christian Legislator perished 
 under the hatred of the scribes, Pharisees, and priests. 
 Socrates might have avoided death, but would not ; Jesus 
 Christ offered himself voluntarily. The Greek philosopher 
 not only pardoned his calumniators and iniquitous judges, but 
 he begged them to treat his children as they had treated him, 
 if they should be happy enough, like him, to merit their 
 displeasure ; the Christian Legislator, infinitely superior, peti- 
 tioned his Father to forgive his enemies. 
 
 If Jesus Christ seemed to fear death ; if the anguish he 
 felt was so great as to draw from him sweat mingled with 
 blood, which is a very uncommon and violent symptom, — it 
 was because he condescended to all the weakness of humanity, 
 which he had taken on him. His body trembled, but his soul 
 was immovable ; he taught us that real fortitude and real 
 greatness consist in bearing evils, under which our nature 
 sinks. It must be courage in the extreme to seek death 
 even while we fear it. 
 
 RICHARD HOOKER. 
 
 [Complete Works, vol. i. p. 397.] 
 
 The soul of Christ, that saw in this life the face of God, 
 was here through so visible a presence of Deity, filled with 
 all manner of o-raccs and virtues in that unmatched deo'ree 
 of perfection for which of him we read it written : " That God 
 with the oil of gladness anointed him above his fellows." 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 47 
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU. 
 
 [Complete Works. (Emilius) Edinburgh : 1773. Vol. ii. pp. 215-218.] 
 
 I WILL confess to you, that the majesty of the Scriptures 
 strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its 
 influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers, 
 with all their pomp of diction : how mean, how contemptible, 
 are they, compared with the Scriptures ! Is it possible that 
 the sacred personage whose history they contain should be 
 himself a mere man ? Do we find that he assumed the tone 
 of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary ? What sweetness, 
 what purity, in his manner! What an affecting grace in his 
 instructions ! What sublimity in his maxims ! What profound 
 wisdom in his discourses! What presence of mind, what 
 subtlety, what fitness, in his replies ! How great the com- 
 mand over his passions ! Where is the man, where the 
 philosopher, who could so live and so die, without weakness, 
 and without ostentation ? When Plato describes his imaginary 
 righteous man, loaded with all the punishments of guilt, yet 
 meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he describes exactly 
 the character of Jesus Christ. The resemblance is so striking, 
 that all the Church fathers perceived it. What an infinite 
 disproportion there is between them ! What prepossession, 
 what blindness, must it be to compare the son of Sophroniscus 
 to the Son of Mary ! Socrates, dying without pain or igno- 
 miny, easily supported his character to the last ; and, if this 
 easy death had not crowned his life, it might have been 
 doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was any thing 
 more than a mere sophist. . He invented, it is said, the theory 
 of ethics. Others, however, had before put them into prac- 
 tice : he had only to say, therefore, what they had done, and 
 to reduce their examples to precepts. Aristides had been just, 
 before Socrates defined justice. Leonidas had given up his 
 life for his country, before Socrates had declared patriotism to 
 be a duty. The Spartans were a sober people, before Socrates 
 
48 TESTIMONY OF NIX E TEEN CENTURIES 
 
 recommended sobriety. Before he had even defined virtue, 
 Greece abounded in virtuous men. But where could Jesus 
 learn, among his contemporaries, that pure and sublime 
 morality of which he only has given us both precept and 
 example ? The greatest wisdom was made known among the 
 most bigoted fanaticism, and the simplicity of the most heroic 
 virtues did honor to the vilest people on earth. 
 
 The death of Socrates, peacefully philosophizing among 
 friends, appears the most agreeable that one could wish ; that 
 of Jesus, expiring in agonies, abused, insulted, and accused by 
 a whole nation, is the most horrible that one could fear. 
 Socrates, indeed, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed the 
 weeping executioner who administered it ; but Jesus, amidst 
 excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. 
 
 Yes, if the life and death of Socrates w^ere those of a sage, 
 the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we 
 suppose the evangelical history a mere fiction ? Indeed, my 
 friend, it bears no marks of fiction. On the contrary, the 
 history of Socrates, which no one presumes to doubt, is not 
 so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, 
 in fact, only shifts the difficulty without obviating it. It is 
 more inconceivable that a number of persons should agree to 
 write such a history, than that one should furnish the subject 
 of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and 
 strangers to the morality, contained in the gospel. The marks 
 of its truth are so striking and inimitable, that the inventor 
 would be a more astonishing character than the hero. 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 [Last Wii.i, and Testament, r6i6.] 
 
 I coMMKxn my soul into the hands of (jod my Creator, 
 hoping, and assurcdl)- bc-licN-ing, through iIk; onlv merits of 
 Jesus Christ ni)' Saviour, to be made partaker of life ever- 
 lasting. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 49 
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 [Works. Oxford: 1825. Vol. ix. p. 520.] 
 
 To bring life and immortality to light ; to give such proofs 
 of our future existence, as may influence the most narrow 
 mind, and fill the most capacious intellect ; to open prospects 
 beyond the grave, in which the thought may expatiate without 
 obstructions ; and to supply a refuge and a support to the 
 mind amidst all the miseries of decaying nature, — is the pecul- 
 iar excellence of the gospel of Christ. Without this heavenly 
 Instructor, he who feels himself sinking under the weight of 
 years, or melting away by the slow waste of lingering disease, 
 has no other remedy than obdurate patience, — a gloomy 
 resignation to that which cannot be avoided ; and he who 
 follows his friend, or whoever is yet dearer than a friend, to 
 the Qrrave, can have no other consolation than that which he 
 derives from the general misery. The reflection that he suffers 
 only what the rest of mankind must suffer, is a poor consid- 
 eration, which rather awes us to silence than soothes us to 
 quiet, and which does not abate the sense of our calamity, 
 though it may make us ashamed to complain. 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 [Complete Works. New York : 1831. Pp. 180, 181.] 
 
 We may, lastly, observe how our Lord teaches here. And 
 surely, as at all times, so particularly at this, he speaks "as 
 never man spake." Not as the holy men of old, although 
 they also spoke " as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 
 Not as Peter, or James, or John, or Paul. They were, indeed, 
 wise master-builders in his church ; but still in this, in the 
 degrees of heavenly wisdom, the servant is not as his Lord. 
 No, nor even as himself at any other time or on any other 
 occasion. It does not appear that it ever was his design at 
 
50 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 any other time or place to lay down at once the whole plan 
 of his religion, to give us a full prospect of Christianity, to 
 describe at large the nature of that holiness without which 
 no man shall see the Lord. 
 
 Above all, with what amazing love does the Son of God 
 here reveal his Father's will to man ! He does not bring us 
 again to the mount " that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, 
 and darkness, and tempest." He does not speak as when he 
 " thundered out of heaven." He now addresses us with his 
 still small voice : " Blessed are the poor in spirit." Happy are 
 the mourners, the meek, those that hunger after righteous- 
 ness, the merciful, the pure in heart, — happy in the end and 
 in the way ; happy in this life and in life everlasting. As 
 if he had said. Who is he that lusteth to live, and would fain 
 see good days ? Behold, I show you the thing which your 
 soul longeth for. See the way you have so long sought in 
 vain ; the way of pleasantness ; the path to calm, joyous 
 peace, to heaven below and heaven above. 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
 
 [Works. Philadelphia: 1871. Vol. iv. p. 479.] 
 
 To the corruptions of Christianity I am opposed, but not 
 to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian 
 in the only sense in which he wishes any one to be: sincerely 
 attracted to his doctrines, in preference to all others ; as- 
 cribing to him every human excellence, and believing he 
 never claimed any other. 
 
 [Vol. iv. pp. 482, 483.] 
 
 In a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, dated Washington, 
 April 21, 1803, President Jefferson enclosed a syllabus of an 
 estimate of the merits of the doctrines of Jesus, compared 
 with those of others. Of Jesus he said, — 
 
 I. He corrected the deism of the Jews, confirming them 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 5 1 
 
 in the belief of one only God, and giving them juster notions 
 of his attributes and government. 
 
 2. His moral doctrines, relatinor to kindred and friends, 
 were more pure and perfect than those of the most correct of 
 the philosophers, and greatly more so than those of the Jews ; 
 and they went far beyond both in inculcating universal philan- 
 thropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and 
 countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one family, 
 under the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants, and 
 common aids. 
 
 3. The precepts of philosophy, and of the Hebrew code, 
 laid hold of actions only. He pushed his scrutiny into the 
 heart of men ; he erected his tribunal in the reeion of 
 the thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain-head. 
 
 4. He taught, emphatically, the doctrine of a future state, 
 which was either doubted or disbelieved, and wielded it with 
 efficacy as an important incentive, supplementary to the other 
 motives to moral conduct. 
 
 IMMANUEL KANT. 
 
 (1724-1804.) 
 [An Inquiry into the Existence of God. London : 1836. Pp. 249, 250.] 
 
 In the life and the divine doctrine of Christ which are 
 recorded in the Gospel, example and precept conspire to call 
 men to the regular discharge of every moral duty for its own 
 sake, to the universal practice of pure virtue. " He can't be 
 wrong whose life is in the right." 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount, in particular, comprises so 
 pure a moral doctrine of religion, which Jesus obviously had 
 the intention of introducing among the Jews, that we cannot 
 avoid considerinof it as the word of God. 
 
 Beyond doubt, Christ is the founder of the first true 
 Church ; that is, that Church, which, purified from the folly 
 
52 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 of superstition and the meanness of fanaticism, exhibits the 
 moral kingdom of God upon earth, as far as it can be done 
 by man. 
 
 For the true end of all religion of reason is the rectification 
 of the heart, or the moral amendment of man. 
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 [The Age of Reason. Boston : 1854. P. 30.] 
 
 Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most 
 distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He 
 was a virtuous anjd an amiable man. The morality that 
 he preached and practised was of the most benevolent kind ; 
 and though similar systems of morality had been preached 
 by Confucius and by some of the Greek philosophers many 
 years before, by the Quakers since, and by many good men 
 in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any. 
 
 JOSEPH PRIESTLY. 
 
 [Socrates and Jesus compared. Philadelphia: 1S03. Pp. 35-37, 42-45, 58-60.] 
 
 Both Jesus and Socrates took advantage of present inci- 
 dents as hints for their instructive discourses ; but those 
 of Socrates have the appearance of having been contrived 
 beforehand, while those to which Jesus alluded were such as 
 naturally presented them.selves at the time. 
 
 What was peculiar to Socrates was his proposing to his 
 hearers a series of questions, by means of which he made the 
 conclusions he wished to have drawn seem to be their own : 
 so that all objections were precluded. 
 
 A great peculiarity in the discourses of Jesus, though his 
 manner was very various and often authoritatively didactic, 
 which that of Socrates never was, consisted in numerous 
 parables, the meaning of which, when he intended it to be 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 53 
 
 SO, was sufficiently obvious and peculiarly striking. At other 
 times there was an intended obscurity in the parables and 
 sayings of Jesus. He did not always wish to be understood 
 at the time, but to have what he said to be remembered, and 
 reflected upon afterwards. 
 
 It is very remarkable that there are not, in the most elabo- 
 rate compositions of the ancients or moderns, any parables so 
 excellent for pertinency to the occasions on which they were 
 delivered, for propriety and consistency in their parts, and for 
 important meaning, as those of Jesus. 
 
 Numerous as they are, they all appear to have been unpre- 
 meditated, as they arose from circumstances in which the 
 speaker had no choice. There is nothing trifling or absurd in 
 any of them ; and few others, though the result of much 
 study, are free from some objection of this kind. It will not 
 be supposed that the parables of Jesus received any improve- 
 ment from the writers of his life ; and yet, the more they are 
 studied, the more admirable they are found to be. 
 
 Both the discourses and the general manner and life of 
 Socrates and Jesus have an obvious resemblance, as they both 
 went about gratuitously doing good, according to their several 
 abilities, situations, and opportunities ; but we see an infinite 
 superiority with respect to Jesus, though he had no such 
 advantage of education and instruction as Socrates had. Not- 
 withstanding this great disadvantage, we find that, without 
 any previous preparation that was visible, Jesus from his very 
 first appearance assumed more authority as a teacher, and as 
 a reprover of vice, than any other man before or since ; 
 addressing himself to great multitudes or single persons, the 
 most eminent for their rank or knowledge, without the least 
 embarrassment, and with an air of superiority to all men, and 
 yet without the appearance of any thing impertinent, osten- 
 tatious, or insulting. 
 
 Had Socrates introduced any of his instructionswith" Verily, '' 
 verily, I say unto you," or any language of similar import, he 
 would have exposed himself to the ridicule of his audience, 
 
54 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 even in the latest period of his life, when he had acquired the 
 greatest respect and authority. But this language was usual 
 with Jesus from the very first ; as in his discourse on the 
 Mount, when, instead of being insulted, he by this ver}' means 
 excited the Qrreater veneration and attachment. 
 
 But independently of this superior authority with which 
 Jesus always delivered himself, the subjects of his discourse 
 and exhortations were far more serious and weighty than those 
 of Socrates. . . . The great inferiority of all heathens with 
 respect to knowledge, especially concerning God, providence, 
 and a future state, made it absolutely impossible that the 
 moral discourses of Socrates should have the clearness, the 
 weight, and importance of those of Jesus. 
 
 To resort once more to the conduct of Socrates and Jesus, 
 Socrates behaved with great propriety and dignity at his trial, 
 but it was by no means equal to the behavior of Jesus in 
 similar circumstances. 
 
 There is a remarkable difference between the general 
 conduct of Jesus and that of Socrates, with respect to the 
 persons to whom they usually addressed their instructions. 
 All the teaching of the latter was confined to persons of good 
 condition, such as were likely to have influence in the impor- 
 tant offices and concerns of the state ; but this was no 
 particular object with Jesus. Though Socrates, unlike other 
 philosophers, took no money for his instructions, his admoni- 
 tions appear to have been confined to persons of the same 
 class with the pupils of the others. There is not one of the 
 dialogues in which he is the speaker, either in Xenophon or 
 Plato, in which the common people are any part of the 
 audience ; so that the great mass of citizens could not receive 
 any benefit froni his teaching. On the other hantl. the tlis- 
 courses of Jesus were addressed to persons ot all ranks 
 promiscuously, and generally to crowds of the common people, 
 though without excluding any, and rather selecting those of 
 the lower classes, who were held in contempt by the learned 
 scribes and Pharisees, for his audience. Me was commonly 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 55 
 
 attended by great multitudes, of whom very few can be thought 
 to have been what we call persons of condition, or who were 
 likely to have any influence in public affairs, to which, indeed, 
 his instructions had no relation whatever. 
 
 Sometimes persons of better condition and of a higher 
 rank, such as Nicodemus, applied to Jesus ; but we nev6r 
 find that he sought their society, or first in any manner applied 
 to them or to any of the scribes or Pharisees, who were the 
 leading men in the country : whereas Socrates, with the best 
 views no doubt, appears to have applied to no other. In this 
 circumstance, however, we see a strikinor difference between 
 these two teachers of virtue. The object of Socrates was the 
 instruction of a few; but that of Jesus, of the many, and 
 especially of those of the middle and lower classes, as standing 
 in most need of instruction, and most likely to receive it 
 with gratitude and without prejudice. 
 
 The habitual piety of Jesus was such as could not have 
 been expected of Socrates or the most virtuous of the hea- 
 thens. He appears to have spoken and acted as at all times 
 not only in the immediate presence, but as by the immediate 
 direction, of God. Raised as he was to a pre-eminence above 
 all other men, he seems to have been, even more than any 
 other man, sensible of his dependence upon God ; and he had 
 recourse to him on all occasions. We even read of his 
 spending a whole night in prayer to God ; and it was in 
 obedience to his will, that notwithstanding the dread that he 
 naturally felt for the painful death to which he was destined, 
 and the horror he expressed on the near view of it, he 
 voluntarily and patiently submitted to it. He prayed, and with 
 peculiar earnestness, that the bitter cup might pass from him ; 
 but immediately added, " Not my will, but thine, be done." 
 Nothing like this could be expected of Socrates, or any 
 heathen. 
 
 Neither Socrates nor Jesus were writers : and there seems 
 to be more of dignity in their characters in consequence of it, 
 as it they were not very solicitous about transmitting their 
 
56 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 names to posterity ; confident that, as far as it was an object 
 with them, it would be sufficiently done by others. All the 
 accounts, therefore, that we have of them, come from their 
 disciples and friends. And there is a remarkable difference 
 in the manner in which the life of Socrates is written by 
 Xenophon, and that of Jesus by the Evangelists. There 
 cannot be a doubt but that the Evangelists had a much higher 
 opinion of their Master than Xenophon and Plato had of 
 theirs. The traces of this are numerous and indisputable. 
 But there is not in their writings any direct encomium or 
 praise of him, as there is in the Greek writers of Socrates ; 
 and yet, without any assistance of this kind, a reader of moder- 
 ate discernment cannot help forming a much higher idea of 
 Jesus than he does of Socrates, from xhQ facts recorded of him, 
 and the discourses ascribed to him. 
 
 WILLIAM NEWCOME. 
 
 [Observations on our Lord's Conduct as a Divine Instructor. First Am. ed., 
 Charleston: iSio. Pp. 4S1-4S5.] 
 
 When our Lord is considered as a teacher, we find him 
 delivering the justest and most sublime truths with respect 
 to the Divine nature, the duties of mankind, and a future 
 state of existence ; agreeable in every particular to reason, 
 and to the wisest maxims of the wisest philosophers ; without 
 any mixture of that alloy which so often debased their most 
 perfect productions ; and excellently adapted to mankind in 
 general, by suggesting circumstances and images on the most 
 awful and interesting subjects. 
 
 We find him filling, and, as it were, overwhelming our 
 minds, with the grandest ideas of his own nature ; represent- 
 ing himself as appointed by his Father to be our Instructor, 
 our Redeemer, our Judge, and our King ; and showing that 
 he lived and died for the most benevolent and important 
 purposes conceivable. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 57 
 
 He does not labor to support the greatest and most 
 magnificent of all characters, but it is perfectly easy and 
 natural to him. He makes no display of the high and 
 heavenly truths which he utters, but speaks of them with a- 
 graceful and wonderful simplicit}^ and majesty. Supernatural 
 truths are as familiar to his mind as the common affairs of life 
 to other men. 
 
 He takes human nature as it came from the hand of its 
 Creator, and does not, like the Stoics, attempt to fashion it 
 anew, except as far as man had corrupted it. He revived the 
 moral law, carries it to perfection, and enforces it by peculiar 
 and animating motives ; but he enjoins nothing new besides 
 praying in his name, and observing two simple and significant 
 positive laws which serve to promote the practice of the 
 moral law. . . . 
 
 From the greatness of his mind, and the greatness of his 
 subjects, he is often sublime ; and the beauties interspersed 
 throughout his discourses are equally natural and striking. 
 He is remarkable for an easy and graceful manner of intro- 
 ducing the best lessons from incidental objects and occasions. 
 The human heart is naked and open to him, and he addresses 
 the thoughts of men as others do the emotions of their counte- 
 nance or their bodily actions. Difficult situations, and studied 
 questions of the most artful and ensnaring kinds, serve only 
 to display his superior wisdom, and to confound and astonish 
 all his adversaries. Instead of showinof his boundless knowl- 
 ^A^^ on every occasion, he checks and restrains it, and prefers 
 utility to the glare of ostentation. He teaches directly and 
 obliquely, plainly and covertly, as wisdom points out occa- 
 sions. He knows the inmost character, the every prejudice 
 and every feeling, of his hearers, and, accordingly, uses para- 
 bles to conceal or to enforce his lessons ; and he powerfully 
 impresses them by the most significant language of actions. 
 He gives proofs of his mission from above, by his knowledge 
 of the heart, by a chain of prophecies, and by a variety of 
 mighty works. 
 
58 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 He sets an example of the most perfect piety to God. and 
 the most extensive benevolence and the most tender compas- 
 sion to man. He does not merely exhibit a life of strict jus- 
 tice, but of overflowing benignity. His temperance has not 
 the dark shades of austerity ; his meekness does not degener- 
 ate into apathy. His humility is signal, amidst a splendor of 
 qualities more than human. His fortitude is eminent and ex- 
 emplary, in enduring the most formidable external evils, and 
 the sharpest actual suffering ; his patience is invincible ; his 
 resignation entire and absolute. Truth and sincerity shine 
 throughout his whole conduct. Though of heavenl)- descent, 
 he shows obedience and affection to his earthly parents. He 
 approves, loves, and attaches himself to amiable qualities in the 
 human race. He respects authority, religious and civil ; and 
 he evidences his regard for his country by promoting its most 
 essential good in a painful ministry dedicated to its service, 
 by deploring its calamities, and by laying down his life for 
 its benefit. Every one of his eminent virtues is regulated 
 by consummate prudence ; and he both wins the love of 
 his friends, and extorts the approbation and wonder of his 
 enemies. 
 
 Never was a character at the same time so commanding 
 and so natural, so resplendent and pleasing, so amiable and 
 venerable. There is a peculiar contrast in it between an awful 
 greatness, dignity, and majesty, and the most conciliating 
 lowliness, tenderness, and softness. He now converses with 
 prophets, lawgivers, and angels; and the next instant he 
 meekly endures the dulness of his disciples, and the blasphe- 
 mies and rage of the multitude. 
 
 Let us pause an instant, and fill our minds witli the idea 
 of One who knew all things heavenly and earthly, searched 
 and laid open the inmost recesses of the heart, rectified every 
 prejudice and removed every mistake of a moral and religious 
 kind, by a word exercised sovereignty over all nature, pene- 
 trated the hidden events of futurity, gave promises of admis- 
 sion into a happy immortality, had tin; ke)s of life antl death, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 59 
 
 claimed a union with the Father, and yet was pious, mild, 
 gentle, humble, affable, social, benevolent, friendly, affection- 
 ate. Such a character is fairer than the morning star. Each 
 separate virtue is made stronger by opposition and contrast ; 
 and the union of so many virtues forms a brightness which 
 fitly represents the glory of that God " who inhabiteth light 
 inaccessible." 
 
 Such a character must have been a real one. There is 
 something so extraordinary, so perfect, and so God-like in it, 
 that it could not have been thus supported throughout by the 
 utmost stretch of human genius, much less by men confessedly 
 unlearned and obscure. 
 
 ROBERT LEIGHTON. 
 
 [Works. London : 1828. Vol. ii. pp. 91, 92.] 
 
 It is ignorance of Christ that maintains the credit of those 
 vanities we admire. The Christian that is truly acquainted 
 with him, enamoured with the brightness of his beauty, can 
 generously trample upon the smilings of the world with the 
 one foot, and upon her frownings with the other. If he be 
 rich or honorable, or both, yet he glories not in that; but 
 Christ, who is the glory of the Lord, is even then his chiefest 
 glory, and the light of Christ obscures that worldly splendor 
 in his estimation. 
 
 And as the enjoyment of Christ overtops all his other 
 joys, so it overcomes his griefs. As that great light drowns 
 the light of prosperity, so it shines bright in the darkness of 
 affliction : no dungeon so close that it can keep out the rays 
 of Christ's love from his beloved prisoners. The world can 
 no more take away this light, than it can give it. And as 
 this light is a comfort, so it is likewise a defence, which sufters 
 no more of distress to come near the godly than is profitable 
 for them. . . . 
 
 You who know Christ, glory in him perpetually. There 
 
6o TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 are some who pretend to love Christ, and yet a taunting 
 word of some profane miscreant will almost make them 
 ashamed of him. How would they die for Christ, who are 
 so tender as not to endure a scoff for him ? Where is that 
 spirit of Moses, who accounted the very reproaches of Christ 
 greater riches than the treasures of Egypt ? Oh, learn to glory 
 in Christ ; think highly of him, and speak so too. Methinks 
 it is the discourse in the world that becomes Christians best, 
 to be speaking to one another honorably of Jesus Christ. 
 
 And of all men, the preachers of his gospel should be the 
 most frequent in this subject. This should be their great 
 theme, to extol and commend the Lord Jesus, that they may 
 inflame many hearts with his love ; and best can they do this, 
 who are most strongly taken with this love themselves. Such 
 will most gladly abase themselves, that Christ may be magni- 
 fied ; and whatever be their excellences, they will still account 
 Christ their glory. 
 
 This would seem a strange word if it were not the apos- 
 tle's : " They are the messengers of the churches, and the 
 glory of Christ" (2 Cor. viii. 23). Delight who will, either 
 in sloth or ignorance on the one hand, or in vain speculations 
 and strains of frothy wit on the other ; surely those preachers 
 only will be approved in the great day, who have constantly 
 endeavored, in their measure, to speak the best and fittest 
 they could for their Master's advantage. And happy those 
 Christians, of what estate soever, who in all estates make 
 Christ their glory, and in all actions have their eyes fixed 
 upon his glory, who is their light and the glory of the Lord, 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 
 
 [Lkttkr to Pkesidknt Stili:s of Yale Colli:(;e. March 9, 1790.] 
 
 I THINK his [Jesus Christ's] system of morals and religion, 
 as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is like 
 to see. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 6 1 
 
 WILLIAM PALEY. 
 
 [Works. Boston: 1812. Vol. v. pp. 460, 461.] 
 
 Jesus was perfectly sober and rational in his devotions, as 
 witness the Lord's Prayer compared with any of the composi- 
 tions of modern enthusiasts. His admirable discourses before 
 his death are specimens of inimitable tenderness and affection 
 towards his followers. His quiet submission to death, though 
 even the prospect of it was terrible to him, exhibits a complete 
 pattern of resignation and acquiescence in the Divine will. 
 To crown all, his example was practicable, and suited to the 
 conditions of human life. He did not, like Rousseau, call 
 upon mankind to return back into a state of nature, or calcu- 
 late his precepts for such a state. He did not, with the monk 
 and hermit, run into caves and cloisters, or suppose that men 
 could make themselves more acceptable to God by keeping 
 out of the way of one another. He did not, with some of the 
 most eminent of the Stoics, command his followers to throw 
 their wealth into the sea, nor, with the Eastern fakirs, to inflict 
 upon themselves any tedious, gloomy penances, or extrava- 
 gant mortifications. He did not, what is the sure companion 
 of enthusiasm, affect singularity in his behavior : he dressed, 
 he ate, he conversed, like other people ; he accepted their 
 invitations; he was a guest at their feasts, frequented their 
 synagogues, and went up to Jerusalem at their great festival. 
 
 Upon the whole, if the account given of Christ in 
 Scripture be a just one, if there really was such a person, 
 how could he be an impostor? If there was no such person, 
 how came the illiterate Evangelists to hit off such a character, 
 and that without any visible design of drawing any character 
 at all ? 
 
 The morality of the gospel is not beyond what might be 
 discovered by reason ; nor possibly could be : because all 
 morality, being founded in relations and consequences which 
 we are acquainted with, and experience, must depend upon 
 
62 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 reasons intelligible to our apprehension and discoverable by 
 us. Nor, perhaps, except in a few instances, was it beyond 
 what might have been collected from the scattered precepts 
 of different philosophers. Indeed, to have put together all 
 the wise and good precepts of all the different philosophers, 
 to have separated and laid aside all the error, immorality, and 
 superstition mixed with them, would have proved a very 
 difficult work. 
 
 But that a single person, without assistance from these 
 philosophers, or any human learning whatsoever, in direct 
 opposition also to the established practices and maxims of his 
 own country, should form a system so unblamable on the one 
 hand, and so perfect on the other, is extraordinary beyond 
 example and belief; and yet this must be believed by those 
 who hold Christ to have been either an impostor or an 
 enthusiast. 
 
 JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. 
 
 [The Doctrine of Religion. London: 1S73. Pp. 483-486.] 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth undoubtedly possessed that highest 
 perception, containing the foundation of all other truth, of the 
 absolute identity of humanity with the Godhead, as regards 
 what is essentially real in the former. 
 
 Jesus did not set out from any speculative question which 
 could be solved only by a religious knowledge attained at a 
 later period, and only in the course of investigation of the 
 question ; for he explained absolutely nothing by his religious 
 principle, and deduced nothing from it : but he presented it, 
 alone and by itself, as the only thing worthy of knowledge, 
 passing by every thing else as undeserving of notice. His 
 faith and his conviction never allowed the question to arise as 
 to the existence of finite things. In short, they had no 
 existence for him : only in union with God was reality. 
 
 In him there was no intellectual questioning, or learning 
 of self to be renounced ; for in this knowledge his whole 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 6'^^ 
 
 Spiritual self-knowledge was already swallowed up. His self- 
 consciousness was at once the pure and absolute truth of 
 reason itself, self-existent and independent, the simple fact 
 of consciousness ; by no means, as with us, genetic, arising 
 from another preceding state, and hence no simple act of 
 consciousness, but an inference. 
 
 In that which I have thus endeavored to express with the 
 utmost precision and distinctness, must have consisted the 
 peculiar character of Jesus Christ, who, like every other 
 true individuality, can have appeared but once in time, and 
 can never be repeated therein. He was the Absolute Reason 
 clothed in immediate self-consciousness ; or, what is the same 
 thinor, — Religion. 
 
 FRANCOIS AUGUSTE CHATEAUBRIAND. 
 
 [The Genius of Christianity. Philadelphia: 1856. P. 530.] 
 
 Jesus overthrows the prevalent notions of morality, insti- 
 tutes new relations among men, a new law of nations, a new 
 public faith : thus does he establish his divinity, triumph over 
 the religion of the Caesars, seat himself on the throne, and at 
 length subdue the earth. No ! if the whole earth were to 
 raise its voice against Christianity, if all the powers of phi- 
 losophy were to combine against its doctrines, never shall we 
 be persuaded that a religion erected on such a foundation is 
 a religion of human origin. 
 
 The bitterest enemies of Jesus Christ never dared to attack 
 his character. Celsus, Julian, Volusian, admit his miracles; 
 and Porphyry relates that the very oracles of the Pagans styled 
 him a man illustrious for his piety. Tiberius would have 
 placed him in the rank of the gods ; and, according to 
 Lampridius, Adrian erected temples to him, and Alexander 
 Severus venerated him among holy men, and placed his image 
 between those of Orpheus and Abraham. Pliny has borne an 
 illustrious testimony to the innocence of the primitive Christ- 
 ians, who closely followed the example of the Redeemer. 
 
64 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 There are no philosophers of antiquity but have been 
 reproved for vices ; the very patriarchs had their toibles. 
 Christ alone is without blemish : he is the most brilliant copy 
 of that supreme beauty which is seated upon the throne of 
 heaven. Pure and sanctified as the tabernacle of the Lord, 
 breathing naught but the love of God and men, infinitely 
 superior by the elevation of his soul to the vain glory of the 
 world, he prosecuted amid sufferings of every kind the great 
 business of our salvation, constraining men by the ascendency 
 of his virtues to embrace his doctrine, and to imitate a life 
 which they were compelled to admire. 
 
 GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL. 
 
 [The Philosophy of History. London : 1878. , Pp. 337, 338.] 
 
 We do not adopt the right point of view in thinking of 
 Christ only as an historical bygone personality. . . . Consid- 
 ered only in respect of his talents, character, and morality, 
 we place him in the same category with Socrates and others, 
 though his morality may be ranked higher. But excellence 
 of character and morality is not the ne plus tiltra in the 
 requirements of spirit ; does not enable to gain the speculative 
 idea of spirit for his conceptive faculty. 
 
 If Christ is to be looked upon only as an excellent, even 
 impeccable individual, and nothing more, the conception of 
 the speculative idea, of Absolute Truth, is ignored. Make 
 of Christ what you will exegetically, critically, historically ; 
 demonstrate as you please, how the doctrines of the Church 
 were established by Councils, attained currency as the result 
 of this or that episcopal interest, or passion, were originated 
 in this or that quarter ; let all such circumstances have been 
 what they might: the only concerning question is. What is 
 the Idea, or the Truth, in and of itself? Further, the real 
 attestation of the divinity of Christ is the witness of one's 
 own spirit, not miracles ; for only spirit recognizes Spirit. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 65 
 
 FRANCOIS P. G. GUIZOT. 
 
 [Meditations on the Essence of Christianity. New York : 1865. P. 320 et seq.'\ 
 
 Take these two grand principles, these two great acts of 
 Jesus, — the aboHtion of every privilege in the relations of God 
 and man, and the distinctions between man's relieious and his 
 civil life. I contrast with these two principles all the history 
 and every state of society previous to the advent of Jesus 
 Christ, and I am unable to discover in those essentially 
 Christian principles any kindred, any human origin. Every- 
 where, before Christ, religions were national, local religions; 
 they were religions which established between nations, classes, 
 and individuals, enormous differences and inequalities. 
 
 Everywhere also, before Christ, man's civil life and his 
 religious life were confounded, and mutually oppressed each 
 other; that religion or those religions were institutions incor- 
 porated in the state, which the state regulated or repressed as 
 its interests dictated. But in this catholicity of religious 
 faith, in this independence of religious communities, I am 
 constrained to recognize new and sublime principles, and to 
 see in them flashes from the light of heaven. It needed 
 many centuries before mental vision was capable of receiving 
 that light ; and no one shall pronounce how many centuries 
 will be needed before it will pervade and penetrate the entire 
 world. But, whatever difficulties and shortcomings may be 
 reserved in the womb of the future for the two great truths 
 to which I have just referred, it is clear that God caused them 
 first to beam forth from the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The supernatural being and power of Jesus may be dis- 
 puted ; but the perfection, the sublimity, of his acts and pre- 
 cepts, of his life and his moral law, are incontestable. And in 
 effect, not only are they not contested, but they are admired 
 and celebrated enthusiastically, and complacently too ; it would 
 seem as if it were desired to restore to Jesus as man, and man 
 alone, the superiority of which men deprived him in refusing 
 
66 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 to see in him the Godhead. But then what incoherence, 
 what contradictions, what falsehood, what moral impossibility, 
 in his history, such as they make it ! what a series of suppo- 
 sitions, irreconcilable with fact, nevertheless admitted! The 
 man they make so perfect, so sublime, becomes by turns a 
 dreamer or a charlatan ; at once dupe and deceiver, — dupe 
 of his own mystical enthusiasm in believing in his own 
 miracles ; deceiver in tampering with evidence in order to 
 accredit himself. The history of Jesus Christ is thus but a 
 tissue of fables and falsehood. And nevertheless the hero of 
 this history remains perfect, sublime, incomparable; the great- 
 est genius, the noblest heart, that the world ever saw ; the type 
 of virtue and moral beauty, the supreme and rightful chief of 
 mankind. What a contradictory and insoluble problem they 
 present to us, instead of the one they labor so hard to 
 suppress ! 
 
 EDMUND LAW. 
 
 [Reflections on the Life and Character of Christ. Cambridge: 1765. 
 
 PP.29S-301.] 
 
 We cannot but observe a surprising mixture of humility 
 and greatness, dignity and self-abasement, in the general 
 demeanor of Christ, both which were equally instructive in 
 their turns. Sometimes we find him solemnly asserting his 
 divinity ; at other times, the meekest and lowliest of men. 
 Sometimes reminding his followers that he could command 
 legions of angels if it were necessary; at others, apprising 
 them that he should be more destitute of common conven- 
 iences than even the beasts of the field or the birds of the 
 air. Now tellinof them that a ofreater than Solomon is amonost 
 them ; now washing his disciples' feet. Conscious of his own 
 power and just prerogative ; and yet all submission to the 
 powers in being, complying with the laws and institutions, 
 however hazardous and inconvenient to him, aiul paying their 
 demands to the uttermost, though at the e.xpense of a miracle. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 67 
 
 On some occasions, publishing the character and office 
 that he bore ; on others, carefully concealing them, in order 
 to prevent the hasty misconstruction of his friends, to guard 
 against the inveterate malice of his foes, and gain sufficient 
 time to fix a sure foundation for the faith of all. None more 
 zealous or industrious in the cause of God than he ; none 
 more indifferent and resigned in his own. He patiently 
 endures affronts and outrages to his person, and the frequent 
 assaults on his reputation ; yet when his Father's honor is 
 concerned, he vindicates it instantly, and with uncommon 
 warmth. He publicly chastises the profaners of his temple, 
 and threatens the severest punishment to such as would 
 continue to blaspheme the Power and Spirit by which he 
 was actinor. 
 
 He is read)- to receive publicans and harlots ; disdains not 
 to converse with heretics and schismatics, with persons most 
 odious and of worst repute, but whom he sees to be truly 
 penitent, and realh' desirous of instruction ; while he rejects 
 the formal, sanctimonious hypocrite, and reprimands the self- 
 sufficient Pharisee. He detects, and with authorit}' rebukes, 
 the flattery of the proud, designing querist ; but satisfies each 
 scruple, and resolves each doubt, of the meek and humble 
 searcher after truth, even before they can be intimated to him. 
 
 He cherishes the broken-hearted, comforts the despond- 
 ing, strengthens and supports the weak and wavering, conde- 
 scends to the infirmities of the meanest and most despicable 
 that has the least spark of goodness in him ; but never grati- 
 fies the vanity, or gives wa)' to the petulancy, of the greatest. 
 . . . Vice from him meets with due discouragement and just 
 reproof in all men, even those of the highest station. Virtue 
 he meets with a kind compassion and a generous aid in any 
 of the lowest. He condescended to the meanest company, 
 when he had a prospect of doing any good upon them ; and 
 was content to lose the reputation of being a good man, that 
 he might more effectually serve the ends of piety and 
 goodness. 
 
68 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 ISAAC BARROW. 
 
 [Theological Works. Cambridge: 1859. Vol. ii. pp. 527-541.] 
 
 By pretending to be Christians, we acknowledge the tran- 
 scendent goodness, worth, and excellency of our Saviour ; that 
 he was incomparably better and wiser than any person ever 
 was or could be ; that he always acted with the highest reason, 
 out of the most excellent disposition of mind, in order to the 
 best purposes ; and that his practice therefore reasonably 
 should be the rule and pattern of ours. For, the best and 
 exactest in every kind is the measure of the rest. All that 
 would attain exquisite skill in any art or faculty, think best to 
 imitate the works of the best masters therein : a painter, 
 to draw after the pieces of Zeuxis or Apelles, of Raphael or 
 Titian ; an orator, to speak in the style of Cicero or Demos- 
 thenes ; a soldier, to emulate the military achievements of 
 Hannibal or Caesar. In like manner reason requireth, if we 
 would live well and happily, that we should endeavor to 
 conform our practice to that of our Saviour, the most perfect 
 mirror of all virtue and goodness. 
 
 The practice of our Saviour did thoroughly agree with his 
 doctrine and law. He required nothing of us which he did 
 not eminently perform himself; he fulfilled in deed, as well 
 as taught in word, all righteousness. 
 
 The example of Christ doth, in efficacy and influence upon 
 good practice, surpass all others. It is a sure and infallible 
 rule, an entire and perfect rule of practice ; deficient in no 
 part, swerving in no circumstance from truth and right, which 
 privileges are competent to no other example. 
 
 A clear evidence of divine light always shining in his soul 
 directed him infallibly in the paths of truth and righteousness. 
 No tempest of cross accidents without, nor any estuations of 
 internal passion, could discompose the steady calm and 
 serenity of his mind. No allurement of worldly pleasure, 
 nor temptation of profit, could [pervert his practice, or seduce 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 69 
 
 his heart, being inflamed with most intense love of God, and 
 entire charity to men ; so that his example must needs be a 
 perfect rule and sure direction to us. Which consideration 
 cannot but yield great encouragement and comfort in follow- 
 ing him, freeing us from all anxious doubts and suspicions of 
 mistake in our spiritual progress ; like the presence of a sure 
 guide to the bewildered traveller ; like the appearance of a 
 star to the weather-beaten mariner; like that miraculous pillar 
 of fire, which safely conducted the wandering Israelites 
 through the unknown and unfrequented passages of a wild 
 desert. 
 
 Our Saviour, like the sun, was ordained with a perpetual 
 and unconfined splendor to illuminate the universe, to cause 
 a general and everlasting day of healthful and comfortable 
 knowledge over the face of the whole earth. He was or- 
 dained, not commander of a single regiment or party, but 
 captain-general of mankind, to conduct all those who were 
 disposed to follow him, by a victorious obedience, into that 
 triumphant state of everlasting joy and happiness. 
 
 So it was, and so it became the infinite goodness and 
 philanthropy of God, to bestow upon mankind one perfectly 
 good example, inviting to all virtue, and so fit to countervail 
 all those many bad ones wherewith we converse, enticing to 
 vice ; to set forth, among so many imperfect ones, one accom- 
 plished piece of his heavenly workmanship, able to attract the 
 eyes and ravish the hearts of all men with admiration oi its 
 excellent worth and beauty ; to offer to our view some dis- 
 cernible representation of his invisible perfections, that so 
 we might better be induced and inured to apprehend, love, 
 reverence, and imitate himself by contemplation of that most 
 exquisite image of him ; to give an evident proof that the 
 highest virtue is not impracticable, that human nature, by aid 
 and guidance of the Divine Spirit, may arrive to the sublime 
 pitch of perfection and goodness : in fine, to expose such a 
 common, sweet, and lovely pattern, as we with assurance, joy, 
 and comfort, may follow. 
 
70 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Our Saviour's example is especially influential upon prac- 
 tice, in that it was by an admirable temperament more accom- 
 modated for imitation than any others have been ; that the 
 perfect copy of his most holy life seems more easy to be 
 transcribed than the ruder draughts of other holy men. For 
 thouo-h it were written with an incomparable fairness, delicacy, 
 and evenness, not slurred with any foul blot, not anywhere 
 declining from exact straightness, yet with the lineaments 
 thereof exceedingly plain and simple ; not by any gaudy 
 flourishes or impertinent intrigues rendered difficult to studious 
 imitation ; so that even women and children, the weakest and 
 meanest sort of people, as well as the most wise and ingenious, 
 might easily perceive its design, and with good success write 
 after it. 
 
 His was a gentle and steady light, bright indeed, but not 
 dazzling the eye ; warm, but not scorching the face of the 
 most intent beholder. No affected singularities, no super- 
 cilious morosities, no frivolous ostentations of seemingly high 
 but really fruitless performances. Nothing that might deter a 
 timorous, discourage a weak, or ofi^end a scrupulous disciple, 
 is observable in his practice ; but, on the contrary, his conver- 
 sation was full of lowliness and condescension, of meekness 
 and sweetness, of openness and candid simplicity ; apt to 
 invite and allure all men to approach toward it, and with 
 satisfaction to enjoy it. 
 
 He did not seclude himself into the constant retirements 
 of a cloister, nor into the farther recesses of a wilderness, but 
 conversed freely and indifferently with all sorts of men, even 
 the most contemptible and odious sort of men, pul^licans and 
 sinners; like the sun, with an impartial bounty. lil-)erally im- 
 parting his pleasant light and comfortable warmth to all. He 
 used no uncouth austerities in habit or diet, but complied in 
 his garb with ordinary usage, and sustained his life with such 
 food as casual opportunity did offer ; so that his indiflerency 
 in that kind yielded matter of obloqu)' against him. from 
 the fond admirers of a humorous preciseness. His devotions 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 7 1 
 
 were not usually extended to a tedious and exhausting 
 durance, nor strained into ecstatical transports, charming the 
 natural senses, and overpowering the reason ; but calm, steady, 
 and regular, such as persons of honest intention and hearty 
 desire might readily imitate. 
 
 His zeal was not violent or impetuous, except upon very 
 great reason and extraordinary occasion, when the honor of 
 God or good of men was much concerned. He was not 
 rigorous in the observance of traditional rights and customs, 
 yet behaved himself orderly and peaceably, giving due respect 
 to the least institution of God, and complying with the inno- 
 cent customs of men ; thereby pointing out to us the middle 
 way between peevish superstition and boisterous faction, 
 which, as always the most honest, so commonly is the most 
 safe and pleasant way to walk in. He delighted not to dis- 
 course of sublime mysteries, nor of subtle speculations and 
 intricate questions, such as might amuse and perplex rather 
 than instruct and profit his auditors ; but usually did feed his 
 auditors with the most common and useful truths, and that in 
 the most familiar and intellio-ible lanofuaofe, not disdain ine the 
 use of vulgar sayings and trivial proverbs when they best 
 served to insinuate his wholesome meaning into their minds. 
 
 His whole life was spent in exercise of the most easy and 
 pleasant, yet most necessary and substantial, duties. — obedi- 
 ence to God, charity, meekness, patience, and the like : the 
 which that he might practise with the greatest latitude, and 
 with most advantao-e for o-eneral imitation, he did not addict 
 himself to any particular way of life, but disentangled himself 
 from all worldly care and business, choosing to appear in the 
 most free though very mean condition, that he might indiffer- 
 ently instruct, by his example, persons of all callings, degrees, 
 and capacities, especially the most, that is, the poor, and 
 might have opportunity in the face of the world to practise 
 the most difficult of necessary duties, — lowliness, contented- 
 ness, abstinence from pleasure, contempt of the world, suffer- 
 ance of injuries and reproaches. 
 
72 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Thus suited and tempered by divine wisdom was the Hfe 
 of our blessed Saviour, that all sorts ot men might be in an 
 equal capacity to follow him ; that none might be offended, 
 affrighted, or discouraged ; but that all might be pleased, 
 delighted, enamoured, with the homely majesty and plain 
 beauty thereof. And in effect so it happened, that ordinary 
 people were greatly taken with, most admired and applauded, 
 his deportment, many of them readily embracing his doctrine, 
 and devoting themselves to his discipline ; while only the 
 proud, envious, covetous, and ambitious scribes and lawyers 
 rejected his excellent doctrine, scorned the heavenly simplicity 
 and holy integrity of his life. 
 
 WILLIAM LAW. 
 
 [Christian Perfection. London: 1762. Pp. 2S5-297.] 
 
 When it is said that we are to imitate the life of Christ, it 
 is not meant that we are called to the same manner of life or 
 the same sort of actions, for this cannot be ; but it is certain 
 that we are called to the same spirit and temper which was 
 the spirit and temper of our blessed Saviour's life and actions. 
 
 We are to be like him in heart and mind, to act b)' the 
 same rule, to look towards the same end, and to govern our 
 lives by the same spirit. This is an imitation of Jesus Christ 
 which is as necessary to salvation as it is necessary to believe 
 in his name. This is the sole end of all the counsels, com- 
 mands, and doctrines of Christ, — to make us like himself, to 
 fill us with his spirit and temper, and to make us live according 
 to the rule and manner of his life. As no doctrines arc true 
 but such as are according to the doctrines ot Christ, so it is 
 equally certain that no life is regular or Christian but such as 
 is according to the pattern and example of the life of Christ ; 
 for he lived as infallibly as he taught. And it is as irregular 
 to vary from his example, as it is false to dissent from his doc- 
 trines. " 1 am," saith the blessed Jesus, " the way, the truth. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. JT, 
 
 and the life ; no man cometh unto the Father, but 1))' me." 
 Christians often hear these words, and perhaps think that 
 they have enough fulfilled them by believing in Jesus Christ. 
 But they should consider that when Jesus Christ saith he is 
 the Way, his meaning is, that his way of life is to be the way 
 in which all Christians are to live ; and that it is by living 
 after the manner of his life that any man cometh unto the 
 Father. 
 
 We may as well expect to go to a heaven where Christ is 
 not, as to go to that where he is, without the spirit and temper 
 which carried him thither. Who can find the least shadow of 
 a reason why he should not imitate the life of Christ, or why 
 Christians should think of any other rule of life ? It would 
 be as easy to show that Christ acted amiss, as that we need 
 not act after his example. And to think that there are 
 degrees of holiness, which, though very good in themselves, 
 are yet not necessary for us to aspire after, is the same 
 absurdity as to think that it was not necessary for our Saviour 
 to have been so perfect himself as he was. For, give but the 
 reason why such degrees of holiness and purity became our 
 Saviour, and you will give as good a reason for us to aspire 
 after them. For, as the blessed Jesus took not on him the 
 nature of angels, but the nature of man ; as he was in all 
 points made like unto us, sin only excepted: so we are sure 
 that there was no spirit or temper that was excellent in him, 
 that recommended him to God, but would be also excellent 
 in us, and recommend us to God, if we could arrive at it. . . . 
 
 There is no falseness of our hearts that leads us into 
 greater errors, than imagining that we shall some time or 
 other be better than we are, or need be now : for perfection 
 has no dependence upon external circumstances ; it wants no 
 times or opportunities ; but is then in its highest state, when 
 we are making the best use of that condition in which we are 
 placed. The poor widow did not stay till she was rich, before 
 she contributed to the treasury : she readily brought her mite, 
 and, little as it was, it got her the reward and commendation 
 
74 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 of orreat charity. We must, therefore, all of us imitate the 
 wisdom of the poor widow, and exercise every virtue in the 
 same manner that she exercised her charity. We must stay 
 for no time or opportunities, wait for no change of life or 
 fancied abilities, but remember that every time is a time for 
 piety and perfection. Every thing but piety has its hin- 
 derances ; but piety, the more it is hindered, the higher it is 
 raised. Let us therefore not vainly say that if we had lived 
 in our Saviour's days, we would have followed him ; or that 
 if we could work miracles, we would devote ourselves to his 
 glory. For, to follow Christ as far as we can in our present 
 state, and to do all that we are able for his glory, is as accept- 
 able to him, as if we were working miracles in his name. 
 
 The Qfreatness that we are to aim at is not the orreatness 
 of our Saviour's particular actions ; but it is the greatness of 
 his spirit and temper, that we are to act by in all parts of our 
 life. Now, every state of life, whether public or private, 
 whether bond or free, whether high or low, is capable of being 
 conducted and governed by the same spirit and temper ; and 
 consequently every state of life may carry us to the same 
 degree of likeness to Christ. So that, though we can in no 
 respect come up to the actions, yet we must in every respect 
 act by the spirit and temper, of Christ. " Learn of me," saith 
 our blessed Lord, " for I am meek and lowly of heart." He 
 doth not say. Be ye in the state and condition that 1 am in ; 
 for that was impossible : yet, though ever so different in state 
 and condition, he calls upon us to be like him in meekness 
 and lowliness of heart and spirit, and makes it necessary for 
 us to go through our particular state with that spirit and 
 temper which was the spirit and temper of his whole life. So 
 far, therefore, as we can learn the heart and spirit of our 
 Saviour; so far as we can discover the wisdom, purity, and 
 heavenliness of his designs, — so far we have learned what 
 spirit and temper we ought to be of; and must no more think 
 ourselves at lilxM-ty to act by any other spirit, than we are at 
 liberty to choose another Saviour. 
 
 i 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 75 
 
 In all our ways and actions of life, \vc must appeal to this 
 rule ; we must reckon ourselves no farther living like Chris- 
 tians than as we live like Christ, and be assured, that, so far 
 as we depart from the spirit of Christ, so far do we depart 
 from that state to which he has called us. For the blessed 
 Jesus has called us to live as he did, to walk in the same spirit 
 that he walked, that we may be in the same happiness with 
 him when this life is at an end. And, indeed, who can think 
 that any thing but the same life can lead to the same state ? 
 
 JOHN LOCKE. 
 
 [Works. London: 1751. Vol. ii. p. 582.] 
 
 Before our Saviour's time, the doctrine of a future state, 
 though it were not wholly hid, yet it was not clearly known 
 in the world. It was an imperfect view of reason, or perhaps 
 the decayed remains of an ancient tradition, which rather 
 seemed to float on men's fancies, than sink deep into their 
 hearts. It was something, they knew not what, between being 
 and not being. Something in man, they imagined, might 
 escape the grave ; but of a perfect and complete life, of an 
 eternal duration, after this, was what entered little into their 
 thoughts, and less into their persuasions. And they were so 
 far from being clear therein, that we see no nation of the world 
 publicly proclaiming it, and built upon it. No religion taught 
 it ; and it was nowhere made an article of faith, and principle 
 of religion, till Jesus came, of whom it is truly said, that he, 
 at his appearing, " brought life and immortality to light." 
 And that not only in the clear revelation of it, and in instances 
 shown of men raised from the dead ; but he has eiven an 
 unquestionable assurance and pledge of it, in his own 
 resurrection and ascension into heaven. 
 
 How hath this one truth changed the nature of things in 
 the world, and given the advantage to piety over all that could 
 tempt or deter men from it ? The philosophers, indeed, show 
 
^d TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 the beauty of Virtue ; they set her off so, as drew men's eyes 
 and approbation to her : but leaving her unendowed, very few 
 are wilHng to espouse her. But now there being put into the 
 scales on her side " an exceeding and immortal weight of 
 glory," interest is come about her ; and Virtue is now visibly 
 the most enriching purchase and by much the best bargain. 
 That she is the perfection and excellency of our nature, that 
 she is herself a reward, and will recommend our names to 
 future ages, is not now all that can be said of her. It is not 
 strange that the learned heathens satisfied not many with such 
 airy commendation. It has another relish and efficiency to 
 persuade men that if they live well here, the)' shall be happy 
 hereafter. Open their eyes upon the endless and unspeakable 
 joys of another life, and their hearts will find something- 
 powerful to move them. 
 
 Upon this foundation, and upon this only, morality stands 
 firm, and may defy all competition. That makes it more than 
 a name, — a substantial good, worth all our aims and endeav- 
 ors ; and this is the gospel Jesus Christ has delivered to us. 
 
 LEOPOLD RANKE. 
 
 [History of the Popes. London : 1870. \'ol. i. pp. 2, 3.] 
 
 How obscure and unpretending was the life of Jesus 
 Christ ! His occupation was to heal the sick, and to discourse 
 of God in parables with a few fishermen who did not alwa)-s 
 V understand his words. He had not where to lay his head. 
 Yet, even from the worldly point of view whence we consider 
 it, we may safely assert that nothing more guileless or more 
 impressive, more exalted or more hoi)-, has been seen on 
 earth than were his life, his whole conversation, and his death. 
 In his every word there breathed the pure Spirit of God. 
 They are words, as St. Peter has expressed it, of eternal 
 life. The records of humanity present nothing that can be 
 compared, however n-niotel)-, with the life of Jesus. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. J J 
 
 HENRY SCOUGAL. 
 
 [The Life of God in the Soul of Man. Boston: 1829. Pp. 24-27.] 
 
 The power and life of religion may be better expressed in 
 actions than in words ; because actions are more truly things, 
 and do better represent the inward principle whence they 
 proceed. And therefore we may take the best measure of 
 those gracious endowments from the deportment of those in 
 whom they reside ; especially as they are perfectly exemplified 
 in the holy life of our blessed Saviour, a main part of whose 
 business in this world was, to teach by his practice what he 
 did require of others, and to make his own conversation 
 an exact resemblance of those unparalleled rules which he 
 prescribed. So that, if ever true goodness was visible to 
 mortal eyes, it was when his presence did beautify and 
 illustrate this lower world. . . . 
 
 An instance of his love to God was his delight in convers- 
 ing with him in prayer, which made him frequently retii'e 
 from the world, and with the greatest devotion and pleasure 
 spend whole nights in the heavenly exercise, though he had 
 no sins to confess, and but few secular interests to pray for ; 
 which, alas ! are almost the only things that are wont to drive 
 us to our devotions. 
 
 Nay, we may say his whole life was a kind of prayer, a 
 constant course of communion with God. If the sacrifice was 
 not always offering, yet was the fire still kept alive ; nor was 
 ever the blessed Jesus surprised with that dulness or tepidity 
 of spirit, wiiich we must many times wrestle with before we 
 can be fit for the exercise of devotion. 
 
 In the second place, I would speak of his love and charity 
 towards all men. But he who would express it must tran- 
 scribe the history of the gospel, and comment upon it ; for 
 scarce any thing is recorded to have been done or spoken 
 by him, which was not designed for the good and advantage 
 of some one or another. 
 
78 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 All of his miraculous works were instances of his good- 
 ness, as well as his power ; and they benefited those on whom 
 they were wrought, as well as they awed the beholders. His 
 charity was not confined to his kindred or his relatives ; nor 
 was his kindness swallowed up in the endearments of that 
 peculiar friendship which he carried towards the beloved 
 disciple, but every one was his friend who obeyed his holy 
 command. 
 
 And what shall I say of his meekness, who could en- 
 counter the monstrous ingratitude and dissimulation of that 
 miscreant who betrayed him, in no harsher terms than these : 
 "Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" What 
 further evidence could we desire of his fervent and unbounded 
 charity, than that he willingly laid down his life even for his 
 most bitter enemies, and, mingling his prayers with his blood, 
 besouofht the Father that his death mioht not be laid to their 
 charofe, but might become the means of eternal life to those 
 very persons who procured it ? 
 
 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
 
 [Works. New York: 1851. Vol. iv. pp. 197, 198.] 
 
 In Christ, infinite greatness and infinite goodness meet 
 together, and receive lustre and glory one from another. His 
 greatness is rendered lovely by his goodness. The greater 
 one is without goodness, so much the greater evil ; but when 
 infinite goodness is joined with greatness, it renders it a 
 glorious and adorable greatness. 
 
 As both divine and human excellences meet together in 
 Christ, they set off and recommend each other to us. It is 
 what tends to endear the divine and infinite majesty antl 
 holiness of Christ to us. that these are attributes of a person 
 that is in our nature, that is one of us, that is become our 
 Brother, and is the meekest antl humblest of men. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 79 
 
 JAMES BURGH. 
 
 [The Dignity ok Human Nature. New York : 1812. Pp. 506,507.] 
 
 There is, indeed, no argument for the truth of Christianity 
 more irresistible than the character and conduct of its first 
 propagators, and especially of its glorious Author. No human 
 sagacity could, from mere inventions, have put together a 
 fictitious account of the behavior of a person in so many 
 strange and uncommon particulars as the Evangelists have 
 told us of our Saviour, without either swelling up the imagin- 
 ary character into that of a hero of a romance, or drawing it 
 defaced with faults and blemishes. That human invention 
 is by no means equal to any such task, is evident from the 
 success of the attempts which have been made by the greatest 
 masters of description to draw perfect characters, especially 
 where any thing supernatural was to have a place. And that 
 such a character as that of our Saviour should be drawn so 
 uniform and consistent, at the same time that it is so wholly 
 new and peculiar that in all the histories and all the epic 
 poems in the world there is no pattern from whence the least 
 hint could be taken to form it by ; that this character, in which 
 the greatness is of so extraordinary and stupendous a kind, 
 that whatever is great in those of warriors, or heroes, or kings, 
 is despised or neglected by him, and infinitely beneath him ; 
 that such a character should be the invention of a few illiterate 
 men, and that it should by them be exhibited, not by studied 
 encomiums, but by a bare unadorned narration of facts, but 
 such facts as are nowhere else to be equalled, — he who can 
 believe that all this could be the effect of mere human 
 invention, without superior interposition, miist be capable of 
 believing any thing. So that I may defy all the opposers of 
 revelation to answer this question : How came we to have 
 such a character as that of Christ, drawn as it is, and drawn 
 by such authors, if it was not taken from a real original, and 
 if that original was not something above human ? 
 
8o TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 DAVID HARTLEY. 
 
 [The Truth of the Christiax Religion. Boston: 1808. Pp. 130-134.] 
 
 Tpie character of Christ, as it may be collected from the 
 plain narratives of the Gospels, is manifestly superior to all 
 other characters, fictitious or real, whether drawn by historians, 
 orators, or poets. We see in it the most entire devotion and 
 resignation to God, and the most ardent and universal love to 
 mankind, joined with the greatest humility, self-denial, meek- 
 ness, patience, prudence, and every other virtue, divine and 
 human. 
 
 If we allow only the truth of the common history of the 
 New Testament, or even, without having recourse to it, only 
 such a part of the character of Christ as neither ancient nor 
 modern, Jews, heathens or unbelievers, seem to contest, it will 
 be difficult to reconcile so great a character, claiming divine 
 authority, either with the moral attributes of God, or indeed 
 with itself, upon the supposition of the falsehood of that 
 claim. One can scarce suppose that God will permit a person 
 apparently so innocent and excellent, so qualified to impose 
 upon mankind, to make so impious and audacious a claim 
 without having some evident mark of imposture set upon him ; 
 nor can it be conceived how a person could be apparently so 
 innocent and excellent, and yet really otherwise. 
 
 The manner in which the Evangelists speak of Christ 
 shows that they drew after a real copy ; that is, shows the 
 genuineness and truth of the gospel history-. There arc no 
 direct encomiums upon him, no labored defences or recom- 
 mendations. His character arises from a careful, imi)artial 
 examination of all that he saitl and did; and the Evangelists 
 appear to have drawn this greatest of all characters without 
 any direct design to do it. Nay, they have recorded some 
 things, .such as his being moved with the passions of human 
 nature, as well as beting affected by its infirmities, which the 
 wisdom of this workl would rather have concealed. But their 
 
4 
 
:5i; VZN WOSSHIF ,HZ :Hli-D JE^.US. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 8 1 
 
 view was to show him to the persons to whom they preached, 
 as the promised Messiah of the Jews, and Saviour of mankind ; 
 and as they had been convinced of this themselves from his 
 discourses, actions, sufferings, and resurrection, they thought 
 nothine more was wantinof to convince such others as were 
 serious and impartial, but a simple narrative of what Jesus 
 said and did. 
 
 If we compare the transcendent greatness of this character 
 with the indirect manner in which it was delivered, and the 
 illiterateness and low condition of the Evangelists, it will 
 appear impossible that they should have forged it, — that they 
 should not have had a real original before them, so that 
 nothing was wanting but to record simply and faithfully. 
 
 How could mean and illiterate persons excel the greatest 
 geniuses, ancient and modern, in drawing a character? How 
 came they to draw it in an indirect manner ? This is, indeed, 
 a strong evidence of genuineness and truth ; but then it is of 
 so recluse and subtile a nature, and, agreeably to this, has been 
 so little taken notice of by the defenders of the Christian 
 religion, that one cannot conceive the Evangelists were at all 
 aware that it was an evidence. The character of Christ, as 
 drawn by them, is therefore genuine and true ; and conse- 
 quently proves his divine mission both by its transcendent 
 excellence, and by his laying claim to such a mission. 
 
 ROBERT BOYLE. 
 
 [Works. London: 1772. Vol. v. p. 553.] 
 
 There is yet a more aspiring path of virtue traced us out in 
 the Gospel, where it proposes to us the example of Christ, as 
 one whose steps we are to tread in : for not not only that 
 Divine Person never committed any sin, neither was guile 
 found in his mouth ; but the supreme and omniscient Judge, 
 God himself, declared by a voice from heaven his full appro- 
 bation, both of his person and his doctrine, when he said, 
 
82 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear 
 ye him." And his sinless life, which was a living law, did not 
 only surpass the examples, but even the precepts and ideas 
 too, of the heathen moralists and philosophers, as may be 
 elsewhere shown. And the becoming a serious disciple of so 
 perfect and divine a Teacher does itself so engage a man to 
 renounce his former vices, that, when St. Paul had dissuaded 
 his Romans from divers other vices, instead of exhorting 
 them to the contrary virtues in particular, he only desires 
 them, in general, " to put on the Lord Jesus Christ," as a 
 comprehensive duty, which contained in it all the virtues he 
 declined to enumerate. 
 
 ROBERT HALL. 
 
 [Works. New York : 1849. Vol. iii. p. 432.] 
 
 In the midst of insults and injuries, the most unmerited 
 and aggravated, Christ exhibited a perfect pattern of patient 
 resignation. He never resented the violence of his enemies. 
 "When he was reviled, he reviled not again." The miracu- 
 lous powers he possessed over nature and the minds of men, 
 he never exerted to avert his own sufferings or avenge his 
 wrongs upon his persecutors. Though the elements were at 
 his disposal, and demons subject to his command, yet in the 
 crisis of his affliction, nothing was visible but compassion for 
 the guilty. " Father," he cried, " forgive them, for they know 
 not what they do." Nor would he suffer his disciples to 
 retaliate the injuries he received. He rebuked Peter when 
 he drew his sword on Malchus ; he rebuked his disciples 
 when they would have called down fire on the Samaritans, 
 saying, " Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of." 
 
 Gentleness and tenderness, a sensibility to the sufferings 
 of others, and an indifference to his own, — these formed the 
 most prominent traits of his character. In these he places 
 the essence of his religion, so far as it is practical and relative 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 83 
 
 to others. Of other virtues we may say they form parts of 
 the Christian character, but these are emphatically the Chris- 
 tian spirit itself. In proportion as we are patient, compas- 
 sionate, forbearing, forgiving, and ready even to suffer for the 
 good of others, we have " the mind of Christ." 
 
 BEILBY PORTEOUS. 
 
 [Lectures on the Gospel of St. Matthew. New Haven : 1S03. Pp- 402-404.] 
 
 The divine Author of our religion is, beyond comparison, 
 the most extraordinary and most important personage that 
 ever appeared on this habitable globe. His birth, his life, his 
 doctrines, his precepts, his miracles, his sufferings, his death, 
 his resurrection, his ascension, are all without parallel in the 
 history of mankind. The work he undertook was the greatest 
 and most astonishing that can be conceived, and such as never 
 before entered into the imagination of man. It was nothing 
 less than the conversion of a whole world. 
 
 He proves himself to have a commission from heaven, for 
 those great purposes, by such demonstrations of divine wis- 
 dom, power, and goodness, as it is impossible for any fair and 
 ingenuous and unprejudiced mind to resist. 
 
 Consider, in the first place, the transcendent excellence of 
 our Lord's character, so infinitely beyond that of every other 
 moral teacher ; the gentleness, the calmness, the composure, 
 the dignity, the spotless sanctity, of his manners, so utterly 
 inconsistent with every idea of enthusiasm or imposture ; 
 the compassion, the kindne.ss, the tenderness, he expressed 
 for the whole human race, even for the worst of sinners 
 and the bitterest of his enemies ; the perfect command he had 
 over his own passions ; the patience, the meekness, with 
 which he bore the cruelest insults and the grossest indignities ; 
 the fortitude he displayed under the most excruciating tor- 
 ments ; the sublimity and importance of his doctrines ; the 
 consummate wisdom and purity of his moral precepts, far 
 
84 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 exceeding the natural power of a man born in the humblest 
 situation and in a remote and obscure corner of the world, 
 without learning, education, languages, or books : and when 
 you lay all these things together, and weigh them deliberately 
 and impartially, your minds must be formed in a very peculiar 
 manner indeed, if they are not most thoroughly impressed 
 with faith in the Son of God, and the Gospel which he taught. 
 
 THOMAS ERSKINE OF LINLATHEN. 
 
 [Letters. Edinburgh : 1878. P. 395.] 
 
 Jesus, is the revealer of the Father, and his deeds have 
 their chief value in discovering to us the everlasting Fountain 
 out of which they flowed. It seems to me that at every step 
 of his earthly course we should hear him saying, " He that 
 hath seen me hath seen the Father." And what were all those 
 steps, but a varied manifestation of the desire to seek and to 
 save the lost? What were they but varied expressions of 
 sympathy for man pressed down by sin and sorrow ? So the 
 miraculous cures are less considered by the Fvangelists as 
 acts of power, than as acts of compassion and tokens of 
 sympathy. And thus he revealed the Father. 
 
 CARL AUGUST AUBERLEN. 
 
 [The Divine Revelation. Edinburgh: 1S67. P. 65.] 
 
 The Risen One is essentially the Man who has really 
 attained his original ideal. 
 
 In the spiritualized and transformed Christ, the true 
 ideal of humanity is absolutely realized. Therefore he is 
 the crown of our race, the surety who guarantees to men the 
 realization of their ideal perfection. . . . Without him the 
 crown would be torn from the head of humanity. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 85 
 
 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 [Lectures. London: 1845. Pp. 398, 399.] 
 
 TiiiXK of all the affection of human hearts that has been 
 given to the Saviour of the world since he withdrew his 
 visible presence from it ! He has appeared to na eye of 
 man since the apostles ; but millions have loved him, with 
 a fervency which nothing could extinguish, in life or death. 
 Think of the great " army" of those who have suffered death 
 for this love, and have cherished it in death ! And a mightier 
 number still would have died for it, and with it, if summoned 
 to do so. Think of all those who, in the incitement and 
 inspiration of this love, have indefatigably labored to promote 
 the glory of its great object ; and the innumerable multitude 
 of those who, though less pre-eminently distinguished, have 
 felt this sacred sentiment living in the soul, as the principle 
 of its best life and the source of all its immortal hope. This 
 is a splendid fact in the history of our race, a glorious excep- 
 tion to the vast and fatal expenditures of human affection on 
 unworthy and merely visible things. So grand a tribute of 
 the soul has been redeemed to be given to the Redeemer, 
 though an object unseen. 
 
 WILLIAM AUSTIN. 
 
 [The Human Character of Christ. Boston: 1807. Pp. 25, 48.] 
 
 Jesus Christ w^as endued not only with all those qualities 
 of mind which are considered the attributes of command, and 
 insure a superior standing among men, but he was still more 
 noted for the milder virtues. These, though less splendid, 
 meant more, in that they rarely associate with strongly marked 
 characters, are subjects of attainments rather than gifts of 
 nature, and require a habit of circumspection to preserve, and 
 a constant exercise to practise. But in Jesus the most 
 
86 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 opposite traits seemed to blend so naturally that one is in 
 danger of mistaking two virtues for a single one. His habit- 
 ual meekness, and undaunted firmness, his all-subduing 
 wisdom accompanied with a subtile sagacity, and his almost 
 childish simplicity, never for a moment proved a foil to each 
 other. . . . 
 
 Human nature was thought to be raised by the Stoics to 
 a dignity scarcely its own. But their moral austerity coun- 
 teracted itself, and produced a pride and intolerance not 
 always compatible with social life. The discourse of Jesus on 
 the Mount gave a moral, which, though built on humility, 
 transcended the severity of the Stoics, and taught the man 
 what he ought to be, rather than what he might be. The 
 Stoics made no allowance for human frailty. Even the milder 
 virtues were treated with contempt. Pity was a weakness, 
 compassion a crime, and love was divested not only of senti- 
 ment, but of heart. They tied up the passions, and chastised 
 the sensations. Jesus Christ, though he struck at the roots 
 of men's pride, offered no violence to his nature. Jesus 
 offered no new system : he who addresses the human heart 
 should never think of a system. 
 
 ^VILLIAM HANNA. 
 
 [Our Lord's Life on Earth. Edinburgh : 1S69. Pp. 244, 245.] 
 
 The beauty and force of that special lesson, which the 
 story of the Good Samaritan was intended to convey, was 
 mightily enhanced, as we remember how recently our Lord 
 himself had suffered from the intolerance of the Samaritans ; 
 only a few days before, — we know not how few, — having 
 been refused entrance into one of their villages. He himself 
 thus gave an exhibition of the very virtue he designed to 
 inculcate. 
 
 But why speak of this as any single minor act of universal 
 love to mankind on his part ? Was not his life and death one 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 87 
 
 continuous manifestation of his love ? Yes : bright as that 
 single act of the Good Samaritan shines in the annals of 
 human kindness, all its brightness fades away in the full blaze 
 of that love of Jesus, which saw not a single traveller, but our 
 whole race, cast forth naked, bleeding, dying, and gave not 
 a day of his time, nor a portion of his raiment, but a whole 
 lifetime of service and of suffering, that they might not perish 
 but have everlasting life. 
 
 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 [Conversation with Gen. Bertrand at St. Helena. John S. C. Abbott's 
 Life of Napoleon. Vol. ii. p. 612 et seq?^ 
 
 Explanatory Note. — As much doubt has existed, and still exists, re- 
 specting the genuineness of the testimony attributed to Napoleon, it is proper 
 to state that the utmost research concerning the facts in the case has not been 
 able to place the matter beyond doubt. 
 
 Dr. Philip Schaff, in his " Person of Christ," states with fairness the 
 strength and weakness of the evidences for and against the authenticity of 
 this now famous passage. Among other things he says, " Gen. Bertrand, an 
 avowed unbeliever, and Gen. Montholon, who, after his return to Europe, 
 became a believer, or at least seriously inclined, would be the proper vouch- 
 ers, since they heard, and must have reported, these utterances at St. Helena ; 
 but I cannot find it in their writings, so far as they came to my knowledge. 
 I was informed by Dr. Stowe that Gen. Bertrand, when on a visit to this 
 country, was asked by a company of ministers at Pittsburgh whether Napoleon 
 really uttered those sentiments in conversation with him, and that he gave an 
 affirmative answer ; but, on further inquiry, I could get no satisfactory reply 
 from Pittsburgh. I also looked in vain for such strong and explicit confes- 
 sions in the Memoirs of Las Casas, Antommarchi, and O'Meara, and other 
 authentic sources on the life of Napoleon at St. Helena, although they con- 
 tain some religious conversations of the Emperor, more or less favorable to 
 Christianity and the Bible. ... In view of all I can gather, I am inclined 
 to believe that these religious conversations of Napoleon have been consider- 
 ably enlarged or modified in the recollection of Bertrand, Montholon, and 
 other reporters ; but are authentic in substance, because they have the 
 grandiloquent and egotistic Napoleonic ring, and are marked by that massive 
 grandeur and granite-like simplicity of thought and style which characterized 
 the best of his utterances." 
 
88 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Though the external proofs of the genuineness of the testimony attrib- 
 uted to Napoleon are very meagre and unsatisfactory, the testimony itself, 
 though its authorship were unknown, is sufficiently striking and impressive to 
 entitle it to a place in this collection. I give, therefore, the most significant 
 passages. 
 
 Every thing in Christ astonishes me. His spirit overawes 
 me, and his will confounds me. Between him and whoever 
 else in the world, there is no possible term of comparison. 
 His ideas and his sentiments, the truths which he announces, 
 his manner of convincing, are not explained either by human 
 organization or by the nature of things. 
 
 His birth, and the history of his life ; the profundity of 
 his doctrine, which grapples the mightiest difficulties, and 
 which is of those difficulties the most admirable solution ; his 
 Gospel, his apparition, his empire, his march across the ages 
 and the realms, — every thing is for me a prodigy, a mystery 
 insoluble, which plunges me into reveries which I cannot 
 escape ; a mystery which is there before my eyes ; a mystery 
 which I can neither deny nor explain. Here I see nothing 
 human. 
 
 The nearer I approach, the more carefully I examine, 
 every thing is above me ; every thing remains grand, of a 
 grandeur which overpowers. His religion is a revelation 
 from an intelligence which is certainly not that of man. 
 There is there a profound originality which has created a 
 series of words and of maxims before unknown. Jesus bor- 
 rowed nothing from our science. One can absolutely find 
 nowhere, but in him alone, the imitation or the example of his 
 life. He is not a philosopher, since he advances by miracles ; 
 and, from the commencement, his disciples worshipped him. 
 
 In fact, the sciences and philosophy avail nothing for 
 salvation ; and Jesus came into the world to reveal the mys- 
 teries of heaven and the laws of the Spirit. Also he has 
 nothing to do but with the soul, and to that alone he brings 
 his gospel. The soul is sufficient for him, as he is sufficient 
 for the soul. Before him the soul was nothing. Matter and 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 89 
 
 time were the masters of the world. At his voice, every 
 thing returns to order. Science and philosophy become sec- 
 ondary. The soul has recognized its sovereignty. All the 
 scholastic scaffolding falls, as an edifice ruined, before one 
 single word, — Faith. 
 
 What a master, and what a word, which can effect such a 
 revolution ! With what authority does he teach men to pray ! 
 He imposes his belief; and no one, thus far, has been able to 
 contradict him, — first, because the gospel contains the purest 
 morality ; and also because the doctrine which it contains of 
 obscurity is only the proclamation and the truth of that which 
 exists where no eye can see, and no reason can penetrate. 
 Who is the insensate who will say " No" to the intrepid voyager 
 who recounts the marvels of the icy peaks which he alone has 
 had the boldness to visit ? Christ is that bold voyager. One 
 can doubtless remain incredulous ; but no one can venture to 
 say, " It is not soT . . . 
 
 You speak of Caesar, of Alexander, of their conquests, 
 and of the enthusiasm which they kindled in the hearts of 
 their soldiers ; but can you conceive of a dead man making 
 conquests, with an army faithful and entirely devoted to his 
 memory? My armies have forgotten me, even while living, as 
 the Carthaginian army forgot Hannibal. Such is our power ! 
 A single battle lost crushes us, and adversity scatters our 
 friends. 
 
 Can you conceive of Caesar as the eternal emperor of the 
 Roman senate, and, from the depth of his mausoleum, govern- 
 ing the empire, watching over the destinies of Rome ? Such 
 is the history of the invasion and conquest of the world by 
 Christianity ; such is the power of the God of the Christians ; 
 and such is the perpetual miracle of the progress of the faith, 
 and of the government of his Church. Nations pass away, 
 thrones crumble; but the Church remains. What is, then, 
 the power which has protected this Church, thus assailed 
 by the furious billows of rage and the hostility of ages ? 
 Whose is the arm, which for eighteen hundred years has 
 
90 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 protected the Church from so many storms which have 
 threatened to ingulf it ? 
 
 Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded 
 empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our 
 genius ? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire 
 upon love, and at this hour millions of men would die for him. 
 
 In every other existence but that of Christ, how many 
 imperfections ! Where is the character which has not yielded, 
 vanquished by obstacles ? Where is the individual who has 
 never been governed by circumstances or places, who has never 
 succumbed to the influences of the times, who has never com- 
 pounded with any customs or passions ? From the first day 
 to the last, he is the same, always the same, — majestic and 
 simple, infinitely firm and infinitely gentle. 
 
 Truth should embrace the universe. Such is Christianity, 
 the only religion which destroys sectional prejudices, the only 
 one which proclaims the unity and the absolute brotherhood 
 of the whole human family, the only one which is purely 
 spiritual ; in fine, the only one which assigns to all, without 
 distinction, for a true country, the bosom of the Creator, God. 
 Christ proved that he was the Son of the Eternal, by his 
 disregard of time. All his doctrines signify one only and the 
 same thing, — eternity. 
 
 What a proof of the divinity of Christ ! With an empire 
 so absolute, he has but one single end, — the spiritual meliora- 
 tion of individuals, the purity of the conscience, the union to 
 that which is true, the holiness of the soul. 
 
 Christ speaks, and at once generations become his by 
 stricter, closer ties than those of blood, — by the most sacred, 
 the most indissoluble, of unions. He lights up the flames of 
 a love which prevails over every other love. The founders 
 of other religions never conceived of this mystical love, which 
 is the essence of Christianity, and is bcautifuU)' called charity. 
 In every attempt to effect this thing, viz., to make himself 
 beloved, man deeply feels his own impotence. So that 
 Christ's greatest miracle undoubtedly is the reign of charity. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 9 1 
 
 JOHANN AUGUST WILHELM NEANDER. 
 
 [The Life of Jesus Christ. London : 1869. Pp. 2, 3, 6.] 
 
 What, then, is the special presupposition with which we 
 must approach the contemplation of the life of Christ ? It is 
 one on which hangs the very being of the Christian as such ; 
 the existence of the Christian Church, and the nature of the 
 Christian consciousness. It is one at whose touch of power, 
 the dry bones of the old world spring up in all the vigor of a 
 new creation. It gave birth to all that culture from which the 
 Germanic nations received their peculiar intellectual life, and 
 from which the emancipation of the mind grown too strong 
 for its bonds was developed in the Reformation. 
 
 It is the very root and ground of our modern civilization ; 
 and the latter, even in its attempts to separate from this root, 
 must rest upon it. Indeed, should such attempts succeed, it 
 must dissolve into its orip^inal elements, and assume an en- 
 tirely new form. It is, in a word, the belief that Jesus Christ 
 is the Son of God in a sense which cannot be predicated 
 of any human being, — the perfect image of the personal God, 
 in the form of that humanity that was estranged from him ; 
 that in him the source of the divine life itself in humanity 
 appeared ; that by him the idea of humanity w^as realized. 
 
 In all other men, there is a contrast between the ideal and 
 the phenomenal. While in many of their traits we may 
 discover the divine principle which forms their individuality, 
 in others we see opposing elements which go to make a mere 
 caricature of that principle. We can obtain no clear view 
 of the aim of the life of such men, unless we can seize upon 
 the higher elements which form the individual character ; just 
 as an artist might depict accurately a man's organic features, 
 and, for want of the peculiar intellectual expression, fail com- 
 pletely in giving the entire living physiognomy. But without 
 the conception of the living whole, we could not detect the 
 separate features which mar the harmony of the whole. On 
 
92 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 the other side, again, if we contemplate the whole apart from 
 the individual features, we shall only form an arbitrary ideal, 
 not at all corresponding to the reality. In Christ, however, 
 the ideal and the phenomenal never contradict each other. 
 All depends upon our viewing rightly together the separate 
 features in' their connection with the higher unity of the 
 whole. We presuppose this view of the whole, in order to 
 a just conception of the parts, and to avoid regarding any 
 necessary feature in the light of a caricature. And as, even 
 in studying the life of an eminent man, we must commune 
 with his spirit in order to obtain a complete view of his 
 being, so we must yield ourselves up to the Spirit of Christ 
 whom we acknowledofe and adore as exalted above us, that he 
 himself may show us his divine image in the mirror of his life, 
 and teach us to distinguish all prejudices of our creating from 
 the necessary laws of our being. 
 
 GULIAN C. VERPLANCK. 
 
 [Essays on Evidences of Revealed Religion. New York : 1824. Pp. 232-236.} 
 
 I HAVE before observed — what philosophers and reasoners, 
 in the pride of intellect, are much inclined to overlook — that 
 man's purely intellectual faculties, and the logical exercise of 
 them, are not his only guides to truth. Full often do his 
 natural sympathies, emotions, sensibilities, and affections 
 speak to his reason in that language in which nature acknowl- 
 edges the presence of its Author, and the authorit)- of his 
 commandments. Thus it is, too, with regard to much of this 
 evidence. There is a natural sentiment of truth in testimony, 
 and honesty in character, as well as a rational perception of 
 them. 
 
 Ihis power of interpreting the language of nature is not 
 learnt from any rules of criticism, but springs up of itself, antl 
 requires only use and exercise for its development. This is 
 the great principle that constitutes the true foundation of 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 93 
 
 g-ood taste and sound criticism. It mingles with our daily 
 thoughts, guides us in the ways of mankind, regulates or 
 infiuences our judgments of character, and dictates to us 
 the faith which we may give to the assertions of others, and the 
 reliance which we may place upon their truth or honor, . . . 
 
 There is a simplicity and directness accompanying strict 
 truth, which, like the frank and open aspect of unsuspicious 
 honesty, at once conciliates the confidence of all whose 
 imaginations are not filled with dark suspicions and universal 
 distrust, or whose aversion to the subject of the evidence does 
 not prejudice them against the character of the witness. On 
 the other hand, there is a partisan tone, and there is also 
 a manner of romance and embellishment, which are as surely 
 calculated to weaken confidence, and to suggest distrust to 
 all who do not participate in the feelings of the writer. 
 
 But the historic portions of the New Testament, above all 
 other narrative writings of any particularity whatever, are 
 remarkable for their perfect artlessness, and their grave and 
 solemn composure ; for the absence of all efforts to animate 
 or embellish the story, to increase its interest, or to fill the 
 reader with admiration for the character, and still less for 
 the prodigies, of him whose acts they record. They narrate 
 his actions, and record parts of his instruction, and no more. 
 So far are they from showing any desire to enforce the truth 
 of their story by argument, authority, or rhetoric, that the 
 bare possibility of being charged with falsehood seems never 
 to suggest itself to them. They manifest nothing of the 
 feeling of party; not a word of eulogy, or of vituperation, or 
 even of censure, escapes them. The deeds and the words 
 of the tyrant or the traitor, of the malignant or the hypo- 
 critical, are spoken as they occurred, but without epithet or 
 comment. There is never any climax of prodigies, no gradual 
 preparation for surprise and wonder. Of themselves they 
 think not. They speak transiently of their own errors and 
 gross ignorance, and of those of their friends and companions, 
 without affectation of humility, but with no attempt to conceal 
 
94 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 or excuse them. Filled with the grand truth of their subject, 
 their own little feelings are forgotten, or rather totally 
 absorbed. In them, the natural passions of human nature, 
 which mingle with the thoughts of the wisest and best, seem 
 for a time to have sunk down, and become hushed into a 
 hallowed calm. 
 
 They profess to be, and they are, witnesses and historians, 
 and nothing else. 
 
 Every transient and unaffected indication which can be 
 given in such compositions, of the temper and moral disposi- 
 tion of the writer, in the exercise of candor, of humility, of 
 liberal and tolerant judgment of others, in the suppression 
 of all personal bitterness, singularly agrees with the precepts 
 and moral tendency of the religion itself. 
 
 This last circumstance at once affords an evidence of 
 veracity, resembling that arising from the circumstantial agree- 
 ment of incidental particulars, and, at the same time, com- 
 mends the testimony of these men to our belief, by all that 
 just authority which arises from excellence of moral character. 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 [Select Works. New York : 1850. Pp. 42, 43, 47.] 
 
 Our Saviour could have ministered food to all the desti- 
 tute with as great facility as he ministered health to the 
 diseased ; and it is a question worthy of being considered, 
 why he was so sparing in the one, and so abundant, and so 
 indiscriminate, and, for any thing we read, so universal, in the 
 other ministration. We know not that he ever sent a peti- 
 tioner for health, uncured or disappointed, away from him ; 
 and we know i^tot, at the same time, if he ever above twacc in 
 the whole course of his history upon earth interposed with 
 a miracle for the relief of hunger ; while in the passage before 
 us [John vi. 24-26], it appears that instead of meeting, he 
 rebuked, the expectations of those who were running after 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 95 
 
 him in the hope of such a miracle. The truth is, that our 
 Saviour's progress in Judaea had before this time become a 
 path of pubHc notoriety. The eye of general observation 
 was upon all his footsteps, and the report of every transac- 
 tion of his was now sure to circulate through the land, so 
 that the operations of his beneficence were quite equivalent, 
 in effect, to the operations of a proclaimed charity ; and you 
 have only to conceive the effect that it must have had upon 
 the habits of the people, did the Saviour, by an indefinite 
 multiplication of loaves, hold out the assurance to all who 
 followed him, that they would also be fed by him. It would, 
 in fact, have deranged the whole mechanism of Jewish society; 
 and the people, at large from the regularities of their wonted 
 employment, would have carried a thickening and accumulat- 
 ing disorder along with them over the whole country. Every- 
 where some habit of Industry would have been suspended, 
 had the great Teacher of moral righteousness been thus 
 transformed into the almoner of assailing multitudes. 
 
 And it would not only have brought a great civil and 
 political mischief upon his countrymen : it would also have 
 raised a subtle and insurmountable barrier in the way of 
 every conversion from sin unto God. His object was to lead 
 men on the path to heaven ; but it is essential to the act of 
 walking in this path, that there be the self-denial of every 
 earth-born propensity, so that, from the very nature of the 
 case, it ceases to be a movement heavenwards when men are 
 led to it by the bribery of this world's advantages. Godli- 
 ness, by being turned into gain, ceases to be godliness. His 
 undertaking was to accomplish in the person of every disciple 
 a triumph of the spiritual over the sensitive part of the human 
 constitution, and to raise the affections of our degenerate 
 nature from the things which are beneath us to the things 
 which are above. Had he, in possession of the gift of multi- 
 plying loaves, done without measure and without considera- 
 tion, what many of our scheming philanthropists would have 
 counted so desirable, he In fact would have nullified his own 
 
96 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 errand. He would have stifled that principle which he sought 
 to implant, and nourished that principle which he wanted to 
 destroy. 
 
 There is not only wisdom, but a profoundness of wisdom, 
 in the example of our Saviour. And in the matter of human 
 charity, it will be seen that both by the actions of his history, 
 and the admonitions of the greatest of his apostles, he pro- 
 vides not only in the best manner for the worth of individual 
 character, but that he also provides in the best manner for the 
 economic regulation of the largest and most complex societies. 
 
 JOSEPH STEVENS BUCKMINSTER. 
 
 [Sermons. Boston: 1814. Pp. 23, 38, 39.] 
 
 There is something in the character of Jesus Christ which, 
 to an attentive reader of his history, is of more force than all 
 the weight of external evidence to prove him divine. If we 
 attempt to persuade ourselves that there is nothing super- 
 natural in the picture, which, with so much simplicity and 
 unlabored consistency, the Evangelists have given of our Lord, 
 the question rushes upon the mind, and demands an answer : 
 How was it, that in the common course of nature, in one of 
 the most corrupt ages of the world, and in an obscure corner 
 of an obscure country, a perfect personage or model of the 
 moral class should all at once start up before the admiration 
 of mankind, and now, after the lapse of many centuries, as 
 well as then, remain unrivalled and almost unapproached ? 
 
 All about Jesus of Nazareth is as fair and grand and 
 unaffected as the sun in his course through a cloudless sky. 
 He appears to be the delegate of him who sits at the head 
 of creation, proposing messages of love, and expressing 
 in his own manner the benevolent designs of his Father in 
 heaven toward this perverse nation. They behold him affec- 
 tionate in his address, sublime in his conceptions, yet fearless 
 in his manner, meekly conscious that God was with him, and 
 
ro JESUS OF NAZARETH. 97 
 
 that his unbeHeving hearers were a wicked and cruel race who 
 would bring upon themselves the vengeance of the Most 
 High whose prophet they rejected. 
 
 We have said that the kind of character which Jesus 
 exhibited as a Messiah was entirely unexpected to his nation. 
 Instead of using his miraculous power to place himself at 
 the head of his nation as their deliverer, and conqueror of the 
 world, the Son of God chose rather to appear as the son of 
 peace and consolation. The heart of man was the only realm 
 which he aspired to rule ; and it was as grateful to him to 
 convert the publicans and sinners, as it would have been 
 to receive the proud submission of a prefect or an emperor, 
 of Herod or Tiberius. He went about doinor o-ood when the 
 impatient Jews were tempting him to aspire to the throne of 
 David. What a lesson of humility is this ! What can more 
 clearly show the unambitious and holy spirit of the Christian 
 religion, than the character of Christ in these circumstances? 
 
 RICHARD WHATELY. 
 
 [Bacon's Essays, with Annotations. Boston: 1877. P. 130.] 
 
 It is now generally acknowledged that relief afforded to 
 want, as mere want, tends to increase that want ; while the 
 relief afforded to the sick, the infirm, and the disabled, has 
 plainly no tendency to multiply its own objects. Now, it is 
 remarkable, that the Lord Jesus employed his miraculous 
 power in healing the sick contimially, but in feeding the 
 hungry only twice ; while the power of multiplying food 
 which he then manifested, as well as his directing the disciples 
 to take care and gather up the fragments that remain that 
 nothing might be lost, seemed to mark that the abstaining 
 from any like procedure on other occasions was deliberate 
 design. In this, besides other objects, our Lord had probably 
 in view to afford us some instruction, from his example, as 
 to the mode of our charity. Certain it is, that the reasons 
 
98 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 for this distinction are now, and ever must be, the same as at 
 that time. Now, with those engaged in that important and 
 inexhaustible subject of inquiry, the internal evidences of 
 Christianity, it will be interesting to observe here one of the 
 instances in which the superhuman knowledge of Jesus fore- 
 stalled the discovery of an important principle, often over- 
 looked not only by the generality of men, but by the most 
 experienced statesmen and the ablest philosophers, even in 
 these latter ages of extended human knowledge, and 
 development of mental power. 
 
 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL. 
 
 [The Evidences of Christianitv. Cincinnati: 1S52. Pp. 4, 5.] 
 
 Jesus Christ was a real person, and had personal, positive 
 attributes. He had a real and positive character, unique, 
 original, transcendent. It was as fixed, as positive, and as 
 radiating as the sun in heaven. The originality and unity of 
 his character is all-sufficient, in the eye of educated reason, to 
 claim for him a cordial welcome into our world, and to hail 
 him as the supreme benefactor of our race. 
 
 To my mind, it has long been a moral demonstration, clear 
 as the sun, that no one could have drawn a character, such as 
 that of Jesus Christ, from all the stores of human learning, 
 from all the resources of the human imagination. The simple 
 character of Jesus Christ weighs more, in the eyes of cultivated 
 reason, than all the miracles he ever wrought. No greater 
 truth was ever uttered than these words : " He that hath seen 
 me hath seen the Father also." No mortal ever could have 
 said so. 
 
 The wisdom and science and learning of the world, 
 compared with his, was, and is, and evermore shall be, as a 
 glimmering spark to a radiant star, as a glow-worm of the 
 twilight in contrast with the splendors of a meridian sun. It 
 is only in the dark that we can admire a glow-worm : we 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 99 
 
 cannot see it when the sun shines. But we might as hopefully 
 lecture to a blind man on the philosophy of light, as address 
 the mere sensualist, the visionary, or the dogmatic simpleton, 
 on the originality, unity, transparency, beauty, and grandeur of 
 the character of Jesus Christ. 
 
 JOHN PYE SMITH. 
 
 [The Scripture Testimony TO THE Messiah. Edinburgh: 1859. Vol. ii. pp. 97, 419.] 
 
 It is delightful to dwell on'the character of this unrivalled 
 Man ; not only because in no other, since the foundation of 
 the world, has the intellectual and moral perfection of our 
 nature been exhibited, but because the contemplation of such 
 excellence refreshes and elevates the mind, and encourages 
 to the beneficial effort of imitation. He always did the things 
 which pleased his heavenly Father. Love, zeal, purity, a 
 perfect acquiescence in the Divine will on every occasion, and 
 the most exalted habits of devotion, had their full place and 
 exercise in his mind. The most refined generosity, but with- 
 out affectation or display ; mildness, lowliness, tenderness, 
 fidelity, candor, a delicate respect for the feelings as well as 
 the rights and interests of others, prudence, discriminating 
 sagacity, penetration into the minds and schemes of his ablest 
 adversaries, the soundest wisdom, and the noblest fortitude 
 shone from this sun of righteousness with a lustre that never 
 was impaired. 
 
 Even by those who have been unwilling to yield obedience 
 to his claims, he has been acknowledged to be the greatest 
 moral phenomenon of the universe. 
 
 Often have his enemies admired and praised him. 
 
 His mind exhibited, beyond all parallel among mortals, the 
 union of wisdom and holiness, meekness and majesty. 
 
 All his dispositions were the most lovely, yet unspeakably 
 dignified. His whole moral character was the perfection ol 
 unalloyed and perfect goodness. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF REDLANDS LIBRARV 
 
 lOO TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 ISAAC TAYLOR. 
 
 [Lfxtures on Spiritual Christianity. London: 1841. Pp. 19-23.] 
 
 It may be questioned, whether the entire range of ancient 
 history presents any one character in colors of reahty so fresh 
 as those which distinguish the personage of the EvangeHcal 
 memoirs. The heroes and sages of antiquity — less and less 
 nearly related, as they must be, to any living interests — are 
 fading amid the mists of an obsolete world ; but he who is 
 " the same yesterday, to-day, and forever," is offered to the 
 view of mankind in the dyes of immortality, fitting a history, 
 which, instead of losing the intensity of its import, is gathering 
 weight by the lapse of time. 
 
 The Evangelists, by the translucency of their style, have 
 given a lesson in biographical composition, showing how 
 perfectly individual character may be expressed in a method 
 which disdains every rule but that of fidelity. 
 
 It is well to consider the extraordinary contrasts that are 
 yet perfectly harmonized in the personal character of Christ. 
 At a first glance he appears always in his own garb of humilit)-. 
 Lowliness of demeanor is his very characteristic. But we 
 must not forget that this lowliness was combined with nothing 
 less than a solemnly proclaimed and peremptory challenge 
 of rightful headship over the human race. 
 
 Nevertheless, the oneness of the character, the fair per- 
 fection of the surface, suffers no rent by this blending of 
 elements so strangely diverse. Let us, then, bring before the 
 mind, with all the distinctness we can, the conception of the 
 Teacher, more meek than any who has ever assumed to rule 
 the oj)inions of mankind, and who yet, in the tones proper to 
 tranquil modesty, and as conscious at once of power and right, 
 anticipates the da)' of wonders when thi'/'King shall sit on 
 lh(; throne ol his glory," with his angels attendant ; and 
 when " all nations shall be gathered before him," from his li|)s 
 to receive their doom. The more these elements of personal 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. lOI 
 
 character are disproportionate, the more convincing is the 
 proof of reality which arises from their harmony. We may 
 read the Evangehsts listlessly, and not perceive this evidence ; 
 but we can never read them intelligently without yielding to 
 it our convictions. 
 
 If the character of Christ be, as indeed it is, altogether 
 unmatched in the circle of history, it is even less so by the 
 singularity of the intellectual and moral element which it 
 contains, than by the sweetness and perfection which result 
 from this union. This will appear the more if we consider 
 those instances in which the combination was altogether of 
 an unprecedented kind. 
 
 Nothing has been more constant in the history of the 
 human mind, whenever the religious emotions have gained a 
 supremacy over the sensual and sordid passions, than the 
 breaking-out of the ascetic temper in some of its forms, and 
 most often in that which disguises virtue, now as a spectre, 
 now as a maniac, now as a mendicant, now as a slave, but 
 never as the bright daughter of heaven. Of the three Jewish 
 sects extant in our Lord's time, two of them — that is to say, 
 the two that made any pretension to any sort of piety — had 
 assumed the ascetic garb in its two customary species, — the 
 philosophic (the Essenes) and the fanatical (the Pharisees) ; 
 and so strong and uniform is this crabbed inclination, that 
 Christianity itself, in violent contradiction to its spirit and 
 precepts, went off into the ascetic temper within a century 
 after the close of the apostolic age. or even earlier. 
 
 Under this aspect, then, let us for a moment consider the 
 absolutely novel phenomenon of the teacher of a far purer 
 morality than the world had heretofore ever listened to, }et 
 himself affecting no singularities in his modes of living. The 
 superiority of the soul to the body was the very purport of 
 his doctrine, and yet he did not waste the body by any 
 austerities. The duty of self-denial he perpetually enforced, 
 and yet he practised no factitious mortifications. This teacher, 
 not of abstinence, but of virtue ; this reprover, not of enjoy- 
 
I02 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 ment, but of vice, — himself went in and out among the social 
 amenities of ordinar)- life with so unsolicitous a freedom as to 
 give color to the malice of hypocrisy, in pointing the finger at 
 him, saying, " Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber ; 
 a friend of publicans and sinners." Should we not, then, note 
 this singular apposition and harmony of qualities, — that he 
 who was familiar with the festivities of heaven did not any 
 more disdain the poor solaces of mortality than disregard its 
 transient pains and woes ? Follow this same Jesus from the 
 banquets of the opulent, where he showed no scruples in diet, 
 to the highways and wildernesses of Judaea, where, never 
 indifferent to human suffering, he " healed as many as came 
 unto him." 
 
 These remarkable features in the personal character of 
 Christ have often, and very properly, been adduced as instances 
 of the unrivalled wisdom and elevation which mark him as 
 pre-eminent among the wise and good. It is not, however, for 
 this purpose that we now refer to them ; but rather as harmo- 
 nies altogether inimitable, and which put beyond doubt the 
 historic reality of the person. Thus considered they must be 
 admitted by calm minds as carrying the truth of Christianity 
 itself. 
 
 ALBRECHT RITSCHL. 
 
 [A Critical History of the Christian Doctrines of Justification and 
 Reconciliation. Edinburgh: 1S72. Sect. 11.] 
 
 The relation of the Christian religion to the person of its 
 Founder is of a different sort from the relation of the other 
 monotheistical religions to Moses and Mohammed respec- 
 tively. In both these, the main business is the founding of 
 a society, upon a definite doctrine, and after a definite form. 
 By Jesus, and in Christianity, on the other hand, redemption 
 has become operative as a principle for the moulding of the 
 devout self-consciousness, which does not take its .shape from 
 a legally enjoined doctrine and constitution, but from the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 103 
 
 never-ending value of the Redeemer to the society founded 
 by him. The ideal contents and the definite historical form of 
 this religion thus coincide in such a way that the thought 
 of redemption prevails in every devout Christian conscience, 
 simply because the beginning of that Christian society is the 
 Redeemer ; and Jesus is the founder of a devout society in 
 virtue of the fact that the members of that society become 
 conscious through him of their redemption. While Moses 
 and Mohammed are elevated, as it were, arbitrarily, from the 
 body of like or only slightly different men, in order to receive 
 the commandments of God for themselves as well as for 
 others, Christ the Redeemer stands out in contrast to all as 
 beinof he who alone did not need to be redeemed. 
 
 EDGAR QUINET. 
 
 [Voices of the Church. London : 1845. Pp. 74-76.] 
 
 If any one thing distinguishes Christianity from preceding 
 religions, it is that the Gospel is not the apotheosis of nature 
 in general, but of personality itself. It has this character in 
 its beginning and in its end, in its monuments and in its 
 dogmas. How, then, should this be wanting in its history ? 
 If it had not exclusively prevailed in the new institution, this 
 would have been but a sect of the great mythology of antiquity. 
 On the contrary, mankind has widely distinguished between 
 them because it was in fact established on a new foundation. 
 The in^-ernal dominion of a soul which feels itself greater 
 than the universe, — this is the lasting miracle of the Gospel. 
 And this prodigy is no illusion, no allegory : it is reality. 
 
 In the same manner as, in paganism, the sea, primitive 
 night, the shoreless chaos, gave a solid base to popular 
 fictions, here also the infinite soul of Christ served as a 
 foundation for all Christian influences ; for, what is the Gospel 
 if it be not an unfolding of the inner world ? 
 
 All life, all grandeur, as well as all misery, rises from the 
 
I04 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 individual. Suppose, then, that we wish to exalt ourselves in 
 union with all the human race, we must not deny the dignity 
 of the individual. The noblest work of Christianity is to have 
 consecrated the individual in the highest manner ; for if the 
 life of the God-made man have a sense comprehensible to all, 
 unexceptionable to all, it is because it evinces that the infinite 
 dwells in each conscience, as well as in the soul of the human 
 race ; and that the thought of each man may spread and 
 dilate itself so as to embrace and penetrate all the moral 
 universe. 
 
 DANIEL SCHENKEL. 
 
 [Character of Jesus. Boston: 1866. Vol. ii. pp. 147, 148.] 
 
 Jesus carried in his heart the consciousness of being the 
 champion and liberator of many, and particularly at that time 
 when he was about to undertake the journey to Jerusalem. 
 It had now become to him an irrevocable conviction, that he 
 was to contend and suffer and die as a sacrifice for the perse- 
 cuted and oppressed portion of mankind, as the friend and 
 brother of the poor, the protector of the miserable upon 
 whom the leaders in Church and State were wont to look 
 down with indifference and contempt. Thus the idea of the 
 Deliverer going to meet death is put in the purest light. 
 That he knew himself not as the representative of the distin- 
 guished, the prosperous, and the rich ; that he relinquished 
 utterly all human approval, all honor, all aid from these classes ; 
 that he sought nothing more or less than to be the helper 
 and rescuer of those who found nowhere else a heart to help 
 or a hand to save them ; that his death was a death met in 
 the service of poverty and sorrow, of the outcast and the 
 perishing, — this is the divine seal which the Eternal Father 
 himself impressed upon his word, \\\\v.\\ he said he gave up 
 his life as a ransom for many. Therefore, upon the very dark- 
 est page of the history of the nations, the name of Jesus 
 shines as a star. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 105 
 
 RUDOLF STIER. 
 
 [The Words of the Lord Jesus. Edinburgh: 1870. Preface, p. 8.] 
 
 That Jesus of Nazareth, as the Son of God, came in the 
 flesh, did in his generation so hve, so teach, so suffer, so die, 
 so rise again, as the four EvangeHsts with all their differences 
 unite perfectly in relating, is a truth attested to be the most 
 certain of all truths by the whole history of the world before 
 him and since, by Israel's permanence among the nations, as 
 well as the continuance of Christianity itself. The entire 
 mystery of all history finds in this its centre and only solution. 
 Similarly, the longing and seeking of every man's inner spirit 
 finds here its simple fulfilment and answer, — here, where all 
 the lines so wonderfully converge, and every thing signifi- 
 cantly tells us that the revelation of the Divine penetrates all 
 human individuality. Simply to accept this, is no false 
 simplicity, but the highest wisdom, which, reverently hearken- 
 ing in the obedience of faith to the Eternal Wisdom, is 
 rewarded by the right perception of the truth which is unto 
 salvation. 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 [Aids to Reflection. New York: 1850. Pp. 150, 288, 2C)r.] * 
 
 Christianity is not a theory or a speculation, but a life ; 
 not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process. Try 
 it. It has been eighteen hundred years in existence : and has 
 one individual left a record like the following ? "I tried it, 
 and it did not answer. I made the experiment faithfully, 
 according to the directions ; and the result has been a 
 conviction of my own credulity." Have you, in your own 
 experience, met with any one in whose words you could place 
 full confidence, and who has seriously affirmed : " I have 
 given Christianity a fair trial. I was aware that its promises 
 were made only conditionally ; but my heart bears me witness, 
 
I06 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 that I have to the utmost of my power comphed with these 
 conditions. Both outw^ardly, and in the discipHne of my 
 inward acts and affections, I have performed the duties 
 which it enjoins, and I have used the means which it 
 prescribes. Yet my assurance of its truth has received no 
 increase. Its promises have not been fulfilled ; and I repent 
 me of the delusion " ? 
 
 If neither your own experience, nor the history of almost 
 two thousand years, has presented a single testimon)' to this 
 purport, and if you have read and heard of many w^ho have 
 lived and died bearing witness to the contrary : and if you 
 have yourself met with some one, in whom on any other point 
 you would place unqualified trust, who has on his own expe- 
 rience made report to you, that he is faithful who promised, 
 and what he promised he has proved himself able to perform : 
 is it bigotry if I fear that the unbelief, which prejudices and 
 prevents the experiment, has its source elsewhere than in the 
 uncorrupted judgment; that not the strong free mind, but the 
 enslaved will, is the true original infidel in this instance ? It 
 would not be the first time that a treacherous bosom-sin had 
 suborned the understanding of men to bear false witness 
 against its avowed enemy, the right though unreceived owner 
 of the house, who had long warned it out, and waited only for 
 its ejection to enter and take possession of the same. 
 
 It is neither the outward ceremony of baptism, under any 
 form of circumstances, nor any other ceremony, but such a 
 faith in Christ as tends to produce a conformity to his holy 
 doctrines and example in heart and life, and which faith is 
 itself a declared mean and condition of our partaking of his 
 spiritual body, and of being clothed upon with his righteous- 
 ness, — that properly makes us Christians, and can alone be 
 enjoined as an article of faith necessary to salvation. In the 
 strictest sense of essential, this alone is the essential in Chris- 
 tianit)', that the same spirit should be growing in us which was 
 in th(.' fulness of all perfection in Christ I(?sus. 
 
 One ol tlu; purposes of baptism was to mark out, for the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 107 
 
 Church itself, those that were entitled to that especial clear- 
 ness, that watchful and disciplinary love and loving-kindness, 
 which, over and above the affections and duties of philan- 
 thropy and universal charity, Christ himself hath enjoined, 
 and with an emphasis and in a form significant of its great 
 and especial importance, — ''A new commandment I give 
 unto you, that ye love one another^ By a charity wide as 
 sunshine, and comprehending the whole human race, the body 
 of Christians was to be placed in contrast with the proverbial 
 misanthropy and bigotry of the Jewish Church and people, 
 while yet they were to be distinguished and known to all men, 
 by the peculiar love and affection displayed by them towards 
 the members of their own community ; thus exhibiting the 
 intensity of sectarian attachment, yet, by the no less notorious 
 and exemplary practice of the duties of universal benevolence, 
 secured from the charge so commonly brought against it, of 
 being narrow and exclusive. 
 
 KARL ULLMANN. 
 
 [The Sinlessness of Jesus. Edinburgh : 1858. Pp. 77, 78, 229, 230.] 
 
 The character of the Lord Jesus presents to us the 
 harmony of a life which, in action as well as in suffering, was 
 equally penetrated with the Spirit of God, which had its source 
 in the perfect love of God, and realized itself in the highest 
 love to man, and in an entire self-sacrifice for the salvation 
 of the human race. In a word, it was the love of God mani- 
 fested in a form purely human. Now, the idea of such a 
 being as this excludes the possibility of sin ; for sin, which 
 is in its very nature antagonistic to God, can find no place 
 where selfishness, which is its essence and principle, is utterly 
 abolished by the full energy of love to God and man. 
 
 Unquestionably the moral image of Jesus, even if regarded 
 as nothing more than an idea, is the noblest and dearest 
 possession of humanity ; a thing for which a man might 
 
 ^ 
 
I08 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 surely be willing to live or die. For this idea is the noblest 
 to which, in religfion or morals, the mind of man has ever 
 attained. It is the crown and glor}^ of the race ; it is the holy 
 place in which the moral consciousness may find refuge from 
 the corruption of every-day life. . . . 
 
 When we endeavor to bring before our minds the image 
 of the personality of Jesus in direct connection wdth the influ- 
 ences and works which originated in him, three things strike 
 us as peculiar. These three things may be summed up in the 
 words, — unlimited perfection, unapproachable dignity, and 
 unconditioned power of action. The character of Jesus is so 
 constituted that we cannot take away one single trait from it, 
 or add one to it, without at once being sensible that we have 
 not only altered but disfigured it. 
 
 He includes in himself in fact, all perfection ; and along 
 with the highest energy, and an inexhaustible fulness of life, 
 there is a harmony so perfect that w^e are compelled to 
 exclaim, " Here no improvement can be made by the loftiest 
 idealizing ; for the ideal itself has become real, and the life 
 itself is stamped with the seal of perfection." In its perfection 
 we feel, moreover, that something attaches to the person of 
 Jesus, which our thoughts and words are incapable of grasping. 
 
 Art has striven in vain to find an adequate expression for 
 the image of Christ ; and so to describe the spiritual nature 
 and character in language, is a task which never has been and 
 never will be accomplished to our complete satisfaction. W'e 
 feel, even, that he is possessed of a dignity which is unap- 
 proachable by man ; of a fulness, which, the more we draw 
 from it, the greater do its treasures appear. This is perceived, 
 not only by separate individuals. l)ut by humanity as a wliole. 
 The higher and truer the life of an indixidual becomes, the 
 more clearly does he discern and realize the image of Jesus ; 
 and at every new step in the development of humanity the 
 form of th(; Nazarene is illuminated by a fuller light. At 
 the same time there is a distinct consciousness that it is not 
 the image: of Christ which increases by means of us. but that 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 109 
 
 we, by living more deeply into it, grow in our capacity of 
 understanding it. 
 
 And however nearly we may approximate toward him, we 
 always feel that he towers above us, at a height to which no 
 man will ever be able fully to rise ; that there is a distance 
 between him and us which none can traverse. This eminence 
 of Jesus is further evidenced by his unbounded influence over 
 the sons of men. The image of the serene and holy One of 
 Golgotha sinks to the very depths of the heart, and presents 
 itself before the soul, — sometimes as a consciousness of sin 
 and evil, at other times like a word of consolation coming 
 directly from our compassionate God. And whilst its influ- 
 ence is thus felt in our own inmost life, it is no less percepti- 
 ble in the ordinary course of the history of mankind. The 
 traces there are alike notorious and indelible ; and the whole 
 development of humanity, especially in its highest aspects, 
 would be inexplicable, apart from the recognition of the 
 presence of such a power. We can conceive it to be possible 
 that all the great men of history should pass into utter obliv- 
 ion ; but we must hold it to be impossible that the memory 
 of this image should depart, because it has become part and 
 parcel of the inmost and truest life of humanity. 
 
 KARL AUGUST HASE. 
 
 [Life of Jesus. Boston: i860. Pp. 16,57, 121, 131, 139.] 
 
 The fact that Jesus left nothing behind in writing stands 
 related with the character of his whole life and influence, as 
 something present and immediate, and with the nature of 
 original Christianity. For the object of Christianity was not 
 to be a system of opinions, but a new life and a new commu- 
 nity. Therefore Jesus commands his Gospel to be preached, 
 and did not command it to be written down. . . . 
 
 Every attempt to give the character of Jesus runs the 
 risk of becoming a merely personified system of morals or 
 
I lO TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 psychology, and of resulting in a superficial enumeration of all 
 possible virtues and qualities. For to the ideal of humanity, 
 as to that of Deity, it is essential to have no sharply marked 
 features, but a beautiful combination of all powers. Quick 
 susceptibilities, and depth of feeling, appear as characteristic 
 traits of Jesus ; yet even these may belong to the Gospel man- 
 ner of description. This advantage at least, therefore, may 
 belong to a biography of Jesus : that instead of an abstract 
 analysis of his character, it may follow the example of John 
 in making a concrete and living picture of his inmost soul, as 
 expressed in words and deeds. 
 
 This character appears fully rounded even at the beginning 
 of his public life. It is essentially an entire love of God 
 manifested in the purest humanity. History has greater 
 examples of the energy of single virtues and qualities ; but in 
 this Jesus stands alone, that every virtue, so far as it was 
 possible to manifest it in his work, appears in full harmony 
 and concord with every other, and includes what in other cases 
 a one-sided development has excluded. . . . 
 
 By calling the publican to be an apostle, Jesus defended, 
 in opposition to the assumed superiority of the Pharisees, his 
 mission to the whole debased part of humanity. By the same 
 act he opposed to the rigor and eternal strictness of the 
 disciples of John, the free and joyful spirit of his doctrine, 
 which would not suffer limitation on the one hand by arbitrary 
 human maxims, and yet, on the other hand, was ready to 
 judge the errors of others in the mildest way. 
 
 ThouMi fastino- was a custom belonofincf to the national 
 morals, the Master did not cause his disciples to fast. Not 
 that he wholly rejected such practices ; but that he wished 
 them to be kept for the hour of real need, and then to be 
 veiled in the secret of a smiling face. He took the most 
 joyous moment of earthly gayety as symbol of the highest 
 communion. No religious hero was ever less afraid of the 
 joys of this life than was Jesus. . . . 
 
 The immediate work of Jesus was not to teach a doctrine, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 1 1 
 
 but to found a kingdom, which should be a community for 
 the reHgious culture of universal humanity. But since this 
 community was based on the knowledge of religious truth, 
 and opposition to its antagonist errors, it became an essential 
 part of his work to teach. His doctrine is the communication 
 of the insights of a perfectly pious soul, with the purpose of 
 laying the foundation of a pious community. The pious soul 
 is as old as humanity, and we accordingly find among the 
 ancients many sayings parallel to the separate sayings of 
 Jesus. But we never find anywhere that complete insight and 
 that perfection of character from which these proceeded. . . . 
 Since Jesus recognized himself as the Messiah, he was 
 divinely sent in the highest national meaning of the phrase ; 
 and since he made God's order of the world his own, he was 
 himself divine in the highest religious meaning of the term. 
 When he says that his doctrine was not his own, but that of 
 his Father, he opposes the conjecture that he might have 
 learned it from another, or thought it out for himself. And 
 thus the difficulty explains itself. The divine consciousness, 
 in Jesus, is an original revelation which God makes of himself 
 in the experience of his Son. Therefore Christ, as the 
 archetype of man's religious nature, not only brought a 
 revelation, but was himself a revelation. All true religion 
 is revelation, for only God can convey a true knowledge of 
 himself to the human heart. Therefore Jesus appealed to 
 each man's experience for proof that his word was from God, 
 and knew that whoever loved the truth and was of God would 
 be drawn to him. 
 
 JOHN R. BEARD. 
 
 [The Moral Argument for the Gospels. From Voices of the Church. 
 London: 1845. Pp- 303-305-] 
 
 With one consentient voice, all the writers of the New 
 Testament declare the divinity of the Christian religion, as 
 embodied in the life and teachings of its Founder. Vary 
 
112 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 as they may on minor points, and vary as they do in the 
 manner and the phraseology in which they set forth the fact, 
 they unite in one grand testimony respecting the divine 
 origin of what the Saviour was. did, and taught. 
 
 Let all the miracles of the New Testament be explained 
 away or exploded or denied, the great miracle still remains : 
 we mean the character of Christ. There is a fact with which we 
 must deal, since it cannot be denied or evaded or expunged. 
 Jesus was, and Jesus is. The essential features of his char- 
 acter are written down in the New Testament in a way to 
 admit of no dispute ; as, indeed, no dispute worthy of notice 
 has ever been raised about them. Whatever else the Gospels 
 may be supposed to fail in, they have handed down to us, in 
 broad and deep relief, the image and superscription of our 
 Lord ; and far more — more in minute detail, more in general 
 amount, more incomparably in impression — do we know, may 
 the simplest Christian know, of the Founder of Christianity, 
 than is known by the most learned of any other personage 
 of antiquity. 
 
 Confessedly, in his moral relations, Jesus stands at the 
 head of humanity. His rule of right was perfect not only in 
 regard to the time in which he appeared, but also to the high- 
 est attainments which a progressive civilization has been able 
 to achieve. Equally perfect and entire was his fidelity to that 
 rule, so that his life was only the simple but energetic expres- 
 sion of his convictions. 
 
 Pure, however, as he himself was. he had the tenderest 
 pity for the impure. With no fear that the lustre of his 
 virtue would be sullied by the foulness of others, he ate and 
 drank with sinners, in order to win them from the error of 
 their way ; and thus, far from remaining satishetl with the 
 delights which spring from pure affections, he used his virtues 
 as instruments for advancing the good of 6thers. 
 
 His ])iety was not an impulse, not a devotional excitability, 
 but a habit of the soul, a moving power within him, no less 
 steady than perpetuated and intense, enabling him to realize 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 1 3 
 
 the constant presence of God, and making his whole Hfe one 
 act of obedience and devotion. There is, indeed, no virtue 
 which Jesus did not possess. Nay, he exhibited every possi- 
 ble excellence, carried to the highest degree of perfection. 
 It is not that he surpasses ordinary men in any one quality, 
 but in all. 
 
 CHRISTOPH JOHANNES RIGGENBACH. 
 
 [Foundations of Our Faith. London: 1867. Pp. 116-11S, 120, 12S, 129.] 
 
 The whole character of Jesus is far removed from any 
 thing of calculation, any thing put on, constrained, artificial. 
 Word and deed are alike simple and majestic. He is most 
 acute and precise in his appeal to conscience : he discovers 
 the very ground of the heart, for he thoroughly knows sinners 
 in their sins, and rebukes them for their good. And yet, for 
 all his keen insight, he is no despiser of men, but very pitiful 
 towards them. What tender love he has for the degraded 
 woman of Samaria ; for her who anointed his feet, being a 
 sinner ; for the fallen disciple who denied him ; for Jerusalem 
 that rejected him ! He is moved with compassion for the 
 sheep that have no shepherd. " Father, forgive them : " this 
 is the breath of his whole life. Meekness and humility, grace 
 and truth, make up his being : this was the impression 
 received by susceptible hearts, and there was not a passage 
 in his life to disturb that impression. 
 
 And this experience they have handed down to us in a 
 representation that testifies to its own faithfulness. Whence 
 could they have derived it, if they had not seen and known it ? 
 In such a case they must have drawn the idea from them- 
 selves, their inward views, their own actual character. But 
 do men afford such an example of spotless purity as this ? 
 Our conscience, indeed, may demand it; but who that looks 
 within finds there the fulfilment of conscience' demands ? 
 Wliat poet or historian, ever before or after, sketched so 
 perfect a form ? True, Xenophon says, speaking of his noble 
 
114 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 master Socrates, " No one ever saw Socrates do, or heard 
 him say, any thing that was irrehgious or unholy." But how 
 external and low was the standard of holiness among the 
 Greeks, compared to that of the Evangelists ! 
 
 We repeat it : a description such as that of the holy 
 character of Jesus is without parallel ; so spotlessly pure, and 
 
 — let us observe this well — at the same time time so lifelike, 
 so true to nature, so individually personified, that no human 
 imagination could ever have created it. What should we men 
 do if we sought from our own resources to draw the imasfe 
 of a sinless man ? Why, we should harp upon his sinlessness, 
 we should insist upon his freedom from this sin and that sin, 
 and we should heap superlatives of virtue and excellence one 
 on the other. But to produce a living, personal, individual 
 character such as that of our Lord in the Gospels allowedly is, 
 and, moreover, to invent a history in which this personality 
 should be retained thoughout most widely varying circum- 
 stances, and to do all this simply, naturally, plainly, grandly, 
 
 — this were beyond the reach of the greatest poet. This, 
 however, the Evangelists have done. They have done it art- 
 lessly, without being highly gifted poets; they have done it 
 so that misapprehension may stumble at much, till, further 
 light breaking in upon the mind, each stumbling-block is seen 
 to be a fresh trait of moral grandeur ; they have done it so 
 as not to conceal froni us how much there was in his charac- 
 ter which contradicted their pre-conceptions of legal piety, and 
 of what became the Messiah ; they have done it, have been 
 able to do it, in short, because they speak of that which they 
 have seen and heard and experienced. . . . 
 
 However clear and correct the insight of Jesus into the 
 sinfulness of the human heart, we never hear from him an 
 admission of personal consciousness of sin. In none of his 
 prayers does he ever humble himself, and implore mercy ; 
 whereas it is in the most distinguished saints that we meet 
 with the deepest convictions of natural corruption, the 
 strongest statements of guilt, the most striking expressions 
 
 1 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. II5 
 
 of self-accusation. But in all his expressions concerning 
 himself, Jesus invariably appears holy, undefiled, and separate 
 from sinners. . . . 
 
 This, then, is how the general question stands. We see 
 that it is in vain to do away with, in vain to cut short, in vain 
 to exclude this or that passage ; for the doctrine runs alike 
 through every phase of the Gospels. 
 
 The same Jesus, then, who makes upon us such an impres- 
 sion of perfect candor and gentleness, meekness and humility, 
 wisdom and holiness, — the same Jesus who " created a moral 
 ideal in the conscience of humanity, and embalmed it in his 
 life, so that whoever would acknowledge or practise what is 
 good must ever keep returning afresh to the word and image 
 of Jesus," — this same Jesus has claimed divine majesty, divine 
 power, divine nature. And were, then, all these claims false? 
 Was he either a crazy enthusiast or a blasphemous liar? 
 Could such impious deceit as this proceed from the lips of 
 him who did no sin ? 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 
 
 [Bethlehem. Baltimore: i860. Pp. 11, 51.] 
 
 Jesus Christ yesterday and to-day, and the same, forever ! 
 These words of the Apostle express at once the noblest and 
 most delightful occupation of our lives. To think, to speak, 
 to write perpetually of the grandeurs of Jesus, — what joy on 
 earth is like it, when we think of what we owe to him, and 
 of the relation in which we stand to him ? Who can weary 
 of it ? The subject is continually growing before our eyes. 
 It draws us on. It is a science, the fascination of which 
 increases the more deeply we penetrate into its depths. That 
 which is to be our occupation in eternity usurps more and 
 more with sweet encroachment the length and breadth of 
 time. Earth orrows into heaven, as we come to live and 
 breathe in the atmosphere of the Incarnation. 
 
Il6 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 The Incarnation lies at the bottom of all sciences, and is 
 their ultimate explanation. It is the secret beauty in all arts. 
 It is the completeness of all philosophies. It is the point of 
 arrival and departure to all history. The destinies of nations, 
 as well as of individuals, group themselves around it. It 
 purifies all happiness, and glorifies all sorrow. It is the cause 
 of all we see, and the pledge of all we hope for. It is the 
 great central fact, both of life and immortality, out of sight 
 of which man's intellect wanders in the darkness, and the 
 light of a divine life falls not on his footsteps. 
 
 HERMANN OLSHAUSEN. 
 
 [The Last Days of the Saviour. Pp. lo, 14.] 
 
 Although Jesus had not where to lay his head, he still 
 ruled as Prophet and King. He spake as never man spake ; 
 he commanded the hearts of his followers, and reigned in the 
 midst of his enemies, who, held by the viewless bands of 
 the Spirit, could not limit the broad compass of his activity. 
 He exercised unlimited power over the force of nature, ruled 
 the storm, walked over the waves of the sea, fed thousands 
 with a few loaves, healed the sick, cast out evil spirits. But 
 in the last days of his earthly pilgrimage, this radiant glory, 
 which surrounded him, vanishes altogether. His speech, alike 
 gentle and powerful, is silent before the multitude of hearers 
 whom he had addressed in vain. Jesus confines himself to 
 the little company of his disciples, and strives to plant in their 
 hearts the undying germ of the kingdom of God. His 
 glorious miracles cease ; every thing brilliant, every thing 
 extraordinary, vanishes ; the poverty and lowliness of the outer 
 being reached inward through the whole soul ; he sinks, as it 
 were, step by step, into deepest humiliation. The eye awake 
 to the conception of true majesty and beauty readily sees, in 
 this utter uncomeliness, the secret glory of the heavenly image 
 beaming through the more purely and clearly. Although the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. II7 
 
 active virtues shine the stronger, yet the passive ones are truly 
 greater, and the harder to exercise. These have their perfect 
 work in Christ ; the record of his sufferings breathes but a 
 heavenly forbearance, gentleness, patience. 
 
 While it is the most exalted office of an earthly sage, to 
 be a genuine inquirer after truth, Christ himself is the actual 
 truth, which the former seeks. All the rays of shining virtues, 
 which have appeared in all the earthly champions and suffer- 
 ers for truth and right, are united in him as in the sun, and 
 melted into an unutterable unity. 
 
 EDMOND DE PRESSENSE. 
 
 [The Religions before Christ. Edinburgh : 1S62. Pp. 246, 254, 257.] 
 
 If Jesus Christ be but the sublimest of teachers, or the 
 greatest of prophets, there is no essential difference between 
 him and Socrates or Isaiah. What constitutes the grand 
 originality of his work is, that he gives all that his precursors 
 promised or hoped for ; and did not merely bear witness to 
 the truth, but was empowered to say, with that calm assurance 
 that carried with it such weight of moral authority, " I am the 
 truth." . . . 
 
 It sufficed to have seen and heard him, to feel the power 
 of that irresistible attraction. There was in him such gentle- 
 ness and purity, in his words such authority and power, a 
 something so consoling and celestial was diffused through 
 his whole person, that all honest hearts felt themselves at 
 once penetrated by sympathy blended with tenderness and 
 adoration. A divine virtue surrounded him like a halo ; he 
 was felt to be as powerful as he was compassionate ; as able 
 to deliver as he was to console ; and, amid all his miracles, 
 there was the presentiment of a still greater, that which all 
 the others announced and prefigured, — the restoration by 
 love of the human race. . . . 
 
 Wliether he argues with his adversaries, whether he 
 
Il8 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 announces the Gospel to the people, whether he explains his 
 parables to his disciples, or withdraws to the desert or the 
 mountain, he is always pre-eminently the Righteous One. 
 the Saint of saints, whom sin never even touches, — he is 
 Divine Love personified. 
 
 JOHN JACOB VAN OOSTERZEE. 
 
 [Christian Dogmatics. New York: 1874. Vol. ii. pp. 504,534.] 
 
 It can surprise no one, that we thus at large defend the 
 doctrine, nay the Jact, of the Lord's sinlessness, against all 
 opposition. For the importance of the subject very soon 
 becomes manifest to us, whether we connect it with the 
 doctrine of revelation, or with that of redemption in Christ, 
 As concerns the former, precisely the absolute sinlessness of 
 the Lord authorizes our unreservedly believing his word, and 
 seeing in his person nothing less than the image of the Father 
 manifest in human form. Sin and the lie are, in the language 
 of the New Testament, and from the nature of the case, 
 correlative ideas ; and on no one can we more certainly rely 
 as having spoken the truth, than upon him who beheld it with 
 absolutely unclouded eye, and, moreover, never sought his 
 own honor. 
 
 Now we know that he who sees him has seen the Father, 
 since no troubled sea can thus clearly reflect the image of the 
 sun in the firmament. He does not merel)' s})eak the truth, 
 but he is the truth, precisely because he has and is the life, 
 interrupted by no power of sin. And as concerns the doctrine 
 of redemption, the sinlessness of the Lord serves, more than 
 any thing else, as a guaranty that he voluntarily laid down 
 his lile, actuated by no other principle than that of perfect 
 obedience and love. 
 
 Precisely because he was truly man, could he enter into 
 our wants and nece.ssities. No deliverance of the sinful world, 
 as we shall soon see, was possible, unless he from whom it was 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. I 1 9 
 
 to proceed should descend into our depths to raise us to his 
 height. Only as truly man could the Son of God be the 
 highest revelation of the Father, in the nature most highly 
 developed and the one best known to us here below. Only 
 thus could he suffer and die, have sympathy with our infirmi- 
 ties, and raise his people to the highest degree of glory and 
 blessedness. 
 
 As man, yet only as spotless man. Show me a single 
 moral blemish in Christ, and the world's Physician of souls 
 will himself require a healer. But it is precisely the moral 
 perfection of this personality, that he never forgets himself, 
 and thus, also, never needs to recall his words and actions. 
 "The Redeemer," to use the words of Rothe, "never needs 
 to do a thing twice, in order, morally, to learn it in the widest 
 sense of the term." Every moment is he equally certain with 
 regard to himself, as with regard to the Father; and on that 
 account have we perfect confidence fully to rely for our 
 salvation upon his word and work. And thus his person is 
 for us God's highest revelation, his life the highest ideal, and 
 his death, out of perfect obedience and love, a sacrifice of 
 inestimable value. 
 
 RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH. 
 
 [Christ the Desire of All Nations. Philadelphia: 1S54. Pp. 141, 155, 239.] 
 
 What do we afTfirm of Christ ? When do we conceive 
 worthily of him ? When we conceive of him in the prophet's 
 words as "the Desire of all nations," — the fulfiller of the 
 world's hopes, the stiller of creation's groans, — the great birth 
 of time, unto which all the unspeakable throes of a suffering 
 humanity had been tending from the first. We do not believe 
 the peculiar glory of what in Christ we possess to consist in 
 this, that it is unlike everv thinor else, — " the cold denial and 
 contradiction of all that men have been dreamine of through 
 the different ages of the world, — but rather the sweet recon- 
 
I20 TESTIMOXY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 ciliation and exquisite harmony of all past thoughts, anticipa- 
 tions, revelations." Its prerogative is, that all whereof men 
 had a troubled dream before did in him become a waking 
 reality ; that what men were devising, and most inadequately, 
 for themselves, God had perfectly given us in his Son ; that 
 in the room of shifting cloud-palaces, with their mockery of 
 temple and tower, stands for us a city which hath come down 
 from heaven, but whose foundations rest upon this earth 
 of ours ; that we have divine facts, — facts, which no doubt 
 are ideal, in that they are the vehicle of eternal truths ; his- 
 tory, indeed, which is far more than history, for it embodies 
 the largest and most continually recurring thoughts which 
 have stirred the bosom of humanity from the beginning. 
 We say that the divine ideas, which had wandered up and 
 down the world till oftentimes they had well-nigh forgotten 
 themselves and their own oriofin, did at length clothe them- 
 selves in flesh and blood ; they became incarnate with the 
 Incarnation of the Son of God. In his life and person the 
 idea and the fact at length kissed each other, and were 
 henceforth wedded forevermore. 
 
 There is a natural grravitation of souls, which attracts them 
 to mighty personalities ; an instinct in man, which tells him 
 that he is never so great as when looking up to one greater 
 than himself ; that he is made for this looking upward, — to 
 find, and, finding, to rejoice and be ennobled in a nobler than 
 himself. And doubtless this instinct in itself is divine. It is 
 the natural basis on which the devotion of mankind to Christ 
 is by the Spirit to be built : it is an instinct, which, being 
 perfectly purified of each baser admixture, is intended to find 
 its entire satisfaction in him. 
 
 It has been to me an argument for the truth and dignity 
 of his mission who was its Author, to find that in him all 
 fulness dwelt, all lines concentrated, all hopes of the world 
 were accomplished. For surely the King of glory shows to 
 us more glorious yet when we are able to contemplate him, 
 not merely as the Prophet and Priest and King of the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 121 
 
 Covenant, but as the satisfier of vaguer, though not less real, 
 aspirations, of more undefined longings, of more wide-spread 
 hopes, when, looking at him, we take note with the inspired 
 seer, that on his head are many crowns ; and, looking at his 
 dodiHne, that not Israel only, but the isles also, had waited for 
 his law. 
 
 GEORGE W. BURNAP. 
 
 Christianity, its Essence and Evidence. Boston: 1855. Pp. 46, 78, 86, 94. 
 
 An effect must have a cause adequate to its production. 
 They who saw, this morning, the day spread itself over the 
 earth knew that it was caused by the rising of the sun, because 
 it was dark before, and it has been light ever since. Such 
 an event was the advent of Christ. His birth spontaneously 
 became the greatest epoch of the ages. From it the centuries 
 preceding are compelled to reckon backward ; from it the 
 ages since are made to reckon forward. It is inconceivable 
 that a fictitious being, an imaginary creation of the human 
 brain, could produce such a revolution in human affairs. The 
 broad, long shadow of the mountain demonstrates its vastness. 
 We hear, at the distance, the roar of the ocean, and we are 
 filled with astonishment and awe. We arrive at its shore, and 
 the mystery is all explained. Its mighty bulk, its tall tumbling 
 waves, as they thunder upon the cliff, or break upon the beach, 
 reveal to us the cause why the atmosphere is jarred and the 
 earth is shaken by the power of the ocean storm. 
 
 So we are disposed to wonder at the great changes pro- 
 duced by Christianity in the world. 
 
 Nations which were pagan became the worshippers of the 
 one true God. Tribes which were savage became civilized. 
 Religious rites which were absurd or obscene were abandoned. 
 Amusements which were bloody, cruel, or indecent, were 
 renounced. The frequency and the atrocity of wars were 
 mitigated. A gentleness and a humanity spread themselves 
 over all the relations of life, which poets had not imagined ; 
 
122 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 and charitable institutions sprang up, of which heathen 
 philanthropy had formed not the most distant conception. 
 Whence did all these things come ? Open the New Testa- 
 ment, and the mystery is revealed. Contemplate the charac- 
 ter, the doctrines, and the credentials of Jesus, and you 
 discover at a glance the adequate cause of this mighty trans- 
 formation. Look on Christ, the spotless and undefiled. 
 Behold the moral miracle of one in human form treading all 
 the paths of duty, amidst trial and temptation before which 
 every other one of the millions of our race has fallen, yet 
 without sin. 
 
 Hear him speak, as never man spake, promulgating a 
 doctrine which surpasses in wisdom all that sages have ever 
 uttered, and thus develop a religion which contradicts no law 
 of human nature, lays a solid basis for society, and corrects, 
 so far as they can be corrected, all the disorders to which 
 humanity is subjected. 
 
 This wisdom Christ manifested from the commencement 
 of his ministry. Whenever he opened his mouth, it flowed 
 forth as from an inexhaustible fountain. Here Christ comes 
 in contrast with the wisest of the heathen philosophers, and 
 he as far transcends them all as the meridian sun the twinkling 
 , stars of night. The wisest of them uttered a few wise sayings 
 among a mass of errors and crudities and follies. Every part 
 of Christ's discourses surpassed the wisest things that the 
 most eminent of them ever uttered. God is revealed, and 
 brought near ; the human heart is searched to its utmost 
 recesses, all the relations of life laid open, and the duties 
 which grow out of them made clear as the light of day ; so 
 that no man can resist the conviction of duty which they carry 
 hom(; to his conscience. 
 
 \\v. ha\(" the direct testimony of his companions expressly 
 to the point ; we have the general portrait of his character, as 
 exhibited in his daily life, in what he did. in what he said, in 
 what he forbore to do and say, and in what he suffered. 
 When these things are exhibited to us in the simple, ingenu- 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 123 
 
 OILS, and artless narrative of the Evangelists, we are able to 
 judge for ourselves, and forni an idea of his character almost 
 as if we had been present. 
 
 We have another source of evidence in the impression he 
 made on those about him. We judge of the dimensions and 
 figure of an object, not only by looking directly at it, but by 
 observing the shadow which it casts. We do not read far in 
 the Gospels before we perceive with what profound veneration 
 Jesus was regarded by his disciples. This, of course, was the 
 natural effect of what he really was. Wherever he went, a 
 moral majesty surrounded him, which cast a spell of awe on 
 friend and foe. And when we see him presiding at the last 
 supper, and in prospect of an immediate and painful death, 
 instead of receiving strength and encouragement from his 
 disciples, rising above the horrors of that sombre hour, and 
 consoling and strengthening his disciples, our souls are bowed 
 before his exalted dignity ; and we acknowledge the towering 
 grandeur of his character. That dignity, that calmness, that 
 self-possession, were not assumed, strained, or artificial. They 
 were in him and of him. They were a part of his permanent 
 self; and when the hour of trial came, the wrong of his unjust 
 condemnation, his brutal scourging, and his painful death 
 upon the cross, he went through it all with the sublimest 
 fortitude and the divinest patience. 
 
 The impression left upon the mind, after a perusal of the 
 Gospels, is, that Jesus formed a class in the moral world by 
 himself. He ascended to a higher sphere than had ever been 
 reached by any who had appeared in human form. To all 
 others whom our hearts reverence, we apply the terms good- 
 ness, virtue, piety. To Jesus alone beside the Almighty, we 
 apply the term holiness. All the saints of old were imperfect. 
 We cannot conceive of their entering heaven by any other 
 gate than that of repentance. Jesus could enter it through 
 the golden portal of innocence. 
 
 But the holiness of God and the holiness of Jesus we 
 conceive of as specifically different. The holiness of God is 
 
124 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 necessary, for God cannot be tempted. It is inherent, consti- 
 tutional, immutable. The holiness of Christ was vohmtary, 
 the result of choice, the habitual preference of good, when 
 evil was equally presented, and freely rejected. The holiness 
 of God is the spontaneous action of infinite wisdom and infi- 
 nite goodness. The holiness of Christ was the conformity of 
 his will to the perfect will of God. " Let this cup pass from 
 me," said he in an hour of human dread of pain and death. 
 " Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt," he added, as 
 his soul assumed an attitude of perfect allegiance. 
 
 The character of Christ, his sinless perfection, may be 
 said, perhaps, to be the most appreciable argument for the 
 Christian faith. Its exalted excellence renders it wholly im- 
 possible to associate with him the idea of imposture or 
 enthusiasm. He who was wiser than the wisest of our race 
 could not have been deceived concerninor himself; and he 
 whose whole soul was simplicity and candor could not have 
 deceived us when he said, " I am the wa)', the truth, and the 
 life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me." 
 
 FRIEDRICH A. G. THOLUCK. 
 
 [Seleciions i'ku.m German Literature. Andovcr : 1839. Pp. 176, 177.] 
 
 How delightful it is to see the manner in which the last 
 glance of the Saviour fell upon his chosen ! It is said in the 
 Gospel of Luke, that he lifted up his hands and blessed them, 
 and, as he was blessing them, he parted from them. If an 
 inventive fancy would form some conception of the mode 
 in which the Saviour might have taken his departure from 
 earth, — that Saviour who broke not the bruised reed, nor 
 quenched the glowing wick, — could it design a more becom- 
 ing, a more beautiful picture, than this? 
 
 This mode of the Redeemer's departure did not take place 
 by accident. It is in keeping with the whole life of him who 
 came into the world not to condemn it, but to make it happy. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 25 
 
 Imagine that the Saviour of sinners had terminated his 
 earthly course hke Ehjah, — who was carried to heaven in a 
 chariot of fire by a tempest of the Lord, — and you will feel 
 that such a termination is not consonant with either the 
 middle or the beg"inning of the Saviour's course. We read of 
 the apostles, that they went back to Jerusalem with great joy. 
 With joy? With joy after their One and All had been parted 
 from them, and while they were not yet certain of his revisit 
 in the spirit ? Yea, with joy. They had seen the hands 
 stretched out to bless them. Wherever they stood, and 
 wherever they went, the blessing hands were before their 
 eyes. 
 
 LYMAN ABBOTT. 
 
 [Jesus of Nazareth. New York : 1S69. P. 498.] 
 
 The question of the justice of Jesus' condemnation de- 
 pends upon the judgment which is formed of his character. 
 If he had been only a Galilean rabbi, the tribunal of history 
 could not rightfully reverse that of Caiaphas. In the mauso- 
 leum of the noble dead, there is no place to erect, by the side 
 of Confucius of China, Buddha of India, and Socrates of 
 Greece, a statue to the memory of Jesus of Nazareth. He is 
 either the Son of God, or he was a false prophet : he was either 
 more than a philosopher, or less than a true man. 
 
 ALEXANDER VINET. 
 
 [Outlines of Theology. London: 1865. Pp. 44,45.] 
 
 It is not to Christianity, it is to Jesus Christ, that we are to 
 go. True Christianity exists nowhere as a whole, if it be not 
 in Jesus Christ : we may conceive it, indeed, in its entirety and 
 in all its beauty ; but we seem never to realize it in our hearts 
 or in our lives. And yet the little each true Christian does 
 realize, little though it be, is divine and incomparable. We 
 
126 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 stand still in amazement before this imperfect sketch of a 
 marvellous picture ; we recognize the touch of God himself in 
 the unfinished work; one single Christian moment is of more 
 value than the whole of an unchristian life ; and Christianity, 
 even in weakness, and the general decadence of faith, is a 
 living seal which continually proclaims that God is not far off. 
 To history, system, Christianity itself, let us prefer Jesus 
 Christ. Let us be Christians by immediate intercourse with 
 him, instead of contenting ourselves by being so through 
 familiarity with doctrine and knowledge which relate to him. 
 
 GEORG HEINRICH AUGUST EWALD. 
 
 [The Life of Jesus Christ. Cambridge : 1S65. Pp. 344-347.] 
 
 Jesus brought the very element which alone was wanting 
 for the completion of the ancient true religion in the Church, 
 which this Church was long desiring; namely, the cheerfulness, 
 power, and activity of the purest divine love, to be subdued 
 by nothing, penetrating all knowledge as well as all action, 
 fulfilling all existing good laws, but alive equall)' to ever)^ new 
 divine duty and all new knowledge ; giving to the world the 
 most sensible proof, in ruling, working, helping, and leading, 
 but also in all obedience, all self-restraint, and all self-sacrifice. 
 Thus was he the Son of God in a way none other had been ; 
 in mortal body and in fleeting time the purest reflection and 
 the most glorious picture of the Eternal. 
 
 He was the Word of God ; through his human word, as 
 well as through his whole manifestation and working, speaking 
 from God, and illustrating to the world God's most secret 
 thought, nay, as it were, the spirit of his working, with such 
 absohite power and such immortal brilliance as none has hitherto 
 surpassed and as none can surpass ; and so he was the only true 
 Messiah, the Eternal King of the Kingdom of God among 
 men, perfected for the first time in his person ; the One 
 towards whom, as Leader and Lord, every one aJter him must 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 27 
 
 constantly look and strive, whom the Spirit leads, whether in 
 thought, in labor, or in suffering, to strive purely and wholly 
 up to God. 
 
 Is the perfect possible in the humanly imperfect ? the 
 imperishable and eternal possible in the perishable and the 
 transitory ? The answer to this he demonstrates as it has 
 never been before or since, and he will forever manifest and 
 prove it to all those who do not flee from his light. 
 
 Before him, amonof all the nations of the earth, no one 
 even rjghtly conceived the task that was to be accomplished. 
 Socrates in a long life hardly succeeded even in rightly dis- 
 cerning it at a distance, whilst his pupils immediately lost 
 themselves again in mere questions of science ; and hardly 
 among the Stoics did a more remote recollection of the task 
 survive. Buddha strove toward it through the creation of the 
 same divided nature in man and in nations which in Christen- 
 dom only satisfies the Pope and friends of Popery, and ended 
 by putting himself in God's place. Confucius conceived the 
 project of founding and sustaining the best kingdom merely 
 through good instruction, good morals, and at most by a 
 striving after the perfect apart from the living and true God. 
 How far does jesus stand removed from even these greatest 
 men outside Israel ! And if, nevertheless, the kingdom of 
 the two last endures so wonderfully, what must we expect of the 
 duration of his kingdom ? 
 
 All Israel's noblest powers, and most exalted efforts, seem 
 united in this Oite, and hence mount in him higher and higher 
 with his very success, most unexpectedly and marvellously ; 
 and in every noble and aspiring people a culminating effort 
 at the close of a long history thus gathers most materials into 
 the condensed kernel-like strength of a single man. 
 
 Thus all that was most fair and exalted in what the Greeks 
 strove after, met in the two so unlike contemporaries, Aristotle 
 and Alexander ; and the best to which the Romans could rise, 
 in one man, Julius Caesar. Among the Arabians, again, 
 Mohammed became such a hero. In Israel also, all at length 
 
128 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 that was most noble and immortal in It, which for hundreds 
 and thousands of years had been striven for and hoped for, 
 was summed up in the working of Jesus of Nazareth. Only 
 in this nation could he come ; and he came here as the long- 
 desired and expected, for whom the way had long been pre- 
 paring, though no one before him was able actually to find 
 it. But as the highest effort of this people from the time of 
 the founding of the Church of the true God was infinitely 
 more exalted and divinely imperative than all which to other 
 nations seemed the highest end of life, and this final goal of 
 all the noblest work of this people, in the course of ages amid 
 all the changing destinies, nay even amid their deepest 
 troubles and most lasting gloom, was only the more clearly 
 recognized and the more zealously pursued anew ; so now in 
 Jesus a hero had appeared on the earth, far less imposing, 
 more short-lived and weaker, than those named above, and 
 yet infinitely more exalted, more mighty, and more immortal 
 than any of them. 
 
 The highest had now come which could come, as the fruit 
 and reward of all the combats and victories of the incalculable 
 hosts of men of God in Israel, to which more or less distinctly 
 the hope and desire of all noblest antiquity had been directed, 
 and which for the whole future was to have an inconiparably 
 higher importance ; but had come infinitely nobler, and hence, 
 also, infinitely more through Messiah's own working and 
 suffering, than through that of all the men of God before him. 
 
 ERNEST NAVILLE. 
 
 [The Chiust. Edinburgh: iSSo. P. 212.] 
 
 In the measure in which you will realize the love of Christ, 
 you will be one of the grains of the salt of the earth, though 
 it be the least ; one of the rays, be it the faintest, of the eter- 
 nal light. You will encounter great obstacles from without, 
 greater still in the miseries of your own nature ; but be not 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. I 29 
 
 discouraged. Do not forget that the moral life is a combat, 
 and that one of the great laws of the spiritual order is, that 
 we must reach success through defeat, and pass through 
 humiliation to glory. 
 
 Under the government of Providence, the world ends by 
 following that which it begins by rejecting. The Greeks put 
 Socrates to death, then raised statues to his glory. By the 
 hands of the Jews, humanity nailed Jesus to a tree ; then, at 
 the call of a few fishermen and of a tent-maker, it relents, and 
 follows him. 
 
 JACOB ABBOTT. 
 
 [The Corner-Stone. New York: 1855. Pp. 51, 60-62.] 
 
 Jesus Christ was so entirely devoted to his Father's 
 business while he was upon earth, that half of the readers 
 of his life do not imagine that he had any personal feelings 
 or desires of his own. . . . 
 
 It is surprising how much the example of Christ loses its 
 power over us, simply on account of the absolute perfection 
 of it. If he had been partly a lover of pleasure ; if he had, for 
 instance, built himself a splendid mansion, and ornamented 
 his grounds, and devoted some portion of his time to selfish 
 enjoyment there ; or if he had entered into political life, and 
 given a share of his attention to promoting his own honor, we 
 might, perhaps, have felt that he was more like one of us ; 
 and if, then, he had torn himself away from these temptations, 
 so as finally to have devoted his chief time and attention to 
 the glory of God and the good of men, the example which 
 he would have thus set for us would have seemed, perhaps, 
 more within our reach. The selfish and worldly spirit which 
 he would have exhibited would, as it were, have made his 
 case come home to us ; and then whatever zeal and fidelity he 
 might have shown in his Father's work would have allured 
 us to an imitation of it. But as it is, since he gave him- 
 self up wholly to his duty, since he relinquished the world 
 
I30 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 altogether, Christians seem to think that his bright example is 
 only to a very limited extent an example for them. But we 
 must remember that his powers were human powers, his feel- 
 ings were human feelings, and his example is strictly an 
 example for the whole world. Yet how few consider it in this 
 light ! Christians admit, indeed, that the general principles 
 which regulated his conduct ought to regulate theirs ; but 
 then the most that they generally think of attempting is to 
 follow in his steps slowly and hesitatingly, and at a great 
 distance behind. 
 
 Jesus Christ was, in some respects, the most bold, ener- 
 getic, decided, and courageous man that ever lived ; but in 
 others he was the most flexible, submissive, and yielding ; 
 and in the conceptions which many persons form of his char- 
 acter, there is a degree of indistinctness and confusion, from 
 want of clear ideas of the mode in which these seemingly 
 opposite qualities come together. The explanation is this. 
 The question, which of these two classes of qualities he would 
 exhibit, depended entirely upon the question, whether it was 
 his own personal welfare, or his Father's business, which was 
 at stake. If it was the latter, he feared no dangfer, he shrunk 
 from no opposition, and no obstacle or difficulty would turn 
 him from his course. If it was the former, his own personal 
 welfare, he was exactly the reverse, — mild, gentle, and yield- 
 ing to the last degree. There never was a mission or enter- 
 prise of any kind conducted with a more bold, energetic, and 
 fearless spirit, than the Saviour's mission ; and, on the other 
 hand, there never was a case where personal sacrifices and 
 injuries were borne with so much indifference and unconcern. 
 Observe how he reproved the insincere and dishonest pre- 
 tenders to religion, who filled Juda-a in those days. He 
 followed them into crowds ; he met them face to face, and in 
 the most direct and personal manner spread out their 
 insincerity and hypocrisy before them. 
 
 In the mitlst of Jerusalem, the very heart and centre of 
 their inlluence, he brought forward his accusations against 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 131 
 
 them, with a power and severity which human eloquence has 
 very seldom equalled. This was in the cause of his Father. 
 But when ends merely personal to himself were concerned, 
 how changed ! Peter's most unmanly and ungrateful denial 
 was reproved by a look. And Judas, coming at midnight with 
 armed men, to seize him by the basest treachery, was called 
 to a sense of his guilt by the mildest, the very gentlest 
 reproof, which language could frame. So, when the profana- 
 tion of his Father's temple was to be stopped, Jesus Christ 
 could use a scourge, and effect a forcible ejectment with 
 almost military authority ; and yet when, as was shown after- 
 ward in the judgment-hall, there was nothing to excite him 
 but his own personal injuries, he was meek and gentle as a 
 lamb. He was equally ready to use the scourge in the cause 
 of God, and to submit to it in his own. 
 
 JAMES DRUMMOND. 
 
 [Spiritual Religion. London: 1870. Pp. 18, 106-109, in.] 
 
 Opening the New Testament, not to discover formal defi- 
 nition or dry statements of dogma, but to ascertain the source 
 of that wonderful spiritual enthusiasm, that outburst of reli- 
 gious light, which from its obscure home in Palestine soon 
 traversed the vast extent of the Roman Empire, we have not 
 long to seek. Instantly there rises into view one great Person, 
 whose name perpetually recurs, and is mentioned with pro- 
 foundest reverence and love ; whose influence pervades every 
 thought, and glows in every feeling ; and whose faith, seizing 
 with holy contagion upon the heart, gives a triumphant peace 
 to the martyr. We are quickly satisfied that we are reading 
 the writings of men who have experienced a great spiritual 
 chanofe, all the noblest elements of whose nature have been 
 stirred to their depths, and who are conscious that they have 
 entered upon a higher form of character, and risen to the 
 apprehension of truer principles ; and when we inquire into 
 
132 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 the source of this change, we are invariably referred under 
 God to Jesus Christ as the being whose teaching enhghtened, 
 whose example directed, and whose love constrained them. 
 Now, if any one will reflect upon this constant reference to 
 Christ, and consider the way in which his spirit is held up as 
 the finished beauty of man's filial character, if he will attempt 
 to measure the impression which Christ left upon the hearts 
 of his disciples, and notice how the earliest Christian thought 
 clusters around his person, he will have no difficulty in con- 
 cluding, without regard to particular passages, that some sort 
 of faith in Christ, combined with heartfelt love and gratitude 
 towards him, was the distinguishing mark of the first believers. 
 
 This general impression, derived from the whole structure 
 of the New-Testament Scriptures, is perhaps more instructive 
 than any thing we can glean from particular statements torn 
 from their connection. The seeming indifference of the 
 writers to mere forms of speculative belief, united with their 
 ardent affection for Christ, and their intense faith that his 
 spirit was the one true spirit for themselves and for all men, 
 might suggest much serious reflection and self-questioning to 
 Christians of later times. . . . 
 
 In the first place, if Jesus be the Son of God, we can at 
 once understand that in seeing him we see the Divine char- 
 acter, so far, at least, as it is open to human apprehension at 
 all. The qualities which we most revere in Christ, and which 
 leave upon us the most solemn impression, — namely, his 
 perfect purity, his noble truthfulness, his immeasurable love, — 
 are precisely those qualities which we instinctively character- 
 ize as divine and eternal. They bear their own witness to 
 the conscience, and refuse to be confounded with the transient 
 displays of human passion, ambition, greed, or sensuality. 
 Wherever we meet them, they command our honor. Within 
 ourselves, they speak with an authority which we may dis- 
 obey, but whose rightfulness we cannot dispute. In other 
 men, the impression these qualities produce upon us is 
 obscured by a large admixture of lower elements ; and they 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 133 
 
 appear rather as transient flashes from a noble spirit con- 
 cealed within, than as the unclouded central light which 
 illumines the whole character with its glory. 
 
 But in Christ they constitute, as it were, the substance of 
 his being ; not waging a fierce and doubtful war with lower 
 impulses, but calmly triumphant, enthroned upon his heart 
 with the serene majesty of conscious power, and leaving on 
 most men's minds an impression of unapproachable sublimity. 
 It is for this reason that words which coming from any one 
 would enforce respect, when spoken by him seem to be noth- 
 ing less than the utterance of a Divine voice, as thouorh the 
 righteousness of heaven had taken up its tabernacle in human 
 form. The conscience is pierced, hypocrisy abashed, penitence 
 subdued into tears of devout love, by the fervor and the ten- 
 derness of his appeal. When he pronounces sin forgiven, 
 it is as though the Father whispered peace. When he yearns 
 to save, it is as though the gentleness of God were bending 
 over our stricken souls. We feel that in him God has indeed 
 come to us, and causes his pity and love to shine amid the 
 shadows of mortality and sin. And is not this feeling true ? 
 For what are the love, the justice, the holiness, of Christ ? 
 They surely do not originate in human selfishness, nor are 
 they invented by human reason or fabricated by human will ; 
 but are simply the indwelling of a spirit given from above, 
 a spirit which reason and conscience may accept, but whose 
 nature they cannot alter, and whose force they cannot create. 
 They are not the dark ephemeral fancies of a disordered 
 brain, but the one abiding liofht amid the fitful orlare of human 
 thought and passion. They are not the passing wisdom of 
 a single age, but the eternal word, which, however dimly dis- 
 cerned, shines as a central light in ever}^ man, but appears in 
 its fulness in Christ, that we, too, may receive of its fulness. 
 Derived, not from earth, but from God, the immediate off- 
 spring of his creative power, disowning all lower dependence, 
 and constitutinof the highest attributes which we can ascribe 
 to God, are we wrong in saying that they are indeed the 
 
134 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Divine Spirit, and that it was the indwelhng Father who mani- 
 fested himself through words of truth and deeds of mercy ? 
 Thus is justified the beUef of Christendom, that in Christ 
 there is a superhuman presence, and in the death on the 
 cross a more than earthly love was revealed to man. This 
 reasoning will indeed apply in a less degree to others besides 
 Christ ; and I believe it true that in every man there is more 
 than man, and in each bosom a mystery too deep to fathom, — 
 a position admitted by the Christian doctrine of the Holy 
 Spirit. But vulgar prejudice dishonors that which is common ; 
 and while in us the human is apt to set up for itself, and 
 obscure the divine, in Christ it becomes the submissive organ 
 of the higher spirit, and the glory of the man is made 
 subservient to the manifestation of God. 
 
 It is in this feature of the Sonship that we feel our human 
 sympathies so nearly touched. Here we recognize the man, 
 conscious of infirmity, subject to weariness, hunger, and pain, 
 not ignorant of temptation, keenly alive to the affections of 
 friendship, sad at the thought of his lonely death, needing 
 the comfort and support of prayer ; yet here, too. in seeing 
 him we see the Father, and this lowly dependence is as neces- 
 sary to a perfect revelation as the clear shining of the higher 
 Spirit. For the word " Father" is not a proper name, but a 
 relative term, denoting one who stands in a fatherly relation 
 to us. Now, a fatherly relation on one side implies a filial 
 relation on the other, and cannot be fully manifested without 
 the presence of a son. We might know God as infinitely 
 wise and good, and yet not know him as the Father. But the 
 beloved Son, who is in his bosom, has declared him. He has 
 completed the true relation between parent and child ; and 
 in seeing his reverent, confiding love and patient submission, 
 we see also that blessed One on whom his heart was stayed, 
 and whose will he followed with such simple and unchange- 
 able devotion. Thus, whether we regard Christ as the imper- 
 sonation of Divine righteousness and love, whose remonstrance 
 breaks the death-.slumber of our conscience, and whose appeal 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 135 
 
 kindles our hearts into a sacrifice of grateful affection ; or, on 
 the other hand, view him as the Man of sorrows, whose soul 
 was obedient unto death, and breathed the prayer, " Not my 
 will, but thine, be done," — we still find him the revealer of 
 God, and in seeing him we see the Father. 
 
 WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS. 
 
 [Miscellanies. New York : 1850. Pp. 35-39, 49.] 
 
 The cross of Christ is the only conservative principle of 
 our literature. Nothing else can save our literature. This 
 can; though alone, it is sufficient. Nor let any be startled. 
 Bacon spoke of theology as the haven of all science. It was 
 said by a highly gifted woman, Madame de Stael, who cannot 
 be charged as a professional or prejudiced witness in the 
 matter, that the whole history of the world resolved itself 
 naturally into two great eras, — that before Christ's coming, 
 and that which has followed his advent. And we find Johann 
 von Miiller, a distinguished scholar and historian of Germany, 
 holding this language as to his favorite science, in which he 
 had made such eminent proficiency. Animadverting on a 
 defect of Herder in his " Philosophy of History," " I find," 
 said Mliller, " every thing there but Christ ; and what was the 
 history of the world without Christ ? " 
 
 And, in fact, the whole history of our world has looked 
 forward or backward to the fatal tree reared on grim Golgotha. 
 The oblation there made had the promise and immutable 
 purpose of God with it, to insure its efficacy over the whole 
 range of human history, and along the whole course of the 
 mystery of the Divine Providence, as seen in the government 
 of the world. 
 
 Let us, we entreat you, be understood. By the cross of 
 Christ we do not mean the imaged cross as borne on the 
 banners of the Inquisition, with the emblems of judgment and 
 mercy floating over the scenes of the auto da fe, where the 
 
136 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 judgment was without mercy, and the mercy a mere he. Nor 
 the cross as borne on the shoulder of the Crusader, whilst, 
 pleading the name of Christ, he moved through scenes of 
 rapine and massacre to lay his bloody hand on the Holy 
 Sepulchre. Nor do we mean the cross, as, carved and 
 gilded, it is seen glittering on the spires of a cathedral, 
 or hung in jewels and gold around the maiden's neck, or 
 embroidered on the slipper of a pontiff. The cross, as we 
 understand it, has no sympathy with the religion of shows and 
 spectacles, of mummeries and pageants, of incense and music, 
 and long-drawn aisles, and painted windows, and gorgeous 
 pictures, and precious statuary. But by this title we mean the 
 cross naked, rugged, and desolate ; not pictured, save on 
 the eye of faith, and upon the page of Scripture ; not graven, 
 but by the finger of the Spirit on the regenerate heart ; the 
 cross as Paul preached it, and the first Christians received it. 
 
 Let us test the energy of the cross in its application to the 
 mechanical and utilitarian spirit of the age. It meets all the 
 just wants of that spirit. Utilitarians demand the practical, 
 and this is a doctrine eminently practical. Let us but observe 
 this trait in Christ's own history. He might have theorized 
 brilliantly, and perhaps safely to himself. He might have been 
 the Plato or the Homer of his age, — a Plato far more pro- 
 found, a Homer far more sublime, than the old Grecians. But 
 he threw aside all such fame. He furnished the substance and 
 subject of the most glorious literature the world has seen, but 
 he lett it to others to write that literature. His business was 
 doing good. He was a practical teacher, and a practical 
 philanthropist. And as to the actual working and the ever)- 
 day results of the doctrine since the Saviour's times, it has 
 seen how commerce confesses that her wa)- lias been often pre- 
 pared and protected by the missionaries of this cross ; and how 
 the statesman bears witness that his government has owed the 
 stability, order, and virtue of the community, to the preaching 
 of this cross ; and how the scholar attests that science has 
 flourished best under the peaceful and sober intluence of this 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 37 
 
 religion of the cross. The gospel is eminently practical, then ; 
 and so far it conciliates the spirit of utilitarianism. But the 
 doctrine of the cross is not sordid and selfish, and so far it 
 corrects the mechanical utilitarian tendency of our times. 
 Against the lust of gain, it sets in strong contrast the example 
 of Christ's voluntary poverty, and, in solemn warning, the 
 Saviour's declaration how hardly the rich man enters the 
 kingdom of heaven. Against the disposition that would set 
 material interests above all others, and teach us to regard the 
 tangible goods of earth as the only real or the only valuable 
 possessions, the gospel shows Christ setting moral far above 
 all material interests, and uttering the brief and pithy 
 question, before which avarice turns pale, and ambition drops 
 his unfinished task : " What shall it profit a man if he gain the 
 whole world, and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man Qrive 
 in exchange for his soul ? " 
 
 If, as the great English moralist has said, that which exalts 
 the future, and disengages man's mind from being engrossed 
 by the present, serves to elevate man to the true dignity of his 
 nature, how great the practical value of a faith in w^hose 
 far-reaching visions time dwindles into a speck, and eternity 
 becomes the paramount object of a man's anxieties and hopes; 
 where truth is made more valuable than all thino-s, to be 
 bought at all risks, while truth is not to be sold for the 
 world ! 
 
 JAMES BARR WALKER. 
 
 [Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation. Boston: 1857. Pp. 138, 141. 
 
 Suppose that the Messiah had come in the character which 
 the Greeks admired ; that, assuming the seat of the philoso- 
 phers, he had startled the learned world by disclosing to them 
 new and sublime truths. Suppose he had, by the power of 
 far-reaching intellect, answered all the questions and solved 
 all the difficulties which perplexed the minds of the disciples 
 of the Porch and the Academy. In such a case, his instruc- 
 
138 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 tions would not have been adapted to benefit the minds of 
 many, nor the heart of any, of the great mass of mankind. 
 Vain of their wisdom already, the character of the Messiah 
 would have been adapted to make the philosophers more so ; 
 and instead of blessing them by humbling their pride, and 
 giving them a sympathy with their fellow-men, it would have 
 led them and their admirers to look upon those who were not 
 endowed with superior mental qualities as an inferior class of 
 men. 
 
 But if the Messiah could not have appeared in the condi- 
 tion desired by the Jews, nor in that admired by the Gentiles, 
 the inquiry arises : What condition in life would it be neces- 
 sary that the Messiah should assume, in order to benefit the 
 human family in the highest degree by the influence of that 
 condition ? In view of the foreo^oinof deductions, the solution 
 is obvious : hi that co7idition which would have the most 
 direct influe7ice to destroy selfishness and pride in the huniaji 
 heart, and to foster in their stead humility, conte?itinent , and 
 be7ievolence. 
 
 Now, in view of this result, deduced directly from the 
 acknowledged character of human nature, turn your attention 
 to the earthly circumstances of Jesus, and see how directly he 
 brought the whole weight of his condition in life to bear 
 against selfishness and pride of heart. He was born in the 
 lowest possible circumstances. His life was a constant rebuke 
 to every ambitious and proud feeling of the human heart ; 
 and his death was one esteemed by men the most ignominious. 
 No one who openly acknowledged and had fellowship with 
 Jesus of Nazareth, as his Teacher and Master, could do so 
 until the natural pride of his nature was subdued. It was 
 impossible for a man to find fellowship with Jesus unless he 
 humbled himself, because in no other state could his feelings 
 meet those of Christ. " Take my yoke upon you." said Jesus, 
 " and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart ; and ye 
 siiall find rest for your souls." 
 
 Thus did Jesus place himself in a condition wiiich rendered 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 139 
 
 humility absolutely necessary in order to sympathy with him, — 
 in the condition directly opposed to pride of heart, one of the 
 most insidious enemies of man's happiness and usefulness. 
 And as it is an acknowledged and experimental fact, that the 
 soul finds rest only in meekness, and never in selfishness and 
 pride of mind, therefore the demonstration is perfect, that 
 Christ assumed the only condition which it was possible for 
 him to assume, and thereby destroy pride and misery, and pro- 
 duce humility and peace, in human bosoms. 
 
 Thus, while the Jews required a sign, and the Greeks 
 sought after wisdom, the apostles preached Christ crucified ; 
 understanding the philosophy, the efficiency, of their doctrine. 
 And so long as the world lasts, every man who reads the New 
 Testament, whether saint or sinner, will be penetrated with 
 the conviction that a vain, aspiring, selfish spirit is incompati- 
 ble with the religion of Jesus. 
 
 HENRY HART MILMAN. 
 
 [History of Christianity. London: 1867. Vol. i. pp. 189, 194, 296.] 
 
 The morality of Jesus was not in unison with the temper 
 or the feelings of his age. It was universal morality, adapted 
 for the whole human race, and for every period of civilization 
 It was morality grounded on broad and simple principles, 
 which had hitherto never been laid down as the basis of 
 human action. . . . 
 
 The Gospel first placed these two great principles as the 
 main pillars of the new moral structure : God the universal 
 Father, mankind one brotherhood ; God made known through 
 the mediation of his Son, the image and humanized exemplar 
 of his goodness ; mankind of one kindred, and therefore of 
 equal rank in the sight of their Creator, and to be united in 
 one spiritual commonwealth. . . . 
 
 In all the superhuman beauty of the character of Jesus, 
 nothing is more affecting and impressive than the profound 
 
HO TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 melancholy with which he foretells the future desolation of the 
 city, which, before two days were past, was to reek with his 
 own blood. . . . 
 
 Jesus might seem not merely to know what was in man, 
 but how it entered into man's heart and mind. His was 
 divine charity enlightened by infinite wisdom. 
 
 W. R. NICOLL. 
 
 [The Incarnate Saviour. Edinburgh: 1881. Pp. 384, 385.] 
 
 Jesus Christ must be accounted for. He is the problem 
 of this age especially, and he will be the problem of all the 
 ages. What account of Christ will stand ? Was he dreamed 
 into being ? Then the dreamer must be equal to the man he 
 dreamed. Those who make this reply must, it has been well 
 said, account for the man born in the imagination of some 
 other man, who, as a creature of imagination, has risen to the 
 supreme place in human history, and who to-day rules millions 
 of human lives and destinies. For this is the wonderful thing 
 about his character, that he has been the constant standard 
 of all the different ages. The best idea of each age has been 
 embodied in him. He was seen at first as the great Prophet 
 and Teacher of mankind, then as the ideal of a life of self- 
 devoted poverty, then as a great improver and reformer, then 
 as the Example of humanity, — all true ideas, but none of 
 them complete. Each age has been touched and swayed by 
 him, but he is always before and above the ages ; and still, as 
 they go, they find him equal to their best thoughts and hopes. 
 As it has been, so it will be, that Model will ever rise above 
 the greatest thoughts of men, and the greatest things even 
 that have been said and thought about itself. 
 
 The generations may make great advances, and find much 
 that their j^redecessors have never thought or cared for ; but, 
 however great their advances may be, that same figure will 
 continue to lead their march. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 141 
 
 W. H. PINNOCK. 
 
 [Christ our King. London: 1876. P. 236.] 
 
 Forcibly indeed does the language of revelation, as it 
 advances, portray the amazing love and yearning the Christ 
 entertains for his Church and people, till it culminates in that 
 truthful simile of living union, sympathy, and defence, the one 
 body, — Christ the Head, and the Church members. Lambs 
 and sheep may be parted with, friends may be cast off, breth- 
 ren forgotten, children deserted, a bride set aside ; but 
 himself, his own body, he cannot part with, cast off, forget, 
 desert, nor repudiate. A living body cannot be separate from 
 a living head ; the head and members are so assimilated and 
 interwoven in their very nature, that severance with life is 
 impossible. 
 
 Allied by covenant, as are Christ and his Church, there 
 is a oneness, communion, and affinity, which are indestruc- 
 tible. If Christ the Head has risen, so must his body, the 
 Church, rise. If Christ is immortal, so is his body, the Church, 
 immortal. 
 
 FRANZ DELITZSCH. 
 
 [Jesus and Hillel. London: 1877. Pp. 142, 169, 189, 190.] 
 
 Jesus is the founder of a new religion, which stands to the 
 religion of the Old Testament in the relation of its very heart 
 and kernel, of its disentrammelled spirit. He is the founder 
 of a humanism undreamt of before his day, of a religion of 
 philanthropy and humanity, which declares all walls of parti- 
 tion between different races to be abolished ; and he has 
 instituted a universal brotherhood, through the new bond of 
 a Divine and an all-embracing love. . . . 
 
 . Jesus breaks down the Jewish national barrier of partition, 
 and inculcates a universal philanthropy, which should subsist 
 regardless of nationality, rank, merit, or sympathy. My 
 
 l^ 
 
142 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 neighbor is henceforth every one who needs my help, or 
 whose help I need, — even my enemy. All men are to 
 acknowledge one another as brethren ; for all have one great 
 Father in heaven, whom Jesus has revealed and brought near 
 to them. This universal love is nowhere enjoined in the Old- 
 Testament Scriptures ; and although here and there generos- 
 ity towards an enemy may be inculcated, Jesus is the first and 
 only one who ever elevated to the rank of a moral principle 
 this love, which should embrace even those that hate us. 
 
 How deeply the whole world has been moved by these 
 words, " Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do 
 good to them that hate you, and pra)- for them that despite- 
 fully use you and persecute you ; that ye may be the children 
 of your Father which is in heaven," all history shows. In 
 these words the highest idea of morality is held up for our 
 imitation ; and ever since they were uttered, all true progress 
 in the history' of mankind has consisted in the triumph of the 
 love they teach. . . . 
 
 Jesus lives, and every onward step in the progress of the 
 human race results from the progressive victory of the light 
 which radiates from him. It is, and must ever remain, a fact 
 deeply engraved in the history of the world, that in this Jesus 
 of Nazareth there was o-iven to mankind a new lioht in the 
 knowledge of God, and of the life which proceedeth forth 
 from him. 
 
 CHARLES HODGE. 
 
 [Systematic Theology. New York: 1872. Vol. ii. p. 257.] 
 
 The Mediator between God and man must be sinless. 
 Under the law, the victim offered on the altar must be without 
 blemish. Christ, who was to offer himself under God as a 
 sacrifice for the sins of the world, must be himself free from 
 sin. The High Priest, therefore, who becomes us, he whom 
 our necessities demand, must be holy, harmless, undefiled, 
 and separate from sinners. He was, therefore, without sin. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 43 
 
 A sinful saviour from sin is therefore an impossibility. He 
 could not have access to God ; he could not be a sacrifice for 
 sins ; and he could not be the source of holiness and eternal 
 life to his people. 
 
 This sinlessness of our Lord, however, does not amount 
 to absolute impeccability. It was not a non potest peccare. 
 If he was a true man, he must have been capable of sinning. 
 That he did not sin under the greatest provocation ; that 
 when he was reviled, he blessed ; when he suffered, he threat- 
 ened not ; that he was dumb as a sheep before its shearers, — 
 is held up to us as an example. 
 
 Temptation implies the possibility of sin. If from the 
 constitution of his person it was impossible for Christ to sin, 
 then his temptation was unreal and without effect, and he 
 cannot sympathize with his people. 
 
 GEORGE P. FISHER. 
 
 [The Beginnings of Christianity. New York: 1877. Pp. 449, 456.] 
 
 The nature of the regal office which Jesus assumed is 
 seen in his actual proceedings. What was the character of 
 his legislation ? This appears in the precepts of the Sermon 
 on the Mount. They relate to tempers of heart as between 
 man and man, and man and God, and to ethical conduct. 
 They have nothing directly to do with civil relations and 
 obligations. They are stripped of all sense, and of all value, 
 unless it is presupposed that the Lawgiver has in view, not the 
 organization of a state, but the moral guidance of mankind. 
 
 When we inquire for the means on which he relied for the 
 accomplishment of a revolution, the grandest which it ever 
 entered into the heart of man to conceive, — it being nothing 
 less than the moral regeneration of mankind, — we find them 
 to be in harmony with the elevated character of his aims. 
 There is no occult policy. There is no elaborate contrivance 
 of machinery. Every thing is simple and open as the day. 
 
144 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 E. H. PEROWNE. 
 
 [HuLSEAN Lectures, 1866. London: 1867. Pp. 42, 43, 51, 52. 56, 57.] 
 
 There is one characteristic of Jesus of Nazareth, which, 
 though not thrust upon our notice, or reiterated in set terms, 
 has impressed the minds of all who read the Gospel narratives 
 with attention, and has been specially pointed out by a recent 
 writer in a work of great notoriety. I allude to that deep, 
 unbroken tranquillity of soul, that profound calm within, which 
 lay too deep for storms, even of his troubled life, to ruffle it. 
 In many, perhaps most, of those who have played a distin- 
 guished part on the world's stage, who have been the leaders 
 of thought or of action to their fellow-men, this equipoise of 
 soul, this inward calm, has been conspicuously waiting. . . . 
 
 And yet in Jesus Christ, grand as was the object which he 
 proposed to himself, magnificent beyond all parallel the end 
 on which his heart was set, we detect no flutter of vanity, 
 no eager panting of ambition, no cowardly apprehension 
 of failure, no despair, nor even despondency, in the hour of 
 death. . . . 
 
 Say what you will of the great Prophet of Nazareth, you 
 cannot say that he ever retraced a step, or retracted a word. . . . 
 
 If it be true that in the holiest and best of men a sense 
 of their sin is commensurate with their progress in holiness, 
 and if this sense of sin finds its expression in words and acts 
 of repentance, in retractation and regret and restitution, — 
 how is it that from the first chapter of Matthew to the last 
 of John we read nothing of such expression on the part of 
 Jesus? ... In all his discourses, whether addressed to his 
 disciples or to the multitude, often as he warned men against 
 sin, both in its grosser and more subtle forms, he never once, 
 cither directly or by implication, included himself in the 
 prohibition. He always spoke as if from a higher platform : 
 he spoke as one who could sympathize with all the human 
 frailty of his hearers, as one who needed not that any should 
 
 i 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 145 
 
 testify of man, for he knew what was in man ; but yet as one 
 who was exempt from the sin which he condemned, and who 
 needed not the pardon which he promised and bestowed. 
 And while in his conversation with men he betrayed no con- 
 sciousness of sin, in the ghmpses which we have of his inter- 
 course with heaven, the same unconsciousness is apparent. 
 MingHng with his prayers for support under suffering, there 
 is no confession of sin, no cry to God for its forgiveness. 
 When I remember the candor of the EvangeHsts, their evident 
 freedom from dishonest artifice, I cannot but think that the 
 silence of Jesus in this matter was real, — that he neither 
 believed himself, nor encouraged others to believe, that he 
 had any sin to confess. And if it were so, then of a truth 
 that silence is more eloquent and more convincing than a 
 thousand disclaimers. And unless we are prepared to accept 
 our Lord's estimate of himself, and say that he confessed no 
 sin because he knew no sin, we must charge him with such 
 spiritual blindness and self-deception as would be fatal at 
 once to his character as a man and his claims as a religious 
 teacher. . . . 
 
 Here is One, born of woman, who rises in moral grandeur, 
 not like Ajax in the Grecian host, the highest of earth's demi- 
 gods, not as the tallest pillar amidst a group of stately col- 
 umns, not as the highest peak among other peaks of a vast 
 mountain range, n,or floating in his unsullied purity above the 
 sin-stained race whose nature he shares ; but, like Jacob's 
 ladder, — blessed emblem! — resting on this earth of ours, 
 and yet reaching far above human pride and passion and sin, 
 penetrating this lower atmosphere of human life, and stretching 
 ever onwards, ever upwards, till its top enters the high court 
 of heaven itself. 
 
 It is not in the practice of one virtue that Jesus excelled, 
 but in all ; not in one relation in life that he was sinless, but 
 in all. And while Moses, the meekest man, sinned in anger ; 
 and Abraham, the father of the faithful, in unfaithfulness ; and 
 Peter, the fearless, in cowardice ; and John, the apostle of love. 
 
146 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 in vindictiveness, — Jesus, Jesus alone, never sinned. Let him 
 who knows any thing of his own inner Hfe, and of the require- 
 ments of God's spiritual law, say whether the moral superiority 
 of Jesus to himself is or is not as I have described. He who 
 is most closely following, and who most nearly resembles 
 Jesus, will confess that, as high as the heaven is above the 
 earth, so far is the sinlessness of Jesus above his own imper- 
 fection and sin. 
 
 J. LEWIS DIMAN. 
 
 [Orations and Essays. Boston : 1882. Pp. 307, 309.] 
 
 Let us not forget that man's normal nature is seen in 
 Christ, and not in us. In our sweeping condemnation of 
 human nature as the world reveals it, let us not blind our eyes 
 to the fact that the world but dimly and partially shows it ; our 
 estimate of human nature is sadly incomplete if we omit that 
 Son of man in whom alone it was perfectly displayed. His 
 spotless excellence not less truly illustrates man than all the 
 sin and misery and guilt we mourn. It is this sense of a 
 common nature, of a nature whose essential qualities and 
 capacities no sin, no degradation, nor long centuries of alien- 
 ation have rooted out, that establishes the sympathy between 
 us and the Son of man. Without this there were for us no 
 redemption. Because he is the Son of man, is he Saviour of 
 the world. We may believe that this phrase was so often on 
 his lips, because he would have men feel that with all their sin 
 he was not ashamed to call them brethren. . . . 
 
 When Pilate led Jesus forth wearing the crown of thorns 
 and lh(; purple robe, he cried to the angry mob before him, 
 " JH^hold the viaii I'' Bui in a sense far deeper than the 
 Roman governor intended, they saw tJic man ; not the despised 
 and hated Nazarene alone, the Man of sorrows, who had not 
 where to lay his head, but tJic man, — the man whose unthroned 
 and unsceptred manhood shamed the craft of priestly spite 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 147 
 
 and cowardice of kingly power. . . . Behold, then, the man as 
 he stands revealed in his real nature ; as he rises in glorified 
 majesty over all the accidents of time ; as he rebukes with 
 his completeness, the hollow, partial, distorted manhood that 
 received him not ; as he rules more and more the increasing 
 purpose that runs through the ages ; as he sits exalted over 
 each loftier reach of redeemed, regenerated souls, crowned in 
 endless adoration as Lord of all ! 
 
 JOHN REID. 
 
 [Christ and His Religiox. New York: 1880. Pp. 20, 31, 33-35.] 
 
 There is a beautiful simplicity in the character of Christ. 
 Nothing appears that is forced. There is a certain freedom 
 and ease, that strike one favorably. His varied perfections 
 have as much naturalness about them as the fruit of a tree. 
 His single aim, which ran through the whole of his life, made 
 his character to be definite and unmixed. Although he may 
 appear strange to us, he never appears strange to himself. 
 He has no favored hour during which he performs a class of 
 duties that are remembered ever after as out of the ranofe 
 of his common life. 
 
 The virtues of Jesus stream forth from his soul with as 
 much naturalness and beauty as the rays of light stream forth 
 from the sun. In fact, his character has such sinorleness and 
 delicacy, that we think of it as formed out of the unbroken 
 rays of light. There is an ethereal cast to it that reminds us 
 of heaven and of God. . . . 
 
 Christ did not merely have one leading moral trait, like 
 the chief minds of the past, but he had all the moral traits. 
 He was not one-sided. His character does not show streneth 
 and weakness, beauties and deformities. In the working of his 
 intellect, he is never at fault. There is no false statement, 
 no false reasoning. He does not find it necessary to change 
 his opinions by reason of new light. Although his thoughts 
 
148 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 are exceedingly comprehensive, entering into a region where 
 men have not been accustomed to go, he yet finds them all 
 sure. Even up to this late da)', no improvement can be 
 made upon his teaching. . . . 
 
 A difficulty which hinders us from grasping the character 
 of Christ is the fact that the character is finished. Our 
 character is unfinished at every point. There is not a single 
 faculty that works in a normal way ; not a single grace that is 
 complete in itself; not one good habit or good tendency that 
 is just as it should be. Consequently we are in no condition 
 to see Christ as he stands before us in his peerless perfection. 
 ... It must be confessed, however, that there are surprises 
 of character about Christ. We cannot understand why the 
 eighteen Christian centuries should have fixed their gaze upon 
 this one person, if he did not possess features of goodness 
 that struck men with surprise. His complete disinterested- 
 ness stands out like a sun, and his death is such a marvel that 
 it can never be forgotten. There were Alps of goodness 
 about him, rivers of purity beautiful as the Rhine, cities of 
 righteousness with their palaces of love, that are always 
 remembered with joy. In fact, he seems like a Holy Land 
 with its mountains and sea, its Plain of Esdraelon and Jordan 
 Valley, its Jerusalem with its temple of God, its Bethlehem 
 where first he appeared, and its Calvary where he at last went 
 away. . . . 
 
 I may think of the past, the brightest and best ages of 
 the past : I yet can see no human being upon whom I can 
 look with complete satisfaction. I look to Jesus. I cannot 
 say he could be better at any point. Only with him am I 
 satisfied. He seems like a majestic river that is winding its 
 way through time, having come from the land of eternity. 
 Yea, he seems like a great world of light, a new sun that has 
 ajopeared in the spaces of God : the centre of a new system, 
 nobler and better th?n all others. 
 
 Although sixty-two generations of men have passed away 
 since Christ appeared, he has never been reproduced, neither 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 49 
 
 can we imagine any advanced diought or action in die future 
 ages that will give to us a second Christ. He is out of the 
 range of the world's movement ; he is not swept onward by 
 the winds and waves that sweep us along. The glories of 
 heaven radiate around his spirit, and he tarries among us as 
 one whose home is in the bosom of God. With outstretched 
 hands he blesses the whole race of man. and then departs. 
 His benediction still rests upon us. and his image goes with 
 us in all our journey of toil. 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 [Prose Works. Boston: 1870. Vol. i. pp. 69, 70.] 
 
 Europe has always owed to Oriental genius its Divine 
 impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found 
 agreeable and true. And the unique impressions of Jesus 
 upon mankind, w^hose name is not so much written as ploughed 
 into the history' of this world, is proof of the settled virtue 
 of this infusion. . . . 
 
 Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He 
 saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its 
 severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and 
 had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the 
 greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and 
 me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and ever- 
 more goes forth anew to take possession of his world. . . . 
 
 He felt respect for Moses and the prophets, but no unfit 
 tenderness at postponing their initial revelations to the hour 
 and the man that now is. to the eternal revelation in the heart. 
 Thus was he a true man. Having seen that the law in us 
 is commanding, he would not suffer it to be commanded. 
 Boldly with hand and heart and life, he declared it was God. 
 Thus is he, as I think, the only soul in history who has 
 appreciated the worth of a man. 
 
 4 
 
I50 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CETTURIES 
 
 STOPFORD BROOKE. 
 
 [Faith and Freedom. Boston: 1881. Pp. 79,81.] 
 
 What that loving kindness, tliat grace, was, lies before you 
 in his life. It is old, simple, gracious human love, raised to 
 its greatest height and tenderness. It is the showing- forth of 
 all those sweet and beautiful qualities which make home and 
 social life so dear, and the showing-forth of them in perfection. 
 It is the filial tenderness which laid down the consciousness of 
 genius and all its impulses for thirty years at the feet of his 
 mother, in a quiet and silent life, which won her pondering 
 and passionate love. It is the penetrating love which saw 
 into the character of his friends, and made them believe in 
 their own capacity for greatness, which led men like Peter and 
 John and James to find out and love one another, which 
 bound his followers together in a love that outlasted death. 
 It is the tender insight which saw into the publican's heart ; 
 which, when the sinner drew near in tears, believed in her 
 repentance, and exalted her into a saint ; which had compas- 
 sion on the multitude and on the weariness of a few ; which 
 wept over Jerusalem and over Lazarus ; which never failed to 
 strike the right chord, even with souls so ignorant as the 
 woman of Samaria ; which in all human life and the move- 
 ments of its passions and hopes and faiths, did, said, and 
 thought the loving and just thing at the right moment, without 
 doing or saying the weak thing. . . . 
 
 But there is more in it than this. Human love, left alone, 
 spends itself only on those near to us, or on those that love us 
 in return, and, in its form of kindness and pity, on those whom 
 we compassionate. Kept within a narrow circle, it tends to 
 have family or a social selfishness. Given only to those who 
 suffer, it tends to become self-satisfied. To be perfect, it 
 ought to reach, through frank forgiveness, those who injure 
 us ; through interest in the interests, ideas, and movements of 
 human progress, those who are beyond our own circle, in our 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 5 I 
 
 nation, nay, even in the world ; and finally all men, those even 
 who are our bitterest foes, through desire that they should 
 have good and be good. 
 
 It was the very glory of the grace of Christ, as love, that 
 it rose into this wonderful height and universality. No act 
 for his truest friend or mother was more intense in feeling 
 than that act in which he laid down his life for his enemies. 
 No love for John or Peter was greater than the love which 
 devoted his whole life to the salvation of the world of men 
 of whom he knew nothing personally. There was, then, a 
 motive power behind his natural human love, which lifted it 
 into a. diviner region, which made it Godlike in forgiveness, 
 Godlike in its rush out of the particular into the universal. 
 What was that motive ? If we can find it, we shall know the 
 very root and inspiration of the grace of Christ. It is easy to 
 find. It is written in every thing he said, but nowhere is it 
 written more clearly than in the first words of his prayer. 
 When he taught us to pray " Our Father," he told us that it 
 was his conviction that all men were children of God, and that 
 necessarily all were brothers one of another. It was easy for 
 him to forgive a brother, even were he an enemy. It was 
 easy for him to die for unknown men, if they were brothers. 
 Christ felt it to be an utterly beautiful and joyful thing to love 
 the sons of God, — the sons of him from whom he drew his 
 mission, to whom he owed his love, from whom came all the 
 souls for whom he died. 
 
 ELISHA L. MAGOON. 
 
 [Republican Christianitv. Boston: 1849. P- 58-] 
 
 Christ was the divinest of theologians : because he taught 
 not in abstraction, but exemplification ; not in dogmas merely, 
 but in deeds ; in the ardor of his heart, as well as in the energy 
 of his mind ; in the gentleness of his demeanor, and the 
 beneficent industry of his life. The love of the beautiful, the 
 
152 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 good, and the true, were in his soul never mutilated, smothered, 
 or divorced. From the earliest youth he so deepened and 
 refined the sentiment of the beautiful, that he could not be 
 otherwise than good ; and he so deepened and refined the 
 sentiment of the good, that it was impossible for him to be 
 otherwise than true. He chose this order and condition of 
 development here below, that he might prepare for earth that 
 which earth most needs, — men and women in whom the 
 beautiful, the good, and the true may be one, harmonious and 
 divine, causing their hearts instinctively to soar towards heaven 
 whenever they behold the flowers of the field, the stars of the 
 firmament, and, with purer vision still, gaze on angels around 
 the eternal throne. 
 
 HERRICK JOHNSON. 
 
 [Christiamty's Challenge. New York: 1881. Pp. 63, 64] 
 
 Whence came Christianity ? What is its origin ? Such a 
 marvel as this is not among men without a sufficient cause. 
 We are in no trouble to trace its history. It has been too 
 mighty a force to lose sight of. Just about eighteen hundred 
 years it has been in the world, and no more. And, following 
 these, we are taken back by a path that the boldest sceptic 
 does not question, and concerning which there is no historic 
 doubt. There we find the origin of Christianity, — the 
 Founder of this new religion. He at whose comino; the whole 
 city was moved, saying, "Who is this?" and concerning 
 whom the multitudes said in reply, "This is Jesus of Nazareth 
 of Galilee." He is the sufficient cause of this marvel we call 
 Christianity. Either he, or there is no cause, and history is a 
 lie, and men are mocked with bubbles and {k^A with husks. 
 All lines of evidence converge in the (lalilrran, the record of 
 whose life is in the Four (lospels. 
 
 Christianity before him was simpl)- prophecy waiting 
 fulfilment. Christianity issued out of him. His personality 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 153 
 
 is woven into the very warp and woof of the new rehgion. 
 He can no more be wrested from his place in Christianity, 
 than Christianity can be wrested from a place in histor}-. 
 Take Christ out of the Gospel, and you take its heart out. 
 
 CHRISTIAN KARL JOSIAS BUNSEN. 
 
 [Christianity and Mankind. London: 1854. Vol. iv. p. 204.] 
 
 The indissoluble union between God and man will hence- 
 forth not be carried on by a new individual teacher. Nobody 
 can lay a new foundation, after that union has once been 
 declared to be the essence of religion. It will be carried on 
 by that Spirit of God which was in Jesus, and which, by his 
 being one with God through constant holiness, made him the 
 very mirror of the Father of the eternal thought of divine 
 love. That Spirit will carry on the work begun by Jesus ; it 
 will enlighten and purify and regenerate man and mankind, 
 the individual and society. 
 
 [God in History. London: 1S70. Pp. 7. 8, 40.] 
 
 Even were we destitute of that which we actually possess, 
 
 — a veracious tradition respecting the person of Jesus of 
 Nazareth, and the history of his three years of public teaching, 
 
 — a glance at the mental development of humanity during 
 the last eighteen centuries would compel us to assume the 
 existence of some singularly exalted, holy personality as the 
 cause, and not simply the occasion, of that revolution in man's 
 view of the universe. 
 
 To nothing else than the purity and universality of the 
 consciousness of God which is reflected in the person of Jesus 
 of Nazareth, can we ascribe the fact that the ideal of humanity 
 has emerged victorious from the ruins beneath which it seemed 
 forever to be entombed, at first in consequence of a civiliza- 
 tion destitute of ideals, and after\vards of a barbarism groping 
 about in blind ignorance. Nothing else than the harmony of 
 
154 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 his doctrine and his Hfe, with the eternal laws of the moral 
 order of the world, affords an adequate explanation of the 
 great fact that the belief in the unity and future re-union of 
 all mankind has never again been lost since his day, but, on 
 the contrary, has struck deepest root in the life of the peoples, 
 and is constantly tending to rule the destinies of the nations 
 in ever-widening circles. . . . 
 
 If we once more glance back to that personality of Jesus 
 which is reflected in his teachings, the utter dissimilarity 
 between him and all other founders of religion who have 
 preceded him becomes most conspicuous precisely when 
 regarded from the point of view taken from, our present 
 inquiry. His teaching is unique and purely divine, by the 
 very circumstance that it professes to be pure self-conscious- 
 ness without any admixture. There is nothing in the sayings 
 above quoted that relates to externals ; nothing is borrowed 
 from extraneous sources, to eke out the knowledge derived 
 from within, and serve as an auxiliary to the construction of 
 the new religion. Thus the faith of Christians has two pivots : 
 one fixed, unconditionally regulated pivot, external to itself, 
 viz., the testimony of Jesus respecting his own divine con- 
 sciousness ; and one fixed pivot within itself, viz., the 
 consensus of conscience and reason. 
 
 THOMAS DEHANY BARNARD. 
 
 [Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament. ISoston : 1S67. Pp. 60, 61.] 
 
 No human being that ever trod the earth has left behind 
 a repre.sentation of himself more clear and living, and more 
 certain in its truthfulness, than is that which we possess of the 
 prophet of Nazareth and Galilee. 
 
 From time: to time some fresh portrait may appear. Some 
 adventurous imagination, charmed and yet perplexed by the 
 Gospel story, may attempt to reconstruct it in accordance 
 with the spirit of the world. Unable to receive as real the sole 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 155 
 
 example of sinless humanity, it may introduce into the picture 
 touches of the error and infirmity which are not there ; and 
 may mistake the awful gleams of the indwelling Godhead for 
 the glimmer of an enthusiasm which deludes and is deluded. 
 The world may read the bold romance, and half commend the 
 creation of fancy. But the creations of fancy perish as they 
 rise, and the Jesus of the Gospels remains ; not only as a 
 perfect ideal, but as a vivid reality, a representation which 
 appears, after every fresh attempt to change it, more glorious 
 in majesty and beauty, and more conspicuous for truthfulness 
 and life. 
 
 JOSEPH ERNEST RENAN. 
 
 [The Life of Jesus. New York: 1864. Pp. 215, 365, 375, 376.] 
 
 On the day when Jesus pronounced these words [John iv. 
 24] he was indeed the Son of God. He, for the first time, 
 gave utterance to the idea upon which shall rest the edifice 
 of the everlasting religion. He founded the pure worship, — 
 of no age, of no clime, — which shall be that of all lofty souls 
 to the end of time. Not only was his religion that day the 
 benign religion of humanity, but it was the absolute religion ; 
 and if other planets have inhabitants endowed with reason 
 and morality, their religion cannot be different from that 
 which Jesus proclaimed at Jacob's well. 
 
 Man has not been able to abide by this worship ; it has 
 taken eighteen hundred years for humanity (what do I say ! 
 of an infinitely small portion of humanity) to learn to abide 
 it. But the gleam shall become the full day ; and, after pass- 
 ing through all the circles of errors, humanity will return to 
 these words, as to the immortal expression of its faiths and 
 its hopes. 
 
 The perfect idealism of Jesus is the highest rule of un- 
 worldly and virtuous life. He has created that heaven of free 
 souls in which is found what we ask in vain on earth, — the 
 perfect nobility of the children of God, absolute purity, total 
 
156 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 abstraction from the contamination of the world ; that free- 
 dom, in short, which material society shuts out as an impossi- 
 bility, and which finds all its amplitude in the domain of 
 thought. The great Master of those who take refuge in this 
 ideal kingdom of God is Jesus still. He first proclaimed the 
 kingliness of the spirit ; he first said, at least by his acts, "My 
 kingdom is not of this world." The foundation of the true 
 religion is, indeed, his work. After him there is nothing 
 more but to develop and fructify. 
 
 This sublime person, who still presides over the destinies 
 of the world, we may call Divine, not in the sense that Jesus 
 absorbed all divinity, but in this sense, that Jesus is that 
 individual who has caused his species to make the greatest 
 advance toward the Divine. . . . 
 
 In him is condensed all that is good and lofty in our 
 nature. 
 
 Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will 
 never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without 
 ceasing ; his legend will call forth tears without end ; his 
 sufferings will melt the noblest hearts ; all ages will proclaim 
 that among the sons of men there is none born greater than 
 Jesus. 
 
 JEAN BATISTE HENRI LACORDAIRE. 
 
 [Jesus Christ. New York : 1870. Pp. 18, 19, 22, 24.] 
 
 No more venerable form than that of Jesus Christ has 
 dawned upon the horizon of history. The simple coiu'se of 
 time has placed him above all, leaving nothing visible that can 
 approach it. By the consent of all, even of those who do 
 not believe in him, Jesus Christ is a good man, a sage, an 
 elect, an incomparable personage. He has done such great, 
 such holy things, that even his enemies pay constant homage 
 to his work and to his person. 
 
 I may, then, stop here, since nothing is higher than uni- 
 versal judgment, and since all demonstration appears weak 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 5 7 
 
 • 
 
 before a conclusion which ft)rms part of the common-sense of 
 mankind. But I wish to afford you the gratification of ana- 
 lyzing the character of Christ, and of examining by what 
 harmony of moral beauties that physiognomy infinitely 
 surpasses the most illustrious forms which time has produced. 
 
 The human character is composed of three elements: 
 namely, the intelligence, the seat of its thoughts ; the heart, 
 the seat of its feelings ; the will, the seat of its resolution. 
 It is the fusion of these three elements, which, by its measure, 
 determines every moral type, and fixes its value. We have 
 no need to seek elsewhere the secret of that perfection which 
 we find in the hero of the gospel. 
 
 Great men generally exhaust their whole power in their 
 thoughts, and are unable to impart more than a feeble and 
 secondary action to their hearts. This is specially remarkable 
 in founders of empires and doctrines, — cold, haughty men, 
 masters of themselves, looking down upon mankind and 
 urging them to and fro in their hidden designs, as the w^ind 
 waves a field of corn, ripe and ready for the sickle. The 
 conception of their plans absorbs them ; success corrupts 
 them by flattering their pride ; reverse sours them ; and all 
 things combine to make them scornful of mankind, which is 
 for them only as a pedestal erect or overthrown. Even if they 
 do not fall so low in the degradation of the heart, they are 
 not permitted to raise their faculty of loving as high as their 
 faculty of thought. The piercing glance of the eagle is not 
 naturally given to the eye of the dove. 
 
 Now, Jesus Christ, under this head, is an ever-memorable 
 exception, and far above successful imitation, even by those 
 who adopt him as the Master of their souls. He carries the 
 power of loving even to tenderness, and to a kind of tender- 
 ness so new that it was needful to create a name for it, and 
 that it should form a distinct species in the analysis of human 
 feelings, — I mean the evangelic unction. Jesus Christ was 
 tender towards all men ; it was he who said of them : 
 " Whatsoever you shall do to the least of these my brethren, 
 
158 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 you will have done it unto me ; "• an expression which intro- 
 duced Christian fraternity into the world, and which still daily 
 engenders love. 
 
 But among great men who are loved ? Among warriors ? 
 Is it Alexander? Caesar? Charlemagne? Among sages? 
 Aristotle ? Plato ? Who is loved among great men ? Who ? 
 Name me even one ; name me a single man who has died, and 
 left love upon his tomb. Mohammed is venerated by Mussul- 
 mans : he is not loved. No feeling of love has ever touched 
 the heart of a Mussulman repeating his maxim: "God is 
 God, and Mohammed is his prophet." One man alone has 
 gathered from all ages a love which never fails. Jesus Christ 
 is the sovereign Lord of hearts as he is of mind ; and by a 
 grace confirmatory of that which belongs only to him, he has 
 given to his saints also the privilege of producing in men a 
 pious and faithful remembrance. 
 
 THOMAS ARMITAGE. 
 
 [Christ: His Nature and Work. New York. Pp. 125, 126.] 
 
 The wide empire of his thought has excited the wonder 
 of the world, as if thought had never been naturalized in 
 any other mind. Every sentence which he uttered is a master- 
 piece of uniqueness, as well in its literature, as in its philosophy 
 and spirituality. 
 
 There is nothing ill-balanced or embarrassed, feverish or 
 disjointed, in his conversations or discourses. He is ever 
 tranquil, measured, exact, pungent, and self-possessed. Not 
 only have we the imperial intellect in him, but also its full 
 force in the imperial heart. No other man has ever existed 
 who was perfectly equal, an evenly balanced unit, in his power 
 of thought and emotion, much less the highest possible type of 
 both. 
 
 ( )iir master human minds generally exhaust themselves in 
 the utterance of great thoughts, because the thinking faculty 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 159 
 
 absorbs their whole being. But while their whole being 
 becomes swallowed up in thought, their heart is correspond- 
 ingly impoverished. To this Jesus is the one mighty excep- 
 tion. Both these declarations are true ; namely, that no man 
 ever reached his power of thinking, and yet no man ever 
 reached his power of loving. Love and light never had such 
 a power of blending as in him. After a life of ineffable 
 luminousness he died, actually imploring forgiveness on his 
 murderers. The very thought is stupendous, while the feeling 
 is unfathomable. When he speaks, he casts his eye into the 
 infinite heights of revelation, and we soar into its sublimities 
 after him ; but when he smiles, he presses us to his bosom, 
 and his tender affection makes our hearts glow while we are 
 folded in his arms. 
 
 JOSEPH P. THOMPSON. 
 
 [The Theology of Christ. New York : 1872. Pp. 12-14, 263.] 
 
 The simplicity with which he utters the profoundest truths 
 distinguishes Jesus from all other teachers. It was said of 
 the orations of Demosthenes, they smelled of the lamp ; 
 and the attention of the hearer was divided between what was 
 said, and the labor bestowed in saying it well. The elaborate 
 finish of a Cicero, a Burke, an Everett, often diverts the mind 
 from the thought to the style. On the other hand, the apo- 
 thegms of some of the most renowned sages are uttered 
 with an air of wisdom that offends the taste. But Jesus never 
 labors to make an impression, nor works up an effect with 
 careful logic and rhetoric. His doctrine drops as the rain, 
 and his speech distils as the dew. 
 
 In listenine to him one never feels that he has exhausted 
 himself while other truth remains to be learned, but that he 
 knows all truth, and contains it within himself. For truth, as 
 spoken by Christ, carries with it the conviction that what he 
 utters is part of himself. It is not truth that he has studied 
 
l6o TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 and developed as an intellectual system, as Copernicus the 
 astronomical, and Cudworth the intellectual, system of the uni- 
 verse : it is not a doctrine that he has derived from another, 
 and teaches with his own illustrations and methods, as Plato 
 expanded and formulated the doctrines of Socrates ; but the 
 truth he speaks is in and of himself. . . . 
 
 The world has not yet outgrown the teachings of Christ. 
 Great advances have been made in the physical sciences since 
 his day, especially within our own times ; but science has dis- 
 covered nothing more precious for the soul's culture than the 
 truths that Christ brought into the world. The philosophy 
 of humanity has grown to a science since Jesus taught, but 
 this has advanced no doctrine of development or perfectibility 
 more elevating or more encouraging than his. 
 
 Science dishonors itself when it affects to ignore the teach- 
 ings of Christ ; for, whatever else is brought to light, his 
 word is both light and life. . . . 
 
 As the stroke of the hammer that bound to its bed the 
 last link of the Pacific Railroad rang clear and musical upon 
 the telegraphic bells all over the continent, proclaiming the 
 way open from sea to sea, so the words of Jesus, proceeding 
 from the central point of human history where this world was 
 linked once more to heaven, vibrate through the ages, in e\-ery 
 clime and tongue, making musical the soul that listens for their 
 coming. 
 
 EDMOND DE PRESSENSE. 
 
 [Jesus Christ: His Times, Like, and Work. London: 1S69. Pp. 507, 508.] 
 
 Our Four Gospels have given us a type of perfection such 
 as the world has never before or since seen equalled. This 
 high ideal is found not as one of those bold generalizations, 
 which are the fugitive and brilliant dreams of the spirit, but 
 in the perfecdy simple form of a human life unfolded before 
 our eyes. The great ascetic of India comes forth, with his 
 doctrine of death, from the depths of mysterious forests, and 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. l6l 
 
 lays hold of the imagination by the very strangeness of his 
 appearance. Not so with Jesus, The humble village in 
 which he was brought up is known to all. He lived the com- 
 mon life of the lower classes of his people ; he was despised 
 because he sat at meat with publicans. He sought no 
 distinction by extravagant self-mortification, nor did he make 
 any appeal, like Mohammed, to the warlike passions. He 
 bequeathed to his disciples, not the cimeter and its conquests, 
 but the cross and its reproach. In the conditions of every- 
 day life was displayed that moral perfection which is without 
 a parallel, because it united all the qualities elsewhere found 
 apart. . . . 
 
 The Christ of the Gospels did not come forth from the 
 crucibles of Alexandrian philosophy. He lived, and lived as 
 he is made known to us by his apostles. He satisfies at once 
 our aspirations after the ideal, by his perfect hohness ; and our 
 deep needs of consolation and restoration, by his sufferings 
 and sacrifice. He meets us in our greatness and our misery, 
 and therefore is called the Saviour of the world. Such is our 
 conclusion. 
 
 We will limit ourselves to one further remark. Besides 
 our Four Gospels there is a fifth, which has been eighteen 
 centuries in writing. This is the work of Christ among man- 
 kind. It bears witness to miracles as great as those of our 
 canonical narratives. The track of his footsteps is seen 
 wherever there has been any real progress in good, in love, 
 in right, in the moral elevation of men. No revolution in the 
 history of the world can be compared with that which placed 
 the cross as the boundary between two entirely different ages, 
 and which caused to flow forth from the rock of Calvary a 
 river of life, which, though at times troubled in its course, 
 rapidly purifies itself again, and goes on fertilizing the most 
 barren soil. At the basis of our modern civilization, lies the 
 thought of Jesus. 
 
 For him have suffered and perished the confessors of ages 
 of persecution, all declaring like the proto-martyr that they 
 
1 62 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 saw him with the eye of faith. For him thousands of heroic 
 hearts in all lands and ages have throbbed and bled, and 
 made sacrifices unknown to fame. In every rank of society, 
 in all stages of culture and civilization, — from the burning 
 sands of Africa to the heart of our brilliant cities, — the same 
 results have been produced, and the same hymn of adoration 
 has ascended in honor of the Crucified. 
 
 JOHANN PETER LANGE. 
 
 [Life of Jesus. Edinburgh : 1872. Vol. i. pp. 42, 74, 75.] 
 
 Jesus asserted his spirituality in the presence of all nature. 
 And what was the result ? All nature began to shine with 
 spiritual brightness in the mirror of his spirit ; the birds of 
 heaven and the lilies of the field became, through him, 
 thoughts of God. He contended for, and victoriously main- 
 tained against the whole world, the sanctuary of his Divine 
 sonship ; and therefore did the whole world in its ruin, and 
 in its call to blessedness, begin to shine with the light of his 
 love and righteousness. ... By the solemn earnestness 
 which consecrated the place on which he stood, he trans- 
 formed the world into a sanctuary of God ; by the constant 
 energy in which he lived in the present, he transformed all 
 ages ; by the manner in which he laid hold of passing events, 
 he consecrated them into symbols of the world's history. Yes, 
 the glory of the personal life flowing from him transfigured 
 both earth and heaven. . . . 
 
 What a solemn beauty do all his deeds exhibit ! A sab- 
 bath glory rests on Canaan where they were performed ; 
 a stream of eternal peace wells forth from his most arduous 
 conflict in Gethsemane ; the accursed tree itself becomes a 
 mark of honor when once his holy head touches it. . . . The 
 characters by whom our Lord is surrounded as heroes of 
 recipiency for his spirit, — a Peter, a James, a John; the 
 dwellings which receive him, such as the house at Bethany ; 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 6 
 
 J 
 
 the dark or darkened beings who oppose him, — a Judas, 
 a Caiaphas, a Pilate, — how significant do they become by 
 their relation to Christ, and by the effect of his light in mani- 
 festing the depths of human nature, of the world, and of hell ! 
 Yes ; every man whom our Lord touched, every creature, 
 every fleeting occurrence, becomes a living mirror, an 
 enlightening agency to the world. 
 
 J. MOORHOUSE. 
 
 [HuLSEAx Lectures, 1865- London: 1866. Pp. 100, loi.] 
 
 Our Lord's human greatness consisted pre-eminently in 
 his perfect moral purity, his infallible spiritual intuition, and his 
 entire and unreserved devotion in the communion of love 
 to the will of his heavenly Father. He possessed in perfec- 
 tion those moral and spiritual faculties which belong to the 
 highest province of our being ; which, through their regular 
 operation, give its true worth and distinctive character to 
 every one of our words and actions ; and which, in fine, are 
 the property not of any particular age, nation, or profession, 
 but of universal humanity. Hence none of those temporal 
 accidents which separate man from man were able to mark his 
 spirit with their peculiarity. His character exhibited no tinge 
 of nationality, no idiosyncrasy of nation, no prejudice of 
 creed, no scar of conflict, no one-sidedness of asceticism, no 
 obtrusiveness of sanctity ; but a rich, harmonious development 
 of all various greatness, wonderful not so much for its brilliant 
 outward form as for its full and intrinsic loveliness ; a devel- 
 opment proceeding without pause or retrogression, untroubled 
 either by sorrow or enthusiasm, suffering neither arrest nor 
 deviation under the stress of temptation and resistance, but 
 advancing equably in its whole breadth of thought and feel- 
 ing, intuition and sympathy, until at length it presented a 
 revelation of the grace and glory of God as complete as the 
 nature of man could disclose. 
 
1 64 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 HENRY M. GOODWIN. 
 
 [Christ AND Humanity. New York: 1875. Pp- 43^ 53> 54-] 
 
 The title " Son of man " is not only one of distinction, 
 separating Christ from all other men, but it is generic, denot- 
 ing not an individual of the race, but humanity itself, individu- 
 alized in one person. In other men we see only partial and 
 imperfect specimens of humanity ; we cannot see in them or 
 gather from them the true and complete idea of humanity, as 
 God meant it to be. Even if we combine all that is highest 
 and best in human biography and human history, in all its 
 manifold developments, sifting out of it all that is impure and 
 abnormal, retaining only what is genuinely human, we should 
 only approximate, not reach, the divine ideal ; for this ideal 
 is ever higher and better than mankind has yet attained. But 
 Christ is the realized Ideal of humanity. He combined in 
 himself all that belongs to the true idea of man. . . . 
 
 Christ is the universal man. He combines in himself, and 
 reconciles by uniting, all differences of nationality, of rank or 
 condition, of class or sex, and of kindred ; so that all that 
 is really human, and not sinful, meets and is represented in 
 him in its integral and perfect form. . . . The distinction of 
 sex is not confined to the body, but runs through mind and 
 soul and character, dividing humanity — not its outward form 
 merely — into two parts, male and female. That is, the one 
 substance or being of humanity was divided at its root into 
 these two opposite branches or types, both of which together 
 constitute humanity, neither of which alone fully represents 
 the true idea of man. No one man, who was merely man, 
 ever yet arose above this organic difference, so as to combine 
 in himself, in kill m(;asure, both the masculine and the femi- 
 nine type of humanity. There have been men with certain 
 feminine attributes, and there are women with certain mascu- 
 line qualities predominant ; but never a human being with all 
 the attributes of man and woman blended in perfection. \\\ 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 165 
 
 Jesus Christ, the Son of man, this union or unity alone is 
 seen. In him neither was found •exclusively, but both in 
 perfect balance. There was in him all that was most manly, 
 and all that was most womanly. In him we see blended the 
 strength and wisdom and authority of nianhood, with the tact 
 and delicacy and intuitive discernment of womanhood. . . . 
 Thus we see that what is implied in the expression " Son of 
 man," is the generic humanity of Christ, or as comprehending 
 the whole of humanity in his own person. He belonged to 
 no particular age, but to all ages ; he had not the qualities of 
 one clime or race, but that which is common to all climes and 
 all races. He belonged to no one class, rank, or sect, but 
 transcended them all, and comprehended them all in his higher 
 humanity. Not even the distinctions of family and sex could 
 confine his nature or his character, which knew no limitations 
 but those which belong to man as man, or rather to the 
 Divine idea of humanity. 
 
 JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY. 
 
 [The Scientific Basis of Faith. London: 1873. Pp. 184, 185.] 
 
 Christ's originality consisted rather in the use of old 
 truths than in the discovery of new ones. In moralit}' it may 
 be true, though I think it an exaggerated statement, that 
 Christ discovered no new principles, and uttered no new pre- 
 cepts ; but he certainly invented a new type of moral excel- 
 lence. In ethics it is the same. Mankind can never have 
 been altogether ignorant of the importance of belief, and the 
 power of personal influence, in the formation of character ; 
 but Christ was the first who founded a vast system of ethics 
 on these truths. No one before him could have uttered those 
 wonderful words : "Thou sayest that I am a King. To this 
 end I was born, and for this cause came I into the world, that 
 I should bear witness to the truth." Love of truth was a 
 virtue not unknown to the ancient world, but the idea of 
 
1 66 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 reigning in men's hearts by the power of truth was thought 
 of by none before Christ. That which was original in his 
 system was the discovery of a new motive power in morals, 
 and the motive power was his own character. Belief in the 
 truths he taught, and* faith in himself, constituted his plan for 
 influencing mankind. 
 
 NOAH PORTER. 
 
 [Boston Lectures for 1870. Boston: 1870. Pp.363, 366, 367.] 
 
 What artist could depict the portrait of Christ if there had 
 been no reality from which to copy ? The invention of such 
 a character, combining so many seemingly incompatible ele- 
 ments, and uttering seemingly inconsistent and paradoxical 
 claims for his person and his kingdom, is itself a superhuman 
 product, which the historical critic cannot account for on 
 purely natural principles, because, in avoiding one form oi the 
 supernatural, he must resort to another. The supernatural 
 which h» would shun, on the one hand, is the existence of the 
 reality ; but, in explaining this away, he supposes an hypothe- 
 sis which is even more difficult to receive, i.e., he accepts a 
 supernatural which is still more incredible, — the fact that it 
 was invented. . . . 
 
 No stories of hujnan duty and self-sacrifice are more 
 instructive and more animating than the stories which Christ 
 taught in parable and precept, and himself enacted in his life. 
 The parable of the Good Samaritan, of the unjust steward, 
 of the wise and foolish virgins, of the woman that was a 
 sinner, of the unforgiving creditor ; the Sermon on the Mount; 
 above all, the Christ who healed the sick, and who counselled 
 and spake forgiveness, who pleased not himself, who went 
 about doing good, who loved his own to the end, who prayed 
 at Gethsemane, who meekly endured Caiaphas and the frantic 
 Sanhedrim, who did not smite the treacherous Judas, who 
 looked so lovingly upon the faithless Peter, who prayed upon 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 67 
 
 the cross, " Father, forgive them," and commended his mother 
 to the beloved disciple, — are all teachings and enforcements 
 of duty which neither history nor fable in the literature of the 
 world has yet surpassed, and which are more effective than 
 any and all other precepts and motives which the world has 
 yet witnessed or produced. . . . 
 
 In the truths that Christ uttered and enacted, there are the 
 materials for extensive systems of scientific thought. Most 
 of these truths are capable of taking a place in the most intri- 
 cate and profound of sciences. Now, what is remarkable in 
 Christianity is, that these germinant and productive scientific 
 truths are not given at all in any scientific form, but are either 
 stated in simple and popular diction, or are left to be inferred 
 from the tremendous facts which suggest them. In other 
 words, what is most extraordinary in Christianity, what is 
 itself superhuman, and well might prove the system to be 
 divine, is not so much the doctrines that it makes known, as 
 the fact that these doctrines are taught by history. 
 
 WILLIAM LINDSAY ALEXANDER. 
 
 [Christ and Christianity. Edinburgh: 1854. Pp. 126-128, 131 et seq\ 
 
 In contemplating the character of our Lord, it cannot fail 
 to strike every one that it is absolutely faultless. His histo- 
 rians nowhere say that his character was faultless, but they 
 never place him in an attitude in which we can detect a single 
 fiaw in his mental or moral development. We see him, in the 
 course of their narrative, under a great variety of aspects and 
 in many different lights ; but the picture is alike perfect in 
 each. . . . We see him brought into relation with people of 
 every class and character, — high and low, rich and poor, 
 young and old, learned and ignorant, soldier and priest, lawyer 
 and rabbi, prince and peasant, Pharisee and Sadducee, the 
 devotee of the temple, the student of the schools, the money- 
 changer of the market-place, and the harlot of the streets. 
 
1 68 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Never was a life in all its phases more faithfully and fairly laid 
 before us. And what is the impression, which, from the con- 
 templation of him in all these changes of outward circum- 
 stances and relations, is left upon the mind of the reader as 
 to his character? Is it not by universal consent this? that 
 here is one who is absolutely superior to circumstances ; 
 one on whose serene and lofty spirit the changes that affect 
 sublunary interests can produce no permanent or injurious 
 impressions ; one for whom his friends never had to make an 
 apology, for whom the impartial critic needs not to demand 
 any forbearance, in whom the keenest-sighted of his enemies 
 can find no fault ; one whom no transient weakness from 
 within, no cunning temptation or frowning terror from without, 
 could divert for a single moment from his onward career of 
 virtue, beneficence, and purity ; one, in short, who, tried by 
 the loftiest standard of spiritual excellence, must be pro- 
 nounced, in the language of a disciple who had seen as much 
 of him as any man whilst he was on earth. " without blemish 
 and without spot." In this judgment all impartial minds have 
 concurred. . . . 
 
 In the character of Christ, there is a display of ever)'^ 
 excellence. The more closely we study it, the more shall 
 we be struck with this. It is not the presence of one or 
 two great qualities that command our reverence : it is the 
 extraordinary combination of excellence which it displays, that 
 constitutes its peculiar attraction. Meekness and majesty, 
 firmness and gentleness, zeal and prudence, composure and 
 warmth, patience and sensibility, submissiveness and dignity, 
 sublime sanctity and tender sympathy, piety that rose to 
 the loftiest devotion, and benevolence that could stoop to the 
 meanest sufferer, intense abhorrence of sin. and profound 
 compassion for the sinner, mingle their varied rays in the 
 tissue of our Saviour's character, and produce a combination 
 of virtues such as the world never saw besides, and such as the 
 most sanguine enthusiasm never ventured to anticipate. . . . 
 
 In short, view our Lord at any stage of his earthly career, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 169 
 
 and under any of die circumstances in which the Evangelists 
 have represented him, and we see the same completeness of 
 character, the same unparalleled combination of excellence, the 
 existence of any one of which in an ordinary mortal, in 
 the degree in which they all appear in Christ, would draw 
 towards him the admiration of all who knew him. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 [Sartor Resartus. Pp. 155, 158.] 
 
 Highest of all religious symbols are those wherein the 
 artist or poet has risen into a prophet; and all men can recog- 
 nize a present God, and worship the same. If thou ask to 
 what length man has carried it in this manner, look on our 
 divinest symbol, Jesus of Nazareth, and his life and his biog- 
 raphy, and what followed therefrom. Higher has the human 
 thought not yet reached: this Christianity and Christendom, — 
 a symbol of quite perennial, infinite character, whose signifi- 
 cance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew 
 made manifest. . . . 
 
 Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a peasant 
 saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one 
 will take thee back to Nazareth. Thou wilt see the splendor 
 of heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of earth, 
 like a light shining in great darkness. 
 
 HENRY WARE, JUN. 
 
 [Works. Boston: 1847. Vol. iv. p. 126.] 
 
 It is impossible to contemplate the character and offices 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, without perceiving that exalted 
 honor is due to him. The insensibility of that man can hardly 
 be conceived, who should be able to question or withhold it. 
 We yield a tribute of respect to the good men with whom we 
 
170 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 meet in the ordinar\- intercourse of life, and every distinguished 
 benefactor is accounted to deserve the gratitude and respect 
 of his fellow-men. Xo one, therefore, who has the common 
 feelings of a man, can deny to Jesus Christ his claims to 
 reverence, gratitude, and honor, whose character exhibits the 
 perfection of moral excellence, and whose history is connected 
 with the most wonderful works of universal benevolence wor- 
 thy the counsels of heaven. Even those who have rejected 
 his revelation, and denied his authority as a divine messenger, 
 have been unable to speak of him in any accents but those 
 of admiration. One of the most eloquent tributes in his 
 praise was from the pen of an open infidel. What, then, 
 should be the feelings of his disciples ? Their hearts must 
 surely burn within them when they think of him. 
 
 WILLIAM E. H. LECKY. 
 
 [History of European Morals. London: 1869. Vol. ii. p. 9.] 
 
 The Platonist exhorted, men to imitate God ; the Stoic, to 
 follow reason ; the Christian, to the love of Christ. Epictetus, 
 the Stoic, had ev^en urged his disciples to set before them some 
 man of surpassing excellence, and to imagine him continually 
 near them ; but the utmost the Stoic ideal could become was 
 a model for imitation, and the admiration it inspired could 
 never deepen into affection. 
 
 It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an 
 ideal character, which, through all the changes of eighteen 
 centuries, has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned 
 love, has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, 
 temperaments, and conditions ; has becMi not only the highest 
 pattern ol virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice; 
 and has exercised so deep an influence, that it may be truly 
 said that the simple record of three short years of active life 
 has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the 
 tlisquisitions of philosophers and all the; exhortations of moral- 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. I 7 1 
 
 ists. This has, indeed, been the well-spring of whatever is 
 best and purest in the Christian life. Amid all the sins and 
 failings, amid all the priestcraft and persecution and fanaticism, 
 that have defaced the Church, it has preserved, in the char- 
 acter and example of its Founder, an enduring principle of 
 regeneration, 
 
 R. \V. DALE. 
 
 [The Atonement. London : 1878. Pp. 38, 39, 436-438.] 
 
 The resources of human language had been almost 
 exhausted, before Christ came, in the attempt to discover the 
 majesty, the holiness, and mercy of God ; and although as a 
 teacher of religious truth the Lord Jesus Christ had a unique 
 power, we misapprehend the character of the supremacy which 
 he claimed, if we suppose that it is to be illustrated and vindi- 
 cated by placing his mere words side by side with the words 
 of prophets who preceded him. I doubt whether he ever said 
 any thing about the Divine compassion more pathetic, or more 
 perfectly beautiful, than had been said by the writer of the 
 hundred and third Psalm : " Like as a father pitieth his 
 children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he 
 knoweth our frame ; he remembereth that we are dust." It is 
 not in the words of Christ that we find a deeper and fuller 
 revelation of the Divine compassion than in the words of the 
 Psalmist, but in his deeds. . . . 
 
 The power of the great sacrifice for the sins of the world 
 lies in itself, and not in our explanations of it. Even when 
 the doctrine of the Church has been most corrupt, the death 
 of Christ has continued to appeal to the hearts of men with 
 unique and all but irresistible force. . . . 
 
 For nearly two centuries, the nations of Western and 
 Southern Europe were inspired with a common enthusiasm 
 and a common purpose. Princes mortgaged their kingdoms, 
 nobles sold their lands, scholars deserted their books, the 
 common people left their homes, to join the armies of 
 
172 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 the cross, and to rescue the Holy Land from the infidel. 
 The hearts of little children caught fire ; and they gathered 
 in thousands, and tried to make their way across unknown 
 countries, through dark forests and over great rivers, to share 
 the sanctity and glory of the enterprise. And what was the 
 supreme object of that romantic and heroic struggle ? It was 
 not to rescue the site of the ruined cities in which Christ had 
 revealed his beneficent and supernatural power, — healing the 
 sick, giving sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and speech 
 to the dumb ; nor the village on the eastern slope of Olivet, 
 in which he had raised Lazarus from the dead ; nor the little 
 town among the limestone hills of Galilee, which was the home 
 of his childhood and his youth. 
 
 The sepulchre of Christ was dearer and more sacred to 
 the hearts of the Crusaders than all the scenes of his living 
 ministry ; and while that was in the hands of the unbelievers, 
 it seemed to them that Christendom was faithless to the 
 memory of its Lord. They were guilty of shameful crime, but 
 the whole movement is a singular proof of the strong and 
 mighty power of the death of Christ over the imagination 
 and passions of mankind. Nor can I doubt that in those 
 vast armies, whose covetousness and treachery and cruelty 
 and lust made the Christian name, infamous throughout the 
 East, there were mijltitudes of men of pure life and noble 
 temper, whose hearts had been inspired by the death of Christ 
 with penitence and hope and immeasurable gratitude ; and 
 who, because they knew of no other way in which they could 
 consecrate their strength and valor to Christ's service, 
 resolved to rescue his sepulchre from its dishonor. 
 
 In modern Jerusalem there is no more affecting sight than 
 that which is witnessed, at every Easter festival, in the chapel 
 erected over the spot on which, according to the tradition 
 both of the Eastern and Western Church, the Saviour of 
 mankind was crucified. Across the marble floor, hour after 
 hour in (Midless succession, pilgrims of many nations and of 
 many tongues move slowly on their knees, with streaming 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. l -j^ 
 
 tears and every manifestation of deep and reverential devo- 
 tion ; and when they reach the sacred rock in which they 
 beHeve that the cross was fixed, they cover it with passionate 
 kisses. 
 
 The tradition is untrustworthy, the devotion superstitious ; 
 but who can tell what love and faith and worship Christ may 
 recognize in the hearts of those who, in this rude way, are 
 fulfilling his own words, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all 
 men unto me " ? 
 
 HENRY ALLOW. 
 
 [Supernatural Character of Christianity. New York: 1873. Pp. 281, 282.] 
 
 Jesus Christ is the one perfect man of the world's history, 
 the one hope of a world of sinful men ; so divine that the 
 loftiest and purest do worship to him, so human that the most 
 polluted and lost can weep at his feet, and little children can 
 smile in his arms while he blesses them. His was a life in 
 which there was no fault to be corrected, no stain to be washed 
 out. . . . 
 
 All human excellences blend in him in perfect proportion, 
 an ideal of moral symmetry, which has neither defect nor 
 excess. His self-consciousness is altogether unlike that of 
 other men. Moses and Isaiah may tremble before God, and 
 acknowledge their sin, Jesus never confesses defeat, never 
 indicates any feeling of unworthiness. No tear of repentance 
 rolls down his cheek ; no prayer for forgiveness escapes his 
 lips. When he speaks concerning himself, it is to assert 
 his own faultlessness, and to avow himself the divine source 
 of other men's spiritual life. So transcendent was he, that 
 from the very beginning men revered his goodness as perfect, 
 and bowed before it as divine. Virtues almost incongruous 
 wonderfully blend in him, — greatness and gentleness, holi- 
 ness and pity, strength and sympathy. He is nobler than the 
 greatest man, more tender than the gentlest woman. 
 
1 74 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 WII.L.IAM MORLEY PUNSHON. 
 
 [Lectures and Sermons. Toronto: 1876. P. 371.] 
 
 There is but one royal lawgiver. There must be no 
 division of authority, no admixture of legislative claims. 
 "Jesus only," reigning in unchallenged and sole lordship over 
 each heart and mind. Christ is the lawgiver to his Church 
 for all time. Prophets and apostles are valuable to us only 
 as they repeat the words of Christ. Holy men and confessors, 
 we rejoice in them because they give to us transcripts of 
 Christ, — laws, decretals, confessions, catechisms, creeds; we 
 accept them only as they are in agreement with the words of 
 Jesus. Let a thousand rubrics or canons condemn what Christ 
 hath not condemned, we may snap them as Samson the withes 
 with which they sought to bind him. Let a thousand enact- 
 ments enforce what Christ hath forbidden, and disobedience 
 becomes a Christian duty, and brave death were preferable to 
 life unworthy and dishonored. 
 
 THOMAS HUGHES. 
 
 [The Manliness of Christ. New York : 1880. P. 46.] 
 
 In all the world's annals there is nothing which approaches, 
 in the sublimity of its courage, that last conversation between 
 the peasant prisoner and the Roman procurator, before Pilate 
 led him forth for the last time and pleaded scornfully with his 
 nation for the life of their king. The canon from which we 
 started must guide us to the end. There must be no flaw or 
 sjjot on Christ's courage, any more than on his wisdom and 
 tenderness and sympathy. And for the last time I repeat, the 
 more unflinchingly we apply the test, the more clear and sure 
 will the response come back to us. We have been told 
 recently, by more than one of those who professed to have 
 weighed and measured Christianity and found it wanting, that 
 
ro JESUS OF NAZARETH. 175 
 
 rclio^ion must rest on reason, based on phenomena of this visi- 
 ble, tangible world in which we are living. Be it so. There 
 is no need for a Christian to object. He can meet this chal- 
 lenge as well as any other. We need never to be careful about 
 choosing our own battle-field. Looking, then, at the world as 
 we see it, laboring heavily along in our own time, — as we hear 
 of it through the records of the ages, — I must repeat that 
 there is no phenomenon in it comparable for a moment to this 
 of Christ's life and work. The more we canvass and sift and 
 weigh and balance the materials, the more clearly and grandly 
 does his figure rise before us, as the true head of humanity, 
 the perfect ideal, not only of wisdom and tenderness and love, 
 but of courage also, because he was and is the simple truth 
 of God, — the expression at last, in flesh and blood, of what 
 he who created us means each one of our race to be. 
 
 WILLIAM RATHBONE GREG. 
 
 [The Creed of Christendom. London: 1874. Pp. 168, 177.] 
 
 It is difficult, without exhausting superlatives, even to 
 inexpressive and wearisome satiety, to do justice to our 
 intense love, reverence, and admiration for the character and 
 teachings of Jesus. We regard him as the perfection of the 
 spiritual character, — as surpassing all men of all times in 
 the closeness and depth of his communion with the Father. 
 In reading his sayings, we feel that we are holding converse 
 with the wisest, purest, noblest Being that ever clothed 
 thought in the poor language of humanity. In studying his 
 life we feel that we are following the footsteps of the highest 
 ideal yet presented to us upon earth. . . . 
 
 We believe Jesus of Nazareth was the most exalted reli- 
 gious genius whom God ever sent upon the earth. In himself 
 an embodied revelation ; humanity in its divinest phase, " God 
 manifest in the flesh," according to Eastern hyperbole ; an 
 exemplar vouchsafed, in an early age of the world, of what 
 
I 76 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 man ma)' and should become in the course of ages, in his 
 progress towards the reaHzation of his destiny ; an individual 
 0-ifted with a erand. clear intellect, a noble soul, a hne oroani- 
 zation, marvellous moral intuitions, and a perfectly balanced 
 moral being ; and who. by virtue of these endowments, saw 
 farther than all other men. — 
 
 •• Beyond the verge of that blue sky, 
 Where God's subliniest secrets lie." 
 
 ANDREWS NORTON. 
 
 [Statement of Reasons. Boston: 1S70. Pp. 414. 426.] 
 
 It is one of the most striking characteristics of the teaching 
 of Christ, that the distinction between the essential truths of 
 religion and all other doctrines, true or false, was never con- 
 founded by him. He fixed the attention of his hearers only 
 upon what it most concerned them to know as religious beings, 
 that is, as creatures of God and heirs of immortality. In 
 order to effect this purpose it was necessary for him to confine 
 his teachinor to the essential truths of relio;ion. If he had 
 done otherwise, if he had labored to correct the errors of his 
 hearers upon subjects of minor importance, and to place the 
 truth distinctly before them in all those new relations which it 
 might present, his hearers would unavoidably have confounded 
 the doctrines thus taught them upon divine authority, with 
 those essential principles which alone it was the purpose of 
 God to announce. Their imaginations and feelings might 
 perhaps have been more occupied about what it was of little 
 consequence for them to know, than about truths which it was 
 of the highest concern that they should understand themselves, 
 and be qualified to teach to others. 
 
 The wisdom and the self-restraint (for so it is to be con- 
 sidered) of our .Saviour, in confining his teaching to the essen- 
 tial truths of religion, and the broad distinction which he thus 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 177 
 
 made between these and all other doctrines, appear to me 
 among the most striking proofs of the divinity of his mission. 
 I cannot believe that a merely human teacher would have 
 conducted himself with such perfect wisdom ; that he would 
 never have attempted to use his authority, or have displayed 
 his superior knowledge, in maintaining other truths than those 
 which essentially concern the virtue and happiness of mankind; 
 that he would have refrained from exposing or contradicting 
 the errors of his opponents on any other subjects ; that he 
 would have succeeded in communicating to his disciples those 
 principles which are the foundation of all religion and morahty, 
 without perplexing their minds by the discussion of any topics 
 less important ; and, at last, have left his doctrine a monument 
 for all future time, — not like the works of some enlightened 
 men, which perish with the errors they destroy, but remaining 
 a universal code of instruction for mankind. 
 
 CHR. ERNST LUTHARDT. 
 
 [Truth of Christianity. Edinburgh: 1S65. Pp. 224, 225, 254, 273, 274, 276, 2S7, 2S8 ] 
 
 Christianity appeared in the world, not as a system of 
 philosophy, not as a code of morality, but as an actual fact, — 
 the fact of the individual Christ Jesus. All depends on him.- 
 With him Christianity stands or falls. It cannot be separated 
 from him. It was not his precepts, but his person, and his 
 testimony concerning himself, which brought about the crisis 
 of Israel. He himself made his whole cause depend upon 
 his person. Jesus Christ does not bear the same relation to 
 Christianity as Mohammed does to Mohammedanism, or as 
 any other founder of a religion to the religion he has founded, 
 but he is himself Christianity. . . . 
 
 Jesus himself neither composed nor bequeathed to us any 
 writings ; for he was no philosopher, or founder of a religion, 
 in the ordinary sense. His person and his work are the 
 writings which he inscribed in broad characters on the history 
 
178 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 of mankind ; and the work of his Spirit in the heart is the 
 epistle which he is day by day inscribing in ineffaceable 
 characters within us. . . . 
 
 If ever love appeared on earth, it appeared under the form 
 of gentleness and meekness in Christ. But over the form of 
 the meek Saviour of sinners are shed a glory and majesty which 
 cause us involuntarily to bow the knee before him. Who can 
 contemplate him in his silent course without feeling that there 
 is in him a mysterious and hidden majesty, and seeing it 
 shine forth from his every word and deed ? 
 
 There is dis-harmony in the life of every other man. Those 
 two poles of mental life, knowledge and feeling, head and 
 heart ; those two powers of the moral life, the reason and the 
 will, — where shall we find them in unison? In the case of 
 Jesus, on the contrary, we are vividly impressed with the 
 feeling that perfect harmony prevails in his mental life. There 
 is absolute peace in his inmost being. It is a human life of 
 perfect harmony. He is all love, all heart, all feeling ; and 
 yet again he is all mind, all mental enlightenment and 
 sublimity. There is no schism between feeling and reason 
 in his nature. There is, moreover, the greatest vitality of 
 feeling and emotion, of thought and reverence : and yet this 
 vitality of his inner nature never passes into passionate 
 excitement ; all is quiet dignity, peaceful simplicity, sublime 
 harmony. 
 
 In him mankind has found its oneness, and the history of 
 mankind its consequent object. He is he that was to come. 
 All history previous to his coming was a prophecy of him. 
 The whole course of external events, and the progress of the 
 human mind, were tending towards him ; the result of both 
 was to demand without being able to produce him : hence in 
 him both find their completion. The secret of his power and 
 the pledge of his success lay in the fact that he is the embodi- 
 ment of the entire collective progress of mankind. He is the 
 fulfilment both of Israelitish prophecy and Gentile prediction; 
 for he is the manifestation of the divine counsel for the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 79 
 
 salvation of men. But he is moreover the fulfilment of that 
 prophecy which is uttered by our own heart. He it is who is 
 the secret object of our aspirations. This is the hidden tie 
 which, unconsciously to ourselves, unites us all to him, and 
 involuntarily attracts us toward him. It is he at whom we 
 are aiming, unknown to ourselves. We are all so disposed 
 towards him, that without him our souls are without rest ; 
 because he is the truth of our being. Thus he is the object 
 of us all. . . . 
 
 There is scarcely any subject of inquiry which lays so great 
 a claim to the religious interest of the present day as the 
 person of Jesus Christ. Nor has any other a right to demand 
 an equal interest ; for it is a matter in which Christianity 
 itself, nay, universal history, is involved. It concerns him who, 
 as Jean Paul Richter says, " being the holiest among the 
 mighty, the mightiest among the holy, lifted with his pierced 
 hands empires off their hinges, turned the stream of centuries 
 out of its channel, and still governs the ages." 
 
 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 [Sermons on Interpretation of Scripture. London : 1845. P. 225.] 
 
 Many and many are the words of our Lord, the riches of 
 whose wisdom will far outlast the longest life in its attempts 
 to come to the end of them. From the time when our childish 
 attention was first drawn by the mere beauty of the story in 
 his parables, or the solemn and affectionate impressiveness 
 of his promises and commands, down to the latest hour in 
 which our unimpaired faculties can ponder over them, their 
 wisdom and excellence seem continually to be rising upon 
 us. The light which streams from them appears to be grow- 
 ing ever more brilliant, ever more searching, ever more 
 cheering and delightful. Every year's experience, both of 
 our own hearts and of the lives of others, sets their manifold 
 truth more fully before us. In every fresh combination of 
 
l8o TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 thoughts and ideas, in every new view which we acquire of the 
 bearing of the world around us, their universal range has 
 gone before us : we find them the Hght and the hfe of every 
 new country which our minds discover, no less than that with 
 which we have been so long familiar. 
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 [Essays. Civil Disabilities of the Jews. New York : 1S71. P. 669.] 
 
 We protest altogether against the practice of confounding 
 prophecy with precept ; of setting up predictions which are 
 often obscure, against a morality which is always clear. If 
 actions are to be considered as just and good merely because 
 they have been predicted, what action was ever more laudable 
 than that crime which our bigots are now, at the end of eigh- 
 teen centuries, urging us to avenge on the Jews, that crime 
 which made the earth shake, and blotted out the sun from 
 heaven ? The same reasoning which is now employed to 
 vindicate the disabilities imposed on our Hebrew country- 
 men, will equally vindicate the kiss of Judas and the judgment 
 of Pilate. "The Son of man goeth, as it is written of him; 
 but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed ! " 
 and woe to those who in any age or in any country disobey 
 his benevolent commands under pretence of accomplishing 
 his predictions. If this argument justifies the laws now 
 existing against the Jews, it justifies equally all the cruelties 
 which have ever been committed against them. 
 
 We have not so learned the doctrines of him who com- 
 manded us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and who, when 
 he was called upon to explain what he meant by a neighbor, 
 selected as an example a heretic and an alien. Last year 
 [1828] we remember it was represented by a pious writer in 
 the John Bull newspaper, and by some other equally fervid 
 Christians, as a monstrous indecency, that the measure for the 
 relief of the Jews should be brought forward in Passion Week. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. l8l 
 
 One of these humorists ironically recommended that it should 
 be read a second time on Good Friday. We should have had 
 no objection, nor do we believe the day could be commemo- 
 rated in a more worthy manner. We know of no day fitter for - 
 terminating long hostilities and repairing cruel wrong, than the 
 day on which the religion of mercy was founded. We know 
 of no day fitter for blotting out from the statute-book the last 
 traces of intolerance, than the day on which the spirit of 
 intolerance produced the foulest of all judicial murders ; the 
 day on which the list of the victims of intolerance, that noble 
 list wherein Socrates and More are enrolled, was glorified by a ' 
 yet greater and holier name. 
 
 JOHN YOUNG. 
 
 [The Christ of History. New York: 1857. Pp. 221-227, 243-245.I 
 
 The difficulty which we chiefly feel in dealing with the 
 character of Christ, as it unfolds itself before men, arises from 
 its absolute perfection. On this very account, it is the less 
 fitted to arrest observation. A single excellence unusually 
 developed, though in the neighborhood of great faults, is 
 instantly and universally attractive. Perfect symmetry, on the 
 other hand, does not startle, and is hidden from common and 
 casual observers. But it is this which belongs emphatically 
 to the Gospels ; and we distinguish in him at each moment 
 that precise manifestation which is most natural and most 
 right. It is wonderful that the unpretending and brief annals 
 of his life, by four different hands, have not failed in this 
 respect ; have not failed in any part of the delineation, or 
 in a single touch or tint : the more wonderful it is, since the 
 character was utterly unlike what the writers could have 
 imagined, by the aid either of experience or history. 
 
 In human beings there is never an approach to sustained, 
 proportioned, and universal good. The manifestation in one 
 direction is so high as to be unnatural, while in another 
 
1 82 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 direction it falls perhaps below the standard of our concep- 
 tions. This wondrous person always is, and acts up to the 
 idea of, perfect humanity, — never unnaturally elevated so as 
 to be out of fellowship with men, and never below the highest 
 human excellence conceivable in the particular circumstances 
 at the time. If men possess a virtue in an unusual degree, 
 the probability is that they will be found to exhibit a defect 
 or fault in the opposite direction. The virtue itself shall pass 
 into a fault, and shall occasion the injury or the neglect of 
 other qualities equally essential. A man is remarkable for 
 sagacity and decision, but he shall be coldly unsusceptible ; 
 or he is tender and ardent, but he shall be wanting in reso- 
 lution and in judgment. He is remarkable for dignity of 
 deportment, but he shall be reserved and proud ; or he is 
 communicative and accessible, but he shall be wanting in 
 becoming self-respect. 
 
 The high development of the intellect is rarely combined 
 with the due cultivation of the affections, and the cultivation 
 of the affections is rarely combined with full development and 
 force of intellect. Jesus Christ possessed the tenderest heart, 
 overflowing with generous and warm feelings; but at the same 
 time his wisdom was profound, and his decision of character 
 was invincible. He was accessible to all without exception, 
 and no circle of exclusiveness was at any time drawn around 
 him in order to guard his presence ; but he was always self- 
 possessed, and self-sustained, and his dignity was command- 
 ing. Intellectually and morally, socially and personally, in 
 relation to his kindred or his disciples, to the followers or the 
 enemies of his ministry, he always rises up to the highest idea 
 that can be formed of perfect man. And then there is thrown 
 over all his intercourse with men, the charni of freshness and 
 of genuine simplicity. Nothing is artificial, nothing assumed, 
 nothing forced ; but we behold the natural, honest, free devel- 
 opment of a true soul. He is never trying to impress, never 
 laboring to sustain a character. He is not aiming to seem, 
 but he seems what he really is, — no more, no less, no other. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 83 
 
 Nor does this being come before us only on a few special 
 occasions carefully selected in order to exhibit conspicuously 
 the best aspects of his character. We behold him mingling 
 with all sorts of persons, and with all kinds of events ; we 
 follow the steps of his public life, and we watch his most 
 unsuspecting and retired moments ; we see him in the midst 
 of thousands, or with his disciples, or with a single individjaal : 
 we see him in the capital of his country, or in one of its 
 remote villages, in the temple and the synagogue, or in the 
 desert, or in the streets. We see him with the rich and the 
 poor, the prosperous and the afflicted, the good and the bad, 
 with his private friends and with enemies and murderers ; and 
 we behold him at last in circumstances the most overwhelming 
 which it is possible to conceive, deserted, betrayed, falsely 
 accused, unrighteously condemned, nailed to a cross ! But 
 wherever he is, and however placed, in the ordinary circum- 
 stances of his daily life, or at the last supper, or in Geth- 
 semane, or in the judgment hall, or on Calvary, he is the same 
 meek, pure, wise, God-like being. . . . 
 
 The character of Jesus, besides, was a pure original, not 
 an imitation. The model existed not, and had never existed, 
 from which it could have been copied. There is no record in 
 the writings of all nations, and of all times, of a life for which 
 absolute perfection is claimed from its beginning to its close. 
 But the character of Christ drawn in the Gospels, though 
 undesignedly on the part of the writers, is human perfection, 
 in which we can discover no defect, and which we can imagine 
 nothing beyond. 
 
 The suspicion is very groundless, that that manifestation 
 which is delineated with great artlessness in the Gospels was 
 not real, but ideal, — a creation of the writers' own minds, not 
 a simple account of what they had actually witnessed. We 
 need only refer to the moral and intellectual condition of Judaea, 
 with its known principles, habits, and tastes ; to the position 
 and character of the Evangelists, and then to the representa- 
 tion itself which they have executed, — in order to show 
 
1 84 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 convincingly that such a suspicion is the most groundless 
 which can be imagined. That country and these men could 
 never have conceived or described such ideal spiritual 
 excellence, as that which they attached as a reality to the 
 person of Jesus ; least of all was it possible, that this idea 
 could have been connected with the name and the office of 
 the promised Messiah. This was not their idea at all, 
 especially in this connection. In several most important 
 respects, it was exactly the opposite of their idea ; and by no 
 possibility could it have originated merely in their minds. 
 Such a character as that of Jesus, they were not the persons 
 ever to have imagined ; and that it has been delineated by 
 them, is the unassailable proof that it was actually seen. 
 
 Never passed before the imagination of man, and never 
 but once alighted on this earth, so heavenly a vision. Once, 
 in all human history, we meet a being who never did an injury, 
 and never resented one done to him, never uttered an untruth, 
 never practised a deception, and never lost an opportunity of 
 doing good ; generous in the midst of the selfish, upright in 
 the midst of the dishonest, pure in the midst of the sensual, 
 and wise far above the wisest of earth's sages and prophets ; 
 loving and gentle, yet immovably resolute, and whose illim- 
 itable meekness and patience never once forsook him in a 
 vexatious, ungrateful, and cruel world. 
 
 If the New Testament had contained only the character 
 of Jesus, as it unfolded itself in his intercourse with men. it 
 had deserved a place above all human productions ; it had 
 been a mine of spiritual wealth, and a fountain of holy inllu- 
 ence unknown to every other region, and to all the ages of 
 time. . . . 
 
 The si)iritual individuality of Christ is as striking as it is 
 manifest. Whether we look to his oneness with God, to the 
 marvellous forms of his consciousness, to the totality of his 
 manifestations, to the motive of his life, or to his unconquer- 
 able faith, his character, take it all in all, must be confessed 
 to stand alone in the history of the world. But this character, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 185 
 
 in its unapproachable grandeur, must be viewed in connection 
 with the outward circumstances of the being in whom it was 
 reaHzed ; in connection with hfe not only privileged, but 
 offering numerous positive hinderances to the origination, the 
 growth, and most of all, the perfection, of spiritual excellence. 
 In a Jew of Nazareth, a young man, an uneducated me- 
 chanic, moral perfection was realized. Can this phenomenon 
 be accounted for? There is here, without doubt, a manifesta- 
 tion of humanity; but the question is, Was this a manifestation 
 of humanity, and no more ? If Jesus was no more than man, 
 why have there not been other men like him ? Why has there 
 not been one man like to him in the whole course of time ? 
 The question is unanswerable, we humbly maintain. If, by the 
 special protection and influence of God, Jesus in his peculiar 
 circumstances, with his youth, his want of education, his 
 poverty and all its hinderances and exposures, reached moral 
 perfection, it is unaccountable, that, in far happier combina- 
 tions of circumstances, such an attainment has never been 
 approached. What God did for one man, God certainly could 
 have done for other men. It is unaccountable that it has 
 never been done, and that not a single individual known to 
 history has risen to the glory of this youthful, untaught, 
 unprivileged Galilsean mechanic. 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 [Works. Argument in the Girard Will Case. Boston: 1869. Vol. vi. pp. 153, 154.] 
 
 When little children were brought into the presence of 
 the Son of God, his disciples proposed to send them away ; 
 but he said, " Suffer little children to come unto me." Unto 
 me. He did not send first for lessons in morals to the schools 
 of the Pharisees, or to the unbelieving Sadducees, nor to read 
 the precepts and lessons phyladeried on the garments of the 
 Jewish priesthood ; he said nothing of different creeds or 
 dashing doctrines : but he opened at once to the youthful 
 
1 86 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 mind the everlasting fountain of living waters, the only source 
 of eternal truths. " Suffer little children to come tmto me'' 
 and that injunction is of perpetual obligation. It addresses 
 itself to-day with the same earnestness and the same authority 
 which attended its first utterance to the Christian world. It 
 is of force everywhere, and at all times. It extends to the 
 ends of the earth ; it will reach to the end of time, alwa)'s 
 and everywhere sounding in the ears of men with an emphasis 
 which no repetition can weaken, and with an authority which 
 nothing can supersede : " Suffer little children to come unto 
 me. 
 
 JOHN HAMILTON THOM. 
 
 [The Revelation of God and Man in the Son of God and Son of Man. 
 London : 1859. P. 1 14, et seq.'\ 
 
 Men never could conceive the harmony of the Divine 
 character, until in Christ they saw the image of it in human 
 nature. No man ever conceived the harmony of the Divine 
 attributes as they exist in one God, until the world saw that 
 harmony reflected in Christ. And this was inevitable, for our 
 own nature is the only basis we possess whence to rise to the 
 conception of any higher nature ; and so long as human 
 nature and character were hopelessly disordered and confused, 
 attribute conflicting with attribute, it was utterly impossible 
 that we should be able to introduce harmony into the Divine 
 attributes, or to think of God after a conception we did not 
 possess. 
 
 Our Lord knew no such spiritual difficulty. He knew 
 himself to be the complete image of the P'ather. In him were 
 reconciled all those spiritual attributes which belong to the 
 Father. This is, tlien, the specific gift that Christ conferred 
 on mankind, — a human soul in wliich all spiritual attributes 
 are so contained and reconciled, that it is worthy to be a type 
 of the Infinite Perfection. We coukl not moukl ourselves 
 after a perfection that we have not conceived ; and who, even 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 187 
 
 now, long as Christ has been with us, — who, looking upon 
 the disorders of his own heart, and the disorders of the world, 
 and the mixed aspects of nature, and the difficulties, the 
 seeming contradictions, of Providence itself, — will be bold 
 enough to say that man could for himself have found the law 
 of harmony in these conflicting elements, and risen to the 
 conception of the one perfect God, who is in them, and 
 presides over them, and of the one image of himself that he 
 is ever seeking to develop in us his children ? 
 
 GEORGE HILL. 
 
 [Lectures in Divinity. Edinburgh: 1850. Pp. 18, 19.] 
 
 The character of Jesus as a man is allowed to be the most 
 perfect which the world ever saw. All the virtues of which 
 we can form a conception were united in him with a more ex- 
 act harmony, and shone with a lustre more bright and more 
 natural, than in any of the sons of men. The majesty of his 
 divine nature is blended with the fellow-feeling and condescen- 
 sion implied in his office ; and although the history of mankind 
 did not afford any model that could here be followed, this 
 singular character is supported throughout, and there is not 
 any one of the words or actions ascribed to him which does 
 not appear to the most correct taste to become the man Christ 
 Jesus. 
 
 It is not possible that a manner of teaching so infinitely 
 superior to that of the scribes and Pharisees, or that of a 
 character so extraordinary, so Godlike, so consistent, could 
 have been invented by the fishermen of Galilee. Admit only 
 that the books of the New Testament are authentic, and you 
 must allow that the authors of them draw Jesus Christ from 
 the life. And how do they draw him ? Not in the language 
 of fiction, with swollen panegyric, with a laborious eftort to 
 number his deeds and to record all his sayings, but in the 
 most natural, artless manner. Four of his disciples, not many 
 
1 88 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 years after his death, when every circumstance could be easily 
 investigated, wrote a short history of his life. Without 
 attempting to exhaust the subject, without studying to coincide 
 with one another, without directing your attention to the 
 shining parts of his history, or making any contrast between 
 him and other men, they leave you from a few facts to gather 
 the character of the man whom they had followed. 
 
 The character of Jesus is drawn, not by the coloring of a 
 skilful pencil, but by a continual reference to facts which to 
 impostors are of difficult invention and of easy detection, but, 
 to those who exhibit a real character, are the most natural, the 
 most delightful, and the most effectual method of making their 
 friend known. 
 
 KESHUB CHUNDER SEN. 
 
 [Jesus Christ; Europe and Asia. Calcutta: 1S69.] 
 
 I CHERISH the profoundest reverence for the character of 
 Jesus, and for the lofty ideal of moral truth which he taught 
 and lived. And it is to impress his moral excellence on my 
 countrymen, as well as the European community in India, 
 unbiassed by the spirit of sectarian bigotry or the spirit of 
 theological wrangling, that I appear before you this evening. 
 
 The world was enveloped in almost impenetrable darkness 
 when Jesus was born. Grim idolatry stalked over the length 
 and breadth of the then known world, and prejudices and 
 corruptions of a most revolting type followed in its train. 
 
 A light was needed. Humanity was groaning under a 
 deadly malady, and was on the verge of death ; a remedy was 
 urgently needed to save it. Jesus Christ was thus a necessity 
 of the age. He appeared in the fulness of time. 
 
 Tiiere can be no question that Jesus was commissioned 
 and destined by Providence for the great work which he came 
 to perform. 
 
 The vast moral influence of his life and death still lives in 
 human society, and animates its movements. It has moulded 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 89 
 
 the civilization of modern Europe, and it underlies the many 
 civilizing and philanthropic agencies of the present day. . . . 
 
 The stream of Christianity, which first flowed westward, 
 has wheeled round towards the east, and diffused the bless- 
 ings of enliehtenment from China to Peru, — east, west, north, 
 and south. On all sides we behold the glory of Christ. His 
 Church has been planted in Greenland, British Guiana, the 
 West Indies, West Africa, East Africa, Cape Town, Madagas- 
 car, Turkey, Arabia, Persia, India, Tartary, Japan, China, the 
 Indian Archipelago, Australia, Polynesia, and New Zealand. 
 
 Such has been the gradual progress of Christianity, such 
 the wondrous growth of the seed planted by Jesus. Tell 
 me, brethren, whether you regard Jesus of Nazareth, the 
 carpenter's son, as an ordinary man ? Is there a single soul in 
 this large assembly who would scruple to ascribe extraordinary 
 greatness and supernatural moral heroism to Jesus Christ 
 and him crucified ? Was not he one who by his wisdom 
 illumined, and by his power saved, a dark and wicked world ? 
 Was not he who left us such a priceless legacy of divine 
 truth, and whose blood has wrought such wonders for 
 eighteen hundred years, was not he above ordinary humanity? 
 Blessed Jesus, immortal child of God ! For the world he 
 lived, he lived and died. May the world appreciate him, and 
 follow his precepts ! 
 
 Christianity was founded and developed by Asiatics, and 
 in Asia. When I reflect on this, my love for Jesus becomes 
 a hundred-fold intensified. I feel him nearer my heart, and 
 deeper in my national sympathies. Shall I not say he Is more 
 congenial and akin to my Oriental habits of thought and 
 feeling? Is it not true that an Asiatic can read the imageries 
 and allegories of the Gospel, and its descriptions of natural 
 scenery, of customs and manners, with greater interest, and 
 a fuller perception of their force and beauty, than Europeans ? 
 
 In Christ we see not only the exaltedness of humanity, '^ 
 but also the grandeur of which Asiatic nature is susceptible. 
 To us Asiatics, therefore, Christ is doubly interesting, and 
 
I go TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 his religion is entitled to our peculiar regard as an altogether 
 Oriental affair. The more this great fact is pondered, the 
 less, I hope, will be the antipathy and hatred of European 
 Christians against Oriental nationalities, and the greater the 
 interest of Asiatics in the teachings of Christ. And thus in 
 Christ, Europe and Asia, the East and West, may learn to find 
 harmony and unity. 
 
 Christ spake not, as worldly men speak, in the accommo- 
 dating spirit of prudence ; he preaches absolute religion. He 
 disdained every thing local and contingent, sectarian and 
 partial, and taught God's universal truth for the benefit of all 
 mankind, — Europeans and Asiatics alike. 
 
 Let it not be supposed that I allude to any special form of 
 Christian ethics, as it is understood and accepted by particular 
 denominations of the Christian Church. No. I have not 
 derived my conceptions of Christ, or his ethics, from the 
 dogmatic theology, or the actual life, of any class of his follow- 
 ers. I do not identify him with any Christian sect. I have 
 gone directly to the Bible to ascertain the genuine doctrine 
 of morality inculcated by Christ ; and it is my firm conviction 
 that his teachings find a response in the universal conscious- 
 ness of humanity, and are no more European than Asiatic ; 
 and that in his ethics " there is neither Greek nor Jew, 
 circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor 
 free." May we all learn to draw near to God by conforming 
 to the spirit of these precepts ! 
 
 The two fundamental doctrines of Gospel ethics, which 
 stand out prominently above all others, and give it its peculiar 
 grantlcur antl its pre-eminent excellence, are, in nn- o})inion, 
 the doctrines of forgiveness and self-sacrifice ; and it is in these 
 we perceive the moral greatness of Christ. These golden 
 maxims, how beautifully he preached ! How nobly he lived ! 
 What moral serenity and sweetness pervaded his life ! What 
 extraordinary tenderness and humility, what lamblike meek- 
 ness and simplicity! His heart was full of mercy and forgiving 
 kindness : friends and foes shared his charity and love. And 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 191 
 
 yet, on the other hand, how resolute, firm, and unyielding in 
 his adherence to truth ! He feared no mortal man, and 
 braved even death itself for the sake of God and truth. 
 
 Verily, when we read his life, his meekness, like the soft 
 moon, ravishes the heart, and bathes it in a flood of serene 
 light ; but when we come to the grand consummation of his 
 career, his death on the cross, behold, he shines as the 
 powerful sun in its meridian splendor. 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 [Orations and Speeches. Boston: 1876. Vol. iii. pp. 585-587.] 
 
 On Christmas Day, beginning at Jerusalem in the Church 
 of the Sepulchre of our Lord, the Christmas anthem will 
 travel with the star that stood above the cradle, from region 
 to region, from communion to communion, and from tongue to 
 tongue, till It has compassed the land and the sea, and returned 
 to melt away upon the sides of Mount Zion. 
 
 By the feeble remnants of the Syrian and Armenian 
 churches, creeping to their furtive matins amidst the unbe- 
 lieving hosts of Islam, in the mountains of Kurdistan and 
 Erzeroum ; within the venerable cloisters which have braved 
 the storms of war and barbarism for fifteen centuries on the 
 reverend peaks of Mount Sinai ; in the gorgeous cathedrals 
 of Moscow and Vienna, of Madrid and Paris, and still impe- 
 rial Rome ; at the simpler altars of the Protestant Church in 
 Western Europe and America ; in the remote missions of our 
 own continent, of the Pacific Islands, and of the farthest East, 
 — on Friday next, for the Catholic and Protestant churches, 
 the sono- of the ana-els, which heralded the birth of our Lord, 
 will be repeated by the myriads of his followers all around 
 the globe. 
 
 Let its choral strains remind us, that, as far as the rela- 
 tions of man to man are concerned, charity is the central and 
 characteristic duty of our religion. 
 
192 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 The splendid polytheisms of antiquity made little or no 
 provision for the organized relief of the poor. As far as one 
 can eather from the remains of Grecian and Roman literatures, 
 such a thing as an almshouse, a refuge for the poor of either 
 sex, an institution for the instruction of the blind, the deaf- 
 mute, the idiot, an infirmary of any description, a retreat for 
 the insane, a foundling hospital, was unknown to the world 
 before the birth of our Saviour. 
 
 There were vestals to guard the sacred fire in the temples, 
 but no sisters of charity to prevent the vital spark from being 
 extinguished in the bosom of suffering humanity. 
 
 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 [Addresses and Speeches. Boston: 1867. Vol. ii. pp. 436-438.] 
 
 It is not enough for any of us merely to profess and call 
 ourselves Christians. Almost the whole civilized world, in- 
 deed, has long assumed to itself the title of the Christian 
 world ; and it rejoices in the recognition of the Christian era 
 as the period from which all human acts or ordinances are 
 dated. We set down, each one of us, at the top of every 
 letter of business or note of friendship, the year of our Lord, 
 as if there were no time worthy to be counted in our calendar 
 (as, in very truth, there is not) until Christ appeared upon 
 the earth to bring life and immortality to light; as if time were 
 nothing, as, in truth, it is nothing, except when regarded as 
 the vestibule of an assured eternity, — the first infant step of 
 a never-ending and immortal career. But how much of this 
 is formal, fashionable, or a matter of reckoning? How few 
 of us, as we date our notes or letters, consider or care, or 
 even remember, from what event so many hundred years 
 have passed away without detracting one jot or tittle from its 
 infinite and unutterable importance! Christmas comes and 
 goes, and comes again, with the revolutions of the seasons. 
 The usual amount of feasting and dancing, of family gather- 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 193 
 
 ings and friendly present- makings, is sure to be witnessed. 
 The churches are decorated, the windows are festooned, the 
 evergreen tree is Hghted with candles and loaded with sou- 
 venirs ; and a " Merry Christmas " is the unfailing ejaculation 
 of every man to his neighbor. But amidst all this anniversary 
 gayety and conventional gladness, how many of us think 
 seriously of the momentous character of the occasion we 
 celebrate ? How many pause from their merry sports to ask 
 themselves the question, " Has Christ been really born to us?" 
 Have we ever been with the wise men to worship at his cradle, 
 or with the loving- women to bend before his cross ? We have 
 used his birthday as an occasion for bringing gifts to others : 
 have we employed it in bringing gifts to him, even the homage 
 of a grateful heart ? . . . 
 
 The Christian spirit, breathing through the individual soul ; 
 the Christian motive, informing and actuating the personal 
 life ; the Christian principle, guiding, governing, controlling 
 the thought, word, act, of every day and hour, — these are 
 what constitute the real recognition and adoption of the name 
 of Christ. The Christian life, as nobly set forth by Thomas 
 Arnold of Rugby, as beautifully delineated by Peter Bayne of 
 Edinburgh, as humbly but heroically exemplified by Howard 
 and Heber and Chalmers and Wilberforce and Samuel Budgett 
 and John Foster and Lady Huntingdon and Elizabeth Fry, 
 as admirably commended before the Queen of England by 
 John Caird of Errol, as exquisitely analyzed by Wesley in 
 the successive stanzas of that almost matchless hymn, "Jesus, 
 my strength, my hope," as perfectly personified by Jesus him- 
 self and by him alone in his work upon earth, — this Christian 
 life, this life of Christ, and no empty acknowledgment of a 
 date or a name or an event, this it is, which, cultivated ear- 
 nestly and successfully, will, in the good time of him with 
 whom a thousand years are as one day, reform the abuses ot 
 the world, so far as they are ever destined to be reformed 
 here, and prepare the way for the coming of those new heavens 
 and that new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
 
194 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 FRANCIS VOLKMAR REINHARD. 
 
 [Plan of the Founder of Christianity. New York: 1831. Pp. 232, 23S, 241, 271. J 
 
 No benefactor of mankind, before Jesus, had ever observed 
 how htde could be accomphshed by singly attacking the bad 
 habits that prevailed, without striking at the root from which 
 they spring. Hence he who, as legislator or ruler, had to do 
 with whole nations, satisfied himself with being able to produce 
 and maintain external order among them ; and he who as a 
 rnoralist and philosopher attempted to accomplish more, and 
 endeavored to effect an internal reformation also, limited his 
 efforts and confined himself to the education of a few select 
 disciples. Jesus possessed deeper, wider, and more correct 
 views, than all the reformers that preceded him. He alone 
 penetrated into the most secret wants of mankind, and knew 
 what was peculiarly needful for them. 
 
 He alone commenced his reformation where it must be 
 commenced in order entirely to change the manner of thinking, 
 willing, and perceiving, to which men have been accustomed. 
 He alone extended his views over the whole human family, 
 and included all nations in his plan. He alone, with a 
 superiority of mind to which every thing that had previously 
 been attempted for the welfare of the human race was far too 
 small and defective, soared to an idea which contained the 
 excellences of all the plans which had ever been invented 
 for the improvement of man. — to the idea of forming a new 
 moral creation. 
 
 It has been peculiar to the founders of religions almost 
 universally, to fall into the mistake of forming regulations, 
 instituting ceremonies, and laying down positive precepts, 
 which will not admit of being observed everywhere. In this 
 way they have proved beyond question, that they were con- 
 fined to limited spheres, and had but little acquaintance with 
 the circumstances of different nations and the character ot" 
 their respective countries. In this respect, also, Jesus con- 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 195 
 
 ducted with a wisdom that took a survey of every thing. His 
 reHgion contains absolutely nothing which cannot be prac- 
 tised everywhere. 
 
 But that he was also the greatest of men in respect to 
 benevolence, and goodness of heart, is beyond all doubt. 
 Such a benevolence as that which he exhibited is nowhere to 
 be met with in history. The most exalted spirits of antiquity 
 were deficient in nothing so much^as the benevolen,t extension 
 of thought. We have already been compelled to remark, that 
 the whole of antiquity was disfigured with a certain want 
 of humanity. Here we find the opposite. The Founder of 
 Christianity in the formation of his plan unveiled a goodness 
 of heart, a philanthropic benevolence, of boundless extent, and 
 absolutely new in its kind. No human mind, before or since, 
 has ap'proximated so near to Deity, or soared so near to his 
 high and perfect pattern of holy goodness, and all-comprehen- 
 sive love, 'as Jesus did. His love, like that of the great Creator 
 which flows forth in constant and boundless streams of kind- 
 ness to every being, flowed forth to all mankind, and aimed 
 to make them all happy without exception. 
 
 And finally the life of Jesus ! It may be described in a 
 few words : He went about doino- orood. He denied himself 
 every convenience and comfort, when by so doing he could 
 accomplish any good in respect to a single soul, or alleviate any 
 sufferer of his pain. In his intercourse with the world, he was 
 neither dark, morose, nor reserved. He caused none to feel 
 his superiority and greatness, in a manner calculated to humble 
 or depress. Full of open-hearted friendship, he shared in fes- 
 tive joys and innocent pleasures ; and the severity of his serious- 
 ness was softened by a love of the mildest character, which 
 filled every uncorrupted heart with reverence and confidence. 
 
 According to the testimony of history, all reformers have 
 been distinguished in their morals and conduct, by a certain 
 inflexibility and hardness, a certain wild severity and stormy 
 vehemence ; and it is easy to bring reasons to show why those 
 who, under the influence of a kind of superiority, undertake 
 
196 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 to renovate the ages in which they hved, and produce an entire 
 change, must have possessed this irresistible firmness, this 
 decisive and authoritative energy. 
 
 Even here, however, Jesus constitutes a remarkable excep- 
 tion. He, the greatest of all reformers, was a man of the 
 most gentle manners, and the mildest habit ; and not a trace 
 of turbulent zeal, blustering impetuosity, and unfeeling sever- 
 ity, is to be discovered either in his disposition or his actions. 
 In this respect also he is unique and unexampled. 
 
 How was it possible for a man who embraced all the 
 nations of the earth in the greatest love, to derive his origin 
 from a nation which despised all other nations, made hatred 
 to them a religious duty, and considered it criminal to ap- 
 proach them or form connections with them ? Here every 
 thing is new and incomprehensible ; every thing govei'ned by 
 strange laws. External circumstances and relations are con- 
 stantly at variance with the disposition and feelings of Jesus, 
 and produce in him the effects directly the opposite to what 
 they usually do in other cases. Under such circumstances, no 
 human mind has developed such qualities. 
 
 If God was not with this man, it is not easy to see how he 
 became what he was ; how he could possibly have acquired 
 that heavenly dignity, greatness, and elevation, with which he 
 stands forth unequalled and alone in the vast spaces of history. 
 far surpassing in splendor all that is worthy of admiration upon 
 the earth. 
 
 SAMUEL J. ANDREWS. 
 
 [The Like ok Our Lord ui-on the Earth. New York: 1865. Pp. 10,11.] 
 
 Wk cannot too steadily keep in mind, that Christianity is 
 Christ. Jesus did not merely originate a spiritual movement. 
 He is himself the living, abiding power of the movement. 
 We look back to no sepulchre : we look up to the Living One 
 in the heavens, Jesus Christ risen from the dead, the same 
 yesterday, to-day, and forever. Christianity lives because he 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 197 
 
 lives. Let, then, the issue between the sceptic and the behever 
 be kept clearly before us. If Jesus Christ is now at God's 
 right hand, Head over all things unto the Church, Christianity 
 lives in him, and must live so long as he lives. It is, because 
 he is. If, as Strauss and Renan say, he has no longer any 
 personal existence ; if he lives only in history, and as an idea, 
 — then Christianity, like other systems, will yield to time, will 
 suffer the transmutations of all things earthly. A new teacher 
 will arise, and men will follow him. 
 
 NEHEMIAH ADAMS. 
 
 [Christ a Friend. Boston : 1855. Pp. 13, 14, 19, 20.] 
 
 There never was such a heart as we find in Jesus Christ. 
 No father, mother, husband, wife, sister, child, or lover can 
 compare with him in his disposition and power to love. It 
 was the great love wherewith he loved us, that made him a 
 Saviour; so that the Apostle speaks of it as "a breadth, and 
 length, and depth, and height," adding, " and to know the 
 love of Christ, which passeth knowledge." 
 
 This love is not a passionate, impulsive feeling ; nor is it, 
 like human love, influenced by fancy ; nor is it variable. 
 There are no private ends to be gained by it. He loves 
 because it is his nature to love. Nor is it fastidious. Infirm- 
 ities and disagreeable peculiarities which repel others, no more 
 alienate the Saviour from us, if we are sincerely pious, than 
 the wounds or deformities, the sightless eyes or wasted face 
 of her child, alienate a mother's feelings. 
 
 Our Saviour sees in every one of us that which inspires 
 him with affection. If our heart condemn us, he is greater 
 than our heart, and knoweth all things, and among them, not 
 only sins which we forget, but the sincerity, and true desires, 
 and godly sorrows, which we have overlooked or underrated. 
 
 Amid the changes of life, and when you cease to move 
 the affections or excite the interest which were once felt 
 
198 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 toward you ; when your outward and inward attractions, your 
 senses, your power to help others, are greatly impaired ; when 
 you are old and decrepit, and are only tolerated, and are a 
 burden to yourself, the Saviour will love you as he did when 
 you were young. " And even to old age, I am he ; and even 
 to hoary hairs will I carry you." 
 
 JOHN ROBERT SEELEY. 
 
 [EccE Homo. Pp. 50, 51, 176, 177, 188, 322.] 
 
 Christ announced himself as the founder and legislator 
 of a new society, and as the supreme judge of men. Now, by 
 what means did he procure that these immense pretensions 
 should be allowed ? He might have done it by sheer power ; 
 he might have adopted persuasion, and pointed out the merits 
 of the scheme and of the legislation he proposed to introduce. 
 But he adopted a third plan, which had the effect not merely 
 of securing obedience, but of exciting enthusiasm and devotion. 
 He laid men under an immense obligation. He convinced 
 them that he was a person of altogether transcendent great- 
 ness, one who needed nothing at their hands, one whom it 
 was impossible to benefit by conferring riches or fame or 
 dominion upon him, and that, being so great, he had devoted 
 himself, of mere benevolence, to their good. He showed them 
 that for their sakes he lived a hard and laborious life, and 
 exposed himself to the utmost malice of powerful men. 
 
 They saw him hungry, though they believed him able to 
 turn stones into bread ; they saw his royal pretensions spurned, 
 though they believed that he could in a moment take into his 
 hand all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them ; 
 they saw his life in danger, they saw him at last expire in 
 agony, though they believed that, had he so willed it, no danger 
 could harm him, and that, had he thrown himself from the 
 topmost pinnacle of the temple, he would have been sofdy 
 received in the arms of ministering angels. Witnessing his 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 199 
 
 sufferings, and convinced by the miracles they saw him work 
 that they were voluntarily endured, men's hearts were touched ; 
 and pity for weakness, blending strangely with wondering 
 admiration of unlimited power, an agitation of gratitude, 
 sympathy, and astonishment, such as nothing else could ever 
 excite, sprang up in them ; and when, turning from his deeds 
 to his words, they found this very self-denial which had guided 
 his own life prescribed as the principle which should guide 
 theirs, gratitude broke forth in joyful obedience, self-denial 
 produced self-denial, and the law and the lawgiver together 
 were enshrined in their inmost hearts for inseparable 
 veneration. . . . 
 
 Let us pause once more to consider that which remains 
 throughout a subject of ever-recurring astonishment, — the 
 unbounded personal pretensions which Christ advances. It 
 is common, in human history, to meet with those who claim 
 some superiority over their fellows. Men assert a pre- 
 eminence over their fellow-citizens or fellow-countr}'men, and 
 become rulers of those who at first were their equals ; but 
 they dream of nothing greater than some partial control over 
 the actions of others for the short space of a lifetime. 
 
 Few indeed are those to whom it is given to influence 
 future ages : yet some men have appeared who have been as 
 levers to uplift the earth and roll it in another course. Homer 
 by creating literature, Socrates by creating science, Caesar by 
 carrying civilization inland from the shores of the Mediterra- 
 nean, Newton by starting science upon a career of steady 
 progress, may be said to have attained this eminence. But 
 these men gave a single impact, like that which is conceived 
 to have first set the planets in motion : Christ claims to be a 
 perpetual attractive power, like the sun which determines their 
 orbit. They contributed to men some discovery, and passed 
 away: Christ's discovery is himself. 
 
 Of his two great gifts, the power over nature and the high 
 moral wisdom and ascendency over men, the former might be 
 the more astonishing, but it is the latter which gives him 
 
200 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 everlasting dominion. He might have left to all subsequent 
 ages more instruction if he had bestowed less time upon 
 diminishing slightly the mass of evil around him, and length- 
 ening by a span the short lives of the generation in the midst 
 of which he lived. 
 
 The whole amount of good done by such works of charity 
 could not be great, compared with Christ's power of doing 
 good ; and if they were intended, as often supposed, merely as 
 attestations of his divine mission, a few acts of the kind would 
 have served his purpose as well as many. Yet we may see 
 that they were in fact the great work of his life ; his biography 
 may be summed up in the words, " He went about doing 
 good." His wise words were secondary to his beneficial 
 deeds ; the latter were not introductory to the former, but the 
 former grew occasionally, and. as it were, accidentally, out of 
 the latter. 
 
 The explanation of this is, that Christ merely reduced to 
 practice his own principle. His morality required that the 
 welfare and happiness of others should not merely be remem- 
 bered as a restraint upon active action, but should be made 
 the principal motive of action. And what he preached in 
 words, he preached still more impressively and zealously in 
 deeds. He .set the first and greatest example of a life wholly 
 governed and guided by the passion of humanity. . . . 
 
 The crowning act of human goodness, when it rises above 
 itself, was made by Christ, not in some moment of elevation, 
 not in some extreme emergency, but habitually. This is meant 
 when it is said, he went about doing good ; nor was the 
 sacrifice made for relative, or friend, or country, but for all 
 everywhere that bear the name of man. 
 
 This moral sensitiveness, this absolute harmony of inward 
 desire with outward obligation, was called by Christ and his 
 apostles by a name of which holiness is the recognized English 
 equivalent ; and it is attributed to the presence of a Divine 
 Spirit within the soul. It is the absolute and ultimate test of 
 true membership in the Christian commonwealth. He who 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 20I 
 
 has it not cannot be a true member, whatever he may have ; 
 and he who has it is a member, whatever he may lack. But 
 how is this moral sensitiveness produced ? It is the effect of 
 a single ardent feeling excited in the soul. A single concep- 
 tion enthusiastically grasped is found powerful enough to 
 destroy the very root of all immorality within the heart. As 
 every enthusiasm that a man can conceive makes a certain 
 class of sins impossible to him, and raises him not only above 
 the commission of them, but beyond the very temptation to 
 commit them ; so there exists an enthusiasm which makes all 
 sin whatever impossible. This enthusiasm is emphatically the 
 presence of the Holy Spirit. It is called here the enthusiasm 
 of humanity, because it is that respect for human beings which 
 no one altogether wants raised to the point of enthusiasm. 
 Being a reverence for human beings as such, and not for the 
 good qualities they may exhibit, it embraces the bad as well 
 as the good ; and as it contemplates human beings in their 
 ideal, — that is, in what they might be, -:— it desires not the 
 apparent, but the real and highest, welfare of each. Lastly, it 
 includes the person himself who feels it ; and loving self too 
 only in the ideal, differs as much as possible from selfishness, 
 being associated with self-respect, humility, and independence, 
 as selfishness is allied with self-contempt, with arrogance, and 
 with vanity. 
 
 How is this enthusiasm kindled ? All virtues perpetuate 
 themselves in a manner. When the pattern is once given, it 
 will be printed in a thousand copies. This enthusiasm, then, 
 was shown to men in its most consummate form in Jesus 
 Christ. From him it flows as from a fountain. . . . Since 
 Christ showed it to men, it has been found possible for them 
 to imitate it ; and every new imitation, by bringing the marvel 
 visibly before us, revives the power of the original. As a 
 matter of fact, the enthusiasm is kindled constantly in new 
 hearts ; and though in few it burns brightly, yet perhaps there 
 are not very many in which it altogether goes out. At least 
 the conception of morality which Christ gave has now become 
 
202 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 the universal one, and no man is thought good who does not 
 in some measure satisfy it. . . . 
 
 ^ The story of his hfe will always remain the one record in 
 which the moral perfection of man stands revealed in its root 
 and its unity, the hidden spring made palpably manifest by 
 which the whole machine is moved. And as, in the will of 
 God, this unique man was elected by a unique sorrow, and 
 holds as undisputed a sovereignty in suffering as in self- 
 devotion ; all lesser examples and lives will forever hold a 
 subordinate place, and serve chiefly to reflect light on the 
 central and original example. In his wounds all human 
 sorrows will hide themselves, and all human self-denials 
 support themselves against his cross. 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 [Sermoxs on National Subjects. London: i860. Pp. 93, 94.] 
 
 Do you think he came, the true and perfect king, only to 
 go away again, and leave this world as it was before, without 
 a law, a ruler, a heavenly kindom ? God forbid ! Jesus is 
 the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. What he was then, 
 when he rode in triumph into Jerusalem, that is he now to 
 us this day, — a king, meek and lowly, and having salvation, 
 the head and founder of a kingdom which can never be 
 moved. . . . 
 
 He came not only to assert his own power, to redeem his 
 own world, but to set his people, the children of men. an 
 example, that they should follow in his steps. Herein, too, 
 he is the perfect king. He leads his subjects, he sets a per- 
 fect example to his own, and inspires them with the power of 
 following that example, as, if you will think, a perfect ruler 
 ought to be able to do. 
 ^ Jesus, the perfect king, is king of men's spirits, as well of 
 their bodies. He can turn the heart, he can renew the soul. 
 None so i""norant, none so sinful, none so crushed down with 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 203 
 
 evil habits, but the Lord can and will forgive him, raise him 
 up, enlighten, strengthen him, if he will but claim his share 
 in his king's mercy, his citizenship in the heavenly kingdom, 
 and so put himself in tune again with himself, and with 
 heaven and earth, and all therein. 
 
 ALBERT BARNES. 
 
 [Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth Century. New York-. 1868. 
 
 Pp. 2S5-296.] 
 
 The general judgment of mankind on the subject of human 
 perfection is undoubtedly in accordance with the expressed 
 opinion of Cicero : "In whom truly there shall be absolute 
 perfection, we have not as yet seen : we have seen no one 
 perfect. It has only been expounded by philosophers what 
 such a one wotild be, if there should be such a one." 
 
 To see the full bearing on the argument, of the remark 
 now made, it is necessary to keep in mind the fact that that 
 character has been regarded as equally perfect in all these 
 eighteen centuries which have elapsed since his appearing, 
 among all nations where he has been made known, by all 
 ranks and conditions of society. This is an ordeal which a 
 character claimed to be perfect must necessarily pass. It is 
 not that the character is regarded as perfect in one age, or 
 among those of a certain rank or condition in life, but that it 
 commends itself to those of every age and ot every condition ; 
 and that, when examined in view of all the phases of opinion 
 which exist among men, and of all the standards of perfection 
 which are set up, in reference to what it would be if repro- 
 duced in a particular class, it is still found to be without a 
 flaw. 
 
 For, abstractly, there are great varieties of opinion among 
 men about what is perfect in character ; there are different 
 standards of morality ; there are different views in philosophy; 
 there are different customs and opinions ; there are different 
 
204 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 things aimed at in life ; there are different attempts to draw a 
 perfect character. That which would seem to be perfect in 
 one age, and according to the mode of judging in that age. 
 might be seen to be very far from being perfect when men 
 should have more enlaro^ed and correct views of what consti- 
 tutes perfection ; and that which would come up to the demands 
 of that more advanced age might still show defects in an age 
 still more advanced, and might fail to meet the general judg- 
 ment of mankind as to a claim of absolute sinlessness. 
 
 The claim set up for the Saviour, and universally conceded 
 with the few exceptions which I have noticed, is, that it com- 
 mends itself equally to every age. to every class of persons, 
 to the learned and unlearned, to sages, to philosophers, and 
 to those in humble life, — to all, as absolutely free from sin. 
 On this fact my argument now is based. 
 
 Assuming now that the character of Christ is perfect or 
 sinless, it will be proper, in order to see the force of the 
 argument, to consider the attempts which have been made 
 to draw or describe a perfect character. 
 
 One of two thines is true in rep^ard to the character ot 
 Christ, as exhibited in the New Testament : it was either 
 real, or it was the work of the Evangelists, — the work ot 
 fiction. 
 
 If it was real, then the question is settled ; for, it he was 
 perfect and sinless, then he was what he claimed to be. antl 
 was the Son of God sent down from heaven. 
 
 If it was the work of the Evangelists, then we have to 
 show how it was that such plain men as they were, and very 
 imperfect men themselves, should have been able to set before 
 the world a perfect imaginary character ; how four or more 
 men ot such rank as they were should have combined, in 
 separate narratives, to produce such a character ; how, more- 
 over, they should have done it, not by direct statements, but 
 by placing this imaginary person in a great variety of situa- 
 tions, and bringing him into contact with the world for a 
 succession of years, and under every possible temptation to 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 205 
 
 tlo wrong" ; and how they were able so to describe him that 
 he never is represented as uttering a sentiment, or manifesting 
 a feehng, or performing an action, which is not conformable 
 to the highest standard of perfection. 
 
 It will be seen at once that it is a much more difficult 
 thing iox four men to represent a perfect character in such 
 details than it would be for one man to carry out his own 
 individual conceptions ; as it would be more difficult for four 
 sculptors to produce the Apollo Belvedere, in the beauty of 
 its form and proportions, than it was for the one mind that 
 conceived it and executed it. 
 
 Moreover, the difficulty is to be explained, how, on the 
 supposition even that Christ actually lived, and was perfect or 
 sinless, such men had the ability so to draw his character, and 
 so to represent him, in such a variety of situations, that his 
 character should commend itself to all ages as absolutely 
 sinless. 
 
 The simple fact in the matter, whether the character was 
 real, or whether it is the creation of the imagination, is, that 
 they have done what was never before done, and what, even 
 with this model before them., has never since been done. 
 
 The attempts made by men to draw a perfect character 
 have been of two kinds, — from real life, and from the imagi- 
 nation ; real characters, and fictitious characters. 
 
 The former attempts have failed, because there have been 
 no perfect characters, and because it has been the work of the 
 historian to describe men as they are. Themselves imperfect 
 men, and portrayed by imperfect men, they stand before the 
 world as imperfect men. 
 
 Those works come nearest to perfection, as works of art, 
 when they describe human nature most accurately. Shak- 
 speare does not describe perfect characters. It may be 
 doubted whether he ever attempted it, or designed to describe 
 one. The characters in novels, as the characters in history, 
 are not perfect characters ; and, if any one has attempted to 
 draw such a character, it is easy at once to see, whatever else 
 
206 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 it may be, how unlike it is to the character of Jesus Christ. 
 Where is there a character in fiction that can be held up to 
 all the world in all ages ; that can represent man in all relations 
 and circumstances ; that can be a sinless model in conduct, 
 alike toward God and toward men ; that can be a model for 
 kings and princes, sages and philosophers, the humble, the 
 unlearned, the lowly, the down-trodden, — in prosperity and in 
 adversity, in joy and in sorrow ; in benevolence, in purity, 
 in gentleness, in the love of truth, in the love of justice ; in 
 childhood, in youth, and in middle age ; under obloquy and 
 reproach ; in dealing with crafty and unprincipled men ; in 
 abandonment and persecution ; in the severest form of death, 
 and under all that could shake the firmness of virtue, — where 
 is there, where has there been, such a character in reality or 
 in fiction, except in the person of Jesus Christ? 
 
 There has been no agrreement amonof men as to what 
 would be such a standard of character. The idea would difter 
 in different ages, and among different nations. A Hebrew 
 would have set. up one standard, an Egyptian another, a 
 Greek another, a Roman another, a Persian another ; an 
 inhabitant of China now has one ideal standard, a Hindoo 
 another, a New Zealander another. A nobleman has one 
 idea, a philosopher another, a priest another. A mandarin 
 has one idea, a Brahmin another, a Turkish mufti another. 
 A Pharisee had one, a Sadducee another, and. one of the sect 
 of the Essenes another. Antony in Egypt, and Benedict in 
 Italy, founders of the monastic system, one ; Ignatius Loyola 
 and Xavier, another. A Catholic priest has one idea ; a Prot- 
 estant minister of religion, another. A peasant of Galilee 
 could hardly be supposed to have the sanie standard which 
 would l)e approved in Corinth. 
 
 There was this special difficult)- in the case, also, that the 
 work was to be done, not by one person who could carry out 
 his own conceptions, but by .several persons, either acting in 
 concert, or acting independently of each other. One man — 
 Homer, Virgil, Milton, Shakspeare — can easily carry out his 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 207 
 
 own conceptions, and secure unity and concinnity in an epic 
 or a tragedy, however long it may be, or however many char- 
 acters are introduced. The writer of the epic can place his 
 hero in a great variety of situations, and still have before him 
 the same hero, acting in conformity with his character ; the 
 writer of the drama can place any variety of characters in 
 different situations, and lead them forth in a great variety of 
 action, and still can so preserve his plan, and keep up the 
 identit^vthat Hamlet and Lear and Othello are always rec- 
 ognized when they speak. But the case would be much more 
 difficult and complicated, if it were supposed that the Iliad, 
 the yEneid, the Paradise Lost, or Hamlet were respectively 
 the production of a society or combinations of poets. 
 
 One sculptor can carry out his own conceptions, and pro- 
 duce symmetry, concinnity, harmony, in his statue ; for the 
 statue is in his mind, and he can copy it as it is there com- 
 bined in its proper proportions. But suppose a company of 
 artists to have undertaken to execute the statue of Minerva 
 or the Apollo ; it is easy to see how the matter would be 
 complicated, and how improbable it would have been that 
 statues with such beauties of proportion and form would ever 
 have existed. 
 
 The statue of Minerva, the Apollo Belvedere, the Venus 
 di Medici, and the still more complicated Laocoon, are respec 
 tively the work of one artist. One mind formed the concep- 
 tion ; one hand carried out the conception ; one idea runs 
 through the entire work as a work of art. 
 
 But suppose that any one of these, either the most simple 
 or the most complicated, were the work of different men, — 
 the production of a society of artists, and not of an individual, 
 either with or without a common ap^reement or understandine. 
 Suppose it to be left to one man to form the head, to a second 
 the hand, to a third the foot, to a fourth the body, each 
 according to his different ideas of beauty. Or suppose, in 
 one case, that it was left to independent workmen to carry 
 out an idea of perfection already agreed upon, and to be 
 
208 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 produced by their joint labors; suppose, in another case, that 
 four men should undertake, without a concerted idea, to form 
 independently, by working on different parts of the statue, 
 the image of a perfect man 
 
 And yet this would present but a small part of the diffi- 
 culty in drawing such a character as that of the Saviour — 
 perfect as a man. For there is a block of marble to be 
 moulded at will. It is cold, passive, subject wholly to the 
 control of the chisel. It has no will, no passion, nopfeeling, 
 no character. It has no complications of fancy, intellect, 
 affections. You can make it what you please ; and, when any 
 part is made, it remains the same. The idea rises before you 
 with nothing to disturb you ; and when complete, there it 
 stands, as you intended it should. Here there is will, and 
 feeling, and purpose, and mind, and heart, and action. — all 
 varying, and all producing endless complications. 
 
 It is to be borne in mind, also, that the plan was, not to 
 present the abstract conception of a perfect man, but to place 
 him in an almost endless variety of situations, and to show 
 how he acted there, with no comment on his conduct with 
 reference to the question whether it was consistent or not, 
 and manifestly with no anxiety on that point, without even 
 saying that he was perfect, — for that was not affirmed by the 
 Evangelists themselves, — but to describe him as acti?tg, leav- 
 ing the world to judge from his actions whether he was a 
 perfect being. Accordingly he appears before us in all the 
 circumstances in which a human being can ordinarily be 
 placed ; in such an endless diversity that the character, what- 
 ever it was, could not but be developed. He makes a thousand 
 speeches ; he performs a thousand actions ; he meets with 
 thousands of people ; he is placed in situations of provocation 
 and temptation ; he is among friends and among foes ; he is 
 with th(; wicked and the good ; he is with the sick and the 
 (lying; he; addresses great multitudes in public ; he warns and 
 denounces the wicked, and he pours consolation into the 
 hearts of those who \v<.'('p in private. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 2 09 
 
 The life of Christ is not a fiction. Christ is a real histori- 
 cal personage, as real as Caesar or Alexander. You can make 
 nothing of history, of nations, of opinions, of philosophy, 
 of the world, of any thing in the past, if this is denied. All 
 history is connected with that life ; all history, for eighteen 
 hundred years at least, turns on that life. The fact that he 
 lived, and founded the Christian religion, is recognized by 
 Josephus, by Tacitus, by Pliny. It is not denied by Celsus, 
 by Porphyry, by Julian, as it would have been if it could have 
 been done. It is not denied by Mr. Gibbon, but in his labored 
 argument he everywhere assumes it. It is not denied by 
 Strauss : it is not denied by Renan. 
 
 It is not a work of genius. Genius has never drawn such 
 a character : genius has never drawn a perfect character at all. 
 Besides, his biographers, the fishermen of Galilee, were 7iot 
 remarkable for genius unless the fact of portraying the life of 
 Christ proves that they were. They did nothing else remark- 
 able. They wrote no poetry. They promulgated no new 
 system of philosophy. They composed no new works of 
 fiction, unless this is one. They wrote no dramas to make 
 them immortal, as Sophocles, Terence, and ^schylus did. 
 They gave the world no inventions in the arts. They made 
 no discoveries in science. They suggested no improvements 
 in architecture, in ship-building, in the implements of agri- 
 culture, even in their own employment, — in the methods 
 of fishing. They would have lived and died unknown, all of 
 them, forgotten just as soon as they died, if it had not been 
 for their life of Christ. Nothing else that they did would 
 have made a ripple on the great flowing stream of the world's 
 events. Fishermen are not commonly immortal. 
 
 Moreover, if it were supposed that they undertook, by 
 combination and concert, to engage in such a work as this, 
 we certainly should not have had this life. We should 
 either have had a character intensely and thoroughly Jezvish, 
 — which the character of Jesus is not. — with Jewish concep- 
 tions, a narrow, bigoted Jewish Messiah, a prince, a conqueror. 
 
2 10 TESTIMONY OF NIXETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 a deliverer, a Judas Maccabaeus, a restorer of the pomp and 
 pride of the ancient monarchy, in accordance with the Jewish 
 conceptions of the Messiah ; or we should have had a biogra- 
 phy full of trifles, and small conceits, of foolish marvels, of 
 improbable stories, — a biography that might have rivalled 
 the Arabian Nights Entertainment, such as the writers of the 
 Jewish Talmud would have been likely to produce. We 
 should never have had the life of Jesus of Nazareth, as 
 we have it now in the New Testament. 
 
 It is to be remarked also, that, in thus drawing the perfect 
 character of Christ, the Evangelists, or the disciples who 
 followed him, did not always themselves see that his character 
 was perfect, or that he was always acting in the wisest manner. 
 On that point they often had doubts ; but they recorded the 
 facts as they occurred, and time has shown that his conduct 
 was perfect and wise. 
 
 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 
 
 [Complete Works. London Edition. Pp. 217, 218, 243, 245, 246.] 
 
 Our long familiarity with Jesus blunts our minds to his 
 •singular excellence. We probably have often read of the 
 character which he claimed, without a thought of its extraor- 
 dinary nature. But I know nothing so sublime. The plans 
 and labors of statesmen sink into the sports of children when 
 ■ compared with the work which Jesus announced, and to which 
 he devoted himself in life and death, with a thorough con- 
 sciousness of its reality. The idea of changing the moral 
 aspect of the whole earth, of recovering all nations to the 
 pure and inward worship of one God and to a spirit of divine 
 and fraternal love, was one of which we meet not a trace in 
 philo.sopher or legislator before him. The human mind had 
 given no promise of this extent of view. The conception of 
 this enterprise, and the calm, unshaken expectation of success 
 in one who had no station and no wealth, who cast from him 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 211 
 
 the sword with abhorrence, and who forbade his disciples to 
 use any weapons but those of love, discover a wonderful trust 
 in the power of God and the power of love ; and when to this 
 we add that Jesus looked not only to the triumph of his pure 
 faith in the present world, but to a mighty and a beneficent 
 power in heaven, we witness a vastness of purpose, a grand- 
 eur of thought and feeling, so original, so superior to the 
 workings of all other minds, that nothing but our familiarity 
 can prevent our contemplation of it with wonder and profound 
 awe. 
 
 I confess, when I can escape the deadening power of habit, 
 and can receive the full import of such passages as the follow- 
 ing : " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
 and I will give you rest ; " "I am come to seek and to save 
 that which was lost ; " " He that confesseth me before men, 
 him will I confess before my Father in heaven ; " " Whoso- 
 ever shall be ashamed of me before men, of him shall the 
 Son of man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of 
 the Father with the holy angels ; " " In my Father's house are 
 many mansions ; I go to prepare a place for you," — I say, 
 when I can succeed in realizing the import of such passages, 
 I feel myself listening to a being such as never before and 
 never since spoke in human language. I am awed by the 
 consciousness of greatness which these simple words express ; 
 and when I connect this greatness with the proofs of Christ's 
 miracles, I am compelled to exclaim with the centurion, 
 "Truly this was the Son of God." ... 
 
 Thus Jesus lived with men ; with the consciousness of 
 unutterable majesty he joined a lowliness, gentleness, human- 
 ity, and sympathy, which have no example in human history. 
 In proportion to the superiority of Jesus to all around him, 
 was the intimacy, the brotherly love, with which he bound 
 himself to them. I maintain that this is a character wholly 
 remote from human conception. To imagine it to be the 
 production of imposture or enthusiasm, shows a strange un- 
 soundness of mind. I contemplate it with a veneration second 
 
212 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 only to the profound awe with which I look up to God. It 
 bears no mark of human invention, it was real. It belonged 
 to, and it manifested, the beloved Son of God. . . . 
 
 I know not what can be added to heighten the wonder, 
 reverence, and love which are due to Jesus. When I con- 
 sider him, not only as possessed with the consciousness of an 
 unexampled and unbounded majesty, but as recognizing a 
 kindred nature in human beings, and living and dying to 
 raise them to a participation of his divine glories ; and when 
 I see him under these views allying himself to men by the 
 tenderest ties, embracing them with' a spirit of humanity 
 which no insult, injury, or pain could for a moment repel or 
 overpower, I am filled with wonder as well as reverence and 
 love. I feel that this character is not of human invention ; 
 that it was not assumed through fraud, or struck out by 
 enthusiasm ; for it is infinitely above their reach. When I 
 add this character of Jesus to the other evidences of his 
 religion, it gives to what before seemed so strong a new and 
 a vast accession of strength. I feel as if I could not be 
 deceived. The Gospels must be true ; they were drawn from 
 a living original ; they w^ere founded on reality. The charac- 
 ter of Jesus is not a fiction ; he was what he claimed to be, 
 and what his followers attested. Nor is this all. Jesus not only 
 was, he is still the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. . . . 
 
 The character of Jesus was original. He formed a new 
 era in the moral history of the hunian race. His perfection 
 was not that of his age, nor a copy of the greatness which 
 had long engrossed the world's admiration. He borrowed 
 from none, and leaned on none. Surrounded by men of low 
 thoughts, he rose to a conception of a higher form of human 
 virtue than had yet been realized or imagined, and tlelibcr- 
 ately devoted himself to its promotion, as the supreme object 
 of his life and death. Conscious of being dedicated to this 
 great work, he spoke with a calm dignity, an unaflected 
 elevation, which separated him from all other teachers. Un- 
 supported, he never wavered; sufficient to himself, he refused 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 2 1 3 
 
 alliance with wealth and power. Yet with all this self-sub- 
 sistence and uncompromising energy, his character was the 
 mildest, the gentlest, the most attractive, ever manifested 
 among- men. It could not have been a fiction ; for who could 
 have conceived it, or who could have embodied the conception 
 in such a life as Jesus is said to have lived in action, words, 
 manners, so natural and unstudied, so imbued with reality, 
 so worthy of the Son of God ? 
 
 The great distinction of Jesus was a philanthropy without 
 mixture and without bounds ; a philanthropy uniting grand- 
 eur and meekness in beautiful proportions ; a philanthropy 
 as wise as it was fervent, which comprehended the true wants 
 and the true good of man ; which compassionated, indeed, his 
 sufferings from abroad, but which saw in the soul the deep 
 fountain of his miseries, and labored, by regenerating this, 
 to bring him to a pure and enduring happiness. 
 
 So peculiar, so unparalleled, was the benevolence of Jesus, 
 that it has impressed itself on all future time. There went 
 forth a virtue, a beneficent influence, from his character, which 
 operates even now. 
 
 Since the death of Christ, a spirit of humanity, unknown 
 before, has silently diffused itself over a considerable portion 
 of the earth. A new standard of virtue has gradually pos- 
 sessed itself of the veneration of men. A new power has 
 been acting on society, which has done more than all other 
 causes combined to disarm the selfish passions, and to bind 
 men strongly to one another and to God. What a monu- 
 ment have we here to the virtue of Jesus ! And if Christian- 
 ity has such a founder, it must have come from heaven. . . . 
 
 The character of Christ has withstood the most deadly 
 and irresistible foe of error and unfounded claims, — I mean 
 time. It has lost nothing of its elevation by the improvements 
 of ages. Since he appeared, society has gone forward, men's 
 views have become enlarged, and philosophy has risen to 
 conceptions of far purer virtues than were the boasts of 
 antiquity. But, however the human mind may have advanced, 
 
214 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 it must still look upward if it would see and understand Christ. 
 He is still above it. Nothing purer, nobler, has yet dawned 
 on human thoughts. 
 
 Then Christianity is true. The delineation of Jesus in the 
 Gospels, so warm with life, and so unrivalled with loveliness 
 and grandeur, required the existence of an original. To 
 suppose that this character was invented by unprincipled 
 men, amidst Jewish and heathen darkness, and was then 
 imposed as a reality in the very age of the founder of Chris- 
 tianity, argues an excess of credulity, and a strange ignorance 
 of the powers and principles of human nature. The character 
 of Jesus was real ; and if so, Jesus must have been what he 
 professed to be, the Son of God, and the Revealer of his 
 mercy and his will to mankind. 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON. 
 
 [Sermons. New York : 1870. Pp. 6S5-6S7.] 
 
 Let us turn to the character of our blessed Redeemer, 
 and we shall find the proof of his perfect purity, in the testi- 
 mony of his enemies, of his friends, and of those indifferent 
 to him. We have, first, the evidence of his enemies. For 
 three long years, the Pharisees were watching their victim. 
 There was the Pharisees mingling in every crowd, hiding 
 behind every tree. They examined his disciples ; they cross- 
 questioned all around him ; they looked into his ministerial 
 life, into his domestic privacy, into his hours of retirement. 
 They came forward with the sole accusation they could 
 muster, — tliat he had shown disrespect to the Roman gov- 
 ernor. The Roman judge, who at least should know, had 
 pronounced the accusation null and void. 
 
 There was another spy. It was Judas. If there had been 
 one act of sin, one failing in all the Redeemer's career that 
 bt'trayed ambition, that betrayed any dt^sire to aggrandize 
 himself, in his hour of terrible remorse, Judas would have 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 2 1 5 
 
 remembered it for his own comfort ; but the bitterness of his 
 feelings, that which made Hfe insufferable, was that he had 
 " betrayed innocent blood." 
 
 Pass we on to those who were indifferent. And, first, we 
 have the opinion of Pilate himself. Contemporary historians 
 tell us that Pilate was an austere and cruel man, a man of 
 firm resolves, and one who shrank not from the destruction 
 of human life : but we see here, that for once the cruel man 
 became merciful ; for once, the man of resolve became timid. 
 It was not merely that he thought Jesus was innocent : the 
 hard Roman mind would have cared little for the sacrifice of 
 an obscure Jew. The soul of Pilate was pervaded with the 
 feeling that spotless innocence stood before him ; and this 
 feeling extended even to Pilate's wife, for we find that she 
 sent to him and said, " Have thou nothing to do with that 
 just man." It was not because he was going to pass an unjust 
 sentence, — he had often done so before, — but she felt that 
 here was an innocent one who must not be condemned. 
 
 Now let us consider the testimony of his friends. They 
 tell us that during their intercourse of three years, his was a 
 life unsullied by a single spot : and I pray you to remember, 
 that tells us something of the holiness of the thirty previous 
 years ; for no man springs from sin into perfect righteousness 
 at once. If there has been any early wrong-doing, though a 
 man may be changed, yet there is something left that tells 
 of his early character ; a want of refinement, of delicacy, of 
 purity ; a tarnish has passed upon the brightness, and cannot 
 be rubbed off. If we turn to the testimony of John the Bap- 
 tist, his contemporary, about the same age, one \A\o knew 
 him not at first as the Messiah ; yet, when the Son of man 
 comes to him simply as a man, and asks him to baptize him, 
 John turns away in astonishment, shocked at the idea. " I 
 have need to be baptized of thee ; and comest thou to me ? " 
 In other words, the purest and most austere man that could 
 be found on earth was compelled to acknowledge that in him 
 who came for baptism, there was neither stain nor spot that 
 
2l6 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 the water of Jordan was needed to wash away. So we see 
 that there was no actual transgression in our blessed Lord. 
 
 Now let us see what the inward life was ; for it is very 
 possible that there may be no outward transgression, and yet 
 that the heart may not be pure. It is possible that outwardly 
 all may seem right, through absence of temptation, and yet 
 there may be the want of inward perfection. Of the perfec- 
 tion of Jesus, we can have but one testimony : it cannot be 
 that of the Apostles, for the lesser cannot judge the greater; 
 and therefore we turn to himself. He said, " Which of you 
 can charge me with sin ? " Now we must remember, that 
 just in proportion as a man becomes more holy, does he feel 
 and acknowledge the evil that is in him. Thus it was with 
 the Apostle Paul : he declared, " I am the chief of sinners." 
 But here is one who attained the highest point of human 
 excellence, who was acknowledged even by his enemies to 
 be blameless, who declares himself to be sinless. 
 
 If, then, the Son of man were not the promised Redeemer, 
 he, the humblest of mankind, might justly be accused of 
 pride : the purest of mankind would be deemed to be uncon- 
 scious of the evil that was in him. He who looked so deeply 
 into the hearts of others, is ignorant of his own ; the truest 
 of mankind is guilty of the worst of falsehoods ; the noblest of 
 mankind, guilty of the sin of sins, — the belief that he had no 
 sin. Let but the infidel grant us that human nature has never 
 attained to what it attained in the character of Jesus, then we 
 carry him still further, that even he whom he acknowledged 
 to be the purest of men, declared himself to be spotless, which, 
 if it \v(;re false, would at once do away with all the purity 
 which he grants was his. It was not only the outward acts, 
 but the inner life of Jesus, which was so pure. His mind 
 regulates every other mind ; it moves in perfect harmony with 
 the mind of God. In all the just men that ever lived, you will 
 find some peculiarity carried into excess. We note this in 
 the zeal of St. John, in the courage of St. Peter, in the truth- 
 seeking of St. Thomas. It was not so with Jesus. No one 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 217 
 
 department of his human nature ever superseded another ; all 
 was harmony there. The one sound which has come down 
 from God in perfect melody is his life, the entire unbroken 
 music of humanity. 
 
 WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE. 
 
 [Review of Ecce Homo, from Gleanings of Past Years. New York: 1879. Vol- 
 
 iii. pp. 84, 93 ] 
 
 It appears, as respects the person of our Lord, that its 
 ordinary exhibition to ordinary hearers and spectators was 
 that of a man engaged in the best and holiest and tenderest 
 ministries, among all the saddest of human miseries and trials; 
 of one teaching in word, too, the best and holiest and tender- 
 est lessons, and claiming, unequivocally and without appeal, 
 a paramount authority for what he said and did, but beyond 
 this asserting respecting himself nothing, and leaving him- 
 self to be freely judged by the character of his words and 
 deeds. ... 
 
 Through the fair gloss of his manhood, we perceive the 
 rich bloom of his divinity. If he is not now without an 
 assailant, at least he is without a rival. If he be not the Sun 
 of righteousness, the Friend that gives his life for his friends 
 and that sticketh closer than a brother, the unfailing Consoler, 
 the constant Guide, the everlasting Priest and King, at least, 
 as all must confess, there is no other to come into his room. 
 
 JULIUS MULLER. 
 
 [Voices of the Church. London : 1845. Pp- 3°) 39-] 
 
 We know these Jewish Christian communities, from the 
 Acts of the Apostles, and from the Apostolic Epistles, suffi- 
 ciently well to judge, that a mythical production, in such a 
 sphere, must have been of quite a different and incomparably 
 
2i8 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 more limited character, or one which, amidst some commin- 
 glings of more elevated and liberal tendencies in the compo- 
 sition, would still have been confused and unconnected. It 
 would not have been the Jesus of the Gospels ; a character, 
 the entire sketch of which combines the most elevated cour- 
 age with the greatest simplicity, embracing opposite qualities, 
 some of which contain such stupendous paradoxes, that indi- 
 vidual traits often appear, at first view, contradictory ; whilst, 
 on a more familiar consideration, there is revealed in these 
 very points, all the more, the depth and living truth of this 
 character. How this portrait, which the most ancient Chris- 
 tendom never once fully understood, as the documents out of 
 the second century sufficiently show, and many of the features 
 of which first came forth from darkness, to the full light of 
 day, through the Reformation, — how this could have origin- 
 ated from the degree of knowledge existing among the 
 Christian communities of that period, is quite inexplicable. 
 
 But if the mythical mist which Dr. Strauss, in his criticism 
 of the Gospel history, spreads around the life of Jesus, once 
 vanishes, we shall see the whole undertaking sink as unten- 
 able, down to the ground on which the Fragmentary Essays 
 at Wolfenbiittel, and similar attacks upon the truth of the 
 Gospel history, rest. For, to give out intentional fiction in 
 complete earnest, for historical facts, and for this purpose to 
 lend to it the form of the most quiet and unadorned narrative, 
 this is quite correctly called to lie, whether it appear in the 
 East or in the West ; and the more void of all conscience, 
 and the more cynical, is the lie, in proportion as the object to 
 which such fiction refers is holy and of vast importance. 
 
 Then, however, the whole character of the Gospel narra- 
 tives ; ilu; honest, true-hearted meaning of their authors, 
 which light up the whole ; all that we know of the religious 
 and moral condition of the earliest communities ; the appear- 
 ance of a man like the Apostle Paul ; the joyous martyrdom of 
 the Church, which began even when our Gospels originated ; 
 the irresistible: power which Christianity exercises over the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 219 
 
 whole spiritual development of the human race ; all its sancti- 
 fying and blessed effects in history, — all this would be the 
 most incomprehensible riddle, and the most tormenting con- 
 tradiction. The holy and divine form of the Redeemer of 
 the world would then appear no longer as an enlightened 
 portrait upon a thick cloud of myths, but would rear itself out 
 of a dark abyss of deception and of wild, unbridled fanaticism. 
 And if thus the highest phenomenon in the sphere of 
 religious life dissolve itself into a monstrous deception, then 
 would it indeed be all over with religion, and it w^ould be 
 high time for philosophy to take charge of the orphaned race. 
 And yet, what kind of weapons in the end would philosophy 
 possess, in order to protect itself against a scepticism that 
 swallows up every thing, if it must acknowledge idle dreams 
 and fanatical fictions to be the mightiest impulses in the 
 development of the human mind ? 
 
 HORACE BUSHNELL. 
 
 [Nature and the Supernatural. New York: 1S60. Pp. 304, 314, 317, 318, 321, 
 
 322, zi^A 
 
 Christ, if we call him a philosopher (and if he is only a 
 man, we can call him by no higher name) , was the poor man's 
 philosopher, — the first and only one that had ever appeared. 
 He laid his foundations, as it were, below all influence, and, 
 as men would judge, threw himself away. And precisely did 
 he here display a wisdom and a character totally in advance 
 of his age. Eighteen centuries have passed away, and w^e 
 now seem just beginning to understand the transcendent 
 depth of this feature in his mission and character. We appear 
 to be just waking up to it, as a discovery, that the blessing 
 and upraising of the masses are the fundamental interests of 
 society, — a discovery, however, which is only a proof that the 
 life of Jesus has at length begun to penetrate society and 
 public history. It is precisely this which is working so many 
 
220 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 and great changes in our times ; giving liberty and right to 
 the enslaved many, seeking their education, encouraging their 
 efforts by new and better hopes, producing an aversion to 
 war, which has been the fatal source of their misery and 
 depression, and opening, as we hope, a new era of comfort, 
 light, and virtue, in the world. It is as if some higher and 
 better thought had visited our race, — which higher thought 
 is in the life of Jesus. The schools of all the philosophers are 
 gone hundred of years ago, and all other visions have died 
 away into thin air ; but the poor man's philosopher still lives, 
 bringing up his poor to liberty, light, and character, drawing 
 the nations on to a brighter and a better day. . . . 
 
 Call him, then, who will, a man, a human teacher; what 
 human teacher ever came down thus upon the soul of the 
 race as a beam of light from the skies, — pure light, shining 
 directly into the visual orb of the mind ; a light for all that 
 live ; a full, transparent day, in which truth bathes the spirit as 
 an element ? Others talk and speculate about truth, and those 
 who can may follow ; but Jesus is the truth, and lives it, and, 
 if he is a mere human teacher, he is the first who was ever 
 able to find a form for truth at all adequate to the world's 
 uses. And yet the truths he teaches outreach all the doc- 
 trines of all the philosophers of the world. He excels them 
 a hundred-fold more in the scope and grandeur of his 
 doctrine than he does in his simplicity itself. 
 
 It is a high distinction of Christ's character, as seen in 
 his teaching, that he is never anxious for the success of his 
 doctrine. Fully conscious of the fact that the world is against 
 him, scoffed at, hated, despised, alone, too, in his course, and 
 without partisans that have any public influence, no man has 
 ever been able to detect in him the least anxiety for the suc- 
 cess of his doctrine. He is never jealous of contradiction. 
 When his friends display their dulness and incapacity, or even 
 when they forsake him, he is never ruffled or disturbed. He 
 rests on his words with a composure as majestic as if he were 
 sitting on the circle of the heavens. What human teacher, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 221 
 
 what great philosopher, has not shown some traces of anxiety 
 for his school, that indicated his weakness ? some pride in his 
 friends, some dislike of his enemies, some traces of wounded 
 ambition when disputed and denied ? But here is a lone 
 man, a humble, uneducated man, never schooled into the 
 elegant fiction of an assumed composure, or practised in 
 the conventional dignities of manner ; and yet, finding all the 
 world against him, the world does not rest on its axle more 
 firmly than he upon his doctrine. Questioned by Pilate what 
 he means by truth, it is enough to answer, " He that is of 
 the truth heareth my voice." If this be human, no other 
 man of the race, -we are sure, has ever dignified humanity by 
 a like example. . . . 
 
 Such is Christ as a teacher. When has the world seen 
 a phenomenon like this? — a lonely, uninstructed youth coming 
 forth amid the moral darkness of Galilee, even more distinct 
 from his age, and from every thing around him, than a Plato 
 would be, rising up alone in some wild tribe in Oregon ; 
 assuming thus a position at the head of the world, and main- 
 taining it for eighteen centuries by the pure self-evidence of 
 his life and his doctrine. Does he this by the force of mere 
 human talent or genius ? If so, it is time we begin to look 
 to genius for miracles, for there is really no greater miracle. 
 We have seen Jesus unfolding as a flower from the germ of 
 a perfect youth ; growing up to enter into great scenes, and 
 have his part in great trials ; harmonious in all with himself 
 and truth, a miracle of celestial beauty. He is a lamb in 
 innocence, a God in dignity, revealing an impenitent but 
 faultless piety, such as no mortal ever attempted, such as to 
 the highest is inherently impossible. 
 
 He advances the most extravagant pretensions without 
 any show of conceit, or even seeming fault of modesty. He 
 suffers without affectation of composure, and without restraint 
 of pride ; suffers as no mortal sensibility can, where, to mortal 
 view, there was no reason for pain at all ; giving us not only 
 an example of gentleness and patience in all the small trials 
 
222 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 of life, but revealing the depths even of the passive virtues of 
 God in the agony and the patience of his suffering love. 
 He undertakes also a plan, universal in extent, perpetual in 
 time ; viz., to unite all nations in a kingdom of righteousness 
 under God, laying his foundations in the hearts of the poor, 
 as no great teacher ever had done before, and yet without 
 creating a faction or stirring one partisan feeling in his fol- 
 lowers. 
 
 In his teachings he is perfectly original, distinct from his 
 age and from all ages; never' warped by the expectations 
 of his friends ; always in a balance of truth, swayed by no 
 excesses, running to no oppositions or extremes ; clear of all 
 superstition, and equally clear of all liberalism ; presenting 
 the highest doctrines in the lowest and simplest forms ; estab- 
 lishing a pure, universal morality never before established ; 
 and with all his intense devotion to the truth, never anxious, 
 perceptibly, for the success of his doctrine. Finally, to sum 
 up all in one, he grows more great and wise and sacred, the 
 more he is known, — needs, in fact, to be known to have his 
 perfections seen. And this, we say, is Jesus the Christ. . . . 
 
 This one perfect character has come into our world, and 
 lived in it, filling all the moulds of action, all the terms of 
 duty and love, with his own Divine manners, works, and 
 charities. All the conditions of our life are raised, thus, by 
 the meanino- he has shown to be in them, and the crrace he 
 has put upon them. The world itself is changed, and is no 
 more the same that it was : it has never been the same since 
 Jesus left it. The air is charged with heavenly odors ; and 
 a kind of celestial consciousness, a sense of other worlds, is 
 wafted on us in its breath. 
 
 Let the dark ages come ; let society roll backward, and 
 churches perish in whole regions of the earth ; let infidelity 
 deny, and, what is worse, let spurious piety dishonor, the 
 truth: still there is a something here that was not, and a some- 
 thing that has immortality in it. Still our confidence remains 
 unshaken, that Christ and his all-quickening life are in the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 223 
 
 world as fixed elements, and will be to the end of time ; for 
 Christianity is not so much the advent of a better doctrine, as 
 of a perfect character. And how can a perfect character once 
 entered into life and history be separated and finally expelled ? 
 It were easier to untwist all the beams of light in the sky, 
 separating and expunging one of the colors, than to get the 
 character of Jesus, which is the real Gospel, out of the world. 
 
 HENRY ROGERS. 
 
 [Defence of "The Eclipse of Faith." Boston: 1854. Pp. 142, 145.] 
 
 The brightness of the brightest names pales and wanes 
 before the radiance which shines from the person of Christ. 
 The scenes at the tomb of Lazarus, at the gate of Nain, in 
 the happy family at Bethany, in the " upper room " wdiere he 
 instituted the beautiful feast which should forever consecrate 
 his memory, and bequeathed to his disciples the legacy of his 
 love ; the scenes of the Garden of Gethsemane, on the sum- 
 mit of Calvary, and at the sepulchre ; the sweet remembrance 
 of the patience with which he bore wrong, the gentleness 
 with which he rebuked it, and the love with which he forgave 
 it ; the thousand acts of benign condescension by which he 
 well earned for himself, from self-righteous pride and censo- 
 rious hypocrisy, the name of " the friend of publicans and 
 sinners," — these, and a hundred things more which crowd 
 those concise memorials of love and sorrow with such prodi- 
 gality of beauty and of pathos, will still continue to charm 
 and attract the soul of humanity ; and on these the highest 
 genius, as well as the humblest mediocrity, will love to dwell. 
 These things lisping infancy loves to hear on its mother's 
 knees ; and over them age, with its gray locks, bends in 
 devoutest reverence. 
 
 No, before the infidel can prevent the influence of these 
 compositions, he must get rid of the Gospels themselves, or 
 he must supplement them by fictions still more wonderful. 
 
2 24 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Ah, what bitter irony has involuntarily escaped me ! But if 
 the last be impossible, at least the Gospels must cease to 
 exist before infidelity can succeed. Yes, before infidels can 
 prevent men from thinking as they ever have done of Christ, 
 they must blot out the gentle words with which, in the pres- 
 ence of austere hypocrisy, the Saviour welcomed that timid 
 guilt that could only express its silent love in an agony of 
 tears ; they must blot out the words addressed to the dying 
 penitent, who, softened by the majestic patience of the mighty 
 Sufferer, detected at last the Monarch under the veil of sorrow, 
 and cast an imploring glance to be remembered by him when 
 he came into his kingdom ; they must blot out the scene in 
 which the demoniacs — or the maniacs, if the infidel will, for 
 it does not help him — sat listening at his feet, and in their 
 right mind ; they must blot out the remembrance of the tears 
 which he shed at the grave of Lazarus, not surely for him 
 whom he was about to raise, but in pure sympathy with the 
 sorrows of humanity, for the myriad myriads of desolate 
 mourners who could not, with Mary, fly to him and say, 
 " Lord, if thou hadst been here, my mother, brother, sister, 
 had not died;" they must blot out the record of those miracles 
 which charm us, not only as the proofs of his mission, and 
 guaranties of the truth of his doctrine, but as they illustrate 
 the benevolence of his character, and are types of the spirit- 
 ual cures his Gospel can yet perform ; they must blot out 
 the scenes of the sepulchre, where love and veneration lin- 
 gered, and saw what was never seen before, but shall hence- 
 forth be seen till the end of time, — the tomb itself irradiated 
 with angelic forms, and bright with the presence of him who 
 brought life and immortality to light ; they must blot out the 
 scene where deep and grateful love wept so passionately, and 
 found him unbidden at her side, type of ten thousand times 
 ten thousand, who have " sought the grave to weep there," 
 and found joy and consolation in him " whom, though unseen, 
 they loved;" tlu^y must blot out the discourses in which he 
 took leave of his disciples, the majestic accents of which have 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 225 
 
 filled so many departing souls widi patience and with triumph; 
 they must blot out the yet sublimer words in which he declares 
 himself " the Resurrection and the Life," — words which have 
 led so many millions more to breathe out their spirits with 
 childlike trust, and to believe, as the ea-te of death closed 
 behind him, they would see him who is invested with the 
 " keys of the invisible world," who " opens, and no man shuts ; 
 and shuts, and no man opens," letting in through the portal 
 which leads to immortality the radiance of the skies. They 
 must blot out, they must destroy, these and a thousand other 
 such things, before they can prevent him from having the 
 pre-eminence who loved, because he loved us, to call himself 
 the " Son of man," though angels called him " Son of God." 
 
 ALEXANDER MACLAREN. 
 
 [Sermoxs. London: 1873. Pp. 178, 1S2, 1S3.] 
 
 Christ is the power to conform us to himself, as well as 
 the pattern of what we may become. He and none lower, he 
 and none beside, is the pattern man. Not the great conqueror, 
 nor the great statesman, nor the great thinker ; but the great 
 lover, the perfectly good — is the man God meant him to be. 
 We may affirm that the noblest and fairest characters, approx- 
 imating as they may to the picture in the Psalm (viii.), and 
 giving us some reason to hope that more is possible for us 
 than we sometimes think, are after all but fragments of 
 precious stones as compared w^ith that one entire and perfect 
 chrysolite, whose unflawed beauty and completeness flashes 
 forth in Christ the w^hole light of God. 
 
 Yet he is not ashamed to call us brethren. Therefore, if 
 we would know what a man is, and what a man may become, 
 let us not only look inward to our own faults, nor around us 
 at these broken bits of goodness; but let us look back to 
 Christ, and be of good cheer. . . . 
 
 The sovereignty of Jesus Christ is not a metaphor, nor a 
 
226 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 rhetorical hyperbole. It is, if we believe the New-Testament 
 writers, a literal prose fact. He directs the histor)^ of the 
 world, and presides among the nations. He is prince of all 
 the kings of the earth. He wields the forces of nature, he 
 directs the march of providence, he is Lord of the unseen 
 world, and holds the keys of death and the grave. 
 
 JAMES McCOSH. 
 
 [Christianity axd Positivism. New York : 1871. Pp. 278, 279.] 
 
 The Memorabilia of Xenophon, with its lessons of 
 Socrates, the Dialogues of Plato, the logical and metaphysi- 
 cal works of Aristotle, and the moral maxims of the Stoics, 
 particularly the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, are about 
 the highest products of human intellect in ancient times, and 
 are worthy the eager study of any educated man. But how 
 different from the discourses of Jesus, both in their subjects 
 and their manner of teaching- them ! . . . 
 
 We recall many able reasoners, many eloquent orators, in 
 ancient and modern times, in ancient Greece and Rome, 
 in modern Europe and America ; but here is one who is differ- 
 ent from them all, and who speaks as never man spake. The 
 truth is so perspicuous and so profound, that we are sure it 
 is uttered from the clear depths of heaven ; and yet, as 
 it comes to us, and penetrates us, we feel that it has come 
 through one who is on the earth, who knows what is in man, 
 who knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust ; 
 we feel that it is addressed to us by a fellow-man, by a brother, 
 it so touches and melts and moves our hearts. 
 
 The discourses of men of profound thought have com- 
 monly tended to drive away little chiklren ; but the words of 
 Jesus, as it were, say, " Suffer little children to come unto me, 
 and forbid them not." Plato and the Greek philosophers spoke 
 and wrote only for the educated, and never thought of addres- 
 sing the great mass of the people, who were, in fact, despised 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 227 
 
 by them. But the prediction regarding Jesus was, not only 
 that he would open the eyes of the blind, but by him the poor 
 were to have the Gospel preached unto them ; and it was 
 found, in fact, that " the common people heard him gladly." 
 This constituted a new era in the history of the world, as it 
 was the means of raising the great mass of the people. 
 While a child, a savage, can understand and appreciate our 
 Lord's discourses, the profoundest thinkers are made to feel 
 that there are depths there deeper than hell, which they can- 
 not fathom ; heights higher than heaven, which they cannot 
 gauge. We feel as we do when we gaze into the expanse of 
 heaven on a clear night, and see every star shining so dis- 
 tinctly, and yet are made to realize that there are depths there 
 far beyond our vision. 
 
 JOHN GORHAM PALFREY. 
 
 (Lowell Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity. Boston : 1S43. ^^^- '• PP- 
 182, 185, 192, 197, 222-227, 230.] 
 
 Never was a more unvarnished tale delivered than that of 
 the Four Evangelists. If ever there were marks of simple 
 honesty impressed on any composition, there do they most 
 conspicuously stand. No one can imagine, as he reads, that 
 the idea had ever entered their minds, of dressing up the 
 story which they had to tell, so as to make it appear in its 
 most unexceptionable form. They never study indefiniteness 
 of expression, nor appear afraid to descend into particulars, 
 as false witnesses are apt to do, lest they should furnish the 
 means of their own confutation ; but, on the contrary, they 
 abound in particulars, opening infinite opportunities of detec- 
 tion, provided there was any thing to detect. It is very 
 remarkable in how perfectly simple, concise, unadorned a 
 manner they relate the stupendous miracles of their Master, 
 neither preparing the way by advertising the reader before- 
 hand that he is going to be informed of something wonderful, 
 
228 TESTIMOXY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 nor conciliating- incredulity by arguments or asseverations or 
 references to others who might confirm their narrative, nor 
 stopping to draw some inference, or to deepen the impression 
 before they pass on to something else ; but simply saying 
 what they have to say in the most quiet and unpretending 
 plainness of truth, as one might be expected to do who was 
 concerning himself about nothing except his own business of 
 bearing an honest testimony, who did not perplex himself by 
 anticipating unbelief, or calculating in any way the impression 
 which might be made upon other minds. . . . 
 
 I do not know whether the impression of candor and fair- 
 ness in the Evangelists, gathered from the whole tone of their 
 narrative, is capable of being increased by reference to any 
 examples. . . . How candidly have they related their own 
 errors and faults and those of their associates ! How freely 
 have they acquainted posterity with that dulness of theirs, 
 which resisted so long the patient instructions of Jesus con- 
 cerning the spiritual nature of his kingdom ! 
 
 They tell us of the incredulity of Thomas; of the ambitious 
 project of James and John to secure to themselves the places 
 of honor when their Master should ascend the proud throne 
 which their imaginations promised him ; of the unbecoming 
 resentment of the same disciple when the company was refused 
 admittance to a Samaritan village, and the peremptory faith- 
 fulness with which it was rebuked; of Peter's unworthy remon- 
 strance with Jesus when he spoke of his impending suft'erings, 
 and the vehement reproof called forth by his self-seeking 
 weakness ; of the same disciple's reiterated denial of his 
 Master ; and of all the disciples forsaking him and lleeing, 
 when, already in the hands of his remorseless enemies, he 
 was about to be led as a lamb to the slaughter. I have here, 
 of course, no other concern with texts of this description than 
 to inquire whether they are easily to be reconciled with any 
 view of their author's character, except that which regards 
 them as fair and honest witnesses, who meant to tell the truth, 
 whatever inference might be drawn from it. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 229 
 
 Men who enter into a combination for imposture undertake 
 a great deal of trouble. To carry on a scheme of deception 
 alone — a scheme which requires no confidant — is a very hard 
 task ; to carry on such a scheme in partnership with others, 
 on whose fidelity, prudence, and recourse one is not absolutely 
 sure how far he can count, is an excessively anxious and 
 heart-wearing one. Such schemes are undertaken. But, 
 when they are, it is in consideration of something which will 
 pay the heavy cost. There must be some strong moving- 
 power to set this reluctant machinery in operation. Nothing 
 can be more certain than that men do not devote themselves 
 to any toilsome and annoying service, except in the hope of 
 something which to their minds, whether rightly or wrongly 
 judging, appears «, sufficient recompense. The first preachers 
 of our religion were, of course, influenced to what they did 
 by some motive. If theirs was a fraudulent enterprise, then 
 their motive was worldly, then they expected their reward 
 in this life ; for men do not promise themselves the least 
 reward in the other for the most indefatiQfable labors of 
 dishonesty. Will any one point out what valuable worldly 
 consideration they obtained, or expected to obtain, for what 
 they did ? 
 
 Dishonest effort implies the hope of some selfish advan- 
 tage. Effort, accompanied by the abandonment of every 
 selfish advantage, contradicts the supposition of dishonesty. 
 Men do not make sacrifices, except in the hope of eventual 
 gain, or from a sense of duty. But the early preachers of 
 our religion made the most unsparing sacrifices. They devoted 
 themselves to labors, they exposed themselves to dangers, 
 they underwent hardships, they endured sufferings, such as 
 it is not in human nature voluntarily to consent to in the 
 maintenance of an unprofitable falsehood. . . . 
 
 In all, except confirmation of those fundamental religious 
 truths which Judaism had taught, scarcely would it have been 
 possible for the tone of Christianity to be more opposed than 
 it was to the tone of Jewish thought and feeling in the age 
 
230 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 when it appeared. He who will reject the miracle of Chris- 
 tianity having been sent from God only chooses, in its stead, 
 the miracle, not less amazing, — but, on the contrary, far more 
 so, since there would not be the same adequate causes to 
 account for the latter, — of Christianity having been born, full 
 formed and armed, from the bosom of a society most alien to 
 it in its principles and practices. What a conception is that 
 of the universal parental providence of God, that the Being of 
 infinite miorht has a Father's care and tenderness for all men ! 
 What a vast conception to enter, unsent, any human mind ! 
 What an unheard-of conception till Christianity made it famil- 
 iar ! But that is not our point. What an impossible concep- 
 tion to form itself in the breast of any Jew, of one of a face 
 whose great pride and joy were in a rigid and exclusive inter- 
 pretation of the assurance that God was the father of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob, and of their posterity, who nauseated the 
 idea that the Divine favor could be extended to a descendant 
 from any other stock, except he should first do homage to the 
 ritual of Moses, which would, at the same time, humble his 
 own pride, and bring a contribution to the pride of those with 
 whom he sought to be associated ! 
 
 How precise, formal, technical, unspiritual, mean, are the 
 notions of religious duty which Christianity found at the time 
 and place of its origin ! The widened phylactery, the enlarged 
 fringe of the garment, — these passed for acts of acceptable 
 devotion. Widows' houses might be devoured, provided the 
 length of prayers did but exceed; and the very doctors said 
 that " whoso sweareth by the temple, it is nothing ; but whoso 
 sweareth by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor ; " and that, 
 if a man will but say of his property, " It is Corban',' or a 
 consecrated gift, he is dispensed from providing with it iox his 
 father or his mother. What a heart-religion, on the contrary, 
 — how jnirc, how spiritual, exalted, internal, and superior to 
 all HK.'re formalities, — did the Gospel of Jesus enjoin and 
 inspire ! 
 
 In the principles and practices of the narrow-minded, not 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 23 1 
 
 to say exasperated and vindictive, inhabitants of Palestine in 
 the first century, irrespective of any goodness which was not 
 formed on their own ungraceful model, incensed against all 
 the heathen by whom they had been successively oppressed, 
 where do we see any elements of the expansive, all-compre- 
 hending philanthropy of that religion which taught us to do 
 to others as we would that they should do to us, and which, 
 in expounding the precept to love one's neighbor as one's 
 self, made the word "neighbor" to stand for every human 
 being whom one could find or make opportunity to serve ? 
 In the mind of the often down-trodden, but only for that more 
 indignant and fancy-fevered Jew, burning with the accumulated 
 heats of hope long deferred, for the raising of that standard 
 which was to roll back the bloody tide of conquest upon 
 doomed and quaking Rome, where do we descry the germ of 
 the grand thought of peace on earth and universal good-will 
 among men ? . . . 
 
 Where, in the popular code of morality of the age of 
 Herod and Caiaphas, where, in the discipline of the Pharisaic 
 and Sadducean schools, do we find any, the faintest rudiments 
 of that system, which so carefully and urgently enjoins internal 
 purity, and the practice of meekness, forgiveness of injuries, 
 patience, humility, self-denial, and all the excellent brotherhood 
 of the passive virtues ? No ; manifestly as well might one 
 expect to gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles, as sup- 
 pose that Jewish minds, in the age when Christianity appeared, 
 could, under any impulse or fraudulent design, or honest 
 delusive excitement, have matured such fruit as we gather in 
 the Gospels ; that they could possibly have originated it at 
 all ; that they possibly could have come into a condition to 
 communicate it to us, as they have done, except through a 
 previous supernatural communication of it to themselves. 
 The efi"ect, certainly known to us, was one so certainly out 
 of proportion and congruity with all natural causes as abso- 
 lutely to demand the assignment of a supernatural cause for 
 its production. 
 
232 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 The same is true in respect to the conception of the char- 
 acter of the Author of the faith. Here is an example of moral 
 sublimity and perfection in a human form, and composed of 
 human attributes, which, after a lapse of ages, remains unpar- 
 alleled and unapproached. . . . 
 
 At the time of the revelation of Christianity, this concep- 
 tion came to be entertained. We know that it did so, because 
 we have the portraitures of it, descended from that age before 
 us. The portraiture is there, that we know ; for we can look 
 at it. The conception was present to the minds which drew 
 the portraiture: that is a point which needs no proving. How 
 came it there ? The Evangelists give us their answer to this 
 question. They say they drew from a living original. 
 
 The expansiveness of the benevolence of Jesus, overleap- 
 ing the much-regarded barriers of kindred, sect, neighborhood, 
 and country, its delicacy and tenderness so contrasted with 
 the hardened and coarse sternness of the age, shining out, 
 as it does sometimes, with its mild grace through the most 
 majestic displays of his power ; the perfection of the same 
 quality shown by him in his superiority to the sense of injury; 
 his respect for the rights, and his sense of the greatness, of 
 the human soul, lodged in however mean and even polluted 
 a tenement ; his sublime spirit of self-consecration and self- 
 sacrifice; the far-reaching of his views into futurity, and of his 
 conviction of the coming triumphs of truth over error, and 
 of good over evil : which of these was borrowed from the 
 tone of sentiment of the age ? For which of them were 
 the Evangelists indebted to any thing they saw around them, 
 or that had come to them through any common channels of 
 thought ? And if each novel trait in this conception is so 
 hard to trace to any human source, how much harder to trace 
 so many ! And yet more, — for the combination is still quite 
 different from a mere aggregate of the several ingredients, — 
 from what source, not supernatural, came the image of such 
 qualities, combiiuxl in one whole of such perfect symmetry? 
 
 The conception of tlie character of Jesus . . . could not 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 233 
 
 have been an imagination of those who have depicted it, but 
 must have had a hving prototype, and that, too, of super- 
 natural formation, since the natural influences in action could 
 no more have formed the character than they could have 
 sueorested the idea. 
 
 It may, perhaps, be worth while to add, in a word, to my 
 remark on the last topic, that they who had opportunity for 
 the contemplation of such a character must, by that contem- 
 plation, have been raised equally above the temptation to 
 fraud, and the susceptibility of any enthusiastic delusions ; 
 from which considerations we obtain yet another confirmation 
 of their credit in regard to particulars of their story. . . . 
 
 We have the portraiture of Jesus, not from one hand only, 
 but from four. This character, so original, so unprecedented, 
 necessarily destined, from the peculiarities of its attributes, to 
 manifest itself in forms of action such as the world had not 
 seen and was little prepared to guess at, so unmanageable, 
 therefore, In the hands of one writer of fiction, is described — 
 I was about to say; but, no, it is not described, it is set before 
 us in action — by four different persons, in a very artless style 
 of writing, but with a vividness and consistency which, had 
 it been the product of art at all, would have been a specimen 
 of miraculous perfection of art. They represent him to us in 
 a great variety of situations, involving a large part of the 
 diversified experience of human life. They represent him as 
 discoursing upon a great variety of topics. Yet, between all 
 these representations, there is a perfect, unbroken, vigorous, 
 lifelike unity. There is not a touch of these untutored men 
 that mars the verisimilitude of the drawing. I should rather 
 say there is not a touch of either, laboring as they did upon 
 separate resemblances, which is out of harmony with any part 
 of the work of the rest. Such a fact admits of only one solu- 
 tion. If it had been possible (which it was not) that such a 
 novel and magnificent fiction should have been conceived by 
 one, still It was not possible that such a complicated fiction 
 should have been conceived consistently by all. 
 
234 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 JOSEPH PARKER. 
 
 [EcCE Df.us. Boston: 1873. Pp. 164, 165, 372, 373.] 
 
 Jesus Christ, immeasurably above any other teacher, 
 recognized the greatness of human nature. How did he 
 come by this unparalleled estimate ? Certainly he had no 
 inducement to flatter it in return for his personal reception 
 on the earth. Sometimes pleasant circumstances force weak 
 observers into an exaggeration of praise ; but in spite of the 
 harshest reception, Christ affirmed that God so loved the 
 world, that he gave his only begotten Son for its salvation. 
 His verdict is thus the more important by reason of the 
 conditions under which it was given. Had he been asked to 
 give an opinion of human nature before he assumed it, his 
 opinion might, on easily understood grounds, have been 
 favorable ; but after he has lain in the manger, been exposed 
 to hunger and thirst and cold, been smitten on the face, and 
 condemned as a felon, when he has been laughed at as a 
 fanatic, or shunned as a madman, he speaks of human nature 
 with the fond tenderness and lofty reverence of one who was 
 preparing to die for it, something more than human must 
 explain the humanness. Every other man falls short of it : 
 how came a Galilaean peasant to have it all ? It is an affront 
 to common sense, to say that it is an imaginary sketch ; but 
 even if it be, what then ? The problem is not solved ; for, 
 as only a poet can write a poem, so only a Christ could have 
 conceived a Christ. 
 
 lo-day the great question that is stirring men's hearts to 
 their depths Is, Who is this Jesus Christ? His life is becom- 
 ing to us a new life, as if we had never seen a word of it. 
 1 li(M-e is round about us an influence so strange, so penetrat- 
 ing, so siibiilc, y(;t so mighty, that we are obliged to ask the 
 great heaving world of time to be silent for a while, that we 
 may see just what we are, and where we are. That influence 
 is the life of Jesus Christ. We cannot get clear of it ; we 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 235 
 
 hear it in the tones of joy ; we feel it steaHng across the 
 darkness of sorrow ; we see it where we least expect it. Even 
 men who have travelled farthest from it, seem only to have 
 come round to it again. And while they have been under- 
 valuing- the inner worth of Jesus Christ, they have actually 
 been livine on the virtue which came out of the hem of his 
 garment. Yes, it seems we must touch him either at the 
 heart, or at the hem ; if we will not have him for the soul, 
 we must have him for the body. What if men reject him 
 altogether? Then, as of old, there is no choice for them but 
 Barabbas, and Barabbas is still a robber. . We see the alter- 
 native. Pilate still puts the question, " Whom will ye that I 
 release unto you, Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ?" 
 The voice of the people was once for the robber ; it will yet 
 be lifted up, never more to change, for the Son of God. 
 
 JAMES WALKER. 
 
 [Reason, Faith, and Dutv. Boston: 1877. Pp. 177-179.] 
 
 The only true greatness is greatness of sotil ; and the 
 circumstances, whatever they may be, which have the effect 
 to display the highest degree of this greatness, are those 
 which vindicate a man's claim to real superiority. 
 
 Let history tell of her hero, who, in the day of his triumph, 
 bestrode the world like a colossus, and was worshipped as a 
 eod ; but when a reverse came on his fortunes, and he was 
 hurled from the eminence he had occupied, where then 
 was his glor}/, or the qualities by which it had been won ? 
 
 If Jesus Christ had merely been a successful adventurer 
 or a mighty conqueror, — another Solomon or another Judas 
 Maccabaeus, another Alexander or Csesar, — his ascendency 
 might easily be accounted for by natural causes. But when 
 we look on him as an obscure Galilsean, educated in all the 
 prejudices of his country, unsustained by any of the excite- 
 ment or illusions which do so much to bolster up the vulgar 
 
236 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENI'URIES 
 
 great, betrayed and forsaken by the few he had counted on as 
 friends, left alone, absolutely alone, to watch the gathering 
 of that black and portentous cloud which was soon to break 
 in thunder on his naked head, and yet with a soul unshaken, 
 unappalled, — well indeed may we exclaim with the Roman 
 centurion who witnessed his last sufterings, " Truly this was 
 the Son of God." 
 
 Jesus Christ might have been great, as other men have 
 been great, and it would have proved notJiing ; but the cir- 
 cumstances of extreme trial in which he was placed afforded 
 him an opportunity for displaying a greatness to which there 
 is no parallel, — a greatness not more remarkable for its 
 degree than for its originality. Every mind capable of pro- 
 found thought will appreciate this argument for Christianity, 
 because the entire originality of our Saviour's character makes 
 it as much a miracle that the Evangelists, with all their preju- 
 dices, should have drawn it from the imagination, as that the 
 character itself should have really existed for them to describe. 
 
 EDWARD HAYES PLUMPTRE. 
 
 [Christ and Christendom. London: 1867. Pp. 242, 243.] 
 
 All the theology of which the Church is the witness and 
 the keeper, runs up to Christ's teaching; all the benevolence 
 of which he has been the minister, to his example ; all her 
 infinite richness and variety of worship, to the prayer and the 
 supper of the Lord. May we not recognize in this, that of 
 which the history of mankind may present distortions, carica- 
 tures, counterfeits, but to which it certainly offers no parallels? 
 
 Can the marvellous personality which has thus stamped 
 its impress on the world's history be resolved into the creature 
 of the after-thoughts of an age that followed it, or of the 
 confUuMice of the thc^osophies of the East and West of the age 
 that went before it ? Can we exclude the personality of Christ 
 from the order of the aoes, and class his faith as but one 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 237 
 
 in the steps which lead men upward from brute ignorance to 
 the negation of God ? Can we accept, admire, and adore the 
 personaHty, and yet reject the claims with which it is insep- 
 arably associated, and without which it would have been 
 powerless as the visions of a dream, ^ nullity among the 
 elements of history ? 
 
 JAMES W, ALEXANDER. 
 
 [Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity. New York : 1852. P. 195 et seqi\ 
 
 In the person of Jesus Christ as presented in the Christian 
 Scriptures, we have a perfect model of moral excellence. The 
 founder of Christianity stands forth in a character absolutely 
 original and unique. The attempt was never made to trace 
 it to any foregoing exemplar. Neither history nor fiction 
 approached to any thing which could serve even as the germ 
 of such a description. It is a quality to which justice is 
 seldom done, perhaps from an extreme familiarity with every 
 trait ; but it was doubtless felt by the great inquirers of 
 antiquity when first summoned into the sublime and winning 
 presence. There are objects in nature, which, previous to all 
 scrutiny or analysis, strike us with the impression : This is 
 unlike all we ever beheld before. Such is the august person- 
 ality of Christ while as yet unstudied in its more delicate 
 lineaments. The picture is intensely and sublimely moral. 
 With a reserve almost w^ithout a parallel, there is not a touch 
 or a color thrown in to gratify what might be considered a 
 reasonable curiosity. Hence there is not a syllable respecting 
 the outward figure, countenance, or demeanor of our Lord. 
 Even the intellectual development is left under a veil, while 
 the moral and spiritual representation stands out with all the 
 austere simplicity of a sculpture. 
 
 Approaching more nearly, we perceive that the character 
 of Jesus is not such as would be produced by what is called 
 the spirit of the age. It was not in subjugated, unlettered 
 
238 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Judaism, to give birth to such an advent. The effect is too 
 colossal for such a cause. It was not even the felicitous 
 anticipation of an age about to dawn. It was not the embod- 
 ied genius of any age. The ideal is one which no age of 
 human progress has yet overtaken. We are the more sur- 
 prised and confounded when we see its matchless proportions 
 emerging from the mists and corruptions of such a period and 
 such a nation. I will go further, and assert that the character 
 of Jesus Christ is one which would have been beyond the 
 power of human conception, before its actual appearance. . . . 
 
 The pureness of his character was known to the people, 
 rehearsed by the wife of the procurator, asserted with reitera- 
 tion by Pilate, avowed by the Roman centurion who stood 
 guard at the cross, and attested by the traitor when he cried 
 in the temple, "I have betrayed the innocent blood." The 
 enemies of Christianity have been too discreet to allege any 
 blemish on the snow-white purity of Jesus. His virtue is 
 immaculate, and has borne the inspection of the ages. This 
 is the more deserving of consideration, when we reHect that 
 any age can discern spots upon a surface of alabaster, and that 
 one undeniable delinquency in the character of our Lord 
 would instantly vacate his whole claim to perfection. But it 
 has not been discovered ; and it has been by an association 
 common to all Christian nations, that we connect with this 
 impersonation of innocency the symbols of the lamb and the 
 dove. . . . 
 
 Of this character, then, I may safely say, produce any 
 parallel who can. If the literature of centuries has given any 
 equal personification of wisdom and goodness, let it be made 
 to appear. Even with this model before the eye for ages, 
 what approach has been made to a similar, not to say to a 
 superior, ideal ? 
 
 The character of Jesus Christ satisfies every demand of 
 our moral nature. Important as external testimony is in its 
 place and for other ends, here is a point where we require 
 no external testimony. The moral glory of such a character 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 239 
 
 shines by its own self-evidencing light. Here there is an 
 analogy between moral conclusions and judgments of taste. 
 Whatever share the understanding may have in adjusting and 
 presenting the objects, the inward faculty judges immediately. 
 Whatever the beautiful object may be, a rose, a Parthenon, or 
 a faultless human countenance, our inward approbation is 
 immediate. Nor are our moral judgments less direct. Here 
 we apply not bare logic, but the determinations of intuitive 
 reason, the utterances of our sublimest instincts, promptly and 
 unhesitatingly accepting a given character as good or evil. 
 
 It is on these grounds that we yield our love, upon the 
 perception of excellence, in all the tenderest relations of life. 
 And the decision is all the stronger, quicker, and less fallible, 
 in proportion to the exquisite harmony and perfection of the 
 object, as light is most undeniable in the effulgence of the sun. 
 The Lord Jesus Christ commands our assent, and overwhelms 
 us into admiration. Here is the great argument which has 
 carried the citadel of a thousand unlettered hearts, while 
 neither they nor we can fully translate it into the terms of 
 cold logic. 
 
 So viewed, the representation of Christ in the New Testa- 
 ment is the greatest moral lesson ever given to mankind, 
 infinitely surpassing all the ratiocination of the schools, and 
 all the systematized precepts of ethics, being virtue reduced 
 to the form of tangible action, and offered to us with the 
 reality of life. 
 
 THEODORE PARKER. 
 
 [Discourse on Religion. New York: 1S76 (fourth edition). Pp. 281, 285, 2S7, 343.] 
 
 In estimating the character of Jesus, it must be remembered 
 that he died at an age when a man has not reached his fullest 
 vigor. The great works of creative intellect, the maturest 
 products of man, all the deep and settled plans of reforming 
 the world, come from a period when experience gives a wider 
 field as the basis of hope. Socrates was but an embryo sage 
 
240 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 till long after the age of Jesus. Poems and philosophies that 
 live, come at a later date. Now, here we see a young man, 
 but little more than thirty years old, with no advantage of 
 position ; the son and companion of rude people ; born in 
 a town whose inhabitants were wicked to a proverb ; of a 
 nation, above all others, distinguished for their superstition, 
 for national pride, exaltation of themselves, and contempt for 
 all others; in an' age of singular corruption, when the sub- 
 stance of religion had faded out from the minds of its anointed 
 ministers, and sin had spread wide among a people turbulent. 
 oppressed, and down-trodden ; a man ridiculed for his lack 
 of knowledge, in this nation of forms, of hypocritical priests, 
 and corrupt people, falls back on simple morality, simple 
 religion, unites in himself the sublimest precepts and divinest 
 practices, thus more than realizing the dream of prophets and 
 sages ; rises free from so many prejudices of his age, nation, 
 or sect ; gives free range to the Spirit of God in his breast ; 
 sets aside the law, sacred and time-honored as it was, its 
 forms, its sacrifice, its temple, and its priests ; puts away the 
 doctors of the law, subtle, learned, irrefragable, and pours out 
 doctrines beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, and true 
 as God. 
 
 That mightiest heart that ever beat, stirred by the Spirit 
 of God, how it wrought in his bosom! What words of rebuke, 
 of comfort, counsel, admonition, promise, hope, did he pour 
 out ! words that stir the soul as summer dews call up the 
 faint and sickly grass. What profound instruction in his 
 proverbs and discourses! what wisdom in his homely sayings, 
 so rich with Jewish life ! what deep divinity of soul in liis 
 prayers, his action, sympathy, resignation! 
 
 Rarely, almost never, do we see the vast divinity within 
 that soul, which, new though it was in the flesh, at one step 
 goes before the world whole thousands of years ; judges the 
 race ; decides questions for us we dare not agitate as yet. and 
 breathes the very breath of heavenly love. The Christian 
 world, aghast at this venerable beauty in the flesh, transfixed 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 241 
 
 with wonder as such a spirit rises in his heavenly flight, veils 
 its face, and says, " It is a God." Such thoughts are not lor 
 men ; the life betrays the Deity. 
 
 Blessed be God that so much manliness has been lived 
 out, and stands there yet, a lasting monument to mark how 
 hieh the tides of divine life have risen in the human world I 
 It bids us take courage and be glad ; for what man has done, 
 he may do, yea more. 
 
 Jesus, there is no dearer name than thine, 
 
 Which Time has blazoned on his mighty scroll. 
 No wreaths nor garlands ever did intwine 
 
 So fair a temple of so vast a soul. 
 There every virtue sets his triumph-seal ; 
 
 Wisdom conjoined with strength and radiant grace, 
 In a sweet copy heaven to reveal, 
 
 And stamp perfection on a mortal face. 
 Once on the earth wert thou, before men's eyes. 
 
 That did not half thy beauteous brightness see ; 
 E'en as the emmet does not read the skies. 
 
 Nor our weak orbs look through immensity. 
 Once on the earth wert thou, — a living shrine. 
 Wherein conjoining dwelt the good, the lovely, the divine. 
 
 Here was the greatest soul of all the sons of men ; a man 
 of genius for religion; one before whom the majestic mind of 
 Grecian sages, and of Hebrew seers, must veil its face. Try 
 him as we try other teachers. They deliver their word ; find 
 a few waiting for the consolation, who accept the new tidings, 
 follow the new method, and soon go before their teacher, 
 though less mighty minds than he. Such is the case with 
 each founder of a school in philosophy, each sect in religion. 
 Though humble men, we see what Socrates and Luther never 
 saw. But eighteen centuries have passed since the tide of 
 humanity rose so high in Jesus. What man, what sect, what 
 Church, has mastered his noblest thought, comprehended his 
 method, and fully applied it to life ? . . . 
 
 Has the New Testament exaggerated the greatness and 
 
242 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 embellished the beauty of Jesus ? Measure his religious 
 doctrine by that of the time and place he lived in, or that 
 of any time and place, — yes, by the doctrine of eternal truth. 
 Consider what a work his words and deeds have wrought in 
 the world ; that he is still the way, the truth, and the life, to 
 millions ; that he is reckoned a God by the mass of Christians, 
 his word their standard of truth, his life the ideal they see too 
 far above them, in the heavens, for their imitation ; remember 
 that though other minds have seen farther, and added new 
 truths to his doctrines of religion, yet the richest hearts have 
 felt no deeper, and added nothing to the sentiment of religion, 
 have set no loftier aim, no truer method than his, of perfect 
 love to God and man ; and then ask, " Have the Evangelists 
 overrated him ? " We can learn few facts about Jesus ; but 
 measure him by the shadow he has cast into the world, no, 
 by the light he has shed upon it ; not by things in which 
 Hercules was his equal, and Vishnu his superior. Shall we 
 be told, such a man never lived ; the whole story is a lie ? 
 Suppose that Plato and Newton never lived ; that their stor)- 
 is a lie. But who did their works, and thought their thoughts? 
 It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have 
 fabricated a Jesus ? None but a Jesus. 
 
 HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS. 
 
 [Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine. New York : i860. P. 327.] 
 
 In Jesus Christ there broke into the world a mighty and 
 shaping influence, a holy will, a spiritual sovereignty, an 
 illuminating, warning, inspiring principle of mingled thought, 
 affection, and volition, which was, among the other moral and 
 spiritual influences at work upon the world of feeling and 
 oj^inion, what the mighty Gulf Stream is among the other 
 currents of the ocean, — changing the temperature of the most 
 distant seas, ameliorating the climates of far-off shores, and 
 modifying the navigation and the commerce of the globe. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 243 
 
 ORVILLE DEWEY. 
 
 [Works. New York : 1870. Vol. i. p. 354. Vol. iii. pp. 76, 85, 86, 88.] 
 
 There are things that unite the moral suffrages of man- 
 kind, — honesty, integrity, disinterestedness, pity for the sor- 
 rowful, true love, true sanctity, self-sacrifice, martyrdom, and, 
 among them and above them all, the character of Jesus Christ. 
 Bad as the world is, yet all sects and classes and communities, 
 all infidels, Mohammedans, and heathen, have agreed, without 
 one single solitary whisper of contradiction, that this character 
 is a perfect example of true divine excellence. 
 
 The death of lesus becomes, to me, the one g-reat 
 revelation. I determine to know nothing else ; nothing in 
 comparison with it ; nothing is of equal interest. All the 
 glory of Christ's example, all the graciousness of his purposes, 
 shines most brig-htlv on the cross. It is the consummation 
 of all, the finishing of all. The epitaph of Jesus is the epit- 
 ome of Christianity. The death of Jesus is the life of the 
 world. 
 
 Jesus knew, if he were lifted up, he w^ould draw all men 
 to him. And how draw^ all men ^ Plainly, in sympath}-, in 
 imitation, in love. He designed to speak to all ages, to touch 
 all the high and solemn aspirations of unnumbered millions 
 of souls ; to win the world to the noble spirit of self-sacrifice, 
 to disinterestedness and fortitude and patience, to meekness 
 and candor and gentleness, and forgiveness of injuries. This 
 is the heroism of Christianit}'. In these virtues, centres all 
 true glory. This did Jesus mean to illustrate. His purpose 
 was to turn off the eyes of men from the power, pride, and 
 ambition and splendor of the world, to the true grandeur, 
 dignity, and all-sufficing good of love, meekness, and disinter- 
 estedness. And how surely have his purposes and predictions 
 been accomplished ! A renovating power has gone forth from 
 him upon the face of the whole civilized world, and is fast 
 speading itself to the ends of the earth. And one emphatic 
 
244 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 proof of this is, that the cross, before the stigma of the vilest 
 crimes, has become the emblem of all spiritual greatness. 
 
 What a peculiarity was there in the character of this 
 wonderful Being, the rejected, the scorned, the scourged, the 
 crucified ! And yet no being was ever so considerate towards 
 the faults of his friends, as he was towards the hostility of his 
 very enemies ; no being was ever so kindly compassionate in 
 spirit, so habitually even and cheerful in temper, so generous 
 and gracious in manner. I cannot express the sense I have 
 of his equanimity, of his gentleness, of the untouched beauty 
 and sweetness of his philanthropy, of the unapproached great- 
 ness of his magnanimity and fortitude. He looked through 
 this life with a spiritual eye, and saw the wise and beneficent 
 effect of suffering. He looked up with confiding faith to a 
 Father in heaven ; he looked through the long and blessed 
 ages beyond this life ; and earth, with all its scenes and 
 sorrows, shrunk to a point amidst the all-surrounding infinity 
 of truth and goodness and heaven. 
 
 EDWIN HUBBELL CHAPIN. 
 
 [Living Words: Sermons. Boston: i860. Pp. roS. 143.] 
 
 Life is the greatest thing that could be given to us. It is 
 the greatest thing which man can communicate to his fellow- 
 man, when he enlarges in any way his life, — gives him a new 
 faculty. When the artist finds new beauty ; when a new fact 
 is discovered ; when Galileo turns his leaden tube to the 
 skies, and sees the phases of Venus and the satellites of 
 Jupiter ; when Columbus returns with tattered sails to bring 
 the glory of a new world ; when Cuvier reads the earth in its 
 mineralogy and its animal structure, passing from fibre to 
 fibre, from organ to organ, until he reaches the highest truth; 
 whenever human ])hilanthropy gives new utterance to the 
 divine love, — it adds to the life of humanity, and contributes 
 the greatest thing a man can eive to the human race. Christ 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 245 
 
 has enlarged it more than all. He has given the whole soul 
 life. He has brought it into infinite communion with the 
 ?\'ither. He has made the eternal world real to us. 
 
 Before the advent of Jesus, something was needed by 
 humanity, and sought for, which it could not obtain itself. 
 It is this desire, this want, that sighs wistfully from the great 
 heart of heathenism. It is this that heaves up in broken 
 longings from among the symbols of a declining worship. 
 It is this that clouds with dissatisfaction the glory of the oracle, 
 and strips the veil from the beautiful deceits of mythology. 
 It is this that breathes in snatches of fragmentary music, 
 wandering as if in search of the full harmony. It was because 
 of this that philosophy struggled, but could not attain ; and 
 the wisest intellects groped among strange splendors and 
 awful shadows. It was this that made the world look, at the 
 time Christ came, like a world in eclipse, an exhausted world, 
 a world of orphanage. He filled a great want, which until 
 then was unsatisfied. He realized an ideal, which until then 
 was incomplete. He imparted a power to the soul, which 
 until then it did not possess. 
 
 JOHN TULLOCH. 
 
 [The Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of Modern Criticism. Cincinnati : 
 
 1865. Pp. 205-208.] 
 
 There is no religion whose interest centres in the person 
 and character of its founder in the same degree as in Chris- 
 tianity. Christ is Christianity. In him are all its truths, all 
 its motives, all its glory, summed up. He is the Alpha and 
 the Omega ; the embodiment of all it teaches, all it prescribes, 
 all it promises. In this respect, it differs entirely from Moham- 
 medanism, or Buddhism, or any other religion which has 
 largely influenced the world. They rest upon many influ- 
 ences : Christianity rests, above all, on Christ. It is the 
 spiritual beauty and perfection of his character which has 
 
246 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 given it the hold it has upon the intelHgence of the most 
 intelHgent nations of the world, which has given it the sway 
 it has over the most spiritual and exalted souls that have ever 
 lived in the world. The character of Mohammed was by no 
 means an important element in the influence exercised by his 
 religion. The character of Sakya Mouni, pure and noble and 
 self-denying as it may have been, was never a living, consist- 
 ent, and intelligible reality to the millions who submitted 
 themselves to his doctrines or institutions. Both characters 
 may be quite obscured or forgotten, and yet the religions 
 which they founded survive and maintain their force. They 
 are the religions of peoples governed by institutions and 
 traditions, and not by character ; by the power of will at best, 
 and not by the attraction of love. Let it be admitted that 
 there are nations to whom Christianity has also become little 
 more than an external influence, — an institution, — which 
 claims their obedience, rather than a moral power which in- 
 stinctively sways their hearts ; to whom the character of Christ 
 is hidden behind the forms and traditions that have gathered 
 around his name : it remains true, nevertheless, that this 
 character is the great motive power of a living Christianity 
 everywhere, as it was the great motive power of its original 
 progression. And it is no less true that Christianity would 
 wholly fail as a religious influence, were this character to lose 
 its lustre. It does so proportionally wherever the externalities 
 of religion darken the spiritual ideal. 
 
 ROBERT LAIRD COLLIER. 
 
 [Meditations on thk Essence ok Christianity, lioston : 1876. Pp. 58, 59.] 
 
 We have no higher idea of man than Christ is, and no 
 higher idea of God than Christ has revealed. He was the 
 revelation himself, finitely ; the essence of this is in him. 
 the expanse of this was God. Indeed, Christ seemed " empty 
 of all save God." He was of God, accordinq^ to his measure, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 247 
 
 which, nevertheless, had the Hmitations of humanity and 
 hniteness. He was all that a perfect man could be. In his 
 perfection he was like God, in his limitation he was like man. 
 Christ is the light of the world. Rising in the East, this 
 sun has girdled the earth, and lighted up all zones with its 
 own splendors. As the world has not yet conceived a more 
 perfect pattern, it has not asked for one, and will not whilst 
 it remains true, as now, that man knows no holy desire 
 unsatisfied, no spiritual want unmet, no immortal aspiration 
 unfulfilled, in Christ our Lord. 
 
 THOMAS STARR KING. 
 
 [Christianity and Humanity. Boston: 1877. Pp- 37: 38, 43-45.] 
 
 Jesus walked in Galilee with fishermen, but he talked to 
 the universal soul. He sat on the hillside near Capernaum, 
 but his sermon was preached to all future generations of men. 
 He conversed with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well ; but he 
 whispered there the truths of God's spirituality and of uni- 
 versal worship into the ear of the race. He narrated a story 
 to a Jewish lawyer ; but it was the world that hearkened, and 
 treasured the picture of the good Samaritan as the ideal of 
 duty. He partook of a simple meal with twelve humble 
 friends; and the penitent, the bowed, the weary, the bereaved 
 of all nations and outstretching centuries, were dimly arranged 
 around that board. His office was the highest to scatter 
 superstitions that hung between the heavens and human eyes, 
 to quicken the religious sentiment of the world by his breath, 
 to bring the race together in a common worship of the Father, 
 and to publish such a mercy hidden in the skies, that penitence 
 should be quickened in the hearts of men, and a filial life 
 take the place of selfishness and sin, . . . 
 
 Where, then, is there another name that can stand so high? 
 Must it not of necessity rise over all others, as the world's 
 greatest practical benefactor, source of its best institutions. 
 
248 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 author of its noblest liberties, purifier of its homes, quickener 
 of its hopes, inspirer of its highest happiness, regenerator of 
 its loves ? . , . 
 
 Intellect is not our highest endowment. Imagination is 
 not our crowning faculty. Every form of genius is inferior 
 to conscience, to the heart, to faith, sympathy, and love. If 
 heaven is to open to us, it must be through the deep, warm, 
 holy sentiments of humanity. Here Christ is highest. Here 
 his name vaults over every name. Those qualities that make 
 our humanity translucent with beams from the Infinite, — per- 
 fect moral truthfulness piercing through all mists of passion 
 to what is pure, complete conformity to conscience and will, 
 undoubting faith in God, unfaltering heroism, prayerful reli- 
 ance upon the Infinite, and love gushing full and steadily 
 towards men from a hallowed heart : were not these elements 
 of the soul of Jesus ? — these his real transfiguration as our 
 spiritual eyes behold him, in splendor more divine than that 
 which invested his form on Mount Tabor, as though they 
 were woven of the pure light which is the effluence of God ? 
 What name offers itself against his in challenge of his spir- 
 itual supremacy ? In meekness and in majesty, in strength 
 and in trust, in service and in royalty, in pity and in search- 
 ing severity, in love for man and in dear devotion to his high- 
 est good, in relation to all or any of the qualities that interpret 
 the compassion, the justice, and the holiness of God, or that 
 reveal the spiritual beauty and worth of man, what name 
 before Jesus rises to any rivalry ? What name since, that is 
 eminent among the saints and the illustrious of the world's 
 heroes of goodness, does not count it the highest glory to be 
 considered his disciple ? 
 
 His name must be the highest, because the desert, and his 
 interview with Nicodemus, and his merciful healings, and 
 his nights of prayer, and his brotherly communings with the 
 lowly, and his quickening compassion for the outcast, and his 
 humility at the last supper, and his lonely fidelity in Geth- 
 semane. and his spiritual royalty before Pilate, and his last 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 249 
 
 petition for his murderers on the cross, are the points in 
 human history where the highest quaHties belonging to the 
 divine irradiate our nature, — hostihty to evil, loyalty, good- 
 ness, pity for the fallen, and love conquering all malice and 
 revenge. His name is the highest as the personal utterance 
 of what is highest as qualities in the spiritual world and in 
 the nature of God. 
 
 LUTHER T. TOWNSEND. 
 
 [The God-Man. Boston : 1872. Pp. 392 et seq."] 
 
 Jesus arrayed moral and religious laws into such new and 
 marvellous combinations, that men who had gone to sleep 
 under formalities, finding themselves suddenly shaken by the 
 arm, woke up, and looked upon a new sunshine in a new 
 world. He surprised and astonished men at every turn ; nay, 
 more. Do not his ideas and expressions continue to thrill 
 with supreme admiration us even, upon whom the ends of the 
 earth, with all their culture and refinement, have come ? 
 
 And, what is no less remarkable, Jesus appears at all times 
 to hold much more in reserve than is expressed. The most 
 august composure, which cannot exist without conscious 
 strength unexpended, almost untried, seemed ever to attend 
 him. He was composed before vast multitudes of all classes, 
 and even when confronting the passions of angry men, as 
 if twelve legions of angels awaited his command. 
 
 Again, Jesus, as a teacher, was not modest, as the term 
 is employed among men, nor yet vain. Moses, Zoroaster, 
 Socrates, Plato, and even Mohammed, were modest : they 
 put themselves in the background, never represented them- 
 selves as perfect examples, and spoke, upon personal admis- 
 sion, the words of others, not their own. 
 
 Jesus possessed such severity when deserved, so great 
 pity when in presence of human evil, want, and sorrow, such 
 plainness and delicacy, such grandeur and gentleness, such 
 
2 50 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 love, patience, purity, perfection, and majesty, and all these 
 qualities were so admirably blended, that the world has long 
 since ceased to look tor their like. 
 
 Consider this thought for a moment : He taught more 
 and better religious truth, during a ministry of three years, 
 than all who have preceded him. So exhaustive was he in 
 the treatment of his subjects, that the world's morality and 
 theology no longer constitute progressive sciences. Men are 
 henceforth to expound and modify existing formulae, but can 
 advance not one step beyond the revelations he made. 
 
 His eloquence, — almost the only example of native elo- 
 quence the world has ever seen, — though eminently persua- 
 sive and thrilling, was never rhetorical or emotional. He 
 spoke : the world is listening to-day. because his sentiments 
 were the embodiment of sublime simplicity, full of charm, 
 and as free from vagaries and abstractions, scholasticisms and 
 technicalities, as the blush of June or the golden draper)- of 
 an October morning, — 
 
 " Which they may read who bind the sheaf, 
 Or build the house, or dig the grave, 
 Or those wild eyes which watch the wave 
 In roarings round the coral reef." 
 
 JOHN STUART BLACKIE. 
 
 [Four Phases of Morals: Socrates, Aristotle, Christfanitv, Utilitarianism. 
 
 Edinburgh: 187 1. Pp. 247, 248.] 
 
 Had Socrates not lived and died with visible power and 
 effect before men, the existence of these schools, fathered by 
 this great teacher, would have been impossible. A person is 
 the necessary nucleus round which all social organisms form 
 themselves. But the personality of Socrates was a much less 
 important element in the formation of the Socratic schools 
 than that of Christ was in the formation of the Christian 
 Church. Socrates was only a teacher; one who, like other 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 251 
 
 teachers, might in time create disciples as wise as, perhaps 
 wiser than, himself. Christ was a Redeemer, whose function 
 as such could be performed by no vicar, and transmitted to 
 no successor. The one was a help and a guide ; the other, a 
 foundation of faith, and a fountain of life. Socrates taught 
 his disciples to become independent of him, and rely on 
 their own perfected reason. From Christ his disciples always 
 derived nourishment, as the branches from the vine. And 
 if the relation of Christ to his disciples, conceived only as a 
 living Saviour, walking on the earth, was so much closer than 
 that of Socrates to his disciples, how much more intimate does 
 the relation become when he, who lived and died to redeem 
 humanity from sin, rose from the dead as a living guaranty 
 that all who walked in his ways should follow up their redemp- 
 tion from sin by a speedy victory over that yet stronger 
 enemy, death ! 
 
 NAPOLEON ROUSSEL. 
 
 [The Christ of M. Renan and the Christ of the Gospels. London : 1864. Pp. 
 
 166-168, 179, 182, 183, 1S5.] 
 
 What, then, are the moral principles of Jesus Christ? 
 And, first, what are his principles on the subject of veracity ? 
 Is man, in this matter, entitled to the use of different weights 
 and measures, according as he lives in the East or in the 
 West ? Is he at liberty to regulate himself by the rule of 
 honesty adopted by his race and the age in which he lives ? 
 Does Jesus know any thing of the theory of Oriental sin- 
 cerity ? Does he admit that the end justifies the means ? 
 Will he say with M. Renan, "There exists no broad founda- 
 tion which is not laid in legends? The only guilty party 
 is the humanity which desires to be deceived " ? Will he allow 
 the concealments and the mental reservations which are sanc- 
 tioned by that too notorious society which bears too beautiful 
 a name? In a word, will Jesus authorize divers sorts ot 
 truthfulness, divers kinds of convenient affirmations? No; 
 
252 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Jesus has but one word for all. His rule is admirably simple ; 
 it is a golden rule, a divine rule, a rule we may challenge all 
 the philosophers to surpass or even to equal: " Let your com- 
 munication be yea, yea ; nay, nay ; for whatsoever is more than 
 these cometh of evil." Noble and impressive maxim, which 
 bears in itself the seal of its divinity ! 
 
 But did Jesus obey this precept of perfect integrity? 
 Yes; always, and everywhere. Follow him from Jerusalem to 
 Gethsemane. and from Gethsemane to the Sanhedrim, you will 
 find him perfectly calm and truthful. Whether it be necessary 
 to assert his divine mission, or to brave a danger, he does 
 both with the same simplicity. " Who is the Son of God, 
 that I might believe on him?" asks the man born blind. " It 
 is he that talketh with thee," answ^ers Jesus. The soldiers 
 search for him in the garden, that they may take him before 
 the tribunal : he comes to meet them, and says, " I am he." 
 "Art thou the Son of God?" ask the priests who seek to 
 crucify him. "You have said," he replies; "I am." "Art 
 thou a king, then?" asks Pilate. Again Jesus replies, "I 
 am." Neither hope nor fear, neither honor nor shame, can 
 alter his word : it is ever his own " Yea, yea." If there be 
 one conviction stronger than another forced upon the reader 
 of the Gospels, it is this : when Jesus speaks, he has no after- 
 thought ; he speaks the truth, the whole truth. Unbelievers 
 may accuse him of ignorance, of prejudice, of provincialism, 
 but never of falsehood. 
 
 What conclusion are we to draw from this ? Not that 
 Jesus was the Son of God, but that he believed himself to be 
 so. Whatever else may be questioned, his sincerity must not 
 be doubted. He said often and in many ways, " I am the 
 Son ot God." Let it be confessed that he believed he spoke 
 the truth. Jesus, then, either was the Son of God, or else 
 he was a madman ! There is no other alternative. Rut how- 
 are we to reconcile this madness with these calm words, these 
 profound thoughts, these humble sentiments, this i)ure and 
 hoi)- lite ? Was it possible for a madman to conceive the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 253 
 
 soundest of moral systems, and specially to live consistentl)- 
 with the principles of this morality ? Is it likely that a mad- 
 man could be so wise as to surpass all mankind in virtue, and 
 that his insanity should be seen only in the name he assumed? 
 No ; M. Renan himself has said it : "If the madman walks 
 side by side with the inspired man, it is with this difference, 
 that the madman never succeeds." If, therefore, the success 
 of a moral enterprise be the test of wisdom, who was ever 
 w^ise as Jesus Christ ? 
 
 How deeply we feel that neither our own pen, nor that 
 of any uninspired man, can ever worthily reproduce the 
 character of Jesus Christ. After having so many times vainly 
 attempted it, we despair of success. Have our readers, for 
 instance, ever met with a head of Christ which has satisfied 
 them ? We never have. Artists and writers only give us 
 magnified men. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, all have our 
 passions, though we have not their genius. In Socrates and 
 Plato we discover the germs of our weakness, though they 
 are wiser than we. A St. Paul, an Augustine, and a Pascal 
 leave us far behind on the road to holiness ; yet w^e recognize 
 them, by means of their defects, as members of our poor 
 human family; and even were we disposed to be indulgent 
 towards them, their own confessions are there to correct us. 
 Thus, always and everywhere, man remains essentially man. 
 
 The Evangelists alone have made us conceive an ideal 
 which no man, whether in his life, or by his pen, has ever 
 reproduced. And if, as we may well suppose, their picture 
 is so far from the reality, as we are from their copy, what 
 must not the living Christ have been ? 
 
 Jesus resembles no other man ; he speaks and acts as 
 none of our kind ever spoke and acted. At first he surprises 
 us ; but as we contemplate him, our surprise changes into 
 admiration. The more we examine, the more we discover in 
 his words profound thoughts and lofty sentiments, which, till 
 then, had never entered our minds or our hearts. In the 
 midst of his superior world, and his superhuman atmosphere. 
 
254 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Jesus lives and breathes as in his own element. There he 
 moves freely ; he speaks without effort ; all is familiar to him ; 
 he is at home. Heaven is his country; holiness is his nature; 
 eternity is his life. His constant thought is about the king- 
 dom of God ; and he is solely occupied with the will of his 
 Father, and the sanctification of humanity. His feet scarcely 
 touch the earth ; his heart is ever in heaven. We feel that 
 he is a stranger to the petty affairs of the world ; even the 
 functions of a secular judge are beneath him ; possibly his 
 hand was never soiled by contact with money. He is simple 
 and humble, but grave. He never utters a jesting word, not 
 even a useless word, nor does he ever speak in order to dis- 
 pla\' his intellectual superiority. And, as a last noteworthy 
 feature. Jesus certainly wept, but we do not learn that he 
 ever laughed. Yet, he never forgot his disciples, nor ever 
 lost sight of the most remote generations of sinners that were 
 to come after him. His thoughts, like his love, embrace the 
 universe. Surely this is the Son of God. 
 
 Let but Jesus speak, and your attention is redoubled. 
 His maxims, by penetrating into your spirit, give you light ; 
 the more you study them, the more you find them beautiful 
 and brilliant with the light of truth. They are like the starry 
 heavens, which reveal to your earnest gaze new depths filled 
 with new lights, of which even the most dim is clear. More- 
 over, that which removes from you the fear of delusion is the 
 fact that all these marvels have, as their end and aim, not the 
 satisfaction of your curiosity, but the purification of your heart, 
 the raising of your mind, and the kindling of your devotion. 
 Yes, this is the test by which we prove the pure gold of the 
 character of Jesus Christ. It is not possible to contemplate 
 him without moral gain. The glow of life is communicated 
 from him to us; it pervades our being; it blesses and sancti- 
 fies us. Jesus is the spiritual sun that warms and vivifies our 
 souls. 
 
 Three hundred millions of men acknowledge Jesus Christ; 
 and the civilization of Christendom exceeds all others, both 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 255 
 
 in its extent and its depth. Pure morals, a mild legislation, 
 the raising of woman to her true standard, the freedom of 
 slaves, the relief of the sick, the helpless and the poor, the 
 brotherhood of nations, — these are things before our very 
 eyes, but only to be found in the Christian world. What we 
 ask, therefore, is this : Do all these things exist without 
 cause ? Do they date from yesterday ? If, in searching for 
 their origin, we must go back to the first century of our era, 
 shall we find them to have been spontaneous growths? Is 
 this transformation without parentage ? Let the divine mis- 
 sion of Jesus Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the 
 existence of the miracles, be denied ; will the void thus made 
 better explain the immense results of which we are witnesses, 
 than do the Evangelical histories ? Is Christianity the off- 
 spring of a dream ? Did it grow in a night ? Did humanity 
 wake up one morning, and find it already established in the 
 earth? Men are anxious to lessen the causes; but the smaller 
 these are, the more astoundinof do the results become. 
 
 The work of Christianity is before us, and the grandeur 
 of its origin is proved both by its nature and by its extent. 
 Its sources may be many, but they must be divine ; for man, 
 in his ability to change his own heart, never could have the 
 power to transform the hearts and lives of twenty generations. 
 
 CHARLES HARDWICK. 
 
 [Christ and Other Masters. London : 1874. Pp. 572, 573.] 
 
 Christians are conscious that in Christ are fully satisfied 
 the cravings of a spiritual hunger which religions of the world 
 may stimulate, but have no power to appease. While 
 Brahmans, in despair of the helpers whom their own imagina- 
 tion had created, were still dreaming of some future of 
 Avatara ; while the Buddhist, equally in North and South, 
 abandoned the original Buddha, and sought comfort now in 
 picturing to himself the distant paradise of Amitabha, " the 
 
256 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 unmeasured Light," and now in praying for the gracious 
 intervention of some Buddha of the future ; while the primi- 
 tive vision of the helper Sosiosh, dim and fluctuating at the 
 best, was blotted from the Persian mind entirely, or was fading 
 under the augmented splendor of the younger Mithra. — Christ, 
 and Christ alone, expected in the old econom)- and made 
 manifest in the new, the living, reigning, and historic Christ, 
 the brightness of the Father's glory and the first-born of a 
 human brotherhood, was everywhere imprinting on the world 
 an image of his love, which neither time nor space could 
 deaden. He lighteth every man by shining down into the 
 heart. He is the true sun, of which all heathen mediators are 
 but transient and confused parhelia ; for while Mithra, once 
 his mighty rival, and as such rejoicing in the name of '' the 
 Invincible." has left no traces, save in monumental sculptures, 
 of the homage rendered to him in the early centuries of our 
 era, Christ, the sovereign Lord of all, is going forward on his 
 peaceful conquest of the nations, the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and forever. 
 
 THEODOR CHRISTLIEB. 
 
 [Best Methods of counteracting Modern Infidelity. New York : 1874. P. 25.] 
 
 In the person of Christ you see a moral grandeur, in which 
 healthy eyes, at least, have been able to discover no blemish ; 
 an ideal of perfection, respecting which, even rationalistic 
 critics have confessed that all human standards vanished 
 before it. What, in view of this, is more reasonable than to 
 conclude that you, poor, fettered, but struggling spirit, unable 
 to free yourself, yet destined to the highest good, must, to 
 attain your destiny, enter into a personal and living commun- 
 ion with the only perfect One who has appeared in the history 
 of our race, — with Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of 
 man, the sin-destroyer and Redeemer of the world ? And this 
 is the sum and substance of our Christian faith and Christian 
 life. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 257 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. 
 
 [The History of the Jewish Church. London: 1S77. Pp. 472, 474.] 
 
 The Roman statesmen, the Grecian philosophers, the 
 Jewish rabbis, looked for nothing beyond the immediate 
 horizon ; but the Sibylline Mystics at Alexandria, the poets 
 at Rome, and the peasants in Syria, were wound up to the 
 expectation of " some beginning of a new order of the ages," 
 some hero " who from Palestine should govern the habitable 
 world," some cause in which the East should once more wax 
 strong. 
 
 Such an epoch was at hand, but unlike any thing that 
 either Greek or Jew of that time had conceived ; a new hero, 
 but unlike any character that in that age either Jew or Greek 
 expected. 
 
 What was that new birth of time ? What was to be the 
 remedy for the superstition, infidelity, casuistry, ambition, 
 impurity, miser^^ of the age ? Not a conqueror, not a philos- 
 opher, not a Pharisee, not a Sadducee, not a mere wonder- 
 working magician, not an ascetic, not a vast hierarchical 
 organization, not a philosophical system or elaborate creed, — 
 but an innocent child, an humble and inquiring boy; a man 
 " who knew what was in man," — full of sorrows, yet full also 
 of enjoyment; "who went about doing good," and "who 
 spake as never man spake ; " a homely, social, yet solitary 
 being, in whose transcendent goodness and truthfulness there 
 was revealed a new image of the divine nature, a new idea of 
 human destiny ; a teacher apart from the generation from 
 which he sprang, yet specially suited to the needs of that 
 generation ; a fulfilment of a longing expectation, yet a fulfil- 
 ment in a sense the reverse of that which was expected ; 
 Israelite, Oriental by race, but Greek in the wide penetration 
 of his sympathy, Roman in the majesty of his authority. 
 The world was, as it were, taken by surprise. All his teach- 
 ing abounded in surprises. But his own coming, his own 
 
258 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 self, was the greatest surprise of all ; and yet, when we reflect 
 upon it, we feel as if we ought not to have looked for any 
 thing else. 
 
 It was the arrival of an event which was but imperfectly 
 understood at the time, which has been but imperfectly under- 
 stood since ; which was, therefore, not exhausted then, and 
 is not exhausted now. 
 
 If ever there was a religion which maintained a continuity 
 with ancient materials or parallel phenomena, it was that 
 which avowedly came not to destroy, but to fulfil, the glories 
 of Judaism; not to exclude, but to comprehend, the aspirations 
 of all the races of mankind. 
 
 EPHRAIM PEABODY. 
 
 [The Saviour. Boston: 1858. Pp. 211, 112, 219.] 
 
 Christ stands before the world, not merely the image of 
 God, but the standard of perfect humanity. In him perfect 
 moral excellence is embodied, and by being embodied is made 
 distinct, clear, definite, to the world's eye. Henceforth the 
 world's ideas of moral excellence are as much more distinct 
 as would be one's conceptions of a work of art, who, having 
 read only some vague description of it in words, should after- 
 wards see it embodied in the chiselled and polished marble. 
 The fact that one perfect character has appeared where it 
 might be seen has cleared up and rendered definite the 
 world's notions of moral excellence. The passions of men, 
 seeking apology for indulgence, the customs of difierent 
 nations and ages, the conflicting theories of philosophers, — 
 all disturb and confuse and cloud over our notions of moral 
 excellences. 
 
 But, above these breakers and drifting clouds, the character 
 of Christ stands, and shines fixedly like a star. If we look 
 only around us on our voyage over life, instead of fixed land- 
 marks, we see only night and storm and breaking waves. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 259 
 
 We look upward, and there shines that constant, tranquil 
 light to guide us across the seas. Let one living, perfect 
 standard of excellence be raised ^loft so that all may see it, 
 and the world unconsciously measures itself by it. Some, 
 looking at that perfect example, revere and love, and through 
 reverence and love ascend towards it ; and others follow them. 
 All feel a gravitating power raising them upward. That ideal 
 standard gives a coloring to literature : it modifies philosophy, 
 gives directness to men's views of life and its objects, and 
 affects, more or less, all human institutions. 
 
 We have thus endeavored to state some of the reasons 
 that induce us to dwell on the character, rather than on the 
 nature, of Christ. However important it may be to have a 
 correct faith as to the nature of Christ, as to his metaphysical 
 constitution, we deem it of infinitely higher moment that we 
 should have just and abiding conceptions of his character. 
 Through his character, as through a glass, not darkly, we see 
 all those spiritual truths that it most concerns us to know. 
 Through his character, God, the moral governor, reveals him- 
 self. Through his character, the spirit of truth and of heaven 
 are made manifest. In his character we shall see the charac- 
 ter of heaven, that character towards which we must approach, 
 and with which we must have a true sympathy, or the happi- 
 ness of heaven cannot be ours. It is because of these reasons, 
 that we attach such importance to the Saviour's character. 
 We deem them of as much more importance than mere specu- 
 lations about his nature, as we deem a Christian character in 
 ourselves of more importance than any metaphysical specula- 
 tions about our own natures. The nature of Christ furnishes 
 for us little except matter for metaphysical speculation, but 
 his character is connected with our highest happiness on earth 
 and our holiest hopes of heaven. 
 
 It is because of this, that the apostles dwell so much on 
 the necessity of faith in Christ ; not faith in speculations about 
 his metaphysical constitution, not faith in some creed about his 
 nature, but faith in that which is the glory and crown of 
 
26o TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 his nature, faith in his moral excellence, faith that he was the 
 image and appointed manifestation of the Father, faith in his 
 truth, faith in his character, as the perfect standard of heavenly 
 excellence. 
 
 Therefore they require faith in Christ crucified ; because 
 on the cross, from amidst its scorn and agony, from amidst 
 the tumult of men below, and the darkened heavens above, 
 shone forth over the world that character with brightest beams. 
 Therefore would they ever carry us, not to his words alone, 
 but to himself: they would have us see him, follow him as our 
 benefactor, leader. Saviour, as that Star in the East, which 
 moves on, ever with steady light, to guide us to salvation. 
 
 JOSEPH BARKER. 
 
 [Jesus: A Portrait. Philadelphia: 1873. Pp.9, 10.] 
 
 There is evidently something most remarkable about 
 Jesus. No one that ever appeared on the earth has been 
 the subject of so much thought and so much talk. Books 
 have been written about him without end. And men seem 
 to be writing about him at present more eagerly than ever. 
 He filled the whole country of his birth with excitement 
 during his life ; and since his death, he has kept the world 
 at large in a ferment. His name and religion seem likely to 
 engage the thoughts and employ the tongues and pens of 
 mankind to the end of time. The most magnificent structures 
 have been raised to his honor, and the highest art has done 
 homage to his name. 
 
 The society which he formed is the wonder of the world. 
 Its peculiar constitution and wonderful history, its vast dimen- 
 sions and its mighty power, the incalculable service it has 
 rendered to mankind, and the multiplied efforts which it is 
 still making for the regeneration and salvation of the world, 
 fill one's mind with amazement. His friends are numberless, 
 and they are the best and most beneficent men and women 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 261 
 
 Upon earth. He has, at this moment, a name above every 
 name. He stands at the head of all the great worthies that 
 have ever adorned or blessed our race. The next in honor 
 on the roll of fame are his faithful followers. And the least 
 among- his followers rank higher than the highest of the 
 world's celebrities. 
 
 ATHANASE COQUEREL. 
 
 [Voices of the Church. London: 1S45. Pp. 78, 79, 107-109.] 
 
 No other moral revolution of which we have any record, 
 approaches in grandeur, in importance, or in duration, to the 
 influence of the Christian religion ; even its enemies concede 
 this. To use the expressive language of Holy Writ, "All 
 things became new." The pure knowledge of God, and of 
 the spiritual worship we should offer him ; the rooting-out 
 of all idolatry, and its revival rendered impossible ; the rela- 
 tions between man and God placed in their true light, and 
 the necessity of a reconciliation proclaimed ; the equality and 
 brotherhood of man given as the basis of a new social state ; 
 families restored to their primitive foundations, divinely insti- 
 tuted in the times of innocence, but forgotten in the Pagan 
 world and even amongst the Jews ; the value of human life 
 at last appreciated ; the tomb laid open, and disarmed of its 
 terrors ; immortality brought to light, and promised to man ; 
 peace of mind, forgiveness of injuries, charity, — these three 
 things, of the very names of which antiquity was ignorant ; 
 the rights of conscience re-established, and the broad way of 
 human perceptibility ever opened to our steps ; the glories, 
 the knowledge, the joys, the affections, of a purely spiritual 
 heaven calmly anticipated by the most humble and most 
 simple disciples of a crucified Saviour, — this, in a few words, 
 is the whole of Christianity ; for which, according to our 
 Christian faith, the whole of antiquity till the advent of Christ 
 was, under God, engaged in preparing ; which, since the birth 
 
262 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 of Christ, occupies eighteen centuries teeming with events, and 
 which in some degree constitutes their sole history; and which, 
 as to time to come, seized beforehand upon the whole of 
 futurity until the end of the world, and of eternity beyond. . . . 
 
 When one has thoroughly contemplated this world of sin 
 and selfishness and war, in its moral nakedness ; when one 
 has studied it well, not through the deceitful prism of a 
 system, but in the broad daylight of conscience and history, — 
 how can one help being struck, awed, and moved by traits of 
 character which form, and have been called, the incomparable 
 originality of Christ ? 
 
 Our adversary will contend that that is the Christian point 
 of view, and that w^e have by no means the right to take our 
 stand there in order to reply to him that it is proving the 
 question by the question itself, and certifying the faith by 
 the faith itself. No ; it is to take bne's stand in the centre 
 of conscience, which is his own as well as ours ; and according 
 to conscience, according to that reflected admiration which the 
 benignity and holiness of Jesus obtain not only from the reli- 
 gious sentiment which animates believers, but from the moral 
 sense which oueht to animate all mankind ; accordino- to 
 that instinctive admiration which made Clovis frankly regret 
 that he was not present at Jerusalem and Calvary with his 
 Franks, — the benignity and holiness can be only facts, and 
 not dreams : our world is too sinful for dreams so pure. 
 
 It has been said. Why dispute about the certainty of a 
 creation, or the excellence of the universe ? If there is a God, 
 there is a Creator. Let the Creator make you believe in the 
 creation ; let the infinite perfection of the Supreme Workman 
 make you believe in the excellence of his work. This reason- 
 ing is just, and is only a summary of the remarkable system 
 of optimism produced by the genius of Leibnitz. The vast 
 and prolound thoughts of this great man upon the work of 
 the Creator may be applied to the work of Christ : thus, 
 as the attributes of God demonstrate creation, so the virtues 
 of Christ prove Christianity. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 263 
 
 Jesus is the ideal of virtue, such as the human conscience 
 conceives it ; so perfect that all the efforts of the most deli- 
 cate conscience, the most fertile imagination, and the most 
 expansive charity, cannot add to it the least trait ; that from 
 circumstance to circumstance through all the Gospel, one 
 continually asks himself, but in vain, what Christ could possi- 
 bly have done otherwise, or better, than he did ; that, in a 
 word, to figure to one's self Christ more virtuous is a moral 
 impossibility. 
 
 But what forms an irresistible demonstration ao^ainst Dr. 
 Strauss and his deplorable doctrine is, in our opinion, that 
 Jesus, the ideal of virtue, is a practical ideal. His perfection 
 has nothing of that impossible heroism which the imagination 
 of poets, and even sometimes the impudent exaggerations of 
 moralists, attach to the models they exhibit ; his perfection 
 has nothing of that of heroes according to fable, or of angels 
 according to revelation ; his virtues are all human, and do 
 not quit the earth, or step out of the just proportions of 
 humanity. He is virtuous, as people may be in a world like 
 ours, in the interval comprised between the cradle and the 
 tomb. He never forgets, in his struggle with the wicked, in 
 the devotedness of his charity, in the most sublime flights of 
 his piety, even in his indignations, — he never forgets that 
 he had not taken the resemblance of ana-els, but the form of 
 a servant, and that he was made in all points like as we are, 
 yet without sin. Man amongst men, he was an Israelite 
 amongst Israelites, taking part in all the interests of his age 
 and nation, as well as in the worship of his country, keeping 
 so close to all of us, sons of Adam and his brethren, that he 
 condescends even to weep with mourners at the very moment 
 of a resurrection, as if to authorize, and sanctify at the same 
 time, our sorrows, our tears, and our hopes. 
 
 From this complete and continued absence of impossibility 
 in the virtues of Christ, there results to Christianity one advan- 
 tage which alone amongst all the religions of the world it 
 possesses, and will possess ; namely, that of having exhibited 
 
264 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 to the world a model which is the ideal of perfection, but 
 which is not inimitable ; which does not leave the sinner, who 
 is invited to follow this perfect model, the pleasing and 
 legitimate excuse, " I cannot." 
 
 When contemplating the virtues of Christ, we feel our- 
 selves in the presence of the ideal, but at the same time of 
 the possible. We admire, we extol, we worship ; we seek for 
 some holiness beyond this, but find none. We search in the 
 most sublime conceptions of human genius, for some virtue 
 more virtuous, some charity more charitable, an appearance, 
 a shade of devotion more generous ; but find none. All is 
 IN Christ. 
 
 HENRY BOYNTON SMITH. 
 
 [Faith and Philosophy. New York: 1877. Pp. 401, 402.] 
 
 The historic supremacy of Jesus is incontrovertible. It 
 is as real as religious life and faith. Christ can no more be 
 expelled from the course of history than the sun from the 
 circle of the sky. Scepticism about Christ is also scepticism 
 about history itself; unbelief in him is unbelief in the con- 
 trolling ideas by which men have been inspired, and in the 
 chief objects for which men have hitherto lived. And such 
 is the mysterious fascination which still issues from his trans- 
 cendent person, that even the incredulous are drawn to him 
 against their very will. He has power over them. To take 
 the veil from his form, is dimly felt like taking the veil from 
 the master of our fate, and reading the profoundest meaning 
 of our earthly life. 
 
 Here is the urn of destiny, and that urn holds no dead 
 ashes. His power over men is still the power of a living 
 personality. To every thoughtful mind, believing or un- 
 believing, he is the ideal of humanity, the son of man, and, 
 as no other, the very Son of God. Not to bow before his 
 matchless worth, is to be faithless to humanity, if not divinity 
 itself. His influence is the marvel of history. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 265 
 
 JOHN CUNNINGHAM. 
 
 [Scotch Sermons. New York: 1881. Pp. 46, 47.] 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth, by his teaching as well as by his life, 
 did much to manifest God. He emphatically declared his 
 spirituality. The idea was not altogether new ; but in every 
 religious system of the then world, it was forgotten. And, 
 having declared that God was a Spirit, he drew from it the 
 inevitable inference that all true worship must be spiritual, 
 and thus revolutionized the religions of the world. All places 
 and all times are alike holy. On Mount Gerizim or Mount 
 Moriah, in mosque or cathedral or meeting-house, by the fire- 
 side or in the field, on Saturday or on Sunday, there may be 
 worship, in spirit and in truth, of the spiritual God. Every as- 
 piration after goodness is worship. Thus in the words of Jesus, 
 as he sat weary and thirsty by Jacob's well, and conversed with 
 the Samaritan woman who had come there with her pitcher to 
 draw water, we get a view of divinity from which all the world 
 might learn something ; and we see no national deity, no sec- 
 tarian God, but the universal Spirit, the common Father of all 
 mankind. The Gentile idea of God was grievously wrong; the 
 Jewish idea was, in some respects, almost as far from the truth; 
 but the Jewish and Gentile ideas were alike corrected in the 
 sublime virtues and blessed lessons of Jesus the Saviour. 
 
 J. ALLANSON PICTON. 
 
 [The Mystery of Matter. London: 1873. Pp. 437, 438.] 
 
 A DISTINGUISHED man once ventured the assertion that 
 Marcus Antoninus was a nobler ideal of human character than 
 is the object of Christian reverence. To which a professed 
 positivist present replied, " He never heard that Marcus 
 Antoninus ever conceived of saving a world by the sacrifice 
 of himself." The remark was just. It is precisely the moral 
 grandeur of the purpose borne out by the spiritual power 
 
266 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 directed to its achievement, which puts the person and the 
 work of Christ simply beyond all rivalry, and assures us, if 
 it were necessary, of the substantial reality of a character 
 impossible of invention. But this purpose to save a world 
 by the sacrifice of himself is surely traceable to his profound 
 consciousness of God as involving both self and the world. 
 I do not by these last words presume to represent the Saviour 
 of mankind as distinctly entertaining or directly teaching any 
 pantheistic philosophy. His consciousness dwelt beyond the 
 range of any mere philosophy, — was too rich in the possession 
 of God to need it. I only mean that he who felt the Father 
 dwelling in him, and watched the Father tinting the lilies, 
 feeding the ravens, sending rain on the evil and the good, 
 must have viewed all things in the light of God ; and in 
 spending himself upon the moral elevation of the w'orld, he 
 was, as it were, consciously dissolving self in God's glory. 
 
 WILLIAM BATHGATE. 
 
 [Christ and Man. London: 1S65. Pp. 2S0, 281.] 
 
 What we hold to be next to an impossibility in the life 
 of a man of extraordinary virtues, we hold to be utterly 
 impossible in the life of Christ, in view of the transcendent 
 nature and measure of his moral worth. We hold that 
 the acknowledged delicacy and beauty and strength of the 
 Redeemer's character was such — no matter in the mean time 
 whether you ascribe that character to the union of divinity 
 and humanity, or to the influence of God on the human nature 
 of Jesus — that the deceptions and aberrations ascribed to him 
 as a professed worker of miracles are palpably inconsistent with 
 the supposition of the reality of that character. We could 
 sooner believe that the great orb of day could be self-eclipsed 
 at noon once a week, than that such glory of character could 
 belong to a being who could deliberately quench it every now 
 and then in accommodation to the prejudices of the age. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 267 
 
 And then, on the supposition that both Christ's moral worth 
 and these aberrations were real, there must have been not 
 only occasional but daily incongruity and contradiction in his 
 life. He would need to keep up to an amazing extent a life 
 of holiness and a systematic continuous series of deceptions. 
 Here is the impossibility, we maintain, intensified and enlarged 
 to the utmost degree. The professed miracles w^ere daily 
 things. His calm assumption that he was the Redeemer of 
 the w^orld w^as a daily thing. You must either accept both 
 the reality of the moral glor)^ of his human life and the reality 
 of the supernatural element in his person and acts, or deny 
 both. They were both true, or they were both feigned. The 
 morality of the false assumption is incompatible with the mo- 
 rality of the Sermon on the Mount. Pretension is incompatible 
 with the transparent truthfulness of the common life. 
 
 EDWARD A. WASHBURN. 
 
 [Christ: His Nature and Work. New York: 1S7S. Pp. 170, 172, 176, 192.J 
 
 If Christianity be the religion of the Son of God, it must 
 find its best proof in his character. It is not the lesser 
 miracles that prove him : it is he, the living miracle, who makes 
 us believe in them. 
 
 All the deepest ideas that the human craves as the end of 
 its knowledge, of God, of the conscience, of the nature of the 
 soul, of moral or social law, of the destiny of the race, are 
 summed up in his teachings. The intellect of the world has 
 acknowledged in him the highest master of wisdom. If we 
 measure the mind of Jesus Christ by any of the great thinkers 
 in science or letters, a Plato in pure thought, a Humboldt or 
 a Shakspeare, while we bow before their undying powder, not 
 one holds the same supremacy over the race. All schools of 
 Christian learning have grown out of his words. Nay. even 
 those who scout his authority are witnesses to his intellectual 
 mastery ; for they still sound the same problems that Chris- 
 
268 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 tianity opened, and waste their wit to shape a newer Gospel, 
 yet their systems wather, and his word does not pass away. 
 
 Where is the most unlettered man, who can only read his 
 Bible in his own mother tongue, to w^hom he does not give the 
 same light as to an Augustine or a Butler in his library? His 
 homely parables, his childlike teachings of God or duty, are a 
 daily bread of life. Place by the side of Jesus Christ all the 
 purest men who have won the homage of the race, a Confucius, 
 a Socrates, yet each has some blemish which mars his virtue, 
 and his highest ofrace has been a orow^th throup-h struo-orle. 
 Gather all of Christian name, even those w^ho came nearest 
 their Lord, in the first age, yet we know that human effort with 
 God's grace could make a John, a Paul, but not a Christ ; and 
 when we read the biography of the saintliest since, a Kempis, 
 a Fenelon, a Herbert, a Leighton, all are but single broken rays 
 of this w'hite liofht; all confess themselves sinful men, whose 
 goodness has been borrowed from their perfect Master. 
 
 We lead the doubter forth as we should the blind, who 
 should tell us there was no light from heaven, and bid him 
 feel the sun in its mid-day strength. We point him to this 
 living kingdom of Christ, which cannot pass away, because it 
 is built on the nature, and is large as the destiny, of mankind. 
 This is the evidence of his reliofion. This is the book of the 
 life of Christ. It begins with the Gospel of his birth. It is 
 written in the yet unfinished acts of all apostles, from a Paul 
 to an Augustine and a Luther, who have taught his truth ; 
 from the batdefields of the Church to the least servant of 
 the Master who has borne his cross ; from the library of the 
 scholar, the palace, the prison, the hospital, the highways and 
 the byways ; wherever this divine man has spoken to men of 
 his Father and their Father ; wherever he has healed the 
 penitent, and led the lost back to the way of life ; wherever 
 he has lifted the craftsman above his toil, has broken the 
 chain of the slave, has made rich and poor partakers of one 
 grace, and blessed the grave with this word of comfort, " I 
 am the resurrection," — all are his witnesses. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARRTJI. 269 
 
 SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. 
 
 [London: 1875 (fifth edition). Vol. ii. p. 4S7.] 
 
 The teaching of Jesus carried morality to the highest 
 point attained or even attainable by humanity. The influence 
 of his spiritual religion has been rendered doubly great by 
 the unparalleled purity and elevation of his own character. 
 Surpassing in his sublime simplicity and earnestness the 
 moral grandeur of Sakya Mouni, and putting to the blush 
 the sometimes sullied though generally admirable teaching 
 of Socrates and Plato, and the whole round of Greek 
 philosophers, he presented the rare spectacle of a life, so 
 far as we can estimate it, uniformly noble and consistent 
 with his own lofty principles, so that the " imitation of 
 Christ" has become almost the final word in the preaching 
 of his religion, and must continue to be one of the most 
 powerful elements of its permanence. 
 
 THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. 
 
 [July-October. London: 1S66. Pp. 422, 424.] 
 
 The character of the Lord has undergone a test which no 
 other has had to bear. His avowed aspiration was, beyond 
 measure, great, — to lead the Jews into the kingdom promised 
 by the prophets, and to shed abroad to Gentiles, to the ends 
 of the earth, the things which God had prepared for all alike. 
 In order to do this, the idea of that kingdom was purified and 
 raised. It was to be a kingdom, not of pomp, but of purity; 
 not of earth, but of heaven. Moreover, every step towards 
 that kingdom was associated not alone with the teaching, but 
 also with the person of the Teacher. He was the example 
 to imitate, the expositor of the law, speaking w^ith authority. 
 His sufferings and death were no private matter, but con- 
 cerned the welfare of the race. The apostles are our wdt- 
 
270 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 nesses of all this. They approach this whole system at first 
 with manifest repugnance. We may well 'believe that they were 
 men as spiritually minded, when Christ called them, as were to 
 be found amongst the Jews of their rank, age, and education. 
 Yet it was a visible kingdom that they wanted ; and as for a 
 Messiah who should become their king by eminence in humil- 
 ity (so to speak), and by love for all souls alike, and by 
 suffering, they not only did not expect such a one, but he 
 inverted all their expectations. For glory, humbleness ; for 
 an army, themselves, who never struck but one blow with the 
 sword, and then received a rebuke ; for a kingdom, judg- 
 ment at the bar of Caesar's deputy ; for a throne, the cross 
 of death. Their repellant dulness when these things were 
 first forced on their belief is pathetic. Nothing, of all 
 they tell us of Christ's plan, was approved by their pre- 
 possessions. They were poor men, but they had a great 
 stake upon the venture they had made ; for it is a fearful 
 thing for the good to spend the one life that is given 
 them upon a religious delusion. What do these witnesses 
 hand down to us ? Not so much asseverations that Christ 
 was perfectly holy, as a general picture of his life, which 
 makes, on all who read it, the impression of holiness. 
 What are the chief elements of holiness ? Great love, great 
 self-abandonment, avoidance of evil, even of the appearance 
 of it, and, above all, a constant sense of dependence on 
 and union with God, and a zeal for the doing of his work. 
 That the Evangelists never put these elements together, 
 but left us to do so for ourselves, adds, if possible, to the 
 weight of their testimony. They do not say, " Here is a 
 righteous man ; " but the facts that pass under their pens 
 produce, in generation after generation, the impression of 
 comi)lete holiness. 
 
 We do not say that no generation can produce an idea 
 somewhat higher than itself; but the fate of all human inven- 
 tions of this sort is, that by and by other human inventions 
 will surpass them. But what ideal have eii'hteen centuries 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 27 1 
 
 produced which has distracted men's attention from the Christ, 
 and drawn them to some other object ? At this moment the 
 person and character of Jesus is an object of even more inter- 
 est than it has ever been before. And while the miracles are 
 denied, and the dates of the Gospels disputed, each writer in 
 turn does homage, after his fashion, to the moral purity and 
 dignity of Christ. 
 
 Strauss concedes to him the " beautiful nature." Renan 
 calls him " demi-god," whereat M. Lassure may well ask, " Is 
 God divided?" Channing, a Unitarian, stands before this 
 unique character, and, abstracting his mind from former im- 
 pressions, tries to see it as a new phenomenon, and feels that 
 he is in the presence of one who spake as never man spake 
 before or since. Schenkel and Keim are far from a true con- 
 ception of Christ, but both admit that history has produced 
 no parallel. Schenkel, whose book is marred by a certain 
 democratic twang, says of Jesus, " He lived in Galilee, he 
 died in Jerusalem ; but he lives forever in the souls that 
 attain, through his word, to truth, to true piety, and to love." 
 Keim, a writer of higher strain, and with more of a true 
 historical spirit, admits that here is one whom history cannot 
 explain, and that the person of Jesus is a fact unique in the 
 history of the world. 
 
 After all the waves of criticism shall have passed over us, 
 we feel that this will remain, which criticism has not shaken, 
 — the admiration for the moral perfection of Jesus the Son 
 of God. The person of Christ, as Schaff has well said, " is 
 the miracle of history." The question about miracles can 
 afford to wait. Men are jealous of interference with the laws 
 of science. Be it so. Science makes the mistake of con- 
 founding the new with the impossible. In a world of minerals, 
 the first plant would be miraculous ; in a world of plants, the 
 first moving animal. Did an image of God's perfection make 
 known to men his divine presence in Palestine long ago? 
 Then, he, rather than any one act of his, is the miracle which 
 supersedes the laws which govern lower natures. It is hard 
 
2 72 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 to believe that Jesus rose from the dead ; it is harder to believe 
 that he said, with all his heart, " I am come to seek and to 
 save that which was lost." " Come unto me, all ye that labor 
 and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He himself is 
 more surprising than all that he appears to have wrought of 
 mastery over material laws. 
 
 SAMUEL COLCORD BARTLETT. 
 
 [BiRLioTHECA Sacra. Andover: 1868. Vol. xxv. p. 179.] 
 
 Christ has asserted, is asserting, his supreme ascendency, 
 his divine potency. Recall the time when Augustus sat on 
 the throne of the world, and Jesus lay in a Jewish stable, and 
 ask, where now is the Empire, and where is not the Church ? 
 He who declared, " I am the light of the world," has proved 
 his words, the words of truth and soberness, and himself 
 divine. He has been the light of nations, and the light of 
 men. What multitudes of renovated souls are clinging to his 
 work and person, — to his alone ! How he has gathered 
 round his track at last, all the high art and science and phi- 
 lanthropy, and now marshals the heavy battalions ! How he 
 rose over the Empire, and conquered its conquerors ! How 
 for fifteen centuries at least, the nations collided around the 
 cross, till those that followed the cross closest now lead the 
 world ! How Christ has brought woman up, and slavery down ! 
 How through ages of conflict, he has cheered his friends, and 
 agitated his foes ! How he has more and more stood forth 
 into the centre of literature and thought, till all the scholarship 
 of Germany starts up to answer that stupendous question : 
 " What think ye of Christ?" and the waves of that commotion 
 dash over the shores of England and France, and spread 
 across this Western Continent ! And how, through the very 
 jostlings of his opponents, that loud question Is now pushing 
 through all the ranks of society, and knocking at every man's 
 door, " What think ye of Christ ? " 
 
• ,,» 
 
POOL OF BETHESDA. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 273 
 
 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 
 
 [New York: 1877. Pp. 65, 66.] 
 
 Christ has been and now is beloved as no other human 
 beinof ever was. Others have been good men, true men, 
 benefactors of their race ; but when they died, their person- 
 ahty faded from the earth. Tell a Hottentot or a Zulu the 
 stor)^ of Socrates, and it excites no very deep emotion ; but 
 for eighteen hundred years, Hottentots, Zulus, South-Sea 
 Islanders, and savages, — men, women, and children in every 
 land, with every variety of constitutional habit, — have con- 
 ceived such an ardent, passionate, personal love for Jesus 
 of Nazareth, that they have been ready to face torture and 
 death for his sake. . . . 
 
 Jesus has been the one man of whom it has been possible 
 to say to all people, of all nations, all ages, and languages, 
 " whom having not seen ye love; in whom, though now ye see 
 him not, yet believing ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and 
 full of glory." 
 
 E. P. BARROWS. 
 
 [BiBLlOTHECA Sacra. Andover : 1870. Vol. xxvii. pp. 53, 54.] 
 
 Jesus was free from all stoicism or asceticism. He made 
 no war upon the genuine passions and affections of humanity, 
 but subjected them all to his higher spiritual nature ; in other 
 words, to the divine law. Except temporarily for meditation 
 and prayer, he never withdrew himself, nor encouraged his 
 disciples to withdraw themselves, from the cares and tempta- 
 tions of active life. He lived among men, ate and drank with 
 them, and made no show of austerity. His heavenly mind lay 
 not in the renunciation of God's gifts, but his maintaining his 
 affections constantly raised above the gifts themselves to the 
 divine Giver. His heavenly mind, therefore, like all his other 
 human qualities, was inimitable, and is propounded to all for 
 
2 74 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 imitation. His virtues are not the virtues of a king- upon a 
 throne, or a philosopher in his school, or a monk in his cell ; 
 but of a man moving among men in the sphere of common 
 life, and filling out common life with all the duties appropriate 
 to it. They are therefore available for the imitation of all 
 classes of men. We may boldly affirm that such a character 
 as that of Jesus of Nazareth could never have been conceived 
 of, had it never actually existed. 
 
 JAMES HENRY THORNWELL. 
 
 [Collected Writings. Richmond: 1871. P. 422.] 
 
 These two elements, love to God and love to man, which 
 the death of Jesus, considered as a sacrifice, expresses, consti- 
 tute the essence of virtue. They are the principles into 
 which every form of moral excellence may be ultimately 
 resolved. 
 
 The extent to which they pervade the character, and regu- 
 late the life, determines the moral worth of the possessor. 
 This degree is ascertained by the severity of the trials to 
 which they are exposed. In the sacrifice of Jesus, therefore, 
 we are to look for the measure of the intensity of his princi- 
 ples. We are to study his character in the light of sufterings. 
 We are to learn how much he loved God, and how much he 
 pitied man, from the cost of his piety and philanthropy to his 
 own soul. Tried by this standard, he stands without a rival. 
 
 R. BOS\A^ORTH SMITH. 
 
 [Mohammed and Mohammedanism. London: 1S74. P. 187.] 
 
 Mohammedanism, in spite of centuries of wars and mis 
 understandings, looks back upon the founder of our religion 
 with reverence only less than that with which the most devout 
 Christians regard him. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 275 
 
 So far from its being true, as is commonly supposed, that 
 Mohammedans regard Christ as Christians have too often 
 regarded Mohammed, with hatred and contempt, Sir Wilham 
 Muir remarks that devout Mussulmans never mention the 
 name Seyeddna Eesa, or our Lord Jesus, without adding the 
 words " on whom be peace." The highest honor that a 
 Mussulman can conceive is given to Christ in the grave 
 reserved to him by the side of the Prophet himself in the 
 great mosque at Medina. Mohammedans expect that he will 
 one day return to earth, and, having slain Antichrist, will 
 establish perfect peace among men. 
 
 FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE. 
 
 [The Atonement. Boston: 1867. Pp. 7-9.] 
 
 Jesus is the hero of all times and climes. So long as the 
 Christian world endures, his name will be the centre of his- 
 tory, and his sacrifice will draw all men to him. The relation 
 which other martyrs bear to us personally is distant and faint. 
 We honor the virtues they displayed ; we acknowledge the 
 good they accomplished ; but it is only indirectly and by infer- 
 ence that we feel ourselves personally indebted to their lives 
 and deaths. But the Christian believer feels towards Jesus 
 a personal obligation, as if the Saviour of the world had had 
 him distinctly in view, and had suffered with special reference 
 to him, as one who should be benefited by his ministry and 
 death. To the believing Christian, he is nearer than any 
 character in history is or can be. We are bound with him 
 in one bond, leagued in one interest, and that the central 
 interest of human life. 
 
 Nowhere but in Jesus has our nature reached so ostensibly 
 its true perfection ; and, but for him, we had not known what 
 that nature is in its possibility and its calling, its highest and 
 deepest capacity and strength. Many wise and good men 
 have blessed the world with their living and with their dying; 
 
276 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 heroes have poured their Hves on the battlefield, a free liba- 
 tion for their country's good ; confessors have given their 
 bodies to be burned, a willing sacrifice to truth ; sages have 
 received, in the solitude of their prisons, the cup of death : 
 but nowhere, as in him, has divinity incarnated itself. There 
 is none in whom the idea is so discriminated from earthly 
 circumstance, so lifted out of its environment and brought so 
 near to us, as in Christ. In him we behold, as in a mirror, 
 what manner of beings we are and behoove to be, our actual 
 and possible self. 
 
 In his virtues we behold our defects ; in his greatness, our 
 littleness ; our weakness in his streno;th. At the same time, 
 the qualities which shine forth in him reveal to us an inner 
 man, a Christ yet unformed in the depths of the soul, which 
 the contemplation of that historical Christ is fitted to unfold. 
 Thus he, in his moral elevation, draws after him all who, 
 " beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed 
 into the same image from glory to glory." 
 
 THE ECLECTIC REVIEW. 
 
 [July-December. London: 1864. Pp. 145, 146, 150, 151.] 
 
 The greatest miracle of Christianity is Christ himself. 
 This was always true, and every effort made to account for 
 this stupendous mystery of humanity only makes the miracle 
 more distinct. Criticism, before the life of Christ, is simply 
 foiled. The critic did not intend it so ; but not the less have 
 his cold-blooded achievements turned into acts of admiration 
 and hymns of praise. Humanly Christ will not be accounted 
 for. His presence on the earth, both in the history of his 
 own person, in the history of opinions about himself, and the 
 history of his Church, increases in marvellousness the more 
 intently the circumstances are surveyed. In the present day 
 it is increasingly felt that all religious controversies are con- 
 verging more and more daily around the person of Christ, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 277 
 
 — all questions relating to man's religious nature, his hopes, 
 his future life and destinies, the subtlest form of modern 
 heresy and speculation. Round the still and beautiful form 
 of the world's Redeemer, rage the fiercest conflicts of the 
 great casuists of the age. In our own time, almost every 
 form of intellectual strife, waged since the Master ascended, 
 finds itself renewed. The press abundantly shows that cold, 
 critical, sceptical intelligences can no more let alone the name, 
 the history, and the work of him who is to us the Son of 
 Mary and the Son of God, than can his most devoted disci- 
 ples. Every few years beholds some bold unbeliever, leading 
 on some new regiment, displaying some new banner as a 
 forlorn hope, attempting to scale the citadel we may well 
 call the Rock of Ages. Around that rock, in all directions, 
 lie the graveyards of heretics and unbelievers of nearly two 
 thousand years ; and amidst the crowd of graves and " bones 
 with us unto this day," here and there a solitary tombstone 
 recording the epitaph and the opinions of some one more 
 bold or presumptuous than the crowd of annihilated comrades 
 around him. It has been all in vain. Millions of arrows 
 have been hurled against that rock ; if they have touched 
 it, they have fallen harmlessly at its side. The arrow which 
 strained all the strength of the marksmen has left its object 
 unhurt. The greatest miracle of all time, we say, the great- 
 est miracle of Christianity especially, is Christ himself. 
 
 Let every other miracle reported of the Christian system 
 be disproved, and there still remains this, — that Christ has 
 furnished such infinite thouofht to men, such infinite refresh- 
 ment. He is not a past tense, even yet. He who enchains 
 cities, monarchies, and empires, whom kings and queens 
 followed through forests, thorns, and rocks, forsaking even 
 themselves for him, whom millions of souls have loved, and 
 those most who were the most wise and tender and thought- 
 ful and pure, even to the suffering of flames, and the disloca- 
 tion of bones, — he has so wrouo-ht himself into the life and 
 experience of the world, that millions of cathedrals, churches. 
 
278 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 and chapels have been reared to Ian the flames of affection 
 to him. The aid of science and the fine arts, of sculpture 
 and of painting, have been called to perpetuate love to him, 
 devotion celebrating and symbolizing it in a thousand ways ; 
 him, seen and believed in monuments, on mountain summits, 
 and by the roadsides, in cemeteries, in words by the beds of 
 the dying, in crosses on the crowns of kings, on the breasts 
 of soldiers, on the bosoms of Christian maidens, — so accom- 
 plishing those wonderful words, " I, if I be lifted up, will draw 
 all men unto me." Such recollections and thoughts as these 
 prevent any escape from the conclusion, — let scepticism and 
 criticism do what they will, — tJie greatest miracle in Chris- 
 tianity is Christ himself. 
 
 NEWMAN HALL. 
 
 [Sermons. New York : 1868. P. 11.] 
 
 There is no bond of union like that which unites us to 
 Christ. No attraction draws us so near to each other as that 
 which draws us all to the cross. Stronger than diplomacy, 
 more convincino; than aro^ument, a common love for the 
 Gospel, a common zeal in making it known, a common loyalty 
 towards our one common Brother, Saviour, Lord, will do more 
 to preserve our two nations in concord than all the arts of 
 self-interested politicians can avail to stir them up to mutual 
 strife. 
 
 For the sake of that international union which is so essen- 
 tial to the prosperity of both .countries and to the welfare 
 of the world, as well as for the interest of the souls of men 
 and the glory of Christ, let us, both in America and Great 
 Britain, maintain, in all its beautiful simplicity, the cardinal 
 doctrine of Jesus Christ and him crucified ; the great object 
 ol |jreaching, the great work of all the churches, being to 
 make known his name, and to secure for him the loving 
 homage of all hearts. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 279 
 
 GOLDWIN SMITH. 
 
 [Lectures on the Study of History. Oxford: 1865. Pp. 133-141.] 
 
 Christianity rests on one moral fundamental principle, as 
 the complete basis of perfect moral character ; that principle 
 being the love of our neighbor, another name for benevo- 
 lence. And the type of character set forth in the Gospel 
 history is an absolute embodiment of love both in the way 
 of action and affection, crowned by the highest possible 
 exhibition of it in an act of the most transcendent self- 
 devotion to the interests of the human race. This being the 
 case, it is difficult to see how the Christian morality can ever 
 be brought into antagonism with the moral progress of man- 
 kind ; or how the Christian type of character can ever be 
 left behind by the course of human development, lose the 
 allegiance of the moral world, or give place to a newly-emer- 
 ging and higher ideal. This type, it would appear, being 
 perfect, will be final. It will be final, not as precluding future 
 history, but as comprehending it. The moral efforts of all 
 ages, to the consummation of the world, will be efforts to 
 realize this character, and to make it actually, as it is poten- 
 tially, universal. While these efforts are being carried on 
 under all the various circumstances of life and society, and 
 under all the various moral and intellectual conditions attach- 
 ing to particular men, an infinite variety of characters, per- 
 sonal and national, will be produced ; a variety ranging from 
 the highest human grandeur down to the very verge of the 
 grotesque. But these characters, with all their variations, 
 will go beyond their source and their ideal, only as the rays 
 of light go beyond the sun. Humanity, as it passes through 
 phase after phase of the historical movement, may advance 
 indefinitely in excellence ; but its advance will be an indefi- 
 nite approximation to the Christian type. A divergence from 
 that type, to whatever extent it may take place, would not be 
 progress, but debasement and corruption. In a moral point 
 
28o TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 of view, in short, the world, may abandon Christianity, but 
 it can never advance beyond it. This is not a matter of 
 authority, or even of revelation. If it is true, it is a matter 
 of reason as much as any thing in the world. 
 
 There are many peculiarities, arising out of personal and 
 historical circumstances, which are incident to the best human 
 characters, and which would prevent any one of them from 
 being universal or final as a type. But the type set up in 
 the Gospels as the Christian type seems to have escaped all 
 these peculiarities, and to stand out in unapproached purity as 
 well as in unapproached perfection of moral excellence. 
 
 The good moral characters which we see among men fall, 
 speaking broadly, into two general classes, — those which excite 
 our reverence, and those which excite our love. These two 
 classes are essentially identical ; since the object of our rever- 
 ence is that elevation above selfish objects, that dignity, 
 majesty, nobleness, appearance of moral strength, which is 
 produced by a disregard of selfish objects in comparison with 
 those which are of a less selfish, and therefore of a grander, 
 kind. But, though essentially identical, they form, as it were, 
 two hemispheres in the actual world of moral excellence, 
 — the noble and the amiable, or, in the language of moral 
 taste, the grand and the beautiful. Being, however, essen- 
 tially identical, they constantly tend to fusion in the human 
 characters which are nearest to perfection, though, no 
 human character being perfect, they are never actually fused. 
 Now, if the type proposed in the Gospels for our imitation 
 were characteristically noble or characteristically amiable, 
 characteristically grand or characteristically beautiful, it might 
 have great moral attractions, but it would not be universal 
 or final. It would belong to one peculiar hemisphere of 
 character, and even though man might not yet actually have 
 transcended it, the ideal would lie beyond it ; it would not 
 remain forever the mark and goal of our moral progress. 
 But the fact is, it is neither characteristically noble and grand, 
 nor characteristically amiable and beautiful ; but both in an 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 281 
 
 equal degree, perfectly and indistinguishably, the fusion of 
 the two classes of qualities being complete, so that the mental 
 eye, though it be strained to aching, cannot discern whether 
 that on which it gazes be more the object of reverence or of 
 love. 
 
 There are differences, again, between the male and the 
 female character, under w^hich, nevertheless, we divine that 
 there lies a real identity, and a consequent tendency to fusion 
 in the ultimate ideal. Had the Gospel type of character been 
 stamped with the peculiar marks of either sex, we should 
 have felt that there was an ideal free from those peculiarities 
 beyond it. But this is not the case. It exhibits, indeed, the 
 peculiarly male virtue of courage in the highest degree, and 
 in the form in which it is most clear of mere animal impetu- 
 osity, and most evidently a virtue ; but this form is the one 
 common to both sexes, as the annals of martyrdom prove. 
 
 There is an equally notable absence of any of the peculiar- 
 ities which attend particular callings and modes of life, and 
 which, though so inevitable under the circumstances of human 
 society that we have learnt to think them beauties, would 
 disqualify a character for being universal and the ideal. The 
 life depicted in the Gospel is one of pure beneficence, 
 disengaged from all peculiar social circumstances, yet adapted 
 to all. 
 
 The Christian type of character, if it was constructed by 
 human intellect, was constructed at the confluence of three 
 races, — the Jewish, the Greek, and the Roman, — each of 
 which had strong national peculiarities of its own, A single 
 touch, a single taint of any one of those peculiarities, and 
 the character would have been national, not universal ; tran- 
 sient, not eternal : it might have been the highest character 
 in history, but it would have been disqualified for being the 
 ideal. Supposing it to have been human, whether it were 
 the effort of a real man to attain moral excellence, or a moral 
 imagination of the writers of the Gospel, the chances surely 
 were infinite against escaping any tincture of the fanaticism. 
 
282 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 formalism, and exclusiveness of the Jew, of the pohtical pride 
 of the Roman, of the intellectual pride of the Greek. Yet 
 it has entirely escaped them all. 
 
 There are certain qualities which are not virtues in them- 
 selves, but are made virtues by time and circumstance, and 
 with their times and circumstances pass away ; yet, while they 
 last, are often naturally and almost necessarily esteemed above 
 those virtues which are most real and universal. These facti- 
 tious virtues are the offspring, for the most part, of early 
 states of society, and the attendant narrowness of moral vision. 
 Such was headlong valor among the Northmen. Such was, 
 and is, punctilious hospitality among the tribes of the desert. 
 Such was the fanatical patriotism among the ancients, which 
 remained a virtue while the nation remained the largest sphere 
 of moral sympathy known to man, his vision not yet having 
 embraced his kind. 
 
 The taint of one of these factitious and temporary virtues 
 would, in the eye of historical philosophy, have been as fatal 
 to the perfection and universality of a type of character, as 
 the taint of a positive vice. Not only the fellow-countrymen, 
 but the companions and apostles of Christ, were, by the 
 account of the Gospels, imbued with that Jewish patriotism, 
 the fanatical intensity of which disgusted even the ancient 
 world. They desired to convert their Master into a patriot 
 chief, and to turn his universal mission into one for the 
 peculiar benefit of his own race. Had they succeeded in 
 doing so, even in the slightest degree, — or, to take a different 
 hypothesis, had those who constructed the mythical character 
 of Christ admitted into it the slightest tinge of a quality which 
 they could hardly, without a miracle, distinguish from a real 
 virtue, — the time would have arrived when, the vision of 
 man being enlarged, and his affection for his country becom- 
 ing subordinate to his affection for his kind, the Christian 
 type would have grown antiquated, and would have been left 
 behind in the progress of history towards a higher and ampler 
 ideal. Hut such is n(H the case. A just affection for country 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 283 
 
 may indeed find its prototype in him who wept over the 
 impending destruction of Jerusalem, and who offered the 
 Gospel first to the Jew ; but his character stands clear of 
 the narrow partiality which it is the tendency of advancing- 
 civilization to discard. From exaggerated patriotism and from 
 exaggerated cosmopolitanism, the Christian Example is equally 
 free. 
 
 Asceticism, again, if it has never been a virtue, even under 
 exceptional circumstances, is very easily mistaken for one, and 
 has been almost universally mistaken for one in the East. 
 There are certain states of society, — such, for example, as 
 that which the Western monks were called upon to evangelize 
 and civilize by their exertions, — in which it is difficult to deny 
 the usefulness and merit of an ascetic life. But had the type 
 of character set before us in the Gospel been ascetic, our social 
 experience must have discarded it in the long-run, as our 
 moral experience would have discarded it in the long-run, had 
 it been connected with those formal observances into the con- 
 secration of which asceticism almost inevitably falls. But the 
 type of character set before us in the Gospels is not ascetic, 
 though it is the highest exhibition of self-denial. Nor is it 
 connected with formal observances, though, for reasons which 
 are of universal and permanent validity, it provisionally conde- 
 scends to the observances established in the Jewish Church. 
 The character of the Essenes, as painted by Josephus. which 
 seems to out-vie the Christian character in purity and self- 
 denial, is tainted both with asceticism and formalism; and, 
 though a lofty and pure conception, could not have been 
 accepted by man as permanent and universal. 
 
 Cast your eyes over the human characters of history, and 
 observe to how great an extent the most soaring and eccentric 
 of them are the creatures of their country and their age. 
 Examine the most poetic of human visions, and mark how 
 closely they are connected, either by way of direct emanation or 
 of re- action, with the political and social circumstances amidst 
 which they were conceived ; and how manifestly the Utopia of 
 
284 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Plato is an emanation from the Spartan Commonwealth, how 
 manifestly the Utopia of Rousseau is a re-action against the 
 artificial society of Paris. What likelihood, then, was there, 
 that the imagination of a peasant of Galilee would spring at a 
 bound beyond place and time, and create a type of character 
 perfectly distinct in its personality, yet entirely free from all 
 that entered into the special personalities of the age ; a type 
 which satisfies us as entirely as it satisfied him, and which, as 
 far as we can see or imagine, will satisfy all men to the end of 
 time ? 
 
 EUGENE BERSIER. 
 
 [Catholic Presbyterian. London and New York : 1882. Pp. i, 2.] 
 
 In the first century of our era, there lived a prophet who 
 enjoyed an immense popularity, a man who played such an 
 important part that the historian Josephus, who seems scarcely 
 to have known Jesus Christ, has to him, on the contrary, 
 accorded an important place. This man was John the Baptist, 
 whom Jews and Christians have equally revered. Neverthe- 
 less, we do not find that the Gospels ever attribute any miracle 
 to John. They picture, in a clear and vivid way, his ministry, 
 his preaching, and his death, without inserting a single touch 
 of the supernatural ; thus proving that they are able to con- 
 ceive of an authentic Divine mission without attaching to it 
 any miracle. But when they come to Jesus, it is quite another 
 matter ; and on every one of their pages, we find ourselves 
 face to face with actions which imply a power actually super- 
 human. 
 
 Does this mean that their style is altered, that their narra- 
 tives thenceforward become less exact, more obscure, niore 
 legendary, and give fewer indications of being the product of 
 witnesses who have seen and heard what they relate ? 0\\ 
 the contrary, these same Gospels portray Jesus, his character, 
 his conduct, and his teaching, in so vivid, so original, and so 
 powerful a maiuu^r. that the picture has survived the changes 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 285 
 
 of centuries. They preserve his words in such grandeur that 
 their authenticity impresses itself on every mind not bhnded 
 by invincible prejudices. Every one feels that those deep 
 and searching maxims, those answers which probe the matter 
 to the bottom, those parables which are so clear and won- 
 drously original, and those other powerful discourses of his, 
 were really uttered, and have been faithfully reproduced. 
 
 JOHANN WOLFANG von GOETHE. 
 
 [Conversations with Eckermann. London: 1S74. Pp. 567-569.] 
 
 I LOOK upon all the Four Gospels as thoroughly genuine ; 
 for there is in them the reflection of a greatness which ema- 
 nated from the person of Jesus, and which was as divine a 
 kind as ever was seen upon earth. If I am asked whether it 
 is in my nature to pay him devout reverence, I say. Certainly. 
 I bow before him as the divine manifestation of the highest 
 principle of morality. . . . 
 
 We have, in consequence of our increasing culture, become 
 capable of turning back to the fountain-head, and of compre- 
 hending Christianity in its purity. We have, again, the 
 courage to stand with firm feet upon God's earth, and to feel 
 ourselves in our divinely endowed human nature. Let mental 
 culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences go on gaining 
 in depth and breadth, and the human mind expand as it may, 
 it will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of 
 Christianity, as it glistens and shines forth in the Gospel. . . . 
 
 As soon as the pure doctrine and love of Christ are com- 
 prehended in their true nature, and have become a vital prin- 
 ciple, we shall feel ourselves as human beings, great and free, 
 and not attach especial importance to a degree more or less 
 in the outward forms of religion. Besides, we shall all 
 gradually advance from a Christianity of words and faith to a 
 Christianity of feeling and action. 
 
286 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS.' 
 
 [The Permanent and the Transient in Christianity: Essay. 1S3S. P. 47.] 
 
 If in Jesus the union of the self-consciousness with the 
 consciousness of God has been real, and expressed not only 
 in words, but actually revealed in all the conditions of his life, 
 he represents within the religious sphere the highest point, 
 beyond whom posterity cannot go ; yea, whom it cannot even 
 equal, inasmuch as every one hereafter who should climb the 
 same height, could only do it with the aid of Jesus, who first 
 attained it. As little as humanity will ever be without religion, 
 as little would it be without Christ ; for to have religion with- 
 out Christ, would be as absurd as to enjoy poetry without 
 regard to Homer or Shakspeare. And this Christ, as far as 
 he is inseparable from the highest style of religion, is histori- 
 cal, not mythical ; is an individual, no mere symbol. To the 
 historical person of Christ belongs all in his life that exhibits 
 his religious perfection, his discourses, his moral action, and 
 his passion. . . . He remains the highest model of religion 
 within the reach of our thought, and no perfect piety is 
 possible without his presence in the heart. 
 
 DANIEL SMITH TALCOTT. 
 
 [Christianity and Scepticism. Boston: 1871. Pp. 414, 416, 417.] 
 
 Nonp: will imagine that Jesus could have borrowed any 
 thing from Confucius or Sakya-Mouni or the Greek philoso- 
 phers. Even if it could be shown that all that is essential to 
 the moral system of Jesus maybe found in scattered fragments 
 here and there among the sayings ascribed to other teachers, 
 who in previous ages and far-off nations had made extraor- 
 dinary use of that inward light that lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world, this would not detract any thing from 
 
 ' <^)ii(jicil l)y Dr. Philip Schaff in his " Person of (."hrist." 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. i^'j 
 
 the claim of him who alone has embodied the sum of human 
 duty, and still more grandly alone has exemplified it in his 
 life. 
 
 If ever there was a sound human intellect, clear, well- 
 balanced, and raised above every inOuence that could disturb 
 or cloud its operation, it was the intellect displayed in the 
 recorded life of Jesus of Nazareth. The only alternative that 
 remains to us is, either to accept him for what he declares 
 himself to be, or to ascribe to him, without any qualification, 
 the boldest, the most arrogant, the most blasphemous of all 
 impostures, yet an imposture steadily devoted to the promo- 
 tion of the highest style of goodness, and connected with a 
 life, which, except upon this revolting supposition, is a life of 
 sinless perfection, and the only such life that has ever been 
 lived upon the earth. 
 
 In whatever part of the world the words of Jesus have 
 been made known, there have always been found hearts ready 
 to receive them ; and to them they have become the medium 
 of a new life. A new style of character has come into exist- 
 ence, — a character to which nothing more than a distant 
 approximation has ever been witnessed in lands unvisited by 
 revelation. 
 
 TRUMAN M. POST. . 
 
 [Christianity and Scepticism. Boston: 1871. Pp. 140, 142.] 
 
 When, in Jesus Christ, God had revealed himself in a 
 human person and a human life, a new and wondrous moral 
 power is clearly recognized by history as entering the circle 
 of human affairs. The charm of the divine beauty touched 
 the heart of the world, A reformative and new-created 
 energy pulsated throughout it, from the depths to the heights. 
 This pulse still beats down the centuries, ever fresh and young. 
 The outward aspects of the world have changed ; political and 
 social systems have come and gone ; empires and civilizations 
 have passed away : but the vitalizing moral impulse then 
 
288 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 communicated is still undecayed and unconfined. It has been 
 entangled and hindered by many alien forces ; often mixed 
 up and disguised with foreign elements ; often confounded 
 with dogmas which have grown obsolete ; with modes of 
 thought, feeling, and action that were adscititious, and have 
 fallen away from the substantive essence. But the moral 
 life-power that entered the world with Jesus Christ still lives, 
 and still energizes more widely and more mightily, in more 
 human interests and human souls, than at any period since 
 the resurrection of Christ. On it is no mould of age, no taint 
 of decay. 
 
 The voice that inaugurated it eighteen centuries ago on 
 the hills of Judaea, as ushering in an era of peace and good- 
 will to men, has since expanded on earth, as it did then in the 
 heavens, to the psalm of an innumerable host, an orchestral 
 symphony of nations and ages, richer as it rolls along with 
 new-born truths and sciences and charities swelling its choral 
 volume. It is obvious, that, whatever else may become things 
 of the letter and pass away, the vision of the personal God 
 in Christ, with its transfiguring charm, cannot perish from 
 humanity without the perishing of the moral structure of the 
 modern world. 
 
 STANLEY LEATHES. 
 
 [The Religion of Christ. London: 1874. Pp. 46, 347, 348.] 
 
 The person of Christ, the character of Christ, the teachings 
 of Christ, must ever be the highest evidence of him. If that 
 evidence is not accepted as in the highest sense miraculous, 
 in the truest sense divine, no miracle can suffice to prove his 
 mission ; but it may be that the truth of his spoken words 
 implies also the truth of his accomplished works ; and, if so, 
 we cannot truly accept him without accepting also the message 
 of his works. 
 
 The centre of Pauline teaching was Jesus ; but the centre 
 of the teaching of Jesus was himself, and every estimate of his 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 289 
 
 character is inadequate which does not recognize this fact. 
 If, therefore, we cannot have the complete conception of the 
 Christ character without the human hfe of Jesus, so neither 
 can we have any adequate or just notion of the personal life 
 of Jesus without the essential elements of the Christ character 
 combined with it. Who was Jesus if he was not the Christ ? 
 We are at a loss to determine. He was an anomaly in human 
 history: standing out in remarkable relation to the ancient 
 literature and history of his people, but having nothing to do 
 with it, and assuredly not produced b)- it ; shedding marvel- 
 lous light on all other times and histories, but himself dwelling 
 in darkness ; undeniably the centre and source of a unique 
 collection of writings, to which there is no approximate 
 parallel in literature, but presenting in his own character the 
 strongest possible contrast to the acknowledged tendency of 
 those writinp;s, because himself indifferent to truth as a first 
 requisite of virtue. If Jesus was not what the Gospels, Acts, 
 and Epistles agree in confessing him to have been, we not 
 only are not 'able to say what he was, but are at a loss to 
 account for their existence as the actual product of the belief 
 that he was the Christ. On the assumption that their 
 combined testimony is true, his character becomes at once 
 consistent and intelligible, and their existence is explained. 
 They are the substantial and permanent bequest of him who 
 was the Mediator of the New Testament. They are the 
 abiding proof of the reality and fulfilment of the promise of 
 the Holy Spirit which he made to his disciples. 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 [Last Will and Testament.] 
 
 I COMMIT my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children 
 humbly to try to guide themselves by the teachings of the 
 New Testament. 
 
290 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 FREDERICK W. FARRAR. 
 
 [The Life of Chrisf. New York : iSSo (American edition). Vol. i. chs. v., x., xii., 
 
 xviii. ; vol. ii. i.xi.| 
 
 It is surely an astonishing proof that the EvangeHsts were 
 guided by the Spirit of God in telHng how he in whom God 
 was revealed to man, when we graduall)' discover that no 
 profane, no irreverent, even no imaginative hand, can touch 
 the sacred outlines of that divine and perfect picture, without 
 degrading and distorting it. 
 
 Whether the apocryphal writers meant their legends to 
 be accepted as history or as fiction, it is at least certain that 
 in most cases they meant to weave around the brows of Christ 
 a garland of honor. Yet how do their stories dwarf and 
 dishonor and misinterpret him ! How infinitely superior is 
 the noble simplicity of that evangelic silence, . to all the 
 theatrical displays of childish and meaningless omnipotence 
 with which the Protevangelium and the Pseudo-'Matthew, and 
 the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, are full ! They meant to 
 honor Christ, but no inventioji can honor him : he who invents 
 about him degrades him ; he mixes the weak, imperfect, 
 erring fancies of man, with the unapproachable and awful 
 purposes of God. The boy Christ of the Gospels is simple 
 and sweet, obedient and humble ; he is subject to his parents; 
 he is occupied solely with the quiet duties of his home and 
 of his age ; he loves all men, and all men love the pure and 
 gracious and noble child. Already he knows God as his 
 Father ; and the favor of God falls on him softly as the morning 
 sunlight or the dew of heaven, and plays like an invisible 
 aureole round his infantile and saintly brow. Unseen, save 
 in the beauty of heaven, but yet covered with silver wings, and 
 with its feathers like gold, the Spirit of God descended like a 
 dove, and rested from infancy upon the Holy Child. 
 
 All true beauty is but " the sacrament of goodness ; " and 
 a conscience so stainless, a spirit so full of hannon)-, a life so 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 291 
 
 purely noble, could not but express itself in the bearing, could 
 not but be reflected in the face, of the Son of man. He of 
 whom John bore witness as the Christ ; he whom the multi- 
 tude would gladly have seized, that he might be their king ; 
 he whom the city saluted with triumphant shouts as the Son 
 of David ; he to .whom women ministered with such deep 
 devotion, and whose aspect, even in the troubled images of a 
 dream, had inspired a Roman lady with interest and awe ; 
 he whose mere word caused Philip and Matthew and many 
 others to leave all, and follow him ; he whose one o-lance 
 broke into an agony of repentance the heart of Peter ; he 
 before whose presence those possessed with devils were alter- 
 nately agitated into frenzy or calmed into repose, and at 
 whose question, in the very crisis of his weakness and betrayal, 
 his most savage enemies shrank and fell prostrate in the 
 moment of their most infuriated wrath, — such an one as this 
 could not have been without the personal majesty of a prophet 
 and a priest. All the facts of his life speak convincingly of 
 that strength, and endurance, and dignity, and electric influ- 
 ence which none could have exercised without a large share 
 of human no less than of spiritual gifts. " Certainly," says 
 St. Jerome, " a flame of fire and starry brightness flashed 
 from his eyes, and the majesty of the Godhead shone in his 
 face." . . . 
 
 Christ came, not to revolutionize, but to ennoble and to 
 sanctify. He came to reveal that the Eternal was not the 
 Future, but only the Unseen ; that eternity was no ocean 
 whither men were being swept by the river of time, but was 
 around them now, and that their lives were only real in so far 
 as they felt its reality and its presence. He came to teach 
 that God was no dim abstraction, infinitely separated from 
 them in the far-off blue, but that he was the Father in whom 
 they lived and moved and had their being ; and that the 
 service which he loved was not ritual and sacrifice, not 
 pompous scrupulosity and censorious orthodoxy, but mercy 
 and justice, humility and love. He came, not to hush the 
 
292 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 natural music of men's lives, nor to fill it with storm and 
 agitation, but to re-tune every silver chord in that " harp of a 
 thousand strings," and to make it echo with the harmonies of 
 heaven. 
 
 Compare Christ's teaching with all that the world has of 
 the best and greatest in philosophy and eloquence and song. 
 Other teachers have, by God's grace, uttered words of wisdom ; 
 but to which of them has it been granted to regenerate 
 mankind ? What would the world be now, if it had nothing 
 better than the dry aphorisms and cautious hesitations of 
 Confucius, or the dubious principles or dangerous concessions 
 of Plato ? Would humanity have made the vast moral advance 
 which it has made, if no great Prophet from on high had fur- 
 nished it with any thing better than Sakya Mouni's dreary hope 
 of a nirvana to be w^on by unnatural asceticism, or than 
 Mohammed's cynical sanction of polygamy and despotism ? 
 
 Christianity may have degenerated in many respects from 
 its old and grand ideal ; it may have lost something of its 
 virgin purity ; the struggling and divided Church of to-day 
 may have waned, during these long centuries, from the splendor 
 of the New Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God : 
 but is Christendom no better than what Greece became, and 
 what Turkey and Arabia and China are ? Does Christianity 
 wither the nations that have accepted it, with the atrophy 
 of Buddhism, or the blight of Islam ? Other religions are 
 demonstrably defective and erroneous : ours has never been 
 proved to be other than perfect and entire. Other systems 
 were esoteric and exclusive, ours simple and universal ; others 
 temporary and for. the few, ours eternal and for the race. 
 K'ung Foo-tze, Sakya Mouni, Mohammed, could not even 
 conceive the ideal of a society without falHng into miserable 
 error. Christ established the reality of an eternal and glorious 
 kingdom ; whose theory for all, whose history in the world, 
 prove it to be indeed what it was at first proclaimed to be. — 
 the kingdom of heaven, tiie kingdom of God. 
 
 And yet how e.\(iuisiiely and freshly simple is the actual 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 293 
 
 language of Christ, compared with all other teaching that has 
 gained the ear of the world ! There is no science in it, no 
 art, no pomp of demonstration, no carefulness of toil, no trick 
 of rhetoricians, no wisdom of the schools. Straight as an 
 arrow to the mark, his precepts pierce to the very depths of 
 the soul and spirit. All is short, clear, precise, full of holi- 
 ness, full of the common images of daily life. 
 
 The effects of the work of Christ are, even to the unbeliever, 
 indisputable and historical. It expelled cruelty, it curbed 
 passion, it branded suicide, it punished and repressed an 
 execrable infanticide, it drove the shameless impurities of 
 heathendom into a congenial darkness. There was hardl}- a 
 class whose wrongs it did not remedy. It rescued the gladi- 
 ator, it freed the slave, it protected the captive, it nursed the 
 sick, it sheltered the orphan, it elevated the woman, it 
 shrouded as with a halo of sacred innocence the tender years 
 of the child. 
 
 In every region of life its ameliorating influence was felt. 
 It changed pity from a vice into a virtue. It elevated poverty 
 from a curse into a beatitude. It ennobled labor from a 
 vulgarity into a dignity and a beauty. It sanctified marriage 
 from little more than a burdensome convention into little 
 less than a blessed sacrament. It revealed for the first time 
 the angelic beauty of a purity of which men had despaired, 
 and of a meekness at which they had scoffed. It created the 
 very conception of charity, and broadened the limits of its 
 obligation from the narrow circle of a neighborhood to the 
 wide horizon of the race. And while it thus evolved the idea 
 of a common brotherhood, even where its tidings were 7iot 
 believed — all over the world where its tidings were believed, 
 it cleansed the life and elevated the soul of each individual 
 man. 
 
 And in all lands where it has moulded the characters ot 
 true believers, it created hearts so pure, and lives so peaceful, 
 and homes so sweet, that it might seem as though those angels 
 who had heralded its advent had also whispered to every 
 
294 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 depressed and despairing sufferer among the sons of men, 
 " Though ye have Hen among the pots, yet shall ye be as the 
 wings of the dove that is covered with silver wings, and her 
 feathers like gold." 
 
 'CUNNINGHAM GEIKIE. 
 
 [The Life and Words of Chi^st. New York : iSSo (American edition). Vol. i. 
 
 ch. i.] 
 
 The life of Jesus Christ mu.st ever remain the noblest and 
 most truthful study for all men of every age. It is admitted, 
 even by those of other faiths, that he was at once a great 
 teacher, and a livinof illustration of the truths he tausfht. 
 The Mohammedan world give him the high title of Masik 
 (Messiah), and set him above all the prophets. The Jews 
 confess admiration of his character and words as exhibited in 
 the Go.spels. 
 
 We all know how lowly a reverence is paid to him in 
 passage after passage by Shakspeare. the greatest intellect 
 known, in its wide, many-sided splendor. Men like Galileo, 
 Kepler, Bacon, Newton, and Milton, set the name of Jesus 
 Christ above every other. Spinoza calls Christ the symbol 
 of divine wisdom ; Kant and Jacobi hold him up as a sym- 
 bol of ideal perfection ; and Schelling and Hegel, as that of 
 the union of the divine and human. . . . 
 
 If we attempt to discover what it is in the personal 
 character of Jesus Christ, as shown in his life, that thus 
 attracts such permanent admiration, it is not difficult to do 
 so. In an age when the ideal of religious life was realized 
 in the Baptist's withdrawing from men, and lnir)'ing himself in 
 the ascetic solitudes of the desert, Christ came, bringing 
 religion into the hearts and homes of every-day life of men. 
 I^'or the mortifications of the hermit, he substituted the labors 
 of active benevolence ; for the fears and gloom which shrank 
 from men, he brought the; light of a cheerful piety, which 
 made every act of (.lail\ life religious. He found the domain 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 295 
 
 of religion fenced off as something distinct from common 
 duties ; and he threw down the wall of separation, and conse- 
 crated the whole sweep of existence. 
 
 He lived a man amongst men. sharing alike their joys 
 and their sorrows ; dignifying the humblest details of life by 
 making them subordinate to the single aim of his Father's 
 glory. Henceforth the grand revolution was inaugurated, 
 which taught that religion does not lie in selfish or morbid 
 devotion to personal interests, whether in the desert or in 
 the temple, but in loving work and self-sacrifice for others. 
 The absolute unselfishness of Christ's character is, indeed, 
 its unique charm. His own life is self-denial throughout ; 
 and he makes a similar spirit the test of all healthy religious 
 life. It is he who said, "It is more blessed to pfive than to 
 receive ; " who reminds us that life, like the wheat, yields 
 fruit only by its own dying ; who gave us the ideal of life 
 in his own absolute self-oblivion. We feel instinctively that 
 this Gospel of love is divine, and that we cannot withhold our 
 homage from the only perfectly unselfish life ever seen on 
 earth. 
 
 He demands repentance from all, but never for a moment 
 hints at any need of it for himself. With all his matchless 
 lowliness, he advances personal claims which in a mere man 
 would be the very delirium of religious pride. He was 
 divinely patient under every form of suffering, — a homeless 
 life, hunger and thirst, craft and violence, meanness and pride, 
 the taunts of enemies, and betrayals of friends, ending in art 
 ignominious death. Nothing of all this for a moment turned 
 him from his chosen path of love and pity. His last words, 
 like his whole life, were a prayer for those who returned him 
 evil for good. His absolute superiority to every thing narrow 
 or local, so that he, a Jew, founds a religion in which all man- 
 kind are a common brotherhood, equal before God ; the 
 dignity, calmness, and self-possession before rulers, priests, 
 and governors, which set him immeasurably above them ; 
 his freedom from superstition, in an age which was super- 
 
296 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 stitious almost beyond example ; his superiority to the merely 
 external and ritual, in an age when rites and externals were 
 the sum of religion : all these considerations, to mention no 
 others, explain the mysterious attraction of his character, 
 even when looked at only as that of an ideal man. 
 
 ALEXANDER RALEIGH. 
 
 [Quiet Resting-Places. Edinburgh : 1871. Pp. 367, 368.] 
 
 " Behold the man ! " How significant it is, when we think 
 
 & 
 
 of it, that the mere passing words of a man of no moral worth 
 should thus become instinct with hio-her and holier meanino^ ; 
 should be, as it were, redeemed and turned to heavenly uses 
 by simple contact with the person of Jesus ! What a virtue 
 there must be in him, when almost every thing he touches 
 is in some sense hallowed and glorified ! Toil has been a 
 nobler discipline since he wrought in Nazareth ; common 
 travel has had more pleasure in it since he trod the dusty 
 highways of Judaea ; suffering has been a sacred thing since 
 he suffered ; we could not now see a crown of thorns, without 
 thinking tenderly of him ; and the cross he has changed from 
 being a symbol of shame, into one of everlasting renown. 
 
 JOHNM ARSHALL LOWRIE. 
 
 [A Week with Jesus. Philadelphia : 1866.] 
 
 The life of Jesus of Nazareth is, beyond all comparison, the 
 most remarkable that finds record in the annals of humanity. 
 No biography has within a hundred-fold been so abundantly 
 re-written, whether by those who humbly follow his footsteps, 
 or by those who have no single tie of sympathy with him 
 that could enable them to comprehend or appreciate his 
 character. No reasonable mind can (juestion, whether from 
 the direct teachings of simple history or the various conces- 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 297 
 
 sions of his bitter foes, that we have the true record of this 
 great Hfe ; and the facts and influences flowing from them 
 are equally remarkable. "VVe have here brought before us a 
 young man born in lowly life, having no advantages of posi- 
 tion, or even education, to lift him above the mass of men, 
 and contenting himself by instructing, with the voice merely, 
 the humble classes in society in one of the meaner provinces 
 of the Roman Empire. For three or four years he spent his 
 time in these pursuits ; he gathered about him a meagre band 
 of disciples, not above his own state ; he awakened only per- 
 secution and contempt among the influential men of his own 
 nation ; and before he reached the middle age of life, he 
 was condemned as a malefactor, and put to a violent and 
 shameful death. And now let the test for truth and true 
 greatness consist in the succeeding influence of his sentiments 
 and character. . . . 
 
 After his death the most remarkable and permanent power 
 belonged to one whose life, up to its latest moment, had been 
 full of humiliation. His were the mighty words of the world. 
 They were living and life-giving principles, which took hold 
 upon men with regenerating power. There was nothing in 
 his claims, his teachings, his promises, to inflame or to gratify 
 the ordinary passions of men ; no honors to be won, no ambi- 
 tion to be gratified, no sensual pleasures to be enjoyed. Yet 
 his words were powerful as no other teachings have ever been 
 upon the earth. They went forth from the narrow boundaries 
 of Judsea, and attacked the hoary prejudices and superstitions 
 of the Pagan world ; and in a few centuries, the Gospel of 
 the despised man of Galilee became the avowed faith of the 
 Roman Empire. And now for many ages, during which 
 hosts of oreat men have risen and been forg^otten, his words, 
 wherever received in their simplicity, have had power to cast 
 down superstition, to change the aspect of human society, to 
 teach men the true principles of freedom, to awaken impulses 
 that refine and strengthen and elevate humanity, and to sup- 
 port true morality and true piety, that seems strangely in 
 
298 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 contrast with the feeble attainments of his hfe-work, and with 
 the apparent triumph of his foes in his death upon the cross. 
 
 It is remarkably true of Jesus, that all his acts, his words, 
 his promises, his thoughts, are more powerful after his death 
 than before. There can be no valid objection to making this 
 the test of truth and true greatness in his case, because there 
 were no adventitious aids to give power to his empire over 
 men, and because to admit his claims at all seems logically 
 to demand our acquiescence in their entire truth and in their 
 supreme authority. 
 
 A kingdom purely of moral principles, having only that 
 power over the minds of men which springs from the proofs of 
 its truth and inherent excellency, and tending to results so 
 contrary to the usual bias of man's fallen nature, could not be 
 founded upon any misapprehension of the great things then 
 occurring before the eyes of his disciples. Such a kingdom 
 must be founded upon principles of truth and righteousness. 
 Happily for the world, there is a consistency between his words 
 and deeds, his claims and avowed purposes, the purity of his 
 personal character, and the tendency of his Gospel to purify 
 its disciples, that justifies our most implicit faith, and bids us 
 receive this Jesus as our Friend and Teacher, our Redeemer 
 and Lord. 
 
 PETER BAYNE. 
 
 [Testimony of Christ to Christianity. Hosion : 1868. Pp. 95, 96, 197-199.] 
 
 Sceptic after sceptic has glared into the character of Christ, 
 searching for a flaw ; and sceptic after sceptic has recoiled 
 with the confession, that, whatever Christianity might be, this 
 Jesus of Nazareth was honest and pure. No character known 
 to history has been subjected to a scrutiny so piercing as that 
 of Jesus Christ; and there is no character known to history, 
 e.xcept his, of which moral perfection could for a moment be 
 maintained. . . . 
 
 It is beyond douln that no btMug has yet appeart^d in 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETJI. ■ 299 
 
 human form whom the suffrage of the race has pronounced 
 so pure, so holy, as Jesus Christ. A beam of white radiance, 
 pure as the Hght of God's throne, proceeds from his eye. 
 falling along all succeeding generations. . . . 
 
 Can any rational mind, fairly considering all we have seen, 
 continue to doubt that the appearance of Jesus Christ in this 
 world is the most important, the central, the all-determining 
 fact in human history ? His influence has been at the heart 
 of the greatest civilizations ; and, judging even by terrestrial 
 analogies, that influence must ultimately renovate humanity, 
 working out the virus of sin, and brightening away the blight 
 of sorrow. The riddle of the world, the existence of evil and 
 anguish under the blue sky of God, may not even thus be 
 solved for us ; but the Christian solution is surely such a one 
 as thoughtful, wise, and reverent men must admit to be infi- 
 nitely superior to any which can be offered by scepticism. 
 Chaos may not yet, in the moral world of humanity, have 
 given place to cosmos ; but God has said. Let there be light ! 
 and Christ has come, the Light of the world. Long ages may 
 yet elapse before his beams have reduced the world to order 
 and beauty, and clothed a purified humanity with light as with 
 a orarment. But he has come, — the revealer of the snares 
 that lurk in darkness, the rebuker of every evil thing that 
 prowls by night, the stiller of the storm-winds of passion, the 
 quickener of all that is wholesome, the adorner of all that is 
 beautiful, the reconciler of contradictions, the harmonizer of 
 discords, the healer of diseases, the Saviour from sin. 
 
 He has come, — the torch of truth, the anchor of hope, 
 the pillar of faith, the rock of strength, the refuge for 
 security, the fountain for refreshment, the vine for gladness, 
 the rose for beauty, the lamb for tenderness, the friend for 
 counsel, the brother for love. 
 
 Jesus Christ has trod the world. The trace of the divine 
 footsteps will never be obliterated. And the divine footsteps 
 were the footsteps of a man. The example of Christ is such 
 as man can follow. On ! until mankind wears his image. 
 
300 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 On ! towards yon summit on which stands, not an angel, not 
 a disembodied spirit, not an abstract of ideal and unattainable 
 virtues, but the Man Christ Jesus. 
 
 When humanity has become like his humanity, we may 
 pause. We shall then be aware that the clouds above our 
 head have beamed into the unutterable beauty of heaven, and 
 that the lilies of the field glowed into immortal amaranths. 
 May God Almighty hasten the consummation, and may we 
 with passionate, steady-burning, unquenchable ardor, strive to 
 know and imitate Christ! 
 
 EDWARD HAROLD BROWNE. 
 
 [Modern Scepticism. New York: 1S71. Pp. 4i3' 4i4r 425- 455-1 
 
 The character of Christ, as depicted in the Gospels, exhibits 
 the most perfect picture of sublime simplicity ever drawn. It 
 is impossible to imagine any thing more simple or more simply 
 graphic than their style. It is still more impossible to imagine 
 any thing more removed from the vulgarit)' of rhetoric or 
 display, or effort at effect, than the character of Jesus Christ. 
 People have spoken as though he had been merel)- a first-rate 
 political reformer, a demagogue belonging to a type of unusual 
 disinterestedness. Surely his retired, unseen youth, his gentle, 
 quiet manhood, his calm, dignified, unimpassioned words, are 
 the very opposite in tone and character to those of the noblest 
 demagogue or the purest political leader that was ever heard 
 of. " He went about doine Qfood." seems almost to record 
 his history. " He was meek and lowly of heart," seems almost 
 to sum up his character. The most untiring energy, the most 
 patient endurance, the most tender and affectionate benevo- 
 lence, strike us in every act and word of Christ. And yet 
 thctrc; was nothing feeble, nothing efteminate, nothing senti- 
 mental, about him. Simple as the gentlest child, he was 
 brav(? as the hardiest warrior. Weeping with the tenderness 
 of a woman lor tlu; sad and \\\v. sufterino-, he rebuked with 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETJI. 30 1 
 
 inflexible sternness the base, the cruel, and the hypocritical. 
 With the most unstudied purity of thought and life, he had 
 yet a heart of such large and gentle sympathy that the v^ry 
 outcast of mankind could come to him for help and counsel, 
 and he never rejected them. 
 
 Probably all men, even those who did not believe in him, 
 would confess, that, if they could see any one living just the 
 life which is related to have been the life of Jesus, the man so 
 living would be perfect in all parts, — the very ideal of humble- 
 hearted, active-spirited, pure-minded, high-souled humanity. 
 The originality of his character is almost as observable as its 
 excellence. He was not simply the great teacher, like the 
 philosophers of old, to whom crowds of disciples were gath- 
 ered to listen. He was not the contemplative thinker, living 
 retired from human society. He was no ascetic, frowning 
 coldly on the innocent happiness of man. On the other hand, 
 with all his marvellous activity, there is not the smallest 
 appearance of restlessness, excitement, impetuosit)-. He was, 
 if he be rightly described by his biographers, what no other 
 man ever was, — perfectly unselfish, living, acting, thinking, 
 speaking always with reference either to the service of God or 
 the good of man. . . . 
 
 I have already pointed to the calmness, self-possession, 
 soberness, of Christ. No character in histor}' exhibits these 
 qualities so markedly. There is not a symptom of restless- 
 ness, excitement, or intemperance of any kind, in any one of 
 his discourses. His eloquence, — and no one can doubt his 
 eloquence who has read, "Consider the lilies of the field," 
 who has heard, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
 heavy laden," — though more heart-thrilling than any human 
 eloquence, was never rhetorical, never emotional. It carried 
 conviction because it sounded like truth uttered by love. In 
 fact, fanaticism or insanity are charges that cannot be made 
 against him on any ground whatever, except on the ground 
 that he believed what he taught, and that no reasonable person 
 could believe it. And if so, I think the charge must be aban- 
 
302 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 doned; for Bacon. Locke, Newton, and Leibnitz have believed 
 it, and it is still believed by the most reasoning minds in 
 Christendom. . . . 
 
 * If an assembly of five hundred or a thousand persons 
 could be gathered together in any city of Europe, or European 
 America, it being provided that all of them should be intelli- 
 gent, well-educated, high-principled, and well-living men and 
 women ; and if the question w^ere put to each of them, "To 
 what do you attribute your high character, your moral and 
 social excellence ? " I feel no doubt that nineteen out of every 
 twenty of them would, on reflection, reply, " To the influence 
 of Christianity on my education, my conscience, and my 
 heart." I will suppose a yet further question to be put to 
 them, and it shall be this : "If you were to be assured that 
 the object you hold dearest on earth would be taken from you 
 to-morrow, and if at the same time you could be assured with 
 undoubting certainty that Jesus Christ was a myth or an 
 impostor, and his Gospel a fable and a falsehood, whether of 
 the two assurances would strike upon your heart with the 
 more chilling and more hope-destroying misery ? " And I 
 believe that nine-tenths of the company, being such as I have 
 stipulated they should be, would answer, "Take from me my 
 best earthly treasure, but leave me my hope in the Saviour of 
 the world." 
 
 JOHN HARRIS. 
 
 [The Great Teacher. Amherst: 1866. I*p. 335, 340, 342, 34S-352, 357, 381, ;,S6-jS8, 
 
 406-408.] 
 
 In perusing the writings of many a moral instructor, the 
 only abatement from our edification arises from the unwelcome 
 recollection of his character. His statements of truth are for- 
 cible, his illustrations clear, his appeals aftecting ; but the 
 remembrance of the contradiction which existed between his 
 doctrine and life returns, the spell by which he held us is 
 dissolved, a shadow falls on the page, and his most arrowy 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 303 
 
 appeals drop pointless and short of our hearts. But in listen- 
 ing to the instructions of our blessed Lord, the recollection 
 of his character is not merely welcome, in order to do them 
 justice : it is essential. There have been others, indeed, who 
 have owed the success of their teaching- partly to their moral 
 excellency ; but such is the excellence of his character, that, 
 could we only bring to the perusal of his instructions a vivid 
 conception of it, we should no longer have to deplore their 
 inefficacy. Could we only come unto them under the full 
 influence of that idea, nothing could long resist their power. 
 As often as we returned to them, they would receive so strong 
 a re-enforcement of impression from that association, that 
 they could not fail to pass farther and farther into the mind, 
 changing the soul into their own form and quality, and thus 
 verifying his own description of them, that "They are spirit, 
 and they are life." 
 
 The universality of his plans left him without any contem- 
 poraneous sympathy. He loved man as man : he came to be 
 the light and life of the world. His benevolence could not 
 endure the thought of a single human being perishing. His 
 heart had room for a whole race, and he could not be satis- 
 fied with less than a universal offer of mercy. 
 
 And benevolence is the principle which harmonized in him 
 the most contrasted qualities. In his mysterious person it 
 had brought into union time and eternity, heaven and earth ; 
 and in his character it blended majesty such as God before 
 had never displayed, with meekness such as man before had 
 never shown. Dignity, in him, was not terror ; for he clothed 
 it with a condescension which had before been thought incon- 
 sistent with greatness. Temperance and self-denial, with him, 
 were not darkened with austerity, but came softened and rec- 
 ommended by gentleness and suavity. In him were united 
 an indignant sensibility to sin, with weeping compassion for 
 the sinner; the splendors of more than an angelic nature, 
 with the humility of a little child ; a resolved perseverance in 
 the path of duty which no array of dangers could deter, with 
 
304 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 a heart so attuned to compassion that the faintest appeal of 
 misery arrested his progress, as with the power of omnipotence, 
 and made him stand still. 
 
 While he seemed to do every thing for the future, he yet 
 neglected nothing proper to the present ; while he held him- 
 self ready to embrace the mightiest plans, and evinced a con- 
 sciousness that he stood related to a whole species, he yet 
 stooped, without trifling, to the smallest circumstance. Like 
 the Almighty Father, sustaining the worlds, yet stooping to 
 succor the fallen bird, he one moment conversed with celestial 
 visitants, and the next he listened to the lispings of infant 
 praise, or meekly bore the obtuseness of his disciples. He 
 who received the homage of angels, and had all their legions 
 at command, sees wealth in the tribute of a sinful woman's 
 tears, and finds the sweetest music in the dying thanks of the 
 guilty malefactor. . . . 
 
 Universal philanthropy did not impair his sensibility to the 
 pleasures of private friendships and domestic intercourse ; nor 
 did the momentous interests, w^iich pressed on his soul in the 
 crisis of the world's redemption, prevent him from thinking 
 of his filial relation, and tenderly providing for a mother's 
 comfort. 
 
 Never was there a character at the same time so magnifi- 
 cent and unlabored ; so conscious of Qreatness, and so unos- 
 tentatiously simple ; so full of inspiration to the good, and 
 so free from terror, so replete \\\\\\ encouragement, to the 
 outcast penitent. In his character met the whole constellation 
 of the virtues, each one made brighter by contrast ; but one 
 overpowering sentiment softened and subjected them all to 
 itsell, — one all-pervading law gave unity and harmon)' to his 
 most opposite actions, interpreting all his words and looks, 
 preventing him, even in the most critical situations, from being 
 at variance with himself, or falling below his professed object ; 
 and that sentiment, that law, was love. 
 
 Hatl the object of Jesus been merely to leave in our 
 possession a rexelation of the will of Ciod, he would have 
 

TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 0^0 
 
 dispensed with that tender solicitude which marked his con- 
 duct, and have confined himself exclusively to the design of 
 his mission. But he came to enlighten, only that he might 
 save ; and, like a wise and kind instructor, he clothed himself 
 with love that he might gain for his instructions a place in 
 our heart. To this end it was, that he chose to move in the 
 humbler walks of life. Every condition of society was open 
 to his choice, and human taste would have selected wealth 
 and rank and worldly influence ; but this would have removed 
 him from the society of the people, whereas his object was to 
 make himself one with them. He selected others to assist 
 him in preaching the kingdom of heaven ; but he asked not 
 philosophy to argue in its defence, or poetry to sing its praise, 
 or eloquence to pour forth its oratory, or royalty to clothe it 
 with state, or arm with power. The instrumentality he em- 
 ployed was of the humblest order ; was, like himself, " raised 
 up from among the people," and therefore adapted to gain the 
 attention of the people. 
 
 He regarded himself as specially anointed to preach the 
 Gospel to the poor. Had human might been consulted on 
 the subject, it would fain have had splendor follow in his train, 
 and wealth pour out its treasures before him, and ambition 
 receive honors and titles at his hands. It would have had his 
 Gospel patronized by the great and mighty of the earth ; and 
 then it would have mino-led amonof them, and enrolled its 
 name among his followers. But the great distinction of his 
 ministry, and the fact in which he gloried, was, that the poor 
 had the Gospel preached to them. This was a stretch of 
 philosophy unknown to the philosophers of Greece and Rome. 
 
 The transcendent idea of propagating a universal religion 
 — a system which should include the multitudes who throng 
 the highways and thoroughfares of life, which should convert 
 religion into a daily bread for the poor — was reserved for 
 him who came to seek and to save that which was lost. He 
 could not look on the exigencies and the evils peculiar to 
 their condition, could not witness the neglect and scorn 
 
306 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 to which they were subjected, and of w^iich in the present 
 day it is not easy to form an adequate conception, without 
 feehng his compassion stirred within him. Among the most 
 civihzed and pohshed nations, they were prostrate in the dust. 
 For them philosophy disdained an interest as utterly beneath 
 her notice, as having nothing sufficiently vulgar for their taste. 
 For them the law had no protecting arm, justice no balances. 
 Right, if it spoke at all, spoke in a voice scarcely to be heard ; 
 and kindness, if it deigned a look, regarded them with a 
 countenance which indicated a heart at ease, and devoid of 
 sympathy. For their darkness, religion — that is to say, the 
 religion which prevailed — had no ray of light, nor did a 
 drop of consolation fall into their cup. Even in Judaea itself, 
 they were treated as the refuse of society, and as cut off from 
 the favor of God. "This people that knoweth not the law," 
 said the proud Pharisees, " are cursed ; " this ignorant and 
 contemptible class are forsaken of God, and doomed to 
 destruction. Now, it was to rescue them from this oppressed 
 and degraded state, to plead their cause, to redress their 
 wrongs, to wipe away their tears, to raise them to that level 
 which they ought to maintain, as heirs of immortality, in 
 common with those around them, that Jesus preached his 
 Gospel to the poor. 
 
 And the mode of instruction he adopted was of the most 
 simple description. He taught no abstract theories inappli- 
 cable to the affairs of life, no philosophic systems incompre- 
 hensible to ordinary capacities ; dealt in no cabalistic lore ; 
 sanctioned no distinctions of philosophical teaching. 
 
 Jewish pride would have dictated, that, if a new dispensa- 
 tion was to be given, it should be proclaimed immediately 
 from heaven ; that, amidst the splendors of another Sinai, it 
 should be delivered by the ministry of angels. Had the taste 
 of Greece been consulted, it would have required that the 
 Gospel should be announced in all the studied beauties of 
 composition, supported by the ingenious reasonings, and 
 accompanied by the airy speculations, in which their philoso- 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 307 
 
 phers were accustomed to propound their flimsy abstractions. 
 But the great Teacher would not thus debase his Gospel, and 
 frustrate his design. He sought to make himself universal, 
 to speak to humanity. His tongue was only the interpreter of 
 the heart, and he aimed to render his teaching a contact 
 of hearts. The key of knowledge had been taken away by 
 those who should have held it only for the people. They 
 had " shut up the kingdom of heaven " from the poor, and 
 left them to perish ; and, while he charged them with this 
 awful fraud on the well-being of man, he hastened to supply 
 the perishing with superior means of salvation. 
 
 His leading topics were few, that he might not confuse ; 
 but so personal and important that they found a response and 
 an interpreter in every bosom. He simplified knowledge, 
 and reduced it to its elements ; now removing the veil from 
 ancient prophecy ; now uttering a touching parable, now a 
 graphic illustration from familiar life, now an easy precept 
 or weighty truth, and presently returning again to place the 
 same truth in a new light. He went about as the bread of 
 life. 
 
 And the simplicity of his teaching was only in accordance 
 with his compassionate design, to console the wretched. The 
 effect of sorrow is to reduce our nature to its elements, to 
 suspend our intellectual powers, and resolve us into creatures 
 of mere feeling ; to shut up every avenue but that which 
 leads to the heart. He knew that grief thus simplifies our 
 nature, and he provided a remedy equally simple. He im- 
 parted truths to which the heart listens, and which the heart 
 alone can understand ; for he held the heart of the world in 
 his hand, and, knowing the secret of all its sympathies, he 
 communed with its weakness and sorrows by methods pecul- 
 iarly his own. 
 
 Sorrow was, in his eyes, among the most sacred things he 
 found on earth ; and had it not been so before, the reverent 
 attention with which he honored it, and the simple and sym- 
 pathetic terms in which he addressed it, would have made it 
 
3o8 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 hallowed. He knew also that the time of affliction would be 
 the season when numbers would first direct a look to the 
 Gospel for relief ; when help, if it came to them at all, must 
 come without effort ; when the staff not only must be pro- 
 vided, but actually be put into their hand. And knowing 
 this, he published his Gospel as a system of consolation for 
 the miserable, and they who know it best are the readiest 
 to confess how fully it answers to the character ; after the trial 
 of ages, it maintains its prerogative of binding up the broken 
 in heart. 
 
 The first sentence he uttered, in his first recorded dis- 
 course, is a sample of the spirit he breathed in all his subse- 
 quent addresses: " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs 
 is the kingdom of heaven." Blessing after blessing follow 
 each other in quick succession ; every sentence comes from 
 his lips loaded with grace ; like the gushing-forth of a fountain 
 long sealed up, they show the fulness of benevolence which 
 possessed his heart. The poor in spirit, the meek, the holy, 
 the sorrowful and broken-hearted, the merciful, the peaceful, the 
 persecuted, the orphans, the disinherited, the rejected of 
 the world, — such was the large family on whom his blessings 
 fell, to whom he opened his arms, and welcomed to the shelter 
 of his heart. 
 
 Each of the virtues which he here implies may be regarded 
 as a separate and essential feature of Christian excellence ; 
 and as he adds one lineament to the portrait after another, 
 he surveys it with delight. He sees wealth in that spiritual 
 poverty, more ample and enduring than all the treasures which 
 earth can boast ; a majesty in this meekness, to which pride 
 can never erect itself; and in this Christian sorrow he beholds 
 the seeds of joy, the blossomings of glory. He contemplates 
 it in reference to another state of being; and, though the 
 world in its blindness may hold this character in contempt, 
 h(! knows that it is such as anofcls will bless ; that the ereat 
 God seated on the throne of heaven pronounces it blessed, 
 repeats over it all the divine beatitudes. He would ha\e us 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 309 
 
 to know, that when It departs by death from this earthly scene, 
 he raises and welcomes it into his own kingdom ; and that 
 when every mere earthly embellishment shall have faded and 
 disappeared, he will proclaim it happy in the presence of the 
 universe, and crown it with glory and honor ; that it is a char- 
 acter whose blessedness eternity itself will ratify and augment. 
 As if the benevolence of God had forsaken every other vent, 
 to find a channel through his lips, thus freely and copiously 
 did he pour forth divine benedictions. 
 
 Nor were the tenderness and benevolence of Christ abated, 
 either by the lapse of time, or the perseverance of human 
 ingratitude. His kindness exhibited no tendency to degener- 
 ate into mere professional sympathy ; nor had the malice of 
 those who seized his outstretched hand, and nailed it to the 
 cross, any other visible effect than that of inducing him to 
 hasten the work of saving them from themselves. 
 
 The superiority to ingratitude, which some exhibit, arises 
 from a defect in the constitution of their nature, by which they 
 are armed with a degree of insensibility to wrongs, sufficient 
 to blunt the weapons of unkindness. But the sensibilities of 
 Christ were of the most acute description ; for in him were 
 harmonized all that is great in mind, noble in sentiment, and 
 delicate in feeling. His nature exhibited the perfection of 
 humanity. The conduct of man made a constant demand on 
 his forbearance, a perpetual drain on his pity, sufficient to 
 exhaust every heart but one which was daily replenished 
 at the fountain of compassion itself. 
 
 What a miracle of moral portraiture do we behold in the 
 evangelical history of Christ ! What transcendent wisdom ! 
 What divine benevolence ! What perfection ! The character 
 of Jesus stands alone ; it has no archetype in history, no 
 analogy in nature, no model in all the worlds of imagination ; 
 as portrayed in Scripture, it could only have been drawn from 
 a contemplation of the living reality. It was the conception 
 of an infinite mind. It was the triumph of mercy to combine 
 in the same being the evidences of divinity, adequate illustra- 
 
3IO TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 tions of divine love, and the power of winning the souls of 
 men to salvation, and transforming them to holiness. 
 
 The character of Christ forms a distinct proof, an invinci- 
 ble demonstration, of the truth of the Gospel. When we 
 remember that it received a tribute of homage from fallen 
 spirits, w^e shall the less wonder that it has extorted expres- 
 sions of reverence from some of the worst specimens of fallen 
 humanity. Men who have sported with the sanctity of every 
 thing else that religion owns, have passed by the character of 
 Christ in respectful silence. This w^as conscience recognizing 
 in his perfection a likeness which it felt it ought to be familiar 
 with and adore. Such is the awful power of goodness pre- 
 configured to its image. Some of them have been entirely 
 restrained from violating the sanctuary of truth by the same 
 guardian influence ; the character of Christ, like the presence 
 of a shrine, protected it. 
 
 Religion has often escaped evil and received homage from 
 its foes, for the sake of the character of Christ. Men who 
 have destroyed in intention every other part of the temple of 
 truth, have paused when they came to this, have turned aside, 
 and desisted for a while from the work of demolition, to gaze 
 and bow before it ; have not merely left it standing as a col- 
 umn too majestic, or an altar too holy, for human sacrilege 
 to assail, but have even inscribed their names on its base, and 
 have been heard to burst forth in admiring exclamations 
 approaching to love. 
 
 The peculiar excellences of the character of Christ, as an 
 argument for the Gospel, are that it tends to attract and invite 
 inspection, for it is the perfection of moral beauty. It is level 
 to the apprehension of all ; for it makes a direct appeal to 
 some of the first principles of our nature, to our natural per- 
 ceptions of goodness, and our instinctive approval of it; and 
 it not only convinces, but transforms, engaging and carr)ing 
 with it the understanding and the heart. While some who 
 were in th(.' last stages of depravity have been allured by it 
 to the pursuit of excellence, others who have been sitting in 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 3 1 1 
 
 despondency at the gates of perdition have beheld it and 
 conceived hope. And though the best specimens of our race 
 have, in every age since his appearance, been laboring to 
 imitate, they have not been able to equal it. 
 
 The character of Jesus challenges the affection of all 
 intelligent beings, leaves the impression of its image on 
 every object it touches, and is destined to collect around 
 itself all the sanctified passions of the universe. 
 
 In the hands of Jesus the science of morality is simplified 
 and complete. A single prohibition is so planted by him, that, 
 like a piece of ordnance, it may be said to enfilade and sweep 
 a whole territory of sin ; nothing can come within its range 
 without challenofinof its thunder and courtinof death. A sino-le 
 rule is found to contain laws for an indefinite number of 
 actions, for all the possible cases of the class described, which 
 can ever occur. Like the few imaginary circles by which 
 geography circumscribes the earth, he has, by a few sentences, 
 described and distributed into sections the whole globe of 
 human duty, so that, wherever we may be on it, we find 
 ourselves encompassed by some comprehensive maxim ; and 
 in whatever direction we may move, we have only to reflect 
 in order to perceive that we are receding from or approaching 
 to some line of morality. 
 
 By thus generalizing morality, he has consulted the 
 weakness of the most impaired memory ; presented us with 
 a map-like view of the wide region of duty, which a single 
 glance can survey ; provided rules for all the possible varieties 
 and continofencies of human action : while the consciousness 
 it affords his followers, that they are able to sustain the 
 particulars of their life upon great first principles, enables 
 them to advance in the path of holiness with an erect, assured, 
 and dienified carriao-e of mind ; and the demand which it 
 makes upon the higher capabilities of nature, in calling them 
 to comprehend such measures of greatness, and to sympathize 
 with such perfection, raises and ennobles them to themselves, 
 and possesses them with a feeling that they are allied to God. 
 
312 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 To give a single exemplification, let me advert to the 
 axiom known as the Golden Rule and universal law of equity : 
 " All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto 
 you, do ye also unto them ; for this is the law and the 
 prophets." The Saviour himself ascribes to this rule the 
 condensed and comprehensive character for which we have 
 cited it ; he pronounces it an abstract of all that had been 
 prescribed by the law and the prophets ; all they delivered 
 on the subject is reducible to this, so that, were their writings 
 lost, this summary might be expanded into all the others. 
 Notwithstanding its conciseness, it is a maxim of so generic 
 a kind, that, encircling the whole sphere of social virtue, it 
 embraces all tilings whatsoever that sphere contains. No 
 injury can be done, no reasonable kindness be omitted by 
 man to man, which is not a violation of this royal law ; nor 
 can any duty be performed, which it does not \irtually 
 enjoin. 
 
 If it needed any other quality to recommend it, we might 
 easily show that it has numerous excellences fully answerable 
 to its comprehensiveness. It is a rule as portable as our self- 
 love, and identical with it ; for, what is it but the love of self 
 applied to the destruction of selfishness, by being pressed 
 into the service of universal benevolence ? It is the measur- 
 ing-rod which is never out of the hand of self for its own 
 purpose, legalized and applied to mete out the same measure 
 for the good of others. It seeks to equalize vicissitude ; to 
 make a community of our joys and sorrows, by distributing 
 them as nearly into equal parts as if we knew^ not the portion 
 which would fall to us. It aims to transform self into an 
 impartial judge, by giving it an interest in all the decisions 
 which it pronounces on others. By compelling our selfishness 
 to do the work of destruction on itself, it makes us content to 
 number as one, as a mere unit in the sum of the species ; and 
 to seek the welfare of the whole as the shortest and the only 
 way of promoting our individual interest. 
 
 Let this infallible law be understood and applied, and the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 313 
 
 trade of the casuist would be gone In the department of social 
 life ; for self-interest, prompt and even intuitive when it sits 
 in judgment for its own ends, would have only to imagine a 
 momentary self-transmigration, and to transfer its judgments 
 for the advantage of others. 
 
 SIMON GREENLEAF. 
 
 [Testimony of the Evangelists. New York: 1S74. Pp. 51-53.] 
 
 Among internal marks of truth in the narratives of the 
 Evangelists, may be mentioned the nakedness of the narra- 
 tives ; the absence of all parade by the writers, about their own 
 integrity ; of all anxiety to be believed, or to impress others 
 with a good opinion of themselves or their cause ; of all marks 
 of wonder, or desire to excite astonishment at the greatness of 
 the events they record ; and of all appearance of design to 
 exalt their Master. On the contrary, there is apparently the 
 most perfect indifference on their part, whether they are 
 believed or not ; or, rather, the evident consciousness that they 
 are recording events well known to all in their own country 
 and times, and undoubtedly to be believed, like any other 
 matter of public history, by readers in all other countries and 
 ages. It is worthy, too, of especial observation, that, though 
 the Evangelists record the unparalleled sufferings and cruel 
 death of their beloved Lord, and this too by the hands and 
 with the consentine voices of those on whom he had conferred 
 the greatest benefits, and their own persecutions and dangers, 
 yet they have bestowed no epithets of harshness or even of 
 just censure on the authors of all this wickedness ; but have 
 everywhere left the plain and unencumbered narrative to speak 
 for itself, and the reader to pronounce his own sentence of 
 condemnation. Like true witnesses, who have nothing to gain 
 or to lose by the event of the cause, they state the facts, and 
 leave them to their fate. Their simplicity and artlessness, also, 
 should not pass unnoticed, in readily stating even those things 
 
314 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 most disparaging to themselves. Their want of faith in their 
 Master, their dulness of apprehension of his teachings, their 
 strifes for pre-eminence, their inchnation to call fire from 
 heaven upon their enemies, their desertion of their Lord in 
 his hour of extreme peril, — these, and many other incidents 
 tending directly to their own dishonor, are nevertheless set 
 down with all the directness and sincerity of truth, as by men 
 writing under the deepest sense of responsibility to God. 
 
 The great character the Evangelists have portrayed is per- 
 fect. It is the character of a sinless being, of one supremely 
 wise and supremely good. It exhibits no error, no sinister 
 intention, no imprudence, no ignorance, no evil passion, no 
 impatience ; in a word, no fault ; but all is perfect uprightness, 
 innocence, wisdom, goodness, and truth. The mind of man 
 has never conceived the idea of such a character, even for 
 his gods ; nor has history or poetry shadowed it forth. The 
 doctrines and precepts of Jesus are in strict accordance with 
 the attributes of God, agreeably to the most exalted idea which 
 we can form of them, either from reason or from revelation. 
 They are strikingly adapted to the capacity of mankind, and 
 yet are delivered with a simplicity and majesty wholly divine. 
 He spake as never man spake. He spake with authority, yet 
 addressed himself to the reason and understanding of man ; 
 and he spoke with wisdom which men could neither gainsay 
 nor resist. In his private life he exhibits a character not 
 merely of strict justice, but of overflowing benignity. He is 
 temperate without austerity, his meekness and humility are 
 signal, his patience invincible; truth and sincerity illustrate his 
 whole conduct; every one of his virtues is regulated by con- 
 summate i)rudence; and he both wins the love of his friends, 
 and extorts the wonder and admiration of his enemies. 
 
 He is represented in every variety of situation in life, from 
 the height of worldly grandeur, amid the acclamations of an 
 admiring multitude, to the deepest abyss of human degradation 
 and woe;, apparently deserted by God and man. 
 
 Yet everywhere he is the same, displaying a character of 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 3 i 5 
 
 unearthly perfection, symmetrical in all its proportions, and 
 encircled with splendor more than human. 
 
 Either the men of Galilee were men of superlative wisdom 
 and extensive knowledge and experience, and of deeper skill 
 in the arts of deception than any or all others before or after 
 them, or they have truly stated the astonishing things which 
 they saw and heard. 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 [The Influence of Jesus. New York: 1879. Pp. 12, 14.] 
 
 Upon the race and upon the individual, Jesus is always 
 bringing into more and more perfect revelation the certain 
 truth that man, and every man, is the child of God. This is 
 the sum of the work of the Incarnation. . . . JNIan is the 
 child of God by nature. He is ignorant and rebellious, 
 the prodigal child of God ; but his ignorance and rebellion 
 never break the first relationship. It is always a child 
 ignorant of his Father ; always a child rebellious against his 
 Father. This is what makes the tragedy of human history, 
 and always prevents human sin becoming an insignificant and 
 squalid thing. To re-assert the fatherhood and childhood as 
 an unlost truth, and to re-establish its power as the central 
 fact of life ; to tell men that they were, and to make them 
 actually be, the sons of God, — that was the purpose of the 
 coming of Jesus, and the shaping power of his life. 
 
 Of course it is not possible to speak of such an idea, which 
 is indeed the idea of the universe, as if it were a message 
 intrusted to the Son of God when he came to be the Saviour 
 of mankind. It was not only something which he knew and 
 tauofht : it was somethine which he was. No other truth ever 
 so inspires a merely human teacher, so fills his whole life with 
 itself, so comes to be not merely the creed which his lips 
 declare, but the truth which his whole living utters, as this 
 truth of man's childhood to God. 
 
3l6 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 EUSTACE R. CONDER. 
 
 [The Basis of Faith. London: 1877. Pp. 347) 359> 367-] 
 
 Sharply outlined against the deep background of the past, 
 rising in serene unapproached grandeur above its heroic 
 figures and colossal phantoms, undimmed by the mists of 
 intervening ages, one form withdraws our gaze from all others. 
 One voice, clear in our ears as in the ears of the men of 
 Galilee eighteen hundred years ago, still speaks as no other 
 voice ever spoke to the heart of universal humanity. One 
 name in its regal power over men's minds and hearts contin- 
 ues, and promises to continue, as during sixty generations, 
 " above every name." Some half-dozen names — Confucius, 
 Gautama, Pythagoras, Socrates, Zoroaster, Mohammed — 
 may for a moment present themselves as rivalling the name 
 of Jesics in their dominion over the faith of mankind ; but 
 an inspection of their dogmas and institutes, and of their 
 influence on their disciples, will dissipate this. 
 
 The certainty that we have valid knowledge of God, and 
 hold real personal communion with him, not merely as Creator 
 and foundation of the universe, but as the Father of spirits, 
 hearer of prayer, and guide of trusting souls, must stand or 
 fall with the authority of Jesus Christ. 
 
 On any theory of his person and character, Jesus stands 
 alone among men, alone in his relation to his own age, and 
 to all preceding and following ages, alone in his breadth and 
 depth of human tenderness and sympathy, as much as in the 
 peerless grandeur of his moral and spiritual nature. Nothing 
 in the age in which he appeared, or in foregoing ages, accounts 
 for him ; and the after-times have been moulded by him. His 
 life rises sheer from the dead level of common humanity, like 
 some mountain peak rising from the bosom of ocean, girdled 
 with perpetual summer and crowned with eternal snow. 
 
 The moral beauty of the character of Jesus is one of those 
 perfect ideals on which no writ of criticism can be served, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 3 I 7 
 
 which no human judgment is quaHfied to arraign ; but which 
 summon human criticism before their tribunals, and fix the 
 standard of human excellence. Yet it is as natural and life- 
 like as it is ideally perfect. Its symmetry, grace, and ease 
 conceal from us its colossal proportions. Saints, heroes, 
 sages, the lights of human history, occupy each his several 
 department of greatness. None of them is great all round. 
 We are not surprised to find the loftiest wisdom unsympa- 
 thetic, and impatient of conceited ignorance ; the most spotless 
 purity cold and ascetic ; the most ardent love partial and 
 jealous ; the most tender-hearted benevolence deficient in 
 righteous indignation, the purest zeal in tolerance, the deepest 
 humility in nobleness. But in Jesus we can find no exagger- 
 ation, no deficiency. 
 
 Yet that which probably impresses our hearts most in the 
 portrait drawn by the Four Evangelists is not his blameless 
 perfection, and remoteness from all human frailty, but his 
 sympathy, accessibleness, tenderness, and intense humanity. 
 His own similitude, which has sunk ineffaceably into the heart 
 of mankind, best represents him : the Good Shepherd carrying 
 the sick lamb in his arms, bearing home the lost sheep on his 
 shoulders, and laying down his life for the flock. 
 
 C. F. SCHMID. 
 
 [Biblical Theology of the New Testament. Edinburgh: 1S70. Pp. ir, 390] 
 
 Jesus himself teaches, but his whole rich store of precepts 
 is nothino- else than the commencement of himself as the 
 manifested Christ. Every thing is merely preparation for, or 
 explanation and application of, that one statement. In St. 
 John's Gospel it is clear that all the teaching relates to the 
 person of Jesus ; but in the other three also, this person is 
 the centre and groundwork of the whole new religion. Here 
 also we have, as the real essence of Christianity, a fact on 
 which all the teaching is based, the history of an actual life. 
 
o 
 
 1 8 2-ESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 The whole body of apostoHc doctrine has reference to the 
 same fact, especially to the turning-point of the life of Jesus. 
 To this, however, is added a further historic basis, the com- 
 munication of the Holy Spirit, and the life of the community 
 of believers in Jesus which is founded therein. These two 
 leading facts, then, are the groundwork an4 hypothesis on 
 which all development of apostolic doctrine must rest. 
 
 Peter very decidedly sets forth the fact of Christ being a 
 model for us. We have already seen that he premised his 
 sinlessness ; but we may also notice in some passages, espe- 
 cially I Pet. ii. 21-23, this sinlessness is linked on to his 
 typical character. Also in i Pet. iii. 18, Christ is looked 
 upon as a pattern, again, in a similar connection. Thus the 
 historical life of Christ on earth is represented as a pattern 
 especially in its sufferings, and as a pattern in peculiar refer- 
 ence to truth, patience, and love of one's enemies. 
 
 CHARLES ADOLPHUS ROW. 
 
 [The Jesus of the Evangelists. London: 1S6S. Pp. 54, Gi,6()!\ 
 
 There is nothing more remarkable in the evangelical por- 
 traiture of the Christ, than the manner in which the humblest 
 of men is depicted as preaching himself. This feature of his 
 character runs throughout the Gospels, and is indissolubly 
 interwoven with their structure. It is impossible to form any 
 correct estimate of the moral teaching which the Evangelists 
 have attributed to Christ, without taking this element of it 
 into the deepest consideration. . . . 
 
 In no other man would such an assumption wear anything 
 but the appearance of arrogance. His sense of worthiness 
 seems like an intuition. How beautifully consistent with the 
 character of him who was the Light of the world Is the invita- 
 tion to the weary and heavy laden to come to him for rest ! 
 But how monstrous would that invitation sound If put Into the 
 mouth of any other teacher with whom we are acqunlnted! 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 319 
 
 Let us conceive of Socrates as saying, " Take my yoke upon 
 you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and 
 ye shall find rest unto your souls." 
 
 But our Lord is depicted as feeling- within him a greatness 
 greater than every other obligation ; and, when he claims the 
 lordship of the human heart, the purest, the wisest, and 
 the best have joined in the exclamation, " Worthy is the 
 Lamb ! " . . . 
 
 An immense distance separates our Lord's moral teaching 
 from that of all other men. Compared with that of all who 
 have preceded him, it presents the widest catholicity of view. 
 The Jew was a brother to the Jew, but he admitted no obliga- 
 tion to the alien or the schismatic. The legislator recog-nized 
 a brotherhood between citizens ; the philosopher recognized a 
 brotherhood between the enlightened and the elevated: but 
 where were the degraded, the slave, and the barbarian ? But 
 Jesus compelled the narrow sectarian to admit that the law 
 of love included within its obligations the outcast. Is my 
 neighbor the priest, the Levite, or the Jew ? He is all these. 
 But the merciful pariah is also neighbor to the man of the 
 purest blood ; the despised schismatic, to the member of 
 the most orthodox church. My neighbor is neither my fellow- 
 sectarian, nor my fellow-countryman, nor my fellow-churchman, 
 but man in need. He is every one whom Jesus Christ has 
 loved, for whom he has lived, and to redeem whom he 
 has died. 
 
 FREDERICK D. HUNTINGTON. 
 
 [Christ in the Christian Year. New York: 1878. P. 56.] 
 
 This Christ to come shall be the perfect man. In him all 
 virtues, all graces, shall meet. They shall not only meet, but 
 harmonize in him, blending together in one matchless man- 
 hood. It shall not be, as in all other men, the grandest speci- 
 mens of virtue, where disproportion spoils the symmetr}' ; 
 one-sidedness or limitation clinging to the highest minds. 
 
320 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 But every thing in him shall be tempered faultlessly together; 
 energy with patience, dignity with tenderness, forbearance 
 towards the guilty with indignation at wrong, command with 
 obedience, courage with humility, the fortitude of heroes and 
 martyrs with the sensibility of woman, and the ripe experience 
 of saints with the artlessness of the child. . . . He would be 
 humanity's one consummate, immaculate example. He would 
 be the world's one stainless soul. 
 
 FREDERIC GODET. 
 
 [Studies in the New Testament. New York : 1877. P. 21.] 
 
 Here, then, we see human nature elevated, in the person 
 of its normal representative, into the possession of the divine 
 life, and become the organ of the supreme thought and will. 
 Here we see the chasm between the finite and the infinite 
 bridged over by a member of our race. If God is love, must 
 not this have been the concluding step of the ascending 
 progress he had planned ? A higher was not conceivable. 
 A conclusion less lofty would have left something wanting in 
 the development of divine love. We have a right, then, to 
 conclude by saying, Jesus was a real man, and this real man 
 was brought to perfection. 
 
 EDWIN A. ABBOTT. 
 
 [Oxford Sermons. London: 1879. Pp. 152, 164, 167, 168.] 
 
 Now, all that we ask for the Founder of Christianity is, 
 that his life and teaching should be investigated with the 
 same dispassionate fairness with which we would approach the 
 biography of the founder of any other religion. Put aside, 
 if you will, every thing which is supernatural ; reject even 
 those miraculous acts of healing which are best authenticated, 
 and which seem to me most certainly true ; consider Jesus 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZAR/<:rH. 321 
 
 of Nazareth simply as a man, simply as a teacher, simply as a 
 moral reformer. — then, when you have done this, consider his 
 influence, after his death, upon his apostles, on his enemy 
 Paul, on those who have believed on him for eighteen centu- 
 ries, on the age in which we now live; and, when all is consid- 
 ered, ask and answer, as best you can, the question, What 
 manner of man is this 9 . . . 
 
 In order to answer this question, let us briefly review the 
 character assumed by Jesus. We have seen that he spoke 
 and acted as one having authority greater than that of the 
 semi-divine lawgiver who was popularly believed not to have 
 died after the manner of men. He claimed authority to 
 abrogate the law, to supersede the sabbath, and to forgive 
 sins. He offered himself to the disciples as the type of per- 
 fect sonship to God, though habitually calling himself the Son 
 of man. He called upon all that were miserable and sinful 
 to come to him, and to place their faith in him, and he would 
 give them rest, and guide to life eternal. In every respect he 
 presented himself to his followers as the visible centre of their 
 religion, the image of the invisible Father. 
 
 The facts of the life of this great Teacher having been 
 briefly considered, we return once more to the question, What 
 mafiiier of 7nan is this f To such an appeal, the countryman 
 of Shakspeare and Bacon will never be so dreamily ignorant of 
 human nature, or so pusillanimously abhorrent of facts, as 
 to reply, " He was a m-ythT Nor shall he be able fairly to 
 reply, " He was indeed a great teacher; but his work is now 
 done, and we need some new revelation." On the contrary, 
 the principle that he revealed and vivified for us, the law of 
 brotherhood among men, is still the only principle whereby 
 there is any hope of ultimately perfecting the human race. . . . 
 
 Those who even approximately appreciate the character 
 of Christ must needs, one would think, recoil from the thought 
 that his life could have been a delusion, not so much out ot 
 fear of lowering their estimate of Jesus, as from a terror of the 
 tremendous consequences upon their belief in God himself. 
 
322 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 For, if you believe that a good God governs the world, how 
 can you possibly do otherwise than reject as blasphemous 
 the thought that he permitted such a one as Jesus of Nazareth 
 to delude himself with intiated self-conceits, to ape the divin- 
 est attributes of the Supreme. — the powers of forgiving and 
 judging, — and die in the vain imagination that he was the 
 Redeemer of mankind ? Surely, if that were possible, the 
 deceived would be morally superior to the deceiver ; and Jesus 
 of Nazareth would be more worthy of worship than God. 
 
 ANDREWS NORTON. 
 
 [Evidences of the Genuineness ok the Gospels. Boston: 1871. Pp. 406, 407. 
 
 409, 410.] 
 
 The Founder of our religion was unquestionably the most 
 wonderful individual who ever appeared on earth. A Jew. 
 a Galilaean in humble life, poor, without literary culture, with- 
 out worldly power or influence ; teaching but a short time, — 
 probably not more than two years ; wandering about the 
 shores of the Lake of Galilee and of the Jordan ; scarcely 
 entering Jerusalem but to be driven away by persecution, till 
 at last he went thither to perish under it ; collecting during 
 his lifetime only a small body of illiterate and often wavering 
 followers ; addressing men whose incapacity, prejudices, or 
 hatred continually led them to mistake or to pervert his 
 meaning ; surrounded and apparently overpowered by his 
 unbelieving countrymen, who regarded him as a blasphemer, 
 and caused him to suffer the death of the most unpitied of 
 malefactors, — this person has wrought an effect to which 
 there is nothing parallel on the opinions and on the condi- 
 tion of the most enlightened portion of our race. The moral 
 civilization of the world, the noblest conceptions which men 
 have entertained of religion, of their nature, of their duties, 
 are to be tracetl back directly to him. They come to us. not 
 from th(; grovels of the Academy, not from the walks of the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 323 
 
 Ilissus which Aristotle frequented, not from the Painted Por- 
 tico of Athens where Zeno taught, but from the mountain on 
 which Jesus dehvered his first recorded discourse ; from the 
 synagogue and the streets of the small town of Capernaum, 
 of which not a ruin remains to fix its site ; from fishing-boats 
 on the Lake of Galilee ; from the less-inhabited tracts — the 
 deserts, as they have been called — of Palestine ; from the 
 courts of the Jewish temple, where he who spake was con- 
 fronting men plotting his destruction ; from the cross of one 
 expiring in agony amid the savage triumphs of his enemies. 
 After witnessing such a death, his disciples lost all their 
 doubts. They affirmed their Master to be the Saviour of the 
 world, the Son of God. 
 
 The character of Jesus Christ as exhibited in any one of 
 the first three Gospels, or in all of them taken together, is 
 equally consistent and wonderful. It is, at the same time, 
 a character to which nothing in human history, before or 
 after, presents a parallel or a resemblance. He appears as 
 one acting under the miraculous conviction that he was the 
 instrument of God, to assure men, on his authority, of their 
 relations to him and to eternity ; and this conception of his 
 character is fully sustained. In the midst of men who appear, 
 as we should expect the Jews of that age to appear, ignorant, 
 narrow-minded, dull in their perceptions, indocile, many of 
 them hating him with all the hatred of bigotr}^ throughout 
 trials of every sort, under external circumstances so humiliat- 
 ing that we shrink from the thought of them, he shows always 
 the same unalterable elevation of character, requiring no 
 human support. We feel that he was not to be degraded 
 by any insult, and that no praise could have been addressed 
 to him, had it come from the highest of men, which would 
 not have been a strange impertinence. If our natural feelings 
 have been unperverted, we follow him ; if not with the convic- 
 tion, — that conviction has been resisted, — but certainly with 
 a sentiment continually prompting us to say, "Truly this was 
 the Son of God." But it is folly to suppose that such a 
 
324 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 portraiture of character could have been the result of an 
 aggregation of fabulous traditionary stories, which had been 
 moulded by different minds, Jewish or Gentile. The compari- 
 son is unworthy of the subject ; but it would not be more 
 absurd to imagine that the finest works of ancient plastic art, 
 the display of perfect physical beauty in the Apollo Belvedere, 
 had been produced by putting together the labors of different 
 artists at different times, all working without a model, this 
 making one part or member, and that another. 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 [Three Essays on Religion. New York: 1874. Pp. 253-255.] 
 
 The most valuable part of the effect on the character 
 which Christianity has produced, by holding up in a divine 
 person a standard of excellence and a model for imitation, 
 is available even to the absolute unbeliever, and can never- 
 more be lost to humanity. For it is Christ, rather than God, 
 whom Christianity has held up to believers as the pattern of 
 perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate, — more than 
 the God of the Jews, or of nature, — who, being idealized, has 
 taken so great and salutary a hold on the modern mind. And 
 whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, 
 Christ is still left, — a unique figure, not more unlike all his 
 precursors than all his followers, even those who had the 
 direct benefit of his personal teaching. . . . 
 
 About the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp 
 personal originality combined with profound insight ; which, 
 if we abandon the idle expectation of fintling scientific pre- 
 cision where something very different was aimed at, must 
 place the prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of 
 those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first 
 rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our sj^ecies can 
 boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the 
 qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr 
 
TO JRSUS OF NAZARETH. 325 
 
 to that mission who ever existed upon earth, rehgion can- 
 not be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this 
 man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity ; nor 
 even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a 
 better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into 
 the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would 
 approve our life. 
 
 EDMUND H. SEARS. 
 
 [The Heart of Christ. Boston : 1874 (fourth edition). Pp. 467. 474, 478, 479.] 
 
 Jesus Christ was more of a man than any other person 
 of whom we have any history ; for nowhere else do we read of 
 a humanity where the compass of its powers and attributes 
 was so full and so complete. Its .sublimest heights of moral 
 grandeur, and its most delicate shades of moral beauty, are 
 all here. The manhood of other men, even the best of them, 
 is somewhat distorted or defective. There is strength without 
 tenderness ; there is breadth without depth ; there is intensity 
 without catholicity ; there is clear intellect without the sweet 
 and fervent sympathies of the heart. The peculiarity of Jesus 
 consists in the union of qualities found elsewhere incongruous 
 and in separation ; union in such majestic and delicate pro- 
 portion as to give the impression of perfect symmetry and 
 harmony. . . . 
 
 The egoism of the Johannean writings is so stupendous 
 and persistent, that we are shut up to the conclusion, that if 
 Christ was a " mere man," though a sage or prophet, he was 
 a man whose self-assertion transcended all the bounds of 
 reason and modesty. For what is the bearing of sage or 
 prophet who have any just apprehension of their function 
 and calling? According to the fulness and depth of their 
 wisdom and inspiration, so will the entireness of their self- 
 abnegation be. . . . 
 
 Such self-assertion was never heard of before or since, 
 
-.2 6 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 o 
 
 except among men of disordered intellect. Why do we read 
 it in the evangelic narratives without being shocked with it ? 
 Plainly, because of its place and setting in a biography which 
 is unlike any other, and which none of the scales of human 
 grandeur are competent to measure, and where the entire 
 harmony and proportion are not broken but preserved. But 
 take out this egoism, and try to fit it into the life of any other 
 great man, prophet, apostle, or sage. . . . They resolve them- 
 selves into nothingness as fast as possible ; and are more 
 conscious than ever of a human infirmity which must not 
 fling its shadow across the sunlight of God. If we think this 
 was owing to any usages of speech peculiar to the men them- 
 selves, we have only to take any of our modern apostles of 
 truth, and try to fit such egoism into the frame of their 
 history. 
 
 MARK HOPKINS. 
 
 [Evidences of Christianity. Boston: 1867. Pp. 212, 213, 240, 242, 246, 251, 255.] 
 
 • 
 
 In an abstract system of philosophy, we do not inquire 
 what the character of its author was. The truth of the system 
 of Plato, or of Adam Smith, or of Jeremy Bentham, does not 
 depend on the question whether they were good or bad men ; 
 but if it could be shown that Christ was a bad man, — nay, 
 if we were simply to withdraw his character and acts, — the 
 whole system would collapse at once. His character stands 
 as the central orb of the system, and without it there would 
 be no effectual light and no heat. This arises from two 
 causes. The first is the very striking peculiarity, that the 
 author of Christianity claims not merely belief but affection. 
 What would have been thought of Socrates or Plato, if they 
 had not merely taught mankind, but if they and their disciples 
 had set up a claim that they should be loved by the whole 
 human race with an affection exceeding that of kindred ? But 
 if he is to be thus loved by all men, he must first place himself 
 in the relation to them of a personal benefactor, and then, by 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 327 
 
 the very laws of affection, he must present a character which 
 ought to call forth their love. 
 
 The second cause why the character of Christ is essential 
 is, that in the moral and spiritual world power is manifested 
 and movement is effected only by action. A moral system 
 must indeed, like any thing else, be the object of the intellect ; 
 but no abstract system of moral truth, no precepts merely 
 enunciated but not embodied and manifested in actual life, 
 could ever have been the means of moral life to the world. 
 Men need not only truth, but life, — the truth and life 
 embodied. They need a leader, some one to go before them 
 as the captain of their salvation, whose voice they can hear 
 saying, " Follow me." While therefore, in all other systems, 
 the character of the founder is of very little importance, it is 
 vital here. . . . 
 
 It was not in the power of man to form a conception of L 
 the character of Christ before he came. It is one thing to 
 recognize a perfect character as such, when it is presented, 
 and quite another so to combine the qualities as to form such 
 a character, and to manifest it in action. It is at this point 
 that we find all the difference between the common power of 
 judging of the productions of genius in the fine arts, and 
 of producing models of excellence in those arts ; and I do not 
 hesitate to say, that, as a work of art, a product of genius, 
 simply, the exhibition in life of a perfect model of human 
 nature would be the highest conceivable attainment. That 
 man has genius who can embody the perfection of material 
 forms in his imagination, and cause those forms to live before 
 us in the marble, on the canvas, or on the printed page ; and 
 he has higher genius still who can arrange the elements of 
 character into new yet natural combinations, and cause his 
 personages, as organized and consistent wholes, to speak and 
 act before us. In all these cases where Michael Angelo 
 produces a statue, or Allston a painting, or Milton a land- 
 scape, or Shakspeare a character, we can judge of it though 
 we could not have made the combination. It is, indeed, the 
 
328 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 great prerogative of genius to produce thoughts, and forms, 
 and characters, and I will add here actions, of which other 
 men recognize the excellence, but which they could not have 
 produced. Yes, I add actions ; for, if the conception and 
 delineation of an original course of action require genius, it 
 must be equally required, and in combination too with high 
 practical qualities, to realize that same conception in the 
 bolder relief of actual life. The power to act thus does not 
 always, perhaps not generally, involve the power of delineation, 
 but it does involve the very highest form of genius, and 
 something more ; and it is only because there is genius that 
 expresses itself in great action, that that of delineation has 
 either dignity or worth. 
 
 Now, as the highest effort of genius in statuary would be 
 to produce a perfect human form, one of which it might 
 be said, that, though no form in nature ever equalled it, yet 
 that every form was perfect in proportion as it approximated 
 towards it, so it would be the highest conceivable effort of 
 genius, involving its most complex elements, to present, as an 
 organized and consistent whole, and to cause to speak and 
 act before us in all the diversified relations of life, a perfect 
 human being, — one of whom it might be said, that, though 
 no other ever manifested the same excellence, yet that all 
 others were excellent in proportion as they approximated 
 towards him. Philosopher, man of genius and of taste, here 
 is a task for you. We challenge you to it. Would you, could 
 you, not merely describe in general terms, but present in 
 detail, the words and actions even of a consistent and perfect 
 piety ? No : you would not, and you could not. Attempts 
 had often been made to portray a model character, but it does 
 not appear that it was within the power of human genius ; 
 and when the majestic, the simple, the beautiful, the perfect 
 character of Christ appeared, it was seen how poor those 
 attempts had been. Certainly, applying the most philosophical 
 tests, if the Evangelists did invent this character, they mani- 
 fested higher genius than any other men that ever lived. But 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 329 
 
 if the bare representation of such a character would be so 
 difficult, who could have thought of really being such a 
 person, of expressing it in life and action ? 
 
 I do not regard the setting of a perfect example, in every 
 thing that may strictly be called a duty, as comprising every 
 thing that should belong to a perfect humanity. A perfect 
 humanity implies a sensibility, a refinement, a grace, a beauty 
 of character, which cannot be said to be required by duty. 
 And all these the Saviour had in the highest degree. There 
 was no pure and exquisite emotion of human nature to which 
 he was not keenly alive ; and it is the union in him of every 
 thing that is tender and gentle with those higher and sterner 
 qualities which renders him a fit example, not for man only, 
 but for woman. How just and perfect must have been his 
 perception of the beauties of nature, who could say of the 
 lilies of the field, that Solomon in all his glory was not 
 arrayed like one of these ! In all the attributes in which 
 Christ was placed, in all the words that he uttered, there is 
 nothing unseemly, or offensive to a just taste. His suscepti- 
 bilities to both joy and suffering were intense. He rejoiced 
 in spirit, and his joy instantly burst forth in devout thanks- 
 giving. The innocence of children engaged his affection. 
 His heart was open to impressions of friendship. 
 
 In all these respects, — in his piety, in his benevolence, 
 and other virtues, in the refinement and deiicacy of his 
 character, — he is a suitable example for us. But, as difficult 
 as it must have been to present in action this combina- 
 tion of human excellences, it must have been much more so 
 to combine with them those qualities, and that deportment, 
 which were appropriate to him as the Messiah and Saviour 
 of the world. Is it possible that he who claimed to be greater 
 than Solomon, to command legions of angels, to raise the 
 dead, — who spoke of himself as the Son of God, and as 
 the final Judge of the world, — should so move, and speak, 
 and act, as to sustain a character compatible with these high 
 pretensions, and yet have the condescension and gentleness 
 
330 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 and meekness of Christ ? And yet such is the character 
 presented by the EvangeHsts. There is no break, no incon- 
 gruity. Like his own seamless garment, the character is 
 one. He seems to combine with perfect ease these elements 
 apparently so incompatible. This, I confess, excites my 
 astonishment. The presentation of a perfect manhood in a 
 lowly station had been beyond the power of human genius : 
 but when this is combined with the proprieties and requisi- 
 tions of a public character, and an office so exalted as that 
 of the Messiah and the Judge of the world, then I have an 
 intuitive conviction that I stand in the presence of no human 
 invention ; then this character presents itself to me with the 
 grandeur and wonder that belong to the great mountains and 
 the starry heavens. 
 
 According to the idea of many, the claim to set a perfect 
 example involves the claim to be perfectly sinless. But in 
 some respects the claim to be sinless involves more than 
 the claim to exhibit a perfect model of humanity, since the 
 exhibition respects an outward manifestation ; and who can 
 say that it may not be compatible with some wrong feeling 
 or affection ? And in some respects, again, the claim to be 
 a model man is more extensive than that to be perfectly 
 sinless. A human being might be sinless, and be destitute 
 of many of the perfections of the character of Christ. And 
 then, again, these claims look in such different directions, and 
 respect such entirely different objects, that there is a propriety 
 in considering them apart. The claim to present a perfect 
 manhood has respect to the wants of man ; the claim to be 
 sinless has respect to the relations of the individual to God. 
 and to his fitness to be a redeemer from sin. It must, I think, 
 be conceded, that he who would deliver others from the power 
 of sin must himself be free from its power. — be entirely 
 above and aloof from it. While, therefore, we can conceive of 
 an exhibitio7i of our nature that would appear to us faultless, 
 while we may not be certain that it was sinless, yet we cannot 
 conceive of one coming as a redeemer and deliverer from sin. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 331 
 
 who had himself ever swerved from moral rectitude, even in 
 thought or feeling. But since the great purpose for which 
 Christ came was to " save his people from their sins," it 
 became necessary that he should himself be, and claim to be, 
 entirely free from sin. 
 
 That Christ made this claim, and that his disciples made 
 it for him, there can be no doubt. They made it impliedly, 
 and they made it expressly. Christ said, " Which of you 
 convinceth me of sin ? " that he did always those things which 
 pleased the Father ; that he was one with the Father. Peter 
 says expressly, that " he did no sin," that " he was the holy 
 one and the just ; " and Paul says that he was " holy, harmless, 
 undefiled, and separate from sinners." 
 
 But what a claim is this, — a claim never made by any 
 other human being! Such a claim, the most extraordinary 
 and the most difficult to be sustained, of any that was ever set 
 up, while it is implied in the idea of a redeemer from sin, 
 must have been fatal to any impostor. Is this claim admitted, 
 or is it denied ? If it is admitted, the claims of Christianity 
 are admitted with it. If it is denied, the claims of Christian- 
 ity as a religion are denied ; for as a mode of delivery from 
 sin, and of salvation, its whole value turns upon this. Men 
 may have what knowledge they please of external evidences, 
 and of mere facts, but this can never work a spiritual regen- 
 eration. They must come to Christ, and believe in him as a 
 sinless Redeemer, or there can no virtue go out of him for 
 their spiritual healing. 
 
 The proof that Christ was a sinless being will be founded, 
 first, on the same facts that prove his perfect example. Here, 
 too, we may properly receive his own testimony, since he 
 could not have been deceived on this point. His perfect 
 sinlessness is also to be inferred from the effects produced by 
 his life upon his disciples ; from its effects upon the world ; 
 and from the fact that, as the mind of an individual becomes 
 more pure and elevated, he perceives a greater purity and 
 elevation in the character of Christ, so that, to whatever 
 
332 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 height he may attain, he still perceives the majestic form of 
 the Redeemer moving before him. . . . 
 
 When we look at his discourses, at their calmness, at their 
 deep insight and profound wisdom ; when we see that the 
 discoveries of. all ages have only shed lustre upon their wis- 
 dom, and that the wisest and best portion of the race now 
 sit at his feet as their instructor ; when we see the more than 
 propriety, the self-possession, the dignity, of his deportment 
 under the most trying circumstances, — we feel that not a voice 
 from heaven could make it more certain that his was not a 
 crazed or a weak or an unbalanced intellect. This fact is 
 borne witness to by the light of its own evidence : it shines 
 by its own brightness. 
 
 Did he, then, in the exercise of a sound mind, put forth 
 those claims with the intention to deceive others ? This, as I 
 have just intimated, I hold to be impossible. No impostor 
 of common sense could have had the folly to prefer such 
 claims. But if this consideration is conclusive, how much 
 more is that drawn from the moral character of Christ ! 
 Look at his unaffected and all-pervading piety, at his universal 
 and self-sacrificing benevolence, look at his purity and eleva- 
 tion above the world, listen to his prayers for his murderers 
 on the cross, and say, Is it possible that through all this he 
 was meditating a scheme of deception deeper, more exten- 
 sive, involving greater sacrifices and sufferings, and more 
 ultimate disappointment to human hope, than any other? Do 
 we not know that this was not so? If we could believe this, 
 would not that faith in goodness, which is the vital element in 
 the atmosphere of our moral life, be destroyed ? and what 
 would remain to us but the stifling and oppressive and deso- 
 lating conviction that there could be no ground of faith in any 
 indications of goodness ? We cannot believe this : we will not 
 believe it. Take away, if you will, the vital element of the air, 
 disrobe the sun of its beams, but remove not from me this life 
 of my life. Leave to me the full-orbed and unshorn bright- 
 ness of the character of Christ, the Sun of righteousness. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 333 
 
 HENRY PARRY LIDDON. 
 
 [Bampton Lectures for 1866. London : 1867. Pp. 290-294, 486, 487.] 
 
 The closest analysis of the actual human life of Jesus 
 reveals a moral portrait not only unlike that we have witnessed 
 before or since, but especially remarkable in that it presents 
 an entirely balanced and entirely harmonious representation 
 of all the normal elements of our perfected moral nature. 
 What are the features in that perfectly harmonious moral life, 
 upon which the reverence and the love of Christians dwells 
 most constantly, most thankfully, most enthusiastically ? 
 
 I say, first of all, that Jesus Christ was sincere. He pos- 
 sessed that one indispensable qualification for any teacher, 
 especially for a teacher of religion. He believed in what he 
 said without reserve, and he said what he believed without 
 regard to consequences. Material error you may pardon, if it 
 be error which in good faith believes itself to be truth. But 
 evident insincerity you cannot pardon ; you cannot regard 
 with any other sentiment than that of indignation, the con- 
 scious propagation of what is known to be false, or even to be 
 exaggerated. If any could doubt our Lord's sincerity, it might 
 suffice, among the facts which irresistibly prove this truth, to 
 point to his dealings with persons who followed and trusted 
 him. It is easy to denounce the errors of men who oppose 
 us ; but it is difficult to be always perfectly outspoken with 
 those who love us, or who look up to us, or whose services 
 may be of use to us, and who may be alienated by our out- 
 spokenness. Now, Jesus Christ does not merely drag forth to 
 the light of day the hidden motives of his powerful adver- 
 saries, that he may exhibit them with so mercifully implacable 
 an accuracy, in all their baseness and pretension. He exposes, 
 with equal impartiality, the weakness or the unreality or the 
 self-deception of others who already regard him with affection, 
 or who desire to espouse his cause. A multitude which he 
 has fed miraculously returns to seek him on the following 
 
334 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 day ; but instead of silently accepting this tacit proof of his 
 popular power, he observes, " Ye seek me, not because ye saw 
 the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were 
 filled." On another occasion, we are told, " there went great 
 multitudes with him ; " he turns, warns them that all human 
 affections must be sacrificed to his service, and that none could 
 be his disciple who does not take up the cross. He solemnly 
 bids men count the cost "before they build the tower" of 
 discipleship. He is on the point of being deserted by all, 
 and an apostle protests with fervid exaggeration that he is 
 ready to go with him to prison or to death. But our Lord, 
 instead of at once welcoming the affection which dictated this 
 protestation, pauses to show Simon Peter how little he really 
 knew of the weakness of his own heart. With the woman 
 of Samaria, with Simon the Pharisee, with the Jews in the 
 temple, with the rich young man, it is ever the same ; Christ 
 cannot flatter, he cannot dispfuise ; he cannot but set forth 
 truth in its limpid purity. Such was his moral attitude 
 throughout ; sincerity was the mainspring of his whole thought 
 and action ; and when he stood before the judges he could 
 exclaim, in this as in a wider sense, "To this end was I born, 
 and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear 
 witness unto the truth." Surely this sincerity of our holy 
 Saviour is even at this hour a main secret of his attractive 
 power. Others, we know, may flatter and deceive us till at 
 length we grow sick and weary at heart of the w^orld, from 
 which truth, in her stern simplicity, might sometimes seem to 
 have fled. But Jesus Christ, speaking to us from the Gospel 
 pages, or speaking in the secret chambers of conscience, is a 
 monitor whom we can trust to tell us the unwelcome truth ; 
 and could we conceive of him as false, he would no longer be 
 himself in our thought ; he would not be changed ; he would 
 simply have disappeared. 
 
 Jesus Christ was unselfish. His life was a prolonged act 
 of self-sacrifice, and sacrifice of self is the practical expression 
 and measure of unselfishness. It misrht have seemed that 
 
 o 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 335 
 
 where there was no sin to be curbed or worn away by sorrow 
 and pain, there room might have been found for a lawful 
 measure of self-satisfaction. But even " Christ pleased not 
 himself;" "he sought not his own glory," he "came not to 
 do his own will." His body and his soul, with all the faculties, 
 the activities, the latent powers of each, were offered to the 
 Divine will. His self-sacrifice included the whole range of 
 his human thought and affection and action ; it lasted through- 
 out his life ; its highest expression was his death upon the 
 cross. It is this disinterestedness, this devotion to the real 
 interests of human kind, this radical antagonism of his char- 
 acter to that vile thinor selfishness, which in our better 
 moments we men hate in ourselves, and which we always hate 
 in others. — it is this unrivalled and majestic renunciation of 
 all that has no object beyond self, which has won to Jesus 
 Christ the heart of mankind. . . . 
 
 As the friend of publicans and sinners, as the consoler 
 of those who suffer, as the helper of those who want, Jesus 
 Christ is at home among us. We can copy him, not merely 
 in the outward activities of charity, but in its inward temper ; 
 we can copy the tenderness, the meekness, the patience, the 
 courage, which shine forth from his perfect manhood. 
 
 His human perfections indeed constitute a faultless ideal 
 of beauty, which, as moral artists, we are bound to keep in 
 view. What the true and highest model of human life is, has 
 been decided for us Christians by the appearance of Jesus 
 Christ in the flesh. For us it is settled irrevocably. Nor are 
 Christ's human perfections other than human ; they are not, 
 after the manner of divine attributes, out of our reach ; they 
 are not designed to remind us of what human nature should 
 but cannot be. We can approximate to them even indefi- 
 nitely. That in our present state of imperfection we should 
 reproduce them in their fulness, is indeed impossible ; but it 
 is certain that a close imitation of Jesus of Nazareth is at once 
 our duty and our privilege. 
 
336 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 ANDREW PRESTON PEABODY. 
 
 [Christianity and Science. New York: 1875. Pp. 47, 49, 50.] 
 
 The character of Jesus Christ stands out alone, whether 
 in fable or in history. Viewed in its human aspects, it is 
 entirely unique. There is a blending, a harmonizing, of all 
 seeming contrasts of moral excellence, of traits any one of 
 which in equal lustre would have immortalized him in whom 
 it shone forth among multiplied imperfections and foibles, — 
 magnanimity and humility ; firmness and meekness ; uncom- 
 promising justice and unexhausted benevolence ; dignity and 
 condescension ; the spirit of command, and that of the lowli- 
 est service ; purity in which the most watchful hostility can 
 detect no stain, and tenderness for the lowest, vilest types of 
 depravity ; a walk with God so close that he seemed ever 
 within temple gates, and yet a walk with man so genial, so 
 friendly, loving, and helpful, that his eyes might seem never 
 lifted above the surrounding world ; a might stern and reso- 
 lute, such as was never witnessed before or since in the conflict 
 with evil, and a submission and resignation so serene and 
 trustful, so gentle and kindly, as to call forth the admiration 
 and sympathy of men whose lives had been passed in scenes 
 of warfare and carnage. . . . 
 
 As to the features of Christ's character, we may say with- 
 out fear of contradiction, that they have commanded the 
 approval ot persons of every age, condition, and culture ; 
 and the most cordially, of the confessedly greatest, wisest, and 
 best. Whatever objections there are to the contents of the 
 Gospels, do not apply to the character of Jesus as a man. 
 " We can find no fault in him," has been the verdict of his 
 enemies from Pilate until now. Nor can we detect in him the 
 absence of any virtue or grace which enters into our highest 
 ideal of human excellence. His, too, is a character whose 
 pre-eminent worth wins universal recognition. Though he is 
 a Jew as to birth and surroundings, there is no Hebrew or 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 337 
 
 Oriental element about him which interferes in the least with 
 the appreciation of his moral supremacy by nationalities of the 
 opposite stamp. The German, the Englishman, the French- 
 man, is not constrained to make the slio-htest abatement or 
 allowance in estimating his merits. He belongs equally to all 
 ages. He has no secular parallax. In the darkest times, he 
 has been acknowledged as supremely perfect, and equally so 
 at epochs of the highest culture, mental and moral. He is 
 transcendently beautiful and glorious to the rudest aspirant 
 after goodness, and no less so to a Fenelon, a Martyn, an 
 Oberlin, a Judson. The ignorant woman who can hardly spell 
 out his story in her Bible can imagine no other being so 
 lovely, so adorable ; and he seems no less the highest type of 
 humanity to Milton, Newton, Locke, Bunsen, Faraday. In 
 the galaxy of the greatly good, he is not a star a little brighter 
 than the rest, but a sun in whose light the stars grow pale. 
 
 JOHN JAMES TAYLER. 
 
 [Discourses. Boston: 1877. Pp. 15, 20, 21, 24.] 
 
 Many have been the wise and virtuous of earth who claim 
 our profoundest respect, but we acknowledge them simply as 
 men ; we feel no disposition to worship them, — least of all 
 Socrates, the oreat moral teacher of the Greeks, so often con- 
 fronted with Christ. We admire in him the subtle disputant, 
 whose keen logic and powerful irony dissolved the false 
 appearances of sophistry, and exposed to view the solid 
 elements of truth and justice; but no devout influence accom- 
 panied his discourse, or seems to hallow his life. Intellect is 
 ever ascendant in him over faith and the affections. He 
 grasps the rational principle of theism, but wants its living 
 soul. His whole character stands out, distinct and sharp and 
 bright, like an orb without an atmosphere, unencircled by 
 the orlorious halo of relio-ious consecration. Turn from the 
 Memorabilia to the Gospels. How different Is the impression 
 
338 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 produced ! We at once perceive ourselves to be breathing a 
 different air. The heart is touched. Conscience awakens 
 from its slumbers. Our aspirations soar above the earthly and 
 the perishing. We have a sense of something heavenly 
 and spiritual investing the life and mind of Christ, and going 
 forth in his words of love and acts of healing power, which 
 carries our thoughts irresistibly to the Sovereign Spirit of the 
 universe, and compels us, as we read, to confess some close, 
 mysterious, and ineffable communion between God and 
 Christ. . . . 
 
 In Christ we pre-eminently see how virtue is accomplished 
 by endeavor, — how through toil and trial, through weakness 
 and fear, the pure and true soul continually advances, and is 
 at length made one with God, We see the divine gradually 
 triumphing over, and finally absorbing, the human. Yet how 
 deeply is the human imprinted on all his history ! What 
 struggles he passed through ! What terrors he vanquished ! 
 How fierce and fiery was that temptation in the wilderness ! 
 How insidious the worldly counsel of Peter ! How sad those 
 tears that flowed at the grave of Lazarus ! How heavy and 
 dark the sorrows at Gethsemane ! But faith was ever at hand 
 to restore the mental balance, and preserve the perfect har- 
 mony of his true and trusting spirit with God. In this full 
 and confiding communion with God as the source and prin- 
 ciple of his moral being, we find, I apprehend, the true divinity 
 of Christ, and the secret of that mingled reverence and love 
 with which all religious hearts have honored him. All spirit 
 is of one nature, though possessed in various degrees. As 
 partakers of spirit, men are the children of God. There is 
 a measure of it corresponding to the moral capacities of 
 humanity, which Christ alone, judging from the extant records 
 of his life, seems to have filled uj) to its utmost limits, and so 
 to have united our nature with the Divine. Through him the 
 Spirit of the Father spoke clearly and intelligibly to men, for 
 it is only a purified and exalted humanity that can interpret 
 the Divine Mind. From him went forth the Spirit that drew 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 339 
 
 men by the attracting sympathies of faith and love to their 
 heavenly Father, and made them own his presence in the 
 midst of them. . . . 
 
 The true believers in the divinity of Christ are those whose 
 hearts glow with a kindred fervor when they meditate on his 
 teachings and his life, and who feel a virtue issuing from them 
 which enters their souls, and makes them better and happier 
 men ; they are those who are stirred up by his holy example to 
 do like things, and to live in the same spirit ; who transcribe his 
 moral image into their lives, and aim in habitual purpose and 
 endeavor to be one with him as he was one with God. By 
 the multiplication of such hearts and lives, the whole Church 
 will gradually become divine, and God, its Head and Founder 
 and unfailing Protector, be all in all. 
 
 GEORGE PUTNAM. 
 
 [Sermons. Boston: 1878. Pp. 208, 210, 212, 217.] 
 
 I DO not know that we can give our thoughts a more 
 appropriate direction, at this season of the celebration of the 
 birth of Jesus Christ, than in considering this declaration of 
 the apostle [" Other foundation can no man lay than that 
 is laid, which is Jesus Christ:" i Cor. iii. 11], — how true it 
 was when he made it, how true it has been ever since, and 
 how true it is likely to continue in the indefinite future. 
 
 His declaration was to the effect, that whatever theolo- 
 gical speculation men might indulge in, w^hatever ritual they 
 might adopt, whatever church institutions they might organ- 
 ize, he, Jesus Christ, was, and was to continue, the head, the 
 centre, the master, lord, king, captain, or whatever other title 
 or metaphor he might use to illustrate his supremacy in reli- 
 gion, his spiritual leadership and authority. Men might build 
 their superstructures variously, but there was only one foun- 
 dation for them all. 
 
 It was a bold saying enough when Paul uttered it. It had 
 
340 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 not much visible support. There were but few Christians in 
 the world, and they w^ere not of much account socially and 
 politically. 
 
 The Roman Senate, the philosophers of Athens, the col- 
 lege of augury, the priesthood of the old religions, would 
 have laughed Paul to scorn, had he spoken thus in their 
 presence. But his words were already coming true, and a 
 complete fulfilment of them was hastening on. ... A great 
 diversity of sects and doctrines has arisen, clashing much w^ith 
 one another, but professing and really striving to build on 
 him, and be true to him, steadfastly adhering to him. So 
 much is secure. The man of Nazareth is sure of eighteen 
 centuries, at least. So lonor he has been the central liQ-ure 
 in history, unapproached and almost unchallenged in his 
 spiritual headship. . . . 
 
 In the first place, if Jesus Christ was what we take him 
 for, a true Son of God, endowed, inspired, sent to teach and 
 inspire true religion, we must infer that he cannot be dis- 
 placed or defeated, but must permanently triumph through 
 the omnipotence of God and the truth. 
 
 Nearly all the most eminent thinkers and writers in 
 literature, philosophy, and religion, are not hostile in spirit 
 to Jesus Christ, do not wish to diminish his influence. They 
 are mostly serious and earnest, if not devout men. They are 
 not scoffers. They profess the highest appreciation of Christ, 
 and regard themselves as promoting his true cause, his real 
 and legitimate influence. The spirit which actuates them, as 
 a general thing, is not hostile to religion, or to Christ as its 
 highest representative. . . . 
 
 The reason, conscience, and heart fmd nothing in him to 
 object to or renounce, but every thing to believe and love 
 and cleave to. The theological obscurations and doctrinal 
 impediments being removed, the mind gets nearer to him, 
 understands him better. He stands out more clearly to view 
 in the simplicity and beauty, the power, the truth, and the 
 divinity, of his teaching, life, and spirit. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 34 1 
 
 JAMES MARTINEAU. 
 
 [Hours of Thought on Sacred Things. Boston: 1876. Pp. 294-296.] 
 
 Morality defines downward the duty of each ; Hves in the 
 midst of human and natural details ; attaches itself to the par- 
 ticular persons and concrete businesses of life. Devotion 
 opens its arms upwards to the source of all ; merges itself in 
 the divine and supernatural infinity ; sighs after the universal 
 spirit of all reality and ground of all appearance and secret 
 tincture of all good and beauty. For neither the masculine 
 concentration of the one, nor the feminine diffusion of the 
 other, is our nature exclusively designed ; to neither can it be 
 given up without one-sidedness and perilous excess. If they 
 are rarely harmonized, it is not for want of a visible ideal or 
 of a fitting capacity. In Christ, at once the Son of man and 
 Son of God, they were blended without discord or interfer- 
 ence : the majesty and the meekness, the force for this world, 
 the tender mingling with another, the percussion upon human 
 evil, and the melting into divine communion. And in the 
 higher mind of us all, the possibility exists of similarly blend- 
 ing all the seeming opposites that make up the equilibrium 
 of goodness, and drawing into nature the fair and happy con- 
 trasts that begin with distribution, only that mutual fascination 
 may help them to union. What but our own low ideal is to 
 hinder the moulding of our defective and broken humanity 
 into more Christ-like completeness ? Shall we never rise to 
 an inflexible moral enthusiasm, untainted by personal passion ; 
 to an indignation at wrong, kindled only by reverence for the 
 right, and made persuasive by sympathy with the wronged ; 
 to a transparent simplicity unspoiled by the deepest insight 
 and the largest intellectual view ; to the fusion of quick affec- 
 tions with unconquerable will ; to a passion for beauty so 
 loving as to labor in the midst of deformity ; to such inward 
 union with the Highest as shall brace the soul to undismayed 
 compassion for the lowest ? Are the graces of character never 
 
342 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 to have any vigor, or its vigor any grace ? Are the heroes to 
 be forever rude, and the saints forever sickly? Not unless 
 the cross is to be forgotten, and its very shadow to vanish 
 from the earth. So long as it stands visible, and fixes any 
 venerating look, no poor fragment of spiritual good can ever 
 content the conscience: without aspiring to the whole, we fall 
 at once from the disciples' place ; and when our all is done, 
 we must still feel ourselves a great way off. To have neither 
 restlessness nor apathy, but pass freely between energy and 
 repose, at the call to act or the need to suffer ; to bind wounds 
 without indulgence to the sins of men ; to have no tears but 
 those of pity ; to utter no reproach but as the true interpreter 
 of conscience ; to send forth no cry that does not soften into 
 prayer ; to mingle with the beauty of the world, yet find it but 
 the symbol of a more transcendent glory, — only brings us 
 somewhat nearer to that marvellous life in which the contra- 
 dictions of thouofht and the conflicts of feelino- formed the 
 very harmony of a nature lifted into perfect peace. His own 
 picture of the kingdom of heaven is the unconscious reflection 
 of himself: the finished and all-blending sphere, where the 
 differences are not indeed lost, but separated no more, between 
 the woman and the man, the elder and the child ; and all are 
 as the angels of God, that serve him with the wholeness of 
 a balanced nature. 
 
 ^VILHELM M. L. DE WETTE. 
 
 [Wesen des Chkistenthums. Pp. 271, 273. Quoted by Ullmann.] 
 
 The man who comes without preconceived opinions to the 
 life of Jesus, and who yields himself up to the impression 
 which it makes, will feel no manner of doubt that he is the 
 most excellent character and the purest soul that history 
 presents to us. . . . 
 
 He walked over the earth like some noble beinij who 
 scarce touched it with his feet. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 343 
 
 PETER BAYNE. 
 
 [The Christian Life. Boston: 1869. Pp. 27, 28.] 
 
 We still are unable to conceive the essential Deity ; but, 
 if we continue to contemplate the Saviour, we rise to ideas 
 of the mode in which his attributes find manifestation unspeak- 
 ably more exalted ; we mark the outgoings of his love, wis- 
 dom, and power, with a clearness inexpressibly greater than 
 can be attained by any observation of the universe or study 
 of man. The infidelity with which we are at present con- 
 cerned has expressed fervent admiration of Jesus ; and this 
 fact must at least make it appear reasonable in the eyes of its 
 followers, that Christians discern in him a holiness and beauty 
 transcending those of earth. The might of the ocean and 
 tempest, the strength of the everlasting hills, the silent 
 beaming forth, as in ever-renewed miraculous " vision," of the 
 splendor and opulence of summer, the illumination of im- 
 mensity by worlds, may offer some faint idea of the going- 
 forth of the power of Omnipotence ; but there is a still more 
 impressive, and, as it were, present manifestation of super- 
 natural power made to man, when the storm sinks quelled 
 before the eye of Jesus, or the dead comes from the grave at 
 his word. When the heart expands with a love that embraces 
 the whole circle of sentient existence, or even, by the bounte- 
 ous imagining of poetic sympathy, first breathes an ideal life 
 into flower and tree, and then over them too sheds, with 
 Wordsworth, the smile of glowing tenderness, we may remem- 
 ber there still linger traces of the Divine image in man, and 
 faintly imagine the streaming-forth of that love which bright- 
 ens the eyes of the armies of heaven, and gives light and life 
 to the universe ; but can any manifestation of human tender- 
 ness bring to us such a feeling of God's love, as one tear of 
 Jesus shed over Jerusalem, or one revering look into his eye, 
 when in the hours of mortal agony it overflowed in love and 
 prayer for his murderers ? We can attach a true and noble 
 
344 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 meaning to the words of Fichte, when he bids us watch the 
 holy man, because in what he '' does, hves, and loves," God 
 is revealed to us ; but we will affirm that any instance of 
 human heroism is altogether faint and powerless in enabling 
 us to form a conception of the holiness of God, when com- 
 pared with the devotion to his Father's service of him whose 
 meat and drink it was to do the will of God, and who died on 
 the cross to make an atonement for sin. 
 
 And if, in addition to all this, Christianity told us of a 
 Divine Spirit whose mysterious but certain influence on the 
 mind enabled it to discern a glory and a beauty in the Saviour 
 incomparably more exalted than could otherwise be distin- 
 guished, how truly might we assert that it brought us into a 
 closer nearness to the divine, than the most ethereal dreaming- 
 of mystic trance, or the most gorgeous imagining of panthe- 
 istic poetry ! 
 
 PHILIP SCHAFF. 
 
 [The Person of Christ. Boston: 1865. Pp. 39-41, 42, 43, 46-50, 82-87, 104-106] 
 
 Christ can be ranked neither with the school-trained nor 
 with the self-trained or self-made men ; if by the latter we 
 understand, as we must, those who, without the regular aid 
 of living teachers, yet with the same educational means, — 
 such as books, the observation of men and things, and the 
 intense application of their mental faculties, — attained to vigor 
 of intellect and wealth of scholarship, like Shakspeare, facob 
 Boehme, Benjamin Franklin, and others. All the attempts 
 made to bring him into contact with Egyptian wisdom, or the 
 Essenic theosophy, or other sources of learning, are without 
 a shadow of proof, and explain nothing, after all. He never 
 quotes from books, except the Old Testament. He never refers 
 to secular history, poetry, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, 
 foreign languages, natural sciences, or any of lho.se branches 
 of knowledge which make up human learning and literature. 
 He confined himself strictly to religion. But from that centre 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 345 
 
 he shed Hght over the whole world of man and nature. In 
 this department, unlike all other great men, even the prophets 
 and the apostles, he was absolutely original and independent. 
 He taueht the world as one who had learned nothine from it, 
 and was under no obligation to it. He speaks from divine 
 intuition, as one who not only knows the truth, but is the 
 truth ; and with an authority that commands absolute submis- 
 sion, or provokes rebellion, but can never be passed by with 
 contempt or indifference. . . . 
 
 His public life lasted only three years ; and before he had 
 reached the age of ordinary maturity, he died, in the full 
 beauty and vigor of early manhood, without tasting the 
 infirmities of declining years, which would inevitably mar 
 the picture of the Regenerator of the race and the Prince of 
 life. He retained the dew of his youth upon him: he never 
 became an old man. Both his person and his work, every 
 word he spoke, and every act he performed, has the freshness, 
 brilliancy, and vigor of youth, and will retain it to the end 
 of time. All other things fade away. Every book of man 
 loses its interest after repeated reading. But the Gospel of 
 Jesus never wearies the reader : it becomes more interesting 
 the more it is read, and grows deeper at every attempt to 
 fathom its depth. . . . 
 
 We should naturally suppose that such an uncommon per- 
 sonage, setting up the most astounding claims, and proposing 
 the most extraordinary work, would surround himself with 
 extraordinary circumstances, and maintain a position far above 
 the vulvar and degraded multitude around him. We should 
 expect something uncommon and striking in his look, his 
 dress, his manners, his mode of speech, his outward life, and 
 the train of his attendants. But the very reverse is the case. 
 His greatness is singularly unostentatious, modest, and quiet ; 
 and, far from repelling the beholder, it attracts and invites him 
 to familiar approach. His public life never moved on the 
 imposing arena of secular heroism, but within the humble 
 circle of ever)'-day life, and the simple relations of a son, a 
 
346 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 brother, a citizen, a teacher, and a friend. He had no army 
 to command, no kingdom to rule, no prominent station to fill, 
 no worldly favors and rewards to dispense. He was an humble 
 individual, without friends or patrons in the Sanhedrim or at 
 the court of Herod. He never mingled in familiar intercourse 
 with the relio-ious or social leaders of the nation, whom he had 
 startled in his twelfth year by his questions and answers. He 
 selected his disciples from among the illiterate fishermen of 
 Galilee, and promised them no reward in this world, but a 
 part in the bitter cup of his sufferings. He dined with publi- 
 cans and sinners, and mingled with the commop people, 
 without ever condescendinof to their low manners and habits. 
 He was so poor that he had no place on which to rest his 
 head. Nor had he learning, art, or eloquence, in the usual 
 sense of the term, or any other kind of power by which great 
 men arrest the attention and secure the admiration of the 
 world. The writers of Greece and Rome were ignorant even 
 of his existence until several years after the crucifixion. The 
 effects of his mission in the steady growth of the sect of his 
 followers forced from them some contemptuous notice, and 
 then roused them to opposition. . . . 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered 
 more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napo- 
 leon. Without science and learning, he shed more light on 
 things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars 
 combined ; without the eloquence of schools, he spoke such 
 words of life as were never spoken before or since, and pro- 
 duced effects which lie beyond the reach of any orator or 
 poet ; without writing a single line, he set more pens in 
 motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, 
 discussions, learned volumes, works of art, and sweet songs 
 of praise, than the whole army of great men of ancient and 
 modern times. 
 
 Born in a manger, and crucified as a malefactor, he now 
 controls the destinies of the civilized world, and rules a spirit- 
 ual empin- which embraces one-thu'd of the inhabitants of 
 
 i 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 347 
 
 the globe. There never was, in the world, a life so unpre- 
 tending, modest, and lowly in its outward form and condition, 
 and yet producing such extraordinary effects upon all ages, 
 nations, and classes of men. The annals of history produce 
 no other example of such complete and astounding success, 
 in spite of the absence of those material, social, literary, and 
 artistic powers and influences which are indispensable to 
 success for a mere man. . . . 
 
 As the pyramid rises high above the plains of Egypt, so 
 Christ towers above all human teachers and founders of sects 
 and religions. He found disciples and worshipers among 
 the Jews, although he identified himself with none of their 
 sects and traditions ; among the Greeks, although he pro- 
 claimed no new system of philosophy ; among the Romans, 
 although he fought no battle, and founded no worldly empire ; 
 among the Hindoos, who despise all men of low caste ; among 
 the black savages of Africa, the red men of America, as well 
 as the most highly civilized nations of modern times in all 
 quarters of the globe. All his words and all his actions, while 
 they were fully adapted to the occasions which called them 
 forth, retain their force and applicability undiminished to all 
 ages and nations. He is the same unsurpassed and unsur- 
 passable model of every virtue to the Christians of every 
 generation, every clime, every sect, every nation, and every 
 race. . . , 
 
 Christ was free from all one-sidedness, which constitutes 
 the weakness, as well as the strength, of the most eminent 
 men. He was not a man of one idea, nor of one virtue, 
 towering above all the rest. The moral forces were so well 
 tempered and moderated by each other, that none were unduly 
 prominent, none carried to excess, none alloyed by the kindred 
 failing. ' Each was checked and completed by the opposite 
 grace. His character never lost its even balance and happy 
 equilibrium, never needed modification or re-adjustment. It 
 was thoroughly sound and uniformly consistent from the 
 beginning to the end. 
 
348 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 We cannot properly attribute to him any one temperament. 
 He was neither sanguine Hke Peter, nor choleric like Paul, 
 nor melancholy like John, nor phlegmatic as James is some- 
 times (though incorrectly) represented to have been ; but he 
 combined the vivacity without the levity of the sanguine, the 
 vigor without the violence of the choleric, the seriousness 
 without the austerity of the melancholic, the calmness without 
 the apathy of the phlegmatic temperament. He was equally 
 removed from the excesses of the legalist, the pietist, the 
 ascetic, and the enthusiast. With the strictest obedience to 
 the law, he moved in the element of freedom ; with all the 
 fervor of the enthusiast, he was always calm, sober, and self- 
 possessed. Notwithstanding his complete and uniform eleva- 
 tion above the affairs of this world, he mingled freely with 
 society, male and female, dined with publicans and sinners, 
 played with little children and blessed them, sat at the wed- 
 ding-feast, shed tears at the sepulchre, delighted in God's 
 nature, admired the beauties of the lilies, and used the occu- 
 pations of the husbandman for the illustration of the sublimest 
 truths of the kingdom of heaven. His virtue was healthy, 
 manly, vigorous, yet genial, social, and truly human ; never 
 austere and repulsive ; always in full sympathy with innocent 
 joy and pleasure. He, the purest and holiest of men, pro- 
 vided wine for the wedding-feast ; introduced the fatted calf 
 and music and dancing into the picture of the welcome of 
 the prodigal son to his father's house ; and even provoked the 
 sneer of his adversaries, that he " came eating and drinking," 
 and was a " glutton and a wine-bibber." 
 
 His zeal never degenerated into passion, nor his constancy 
 into obstinacy, nor his benevolence into weakness, iror his 
 tenderness into sentimentality. His unworldliness was free 
 from indifference and unsociability, his dignity from jiltide and 
 presumption, his affability from undiie familiarity, his self- 
 denial from moroseness, his temperance from austerity. He 
 combined childlike innocence with manly strength, all-absorb- 
 ing devotion to God witii untiring interest in the welfare of 
 
 1 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 349 
 
 man, tender love to the sinner with uncompromising severity 
 against sin, commanding dignity with winning humihty, fear- 
 less courage with wise caution, unyielding firmness with sweet 
 gentleness. . . . 
 
 All human greatness loses on closer inspection ; but 
 Christ's character grows more pure, sacred, and lovely, the 
 better w^e know him. The whole range of history and tiction 
 furnishes no parallel to it. There never was any thing even 
 approaching to it, before or since, except in faint imitation 
 of his example. 
 
 No biographer, moralist, or artist can be satisfied with any 
 attempt of his to set forth the beauty of holiness which shines 
 from the face of Jesus of Nazareth. It is felt to be infinitely 
 greater than any conception or representation of it by the 
 mind, the tongue, or the pencil of man or angel. We might 
 as well attempt to empty the waters of the boundless sea into 
 a narrow w^ell as to portray the splendor of the risen sun 
 and the starry heavens with ink. No picture of the Saviour, 
 though drawn by the master-hand of a Raphael or Dijrer or 
 Rubens ; no epic, though conceived by the genius of a Dante 
 or Milton or Klopstock, — can improve on the artless narrative 
 of the Gospels, whose only but all-powerful charm is truth. 
 In this case, certainly, truth is stranger than fiction, and speaks 
 best for itself without comment, explanation, or eulogy. Here, 
 and here alone, the highest perfection of art falls short of the 
 historical fact, and fancy finds no room for idealizing the real ; 
 for here we have the absolute ideal itself in living reality. 
 
 It seems to me that this consideration alone should satisfy 
 any reflecting mind that Christ's character, though truly natu- 
 ral and human, rises far above the ordinary proportions of 
 humanity, and cannot be classified with the purest and greatest 
 of our race. . . . 
 
 Jesus Christ is the most certain, the most sacred, and the 
 most glorious of all facts, arrayed in a majesty and a beauty 
 which throws " the starry heavens above us and the moral law 
 within us " into obscurity, and fills us truly with an ever- 
 
350 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 glowing" reverence and awe. He shines forth with the self- 
 evidencing light of the noonday sun. 
 
 He is too great, too pure, too perfect, to have been 
 invented by any sinful and erring man. His character and 
 claims are confirmed by the sublimest doctrine, the purest 
 ethics, the mightiest miracles, the grandest spiritual kingdom, 
 and are daily and hourly exhibited in the graces and virtues 
 of all who yield to the regenerating and sanctifying power of 
 his spirit and example. The historical Christ meets and satis- 
 fies all our intellectual and moral wants. The soul, if left 
 to its noblest impulses and aspirations, instinctively turns to 
 him, as the needle to the magnet, as the flower to the sun, as 
 the panting hart to the fresh fountain. We are made for him, 
 and our " heart is without rest until it rests in him." 
 
 He commands our assent, he wins our admiration, he over- 
 whelms us with adoring wonder. We cannot look upon him 
 without spiritual benefit. We cannot think of him without 
 being elevated above all that is low and mean, and encouraged 
 to all that is good and noble. The very hem of his garment 
 is healing to the touch. One hour spent in his communion 
 outweighs all the pleasures of sin. He is the most precious 
 and indispensable gift of a merciful God to a fallen world. 
 In him are the treasures of true wisdom, in him the fountain 
 of pardon and peace, in him the only substantial hope and 
 comfort in this world and that which is to come. Mankind 
 could better afford to lose the whole literature of Greece and 
 Rome, of Germany and France, of England and America, 
 than the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Without him, history is a 
 dreary waste, an inextricable enigma, a chaos of facts without 
 a m(;aning. connection, and aim. With him, it is a beautiful, 
 harmonious revelation of God, — the slow but sure unfolding 
 of a plan of infinite wisdom and love, — all ancient history 
 converging to his coming, all modern history receiving from 
 him its higher life and impulse. He is the glory of the past, 
 the life of tlic present, the hope of the future. We cannot 
 even understand ourselves without him. Accordine to an 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 35 I 
 
 old Jewish proverb, "The secret of man is the secret of the 
 Messiah." He is the great central Light of history, as a 
 whole, and, at the same time, the light of ever}^ soul. He 
 alone can solve the mystery of our being, and fulfil all our 
 intellectual desires after truth, all our moral aspirations after 
 goodness and holiness, and the longing of our feelings after 
 peace and happiness. 
 
 CYRUS D. FOSS. 
 
 [Christ: His Nature and Work. New York : 1878. Pp. 49-51.] 
 
 These five Gospels. Matthew's, Mark's, Luke's, John's, 
 and God's (these yfe-^ Gospels, — the four, and the sublime 
 commentary on them furnished by almost nineteen centuries 
 of Christian history), teach, to begin with, that Jesus was the 
 most wonderful man that has ever lived upon the face of 
 the earth, and that with none of those appliances for becom- 
 ing famous which the great men of the world have had. He 
 was not an author ; he was not a scientist ; he was not a 
 philosopher, nor a statesman, nor a warrior. He wrote no 
 books, no proclamation, no letters, no line or word that has 
 survived him. When he wrote, he wrote in the dust. He 
 revealed no scientific truths to men, no new philosophical 
 system, no arts of diplomacy ; he assumed no control of the 
 governments of the world. He had no army, no sword. He 
 rebuked the only disciple who ever drew a sword for him, 
 and healed the mischief that the sword had wrought. And 
 yet somehow this man has made himself more famous than 
 any other man. Infidels admit this. . . . 
 
 Not only is Jesus morally unique among the sons of men, 
 but intellectually also. In all his teachings that have been 
 reported to us, men have never found one error. And still 
 further, they have never added one iota to his teachings on 
 moral and religious subjects. Behold him going forth into 
 this world, — a map of which he had never seen, — moving 
 
352 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 about among men his superiors in all that calculation can do ; 
 pitched upon by wary lawyers, who had put their heads 
 together to puzzle him. Behold him at all hours subject to 
 the keenest inquisitions, and never saying, no matter how 
 profound the question (as our judges of the Courts of 
 Appeals are obliged to do), " Decision reserved." 
 
 On the instant this wonderful man answered all questions, 
 and not only answered them correctly, but in his brief answer 
 brought out without a single mistake those principles of 
 casuistry that have 'for eighteen hundred years been the 
 solvent of all questions of conscience. What an intellect 
 had he ! In eighteen centuries, during which the human 
 mind has been immensely and amazingly busy, men have 
 not added to his teachings one jot. If any man challenges 
 this statement, let him point out to us from all other sources 
 the first ray of moral or religious truth that has been added 
 to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 THOMAS WELBANK FOWLE. 
 
 [The Character of Christ. New York: 1872. Pp. 16,17.] 
 
 What is with us the obtrusion of self into our works, not 
 at all in a sinful, but simply in a necessary form, corresponds 
 in Jesus to the consciousness of the Father doing all the 
 works. His meat and drink was to finish that work ; his 
 glory, in having finished it. And it is remarkable that this 
 consciousness of self, this reflection upon our motives and 
 successes, this almost agonizing survey of our work and life, 
 is particularly strong In religious reformers. The men who 
 have most moved the world In religion have been those to 
 whom the movements of their own souls have been most 
 painfiilly clear; for Instance, St. Paul, Luther, and Milton. 
 Consider the former, painfully conscious of his bodily appear- 
 ance, his reputation, his conversion, his very handwriting, 
 his labors ; consider the latter brooding over his blindness, his 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 353 
 
 treatment, his failure, the evil days on which he had fallen. 
 And these men powerfully affected the world in which they 
 lived ; whereas Homer and Shakspeare, of all men the most 
 destitute of self-consciousness, fade away from history, and 
 are spirits, voices, rather than distinct human beings. But 
 in Christ we have an element of self-forgetfulness, so to 
 speak, combined with a power to move humanity, which 
 renders him unique in history. But, to be unique in history, 
 what is it but to be divine ? 
 
 CHARLES ADOLPHUS ROW. 
 
 [Christian Evidences viewed in Relation to Modern Thought. Bampton 
 Lectures for 1877. London: 1S77. Pp. 97-99, 146,147, 179, iSo] 
 
 If the character of Jesus Christ, and his action in history, 
 are separated by a profound interval from that of every other 
 man, if he stands at an elevation immeasurably higher than 
 the greatest, the wisest, and the best of men, if his influence 
 for good not only transcends that of any single great man, 
 but of all great men united, it is utterly unphilosophical to 
 affirm that he was the simple product of those forces that 
 energize in humanity : on the contrary, the difference in the 
 effect proves a difference in the cause which produced it. 
 If he were their simple product, how, I ask, has it come to 
 pass, that they have produced only this one great perfect man, 
 this single ideal of human nature, and then ceased from their 
 activity for evermore ? Such a question urgently demands 
 solution if our beliefs are to be grounded on rational convic- 
 tion. The difference in the results proves that the causes 
 which produced them have been different ; in other words, 
 that the greatness of Jesus Christ and his action in history 
 cannot have been due to those forces which have produced 
 other great men, but are manifestations of the energy of a 
 superhuman power. 
 
 Whence, I ask, has come this power of impressing the 
 
354 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 hearts of men with an impassioned love, which has been 
 exhibited by Jesus Christ for a period of more than eighteen 
 hundred years after the termination of his earthly life ? Why 
 have not other great men exerted a similarly attractive power, 
 If the)' have not done so to the full extent, why have they not 
 at least made some approach towards it ? Great men have 
 existed in abundance ; and not a few of them have been great 
 benefactors of mankind, and to the utmost of their powers 
 have labored to do them o-ood. But where is the ofreat man, 
 Jesus Christ alone excepted, who has for eighteen centuries 
 after the termination of his earthly life been capable of excit- 
 ing in the hearts of men an impassioned love ? Who among 
 them has called forth a self-sacrificing devotion of heart and 
 life ? The memory of other great men we respect and rever- 
 ence, but not one of them inspires us with impassioned love. 
 Take a careful survey of the entire history of the past. Does 
 Socrates, or Plato, or Aristotle ? Does Zoroaster, or Confu- 
 cius, or Sakya Mouni ? Does Mohammed, does even the 
 venerable Howard ? Who among the sons of men has kin- 
 dled towards himself a self-sacrificine love analoofous to that 
 which has been aroused towards Jesus Christ ? Even if we 
 assume the character of Jesus to be an ideal creation, the 
 argument is no less cogent. Where is the ideal creation 
 that has exerted this singular power? The interval which 
 separates the earliest of poets from the greatest of living 
 ones is very wide, and contains many illustrious names ; yet 
 •poetic genius has been unable to create a character which 
 could similarly inspire the hearts of men, and thereby act 
 ■mightily on man's moral and spiritual being for eighteen 
 •centuries, and afford the promise of acting mightily forever. 
 Jesus Christ alone has exerted such a power. What, then, 
 is the inference ? I answer, that we must be in the presence 
 of the superhuman. . . . 
 
 Th'- presence of a body of political and social legislation 
 in the Koran constitutes the rock on which Mohaiiinuxlanism 
 IS l)eing hopelessly shipwrecked before our eyes, and utterly 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 355 
 
 unfitted for being- the religion of humanity. Is it possible, 
 I ask, that any one who was born and educated under the 
 influences by which Jesus was surrounded could have rigidly 
 excluded all political and social questions from his teaching ? 
 With such an experience, would any amount of foresight 
 have enabled him to guess that if he had prescribed a body 
 of political legislation, the consequences would have been 
 fatal to his religion, and have caused the ruin of that kingdom 
 which it was his purpose to establish ? 
 
 This most remarkable abstinence from entering on ques- 
 tions of this description, I claim to be a striking proof that 
 the Founder of Christianity possessed an insight which must 
 have raised him above all the trammels imposed on him by 
 his birth and surroundings, in that, while he has kept clear 
 of all political and social questions, he has been able to embrace 
 all the duties which they demand in the all-comprehending 
 principle of self-sacrifice rendered to himself. If he had pur- 
 sued the course which many eminent moderns would have 
 suggested to him, and commenced his work of regenerating 
 mankind, not by appealing to the conscience of the individual, 
 but by addressing himself to the external, the social, and the 
 political, Christianity would never have survived the century 
 that gave it birth. 
 
 The almost entire absence of blame or praise assigned to 
 the different characters in the scenes which they depict is a 
 most striking feature in the Evangelists. The absence of the 
 expression of any personal feeling on the part of the writers 
 seems almost like coldness. They have not one word in 
 commendation of the absolute self-sacrifice manifested in their 
 Master's life, nor of his unwearied labors in doing good, nor 
 of his benevolence, his holiness, or his humility, or any one of 
 the striking traits of his character. They must have viewed 
 his death as the most atrocious of murders : yet not one word 
 have they uttered for the purpose of heightening the eftect 
 of his cruel sufferings, or even of drawing our attention to 
 his patient endurance. The whole account of the crucifixion 
 
356 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 is a remarkably matter-of-fact one ; in some respects it is 
 even meagre, and not one word is added for the purpose of 
 giving pathos to the scene. 
 
 Equally remarkable is the entire absence of any expres- 
 sion of surprise or admiration at any miracle which our Lord 
 performed, and the want of dramatic coloring in their relation 
 of them. The authors of the Gospels are exclusively occupied 
 with the facts which they narrate, and trusted to them alone 
 to produce the effect which they desired. In one word, all 
 four Evangelists write like men who were utterly unconscious 
 that they were delineating the greatest character in history. 
 
 It is very remarkable, that even in respect to the imme- 
 diate agents of our Lord's death, there is an entire absence 
 of denunciation ; the hardest term which they employ being 
 that by which they designate Judas as a traitor, softened in 
 three out of the four into the expression, " He who delivered 
 him up." This absence of remark is not a peculiarity of any 
 one of the Evangelists, but alike distinguishes the four. 
 When we consider that the attachment to their Master was 
 profound, it constitutes a most surprising trait, and is utterly 
 inconsistent with the idea that any portion of the delineation 
 has been worked up for the purpose of producing an effect. 
 Yet it has produced one which has utterly distanced the 
 mightiest creations of o-enius. 
 
 FRANCES POWER COBBE. 
 
 [Broken Lights. Boston: 1S64. Pp. 159, 160, 166-170, 172, 173.] 
 
 Of that noblest countenance which once smiled upon the 
 plains of Palestine, we possess not, nor will mankind ever 
 recover, any perfect and infallible picture, any sun-drawn pho- 
 tograph which might tell us with unerring certainty he was, 
 or was not, as our hearts may conceive of him. Rather do 
 we only look sorrowfully over the waves of time to belioltl 
 reflected therein some such faint and wavering image as his 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 357 
 
 face may have cast on the Lake of GaHlee, as he leaned at 
 eventide, from the ship of his disciples, over the waters 
 stirred and rippling before the breeze. Some features too 
 often recur to leave us altogether mistaken concerning them, 
 and the impression of the whole countenance is one " full of 
 grace and truth." But of the details we can decide nothing, 
 nor pretend to speak of them as clear or assured. 
 
 One thing, however, we may hold with approximate cer- 
 tainty; and that is, that all the highest doctrines, the purest 
 moral precepts, the most profound spiritual revelations 
 recorded in the Gospels, w^ere actually those of Christ himself. 
 The originator of the Christian movement must have been the 
 greatest soul of his time, as of all time. If he did not speak 
 those words of wisdom, who could have recorded them for 
 him ? "It would have taken a Jesus to forge a Jesus." 
 
 To form a just estimate of any character in history, it is 
 obviously needful that we view him from the standpoint of his 
 special eminence. To judge an artist from the point of view 
 of the politician, or the man of science from that of the philan- 
 thropist, is manifest injustice. The artist's work must be 
 judged as art, the politician's as policy, and so on through 
 every department of human action, if we would recognize the 
 real merit thereof. Applying this rule to the estimate of 
 the character of Christ, it is clear that we must put aside from 
 our view a variety of qualities on which the claim to greatness 
 is commonly made in the world. . . . 
 
 The greatness of the sovereign, the statesman, the econo- 
 mist, the commander, the metaphysician, the man of learning, 
 the scientific discoverer, the poet, the historian, the artist, — not 
 one of these forms of outward, and, as we might say, tangible 
 greatness, belonged in any degree to Christ. It is altogether 
 in the inward world that we must find the traces of his work, 
 and take the measure of his altitude. But here we may 
 greatly err also ; for there are many aspects in which the 
 inward world may be regarded. A moral reformer is one 
 thing, a spiritual regenerator another, a very different one. 
 
35S TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Because the exalted spirituality of Christ included (as, alas ! 
 lesser spiritual eminence has not always done) a transcend- 
 ently pure morality, it has happened that those who have 
 regarded him from the rationalist side, and sought to give him 
 the peculiar human dignity he deserved, have commonly fixed 
 their attention on his moral teachings, and have proclaimed 
 him the supreme moral reformer of the world. He was so, 
 indeed ; but he was surely something more. . . . 
 
 The fact of regeneration must be admitted to be the most 
 important of all the phenomena of the moral world. Nothing 
 else can compare with it for influence on the whole life and 
 character of man. In judging, then, of the greatness of such 
 a religious teacher as Christ, this one most important fact 
 must not be left out of sight. We must not pass over it, and 
 inquire only of his ethics or his theology. We must ask. Had 
 he influence in this matter also ? Did he do aught toward 
 aiding mankind to take that one greatest step, — from the 
 unregenerate to the regenerate life ? 
 
 Now, it would appear, that, if we actually estimate Christ 
 by the influence which he has had in the life of humanity, we 
 shall find that it is precisely here that we come on the largest 
 traces of his work. Taking the whole ancient world in com- 
 parison with the modern, the heathen with the Christian, 
 the general character of the two is absolutely analogous to 
 that which in individuals we call unreofenerate and regenerate. 
 Of course there were thousands of regenerated souls, Hebrew, 
 Greek, Indian, of all nations and languages, before Christ, 
 Of course there are millions unregenerate now. But never- 
 theless, from this time onward, we trace through history a 
 new spirit in the world, — a leaven working through the 
 whole mass of souls. 
 
 This great phenomenon of history surely points to some 
 corresponding great event, whereby the revolution was accom- 
 plished. Tlicre must have been a moment whcMi the old 
 order stopped, and the new began. Some action must have 
 taken place upon the souls of men, which thenceforth started 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 359 
 
 them in a different career, and opened the age of progressive 
 life. When did this moment arrive ? What was the primal 
 act of the endless progress ? By whom was that age opened ? 
 
 Here we have really ground to go upon. There is no 
 need to establish the authenticity or veracity of special books, 
 or harmonize discordant narratives, to obtain an answer to our 
 question. The whole voice of human history, unconsciously 
 and without premeditation, bears its unmistakable testimony. 
 The turning-point between the old world and the new was the 
 beginning of the Christian movement. The action upon 
 human nature, which started it on its new course, w^as the 
 teaching and example of Christ. Christ was he who opened 
 the age of endless progress. 
 
 The view, therefore, which seems to be the sole fitting one 
 for our estimate of Christ, is that which regards him as the 
 REGENERATOR of humanity. His coining was, to the life of 
 humanity, what regeneration is to the life of the individual. 
 This is not a conclusion doubtfully deduced from questionable 
 biographies, but a broad, plain inference from the universal 
 history of our race. We may dispute all details, but the grand 
 result is beyond criticism. The world has changed, and that 
 change is historically traceable to Christ. The honor, then, 
 which Christ demands of us, must be in proportion to the 
 value of such regeneration. 
 
 He is not merely a moral reformer, inculcating pure ethics ; 
 not merely a religious reformer, clearing away old theological 
 errors, and teaching higher ideas of God. These things he 
 was ; but he might, for all we can tell, have been both as fully, 
 and yet have failed to be what he has actually been to our 
 race. He mio-ht have tauQfht the world better ethics and 
 better theology, and yet have failed to infuse into it that new 
 life which has ever since coursed through its arteries, and 
 penetrated its minutest veins. What Christ has really done is 
 beyond the kingdom of the intellect and its theologies ; nay, 
 even beyond the kingdom of the conscience and its recogni- 
 tion of duty. His work has been in that of the heart. He 
 
360 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 has transformed the law into the Gospel. He has changed 
 the bonds of the alien into the liberty of the sons of God. He 
 has glorified virtue into holiness, religion into piety, and duty 
 into love. 
 
 The manner in which Christ achieved the regeneration of 
 the world, who shall now decide ? Was it only by his great, 
 holy words, telling men that God was the father of all, — of 
 the just as of the unjust, — the forgiving parent of the 
 prodigal ; the shepherd who would follow the wanderer even 
 unto the utmost verge of the wilderness of his wickedness, 
 and bring him home at last with rejoicing? Was it thus, and 
 by telling man that to love God and his neighbor fulfilled all 
 the law and the prophets, — w^as it thus that Christ touched the 
 heart of the world ? Or, was it by his life so pure and holy, 
 that men saw, as in a visible parable, what it meant to be 
 God's beloved son, — to be one with the Father, even as all 
 men shall be one with him ? Was it thus that Christ awoke 
 in human nature the unutterable yearning after such sonship 
 and such unity with God ? Or, was it that words and life all 
 found their crown and end in his martyr death, — that death 
 which transformed forever the world's ideal of glory, and 
 made for all time the cross of agony and sacrifice the type of 
 somewhat so far above all earthly power and joy, that men 
 ceased to deem it human, and adored it as divine ? 
 
 We know not ; it concerns us not to know. One thing 
 we must believe, — that He to whom was committed such a 
 work, he to whom such a part was assigned in the drama of 
 history by its great Author, must have been spiritually 
 of transcendent excellence. Of ordinary genius or powers of 
 any kind, he may have had less or more ; but of those hidden 
 faculties by which the highest religious truths are reached, and 
 of that fervent loyalty by which the soul is fitted to receive 
 .divine instruction, o{ these Christ must have had a superabun- 
 dant share. Stricdy to define his spiritual rank, he must 
 surely have been the man iv/io best fulfilled all the conditions 
 under whicJi God <i rants his inspiration. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 361 
 
 God is best honored by the glad admission that the man 
 who has most deeply moved humanity was most fully inspired 
 by his Spirit, 
 
 The spiritual greatness of Christ is the necessary postulate 
 for the whole rationalist theory of religion. 
 
 RICHARD S. STORRS. 
 
 [Introduction TO Eddy's Life OF Jesus Christ. Springfield: 1S6S. Pp. 5, 7-] 
 
 The brilliant names of orators, soldiers, skilful inventors, 
 sagacious statesmen, gradually fade in the vividness of their 
 lustre as other generations follow that to which their genius 
 was first exhibited. But the name of Jesus continues to 
 command, and ever more widely, the love, the reverence, the 
 obedience, of mankind. Careers so splendid in comparison 
 of his, and so rich in energy and governing forces that to 
 rank his beside them would have looked to the cultivated 
 men of his time like a balancinor of Nazareth against the 
 Rome of Augustus, have been lost from sight, and even from 
 recollection, as the race has moved from them across the 
 expanse of peaceful or of stormy years. But his career 
 remains always in sight, like the star which shines in its 
 serene heights when the light-house lamp, which near at 
 hand glittered more brightly, has sunk beneath the lifting 
 horizon. 
 
 More than sixty generations of men, vexed with thought, 
 burdened with cares, and each accomplishing, wearily or 
 victoriously, its office in the world, have lived and wrought 
 and passed away since the young child Jesus lay on his 
 mother's breast at Bethlehem. Yet they are to-day more 
 numerous than ever, and more influential, who turn with 
 profoundly attentive minds, because with profoundly adoring 
 hearts, to consider what he was, and to ponder the things 
 which he said and did. 
 
 With every century it becomes more difficult for the 
 
o 
 
 62 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 simply philosophical student, though wholly uninfluenced by 
 that peculiar Christian affection which in the Church is 
 sought to be propagated, to eliminate from history, and to 
 remit to the department of fable or of poetry, the early 
 records of this supreme man, who was born to no rank, and 
 trained in no school ; who held himself aloof from none, and 
 did not shrink from the touch of the sinful ; who sought no 
 fame, and seemed content to strew his words on the vanishing 
 winds: but who perfectly expressed in his crystalline character 
 whatever all peoples concede most precious, and who to-day 
 governs governments ; whose words are the light, his temper 
 the model, and his life the inspiration, of all that is noblest 
 in the modern as in ancient character and thought ; and from 
 whose unconspicuous advent the new ages of liberty, of 
 discovery, and of progress, date their birth. It is a true 
 saying of F. W. Faber, that "The Incarnation is as much 
 the world In which we live, as is the globe on which we 
 tread." 
 
 G. VANCE SMITH. 
 
 [The Spirit and the Mind of Christ, and their Permanent Lessons. London: 
 
 1874. Pp. 116, 117.] 
 
 " Before all things " the Spirit of Christ ! And what 
 this was and is, it requires no detailed exposition to set forth. 
 All Christians are agreed as to its most vital and characteristic 
 qualities. It is the spirit of truth and justice, and fidelity to 
 the sense of duty; of love and good-will between man and 
 man; of humble trust and reliance upon God. It is the 
 spirit of active obedience and well-doing, of purity in thought 
 and in deed, of self-renunciation, and sympathy for the 
 afflicted and suffering. It Is tender compassion for the sinner, 
 combined with an earnest Intolerance of untruth, hypocrisy, 
 and formalit)', in religion as In every thing else. It Is the 
 spirit ol j)ra)cr and u|)\vard asi)iration towartls the universal 
 Father, of unfailing submission to the hoi)- will, and devout 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 363 
 
 trust in the unseen heaven ; while at last, as the result and 
 crown of all, it is a perfect readiness, even in the moment of 
 supreme agony and death, to commit every interest and care 
 of earthly life into the hands of God, — not forgetting, withal, 
 to return good for evil, blessing and forgiveness for injury and 
 scorn, as shown in that memorable prayer: "Father, forgive 
 them, for they know not what they do." 
 
 WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS. 
 
 [Thoughts on the Life and Character of Jesus of Nazareth. Boston: 1S59. 
 
 Pp. 26, 84, 95, 274.] 
 
 The idea of Jesus Christ, rendered as it is with such rare 
 freshness in the New Testament, must be vital, or it would 
 never have taken such a hold, stronger than adamant, upon 
 the world, never have so fixed itself with such distinctness 
 and prominence in the w^orld's history ; especially when it had 
 such obstacles to overcome, mountains of ignorance, rivers 
 and oceans of prejudice, partition-walls heaven-high of cus- 
 tom, temperament, and language, dividing the nations. What 
 was it I just now heard from my window? A little colored 
 child in the street, singing a hymn about Jesus, the Saviour. 
 Thus far away from remote, obscure Nazareth, centuries back, 
 out of the depths of the past, has his name come. . . . 
 
 Like God, like nature, is the unconsciousness of doinof 
 any thing remarkable that characterizes Jesus, the wonder- 
 worker. He produces those striking effects as if nothing in 
 the world were more a matter of course. And although 
 people came to him in such numbers and so continually that 
 he had not time so much as to eat, and althoup"h the crowd 
 was at times so o-reat that there was no o-ettinof into the house 
 where he was, and some were in danger of being crushed and 
 trampled under foot, still no heaving surges of public wonder 
 could disturb the singleness of his purpose, or put him under 
 the slightest constraint. He still extended his hand to heal 
 
364 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 the sick, he still spoke to relieve the suffering, with a manner 
 as simple as if there were not an eye to behold what he was 
 doine, nor a heart to beat with admiration and awe. . . . 
 
 I do not challenge admiration for him because he never 
 sought, with all his great power, to inflict injury upon those 
 who persecuted him. But the wonder is, that, confronted as 
 he was by powerful and merciless foes, he was still as serene 
 and as unmoved by them as if he neither had an enemy on 
 earth, nor any unusual means of resisting hostility. 
 
 To use his great gift, save for some blessed office of 
 mercy, appears never to have been thought of by him. How 
 clear his vision, how pure his aim, never to have been deluded 
 into thinking, that, as he had the good of men so much at 
 heart, he would be justiiied in using all the means in his power 
 to strengthen himself, and that those who so wickedly with- 
 stood his generous labors deserved no consideration at his 
 hands ! That most plausible of errors, the error to which the 
 strongest and the wisest have so often yielded, namely, that 
 the end justifies the means, derives not the slightest authority 
 from him. 
 
 The man of Nazareth is remarkable, not onl)- for the 
 breadth and depth of his intuitions, but also for the delicacy 
 of his spiritual sense. It is also as strong as it is delicate. 
 The leading moral teachers of antiquity give one the impres- 
 sion, together with a certain rugged grandeur, of a boyish, if 
 not a barbarian simplicity, that did not always distinguish 
 things indifferent from vital truths. They are great, but they 
 are antique. With all their superiority to their times, they still 
 belong to them. But in him there is a fine finish of the 
 moral nature which is in advance of the world, even now, after 
 eighteen centuries, and which tells less of a past than of a 
 future. No culture that has yet been realized, however 
 refined, can look down on him. . . . 
 
 "Are you a king, then ?" asks Pilate. "Yes," he replies, 
 "I am a king." llis whole, air attests his inborn royalty. 
 1 hid the blood of a long line of kingly ancestors filled his 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 365 
 
 veins, he could not have borne himself more royally. " For 
 this end came I into the world, that I might bear witness to 
 the truth ; and every true man listens to my voice." 
 
 A kinp- indeed, reio-ninor over all true men as a sovereio-n 
 by whom all truth makes free, wielding a sceptre never to be 
 broken. He stood there utterly forsaken by every earthly 
 friend, but he could not be unkinged. Unkineed ! It was 
 his coronation day. His own blood was the oil of consecra- 
 tion ; and a vile cross was the throne prepared for him, from 
 which he was to rule the ages. 
 
 The consciousness of being then and there a martyr to the 
 truth, to reign forever by a divine right in every true soul, 
 was the token of his prerogative, more significant than any 
 crown of gold. Alone, misunderstood, surrounded by savage 
 men thirsting for his life, amidst that horrid din and with that 
 grim death before him, not for an instant does he lose his 
 generous faith in good men and true. He still leans with 
 perfect dignity upon all loyal hearts. This is kingly. 
 
 GEORGE A. CHADWICK. 
 
 [Christ bearing Witness to Himself. New York : 1S79. Pp. 148, 153, 166, 1S2.] 
 
 Habit and a different state of things blind us to the 
 
 t>' 
 
 inspiration which was needed to strike out a new path, refus- 
 ing the jurisprudence of Moses, the crown of David, the 
 vestments of Melchizedek, despising alike the power of 
 statutes, victories, and hecatombs, and yet claiming for him- 
 self a glory of which all these are but reflected rays. 
 
 The problem which a Christ would have to solve, but 
 which was not formally propounded to his consciousness, was 
 this : Be king, prophet, priest ; catch the various and anti- 
 thetical excellences of hero and teacher, sage and mediator, 
 that all the great shall be a mere picture and shadow, thou 
 the reality and substance ; and in this combination let none 
 predominate to the injury of the rest; continue at the same 
 
366 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 time to be completely and supremely unique, allowing thyself 
 to imitate none, while so completely satisfying the drift of all 
 who went before thee as forever to abrogate their methods. 
 Jesus has done this. To him the mighty traditions of his 
 race were like the piers along which Galahad advanced to 
 his crown far in the spiritual city : — 
 
 " Ancient kings 
 Had built a way, where, linked with many a bridge, 
 A thousand piers ran into the Great Sea, 
 And Galahad fled along them, bridge by bridge ; 
 And every bridge, as quickly as he crossed, 
 Sprang into fire, and vanished." 
 
 The fulfilment of type and prophecy is much. It is much 
 also to be original. What, then, is the combination of the two? 
 
 Where are the religions of Egypt, Babylon, and Tyre? 
 They are dead : they are buried in sombre and profound 
 sepulchres. It is seldom that a lonely student spells out 
 painfully the inscription on the walls of their funereal vaults. 
 
 Where is the bright and romantic religion of Greece and 
 Rome ? This also is dead. The sweetest poetr}' could only 
 embalm it. We gaze upon the fair featuies, but there is no 
 voice nor any to answer us. " 'Tis Greece, but living Greece 
 no more." 
 
 And if the religions of the East live on, they are bed- 
 ridden, blind, paralyzed, and imbecile, and only serve to 
 emphasize the difference between senility and eternal youth. 
 
 But where is the religion of Judrea ? It lives exalted and 
 transmuted above its former self: its temples overtop our 
 proudest palaces ; its narrow intolerance has been shaken off. 
 like the husk of the chrysalis from the winged and lo\cd 
 creature whose flight is to be henceforth as unfettered as the 
 winds. 
 
 No unreal personage wields a power like the power of 
 Jesus. The myths of India cover, like a veil, the sleeping 
 and impassive face of Asia ; but when the voice of Europe 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 367 
 
 penetrates their slumber, her first uneasy movement begins 
 to shake them off. But Jesus leads the West in her wakeful 
 quest for truth, fires her energies, develops her originality, 
 inspires her exploits, peoples the oceans with her ships, and 
 the wilds with her colonies. He is, as Paul described him, 
 not only a living soul, but a life-giving Spirit. 
 
 Here the story of Jesus parts company with ever)^ creation 
 of human genius. The noblest figures painted by the grand- 
 est literary artists hang idly on the walls of the great picture- 
 galleries of culture. Achilles is no longer desired in battle. 
 The wandering Ulysses is sighed for in Ithaca no more. 
 What's Hecuba to us? The murder of Duncan, the wrones 
 of the Prince of Denmark, the broken heart of Lear, — what 
 politics do these affect ? The party of Jesus, — that is the 
 holy Church throughout all the world. 
 
 In the Palestine of the year one, what is there to explain 
 Christ ? Did this eagle, with sun-sustaining eyes, emerge 
 from the slime of the acre of Tiberius, the basest aee in 
 history^ ? Natural causes, — the struggle to exist, the race 
 which is to the swift, and the battle which is to the strong, — 
 did these teach a Jew, whose interested intellect and his law 
 both said, "Thou shalt hate thine enemies," to pray upon his 
 cross for those who nailed him there ? 
 
 And whence is the trumpet, and whose is the breath in it, 
 which has blown that dying supplication round the world and 
 down the ages, to become for centuries and races the blast 
 of a spiritual resurrection ? Who built the throne from which 
 he stretches a rod of iron across the world ? How does that 
 pierced and mouldered hand break his foes in pieces like a 
 potter's vessel? His name lights up with unearthly lustre the 
 painful lives and cruel deaths of a great multitude which no 
 man can number. Where has a hum.an being found the colors 
 and the brush to paint across the wildest storm-clouds of 
 existence this never-fading rainbow ? Could the rays of an 
 earthly taper, or any thing but the pure light of heaven, make 
 our very tears thus radiant ? 
 
368 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS. 
 
 [A New Life of Jesus. London: 1865. Vol. ii. p. 436 f/ j-^^.] 
 
 Every man of moral pre-eminence, every great thinker 
 who has made the active nature of man the object of his 
 investigations, has contributed in narrower or wider circles 
 towards correcting that ideal, perfecting or improving it. And 
 among these improvers of the ideals of humanity, Jesus stands 
 at all events in the first class. He introduced features into it 
 which were wanting to it before, or had continued undevel- 
 oped ; reduced the dimensions of others which prevented its 
 universal application ; imparted into it, by the religious aspect 
 w^hich he gave it, a more lofty consecration, and bestowed 
 upon it, by embodying it in his own person, the most vital 
 warmth ; while the religious society which took its rise from 
 him provided for this ideal the widest acceptance among 
 mankind. . . . 
 
 In the pattern exhibited by Jesus in his doctrine and in 
 his life, every point is fully developed that has reference to 
 love towards God and our neighbor, to purity in the heart and 
 life of the individual. 
 
 CONSTANTINE TISCHENDORF. 
 
 [Bremen Lectures. Boston: 1S71. Pp. 200, 217.] 
 
 The life of Jesus has become, in Christian science, the 
 great question of the day. And this question engages 
 the attention, not only of professors, ecclesiastics, and other 
 men whose position brings them nearer to theological sci- 
 ence ; by no means : the interest of it is shared also by the 
 Church, by the whole Christian world. Whence this interest, 
 this- significance of the question ? That can be told without 
 difficulty. For, on the answer to the question, What must be 
 said of the life of Jesus ? depends in a very particular sense 
 

TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 369 
 
 Christianity and the Church, our faith and our salvation. But 
 on what does the answering of the momentous question itself 
 depend ? The sources from which we derive the life of Jesus 
 and our Gospels. On the nature of these sources, on their 
 trustworthiness, their authority, therefore, depends. Especially 
 the life of Jesus depends on the authority of the evangelical 
 life of Jesus. 
 
 The agreement of the Evangelists on the divine character 
 of Christ, notwithstanding all their many differences in detail, 
 is of the greatest consequence. Observe how much all these 
 utterances aim at the person of the Saviour. I know of no 
 way of escape. If Christ was not what he claimed to be, the 
 Son of God, then he spoke with blasphemous audacity. And 
 how far from the representation, common to all the Gospels, 
 of this sublime, heavenly personality, Is the thought that we 
 have here to do with a product of the reflection and fancy 
 of the first Christian community ! To attempt such an 
 explanation of the Gospels, is to wander off into the realm 
 of the most unintelligible. It is an error that overleaps the 
 bounds of both the possible and the wonderful. 
 
 JEAN PAUL RICHTER. 
 
 [Dawnings for Germany. Complete Works, 33, 36. Cited in note to p. 247 of 
 Olshausen's " Last Days of the Saviour."] 
 
 An individual once trod the earth who swayed remote 
 ages, and founded an eternity of his own ; gently blooming 
 and pliant as a sunflower, burning and drawing as the sun, 
 he even with his mild aspect moved himself and nations and 
 centuries together towards the universal and primeval Sun. 
 Did he exist? Then is there a providence, or he were it. . . . 
 
 It concerns him who, being the holiest among the mighty, 
 the mightiest among the holy, lifted with his pierced hands 
 empires off their hinges, turned the stream of centuries out 
 of Its channel, and still governs the ages. 
 
370 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 ABIEL ABBOTT LIVERMORE. 
 
 [Unitarian Review. Boston: October, 1879. Pp. 400, 406, 411.] 
 
 No Other evidence of the truth and authority of the 
 Christian faith can for one moment compare with that afforded 
 by the character of Jesus. None is so vital, persuasive, 
 endurino", as this proof. None has stood the test of time 
 so well, or come out so unharmed from the vicissitudes of 
 opinion or the processes of criticism. When most at sea 
 upon other points, even the most unbelieving- have felt that 
 in the moral excellence of Jesus Christ they have placed 
 their feet upon the everlasting rock. As a motive force to 
 individual minds, or to churches, or to great Christendom 
 itself, no influence probably has equalled this personal attrac- 
 tion which has silently drawn mankind to the prophet of 
 Nazareth. 
 
 Less sung or preached as the crowning testimony, it is, 
 nevertheless, the secret fascination which wins the hearts and 
 commands the consciences of mankind. They may hold out 
 successfully against other arguments, but they confess them- 
 selves conquered here. The pure spiritual life of Jesus has 
 been the leaven in the three measures of meal. The wonder- 
 ful beauty of his life has been testified to by men of all creeds 
 and of no creed. It has been heartily recognized by Rous- 
 seau and Renan, as well as by Leighton and Channing. 
 Warriors and statesmen, the Napoleons and Websters, have 
 bowed in reverence before its lofty superiority. Prose and 
 poetry have exhausted their resources more worthily to cele- 
 brate its purity and heavenly-mindedness. The fine arts have 
 done their utmost, and have retired confessing themselves 
 unable to give any adequate representation of " the glory 
 of (k)d in the face of Jesus Christ." 
 
 The expansion in Christendom itself for eighteen centu- 
 ries, and tlirouglioiit the range of many nations, of the aims 
 and attributes of him who set in motion its mighty machinery 
 
 I 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 37 1 
 
 of truths and agencies, suggests conclusively the moral dig- 
 nity of his character. Nothing out of nothing comes, and the 
 reverse is true. Saints, confessors, and martyrs, the cloud of 
 witnesses, the great company of the preachers, the churches 
 that have exhaled a life-giving moral atmosphere in the world, 
 are but so many testimonies, that he to whom they all date 
 back as their great original and inspirer bore in his own hand 
 the sceptre of this unique and victorious righteousness. 
 
 He has created a new and loftier standard of character, 
 widened the conceptions of moral excellence, and raised to 
 a flame in myriads of minds the desire of holiness by his 
 own incalculable force of will and aspiration. He has touched 
 to finer issues of motive and life whole nations and genera- 
 tions of our race. No ordinary character could sit at the 
 centre of energies like these which have operated for ages, 
 and which still operate unspent and inexhaustible. If the 
 echo has been so grand, what must have been the moral 
 loveliness of the Christ himself? Well might Paul speak of 
 the unsearchable riches of Christ, when all down the track 
 of Christian history since his day are scattered the golden 
 ingots from this great treasure-house. 
 
 Most characters, even great ones, are copies : Jesus was 
 sublimely original. If he copied from any one, it was not 
 from a mortal, but from the glory of the divine perfections 
 in obedience to his own precept, " Be ye perfect, as your 
 Father in heaven is perfect." Great generals imitate other 
 generals. The laurels of Miltiades would not suffer Themis- 
 tocles to sleep. Alexander carried to his career of conquest 
 the Iliad of Homer, and fired his warlike zeal by the deeds 
 of Achilles and the heroes of Greece. Napoleon was always 
 measuring himself with Caesar and other great warriors. Poets 
 catch inspiration from the masters of the art who have gone 
 before them. Homer lighted the torch for X^irml Dante, and 
 Milton, and he speaks of those who went before him. There 
 were kings before Agamemnon. The lineage of saints, too, 
 has been handed down from o-eneration to o-eneration. 
 
372 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 But the life of Jesus is unlike that of any of the worthies 
 of the classical or biblical record. Perhaps those most like 
 him were his two leading apostles, John and Paul ; Paul as a 
 type of his energy and enterprise, and John as the embodi- 
 ment of his sweetness and lov^e. Yet how very unlike in 
 many respects they were to him ! He gave a type all his 
 own, transplanting divine qualities of mingled mercy and 
 majesty into his life, because he lived and moved and had 
 his being in God, and was one with him in a holy and tender 
 sympathy. 
 
 Here we behold the ever-renewing hope of our civilization 
 and the progress of the world. It is not, it cannot be, in any 
 of the arts, fine or practical ; in any of the sciences that deal 
 with matter or material interests ; in external forms of social 
 arrangement and government, though they may be cried up 
 to the skies as the sure panacea for all the evils of the world. 
 That hope still lies, in spite of all our boasted systems of 
 human amelioration, substantially and necessarily in man's 
 moral regeneration. This only reaches the root of the matter. 
 And that power of moral regeneration is lodged, more than 
 anywhere else, in the vivifying power of the life and character 
 of Jesus upon the hearts and consciences of mankind. There 
 it takes its purest form, and breathes its holiest spirit. 
 
 WILLIAM GRIFFITHS. 
 
 [Divine Footprints in the Field of Revelation. London : 1S79. P. 269 et stq?^ 
 
 None who knew our Lord could fail to be struck b)- the 
 spotless integrity and deep seriousness of his demeanor. He 
 resorted to no underhand methods, and cherished no sinister 
 designs. He did not propitiate the great, so as to stave off 
 their wrath, or pander to the vices of the populace so as to 
 win their applause, or spare his disciples in order to hide their 
 faults. He could l)e as severe in the treatment of obstinate 
 offenders, however high in station or power, or closely related 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 373 
 
 to himself, as he was uniformly gentle toward the weak and 
 penitent. 
 
 The arts of flattery and conciliation seem to have been 
 unknown to him. He humored no man, but uniformly acted 
 and spoke as in presence of eternal rectitude. To utter the 
 true, and do the riofht, was at all times his sole and rulino- 
 object. From the law of righteousness he never swerved. 
 Conscience in him exercised imperial sway. He was the very 
 personification of purity and light. 
 
 Nothing shone more brightly in the nature of Jesus than 
 good-will towards men. Acts of pity and love were his 
 constant employ. He lived to relieve the sorrows of earth. 
 
 Truth and love, in the perfectly balanced spirit of the 
 Son of God, held equal place. Neither rose at the expense 
 of the other. Justice did not burst into unfeeling sternness ; 
 tenderness did not sink into weak familiarity. 
 
 Jesus stooped to no dignified airs. He did not act 
 greatness. The overwhelming mass of men from the most 
 unlettered to the most refined, and representing nearly every 
 phase of opinion, have but one verdict to pass on the charac- 
 ter of Jesus. They vie with one another in paying homage 
 to him who reached a standard which it would have been 
 impossible for them to conceive. 
 
 No skill in word-painting can limn our thought of the 
 faultless One. As means of its adumbration, the pen, tongue, 
 and pencil are alike feeble. The failure of our powers should 
 make us appreciate keenly the graphic power of the Evan- 
 gelists. Our defeat is a foil to their triumph. How strange 
 that several unpretending Jews should have bequeathed to 
 us an august form which art and eloquence have since been 
 unable to trace! By what means did these four simple-minded 
 men — one a tax-gatherer, another a fisherman from the Lake 
 of Galilee — manage to compile inimitable masterpieces of 
 biographical literature ? And how did it happen that their 
 subject should be the one which it most concerned the world 
 to be acquainted with ? 
 
374 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 In trying to account for the fortunate eminence of these 
 authors, we have no reasonable alternative. The facts admit 
 of but a single explanation. The success of the Evangelists, 
 not due to special merit, is due to special privilege alone. 
 The providence and Spirit of God conspired in their favor, 
 or it would have been impossible for them to have conferred 
 the boon which we inherit from their peerless pens. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 [Literature and Dogma. New York: 1873. Pp. 190-193, 197, 19S, 208.] 
 
 Now, if we describe the work of Christ by a short expres- 
 sion which may give the clearest view of it, we shall describe 
 it thus : that he came to restore the intuition. He came, it is 
 true, to save, and to give eternal life ; but the way in which he 
 did this was by restoring the intnition. 
 
 He found Israel all astray, with an endless talk about God, 
 the law, righteousness, the kingdom, everlasting life, and no 
 real hold upon any one of them. Israel's old, sure proof of 
 being in the right way, — the sanction of joy and peace, — 
 was plainly wanting; and this was a test which anybody could 
 at once apply. " O Eternal, blessed is the man that putteth 
 his trust in thee," was a corner-stone of Israel's religion. 
 Now, the Jewish people, however they might talk about 
 putting their trust in the Eternal, were evidently, as they stood 
 there before Jesus, not blessed at all ; and they knew it them- 
 selves as w^ell as he did. " Great peace have they who love 
 thy law," was another corner-stone. But the Jewish people 
 had at that time in its soul as little peace as it had joy and 
 blessedness; it was seethino- with inward unrest, irritation, and 
 trouble. Yet the way of the Eternal was most indubitably a 
 way of peace and joy ; so, if Israel felt no peace and no joy, 
 it could not 1)(^ walking in the way of the Eternal. Here 
 we hav(! th(,' lirm, unchanging ground on which the operations 
 of Jesus both began and always proceeded. . . . 
 
 I 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 375 
 
 Search and sift and renew the idea of righteousness, Jesus 
 did. And though the work of Jesus, hke the name of God, 
 calls up in the believer a multitude of emotions and associa- 
 tions far more than any brief definition can cover, yet, 
 remembering Jeremy Taylor's advice to avoid exhortations to 
 get Christ, to be in CJirist, and to seek some more distinct 
 and practical way of speaking of him, we shall not do ill, 
 perhaps, if we summarize to our own minds his work, by 
 saying that he restored the intuition of God through trans- 
 forming the idea of righteousness ; and that, to do this, he 
 brought a method, and he brought a secret. And of those two 
 great words which fill such a place in his Gospel, repentance 
 and peace, as we see that his apostles, when they preached his 
 Gospel, preached " repentance unto life," and ''peace through 
 Jesus Christ," — of these two great words, one, repentance, 
 attaches itself, we shall find, to his method ; and the other, 
 peace, to his secret. . . . 
 
 The man who is founded upon rock is always, as Jesus 
 said, the man who does, never the man who only hears. To 
 say, Look within, was therefore not every thing ; yet we none 
 of us, probably, enough feel the power which at first resided 
 in the mere saying of it, as Christ said it. And this is 
 because his words have become so trite to us, that we fail to 
 see how powerfully they were all adapted to call forth the new 
 habit of inwardness ; and if we want to see this, we must for 
 a time either retranslate his words for ourselves, or paraphase 
 them. . . . Instead, then, of, " Grace and truth came through 
 Jesus Christ," let us say, " Happiness and reality came 
 through Jesus Christ ; " instead of, " To know the grace of 
 God in truth," " To know the happiness of God in reality!' 
 Even if the new rendering is not so literally correct as the 
 old, not permanently to be adopted, it will be of use to us for 
 a while to show us how the words work. . . . 
 
 Jesus not only saw this great necessary truth of there being, 
 as Aristotle says, in human nature a part to rule and a part 
 to be ruled ; he saw so tJioroiighly, that he saw through the 
 
376 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 suffering at its surface to the joy at its centre, filled it with 
 promise and hope, and made it infinitely attractive. As Israel, 
 therefore, is " the people of righteousness," because, though 
 others have perceived the importance of righteousness, Israel, 
 above every one, perceived the happiness of it ; so self- 
 renouncement, the main factor in conduct or righteousness, is 
 " the secret of Jesus," because, though others have seen that 
 it was necessary, Jesus, above every one, saw that it was peace, 
 joy, life. 
 
 WILLIAM E. H. LECKY. 
 
 [History of the Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe. London : 
 1872. Vol. i. pp. 306-308.] 
 
 There is but one example of a religion which is not 
 necessarily subverted by civilization, and that example is 
 Christianity. In all other cases the decay of dogmatic concep- 
 tions is tantamount to a complete annihilation of the religion ; 
 for, although there may be imperishable elements of moral 
 truth mingled with those conceptions, they have nothing dis- 
 tinctive or peculiar. The moral truths coalesce with new 
 systems; the men who uttered them take their place with 
 many others in the great pantheon of history; and the religion, 
 having discharged its functions, is spent and withered. But 
 the great characteristic of Christianity, and the great moral 
 proof of its divinity, is that it has been the main source of the 
 moral development of Europe, and that it has discharged this 
 office not so much by the inculcation of a system of ethics, 
 however pure, as by the a.ssimilating and attractive influence 
 of a jjcrfect ideal. 
 
 '1 he moral progress of mankind can never cease to be 
 distinctively and intensely Christian as long as it consists 
 of a gradual ai)i)roximation to the character of the Christian 
 Founder. Th(,'re is, indeed, nothing more wonderful in the 
 history of llu; luiiiian race, than the wa)- in which this ideal 
 has traversed the la[)se of ages, acquiring a new strength and 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 2>77 
 
 beauty with each advance of civihzation, and infusing its 
 beneficent influence into every sphere of thought and action. 
 
 At first, men sought to grasp by minute dogmatic defini- 
 tions the divinity they felt. The controversies of the Homoou- 
 sians or Monophysites or Nestorians or Patripassians, and 
 many others whose very names now sound strange and 
 remote, then filled the Church. Then came the period of 
 visible representations. The handkerchief of Veronica, the 
 portrait of Edessa, the crucifix of Nicodemus, the paintings of 
 St. Luke, the image traced by an angel's hand which is still 
 venerated at the Lateran, the countless visions narrated by 
 the saints, show the eag-erness with which men sought to 
 realize, as a palpable and living image, their ideal. 
 
 This age was followed by that of historical evidences, the 
 age of Sebonde and his followers. Yet more and more 
 with advancing years the moral ideal stood out from all dog- 
 matic conceptions; and it is no exaggeration to say that at no 
 former period was it so powerful, or so universally acknowl- 
 edged, as at present. This is a phenomenon altogether 
 unique in history ; and to those who recognize in the highest 
 type of excellence the highest revelation of the Deity, its 
 importance is too manifest to be overlooked. 
 
 EZRA STILES GANNETT. 
 
 [Memoirs. Boston: 1875. Pp- 447> 448' 4S9, 490.] 
 
 The chai^acter of Christ: on this infinite theme I wish 
 it were possible for me to utter my own feelings. I call it an 
 infinite theme, for such it appears to me. It comprises, I 
 believe, all that can be known of God or of human duty. 
 Unlike every other being that has appeared on earth, he was 
 sinless and perfect. We behold in him an unparalleled com- 
 bination of virtues. He united the most dissimilar traits, — 
 dignity and humility, consciousness of power with meekness 
 and tenderness, the most delicate sensibility with an adaman- 
 
378 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 tine fortitude, devotion to the will of God with boundless 
 philanthropy, abhorrence of sin with compassion for the sinner, 
 excellence on the broadest scale with fidelity to duty in the 
 minutest details. There was no defect, and no excess. We 
 cannot imagine his character despoiled of a single attribute, 
 and not perceive that it would be injured by the loss. We 
 cannot add a single grace that would not mar its symmetry. 
 It was his prerogative, and his alone, to reply to one who 
 desired to see God, " He who has seen me hath seen the 
 Father." In him were hidden all the treasures of knowledge 
 and love. In him was truth embodied. In his character the 
 everlasting principles of the divine government, the essential 
 doctrines of religion, were manifested. " I am," said he, " the 
 truth." 
 
 Here Jesus Christ stood alone. " Greater works than 
 these shall ye do," said he to his disciples ; but not a greater 
 miracle than I am shall you offer to men's admiration, — he 
 made no such promise. Peter, John, Paul, was not a second 
 Christ. No ! he was alone in the grandeur and beauty and 
 perfection of his character. We must assign to this prodigy 
 an adequate purpose ; and while I can discover nothing short 
 of that which considers it a revelation — not an evidence nor 
 a sanction, not the credential nor the seal, but a revelation — 
 of truth, while I find nothing short of this that will satisfy me, 
 I rest here in the conviction that I have found its meaninij, its 
 purpose, its justification, its worth, and its glory. 
 
 But how is Christ known ? by an intellectual examination, 
 or by a moral appreciation ? Neither through metaphysical 
 nor through psychological study shall we find the avenue to 
 an ac(|uaintance with him on whom his enemies endeavored 
 to fasten the charge of blasphemy because he called himself 
 the " Son of God." We do not put ourselves in relations of 
 intimacy with Christ in this way. Is it. then, by making our- 
 selves familiar with every incident that the Evangelists offer 
 for onr study, till we can describes llie whole outward life of 
 Jesus as if it luul been passed under our own eyes? If our 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 379 
 
 knowledge of him be confined to the external history, we 
 mipfht almost as well have studied Worcester or Robinson as 
 Matthew and John. They know Christ who approach him 
 through s)mpathy, welcome him through faith, receive him 
 into believing Jiearts. There his character discloses its beauty, 
 its power, and its value as a revelation of the one character, 
 which, like the divine appearance, can only be made known 
 by sign or by reflection, never in its awful radiance. He that 
 hath realized the spiritual influence of Christ is alone able to 
 understand that personal superiority which made him the 
 image of the majesty on high, the milder type' of the inac- 
 cessible glory. 
 
 If we would perceive yet more clearly the superiority of 
 the Christian religion to all other forms of faith, and of Christ 
 to all other teachers, we need only compare him with others 
 who have been eminent as instructors of their race, or his 
 Gospel with other systems of belief. We will leave the ancient 
 world. Pagan philosophy, or Jewish wisdom, and come to later 
 times. In all the teaching of great men who have founded 
 communities or gathered sects, or left the impress of their 
 own minds on society, you find something which was not 
 great. The trivial and the mean are bound up with the grand 
 and the beautiful. The proportions of the building are not 
 preserved. The noble entrance leads to an unfinished 
 interior, or the humble gateway does not correspond to the 
 spacious courts into which it opens. A massive pillar rests 
 on a slight foundation, or a solid base supports no column. 
 Weakness and strength are joined together. Imperfection 
 mars the whole work. There is something in every one's dis- 
 course which you wish for his sake to be omitted. Great 
 writers cannot get away from their own littleness. Calvin 
 must dogmatize, and Luther must rail, and Swedenborg 
 abound in idle conceits. But he who spake as never man 
 spake is always consistent, always great. There was nothing 
 little, either in him or his religion, nothing he would wish to 
 efface. This young man of Galilee, as we see him, who was 
 
380 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 born in obscurity and cradled in fear, whose education was a 
 simple mother's care, who had no books and no masters, never 
 sat at Gamaliel's feet, nor listened to Grecian sages or Egy^p- 
 tian priests, — this plain, humble Nazarene speaks words which 
 not only pierce the heart of humanity, and at which the ages 
 tremble, but says nothing that is poor, false, or narrow. All is 
 great, and all is harmonious. Explain this, unbelief. Solve 
 this intellectual problem, this moral wonder. Listen to the 
 Son of Mary, ye men of this generation, as if now for the first 
 time the sound of his instruction had reached your ears ; and 
 see if you must not pronounce the teaching and the teacher 
 divine. 
 
 ROBERT S. CANDLISH. 
 
 [The Gospel of Forgiveness. Edinburgh : 1878. Pp. 305, 306.] 
 
 With us, power is commonly violent ; and wisdom artful, 
 ingenious, inventive. We measure power by the din and 
 noise and tumult it creates ; we measure wisdom by its 
 shrewd guesses and apt contrivances and plans. But nothing 
 of all this is to be found about the holy Jesus. He makes 
 no mighty stir when he exerts his power ; he surprises by no 
 mere exercise of ingenuity, when he manifests his wisdom. 
 Calmness, simplicity, repose, and what might almost be called 
 unconsciousness, are the features that most distinguish his 
 manner. There is nothing fitful or capricious in Christ as the 
 power of God, — nothing like the putting-forth of a giant's 
 or a tyrant's might. There is nothing strained and refined, or 
 artful, in Christ as the wisdom of God : his wisdom is not 
 mere knowing or cunning. Power with him is serene and 
 unimpassioned. Wisdom with him is always self-possessed, 
 calm and clear in the uiu-uftled fulness of its infinite fore- 
 thought and foresight and insight ; and hence the grandeur 
 ol his character. Excitement may be great, but repose is 
 greater. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 38 1 
 
 GOLDWIN SMITH. 
 
 [Lectures and Essays. New York : 1874. Pp. 96, 97.] 
 
 It must surely be apparent to the moral philosopher, no 
 less than to the student of history, that at the time of the 
 appearance of Christianity a crisis took place in the develop- 
 ment of humanity, which may not unfitly be described as the 
 commencement of spiritual life. . . . 
 
 Faith, Hope, and Charity, by which the Gospel desigrnates 
 the triple manifestation of spiritual life, are new names for 
 new things ; for it is needless to say that in classical Greek 
 the words have nothing like their Gospel signification. 
 
 It w^ould be difficult, we believe, to find in any Greek or 
 Roman writer an expression of hope for the future of humanity. 
 The nearest approach to such a sentiment, perhaps, is in the 
 political Utopianism of Plato. The social ideal is placed in a 
 golden age which has irretrievably passed away. Virgil's 
 Fourth Eclogue, even were it a more serious production than 
 it is, seems to refer to nothing more than the pacification of 
 the Roman Empire, and the restoration of its material 
 prosperity by Augustus. 
 
 But Christianity in the Apocalypse at once breaks forth 
 into a confident prediction of the ultimate triumph of good 
 over evil and of the realization of the ideal. 
 
 The moral aspiration — the striving after an ideal of char- 
 acter, personal and social, the former in and through the 
 latter — seems to be the special note of the life, institutions, 
 literature, and art of Christendom. Christian fiction, for 
 example, is pervaded by an interest in the development and 
 elevation of character, for which we look in vain in the "Arabian 
 Nights," where there is no development of character, nothing 
 but incident and adventure. Christian sculpture, inferior per- 
 haps in workmanship to that of Phidias, derives Its superior 
 interest from Its constant suggestion of a superior Ideal. The 
 Christian lives, in a manner, two lives, — an outward one of 
 
382 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 necessary conformity to the fashions and ordinances of the 
 present world ; an inner one of protest against the present 
 world, and an anticipation of an ideal state of things ; and 
 this duality is reproduced in the separate existence of the 
 spiritual society or Church, submitting to existing social 
 arrangements, yet struggling to transcend them, and to trans- 
 mute society by the realization of the Christian social ideal. 
 With this is connected a readiness to sacrifice present to future 
 good, and the interests of the present world to those of the 
 world of hope. Apart from this, the death of Christ (and 
 that of Socrates too), instead of being an instance of " sweet 
 reasonableness," would be out of the pale of reason 
 altogether. 
 
 JAMES MARTINEAU. 
 
 [Studies of Christianity. P. 20.] 
 
 The universe gives us the scale of God, and Christ his 
 spirit. We climb to the infinitude of his nature by the awful 
 pathway of the stars, where whole forests of worlds silently 
 quiver here and there like a small leaf of light. W^e dive 
 into his eternity through the ocean waves of time, that roll 
 and solemnly break on the imagination, as we trace the 
 wrecks of departed things upon our present globe. The 
 scope of his intellect and the majesty of his rule are seen in 
 the tranquil order and everlasting silence that reign through 
 the fields of his volition. And the spirit that animates the 
 whole is lik(,' that of the prophet of Nazareth ; the thoughts 
 that fly upon the swift light throughout creation, charged 
 with fates unnumbered, are like the healing mercies of one 
 who passed no sorrow by. A faith that spreads around and 
 within the mind a Deity thus sublime and holy, feeds the life 
 of every y\\\\\ aflection, and presses with omnipotent power 
 on the conscience ; and our only prayer is, that we may walk 
 as children of such liL-ht. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 383 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
 
 [The Life of Jesus the Christ. New York: 1S71. Vol. i. p. 140 et seq?^ 
 
 There is absolutely nothing- to determine the personal 
 appearance of Jesus. Some ideas of his bearing, and many 
 of his habits, may be gathered from incidental comments 
 recorded in the Gospels. But to his form, his height, the 
 character of his face or of any single feature of it, there is not 
 the slightest allusion. Had Jesus lived in Greece, we should 
 have had a very close portraiture of his person and coun- 
 tenance. Of the great men of Greece, — of Socrates, of 
 Demosthenes, of Pericles, and of many others, — we have 
 more or less accurate details of personal appearance. Coins 
 and statues reveal the features of the Roman contemxporaries 
 of Jesus. But of him, the one historic personage of whose 
 form and face the whole world most desires some knowledo-e, 
 there is not a trace or a hint. 
 
 The disciples were neither literary nor artistic men. It 
 is doubtful whether the genius of the race to which they 
 belonged ever inclined them to personal descriptions or 
 delineations. . . . 
 
 We cannot wonder, therefore, that there was nothing 
 which was at any time said by the common people, or by their 
 teachers and rulers, and that nothing fell out upon his trial, 
 among Roman spectators, and nothing in the subsequent 
 history, which throws a ray of light upon the personal appear- 
 ance of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 We know not whether he was of moderate height or tall, 
 whether his hair was dark or light, whether his eyes were 
 blue or gray or piercing black. We have no hint of mouth 
 or brow, or posture, gesture, or of those personal peculiarities 
 which give to every man his individual look. All is blank, 
 although four separate accounts of him were written within 
 fifty years of his earthly life. He is to us a personal power 
 without a form, a name of wonder without portraiture. It is 
 
384 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 true that there is a conventional head of Christ, which has 
 come down to us through the schools of art ; but it is of no 
 direct historic value. . . . 
 
 As Christ spiritually united in himself all nationalities, so 
 in art his head has a certain universality. All races find in 
 it something of their race features. The head of Christ, as it 
 come to us from the great Italian masters, is to art what the 
 heart of Christ has been to the human race. . . . No one 
 view of the head of Jesus can satisfy the desires of a devout 
 spectator. It is impossible for art to combine majesty and 
 meekness, suffering and joy, indignation and love, sternness 
 and tenderness, grief and triumph, in the same face at one 
 time. Yet some special representations may come much 
 nearer to satisfying us than others. The head and face of 
 Christ by Leonardo da Vinci, in the Last Supper, even in its 
 present wasted condition, produces an impression upon a 
 sensitive nature which it will never forget, -nor wish to 
 forget. 
 
 Note. — About the beginning of the fourth century there appeared a famous 
 letter purporting to have been written by one Publius Lentulus, a friend 
 of Pilate, giving a detailed and most graphic description of the prophet of 
 Nazareth. Though this portraiture has no historical value, it gives what is 
 probably the best pen-and-ink sketch in literature of the ideal form and 
 features of Jesus. 
 
 " In this time appeared a man who hves till now, — a man endowed with 
 great powers. Men call him a great prophet : his own disciples term him the 
 Son of God. His name is Jesus Christ. He restores the dead to life, and 
 cures the sick of all manner of diseases. 
 
 " This man is of noble and well-proportioned stature, with a face full of 
 kindness and yet firmness, so that the beholders both love him and fear him. 
 His hair is the color of wine, and golden at the roots, straight and without 
 lustre, but from the level of the ears curling and glossy, and divided down the 
 centre after the fashion of the Nazarenes. His forehead is even and smooth, 
 his face without blemish, and enhanced by a tempered bloom. His coun- 
 tenance is ingenuous and kind. Nose and mouth are in no way foulty. His 
 beard is full, of the same color of his hair, and forked in form; his eyes 
 blue and extremely brilliant. 
 
 " In reproof and rebuke he is formidable ; in exhortation and teaching, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 385 
 
 gentle and amiable of tongue. None have seen him to laugh ; but many, on 
 the contrary, to weep. His person is tall, his hands beautiful and straight. 
 In speaking he is deliberate and grave, and little given to loquacity. In beauty, 
 surpassing most men." 
 
 Every system, whether of philosophy or rehgion, that was 
 ever propounded before Christianity, might be received with- 
 out any knowledge, in the disciples, of the person of its 
 teacher. The Pharisee and the Buddhist believe in a system 
 more than in a person. What Plato taught was more impor- 
 tant than what Plato himself was. One may accept all of 
 Socrates' teaching without caring for Socrates himself. Even 
 Paul's development of Christian ideas does not require that 
 one should accept Paul. Not so Christianity. Christianity is 
 faith in Christ. The vital union of our souls with his was the 
 sum of his teaching, the means by which our nature was to be 
 carried up to God ; all other doctrines were auxiliary to this 
 union, or a guide to the life which should spring from it. To 
 live in him, to have him dwelling in us, to lose our personality 
 in his, and to have it returned to us purified and ennobled, — 
 this is the very marrow of his teaching. . , . 
 
 The very genius of Christianity, then, requires a distinct 
 conception, not of Christ's person, but of his personality. This 
 may account for the structure of the Gospels. They are 
 neither journals nor itineraries ; still less are they orderly 
 expositions of doctrine. The Gospels are the collective 
 reminiscences of Christ by the most impressible of his disci- 
 ples. We find, therefore, as might be expected, in all the 
 Gospels, pictures of Christ which represent the social and 
 spiritual elements of his life, rather than the corporeal. If 
 these biographies be compared with the physical portraiture 
 of heroes and gods which classic literature has furnished, the 
 contrast will be striking. The Gospels give a portrait, not of 
 attitudes or of features, but of the disposition and of the 
 soul. . . . 
 
 It is difficult to think of him as specialized, either to any 
 nation, or to any class or profession. He was universal. 
 
386 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Although he had the sanctity of the priest, he was more than 
 priest. Though he had a philosopher's wisdom, he had a 
 royal sympathy with all of human life, quite foreign to the 
 philosophic temper. He was more than a prophet, more than 
 a Jew. He touched human life on every side, though chiefly 
 in its spiritual elements. He moved alike among men of 
 every kind, and was at home with each. Among the poor 
 he was as if poor ; among the rich, as if bred to wealth. 
 Among children he was a familiar companion ; among doc- 
 tors of theology, an unmatched disputant. Sympathy, versa- 
 tility, and universality are the terms which may with justice 
 be applied to him. 
 
 WILLIAM S. TYLER. 
 
 [The Son of Man. Bibliotheca Sacra, Andover: 1865. Vol. xxii. pp. 59-63.] 
 
 Most men are not only small patterns, but mere fragments, 
 of humanity. You must put a great many of them together 
 to make a real man. To make up our ideal of man, we must 
 unite all that is highest and best in the biography and history 
 of mankind, written and unwritten, and refine it of all that 
 is impure and unreal and abnormal, leaving only the pure 
 gold. Such an ideal is realized in the humanity of Christ. 
 
 Christ had no individual idiosyncrasies. You cannot say 
 he was more like Peter or Paul, or James or John. You must 
 have put together Peter and Paul, and James and John, or 
 all that was normal and good in them, and all that was right 
 and good in all other men that ever lived, to make up the 
 human nature of Christ. 
 
 There have been a few men in the history of the world 
 who seem to understand all other men, to be able to repro- 
 duce men of all ages and nations, because they comprehend 
 all men in their universal and comprehensive genius. To 
 call Jesus of Nazareth by any of those epithets by which we 
 distinguish Homer or Shakspcare, as the many-sided, the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 387 
 
 myriad-minded, and the like, were only to degrade our con- 
 ceptions of him. And yet this class of men may serve as 
 types and images of him whom we have styled the universal 
 and ideal man. Only he was the ^//-sided, the rt;//-minded, 
 the all-hearted, the all-comprehending type of humanity ; the 
 antitype of all that is beautiful and good in the past history 
 and character of man, and the prototype of all that man is 
 capable of becoming, all that a pure heart can wish, or a holy 
 imagination can conceive, in the future progress of the race. 
 
 Christ had none of the prejudices of the class to which he 
 belonged, or of the section in which he was born and brought 
 up. He was only a poor man in condition. He was just as 
 much at home and at ease with the rich, provided only they 
 were good. He was a Nazarene and a Galilaean only in origin. 
 He had none of the rusticity of an obscure village ; none of 
 the narrowness of a despised province. Country and city 
 were alike to him. He taught with equal freedom and 
 authority in a fisherman's boat on the Sea of Galilee, and in 
 the temple at Jerusalem. 
 
 He had no national peculiarities. He was born a Jew, and 
 brought up among Jews ; but not a trace of Jewish prejudice, 
 bigotry, or narrowness can be discovered in all his words and 
 actions. His birth and education were in the East, but there 
 is nothing peculiarly Oriental in his ideas or instructions. He 
 spoke the language of Judaea ; but he spoke to the hearts of 
 men in all nations and ages. 
 
 He was emphatically the Son of fnan ; not of one man 
 nor another ; not of one nation rather than another ; not of 
 one age to the exclusion of other ages, — but of man univer- 
 sal. We do not even conceive of the human nature and 
 character of Christ as limited and narrowed by the distinction 
 of sex. As the traditional face of Christ, which we see so 
 often in paintings, combines the dignity and strength of one 
 sex with the beauty and loveliness of the other, so his nature 
 unites the susceptibilities, virtues, and graces of both. 
 
 As in the Christian Church, so in Christ himself, though 
 
o 
 
 88 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 in a different sense, there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian 
 nor Scythian, bond nor free, male nor female; but all com- 
 bined in one comprehensive, harmonious, and perfect whole. 
 
 Christ, as man, exhibited the human virtues without imper- 
 fection or alloy ; and man, when he becomes a Christian, is 
 not expected or desired to dehumanize himself, but only to 
 restore and perfect that portion of humanity which he has in 
 him. And this can be accomplished only by being and doing 
 just what Christ would be and do in like circumstances. We 
 are not commanded to practise any superhuman virtues, Man 
 has actually been and done all that we are commanded to be 
 and do, and that, too, in circumstances essentially like our 
 own. He was every human virtue embodied in the human 
 form and exhibited in our fallen, sinful world. 
 
 The patience of Job, the faith of Abraham, the prayer of 
 Jacob, the obedience of David, the courage of Elijah, the 
 fortitude of Daniel, the seraphic joy of Isaiah and the sympa- 
 thetic tenderness of Jeremiah, the zeal of Peter and the love 
 of John, the believing works of James and the working faith 
 and heroism of Paul ; all the active, aggressive, energetic, 
 and heroic virtues of man ; all the meek, gentle, loving, and 
 suffering graces of woman ; and all the humble, truthful, 
 affectionate, and obedient spirit of the little child. — all, and 
 more than all, these virtues met in him, without any of the ex- 
 cesses into which they are prone to run, without any of the 
 defects which attend them in other men, each so complete in 
 itself, and all so tempered and combined, as to form a perfect 
 whole. And yet, so far from dazzling and confounding us 
 with the idea that this is superhuman excellence, which it is 
 vain and almost impious for ordinary mortals to attempt to 
 imitate, we feel all the time that it is human virtue, the very 
 excellence which we were made to aspire after, and, in kind. 
 to reach ; nay, more, that he exemplified all the virtues before 
 our eyes lor the vary piirpose of proving their practicability, 
 and teaching and encouraging us, in his presence and in 
 reliance on his aid, to practise them. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 389 
 
 "The Son of man" was a perfect pattern of what man 
 should be in his relations to his fellow-man, loving- his 
 neighbor as himself, doing unto others all things whatsoever 
 he would that they should do unto him. and even going 
 beyond the strict requirements of the Golden Rule in volun- 
 tary self-denial and self-sacrifice for the good of men. At the 
 same time he was a model man in his relations to God. The 
 will of God was his will : he did always those things which 
 pleased his Father which is in heaven. The glory of God 
 was, in his daily consciousness and his habitual choice, the end 
 of his being. He lived in habitual communion with God ; 
 and even his personal union with the Father was the most 
 perfect image of the true life of man, which is life in Christ 
 and life in God. 
 
 Man attains to the dignity and perfection of his nature only 
 when, like Christ, he is not only the son of man, but the son 
 of God also. Godliness is true manliness, and perfect manli- 
 ness is godliness. Godliness and manliness in their perfection 
 cannot be separated. They are seen together, seen in their 
 perfection, and seen to be one, in the life and character of 
 Christ. 
 
 F. C. COOK. 
 
 [Modern Scepticism. New York: 1871. Pp. 474, 475, 477, 478.] 
 
 Here let me speak out frankly my own opinion. The 
 whole result of inquiry into the truth of Christianity will 
 depend upon the effect produced upon you by the personality 
 of Jesus Christ. If a careful study of his words, of his works, 
 does not constrain you to recognize in him a divine teacher, 
 if it does not lead you to discern the being in whom alone 
 humanity attained to that ideal perfection of which philoso- 
 phers had ever dreamed, but of which they dreamed that the 
 realization was impossible ; nay, more, a being in whom the 
 moral and spiritual attributes of deity, perfect holiness, and 
 perfect love were manifested, — then indeed 1 admit, nay I 
 
390 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 am in truth convinced, that no other evidences will have any 
 real or permanent effects upon your spirit. The complete- 
 ness of those evidences may fill your minds with anxious 
 questionings ; their adequacy may leave you without excuse 
 for their rejection : but without influence they will also leave 
 you cold, and in a position, if not of outward antagonism, yet 
 of inward alienation. 
 
 If, on the other hand, you accept Jesus as your teacher 
 and master, simply and wholly because he has won your 
 heart and conquered your spirit, then all other evidences 
 will fall into their proper places ; they will not be set aside, 
 contemned, or neglected, but they will be used as subsidiary 
 and supplementary, enabling you to give a reason for the 
 faith which is in you, both for your own satisfaction, and for 
 the defence and advancement of Christian truth. The one 
 great evidence, the master evidence, the evidence with which 
 all other evidences will stand or fall, is Christ himself speaking 
 by his own words and life. 
 
 No healthy moral nature ever came into contact with that 
 personality without recognizing its unapproached and unap- 
 proachable excellence. Nay, I will add, no human heart, 
 susceptible of tender or noble emotions, ever fixed its gaze 
 upon Jesus without acknowledging in him the embodiment 
 of love. Attestations to this effect mieht be adduced in 
 abundance from writings of men who have passed their lives 
 in ineffectual efforts to extricate themselves from the perplex- 
 ity arising from their inability to reconcile that impression 
 with their intellectual system ; but we need no testimony 
 from without. 
 
 Go to Christ, hear him speak, watch his actions, and you 
 will have an evidence at once complete and adequate, that in 
 him was a human nature, which in its entire freedom from 
 all moral evil, and in its perfect development of all moral 
 goodn(.'ss, stands absolutely alone. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 391 
 
 D. W. SIMON. 
 
 [Historical Influence of the Death of Christ. Hibliotheca Sacra, vol. xxv. 
 
 PP- 753' 755-757-] 
 
 The death of Christ constitutes from this time onwards 
 (A.D. 323) one of the most important factors in the Hfe of 
 civilized humanity. Its history is, to no small extent, the 
 history of what is profoundest in human thought, what is 
 purest in human feeling, what is noblest in human endeavor, 
 what is loftiest in human self-sacrifice ; nay, more, we might 
 add, of what is best in human life, whether in the family, the 
 society, or the state. . . . 
 
 Never did the crucifixion on Calvary, under Pontius Pilate, 
 attract more thought and speculation than it does at this 
 present moment. So much for its position in the history of 
 human thought, — a thousand times tabooed as a problem 
 beneath the notice of philosophic minds, and a thousand times 
 imperiously claiming the most concentrated attention of the 
 simplest and the profoundest. 
 
 But, besides engaging the intelligence of man, it has also 
 awakened in him feelings, stirred him to efforts, and manned 
 him to self-sacrifice as pure, as high, as lofty — we should be 
 justified in saying immeasurably purer, higher, and loftier, than 
 any recorded on the whole page of human history. What 
 was it that led to the establishment of hundreds of monas- 
 teries, convents, and similar institutions, which, whatever they 
 may have been in the days of their degeneracy, were founded 
 by men of the purest zeal for their own and others' welfare, 
 and were for generations a source of refining, elevating, and 
 civilizing influences to the districts around them ? It was the 
 cross. What was it that drove hundreds of the best men of 
 their respective generations from their native lands, to traverse 
 pathless wilds, and seek out unknown and barbarous tribes 
 for the purpose of saving them from temporal and eternal 
 ruin ? It was the cross in their hearts, whose image they often 
 
392 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 bore in their hands. What gave the signal for the movement 
 of those immense masses of men of all classes and ages, from 
 all parts of Europe, on Jerusalem, during the eleventh, twelfth, 
 and thirteenth centuries, to the Crusades, which, however else 
 you may judge them, must be confessed to have been rooted 
 in an enthusiasm such as the world had never before witnessed? 
 It was the cross. What was it that inspired Italian art, at the 
 noblest period of its existence, with its grandest thoughts and 
 colors and forms ? Was it not the cross ? In whose honor 
 were raised the finest monuments of the most spiritual style 
 of architecture that human genius has conceived ? Surely the 
 cross, which they exhibit in their form. — the cross which 
 towers aloft upon their summit. 
 
 Under what sign arose and labored the numerous orders 
 and associations in the Middle Ages, — cleric and laic, civil and 
 military, — for the defence of the Church and for the care of 
 the sick and needy ? Under the sign of the cross. To what 
 do the tens of thousands of churches whose spires adorn 
 the landscapes of Europe and America, and other parts of the 
 world, owe their existence ? To the cross. To what purpose 
 are devoted the vast majority of the benevolent institutions 
 which exist all over the civilized world ? To the preaching 
 of the cross. Whatever may be said to the contrary, and 
 however many defects and weaknesses may be pointed out 
 in its bearers, can it be denied that the message of the 
 cross is at the present moment as powerful and strong as 
 ever? 
 
 Throughout Christendom, notwithstanding that many 
 maintain it to be surfeited of the cross, wherever that cross is 
 held up distinctly, simply, faithfully, it never fails to speak to 
 the human conscience, heart, and will, with a power which, 
 unexplained as it may be, is none the less indubitably great. 
 And the victories it gained over the heathenism of Greece 
 and Rome, and Egypt and Carthage, during the early years of 
 its proclamation, it is still gaining, and likely to gain, in India, 
 China, Africa, and Polynesia. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 393 
 
 JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 
 
 [The New Theology. Unitarian Review, October, 1878. P. 403.] 
 
 Nor is the historic Christ outgrown. He will still be the 
 centre of the new theology, as he is the central figure in hu- 
 man history. In him men will see God manifest in the flesh, 
 recognize the identity of spirit and matter, eternity and time, 
 the divine and human. In looking at him, men w411 continue 
 to see the God who was atar off becoming nigh ; and he 
 who sees him will always see the Father. 
 
 One human life like that of Jesus lifts the world forever 
 to a higher plane. Jesus has brought God to man, and lifted 
 man to God. Since he has done this, all minute criticisms 
 intending to discredit the integrity of his character become 
 futile. We know what he was, b)' what he has done ; we 
 know what he is, by what he is doing. As long as men con- 
 tinue to come to God through him, so long must Jesus be the 
 centre of the religious thought of the world. 
 
 JAMES THOMPSON BIXBY. 
 
 [Christ the Life. Monthly Religious Magazine, Boston : 1873. Vol. xlix. 
 
 pp. 126-128, 130.] 
 
 " I AM the life," said Christ. It was not what he did, but 
 what he was, that has influenced men. He came, not to 
 organize, but to inspire ; not to teach truths before unper- 
 ceived, foreiofn to the line of men's thouo^hts, but to eive 
 vitality and force and clearness to those universal truths which 
 the world heretofore had caught dim and transient glimpses 
 of. The light was already in the world, but the world knew 
 it not. The Word of revealing truth had already come to its 
 own. but its own had received it not. Christ focussed these 
 scattered rays, and made them a glowing point, seen of all 
 men. Grant that the truths of the Gospel have been enun- 
 
394 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 dated outside the Gospel, and before the birth of Christ : yet 
 every one must see that they present an entirely different 
 aspect, have an entirely different power, in the one place, from 
 what they do in the other. In Talmud and Veda they are as 
 rou^h diamonds, hid in pits of dirt and stone. In the Gospel 
 they are gems, cut and polished, and set in a royal diadem. 
 In Grecian, or Roman, or Chinese philosophy, they are abstract 
 speculations, theories, ideals, .with a fancy cold and inert. In 
 the Gospel they come with a power that makes them realized ; 
 they are pointed with practicalness ; they burn with a fire 
 that kindles every heart they strike. They are as different, 
 practically, from their Oriental or classic prototypes, as the 
 dramas of Shakspeare from the old chronicles and plays which 
 he worked over. 
 
 I feel sure that all the great truths which Jesus proclaimed 
 were original with him. . . . See how he transmutes every 
 thing he touches, — the wild flowers, and the birds of the 
 air, the weed and the grain ; every thing, down to the small 
 grain of mustard-seed and to homely domestic employments, 
 — the making of bread, the patching of garments, — he 
 makes serve his great purpose. The sudden interruptions, 
 the dilemmas of opponents, the plots of foes, he so turns to 
 his service, that they almost seem to be in collusion with him. 
 The great truths which had been lying in the world, dormant 
 and nerveless, he took to his bosom, and warmed them in the 
 fire of his heart ; and they issued thonce again full of life and 
 effectiveness, so transformed that the world long thought them 
 his new and peculiar discovery. 
 
 The fishermen and the publicans and peasants whom he 
 made his followers — men who, had it not been for their con- 
 nection with Jesus, would have gone on in the old, narrow, 
 unassuming round of life, timid, illiterate, unenergetic, buried 
 in self — under the influence of one year's short contact with 
 the Master, go forth charged with enthusiasm, bold, untiring, 
 ready for martyrdom, handing down to after generations grand 
 words of wisdom and spirituality. The Saul who came down 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 395 
 
 to Damascus breathing out fury and curses, the narrowest 
 and most bigoted of Pharisees, becomes, under the guiding 
 of the Spirit of the Lord, the Apostle to ^ the Gentiles, the 
 champion of liberty and chanty, the eloquent preacher and 
 practiser of love. Here is something greater than the dis- 
 covery of new truths. For, more than to find out a new 
 principle, is it to take the old ones that the world has handled, 
 and turned over and over, and made nothing of, and so put 
 them together that each useless part, rightly jointed with its 
 neighbor, gives and receives new strength, and forms a new 
 and unique whole. Greater than to show the good, is it to 
 awaken in the soul the desire that will not be satisfied without 
 it. Greater than the adjusting of parts and means is the life 
 that communicates its own vital energy. 
 
 Thus was Jesus the life in his day and generation, and he 
 is still the life to the individual and the society. He shows 
 us what we ought to be, what we can be, what we shall be. 
 His life was lived so truly, his character so rounded out on all 
 sides, that he has become the model for humanity, the type 
 of complete manhood. There met in him the boldness of the 
 prophet and the gentleness of the saint. Masculine strength 
 and feminine tenderness kissed each other. The patriot's 
 devotion to his country was married to the breadth of view 
 that could take the foreigner as a neighbor to be loved as 
 one's self. 
 
 Such things as the hospitals, the asylums for the aged, the 
 infirm, the blind, the deaf, and the lunatic, were unknown in 
 Greece and Rome. Such a thing as one nation sending to 
 another gifts of money and provision to succor it in its dis- 
 tress, as occurs now whenever a war or a famine or an 
 epidemic desolates a neighboring countr}', would have been 
 to a Greek or a Roman an incredible thing. 
 
 These numberless and manifold charities, this spirit of 
 peace and brotherly good - will, which all nations always 
 acknowledge now as the rule of their duty, we owe to Christ. 
 He was our Teacher of the brotherhood of man and love to 
 
396 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 all our kind. Where freedom and progress are, there is 
 shown his influence. 
 
 It was his spirit that forbade men to make an amusement 
 of the mortal combats of their fellows, or to hold their brother 
 as a chattel. It was his spirit that took the knight's free 
 lance, and baptized it into Christian ser\'ice, into deeds of 
 gallant succor and chivalric redress. In ever)- effort after 
 social amelioration, in every humane enterprise, in ever)' civil, 
 industrial, or educational reform, is seen the reflection of that 
 life which was spent in going about doing good. 
 
 In the practical turn which religion is more and more 
 assuming, in the gentler, kinder, and more peaceful air which 
 is settling over the face of society, in the greater and greater 
 demand for love and sweetness and holiness in ever)' charac- 
 ter that demands our reverence, we see the unmistakable 
 influence of Christ's life. 
 
 GEORGE MATHESON. 
 
 [ORioiNALrTY OF THE CHARACTER OF Christ. Contemporary Review, November, 1878. 
 
 Pp- 759-763. 773-775-1 
 
 There is not only a Gospel and a Gospel history to be 
 accounted for : behind both there is a Gospel portraiture, and 
 a portraiture without which neither the outward acts nor 
 the written record could ever have found a place in human 
 thought. Could we satisfactorily explain on purely human 
 principles the origin of the evangelic manuscripts ; could we 
 .satisfactorily account, on purely natural grounds, for the suc- 
 cessful propagation of the facts which these narratives record, 
 — we should still be confronted by a more formidable antag- 
 onist than all in the existence of the character of Christ. 
 
 We do not here contend that this existence was actually 
 lived ; we do not assume that the character attributed to the 
 founder of Christianity was in veritable form seen amongst 
 uKm : to do so would be to beg the whole question. We 
 
rO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 397 
 
 take our stand upon an undoubted fact, — a tact admitted by 
 all schools of thought, orthodox and heterodox, supernatural 
 and mythical, — that there is before our eyes the delineation 
 of a moral character which professes to embody the essence of 
 the Christian life. We have here the portraiture ; whether 
 it be the ideal portraiture, or the description of an actual life, 
 is not here the question : the sole question is, To what does 
 this portraiture amount? Is it reducible to the natural yearn- 
 ings of heathendom ? Is it the flower of human speculation ? 
 Is it the latest fruit of the Pagan tree ? If so, it becomes 
 only another argument for the mythical theory. But if, on 
 the other hand, it should be found to be an original portrait- 
 ure ; if on examination it should be found to transcend alike 
 the Jewish and the heathen yearning ; if it should be recog- 
 nized to contain an element for which there was no prepara- 
 tion in the pre-Christian world, — its existence must furnish 
 a strong presumption against the very basis of that theory. 
 Such is the question we intend to consider. We assume 
 nothing. We use no materials which the mythicist himself 
 would not admit to be legitimate. We do not take for 
 granted that the Founder of Christianity ever existed. We 
 do not take for granted that the records of his existence are 
 either authentic or genuine. We simply recognize the fact 
 that there is a narrative before us, and that in this narrative 
 there is delineated the portrait of a life. We address our- 
 selves solely and entirely to the examination of that portrait. 
 We consider not whence it came. We inquire not who 
 painted it. We only ask whether it was painted in old or 
 in new colors ; and, according to our answer of that question, 
 we seek to estimate the force of the mythical theory. . . . 
 
 The life of Christ, as recorded in the Evangelists, is a 
 life which reaches its perfection by the assimilating of contrary 
 elements. . . . We have that rare capacity of moral sympathy 
 which can at once turn aside from rejoicing with the joyful, 
 to find an equal power in sorrowing with the sad. We have 
 that vast outlook which can contemplate the end of all things. 
 
39^ TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 immediately succeeded by that minute particularity which 
 dictates the precepts for the hour. We have the life which at 
 one moment seems at home amid the crowd, and which the 
 next appears to have reached its ideal in solitude. 
 
 He is boundlessly tolerant. He forbids not the good 
 work of those who are working from an inferior motive to 
 that of his personal service. Yet he displays something 
 which in such minds was rarely to be found, — a tolerance 
 even for intolerance. He will not suffer the fire from heaven 
 to descend upon that village of Samaria, which, through the 
 force of religious bigotry, has closed its gates against him. 
 He is pervaded with the love of purity, yet he claims a special 
 power of extending forgiveness to the impure, and exemplifies 
 that power in a series of instances whose consistency is never 
 broken. 
 
 The conception, in short, which the delineation of Christ's 
 character introduced into the world, is that idea which Paul 
 felicitously expressed in the words, " He that is spiritual 
 judgeth all things." It is the conception of a spirituality 
 which, just because it is the highest type of life, comprehends 
 within itself all the lower forms of existence ; which, because 
 it is sacred, includes all the secular, and, because it is high, 
 stretches down to the minute and lowly. This, we say, is 
 the thought which the delineation of Christ's portraiture has 
 presented to the world, and which has long since become the 
 world's possession. Yet we must not forget that this thought 
 was not always commonplace ; least of all must we forget 
 that it was foreign to the nation that produced it. It was. of 
 all other thoughts, that most remote from the Jewish mind ; 
 and when the Jewish mind beheld it, it beheld it with aver- 
 sion and loathing. Even the recorders of the evangelical 
 narratives give indications that they are depicting a portrait, 
 the full beauty of whose expression they do not as yet see. 
 
 No one will suspect Mr. Matthew Arnold and Mr. Stuart 
 Mill 'of an undue prcxlilcction for dogmatic Christianity, yet 
 both have recorded in the strongest terms their conviction that 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARRTH. 399 
 
 the portrait of the Master was above its Jewish dehneators. 
 Strauss himself seems latterly to have had this truth forced 
 upon him. In his later life of Jesus, intended for the German 
 people, he appears to have found that the character of the 
 Founder himself was precisely that element which could not 
 be resolved into the legendary expectations of the Jewish 
 nation ; and therefore he is forced to seek for that character 
 a source outside of Judaism. 
 
 Judaism, in the judgment of the mythical theory itself, 
 has been pronounced to be inadequate to account for the 
 creation of a Christian portraiture, and the mythical theory 
 has fallen back on the support of the Gentile element. But 
 is the Gentile element more adequate than the Jewish? Does 
 the portrait of Christ as we now behold it show any real 
 analogy to the aspirations of heathendom ? The heroes of 
 all nations, as embodied in their works of fiction, will be 
 found to be simply the expression of the national ideal. Is 
 the portrait of Christ the expression of the heathen ideal ? 
 That is the question to which the subject narrows itself. . . . 
 
 Christ felt, and felt truly, that any empire which, like the 
 Jewish and the Roman, claimed to be theocratic, could only be 
 made permanent by ruling from within ; that nothing could 
 be called a sacred sovereignty which did not directly influence 
 the mind. He felt that the ultimate seat of regal authority 
 lay in the heart of a people ; that the heart could only be 
 won by love ; and that love could only be manifested by 
 sacrifice. It was from this thoug-ht, or train of thouo-ht, that 
 there emerged the great Christian paradox, " He that is least 
 shall be greatest." 
 
 To be a king in the most absolute sense, was to be a 
 ruler over the heart ; to be a ruler over the heart, it was first 
 necessary that the sovereign should be a subject. He who 
 would win the love of others, must first be dominated by the 
 love of others ; captivity must precede captivation. Inspired 
 by this deep principle of morality, the Master conceived the 
 grand design of establishing a kingdom that could never be 
 
400 TRSriMONV OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 moved, — a kingdom, not based upon the physical power 
 which was perishable ; nor even on the intellectual Platonic 
 power, which could only exist through the ignorance of the 
 many ; but on a power whose foundation was the noblest 
 element of humanity itself, — the capacity for love. He pro- 
 posed to conquer the heart of the world, and to conquer it 
 by the exhibition of his own heart. 
 
 The founders of previous kingdoms had sought to rule by 
 placing in the foreground the display of their personal superi- 
 ority ; the Flounder of Christianity resolved to subjugate man- 
 kind by the sacrifice of himself. The kings of former times 
 had fought their way to empire by shedding the blood of 
 their enemies ; the aspirant to this new kingdom determined 
 to secure dominion by shedding his own. 
 
 An aim so strange, a plan so paradoxical, would alone 
 have been sufficient to mark out Christianity from all other 
 forms of faith; but to this must be added another element 
 which heightens the strangeness and completes the contrast. 
 
 It is now an historic fact, that the Founder of Christianity 
 has succeeded in his aim ; whatever be mythical, there is no 
 mythology here. There is at this hour in the world the 
 nucleus of such a kinofdom as Christ desired to found. We 
 mean not the kingdom of the Roman hierarchy, or the king- 
 dom of the Anglican Church, or the kingdom of the Presby- 
 terian worship, but that which at once overlies and overlaps 
 them all, — the loyalty of a multitude of souls to him who 
 is their ideal of perfection. For, let it be remembered that 
 Christianity is not primarily, nor even chiefly, a collection of 
 moral precepts intended for the guidance of human life. If 
 that were all, it would be easy to find occasional parallels 
 between the maxims of Jesus, and the maxims of Buddha 
 or Confucius or Lao-tze. 
 
 But Christianity is what Buddhism, Confucianism and 
 Taoism are not, — the membership in a kingdom, and the 
 loyalty to a King. It contemplates, in the first instance, not 
 the special sayings of its Founder, nor yet the sum of his 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION. 
 
I 
 
 e • CO 
 • • t 
 
7'0 JESUS OF NAZARETH. 40 1 
 
 united teaching ; it contemplates the Founder himself, and 
 fixes its eye on him alone. 
 
 Christianity includes all the precepts of morality; but all 
 the precepts of morality united are not the essence of the 
 Christian faith, and simply for this reason, — that the Chris- 
 tian religion is a faith. It is the subjection of the heart to an 
 ideal whom it adores, the captivation of the eye by a portrait 
 in which it revels, the conquest of the will by a law which it 
 loves. Christianity in its deepest nature is an aesthetic belief, 
 the vision of a beautiful life, and the conviction that this 
 beauty has become by its union with humanity the atonement 
 for human deformity. 
 
 There is within this world an actual existing kingdom of 
 Christ, the hearts of whose subjects are ever bowing down 
 before him ; and amidst all the changes in the systems of 
 human government, amidst all the transmutations in the 
 aspects of theological thought, this great ideal has found no 
 diminution in its power and reign. The question is. Does the 
 ideal represent a reality ? And the answer to that question 
 depends on the answer to another. Has the ideal of Chris- 
 tendom sprung from a reality? has it grown out of the natural 
 instincts of the human mind? or does it involve something 
 which the human mind has displayed no ability to create ? 
 That is the question which we have been endeavoring to 
 answer, and we seem to have arrived at the only possible 
 answer. 
 
 If we find Judaea reaping where she has not sown, and 
 gathering where she has not strown ; if we see her the birth- 
 place of an idea which surpassed her power of origination, 
 and when originated surpassed her power of comprehension ; 
 if, in her contact with Gentile nations, we fail to discover any 
 germs from which that idea could have naturally sprung ; if 
 we find it in essence and in portraiture directly at variance with 
 all heathen aspirations, reversing the world's ideal of physical 
 strength, transforming its estimate of mental power, casting 
 into the shade its conception of aesthetic culture, and placing 
 
402 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 on a contrary basis its hope of a theocratic kingdom ; if we 
 find it introducing a new standard of heroism, which caused 
 every valley to be exalted, and every mountain to be made 
 low ; and if, above all. we perceive that when that standard 
 of heroism rose upon the world, it rose upon a foreign soil, 
 which received it as an alien and an adversary, — are we not 
 driven to ask if even on the lowest computation we have 
 not reached the evidence of a new life in humanity, the out- 
 pouring of a fresh vitality, and the manifestation of a higher 
 power ? 
 
 I 
 
 JOHN LOCKE. 
 
 [The Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. London: 1785. P. 243.] 
 
 Besides the great excellency and reasonableness of the 
 doctrine considered in itself, of which I have already treated, 
 it is here of no small moment to observe that the Author of 
 it — separate from all external proof of his divine commission 
 — appeared, in all his behavior, words, and actions, to be 
 neither an impostor nor an enthusiast. His life was innocent 
 and spotless, spent entirely in serving the ends of holiness 
 and charity, in doing good to the souls and bodies of men, in 
 exhorting them to repentance, and inviting them to serve and 
 glorify God. 
 
 When his bitterest enemies accused him in order to take 
 away his life, they could not charge him with any appearance 
 of vice or immorality. And so far was he from being guilty of 
 what they did charge him with, — namely, of vainglory, and 
 attempting to move sedition, — that once, when the admiring- 
 people would by force have taken him and made him their 
 king, he chose even to work a miracle to avoid that which 
 was the only thing that could be imagined to have been the 
 design of an impostor. 
 
 In like manner, whoever seriously considers the answers 
 he gave to all (juestions, whether moral or captious, his occa- 
 sional discourses with his disciples, and more especially the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 403 
 
 wisdom and excellency of the Sermon on the Mount, which is, 
 as it were, the system and summary of his doctrine, manifestly 
 surpassing all the moral instructions of the most celebrated 
 philosophers that ever lived, cannot, without the extremest 
 malice and obstinacy in the world, charge him with enthu- 
 siasm. 
 
 ARTHUR T. PIERSON. 
 
 [Many Infallible Proofs. Chicago: 1886. Pp. 216, 225, 228.] 
 
 We notice about Jesus no narrow limits of individuality. 
 James Watt suggests the inventor ; Benjamin West, the 
 painter ; Napoleon, the warrior ; Columbus, the uisccverar : 
 Pitt, the statesman. Men of mark stand out from the mass 
 with sharp individual traits, as, in the apostolic company, we 
 think of Peter's impetuosity, Paul's energy, John's love ; and 
 these traits both distinguish and separate certain men from 
 others. 
 
 But Christ's peculiarities did not isolate him from other 
 men. Nothing stands out so prominently as to draw some to 
 him from a sense of sympathy and similarity, and drive others 
 from him by a feeling of natural antagonism. He is not so 
 allied to any particular temperament as to impress others with 
 a lack of power to understand their individual cast of character. 
 
 Yet there is no lack of positiveness in this perfect man, like 
 a coat fitting everybody yet fitting nobody ; no such elasticity 
 of character as stretches or contracts to suit every new de- 
 mand ; but such a common fitness as tells of something in 
 common with every man, — a beautiful fulfilment of the scrip- 
 tural figure that "as in water face answereth to face, so the 
 heart of man to man." Any man, whatever his tastes or 
 temperament, his type of mind or heart or disposition, finds 
 in Jesus something answering to his need, — a sympathizing 
 brother. . . . 
 
 When we endeavor to picture him to ourselves, no beauty 
 of face, form, figure, can do justice to his perfection. Put the 
 
404 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 " brow of Jupiter on the form of Apollo," and you have not 
 approached the beauty with which imagination invests his 
 person. Give him " Luther's electrical smile, opening the 
 window in a great soul," and you have nothing yet to express 
 the divine charm of his winning grace, which, notwithstanding 
 his majesty, drew little children to his arms. Give him the 
 wisdom of Solomon, and the profoundness of Aristotle, and the 
 originality of Bacon, and all this cannot explain the words of 
 him who, by the confession of his enemies, spake as never 
 man spake, and who, in dealing with truths the most sublime, 
 never forgot to be simple, even in the forms of his illustrations. 
 
 Here is the ideal of manhood, in mind as well as body. 
 What thoughts, inspiring what words and works ! What sub- 
 lime conceptions, convincing argument, wise counsel, powerful 
 persuasion, perfect illustration, grand discrimination ! 
 
 What a heart, — so pure, so noble! Was ever love so 
 charming in its fervor, its sincerity, constancy, generosity, un- 
 selfishness ? Nothing but a look of gentle reproach for the 
 disciple who denied him, and no word of bitterness even for 
 the apostle who with a kiss betrayed him. He left all ideals 
 behind in his reality. We think no more of the Roman no- 
 tion of heroic virtue, the Greek notion of culture, the Italian 
 idea of beauty : in presence of Jesus, all these fade, as stars 
 grow pale at morning. . . . 
 
 When we study the marvellous history of those thirty-three 
 years, we stand in presence of the most significant period of 
 all history, folding in its bosom the most precious facts ever 
 cherished in the heart of man. The existence of Jesus Christ 
 is the pivot upon which turn the history and destiny of the 
 world. This one man, born in poverty and bred in obscurity, 
 who could call no spot home, and no great man his friend, 
 who was hated by the influential men of Church and State, and 
 died as a criminal by their united verdict, even whose tomb 
 was the loan of charity, — this one man somehow sways the 
 world! We date our very letters and papers, not "Anno 
 Mundi," — the year of the world; but "Anno Domini," — 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 405 
 
 the year of our Lord ; and even he who, from his dark cham- 
 ber of doubt and disbehef, sends out his assauhs upon Jesus 
 of Nazareth, still dates his pen's production " Anno Domini," 
 unwillingly bowing to Christ's Lordship, even of the world's 
 calendar. Even creation is forgotten, as the epoch from which 
 all is to be reckoned, since that babe was born in Bethlehem of 
 Judaea, as though all history had a new birth then. Kings are 
 anointed in his name ; the grandest cathedrals unfold their 
 white blossoms of stone to bear perpetual witness to his glory 
 and beauty. Millions of believers offer him the myrrh of their 
 penitence for sin, the frankincense of their prayers and praise, 
 the gold of their costliest offerings of gratitude and service. 
 
 ^A^ILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 
 
 [The Perfect Life. Boston : 1876.] 
 
 Our great privilege as Christians is, that we know the 
 MIND and CHARACTER of Jesus ; and these were brought out by 
 the condition in which he was placed. How often great virtue 
 is hidden, how often great power slumbers, for want of an 
 appropriate sphere, for want of the trials by which alone true 
 greatness can be revealed! Had Jesus been born under a 
 regal roof, rocked in the cradle of ease, and surrounded from 
 birth with imposing pomp, he might have lavished gifts with 
 a bountiful hand, but the omnipotence of his love would never 
 have been known as it now is. He would have encountered 
 no opposition ; and therefore his chief victories — the victo- 
 ries of his calm courage, of his unconquerable philanthropy — 
 could not have been won. How entirely he gave himself up 
 to the work of love, we should not have conceived. Jesus 
 on a throne, followed at every step by obsequious multitudes, 
 hearing no sound but shouts of praise, anticipated in every 
 want, obeyed at the slightest intimation of his will, might 
 have loved us as earnestly as did the poor and persecuted 
 Jesus. But who could have looked into the depths of his 
 
406 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 soul ? Who could have measured the energy of his goodness ? 
 Who would hav^e comprehended that a mind of a 7iew order 
 had come to act on human affairs ? 
 
 When is it that I learn to know and feel the mind of 
 Jesus ? It is when I see him associating with the ignorant 
 and the lowly, and conforming himself to their lot. that he 
 might more effectually bring great truths within the reach of 
 their intelligence, and might enrich them with new virtues 
 and hopes. It is when I see him beset with foes, spies, and 
 slanderers, meeting, wherever he looks, the malignant eye, 
 the dark frown, the whispered taunt, the insulting sneer, and 
 yet giving out the treasure of divine truth with unaltered con- 
 stancy and meekness. It is when I see him betrayed into the 
 hand of murderers, and recompensed for his blameless and 
 beneficent life by death in its most humbling and dreaded 
 form, and yet holding fast the cause of mankind which God 
 had intrusted to him, and returning their curses with prayers 
 for their forgiveness. 
 
 At such seasons, I approach the mind of Jesus. I under- 
 stand him. And so much do I prize this knowledge, that I 
 rejoice in the humble birth through which he was enabled thus 
 to manifest himself. 
 
 To this comprehension of the mind and character of Jesus 
 Christ, I attach infinite importance. To me, it is the greatest 
 good received from him. In so saying, I know that I difter 
 from many Christians, who rejoice in Christ's birth chiefly 
 because he came, as they think, to purchase by his suffer- 
 ings the pardon of their sins. 1 rejoice in his birth, chiefly 
 because he came to reveal, by his suffering, his celestial love, to 
 lay open to us his soul, and thus to regenerate the human soul. 
 To regenerate and exalt human souls, was Christ's ultimate 
 aim. And by what means could he more effectually have 
 ministered to this end, than by manifesting, as he did, his own 
 excellence, disinterestedness, and divine love ? 
 
 This seems to me more and more to be the great good 
 which we derive from the birth of Jesus. His inmost spirit 
 
 I 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 407 
 
 was thus laid open to us. Nothing has wrought so powerfully 
 on the human soul as the mind and character of Jesus Christ. 
 Among all means of civilization and improvement, I can find 
 nothing to be compared in energy with this. The great 
 impulse which is to carry forward the human race is the 
 CHARACTER of Jesus, Understood ever more clearly, and ever 
 more deeply felt. And consequently I rejoice in his human 
 and humble birth, because by this his character was brought 
 out. Thus was he revealed as the express image of divine 
 perfection. 
 
 And here I cannot but admire and adore the wisdom of 
 Providence. I see how, by means most unpromising to men's 
 view, the greatest purposes of Heaven may be accomplished. 
 Who of us, on visiting the manger at Bethlehem, and behold- 
 ing an infant amidst accommodations provided for animals, 
 would not have seen in these circumstances the presage of an 
 obscure lot ? and yet this lowly birth was the portal to that 
 glorious though brief career through which the greatest mind 
 established an imperishable sway over humanity. In that 
 infant the passing spectator saw only the heir of poverty, and 
 pitied his hard fate ; and yet, before that infant the brightest 
 names of history have grown dim. The Caesar whose decree 
 summoned the parents of Jesus to Bethlehem is known to 
 millions only through the record of that infant's life. The 
 sages and heroes of antiquity are receding from us. and his- 
 tory contracts the record of their deeds into a narrow and 
 narrower page. But time has no power over the name and 
 deeds and words of Jesus Christ. From the darkness of the 
 past they shine forth with sunlike splendor 
 
 Such affection does his peculiar character inspire, that to 
 thousands now living the intervening ages since his advent 
 seem annihilated. They place themselves amidst the crowds 
 who followed him ; they hear his voice ; they look on his be- 
 nignant countenance ; they cherish intimacy with him, almost 
 as if he were yet on earth. 
 
 No other fame can be compared with that of Jesus. He 
 
408 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 has a place in the human heart that no one who ever lived has 
 in any measure rivalled. No name is pronounced with a tone 
 of such love and veneration. All other laurels wither before 
 his. His are kept ever fresh with tears of gratitude. . . . 
 
 I affirm, then, that the efficacy of the Christian religion lies 
 chiefly in the character of Jesus. Christianity, separated from 
 Jesus, wanting the light and comment of his character, would 
 have done comparatively little for the world. Jesus, with his 
 celestial love, is the Life of his religion. 
 
 The truths of Christianity, had they come to us as abstract 
 principles, would have been comparatively impotent. I might 
 have received from a common messenger of God the same 
 precepts which fell from Jesus. But how different are these 
 precepts in quickening power when coming from those holy 
 lips, from that warm and noble heart, from that Friend who 
 loved me so tenderly, and died that these laws of life might 
 be written on my soul ! 
 
 The perfect charity that Jesus inculcates, if taught by a 
 philosopher, would have been a beautiful speculation, and 
 might have hovered before me as a bright vision. But could 
 I have that faith in its reality which I now possess, as I see it 
 living and embodied in Jesus ? What an all-animating hope 
 of realizing this virtue in my own person springs up, now that 
 I see in Jesus an inexhaustible desire to infuse it into ever)^ 
 human heart, and am taught that this inspiring influence was 
 the very purpose of his life and death ! Other sages have 
 spoken to me of God. But from whom could I have learned 
 the essence of divine perfection as from him who was in a 
 peculiar sense the Son, representative, and image of God, 
 who was especially an incarnation of the unbounded love of 
 the Father? 
 
 And from what other teacher could I have learned to 
 ai:)proach the Supreme Being with that filial spirit which forms 
 iIk." happiness of my fellowship with him ? From other seers 
 1 might have heard of heaven ; but when I behold in Jesus the 
 spirit ol heaven dwelling actually upon earth, what a new 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 409 
 
 comprehension have I of that world ! And when at last I see 
 him returning, through a life and death of all-enduring devot- 
 edness, to those pure mansions of the blest, how much nearer 
 are they brought to me ! What a new power does futurity, 
 thus associated with Jesus, exert upon the mind ! The spirit 
 of Jesus is thus the true life-giving energy of his religion ; and 
 well may we rejoice in the human and humble birth by which 
 his peerless character w^as made to shine forth so gloriously 
 before " all people," throughout all ages. 
 
 WILLIAM D. GODMAN. 
 
 [Ingham Lectures. New York : 1872. Pp. 359-363.] 
 
 Jesus realizes all the good possibilities that were wrapped 
 up in the first man. All that intellect can be, all that can 
 grow in the pure heart, all beautiful thoughts, all best affec- 
 tions, whatsoever we can conceive of perfect good in the 
 possible experiences of a man, whatsoever is grand in moral 
 power, whatsoever is beautiful in sentiment, — all gather 
 together harmoniously into the oneness of this glorious Per- 
 son. Privation, pain, and sorrow dim not the brightness of 
 his perfection, but seem to be the media for its highest mani- 
 festations. He has not where to lay his head, but yet he is 
 at home everywhere. He has no lot to seek ; there is none 
 whereof he complains. He loves men. He is at home with 
 them everywhere, — in hut and harbor and palace. His 
 presence is a charm. He brings with it attraction. He uses 
 that attraction to bring men nearer to his ideal self, up towards 
 the measure of his spiritual stature. 
 
 He has the most perfect equipoise ever known in man. 
 He strives not. He cries not. He is never in a hurry. He 
 is never agitated. He is not storm-tossed wath passion. The 
 storm shadows of our life seem not to fleck the sublime 
 serenity of his interior life. He is not up and down like the 
 ocean billows, as most of us are. He is as composed among 
 
4IO TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 the crowd of crafty, vulgar, stormy adversaries, as is the sleep- 
 ing infant in its mother's arms. He sleeps when nature is 
 enraged, and rises in calmness to chide the winds. 
 
 This sunny sweetness, this grand composure, made him a 
 o-rateful refuge to the weary-hearted. Like a mountain, he 
 could furnish a quiet retreat for weary flocks. Like a great 
 rock, he casts his shadow over the fainting traveller. He had 
 nothing in him exclusively Jewish. He cherished no fondness 
 for the traditions of his ancestor David. He had no family 
 pride, no pride of intellect, no vanity of achievements, no 
 conceit. There was in him no littleness, no narrowness, no 
 blind prejudice, no obstinacy. His thoughts are fresh to-day 
 as when they were uttered. They bear no mark of Jewish 
 master. They bear no partial reference to times and countries. 
 They are of universal import, and of immortal excellence. 
 
 Such a human being is 2i perfect man, filling out our ideal 
 of the highest human excellence, and leaving nothing yet to 
 be attained! The race culminates in him. All history before 
 sought after him, and looked forward to him. All history 
 since looks back to him, and moves forward in his light. 
 
 Perfect as was this humanity in its inception and growth, 
 the history makes it plain that its acme of refined complete- 
 ness was realized by the instrumentality of suffering. This it 
 is which brings it nearest to our sympathies, and opens the 
 innermost depths of our hearts for its fellowship. 
 
 That such a being suffered as we do, and yet was perfect, 
 sheds a radiance on our sorrows, and relieves them of their 
 harsher aspects. His suffering makes his love for us deeper 
 and stronger, in proportion as his perfections stand in contrast 
 with our unworthiness. His trials add to his inherent excel- 
 lence the grandeur of heroism ; and his humanity shines the 
 more perfectly human, inasmuch as it stands secure, while all 
 others of human kind have fallen in the hour of trial. . . . 
 
 Who can utter the value of this one thought in history, 
 Ihat Jesus fommitted no sin f Does it not illuminate every 
 dark page of our human record ? Does it not surround the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 411 
 
 very savage of Africa's dark wastes with a halo of possibiHties 
 otherwise not to be imagined ? Does it not kindle hope in the 
 criminal's bosom, the victim of society's justice, the doomed 
 wretch who has no hope for this life ? Ah ! who can tell how 
 deep a pall would have rested on the spirit of the modern 
 world if it had inherited the mistakes and miseries of the 
 ancient world without the glory of Jesus ? Who can tell how 
 much of the hopefulness, the cheer, and the triumph of our 
 modern civilization is owing to the sinlessness of this one man ? 
 For it is this that makes him dear, — makes him a Saviour. 
 
 This sinlessness is sunshine over all lands, and in all 
 hearts. It gives emphasis to the commands of conscience 
 in the bosoms of the great and of the humble. It overhangs 
 the oracles of justice, and makes the utterances of human law 
 more sacred. It enters the noisy marts of trade, and reveals 
 to the worshipper of Mammon a more entrancing lustre than 
 that of gold. It glows in the sacred desk, and sanctions every 
 claim of divine law, while it glorifies the benignity of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN. 
 
 [Method of Jesus Christ as Teacher. In Lectures on the Bible. New York: 
 1877. Pp. 205, 207, 209, 217.] 
 
 Beneath the teaching of the scribes, who had taken the 
 seat of Moses, all had become formal, artificial, riofid, techni- 
 cal, arbitrary, pedantic, microscopic, rotative, slavish, hollow, 
 icy, — every duty duly labelled and pigeon-holed. 
 
 Not so did Jesus Christ teach. No teaching was ever 
 fresher or more vitalizing than his. So far was he from idol- 
 izing the letter, that in his quotations from law or prophet he 
 was generally content with quoting the thought rather than 
 the word. He did not load down the memory of his pupils 
 with citations of traditions from Hillel the Looser, or of pre- 
 cedents from Shammai the Binder. Nor did he oppress their 
 consciences with numerous and tiny regulations, or vex them 
 
412 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 with gossamer distinctions and phantom conceits. He did 
 not turn religion into a rubric, or character into a mummy. 
 In short, he did not teach as the scribes. 
 
 Jesus Christ did not teach systematically ; that is to say, 
 according to what we would call a scientific method. In his 
 instructions there is no appearance of elaboration, no show 
 of logic. Look at this Instruction of the Mount. It is the 
 most formal and elaborate of his teachings, for it is his pro- 
 nunciamento as the new king. And yet nothing could be 
 simpler, or more free from all signs of study. It has no 
 firstlies, secondlies, thirdlies ; it does not sug-ofest Aristotle's 
 dialectics, or Calvin's syllogisms, or Buckle's statistics. In fact, 
 it is so informal as to baffle any natural analysis. And so 
 with all his teachings. Not that there is no plan in them, 
 or no philosophy in his religion : he is profoundly systematic. 
 But his system is the natural meandering of the river, not the 
 artificial course of the canal. To the student of nature, there 
 is more method in a cedar of Lebanon than in the temple of 
 Solomon. 
 
 Jesus Christ did not teach rhetorically. The thought does 
 not seem to have occurred to him, of substituting aesthetics 
 for relio-ion, literature for dog-ma, culture for righteousness. 
 Look at his instructions. In vain shall you search for finely 
 turned sentences, ornate amplifications, brilliant Bights, elegant 
 allusions, learned quotations from the hermeneutics of Hillel, 
 or the theology of Zoroaster, or the metaphysics of Plato, or 
 the poetry of Virgil. His language is the language of the 
 common people. And yet, unstudied and homely as it is, it 
 involves the lore of the eternities. 
 
 What he came to teach was not incidentals, but essentials ; 
 not ephemerals, l)ut eternals ; not facts, but truths. " To this 
 end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that 
 I should bear witness unto the truth." Yes, Jesus Christ 
 came into the world to attest the existence of unseen, ele- 
 mentary, eternal realities. And how profound and radical his 
 teachings ! I low utterly free from all pettiness of details, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 413 
 
 from all that is merely incidental and transient ! For exam- 
 ple, the Lord does not tell us how often to pray, or how much 
 to eive, or when to Qfo to church, or what to do or what 
 not to do on the sabbath day. And yet many persons 
 imagine that if they could know such things as these, they 
 would master the chief problems of the Christian life. It is 
 a profound misconception of the teaching of Jesus Christ. 
 No martinet disciplinarian is he, turning life into a minute 
 and perennial drill, where all is " faultily faultless, icily 
 regular, splendidly null." 
 
 No, he does not tell us what to do, so much as what to be ; 
 for, if we are what we ought to be, he knows we will do what 
 we ought to do. He does not purify the stream of life by 
 undertaking to purify each separate drop as it rushes along : 
 he purifies life at its fountain. He grapples with living, 
 immortal, transcendent issues, even the issue of a godlike 
 character: " Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in 
 heaven is perfect." 
 
 Once more : Jesus Christ taught with the authority of one 
 whose character was itself the supreme authority. 
 
 How marvellous the authority of the Galilaean carpenter 
 over the ages ! How. he dominates men's intellects and affec- 
 tions and consciences ! At the mention of his name, how 
 many millions bow, and confess that he is Lord of lords ! The 
 civilized world, in spite of the sneer of the sceptic and the 
 wrath of the reprobate, reckons its dates from the year of his 
 birth, heading their documents with the august words. Anno 
 Domini. The word Christendom itself, — what is it but 
 Christ's dominion ? And whence came this man's authority ? 
 Not from wealth, for he had not where to lay his head ; not 
 from social influence, for his own brothers did not believe in 
 him, his own townsmen rejected him, his own countr)^men 
 crucified him ; not from scholarship, for he was only a Naza- 
 rene mechanic, without academic training. " How knoweth 
 this man letters, having never learned?" that is, having 
 never been trained as a rabbi. And yet, never man spake 
 
414 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 like this man. Whence, then, comes this man's authority ? 
 From the majesty of personal character, from the omnipotence 
 of daily life. 
 
 Men can fight other things ; they can fight wealth, rank, 
 force, brain : but they cannot fight character. And this man's 
 heavenly teachings were matched, buttressed, made imperial, 
 by his heavenly life. Therefore never man spake like this 
 man, never teacher with this teacher's authority. 
 
 RICHARD \VHATELY. 
 
 [Christian Evidences. Boston: 1850. Pp. 77-80.] 
 
 The character of our Saviour, as described in the Gospels, 
 is one of the strongest proofs, and the most satisfactory and 
 delightful proof, of the truth of his religion. But the moral 
 excellence of his character, as drawn by the Evangelists, is 
 what could not be set forth, so as to do justice to the argu- 
 ment founded on it, within a small space. For it would be 
 necessary to dwell at some length on each of his sayings and 
 acts, so as to point out the kindness and tenderness of heart, 
 the persevering benevolence, the gentleness combined with 
 dignity and firmness, the active and unwearied yet calm zeal 
 with which he labored for the good of mankind, and the 
 other great and amiable qualities which he displayed on so 
 many occasions. 
 
 In conducting for yourself such a study as we have been 
 suggesting, these three points should be attended to. and 
 steadily kept before the mind : — 
 
 First, The picture drawn by the Evangelists is, evidently, 
 an unstudied one. There is nothing in it of the nature of 
 euloo^ium and panegyric. They do not seem laboring to set 
 forth and call attention to the excellence of their Master's 
 character. They do not break out into any exclamations of 
 admiration of it ; and, indeed, make hardly any remarks on it 
 at all, but simply relate what he said and did. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 415 
 
 Secondly, If they had the indination, they do not seem to 
 have had the ability, to draw a fictitious character of great 
 moral beauty, devised by their own imagination. They write 
 like plain, unpractised authors, without learning, or eloquence, 
 or skill in composition. Now, let any one try the experiment 
 of setting some person, of great ability as a writer, to draw 
 up a fictitious narrative concerning some imaginary personage. 
 Let him enter into particiUar details as fully as the Evangelists 
 have done ; and let him do his best to paint a character as 
 consistent, and as morally beautiful, as that of Jesus. You 
 would see how imperfectly he would succeed, and how far he 
 would fall short of the picture drawn, and which must there- 
 fore be a real picture, by untaught Jewish fishermen and 
 peasants. 
 
 And what we have been saying is confirmed by certain 
 works commonly called the " Spurious Gospels ; " of which 
 some considerable portions have come down to us. They 
 seem to have been composed — some of them as early as the 
 fourth century — partly from invention and partly from some 
 vague traditions that were afloat. But they were never, as 
 far as we can learn, received by any church as Scripture. 
 These narratives professed to give several particulars of the 
 life of Jesus, — especially of his childhood, — which are not 
 to be found in the genuine Gospels. 
 
 Now, it is remarkable, that though the writers evidently 
 designed to raise admiration of our Lord, and manifest that 
 design very strongly, yet the picture they draw of him is, in 
 many points, contemptible or odious. For instance, they 
 represent him as exercising, when a child, miraculous powers, 
 not for any purpose connected with his ministry, but merely 
 for his own amusement, as any ordinary child would be likely 
 to do if gifted with such powers. He is also represented as 
 so passionate and mischievous a child, that he miraculously 
 struck dead another boy for accidentally running against him. 
 In short, his character as given in these " Spurious Gos- 
 pels " is quite a contrast to that given by each of our four 
 
41 6 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Evangelists. And the whole tone of the narratives themselves 
 — the spurious and the genuine — is no less contrasted. 
 
 Thirdly, You are to keep in mind, that the private moral 
 character of Jesus is U7iimpeached, even by the opponents of 
 the Gospel. None of them have ever imputed to him avarice. 
 or cruelty, or any kind of profligate sensualit}-. Certainly no 
 man was ever so unimpeached in character, who had so many 
 and such bitter enemies ; enemies who would have been glad 
 to get hold of any story, or even any suspicion, that could 
 raise a prejudice against him. 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD. 
 
 [Unspoken Sermons. New York : 1879. Pp- 10-12, 54, 55.] 
 
 Our Lord could not commission any one to be received 
 in his name who could not more or less represent him. for 
 there would be untruth and unreason. Moreover, he had 
 just been telling the disciples that they must become like 
 this child ; and now. when he tells them to receive such a 
 little child in his name, it must surely imply something in 
 common between them all, something in which the child and 
 Jesus meet, something in which the child and the disciples 
 meet. What else can that be than the spiritual childhood ? 
 
 In my name does not mean because I ivill it. An arbitrary 
 utterance of the will of our Lord would certainly find ten 
 thousand to obey it, even to suffering, for one that will be 
 able to receive such a vital truth of his character as is con- 
 tained in the words. But it is not obedience alone that our 
 Lord will have, but obedience to the trutJi : that is, to the 
 light of the world, truth beheld and known. In 7ny na7?ie, 
 if we take all we can find in it, the full meaning which alone 
 will harmonize and make the passage a whole, involves a 
 revelation from resemblance, from fitne.ss to represent and 
 so reveal. He who receives a child, then, in the name of 
 Jesus, does .so perceiving wherein Jesus and the child are 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 417 
 
 one, what is common to them. He must not only see the 
 ideal child in the child he receives, that reality of loveliness 
 which constitutes true childhood, but must perceive that the 
 child is like Jesus, or, rather, that the Lord is like the child, 
 and may be embraced, yea, is embraced, by every heart 
 childlike enoufjh to embrace a child for the sake of his child- 
 ness. I do not therefore say that none but those who are 
 thus conscious in the act partake of the blessing. But a 
 special sense, a lofty knowledge of blessedness, belongs to 
 the act of embracing a child as the visible likeness of the Lord 
 himself. For the blessedness is the perceiving of the truth ; 
 the blessing is the truth itself, the God-known truth, that the 
 Lord has the heart of a child. The man who perceives this 
 knows in himself that he is blessed, — blessed because that is 
 true. 
 
 There is more hid in Christ than we shall ever learn, 
 here or there either ; but they that begin first to inquire will 
 soonest be gladdened with revelation ; and with them he 
 will be best pleased, for the slowness of his disciples troubled 
 him of old. To say that we must wait for the other world, 
 to know the mind of him who came to this world to eive 
 himself to us, seems to me the foolishness of a worldly and 
 lazy spirit. The Son of God is the teacher of men, giving 
 to them of his Spirit, — that Spirit which manifests the deep 
 things of God, being to a man the mind of Christ. 
 
 The great heresy of the Church of the present day is 
 unbelief in this Spirit. The mass of the Church does not 
 believe that the Spirit has a revelation for every man individ- 
 ually, — a revelation as different from the revelation of the 
 Bible, as the food in the moment of passing into living brain 
 and nerve differs from the bread and meat. If we were once 
 filled with the mind of Christ, we should know that the Bible 
 had done its work, was fulfilled, and had for us passed away, 
 that thereby the Word of our God might abide forever. The 
 one use of the Bible is to make us look at Jesus, that through 
 him we might know his Father and our Father, his God and 
 
41 8 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 our God. Till we thus know him, let us hold the Bible dear 
 as the moon of our darkness, by which we travel towards the 
 East ; not dear as the sun whence her light cometh, and 
 towards which we haste, that, walking in the sun himself, 
 we may no more need the mirror that reflected his absent 
 brightness. 
 
 THOMAS GRIFFITH. 
 
 [Studies of the Divine Master. London: 1875. Pp. 436-441.] 
 
 The character of " the foremost man in all the world." 
 Let us not think to gauge the depths of this unique person- 
 ality ; to walk round it in all its aspects ; to catalogue all the 
 features which make up together its marvellous completeness. 
 
 The profoundest moralists find the perfection of personal 
 character in the presence and predominance of two leading 
 features, — firmness of will, and flexibility of will; the unmoved 
 consistency of conduct with conscience, and the ever-moving 
 adaptation of a many-sided personality, in ever-widening 
 completeness, to all the varying circumstances of life. 
 
 And who does not remark in Jesus, as his very first char- 
 acteristic, this consistency of conduct with conscience, this 
 firmness of will amidst all the tests to which it was exposed ? 
 . . . No yielding to plausible suggestions ; no swerving by 
 a hair's breadth from the law of his being ; no hesitation 
 either about the right, or the doing of the right. The ideal 
 of his duty, as the Son of God, remains undisturbed in all its 
 purity before him. Its essential features of faith waiting on 
 God's will ; fear playing not with God's promises ; fidelity 
 throwing back with a hasty indignation the mere whisper of 
 any transfer of allegiance, even as a mirror throws off from 
 its polished surface the slightest breath of defilement. — these 
 shine out full in him. He will neither, through mistrust of 
 his Father, help himself to what he needs ; nor, through over- 
 trust of his Father, " play fantastic tricks before high heaven;" 
 nor, through transfer of trust to any other than his Father, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 419 
 
 seek by bad means good ends. And this steadfastness of will 
 we see maintained throughout the whole career of Jesus. 
 When the Pharisees warned him that Herod was purposing 
 to kill him, what was his majestic answer? " Nevertheless, I 
 must go on in my work to-day, and to-morrow, till I have 
 finished that which Is given me to do." 
 
 But while central fixity is the first mark of all greatness 
 of character, not less important is the circumferential flexibil- 
 it}^ which is ever widening itself into contact with all the 
 varying circumstances of life. All this was conspicuous in 
 Jesus. He was emphatically, beyond all others, a myriad- 
 minded man. The rays from his central force spread them- 
 selves in every direction ; always the same in essence, yet 
 always varying in form and color and brilliancy, according 
 to the surfaces on which they impinged. With the utmost 
 vehemence, there was in him nothing violent ; with the fullest 
 vigor, nothing overbearing ; with the highest dignity, nothing 
 haughty ; lofty as a hero, gentle as a woman ; manly with- 
 out high-mightiness, feminine without effeminacy ; a perfect 
 specimen of that essential difference which Coleridge once 
 remarked to me as distino-uishing- all hiorh character, — the 
 femitiine quality refining, elevating, purifying, beautifying 
 every other, shedding over all the fragrance of a virgin 
 delicacy ; yet no effeminacy such as Renan has given to him. 
 We see him, indeed, braving the wrath of the most inveterate 
 enemies, yet weeping at the tomb of Lazarus ; hurling indig- 
 nation like a thunderbolt at the head of priests and lawyers, 
 yet insinuating comfort like a sunbeam into the heart of 
 penitent offenders. 
 
 This combination of the tenderest compassion for curable 
 sin, and the sternest wrath against incurable malignity, exactly 
 realizes what Socrates requires of a good man : " Every one 
 should combine with the greatest possible gentleness a spirited 
 indiofnation. For we can no otherwise secure ourselves from 
 those injustices of others, which are either difficult or impos- 
 sible to be cured, except by attacking them, resisting them, 
 
420 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 triumphing over them, and punishing them without mercy. 
 And no soul is equal to this without high-minded indignation. 
 With respect, indeed, to those who are unjust, but yet are 
 curable, we must recollect that such are altogether to be 
 pitied and treated with tenderness ; but it is indispensable to 
 hurl wrath against the incorrigible. And, therefore, every good 
 man must be capable of indignation as well as gentleness." 
 
 How various, too, his procedure with difterent classes 
 of men, — the multitude, the Pharisees, the disciples, the 
 oppressed, the haughty, the submissive! In how many ways 
 he " went about doing good " ! now healing, now teaching, 
 now reproving, now consoling, now rousing up to fear, now 
 animating into hope, now explaining, now arguing, now re- 
 futing arguments, now encouraging the simple, now denoun- 
 cing the hypocritical ; and all this now in private, now in 
 public, now in the crowded city, now in the solitary wilder- 
 ness, now in heretical Galilee, now in heathen Tyre and 
 Sidon, now in orthodox Jerusalem. 
 
 And what magnificence did this wondrous compound of 
 firmness and flexibility, of unity and versatility of will, throw 
 around the whole personal character of this divine man ! 
 How he towers up above all about him ! How he comes 
 before our fantasy with the erect port, the eagle eye, the 
 beaming countenance, the commanding though not imperi- 
 ous demeanor of a king of men ! See him rising up in the 
 synagogue of his family village, with the rapt, transfigured 
 countenance of one who feels within himself, "The Spirit of 
 the Lord is upon me." See him standing over the poor 
 crazed wretch, with majestic dignity rebuking the foul demon 
 who possessed him. See him in the synagogue, " looking 
 round about" upon his enemies in that white heat of lofty 
 indignation, which like lightning scathes by its very purity, 
 and simply saying to the palsied sufterer, " Stretch forth thine 
 hand." 
 
 And confirm )our own imagination of what must have 
 been the halo ol glory which surrounded him, by observing 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 421 
 
 the impression which he actually made on those about him, 
 whether friends or foes. They unconsciously do him homage. 
 They are attracted to him as by a magnetic force. They are 
 swayed by him as by a mesmeric power. A word to the 
 busiest and most prosperous, laboring in their boats, or sitting 
 in their offices, makes them " rise up and forsake all, and 
 follow him." The lustre of his appearance makes the people 
 " run to him greatly amazed." The officers who are sent to 
 seize him return ashamed to their employers, crying, " Never 
 man spake like this man." At the first glance of his eye, the 
 guards who were pressing to arrest him " go backward, and 
 fall to the ground." And his most determined enemies were 
 so terror-struck at his continually brightening splendor, that 
 it formed to them the justification of their extremest measures. 
 "If we let this man alone, all men will believe on him, and 
 the Romans will come and sweep away our place and nation." 
 
 EBENEZER P. ROGERS. 
 
 [Christ: His Nature and Work. New York: 187S. Pp. 223-225, 232.] 
 
 Fifty-five generations have passed away ; and there is no 
 name which exerts such an influence in the world to-day, as 
 the name of him who was lifted up on the cross. It is 
 associated with the most advanced civilization ; with the best 
 and most endurine literature; with the noblest forms of art; 
 with the broadest systems of education ; with the most 
 gigantic enterprises of commerce ; with the purest and most 
 extended institutions of philanthropy; with the most refined 
 and healthful social progress ; and, in fine, with every element 
 of dignity, prosperity, and power, among the nations of the 
 earth. 
 
 The name Christian, which was at first o-iven to a few 
 humble individuals in an Oriental city, as a term of reproach, 
 is now blazoned on the banners of the greatest kingdoms of 
 the earth, and borne with pride by the peoples who rule the 
 
42 2 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 world. The cross, once the emblem of shame and reproach 
 and guilt, is now a symbol of what is pure and and honorable 
 and sacred among the most advanced and powerful nations 
 of the earth. It gleams from the towers and spires of innu- 
 merable temples of Christian worship. It is borne on the 
 diadems of the most illustrious kings. Beauty wears it as an 
 ornament. Devotion bows before it, on the altar. It has 
 given shape and grandeur to the proudest specimens of 
 modern architecture. It has inspired the noblest creations 
 of the chisel and the pencil. It has kindled in human 
 hearts the most heroic sentiments. It has led unnumbered 
 hosts to battle and to victory. It has inspired more martyrs 
 than science, or art, or discovery, or commerce, or any great 
 interest of mankind. It has cheered the souls of the dying, 
 and been carved by loving fingers over the tombs of the 
 dead. It is to-day the symbol of the most ad\'anced forms 
 of civilization, the most liberal systems of government, the 
 most progressive theories of human development, the purest 
 social state, and the most practical and successful endeavors 
 for the amelioration of human suffering and the extension 
 of human happiness. A man must be blind, and deaf, and 
 idiotic, who can look over the world, and deny that this is the 
 history, and this the present position, of Christianity. 
 
 It is not, then, too much to say, that the words of Jesus 
 Christ, uttered in view of his death on the cross, "And I, if I 
 be lifted up, will draw all men unto me," have really been 
 fulfilled in the history of Christianity. The prophecy was, 
 that the doctrine of the cross should be the o-reatest moral 
 power in the universe. The prediction was, that this suffering, 
 dying Saviour should be the centre of attraction to the world, 
 and that an inOuence should emanate from his cross, which 
 should ev(Mitually bring the whole world under its sway. It 
 was as it he had said, " You may hang me on the cross ; you 
 may lilt mv. up between heaven and earth : but in so doing 
 you will make me the grand centre of universal and perma- 
 nent attraction among men. My name will never be forgotten. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 423 
 
 No name will be so well known by all mankind. No name 
 will excite so much interest, provoke so much discussion, 
 arouse so much opposition, awaken so much enthusiasm, 
 kindle so much devotion, and be so constantly on the lips of 
 men. No story will be so deeply incorporated into the litera- 
 ture of all ages, will be told in so many of the languages of 
 the earth, will be the theme of so much comment, will excite 
 so much emotion, and be so carefully handed down from 
 generation to generation." 
 
 On the Lord's Day, amid the arctic frosts, or the equato- 
 rial heats, among the sands of the deserts, and the isles of 
 the sea, this name of Christ, this story of the cross, is spoken ; 
 and the sun, in his radiant course around the world, witnesses 
 the universal homage paid to him who was lifted up on the 
 tree, and who then predicted that his cross would be the grand 
 magnetic centre of the creation of God. . . . 
 
 To ameliorate human suffering, and assuage human grief, 
 has been a great study of wise men and philanthropists ever 
 since sorrow followed in the train of sin. Philosophers and 
 moralists, orators and poets and teachers, of every variety, in 
 all ages, have tried to discover some adequate solace for 
 human woe. What volumes have been written, what orations 
 have been pronounced, what counsels have been published, 
 on this theme, so old and hackneyed, yet so constant and 
 imperative ! 
 
 And how little have all these done to lighten the burdens 
 which rest on sorrowful souls ! All that they could do was to 
 inculcate the cold lessons of stoicism, or urge man to a blind 
 and reluctant submission to the decrees of an inevitable and 
 irresistible fate. "Why do you weep, since tears are unavail- 
 ino;?" said one to Solon, as he mourned at the bier of his 
 child. " It is for that very reason I weep," was the heart- 
 broken father's reply. 
 
 How different are the ministrations of Christ to mourners! 
 He, too, says to the widow, " Weep not," but not in the cold 
 words of unfeeling stoicism. He says to the bereaved father 
 
424 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 at the grave of his son, to the mother bending over her dying 
 babe, " I am the resurrection and the hfe ; he that beheveth 
 in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." He says, 
 " In my Father's house are many mansions ; " and " God shall 
 wipe away all tears from their eyes." Thus his ministrations 
 are not those of a philosopher or a mere teacher, but of a 
 living and sympathizing friend and helper, bringing to the 
 afflicted revelations which are full of practical power to help 
 and comfort. 
 
 EDWIN A. ABBOTT. 
 
 [Through Nature to Christ. London: 1877. Pp. 270-2S0.] 
 
 Ix the society of Jesus there were to be no distinctions of 
 rank except such as arose from distinctions of service. The 
 least would represent the Master: the greatest could represent 
 no more. The object of the whole society was the same, — 
 war against sin. The weapon with which they were especially 
 armed by their Master was the sword of the Spirit. The 
 Church of Christ was a spiritual Sparta, a society of combat ; 
 yet they had no detailed code of laws and regulations, such as 
 Lycurgus bequeathed to his martial fellow-countrymen, laying 
 down principles of government, and entering into the minutest 
 details of the life of the home which was to prepare them for 
 the combat abroad. The difference between the two lawgivers 
 is striking. The Spartan, after mapping out the life political, 
 military, and domestic, for each member of his state for all 
 time, is said to have bound his countrymen to obedience to 
 his legislation by exacting from them an oath that they would 
 obey it at least till his return home from an intended journey ; 
 upon which the lawgiver exiled himself forever. True or 
 false, the story exactly illustrates what Christ's commonwealth 
 was not. Lycurgus left laws behind him, and secured them 
 by his et(;rnal ab.sence. Christ U^ft no laws behind him, and by 
 his last will and testament bequeathed to his society no 
 code, no {^receipts, no .secret charm of policy, nothing but his 
 
 I 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 425 
 
 eternal presence in the hearts of his followers. This was his 
 only legacy, — himself to be their life and the food of their 
 souls. 
 
 The whole world was to be henceforth a family, a brother- 
 hood looking" up to the common Father. His disciples were 
 not to be able to look upon a human being without recogniz- 
 ing in him a brotherhood, or possibilities of brotherhood, that 
 pointed up to the Father in heaven. No legislation of a 
 Lycurgus could be more exacting than the demands of Jesus 
 upon every department of the life of his followers. Wherever 
 they went, whatever they did, they carried with them a law, 
 not localized or limited like the law of Moses, but ubiquitous, 
 regulating conduct to Gentiles as well as to Jews, and extend- 
 ing to thought and word as well as deed. This law was his 
 presence, or his Spirit ; and it was pre-eminently a spirit of 
 brotherhood, of love, of fellowship. By his disciples this 
 Spirit was so familiarly associated with the feeling of fellow- 
 ship, that, when they prayed for its presence, they habitually 
 spoke of " the fellowship of the Holy Spirit." 
 
 The very simplicity of the basis which Christ laid as the 
 foundation for his future society, has blinded some persons to 
 the obvious fact that he was the greatest social reformer that 
 ever lived. So far from contemplating an isolated life of 
 contemplation for his followers, he made it a part of their 
 religion to be sociable. There is not one of his precepts that 
 does not directly or indirectly point to a future organization 
 of society, and does not make war against the principles that 
 would disorganize a society. All this he so takes for granted, 
 that he does not think it worth while to say in so many words, 
 " I intend to reform social life ; " but the constant mention of 
 the kingdom of God and of the Father in heaven bears witness 
 to the social aspect in which he always regarded mankind. In 
 every point it might be shown that the life and teachings of 
 Jesus w^as intended to supply the links necessary, just at that 
 crisis in the history of the world, to re-unite and re-organize a 
 society that was on the point of falling to pieces. 
 
426 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 When Christ came into the world, he found the Pagan 
 nations worshipping power. They had worshipped power 
 under the form of polytheism ; they were now drifting into 
 another worship of it under the form of imperialism. Now, 
 the worship of might is a sure forerunner of the decay and 
 disorganization of society ; it is a religion of conquerors, not 
 the religion of a peaceful society. Against the worship of 
 might, therefore, Jesus set up the worship of a righteous 
 Father of all men. 
 
 Especially in Christ's treatment of the law of JNIoses, 
 does he appear in the light of a reformer of society. Had 
 he been bent upon founding a sect of hermits, he might have 
 been expected to encourage the rigid observance of sabbaths, 
 fastings, purifications, and the like, all of which, by fixing the 
 thouo-hts on the divine author of these institutions, mio-ht be 
 supposed to foster contemplation and solitary worship. But 
 Jesus rejected them because they were unsociable, and because 
 they hampered the free and healthy intercourse between man 
 and man. In the same spirit he condemned the selfish 
 moroseness of rich men who suppose the)' have no responsi- 
 bilities to society, he condemns violence, he inculcates respect 
 for the weak and lowly ; and, appealing to the down-trodden 
 classes of society, he calls upon them to enter the kingdom of 
 God on the strength of that new power of forgiveness which 
 he had introduced into the world. 
 
 The absence of a code for his Church was not only a 
 protest on the part of Christ against the literalism of the 
 Jews, but was also necessary for the transmission of his organ- 
 izing influence to the future society. It was the beauty of 
 Christ's policy, that he left no code to be idolized, distorted, 
 and disputed about. His constructivencss consisted in being 
 what he was, and in bequeathing himself to his disciples as a 
 moral force for all posterity. One law alone he left to the 
 citizens of his kingdom, — that they were to love one another 
 as they loved themselves ; and, having inspired them with 
 moral power to carry this rule into effect, he left all details of 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 427 
 
 execution to be stated by the countless varieties of the circum- 
 stances of the future. But what can be more fundamentally 
 social than Christ's kingdom of God ? The king was to be a 
 Father of all men : the only sign of citizenship, and the only 
 law of the kingdom, was love. 
 
 It is because true Christianity is so very reforming a 
 religion, that it must always seem to be visionary and unprac- 
 tical ; so much will always appear remaining to be done by 
 the true Christian reformer. After eighteen centuries of 
 Christianity we are only just entering upon the new phase 
 of society contemplated by Christ, when the distinctions of 
 rich and poor, powerful and weak, shall be, not, perhaps, 
 obliterated, but at least consecrated, to the good of the com- 
 munity. Slavery has been abolished ; duelling, through the 
 indirect influence of Christ, has been greatly diminished ; but 
 war still thrives, unchristian distinctions are still kept up 
 between rich and poor, and no one can say that the masses 
 of mankind are as yet placed in the position that Christ would 
 claim for them. Wherever we look, we find Christ's meas- 
 ures of reform as yet only imperfectly carried into effect. 
 
 " Then by your own confession Christ's society is a dream, 
 and has never yet been realized." Certainly it has not yet 
 been realized, and probably will not be even approximately 
 realized for a century or more, perhaps for many centuries to 
 come ; but it has already saved mankind from ruin, and raised 
 it steadily up to its present position. Had it not been for 
 Christ's society, the framework of the civilized w^orld would 
 have fallen completely to pieces after the fall of the Roman 
 empire. It is not sufficiently recognized, that ancient society 
 was absolutely dependent on a basis of wretchedness and 
 servitude. For every free citizen of Athens, there were some 
 half-dozen or more of slaves ; a Roman noble in the time of 
 Christ presupposed a whole regiment of slaves. If any 
 Roman had predicted, in the time of Christ, that a time would 
 come when this foundation of misery would be withdrawn, 
 and society would still remain intact and progressive, he 
 
428 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 would have been scoffed at by his countrymen as being more 
 fatuous and contemptible than even a professional augur. 
 But Christ has effected for mankind this seeming impossi- 
 bility, and has effected it quietly, without " servile wars," 
 without bloody revolutions. Who, then, can deny to Christ 
 the name of a great practical reformer ? 
 
 It may be said indeed that even in modern Christian states 
 this inequality of happiness still remains. Ev^en now, in Eng- 
 land, as once in Greece and Rome, " good society, floating on 
 gossamer wings of light irony, is of very expensive produc- 
 tion ; requiring nothing less than a wide and arduous national 
 life condensed in unfragrant deafening factories, cramping 
 itself in mines, sweating at furnaces, grinding, hammering, 
 weaving, under more or less oppression of carbonic acid, — 
 or else, spread over sheep-walks, and scattered in lonely 
 houses and huts on the clayey or chalky corn-lands, where the 
 rainy days look dreary." True ; but it is the merit of Christ's 
 re-organization of mankind, that he goes down to the lowest 
 stratum of society, and exalts it in two ways. On the one 
 hand he appeals to it directly, by consecrating all labor and 
 every condition of life as equally holy, and by holding out 
 hopes of equal future blessedness to peasant and to king ; 
 and, on the other hand, he ameliorates it indirectly by making 
 the other classes of society uneasy at the spectacle of their 
 brethren toiling below them. 
 
 Old Cato recommended his countrymen to work their 
 decrepit slaves to death ; but the Christian spirit of humanity 
 devotes itself unweariedly to the discovery of inventions for 
 minimizing the hardships of toil, and of late years the Chris- 
 tian spirit of iairness and justice is at last beginning to recog- 
 nize the rights of manual labor to a far greater share in 
 the comforts and pleasures and culture of life. Very much 
 more will be done in this direction before this century has 
 passed away : but even as things are, we may say that wher- 
 ever the spirit of Christian fi^llowshij) is pres(Mit. there we find 
 life and progress ; wherever it is absent, there we fnid decay. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 429 
 
 Many of those who might be disposed to blame the tardy 
 reahzation of Christ's poHcy would probably be found among 
 those who believe that the human race has existed, not for six 
 thousand years, but for a much longer period. Those who 
 believe in the fascinating theory of evolution can better afford 
 to wait than those who do not. If it took so many thousand 
 years first to create man, and then to develop him to a state 
 fitting him even to receive the seed of the spirit of brother- 
 hood, surely we may naturally expect that a few thousands of 
 years will be required to foster and rear that seed into a 
 vigforous life. 
 
 Evolutionists ou^ht to be amonof the most ardent believers 
 in the future of humanity, and the most patient waiters for the 
 development of Christ's grand scheme. ^ 
 
 FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE. 
 
 [Christiamtv and Moderx Thought. Boston: 1S72. Pp. 174-176.] 
 
 The mythical interpretation of certain portions of the 
 Gospel has no appreciable bearing on the character of Christ. 
 The impartial reader of the record must see that the Evan- 
 gelists did not invent that character ; they did not make the 
 Jesus of their story : on the contrar)', it was he that made 
 them. It is a true saying, that only a Christ could invent a 
 Christ. The Christ of history is a true reflection of the image 
 which Jesus of Nazareth imprinted on the mind of his con- 
 temporaries. In that image the spiritual greatness, the moral 
 perfection, are not more conspicuous than the well-defined 
 individuality which permeates the stor}', and which no genius 
 could invent. 
 
 If the Christ of the Church, of Christian faith, is, as some 
 will have it, an ideal being, it was Jesus of Nazareth who 
 made the ideal. The ideal in him is simply the result of that 
 disengagement from the earthly vestiture, which death and 
 distance work in all who live in history. By the very neces- 
 
430 TESTIMONY OF NINE TEEN CENTURIES 
 
 sity of its function, history idealizes. The historic figure and 
 individual represented by it, though inseparably one in sub- 
 stance, are not so identical in outline that the one exactly 
 covers the other, no more and no less. The individual is the 
 bodily presence as it dwells in space; the historic figure is 
 the image of himself which the individual stamps on his time, 
 and, so far as his record reaches, on all succeeding time, — his 
 import to human kind. That image is a veritable portrait, 
 but not in the sense of a facsiviile. A material portrait, a 
 portrait painted with hands, if the painter understands his 
 art, is not a facsimile : it presents the chronic idea, or char- 
 acteristic mode ; not the temporar}- accidents, the fallings-off, 
 the vanishings, of the person portrayed. In the hero-galleries 
 of tradition, as in the visions of the Apocalypse, they are seen 
 with white robes, and palms in their hands, and unwrinkled 
 brows of grace, w^ho in life were begrimed with the dust and 
 furrowed with the cares of their time. St. Paul is there with- 
 out his thorn in the flesh ; Luther without his impatience ; 
 Washington without his fiery choler; Lincoln without his 
 coarseness ; Dante and Milton without their scorn. History 
 strips off the indignities of earth when she dresses her heroes 
 for immortality. And the transfigurations she gives us are 
 nearer the truth than the limitations of ordinary life. The 
 man is more truly himself in the epic strain of public action, 
 with spirit braced and harness on, than in the subsidence 
 and undress of the closet. It is not the gossiping anecdotes, 
 the spoils of the ungirt private life, so dear to antiquaries and 
 literary scavengers, but the things which history hastens to 
 record, that show the man. We must take the life at full tide; 
 we must view it in its freest determination, in its supreme 
 moment, to know the deepest that is in him. And the 
 deepest that is in him is the true man. That is his idea, his 
 mission to the world, his historic significance. It is this that 
 concerns us in all the great actors of history, — the historic 
 person, not the individual. And the'more the historic person 
 absorbs the individual, the hi^rher we rise in the scale of 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 43 1 
 
 being, until we reach the ideal of God, from which all individ- 
 uality is excluded, and only the person remains, filling- space 
 and time with the ceaseless procession of his being. 
 
 We misread the Gospel, and reverse the true and divine 
 order, if we suppose the ideal Christ to be an essence distilled 
 from the historical. On the contrary, the ideal Christ is the 
 root and ground of the historical ; and without the antecedent 
 idea inspiring, commanding, the history would never have 
 been. 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 [The Candle of the Lord. Sermons. New York : 18S1. Pp. 260, 261.] 
 
 Men call Christ the crown of manhood, the perfect man ; 
 and yet they need a book, yea many books, to teach them that 
 he is manly. They have given that name so long to brilliant 
 incompleteness, that they find it hard to carry it over to the 
 complete life when it appears. The name of manly has 
 become a certain fixed, definite thing, not pliable and capable 
 of advancement to some new manifestation of what is worthiest 
 of man, what it is noblest for man to be. This seems to be 
 the real state of the case. Men own that the human charac- 
 ter of Christ is the completest human character the world has 
 ever seen, and yet they give their admiration to incomplete 
 characters ; and, not yet risen to the full revelation of the 
 Lord, they call that manly which they know all the while is 
 something less than the full-orbed attainment of the perfect 
 man. 
 
 JOSEPH BUTLER. 
 
 [Analogy of Religion. London : 1868. P. 247.] 
 
 The Son of God loved us, and gave himself for us with a 
 love which he himself compared to that of human friendship ; 
 though in this case all comparisons must fall infinitely short 
 of the thing intended to be illustrated by them. 
 
432 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 DAVID SWING. 
 
 [Truths OF To-D AY. Chicago: 1874. P. 75.] 
 
 The fact that the Christian Church was first named an 
 ecclesia points out not obscurely its ideal scope, for that word 
 had for hundreds of years indicated a convention of the 
 people. 
 
 The ecclesia was the Greek house of representatives, — 
 a house which stood as a check upon archons and senates, a 
 mediator between the multitude and the ambition of orators 
 and generals. As the public throng was called by heralds 
 who passed along from street to street, the meeting was so 
 named "the called out," or the "ecclesia;" and from such 
 associations it has descended to us. Thus all the parts of 
 Christianity — its Christ, its apostles, its avowed object, its 
 ignoring states, its simplicity of doctrine, and its very Church 
 name — confess it to be a religion for the whole people, and 
 hence nothing but a holy crusade against the sins of the wide 
 world. 
 
 Such being the avowed design of the Founder of this 
 religion, we who profess to believe it are in the path of duty 
 only when we are in sympathy with this large design, and are 
 shaping our thoughts and feelings and actions to this immense 
 scope of the Gospel. We, as a Christian nation and as pri- 
 vate Christians, are here to-day in what religious truth we 
 have, only because the religion of Palestine assumed the form 
 ot a mission rather than of a local faith. Palestine had held 
 its Hebrew ideas for two thousand years without having sent 
 outward one single chapter from Isaiah or one single psalm 
 from David. Wonderful and divine as was the deism of the 
 Old Testament compared with the polytheism of the classic 
 states, and sacred as were the hymns of the temple compared 
 with any religious songs of the surrounding lands, yet none 
 of th(; theology of the Hebrews seems to have broken out of 
 its national confines into the classic world ; and not a psalm 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 433 
 
 of David seems ever to have sent its music over to where 
 Homer held a harp, or to where Virgil was devoting his life 
 to a chaste and an elevated poetry. 
 
 Palestine lay beside Greece for hundreds of years, with 
 only a fragment of the Mediterranean between ; and yet be- 
 tween Athens in her glory, and Jerusalem in her almost equal 
 splendor, no exchange of creed or prayer or hymn seems 
 ever to have taken place. What thoughts these two cities 
 had of each other must have been in the line of wondering 
 when the armies of one mio-ht thunder at the eates of the 
 other. The active idea with both was not how they might 
 spread their poetry, or their psalms, and their worship, but 
 how they might advance and support their thrones. 
 
 Born into such a spirit, Christianity would have remained 
 in Palestine, just as Hebraism had remained there. But 
 Christ reversed the genius of religion. He separated it from 
 state, and attached it to man as a citizen of the world, and 
 moved it from its narrow borders ; and from that hour the 
 Psalms of David and the sono^s of the new Church be^an to 
 cross the sea by every wind that wafted the merchant's ship. 
 It must have been a thrilling passage of eloquence when one 
 of the Roman orators, in perhaps the second century, arose in 
 the public assembly, and said, " Your altars and temples are 
 all becoming vacant, your laws are passing away, before the 
 laws and temple of this Christ." 
 
 JAMES MARTINEAU. 
 
 [Miscellanies. Boston: 1S52. P. 280.] 
 
 The grand objects of the physical universe, discernible 
 from every latitude, look in at the understanding of all nations, 
 and secure the unity of science. And the glorious persons 
 of human history, imperishable from the traditions of every 
 civilized people, keeping their sublime glance upon the con- 
 science of ages, create the unity of faith. And if it hath 
 
434 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 pleased God the Creator to fit up one system with one sim, 
 to make the dayhght of several worlds, so may it fitl)- have 
 pleased God the Revealer to kindle amid the ecliptic of 
 history one divine Soul, to glorify whatever lies within the 
 great year of his moral providence, and represent tlie Father 
 . of lights. 
 
 The exhibition of Christ as his moral image has maintained 
 
 in the souls of men a common spiritual type, to correct the 
 
 aberrations of their individuality, to unite the humblest and 
 
 the highest, to merge all minds into one family, and that the 
 
 ^i family of God. 
 
 RICHARD HOLT HUTTON. 
 
 [Theological Essays. London: 1871. Vol. i. pp. 13S-140, 261, 267-269, 278, 282.] 
 
 Christ no sooner disappeared from the earth, than all the 
 Christian writers began to dwell far more on the new strength 
 he had revealed within them, than on his outward life. The 
 interior growth of the divine nature thus revealed might be 
 called new, because now first it was recognized as a divine 
 power, as a power inspiring trust, as a life that would grow 
 by its own might within men if only they did not smother it, 
 and were content to restrain their own lower self from any 
 voluntary inroads of evil. It was the same divinely human 
 nature which had been embodied in the earthly Christ, that 
 was stirring in the hearts of all men. It was he whose life 
 had been so strange and brief a miracle of beauty, to whom 
 they might trust to mould afresh the twisted shapes of human 
 imperfection, to push forward the growth of the good seed 
 and the eradication of the tares within them. 
 
 The same life which had shed its healing influence over 
 the sick and sinful in Galilee and Juda?a, was but the human 
 form of that which fostered the true nature beneath the false- 
 hoods of all actual life and the world within the disciples as 
 they preached their risen Lord. It was not they, but Christ 
 that worked in them. 1 lere was the true explanation of the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 435 
 
 unity of the human race, the common life which was the source 
 of all that was deep and good, as separating- influences irrcw 
 out of all that was profoundly evnl. Men were all members of 
 Christ ; his nature was in them all, drawing out the beauty, and 
 destroying the deformity, breathing the breath of universal 
 charity, and kindling the flame of inextinguishable hope. . . . 
 
 The essential difference, the only essential diflerence, 
 between the life of Jesus of Nazareth and of any human 
 being, seems to me to be that his free will was always fas- 
 tened, so to speak, on that of God ; so that, though he felt 
 temptation, the predominant passion of his will (if it is legiti- 
 mate to apply such a word as passion to a fountain of perfect 
 freedom) prevented the slightest trembling in the balance; 
 while the free will of all other men is intrinsically indifferent, 
 and needs a divine countervailing force to aid it in escaping 
 from the solicitations of human temptation. And Christ, in 
 revealing the perfectly filial will, revealed it as a power, in the 
 protecting shadow of which, and by the sympathy with which, 
 we might also escape the sin which he understood but never 
 experienced. It was not as an example, but as the very 
 source of the divine light which was to stream into us, that 
 his lite was revealed. What the incarnate word was in him, 
 tJiat it would have the power to make us, if we would but 
 yield ourselves up absolutely to its guidance. In point of 
 limitations, temptations, frailties, his life was no better than 
 ours. The will alone was better, intrinsically better ; and 
 that will would ingraft itself on ours, and guide and sway 
 us, if we would but surrender the reins. 
 
 I cannot open a page of the Gospels without finding in 
 Christ a complete absence of that self-reproach which we 
 identify with humility, but which only belongs to it aniong 
 imperfect and sinful men; and yet the fullest presence of that 
 filial humility which recognized dependence on the Father 
 as the true law and spirit of life, which lived in the will of 
 another, and yet concurred freely in that will. Now, this 
 combination seems to me, and is, I believe, unique in history. 
 
436 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Wherever we find deep humility amongst men, it is accom- 
 panied by self-distrust and self-accusations, as in the case 
 of St. Paul. Wherever we find tranquil self-reliance, it is 
 unaccompanied by the dependent and filial spirit ; it is found, 
 if at all, in some Goethe, standing with serene brow above the 
 clouds of human sorrow and weakness : — 
 
 " He took the suffering human race, 
 He read each wound, each weakness clear : 
 He struck his finger on the place, 
 And said, ' Thou ailest here and here.' 
 He looked on Europe's dying hour 
 Of fitful dreams and feverish power, 
 And said, 'The end is everywhere. 
 Art still has truth, take refuge there.' 
 And he was happy — if to know 
 Causes of things, and far below 
 His feet to see the lurid flow 
 Of trouble, and insane distress, 
 And headlong fate, be happiness." 
 
 Such is the attitude of the most complete human self- 
 adequacy ; but it was not the attitude of Christ, who proclaims 
 to us everywhere, " I am come in my Father's name, and ye 
 receive me not ; if another shall come in his own name, him 
 ye will receive." 
 
 And it seems to me that this unique combination of child- 
 like lowliness with perfect kingliness, and serenity of con- 
 science, extorts a witness to it from human nature which is 
 equally unique. We say to our hearts, This is not an inde- 
 pendent will, but a filial will ; and yet this is not an imperfect, 
 sinful man, but one who shares the eternal life of the Father 
 whom he reveals. 
 
 The ultimate distinction between Christ's human nature 
 and our own lay not, it seems to me, in any exemption from 
 human iornorance, sensitiveness, temptation, but in the ulti- 
 mate divinity of his free will, which moulded itself according 
 to the leather's will without a moment's trembling in the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 437 
 
 balance. Of the perfect concord, perfect submissiveness, 
 perfect dependence of this will, he himself was aware ; and this 
 gave him his tone of authority towards man. But God's pur- 
 pose was often concealed from him on earth : he could discern 
 only the general outline of his destiny, and this only w^ith the 
 fitful uncertainty of that prophetic prescience which estimates 
 perfectly the evil and the good, and yet can hardly bring 
 itself to believe in any, even temporary, triumph of evil. " If it 
 be possible, let this cup pass from me : nevertheless, not as I 
 will, but as thou wilt," is surely the highest expression of a 
 perfect filial will, full of humility, but wholly untouched by 
 humiliation. 
 
 Surely all the expansive power of Christianity, all that 
 adapts it to the purpose of the ages, has been directly due to 
 the faith in a " light which lighteth ever)^ man which cometh 
 into the W'Orld," and in the incarnation of that light in the 
 human life of Jesus of Nazareth. Without this belief in 
 the inward light, the reverence paid to the external life is a 
 mere idolatry ; without the belief in the external incarnation, 
 the inward light is too apt to nourish human conceit and 
 pantheistic dreams. And I cannot understand the histor}' of 
 the Christian Church at all, if all the fervent trust which has 
 been stirred by faith in the actual inspirations of a nature at 
 once eternal and human, has been lavished on a dream. . . . 
 
 Now, let me honestly ask myself, and answer the question 
 as truly as I can, whether this great, this stupendous fact of 
 the incarnation, is honestly believable by an ordinary man 
 of modern times, who has not been educated into it, but 
 educated to distrust it ; who has no leaning to the orthodox 
 creed, as such, but has generally preferred to associate with 
 heretics ; who is quite alive to the force of the scientific and 
 literary criticisms of his day ; who has no antiquarian tastes, 
 no predilection for the venerable past, wdio does not regard 
 this truth as a part of a great system, dogmatic or ecclesias- 
 tical, but merely for itself; who is, in a word, simply anxious 
 to take hold, if he so may, of any divine hand stretched out to 
 
438 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 help him through the excitement and the languor, the joy, the 
 sorrow, the storm and sunshine, of this unintelligible life. 
 Froni my heart I answer, yes, — believable, and more than 
 believable, in any mood in which we can rise above ourselves 
 to that supernatural Spirit which orders the unruly wills and 
 affections of sinful man ; more than believable, I say, because 
 it so vivifies and supplements that fundamental faith in God, 
 as to realize what were else abstract, and, without dissolving 
 the mystery, to clothe eternal love with breathing life. 
 
 HOWARD CROSBY. 
 
 [The True Humanity of Christ. New York : i8So. Pp. lo, 13.] 
 
 The conversation of Jesus was eminently practical, having 
 cognizance of, and relation to, the many-sided duties and inci- 
 dents of daily life. There were no assumptions of higher 
 knowledge or higher rank ; there was nothing haughty or 
 supercilious in his demeanor, no affected distance in manner 
 and habits, no inshrouding of his person in mystery. 
 
 There never was a public character so devoid of the charac- 
 teristics of enthusiasm, if we use the word in the sense of a 
 self-deceiving and unbalanced zeal. Much more is it impossi- 
 ble to find in his life the first trace of imposture. A life of 
 poverty and self-denial, carefully repelling any efforts made by 
 others for his aggrandizement, refusing to take advantage of 
 the full tide of public sentiment running in his favor, promising 
 no earthly portion but persecution to his followers, seeking 
 neither admiration nor support, and looking forward to a 
 painful death, — such a life has not a feature that does not 
 prove the charge of imposture and absurdity. An impostor 
 is self-seeking, rules his victims, assumes a Delphic air. and is 
 afraid to expose himself to public scrutiny. Compare 
 Mohammed with Jesus, and see how different they appear. 
 The contrast brings out the truthfulness of our Saviour's 
 life. . . . 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 439 
 
 Internal and external evidences thus conspire to give 
 every thoughtful and reasonable man implicit confidence in 
 the words of Jesus. Whatever the Jesus of Strauss or the 
 Jesus of Renan may be, the Jesus of the Gospels is the em- 
 bodiment of truth. To refuse allegiance to him and his words 
 is to stultify one's reason, and to dishonor one's manhood. 
 It is to deny the sun in the heavens, and swear that white is 
 black. A man who rejects the truth as it is in Jesus, has no 
 right to believe any thing. He is an outcast from order, an 
 eternal denizen of chaos. 
 
 A. M. FAIRBAIRN. 
 
 [Studies in the Life of Christ. New York : 1882. Pp. i, 2, 4.] 
 
 The greatest problems in the field of history centre in the 
 person and life of Christ. Who he was, what he was, how 
 and why he came to be it, are questions that have not lost and 
 will not lose their interest with and for mankind. For the 
 problems that centre in Jesus have this peculiarity : they are 
 not individual, but general ; concern not a person, but the 
 world. How we are to judge him, is not simply a curious 
 point for historical criticism, but a vital matter for religion. 
 
 Jesus Christ is the most powerful spiritual force that ever 
 operated for good on and in humanity. He is to-day what 
 he has been for centuries, — an object of reverence and love 
 to the good ; the cause of remorse and change, penitence and 
 hope to the bad ; of moral strength to the morally weak ; of 
 inspiration to the despondent, consolation to the desolate, and 
 cheer to the dying. He has created the typical virtues and 
 moral ambitions of civilized man ; has been to the benevolent 
 a motive to beneficence, to the selfish a persuasion to self- 
 forgetful obedience ; and has become the living ideal that 
 steadied and raised, awed and guided youth, braced and 
 ennobled manhood, mellowed and beautified age. 
 
 It is impossible to touch Jesus without touching millions 
 
440 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 of hearts now living or yet to live. He is, whatever else he 
 may be, a world's imperishable wonder, a world's everlasting 
 problem, a pre-eminent object of faith, a pre-eminent subject 
 of human thought. . . . 
 
 The historical person of Christ is at once the basis and 
 source of the Christian religion. He made it, he is it. Its 
 distinctive and essential elements are elements that can be 
 found in him. Whatever cannot be found there, belongs to 
 its accidents, not to its essence. And so, the better we know 
 him, the better we know our faith ; the more he is made a 
 reality to heart and mind, the more will it be the same. He 
 who best knows Christ is the best Christian. 
 
 MARVIN R. VINCENT. 
 
 [Faith and Character. New York: 1880. Pp. 46, 47.] 
 
 I STATE a fact, let it be accounted for as it may, that a man 
 who thinks at all can hardly be in contact with nineteenth- 
 century civilization, and not be compelled to think of Christ. 
 All attempts to banish him into the region of remote history 
 are in vain. The age has gotten past other men. Plato, 
 Socrates, Caesar, Alexander, Homer, and Virgil, all confessedly 
 great men, are yet instinctively felt to belong to the past. But 
 the age does not get past Christ. He is as distinctly, yea 
 more distinctly, a fact of the nineteenth century than of the 
 first. In a hundred different ways he appears in the philoso- 
 phy, the politics, the social science, the statesmanship, the 
 language, the ordinary customs, of the present time. He is 
 historical, but he is more than historical. . . . 
 
 Christ is in the way of the nineteenth century. He cannot 
 be waived out of the way, nor argued out of the way, nor 
 driven out of the way, nor ignored. He must be confronted 
 and dealt with, no matter how many Pilates desire to wash 
 their hands of him. He was a troublesome fact in his own 
 time, but the trouble has taken on a thousand new forms since 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 44 1 
 
 that. His own time dealt with him at last, and thought it had 
 gotten him safely out of the way ; but the resurrection disap- 
 pointed its hopes, and Christ, being raised from the dead, has 
 been proving to every succeeding age that he dieth no more ; 
 and an age that is annoyed by his presence, and stirred into 
 opposition by his power, is yet forced to hear, with chagrin, 
 the words so dear to his disciples : " Lo, I am with you alway, 
 even unto the end of the world." 
 
 JOHN TAULER. 
 
 [Sermons. Boston: 1878. P. 130.] 
 
 Now, as the loadstone draws the iron after itself, so doth 
 Christ draw all hearts after himself which once have been 
 touched by him ; and as, when the iron is impregnated with 
 the energy of the loadstone that has touched it, it follows 
 the stone up-hill, although that is contrary to its nature, and 
 cannot rest in its own proper place, but strives to rise above 
 itself on high ; so all the souls which have been touched by 
 this loadstofie, Christ, can neither be chained down by joy nor 
 grief, but are ever rising up to God out of themselves. They 
 forget their own nature, and follow after the touch of God; 
 and follow it the more easily and directly, the more noble is 
 their nature than that of other men. 
 
 PROTAP CHUNDER MOZOOMDAR. 
 
 [The Oriental Christ. Boston : 1883. Pp. 42-46.] 
 
 To be able to illustrate more fully the distinctions which 
 may be said to exist between Eastern and Western concep- 
 tions of Christ, let us place side by side two strongly marked 
 characters. One of them is an elaborately learned man, versed 
 in all the principles of theology. His doctrine is historical, 
 exclusive, arbitrary, opposed to the ordinary instincts and 
 
442 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 natural common sense of mankind. He insists upon plenary 
 inspiration, becomes stern over forms, imports institutions 
 foreiofn to the o-enius of the continent, and, in case of non- 
 compliance with whatever he lays down, condemns men to 
 eternal darkness and death. He continually talks of blood 
 and fire and hell. He considers innocent babes as the 
 progeny of deadly sin; he hurls invectives at other men's faith, 
 however truly and conscientiously held. No sacred notions 
 are sacred to him unless he has tauo^ht them. All self-sacrifice 
 which he does not understand is delusion to him. All 
 scriptures are false which have grown up outside of his 
 dispensation, climate, and nationality. He will revolutionize, 
 denationalize, and alienate men from their kith and kin. 
 Wherever he goes, men learn to beware of him. He is toler- 
 ated only because he carries with him the imperial prestige of 
 a conquering race. Can this be the Christ that will save 
 India? 
 
 By his side place another figure. He is simple, natural. 
 He is a stranger to the learning of books. Out of the 
 untaught impulses of his soul he speaks, and when he speaks 
 nations bow their head. His voice is a song of glory; his 
 sentiments are the visions of a heaven in which all men are 
 united by love. His doctrines are the simple utterances 
 about a fatherhood which embosoms all the children of men, 
 and a brotherhood which makes all the races of the world one 
 great family. The sinful and the sorrow-stricken, the ignorant 
 and the unwise, the publicans and the harlots, the very dregs 
 and refuse of mankind, he draws around him. What he 
 touches he purifies, but the touch of no impurity can taint the 
 light oi holiness in him. The fountains of righteousness he 
 drinks as they How from heaven. The profoundcst wisdom 
 and holiness come to him as comes natural breath to us. The 
 unspeakable peace of God descends upon his soul as showers 
 descend upon the thirsty soil. What is invisible to others is 
 seen as da\Iight b)- him. The? music that no mortal can hear, 
 the celestial music of the union of spirit with spirit, filleth the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 443 
 
 expanse of his nature. His every word is a revelation, and 
 he bcholdeth revelation among all nations and amid all faiths. 
 His love invites men to rest and reward. His presence is the 
 presence of all that is good and loving. His memory is a 
 benediction to all. His institutions are the simplest forms of 
 instinctive love and remembrance, and his service is the 
 affectionate labor of self-devoted faith. All lands echo his 
 teaching ; all nations respond to his mystical utterances about 
 heaven and earth. 
 
 Wherever he treads, flowers spring under his feet. Wher- 
 ever he stands, all sorrow and self-complaint are hushed. His 
 long uncut locks of hair, in which the pure zephyr of the 
 mountain plays ; his trailing garments of seamless white, 
 whose touch the diseased and sinful eagerly long for ; his 
 beautiful feet washed with precious ointments, and wiped with 
 women's hair ; his self-immersed air, — absent eyes, bright- 
 ened forehead, which shows that his spirit is far away 
 communing with beings we do not see, — point him out to be 
 the prophet of the East, the sweet Jesus of the Galilsean lake, 
 whom we still see in our hearts. The testimony of his life 
 and death makes heavenly realities tenfold more real to us. 
 His patience and meekness in suffering are like an everlasting 
 rock, which we may hold by when tossed in the tempest of 
 life. His poverty has sanctified the home of the poor; his 
 love of healing fills the earth with innumerable works of 
 benevolence and sympathy, and fills with wonderful hope the 
 bedside of the sick and dying. His death and resurrection 
 call us to the mansions where he has gone to wait for us. 
 
 Throughout the Eastern world, the perfume of his faith 
 and devotion has spread. The wild genius of Mohammed 
 knew and adored him amid the sands of Arabia. The tender, 
 love-intoxicated soul of Hafiz revelled in the sweetness of 
 Christ's piety amid the rosebuds and nightingales of Persia. 
 And here, too, in India, though latest and most backward, 
 we Aryans have learned to enshrine him in the heart of our 
 philosophy, in the core of our exuberant love. Look at this 
 
444 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 picture and that. This is the Christ of the East, and that of 
 the West. Very true that the pictures are extreme, and there 
 are men in the West with an Eastern imagination, as there are 
 Orientals who have inherited the coldness and hardness of 
 Europe. But when we speak of an Eastern Christ, we speak 
 of the incarnation of unbounded love and grace ; and when 
 we speak of the W^estern Christ, we speak ot the incarnation 
 of theology, formalism, ethical and physical force. Christ, we 
 know, is neither of the East nor of the West ; but men have 
 localized what God meant to make universal. 
 
 BERNHARD WEISS. 
 
 [The Life of Christ. Edinburgh: 1S83. Vol. i. pp. 353, 354.] 
 
 When Jesus asks, " Which of you convinceth me of sin ?" 
 (John viii. 46) , nothing more can be inferred from the silence of 
 his adversaries, than that his public life was free from reproach. 
 But if he, who so often accused the pattern men of his time of 
 hypocrisy, makes use of this evident external blamelessness 
 of his to deduce from it a sinlessness which would oruarantee 
 his truthfulness, he was either more wicked than any h\pocrite 
 scourged by him, or he must have been conscious that the 
 most hidden recesses of his heart and life, as well as his out- 
 ward walk and conversation, were free from reproach. . . . 
 
 He demands repentance from all men ; he takes for granted 
 that they are all evil by nature, and he teaches them to pray 
 daily for the forgiveness of their debts. But there never 
 appears in himself the slightest trace of any feeling of repent- 
 ance ; no prayer for forgiveness issues from his lips ; he never 
 gives expression to the consciousness of in an\" way enjo\ing 
 for the first time a peace with God. He is and remains the 
 Son of God, the one who is conscious of the love of his 
 heavenly Father, while all others must become such. He sets 
 himself over against the whole sinful world, as its Redeemer, 
 yea, even ultimately as its Judge. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 445 
 
 These are facts which no criticism can shake. They speak 
 for themselves. The dilemma is one from which there is no 
 escape. He who has removed from us all the bandage of 
 self-deception and of self-righteousness, who has taught us all 
 to seek forgiveness where it is to be found, he was either the 
 chief of sinners, for self-righteous pride is the root and climax 
 of all sin, or he was the only sinless one upon whose life 
 rested the peace of God. Not because he knew not the 
 temptation and the conflict without which no man can reach 
 the summit of moral perfection, but because he approved him- 
 self in every temptation, and gained the victory in every 
 conflict. Thus he became that which he would not be called 
 until the trial of his life was accomplished: he became the 
 absolutely good, the image of his Father in heaven. 
 
 ELISHA MULFORD. 
 
 [The Republic of God. Boston: 1882. P. 146.] 
 
 The perfect manifestation of righteousness is in the person 
 of the Christ. The law of righteousness is not abstract : it 
 is manifested in the realization of personality, and in the life 
 and relations of men in the world. It is in a life in which 
 there is the consciousness of perfect unity with man, and 
 which becomes in itself the perfect realization of the truth. 
 
 The life of Jesus the Christ was not simply a sinless life, 
 with the negative quality that it was without sin. It was 
 that, but it was of a positive ethical quality. It was not 
 alone the representation, the mere bodying-forth, of a perfect 
 ethical character, a phenomenon of excellence, a simular of 
 virtue ; but it was the manifestation of a life in the realization 
 of a perfect righteousness in perfect unity with man. It was 
 a life that was wrought through the trial of earth, in the 
 realization of righteousness. It was a real conflict, and a real 
 victory. 
 
446 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. 
 
 [Ninth edition, vol. xiii. pp. 6So, 68i. Article Jesus Christ.] 
 
 The transcendent power of his personality is due, not only 
 to his devotion and self-sacrifice, but to his absolute sinless- 
 ness. This constitutes the unique character of his individ- 
 uality. He alone of mankind has claimed to be sinless, and 
 has had the claim granted by unanimous consent, both in his 
 lifetime and in subsequent ages. He alone among men has 
 never even been assailed by the breath of moral calumny, 
 and never, even in his most sacred utterances and prayers, 
 betrayed the faintest consciousness of any evil as present in 
 his soul. He therefore alone has furnished mankind with a 
 perfect ideal. . . . 
 
 Nor was his teaching less unique than his personality. It 
 was marked by a tone of sovereign authority: "Ye have 
 heard that was said; but, I say unto you." In this it was the 
 very opposite of the teaching of his own day, and of centuries 
 afterwards, which relied exclusively upon precedent. It was 
 also marked by absolute originality. The test of its originality 
 is the world's acceptance of it as specifically his. Isolated 
 fragments of it may be conipared with truths uttered by 
 others ; but it stands alone in its breadth and in its power, in 
 its absence of narrow exclusiveness and scholastic system and 
 abstract speculation. It was fresh, simple, abounding in illus- 
 trations at once the most beautiful and the most intelligible, 
 drawn from all the common sights and sounds of nature, and 
 all the daily incidents and objects of social and domestic life. 
 It flowed forth without reserve to all and on every fitting 
 occasion, — on the road, on the hillside, on the lake, or by 
 the lonely well, or at the banquet, whether of the Pharisee or 
 of the publican. Expressed in the form of parables, it has 
 seized the imagination of mankind with a force and tenacity 
 which is not distantly ap|)roached, even b)- the sacred writers ; 
 and even when not directly parabolic, it was so full of pictur- 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 447 
 
 esqueness and directness that there is not one recorded 
 sentence of it which has not been treasured up in the memory 
 of mankind. 
 
 His utterances not only rival and surpass all that preceded 
 and all that has followed them, but they complement all 
 beginnings. Sometimes they consist of short suggestive 
 sayings, full of depth, yet free from all affectation or obscur- 
 ity, which make even what is most mysterious and spiritual 
 humanly perceptible, throwing over it the glamour both of 
 poetry and of a longing presentiment, and incessantly enticing 
 man towards something yet higher. There is never in them 
 a lurking fallacy nor a superfluous w^ord ; but all is vivacity, 
 nature, intelligibility, directly enlightening grace, intended 
 only to convince and to save. 
 
 And while such was the incomparable form of his teaching, 
 its force was even more remarkable. It is all centred in the 
 two great truths of the fatherhood of God and the brother- 
 hood of man. From the former springs every truth of theol- 
 ogy ; from the latter, every application of morals. Judaism 
 had sunk into a religion of hatreds ; the one message of Jesus 
 was love. In this he differs even from John the Baptist, and 
 the prophets. "Their emblem is the stars; his, the sun." . . . 
 
 As regards the work of Jesus Christ, the Christian believer 
 contemplates it in that aspect in which it is presented by St. 
 Paul as a work of atonement, the redemption of a guilty soul ; 
 but even apart from this, the mere historical student must 
 admit that Christ elevated both the individual and the race 
 as none have ever done before or since. His doctrine purified 
 the world from the loathly degradation of lust and luxury into 
 which society had fallen. By convincing men of the inherent 
 dignity of manhood, he added to the value of human life. 
 He made holiness a common possession. Heathen morality 
 had reached its highest point in the Stoic philosophy. But 
 Stoicism was scornful, ineffectual, despairing ; and Christ gave 
 a moral system infinitely more perfect, more hopeful, and 
 more tender to all mankind. 
 
448 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 To him is alone due the Christian significance of such 
 words as "charity," "humiHty," and "humanity." He first 
 taught the sacredness of the body as the temple of the Holy 
 Ghost. He has inspired the aims of the highest culture ; while 
 at the same time he has restored the souls of men, and made 
 the care of the moral and spiritual being the supreme end of 
 life. The gradual emancipation of the world from the tyran- 
 nies of sensuality, cruelty, and serfdom, has been w^on step 
 after step from his principles. The supremacy of the spiritual, 
 the solidarity of nations, the universality of God's love, the 
 essential equality of all men in his sight, are but a few of the 
 great and fruitful conceptions which have sprung directly from 
 his teaching, and w-hich still have an unexhausted force to 
 bring about in ever-increasing measure the amelioration of 
 the world. 
 
 JOHN CAIRNS. 
 
 [Christ the Central Evidence of Christianity. From the Journal of Christian 
 Philosophy, October, 1SS2. Pp. 56, 60, 70.] 
 
 It is becoming more and more apparent to friend and foe 
 in the oreat struoro-le between Christian faith and doubt, that 
 the key of the position is the person of Christ himself; and 
 that so long as the obvious meaning of the Gospel narrative 
 as to the life, character, and work of that grand central figure 
 can be accepted as " fact, and not delusion," no weapon lifted 
 against Christianity can prevail. It is a presumption of truth 
 in any system to have a centre ; and I now propose to show, 
 confining attention chiefly to the Four Gospels, that the life 
 of Christ as there exhibited is a reality, and is so fitted to 
 bind all the Christian evidences together as to furnish an 
 additional and independent evidence of the divinity of the 
 Christian faith. . . . 
 
 A history which has led the vast majority of readers in 
 all ages to feel that it was more than human, is confessedly 
 beyond human construction. Christian theology itself is 
 
rO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 449 
 
 baffled when it tries to state in propositions the two natures 
 of Christ, and the relation between them. The decrees of 
 councils and the terms of creeds rather exclude error than 
 grasp truth. Yet here, admittedly, in the narrative of the 
 Evangelists, the impossible is achieved. The living Christ 
 walks forth, and men bow before him. Heaven and earth 
 unite all through, — power with gentleness, solitary greatness 
 with familiar intimacy, ineffable purity with forgiving pity, 
 unshaken will with unfathomable sorrow. There is no effort 
 in these writers, but the character rises till it is complete. It 
 is thus not only truer than fiction or abstraction, but truer 
 than all other history : carrying through utterly unimaginable 
 scenes the stamp of simplicity and sincerity ; creating what 
 was to live forever, but only as it had lived already, and 
 reflecting a glory that had come so near, and been beheld 
 so intently, that the record of it was not only full of grace but 
 ' of truth. . . . 
 
 A second argument for the historical reality of Christ's 
 life and character is formed of so many separate testimonies. 
 I am not now urging the credibility of the Evangelists on the 
 ordinary historical grounds of their nearness to the facts and 
 their integrity as witnesses. These considerations cannot, in 
 their own place, be overestimated ; and the whole strain of 
 recent criticism is in the direction of confirming disputed 
 points of date and authorship. I proceed, now, however, 
 rather upon the simple fact, that so many separate writers, with 
 visible independence, should have drawn essentially the same 
 unparalleled character. One Gospel is a marvel : what shall 
 we say of four, each with its distinct plan, its enlargements 
 and omissions, its variations even where most coincident, its 
 problems as yet unsolved, but always yielding something to 
 fresh inquiry, and only making more manifest the unchal- 
 lengeable oneness and divinity of the history ? 
 
 The difficulties of the Gospel from divergence are as 
 nothing compared with the impression made by them all of 
 one transcendent creation ; c(nd for my part, if I rejected 
 
450 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 inspiration, I should have reason to be still more astonished. 
 Some slight mistake could so easily have impaired perfection, 
 or yet more easily lowered divinity ; some careless handling 
 might have deranged the balance at the most critical point, or 
 pulled down the structure in hopeless disaster. Yet. though 
 we see how different each Gospel plan is, we see there is not 
 any such trace of failure. The long discourses are left out 
 by Mark, but in action his Christ equals that of Matthew. 
 Luke has his own type, both of parable and of miracle, but 
 the same inimitable figure starts up from all. The sorest 
 trial to the familiar features comes from the Fourth Gospel, 
 without a parable and hardly a miracle like the foregoing, 
 and with so great a flood of novelty, especially toward the 
 end. But the unity in diversity is only the more marvellous. 
 The Christ of the Fourth Gospel is the Word of God, but he 
 is still the Son of man. He utters no Sermon on the Mount, 
 but he still preaches the kingdom of heaven. The sheep 
 scattered abroad still find him the good Shepherd. There 
 is no exorcism, but the prince of this world is cast out. 
 There is no transfiguration, but his glory through out is 
 beheld ; no agony in the garden, but his soul is troubled. . . . 
 
 With all these data, then, and many others of the Gospel 
 records, which are not conjectures but facts, the only rational 
 conclusion is, that they embody reality, the greatest reality 
 ever transacted on the scene of time ; that the very diversities 
 so often appealed to as an objection to this conclusion, really 
 strengthen it, and prove that writings which can so bring 
 forth the one out of the manifold have in them not only truth 
 but inspiration ; and that the Christian Church stands in the 
 centre of all history, divinely planted there, where she still 
 proclaims, as from the beginning, that Jesus is the Christ, the 
 Son of God. . . . 
 
 Thus a perfect moral example, at the very point where it 
 reaches its highest perfection, begins, by its own surpassing 
 charm of condescension and tenderness, to work on the 
 lowest and most fallen, and invite them up the steeps of its 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 45 I 
 
 grandeur and purity : whence we see the falsehood of the 
 current idea, that the example which is most like ourselves 
 and the least raised above our own struggles and falls, is 
 the best, at least for beginners in the race of holiness. The 
 whole experience of the Christian Church refutes this. Who 
 have acted with the greatest power on our degraded and 
 criminal classes ? Not their own companions, striving, like 
 themselves, to raise their heads above the wide surrounding 
 sea of evil ; but the holiest men and women, who have come 
 to them as ministering angels, who have recalled the image 
 of good in all its loveliness, and, by associating all with self- 
 sacrificing kindness, have given them the hope and possibility 
 of escape, otherwise almost as remote as if they had been 
 abandoned forever. Of this law of the attraction of the holy, 
 — if it be supremely kind, still more if it bring the news of 
 pardon, — Christ is the limit ; and hence, as of old, to the 
 publicans and sinners, and to all the wide family of the out- 
 cast and the miserable, he stretches down his loving arms, 
 and, high as he rises above them, he can still reach to their 
 level, and lift them upward with the call, " Come unto me, 
 all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest." . . . 
 
 Here, then, is the summation of this cumulative argument, 
 where every other evidence converges to the life and charac- 
 ter of Jesus Christ. What other religion has such a mass of 
 evidence in its favor, historic, prophetic, doctrinal, or moral? 
 What other religion could centralize all of its evidences in the 
 person of its Founder ? Not Confucianism ; not Buddhism, 
 attractive though in one sense the record of its founder be ; 
 not Brahmanism, which has no commanding personality in its 
 history ; and as little, Mohammedanism. These religions lie 
 mainly outside of the lives of their human authors. Why 
 did not their authors in this way make these religions more 
 strong, interesting, and likely to endure ? They were as able 
 on human principles as the original or secondary founders of 
 Christianity, who also strike clear off from philosophy ; for 
 
452 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 what philosophy ever thought of constituting itself out of the 
 biography of Socrates or Zeno, of Descartes or Hegel ? . . . 
 When we speak of the wonderfulness of Christianity, we 
 must not neglect the future. It only among religions has at 
 once an Alpha and an Omega. The future alone shall bring 
 out its great proportions. It is said that in our century, for 
 the first time, the master-works of Handel are fully disclosed 
 as he conceived them. Their airs sound through vaster 
 spaces, their choruses are borne up by mightier instruments 
 and voices. So shall it be, if the comparison may be per- 
 mitted, with that grander " Messiah," which is now, amidst 
 incredible struggle, breaking out in living music throughout 
 the world. 
 
 NE^A^MAN SMYTH. 
 
 [The Reality of Faith. New York : 1884. Pp. 65-69.] 
 
 How did the Christ look upon the lives of men ? Did he 
 stand before life spell-bound and awed, like a child before the 
 ocean ? Was this many-voiced, multiform, endless complexity 
 of life which we see, in which we are tossed about, of which 
 at times even the bravest of us grow weary at heart, to him 
 also endless confusion of joy and sorrow, a tumult of cloud 
 and sunshine, a something without method or meaning or 
 purpose or end ? What was our life to Jesus ? We may be 
 sure that he saw all these changes and strange minglings of 
 comedies and tragredies, which so confuse and exhaust us. 
 We may be sure that no novelist, nay, not all the novelists or 
 poets who have had insight into hearts, seen characters, and 
 made miniatures in their stories of the world around them, 
 ever understood men, or took in at a glance the histories of 
 human souls, or saw to the end, in its last scene, the drama 
 of human history, as did the Son of man, who needed not 
 that any should tell him of men. for he knew what was in 
 man. We may be sure, then, that these thoughts of our 
 hearts about life — such thoughts as I have been trying 
 
rO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 453 
 
 to suggest in words — were perfectly familiar to Jesus of 
 Nazareth. He knew what his disciples were thinking about, 
 as they went from city to city and through the villages with 
 him. He knew the world of men. 
 
 If we feel at times the myriad multiplicity and infinite 
 confusions of life, and wonder what it all means and is worth, 
 Ave may be perfectly sure that the most sensitive and receptive 
 soul that ever was found in fashion as a man, felt life as we 
 never have. He was touched, says the record, with a feeling 
 of our infirmities. Indeed, all that we see in the world 
 around us, — youth, laughter, love, hope, vanity, passion, evil, 
 death, — all these powers of light and darkness which w^e 
 know, were making and marring the life upon which Jesus 
 looked. Every synagogue which he entered was a bit of the 
 same problem of humanity of which our lives are parts. You 
 may be sure, then, that you never had an experience, a feel- 
 ing, or a thought about life and death, which, in its real 
 nature and meaning, was not perfectly known and familiar 
 to Jesus Christ. He measured in his own experience our 
 temptations ; and his life took in Cana of Galilee, a sick-room 
 in Capernaum, the market-place before the temple, the streets 
 of the city, the country towns by the sea, the master in Israel, 
 the multitude of the people, the whole world of his da)^ and 
 of all days, our world-age, and God's eternity. 
 
 Remembering thus that Jesus lived as never poet, philoso- 
 pher, or novelist has lived, in the real world of human motives 
 and hearts, with our real human life a daily transparency 
 before his eye, open now these Gospels, and see if you can 
 find there In Jesus' view of our life, in his thought of us, 
 any such feelings or questionings as I have been expressing 
 in this sermon, — any such sense of the emptiness, vanity, 
 strangeness of life, as we have often felt resting like a shadow 
 over our thoughts. Did not he listen to stories of lives as 
 strange and sad as any we have ever heard ? Did not he 
 look upon things as contradictory to goodness and God, as 
 any thing we have ever seen under the sun ? and with purer 
 
454 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 eyes ? Did not he feel with larger sympathy and warmer 
 heart the broken, tangled, bleeding lives of men ? Did not 
 he bear the sin of the world ? Where, then, is our human 
 word of doubt among his words ? Where is the echo of 
 man's despair among the sayings of our Lord ? Where, in 
 his conversation with his friends, can you catch a note of that 
 minor key which runs through our common speech of life ? 
 He could weep with those who mourned, but he spake and 
 thought of life and the resurrection before the grave of 
 Lazarus. Read over these Gospels carefully, and where 
 among Jesus' words will you find even the interrogation- 
 point of our ignorance ? Upon what parable of the Lord rest 
 the shadows which come and go over all our poetry of life ? 
 What discourse of his fortifies itself by the arguments, labori- 
 ously heaped up, with which our faith betrays its own fear? 
 
 Read Tennyson's " In Memoriam," and then read the story 
 of Jesus' w^ords at Bethany ; read Matthew Arnold's poems, 
 and then read Jesus' parables ; read Herbert Spencer's " First 
 Principles," and then read Jesus' single discourse with the 
 master in Israel. Remember, you cannot say that Jesus 
 Christ did not know our unbelief. You cannot say that he 
 did not understand our sense of life's mystery and broken- 
 ness. He saw it all in Mary's tears ; he read it in the 
 thoughts of disciples' hearts ; he heard it in Nicodemus' 
 hard question. How can these things be? Why, then, did 
 he never reproduce our common human weariness and doubt 
 in his thought of life ? Why did he not show himself to be 
 a man like one of us, as he wrestled there among men with 
 all their burdens and their woes ? Why was there not a word 
 or note or tone or far-off echo of such human sense of 
 weakness, wonder, hungry doubt, as life brings so often to 
 our lips, ever heard in all his wondrous life of toil and 
 sympathy with man ? Who is he whose feet tread our com- 
 mon ways, whose spirit dwells above the clouds ? Behold the 
 man ! behold Jesus the Lord of life ! behold the Son of man 
 on earth who is in heaven ! He looks out upon this restless, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 455 
 
 age-long mystery of our existence, but not as we walk insig- 
 nificant upon the beach before the ocean. He stands before 
 our life in the consciousness of power. He walks upon the 
 sea, and the winds and the waves obey him. Not upon 
 the Sea of Galilee alone, — upon the sea of life. Its winds 
 and waves obey him. He stands before our life. Its sin and 
 woe are the burden and the sorrow of the Christ, but its 
 meaning is no unknown voice to him. It is not an endless 
 wonder to him. He sees our life surrounded by the living 
 God ; he sees beneath our world, undergirding it, God's 
 mighty purpose ; he sees above, the righteous Father ; he 
 sees the calm of eternity. Nay, as you may have looked into 
 a troubled pool of waters, and seen, shimmering in broken 
 lines beneath its wind-stirred surface, the reflection of the 
 skies, so this man sees the promise of the kingdom of heaven, 
 even in troubled Judaea. 
 
 And knowing life better than you or I do, knowing such 
 things as you may have heard yesterda}-, or may experience 
 to-morrow, — enough sometimes to make men wonder whether 
 there be a God, or truth, or any thing of worth, — Jesus Christ, 
 in full open view of all life, said, " Let not your heart be 
 troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye believe in God ; believe 
 also in me." 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 [The True and the Beautiful. New York: 1876. Pp. 439, 441.] 
 
 In the early ages of Christianity, there was little care taken 
 to analyze character. One momentous question was heard 
 over the whole world : " Dost thou believe in the Lord with all 
 thine heart ? " There was but one division among men, — the 
 great unatonable division between the disciple and the adver- 
 sary. The love of Christ was all, and in all ; and in propor- 
 tion to the nearness of their memory of his person and teaching, 
 men understood the infinity of the requirements of the moral 
 law, and the manner in which it alone could be fulfilled. . . . 
 
456 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 And so it is in all writings of the apostles : their manner 
 of exhortation, and the kind of conduct they press, vary 
 according to the persons they address, and the feeling of the 
 moment at which they write, and never show attempt at logi- 
 cal precision. And although the words of their Master are 
 not thus irregularly uttered, but are weighed like fine gold, 
 yet, even in his teaching, there is no detailed or organized 
 system of morality, but the command only of that faith and 
 love which were to embrace the whole being of man : " On 
 these two commandments hang all the law^ and the prophets." 
 Here and there an incidental warning against this or that more 
 dangerous form of vice or error, "Take heed and beware of 
 covetousness," " Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees ; " here 
 and there a plain example of the meaning of Christian love, 
 as in the parables of the Samaritan and the prodigal, and his 
 own perpetual example, — these were the elements of Christ's 
 constant teachings ; for the Beatitudes, which are the only 
 approximation to any thing like a systematic statement, belong 
 to different conditions and characters of individual men, not to 
 abstract virtues. And all early Christians taught in the same 
 manner. They never cared to expound the nature of this 
 or that virtue ; for they knew that the believer who had Christ, 
 had all. Did he need fortitude ? Christ was his rock. 
 Equity ? Christ was his righteousness. Holiness ? Christ 
 was his sanctification. Liberty? Christ was his redemption. 
 Temperance ? Christ was his ruler. Wisdom ? Christ was 
 his light. Fruitfulness ? Christ was the truth. Charity? 
 Christ was love. 
 
 THEODORE T. MUNGER. 
 
 [The FuEEnoM OF Faith. Boston: 1S83. Pp. 1 15-125.] 
 
 Thus Christ presented himself before the world, drawing- 
 it off from its speculations, its ritualized dogmas, its tratlitional 
 ethics, and fixed its thought upon himself, a new centre of 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 457 
 
 truth and inspiration. His position is without parallel. The 
 philosophers had said, " Accept our ideas, adopt our systems ; " 
 but Christ said, "Accept nie^ No religionists have ever made 
 a similar claim. Gautama said, "This is the way, by renun- 
 ciation." Mohammed said, "There is heaven." They sunk 
 themselves in their theories, and, while claiming leadership, 
 put the centre of their systems in some idea or external end ; 
 but Christ merges all ideas and methods in devotion to him- 
 self, and the devotion is summed up in love. A most strange 
 thing : here is one whose main thesis is abnegation of self, 
 and is himself its prime illustration, and at the same time sets 
 himself up as the centre of the world's love ! It is out of such 
 contradiction that we are to look for the issue of the finest 
 truth, as vision is born of darkness and light. 
 
 There is in this attitude no final abjuring of philosophy 
 and system and doctrine, but only the adoption of a higher and 
 surer method of reaching them, a vitalizing and humanizing 
 of them. In its last analysis the idea is this : truth entering 
 human society through a person, and making love its vehicle. 
 
 For personality is the secret of both the Christian and 
 Judaic systems, — revelation by a pej'son. The peculiarit)^ of 
 these systems is not their truth. Men are sure to find that 
 out, first or last. And ethical truth is almost the first to clear 
 itself in the human understanding. The old philosophies and 
 mythologies are packed with undoubted truth ; enough for all 
 social and personal need, if that were all that was necessary. 
 It was inevitable that the precepts of love as the sum of 
 duty should have early utterance: the human mind could not 
 go amiss of them. But to connect them with a person for 
 authority and inspiration was another matter : the efficacy 
 of the precepts lies in the person that utters them, and in 
 the relation of this person to man. The fault of Matthew 
 Arnold's definition of God, " A Power not ourselves that makes 
 for righteousness." is, that it blurs the personalit}^ behind the 
 righteousness, and so deprives it of motive. Whatever signifi- 
 cance there is in the Jewish Scriptures lies in the personalit}' 
 
458 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 emblazoned on every page, — a God who is not a power 
 only, but also a person, and a power because he is a person ; 
 not a " stream of tendency," flowing in free or hindered cur- 
 rents, destined perhaps to flow, but capable also of resistance, 
 with some question of ultimate success, — but the / am, the 
 Personal Being ! Cast this out, and they might have been 
 burned with the books of Alexandria with little loss. But 
 because they contain this uniform and self-attesting assertion 
 of a personal God, as personal as man is, and the basis of his 
 personality, they have lain warm and nourishing at the roots 
 of that civilization which is dominating the world. 
 
 There is reason in this. A relation of duty cannot be 
 fully established and sustained, except between persons. I 
 owe no duty to force or to "a stream of tendency." I merely 
 fall in with or resist it, without any play of my faculties except 
 some sense of prudence. This would seem axiomatic ; yet it 
 is in the face of such axiomatic truth that we are asked to 
 accept the theories of an unknowable God, — theories that 
 annihilate duty by rendering impossible a relation of duty. 
 
 The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures have presented duty 
 to the world, not only in a rational but in a commanding wa)-, 
 because they assert in the loftiest way the two correlative 
 elements in duty ; namely, the personality of man and the 
 thorough personality of God. It is Christ's revelation of this 
 personality, on each side, that constitutes Christianity. It was 
 long before its facts crystallized into systems. The Church 
 sprang up about the revealing person of Christ ; love to him 
 was the bond that held it together ; and so it continued to be, 
 till the image of Christ grew dim, and the Master was buried 
 first beneath his Church, and then under formal renderings of 
 his truth ; and to-day Christendom puts its churches and its 
 theologies before its Lord. 
 
 There arc tliose who contend that what we need is not the 
 Christ himself, but the truth of Christ ; that, if we accept the 
 principles he taught, there need be no special enthusiasm or 
 even thought about their author. And thus Christianity is 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 459 
 
 gradually reduced to a philosophy, and thence into mere 
 maxims about good and evil, as though even in Christ's day 
 they were not the lumber of the world. 
 
 But let us see if Christ was mistaken in planting his sys- 
 tem upon personal love and devotion to himself. Or, more 
 broadly, why does this faith, that claims to be the world's sal- 
 vation, wear this guise of personal relations ? Simpl)- because 
 in no other way can man be delivered from his evil. There 
 may be exceptions here and there in whom natural dispositions 
 are so happily blended that they have attained to a stainless, if 
 cold, virtue. But take men as they are, the bulk and mass of 
 humanity, they are too blind to find their way by the light 
 of precepts, too firmly wedded to evil to be moved by theo- 
 ries of virtue, too solidly embedded in the custom of an " evil 
 world " to be extricated by any play of reason. And as to 
 experience, the fancied teacher of wisdom, with its " hoard of 
 maxims," it is the weakest of all. Polonius is but " a tedious 
 old fool " to the Hamlets who are struggling with their own 
 weakness in the hard play of human life. It is the subtlest 
 thought in the profoundest drama, that Hamlet is searching 
 for a human love to upstay and inspire him ; it is the key to 
 all his wild, testing talk with Ophelia : the love he found, but 
 there was no streno-th in it ; it could not draw too-ether his 
 scattered and faltering energies, and set them to some definite 
 end, and so his life sweeps on to its tragic close. There is in 
 all these simply lack of motive power. Men need, instead, 
 something of the nature of a passion to dislodge them, some 
 deep swelling current of feeling to sweep them away from evil 
 towards goodness, from self towards God. 
 
 Suppose Christ had simply depicted the miseries of sin 
 and the inherent fitness and excellence of the virtues, what 
 would he have done ? What become ? Simpl)- another rabbi 
 with a few followers for a generation. He began instead 
 by forming personal relations with a few men, captivating 
 them by his divine charms, making them feel at last that 
 his love was more than a human love, even God's own love. 
 
46o TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Ideas, truths, principles, these are not lacking ; but the es- 
 sence of his power is not in them, for they have no power. 
 The great reflective novelist has well stated it in her earlier 
 and wiser pages : " Ideas are often poor ghosts ; our sun-filled 
 eyes cannot discern them ; they pass athwart us in their vapor, 
 and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes they are 
 made flesh ; they breathe upon us with warm breath ; they 
 touch us with soft, responsive hands ; they look at us with 
 sad. sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones ; they 
 are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its 
 faith, and its love. Then their presence is a power ; then they 
 shake us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with 
 gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame." And yet it is 
 ideas that the loud-voiced wisdom of the age would have us 
 believe to be the salvation of the world ! God is driven far- 
 ther and farther into unknowable heavens ; the Christ is made 
 to figure only on a dim and blurred page of history ; the 
 Spirit is thrust out on some score of intellectual difficulty, — 
 all reduced to ideas, and ghostly at that ; and a selfish world is 
 summoned to drop the principles that have made it what it 
 is, and that stand to it for the solidest realities, by a phantom- 
 show of ideas for which it does not care, or but admires as 
 some far-off unattainable glory ! 
 
 The faith that is to redeem the world must have a surer 
 method. It must have a vitalizing motive, and such a motive 
 can proceed only from a person using the strongest force in a 
 person, — love. And thus the Christ comes before humanity, 
 making God's love manifest in a human and personal way, so 
 unfolding his divine beauty in word and deed that men kneel 
 before him, subdued into glad receptivity of his truth. Thus 
 it was that the multitudes thronged about him. that Zacchaeus 
 was won by his condescending pity, that this woman broke 
 upon him her fragrant tribute of honor, that Thomas said, 
 " Let us also go, that we may die with him," and Peter, with 
 a devotion that outran his courage, " Even if I must die with 
 thee, yet will I not deny thee ; " that John leaned upon his 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 46 1 
 
 bosom ; that the women of Jerusalem bewailed him on the 
 cross, and lingered about the sepulchre ; that Joseph claimed 
 the privilege of his burial ; that the disciples mourned while 
 he lay in the tomb ; that joy gave wings to their feet when 
 they heard of his resurrection. Andw^hen he finally ascended, 
 and the full scope of his love came to be realized, when his 
 character and being began to stretch away into the infinite 
 under the revelation of the Spirit, it stirred them to even 
 deeper passion. His love, seen now to be divine, awoke in 
 them all the divineness of love, and became the measure of 
 their devotion. From that day to this, the faith of believers 
 has clustered about the personal Christ, growling cold and 
 effete as it has drawn off from him towards philosophy, and 
 waxing warm and effective as it has come near to his 
 glorified person. 
 
 I grant that this love varies in its external features. In 
 these later days, it has the calm of thought, the sobriety of 
 conviction, the breadth that springs from a realization of his 
 work. . . . The love we now render is the fidelity of our 
 whole nature, the verdict of our intellio'ence, the assent of 
 our conscience, the allegiance of our will, the loyalty of sym- 
 pathetic conviction, all permeated with tender gratitude ; but 
 it is still personal, loving him who loved us, and gave him- 
 self for us. 
 
 There are reasons for the assertion just made, that it is 
 only through such a love that we can be delivered from our- 
 selves and our evil. It is no novelty even in the thought of 
 the world. " George Eliot" says (" Daniel Deronda," ii. 36), 
 "It is one of the secrets in that change of mental poise which 
 has been fitly named conversion, that to many among us 
 neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some person- 
 ality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them 
 into receptiveness." It only needs to make this assertion 
 universal, to have in it a definition of the process of Christian 
 faith, and almost a vindication of it by its superb insight. 
 How otherwise shall we begin to secure this process of con- 
 
462 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 version ? how uproot the selfishness that makes it necessary ? 
 Authority fails. The commandments are in the Old Testa- 
 ment, also in other sacred books, it is claimed ; but they had 
 not much honor in their fruits. But when they issued from 
 the lips of the living Christ, they fell into men's hearts like 
 fire, and wrought in them as a passion. Will not thought open 
 a path between evil and good ? Thought may resolve con- 
 duct and character into their elements, but it cannot separate 
 them. Philosophy makes slow^ progress in saving men. It 
 has eyes to see man's misery, but no hands to lift him out of 
 it. If upon such a basis one begins to struggle towards the 
 good, the result is a hard, painful life, sustained by mere will, 
 without warmth or glow or freedom, often overshadowed by 
 doubts, and mazed by sophistries ; for there are philosophies 
 and philosophies, a life more deficient and less exalted than it 
 seems to itself, because it is not constantly matching itself 
 with a personal standard. 
 
 The measure of rules and bare ideals has little working 
 efficacy ; it is unsubstantial ; it does not recognize the com- 
 plexity of life, for only life can measure life ; it guides but 
 imperfectly, and lacks the strongest of motive powers, — 
 inspiration. There is light enough, but no warmth : matter 
 enough, but no attraction. Goodness that is enforced or de- 
 vised has no propagating power. You cannot think, or plan, 
 or legislate it into existence ; it is not a product of syllogism, 
 nor a deduction of knowledge, nor a fruit of experience, but 
 is akin to life, and must be begotten. 
 
 And so character is placed under the lead of personal 
 love. At the threshold of life we are met by affections that 
 check and call us off from inborn selfishness, — the love of 
 parents, and of brother and sister, and then that fiery passion 
 that ushers in a love that makes of twain one, and then the 
 diviner, downward-flowing love upon children ; it is in such 
 ways as these, all personal, that evil is kept or crowded out, 
 and we become tender and generous and pure. 
 
 But be)ond lies the broader sphere of humanity, for which 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 463 
 
 there is but small native passion, and hence but little inspirino- 
 force impelling us to its duties. Yet this is the field of our 
 highest duties, for here are our widest relations. And it is 
 here chiefly that Christ becomes an inspiration through the 
 loyalty of love. Christ is humanity to us ; he has hardly any 
 other relation : he was not a father or husband. As son and 
 brother his relation is obscured ; his citizenship is not empha- 
 sized. In a certain sense, it is hardly necessary to have an 
 inspiring and saving Christ in these relations : they enforce 
 themselves ; they are still full of their original divine power. 
 Not so, however, when we get outside of these domestic and 
 neighborly instincts. Our relation to humanity at large is so 
 blurred that it fails to enforce its duties. Hence Christ put 
 himself solely and entirely into this relation, — the Son of 
 man, the Brother of all men, the Head of humanity ; and 
 there sets in play the divine forces of universal love, and pity, 
 and sympathy. When our love meets his in the loyalty of 
 faith, we find ourselves rightly related to humanity and to 
 God. Faith in Christ has for one of its main ends the proper 
 adjustment of the individual to society. The secret, essential 
 relation of the Christ to humanity, and of humanity to God, 
 flows to us along this channel of obedient, inspiring love ; 
 and so we come to love our neighbor as ourselves, and God 
 supremely. 
 
 But the truth may be set in even a larger light. The love 
 of Christ not only delivers us from evil, and unites us to 
 humanity ; but it does the wider work of uniting us to God's 
 eternal order, both on earth and in heaven. 
 
 The one supreme truth is, that God is love. This is the 
 secret of the universe. Creation is the outcome of this fact ; 
 the whole order of all things is grounded in it ; the harmony 
 of the universe is its realization. There is therefore no possi- 
 ble relation for a human being to stand in to God, and to his 
 creation, but that of love. Not to love God is to be in 
 confusion, at odds with creation, aside from the order of the 
 universe. The whole creation swims in a sea of eternal love. 
 
464 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Every law, and process, and form, material and spiritual, 
 angelic and human, individual and social ; every relation, 
 every method, — is established in this love. This makes love 
 the supreme and all-embracing duty. It is thus only that we 
 come into accord with the world, and fall into the current that 
 sweeps through eternity. 
 
 Thus love, that seems the most voluntary thing and the 
 thing most to be kept at our own disposal, to be given or 
 withheld as we see fit, becomes an imperative obligation ; for 
 it is the only possible bond by which we can hold our place 
 in God's created order, the one highway between self and all 
 other things and beings. Not to love is, at last, utter and 
 absolute separation from all else, even from self. It is the 
 outer darkness, where existence itself becomes bewilderment. 
 To get into this love, which is God, and respond to its mighty 
 harmonies, and know its perfect peace, this is the great and 
 final achievement. Consider this truth until you have mas- 
 tered it. or at least got some glimpse of it, and then put it 
 beside the revelation of this love in the Son of God ; and you 
 see at once why you are to love him. It is simply putting 
 yourself in accord with the ruling principle of the universe. 
 It is falling into line with the eternal order. For the whole 
 universe is wrought into him ; he is the only begotten Son 
 of the Father ; in him the entire order of nature is set forth ; 
 in him the whole of God's will is perfectly obeyed ; he is the 
 perfect Righteousness. And in him the full order and will of 
 eternal love is brought into humanity, where human love — 
 your love and mine — may lay hold of it, and play into it. 
 Nor can there be conceived any other method by which 
 human love can enter into the eternal love. It must go by 
 the eternally ordained path of personality, and the personality 
 mu.st be a manifestation of all the fulness of God. Hence, 
 there is no other name under heaven wherein we must be 
 .saved. 
 
THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 465 
 
 CAZNEAU PALFREY. 
 
 [The Christian Register. Boston: Aug. 20, 1885.] 
 
 It is said that the pages of the New Testament exhibit a 
 complete portrait of an absohitely perfect Hfe. 
 
 Let lis examine that assertion. In what sense is it true? 
 Can it be Hterally true ? Is a complete verbal description of 
 an absolutely perfect life even possible ? All language is in 
 its nature imperfect, and cannot adequately represent perfec- 
 tion. Words that stand for spiritual ideas are not mathe- 
 matical terms, but symbols. They do not exactly define, but 
 suggest merely ; and they will suggest more or less according 
 to the intelligence and sensibility of the hearer or reader. In 
 every process of communication by speech, the mind of the 
 recipient is an essential factor. A delineation of moral excel- 
 lence which should produce the same impression upon all 
 minds and hearts is inconceivable. 
 
 Besides, would it not be presumptuous to say, " I have 
 examined the character of Christ, as it appears in the New 
 Testament, and have found it perfect " ? Would it not be 
 claiming that I fully comprehend Christ, and that I carry within 
 me an infallible standard of judgment, by which I am able to 
 pronounce finally on moral perfection? One who could so 
 speak of Christ would no longer need him. More, unspeak- 
 ably more than this, is Christ to the soul. He is practically 
 an inexhaustible, an infinite, object of contemplation. We 
 cannot comprehend him : we can only apprehend him. The 
 glad and grateful acknowledgment of the Christian heart is : 
 I find in him the supply of all my spiritual needs. He speaks 
 to that which is deepest and highest, and quickens into new 
 life all that is good within me. All my moral ideas are raised 
 and purified by the contemplation of his excellence. In him 
 I ' ave ever before me an embodied ideal of a divine life. So 
 he is to me a perpetual source of light, strength, and inspira- 
 tion. And the more profoundly I study him, and the more I 
 
466 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 understand of his spirit, and the more of it I am able to 
 transfuse into my own life, the more do I see in him, and the 
 more do I gain from him. 
 
 Here, again, the question may be asked, not without 
 incredulous wonder, Can it be that all this is in the contents 
 and effects of those brief narratives, so fragmentary, so dis- 
 connected, so difficult to be chronologically arranged and 
 woven into a continuous and consistent history ? To this 
 question the answer comes from all . the ages of Christian 
 experience : Yes ; all this, and more that will be disclosed to 
 future ages, is contained in and proceeds from those same 
 imperfect narratives, provided only there be the heart prepared 
 to receive it ; for the word is a seed, and must find a fit soil 
 before it can spring up and bear fruit. In all the generations 
 of the Church, reverent and seeking hearts hav'e pondered 
 over those narratives ; and there has perpetually risen from 
 them the living Christ. Is it said that all have not seen alike, 
 that different Christs have appeared to different individuals 
 and ages? It is true that no one has seen the whole. Each 
 sees but a part ; different beholders see different parts, and 
 some may not see rightly. Is it said that we find in the 
 narrative no more than we bring to it, — that, as is sometimes 
 said, every man constructs his own Christ out of the recorded 
 facts ? Every experienced disciple of Christ knows how untrue 
 that is. Christ and the human soul are indeed adapted to 
 each other, else were he no Christ to us. We may admit, 
 indeed, with George Fox, that there is a latent Christ in every 
 human soul. To that the historical Christ speaks. His spirit 
 moves over the soul, and brings forth from the secret depths 
 of unconsciousness all that is most like itself. We cannot 
 bring it forth ourselves. The soul cannot furnish itself with 
 a new ideal. It cannot inspire itself. As well might we try 
 to lift ourselves from the earth by clasping our own loodies. 
 The philosophy of the day speaks, at least by the lips of some 
 of its adherents, of a spiritual environment by which the 
 spiritual nature is developed, as the intellectual, moral, and 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 467 
 
 aesthetic faculties are developed by their respective environ- 
 ments. Unquestionably there is such an environment, which 
 has embraced all men, and been more or less effectual in 
 their spiritual education. Such is the doctrine of the proem 
 of John's Gospel. When Christ came, he stepped into this 
 environment ; and then it became, oh, how unspeakably more 
 potential than ever before 1 
 
 When God sends forth a new spiritual power in the 
 person of a living messenger, it will inevitably happen that 
 a history of its introduction into the world will sooner or later 
 be written ; and the record of the facts and circumstances 
 attending it will become very precious, and will perform an 
 important office in preserving the purity of the power, and 
 helping its operation. But the first product of such a force 
 will be, not a book, but a church. It will first be felt in living 
 hearts, and will spread from soul to soul by a holy contagion, 
 and will manifest itself to the w^orld by an altered society. It 
 is only when the first intensity of the power has somewhat 
 subsided, that a record bemns to be thougfht of. The Church 
 lived certainly a generation without the Gospels w^e now have. 
 Yet it knew Christ ; it partook of his spirit ; it possessed a 
 Christian consciousness. And, when our present Gospels 
 w^ere brought to it they were received, not as a new authority, 
 but as embodying one already recognized. The Church in 
 effect sat in judgment on them, and accepted them because 
 they best represented the Christ it had always known. 
 
 It may help us somewhat to understand the wonderful 
 efficiency of the Christian records, to consider the use of all 
 other historical records. Every student of history has a circle 
 of acquaintances in the ages of the past. He knows, more 
 or less intimately, many distinguished men, who have acted 
 prominent parts in the affairs of the world, and have shown 
 by conspicuous deeds what manner of men they w^ere. I 
 know, for example, to some extent, Socrates, Alexander, Cicero, 
 St. Francis, Cromwell, Washington, Franklin. They are real 
 persons to me. How can this be ? It is because they were 
 
468 • TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 men, and I am a man. By reason of a common nature, I 
 know what the acts recorded of them mean. I understand 
 the dispositions and feelings from which they proceeded ; I 
 discern the character imphed in them. Often a very simple 
 fact has a profound significance. It lets us deeply into a 
 man's soul. It not only makes itself manifest, but reveals 
 many things that lie about it. I put together all the facts 
 recorded of a man ; and out of the synthesis there springs a 
 living man, with not merely all the qualities implied in the 
 facts, but with all related qualities, all that my human instincts 
 teach me are requisite to complete the portrait. All historical 
 personages do not, indeed, impress us with equal vividness, 
 nor do any with absolute completeness. Neither do the 
 persons whom we meet daily face to face. They become real 
 persons to us in proportion to the force that is in them, 
 according to the quantity of being they represent. 
 
 And if that is the condition of personal influence, what 
 shall we say of the power of Christ's life ? He was the most 
 intense personality the world ever saw. He included all 
 human possibilities ; he was pure spiritual power, — the power 
 of God. Not only was his life of uncompromising fidelity 
 to the highest, but the highest to which he was so faithful was 
 a higher than the heart of man had conceived, but which, 
 when presented to it, it can appreciate and accept. Therefore 
 it is that I say that Christ speaks with power to the human 
 heart as it had never been spoken to before. This power so 
 far transcends in degree that of all other historical persons, as 
 to amount to a difference in kind. His relation to history is 
 peculiar. He is in the record, but the record cannot contain 
 him. The record reveals him rather by what it suggests, than 
 by what it can possibly describe or define. The recortl 
 introduces him to us, but he establishes and explains the 
 record. 
 
 His sj)irit, as we receive it from the whole narrative, 
 enables us to sit in judgment on particular parts of it, and 
 to pronounce upon errors and misapprehensions into which 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 469 
 
 its authors may have fallen. The integrity of our conception 
 of Christ does not depend on the settlement of any questions 
 respecting the origin of the records, or the method of their 
 composition. It is not affected by the various readings of 
 ancient manuscripts, or by the different renderings of divers 
 versions. It is well that all the resources of critical and 
 exegetical skill should have been exhausted on the text of 
 writings so precious ; but let it not be thought that any vital 
 issue is involved in such investio^ations. For learnino- the 
 mind and imbibing the spirit of Christ, nothing more is 
 essential than the plain English Testament that we read at 
 our mother's knee. The chief qualification for gaining what 
 the record has to reveal, is the heart of a reverent, loving, 
 sympathetic disciple. 
 
 CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON. 
 
 [Hands Full of Honey, and Other Sermons. New York: 1SS4. Pp. 164, 170, 172.] 
 
 In these days, certain w^ould-be wise men are laboriously 
 attempting to constitute a church without Christ, and to set 
 forth salvation without a Saviour ; but their Babel building is 
 as a bowino- wall and a tottering fence. The centre of the 
 blessed mystery of the Gospel is Christ himself, in his person. 
 ... I go a little farther still. As it must be Christ himself, 
 and none other, it must also be Christ himself rather than 
 any thing which Christ gives. I was thinking the other da)f 
 how different Christ is from all the friends and helpers we 
 have. They bring us good things, but Jesus brings us him- 
 self. He does not merely give us wisdom, righteousness, 
 sanctification, and redemption ; but he himself, of God, is 
 made all these things to us. Hence we can never do without 
 him. 
 
 When you are very ill you are pleased to see the doctor ; 
 but when you are getting well you say to yourself, " I shall be 
 glad to see the back of the good man, for that will be a sure 
 
470 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 sign that I am off the sick-Hst." Ah ! but when Jesus heals 
 a soul, he wants to see Jesus more than ever. Our longing 
 for the constant compans' of our Lord is the sign that we 
 are eettine well. He who lono-s for Tesus to abide with 
 hini forever is healed of his plague. We never outgrow 
 Christ. . . . 
 
 If you have your foot upon the threshold of pure gold, and 
 your finger upon the latch of the gate of pearl, you now need 
 Christ more than ever you did. I feel persuaded that you are 
 of Rutherford's mind, when he cried to have his heart enlarged 
 till it was as big as heaven, that he might hold all Christ within 
 it. 
 
 Christ alone is enough. Mark this. Nothing must be 
 placed with Christ as if it were necessary to him. Some hold 
 a candle to the sun, by preaching Christ and man's philosophy, 
 or their own priestcraft. When the blessed rain comes fresh 
 from heaven, they would fain perfume it with their own dainty 
 extract of fanc)-. As for God's blessed air, fresh from the 
 eternal hills, they dream it cannot be pure unless, by scientific 
 experiments, they load it with their smoke and cloud. 
 
 Come, clear out ; let us see the sun. We want not your 
 rushlights. Away with your gauzes and your fineries. Let 
 the clear sunlight enter, let the holy water drop from heaven ; 
 we want not your scented essences. Out of the way, and let 
 the fresh air blow about us. There is nothing like it lor the 
 health and strenpfth of the soul.' 
 
 JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 
 
 [The Oricinality ok Jksus. The Sxturday Kvcning Gazette, Uoston : Feb. 25, 1SS2.] 
 
 Highest of all are the souls who have become fountains 
 of spiritual life, satisfying the longing of the human heart for 
 goodness and God. Those who have held up the great law 
 of righteousness, wlio have taught mankind justice, who have 
 inspired the heart with generosity, who have awakened and 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 47 1 
 
 satisfied the thirst for divine things, — these are the most ori- 
 ginal of all, for to them men trace the origin of the noblest 
 work done on earth. These sit in the highest places, among 
 the immortals, the prophets, saints, pacifiers of the world. 
 They have been sent by God in every time and to every land, 
 divine teachers to lift men above what is merely earthly, and 
 to show to them the eternal world m which God dwells. 
 
 And who can doubt that Jesus is highest among them 
 all? He is highest of all because he went down deepest of all. 
 He knew the needs of the soul better than any other. He 
 most of all reverenced the humanity of man. Human nature 
 was dear to him in every form. No one was too low, too 
 mean, too sinful, for his divine love. This is his great honor, 
 his chief dignity. . . . 
 
 He was the creator of a higher form of faith, hope, and 
 love, than had ever existed before. It is Pascal who says that 
 the whole outward universe of suns and stars is nothing when 
 weiofhed against a single thought in the mind of man ; that 
 all the thougrhts in the minds of all rational men are nothino- 
 when weighed against one act of faith in God and eternity; 
 and that all the faith of mankind is nothing when placed in 
 the scale against a single throb of orenerous love. In the 
 soul of Jesus all are found, — the insight which shows to us 
 the highest truths, the faith which made him one with God, 
 and the love, mightiest of all, which led him to crive his life 
 to the service of mankind. Thus he fulfilled his own saying, 
 " He that exalteth himself shall be abased, but he that hum- 
 bleth himself shall be exalted." . . . 
 
 This was the type of originality of which Jesus was the 
 loftiest specimen ever shown on earth. He went up by going 
 down. He went down in sympathy with the poor, the lepers, 
 the publicans, the hard worldly men, the weak sinful creatures 
 around him. We are apt to be disgusted by different forms 
 of evil. We shrink from some kinds of coarseness, falsehood, 
 meanness, cruelty, sensuality, ferocity. But Jesus had a heart 
 large enough to pity the poor wretch whose miser)^ is that he 
 
4/2 TESTIMONY OF NLXETEEmN CENTURIES 
 
 is possessed by such demons. He saw the human soul in all, 
 and he loved it, and was willing to do and bear any thing in 
 order to save it. This is his true glor)% his divine originality. 
 This is what has made him the leader of the human race. . . . 
 
 He came to fulfil all righteousness ; that is, to fill it full 
 of life on every side. He combined in his soul antagonist 
 and opposite virtues, so that they were no longer opposed, 
 but were resolved into perfect harmony. He could hate the 
 sin, yet be merciful to the sinner. He joined the love of God 
 with the love to man ; toleration of all the innocent joys of 
 this world, with entire self-denial when duty called for it. All 
 the shackles of tradition fell from him : he was the- most 
 radical reformer ever seen on earth. To him the sabbath 
 was nothing unless it helped man. He taught that man need 
 worship neither in the temple, nor on Mount Gerizim, but in 
 spirit and in truth, in the closet of the heart, not with many 
 repetitions. He taught the shortest of all prayers ever taught 
 by prophet to his disciples. It did not matter to him what a 
 man ate or drank, whether he fasted or not ; ablution and 
 ritual were nothing in his eyes. The man who does the will 
 of God is he who builds his house on the rock, never to be 
 shaken. 
 
 Jesus did not wish men to say to him, Lord, Lord ; but 
 to do justly, and love mercy. Thus he taught a truly universal 
 religion, a religion both for this world and for the world to 
 come. 
 
 This was the originality of Christ ; not discovering some 
 truth which had never been thouo-ht of before, but summinor 
 ujj into one fulness and harmony all the great truths ; uniting 
 this life and the next ; making time and eternity one. We 
 call one man a saint, another a hero, another a martyr, another 
 a sage, another a reformer, another a philanthropist. We 
 never think of giving any of these names to Jesus, but yet 
 all ol them were in him. He was saint, hero, martyr, prophet, 
 philanthropist, reformer, all in one, but all so harmonized that 
 neither element is prominent. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 473 
 
 This is his perfection. It is fulness ; the complete, well- 
 rounded, entire human life, in which man, being perfect, 
 becomes one with God. 
 
 No one can question the fact that Jesus is still the actual 
 leader of that part of the race which leads the rest. In this 
 is his originality, that he has originated and still carries on 
 the deepest, loftiest, and widest movement ever known in this 
 world. 
 
 WILLIAM GARDEN BLAIKIE. 
 
 [The Public Ministry of. Our Lord. New York: 1S83. Pp. 5, 6, 115, 116.] 
 
 With all his naturalness and social likeness to us, and with 
 all his participation in the infirmities of our nature, Jesus never 
 shows kinship with us in our sins. It is a strange yet com- 
 mon experience, that out of the very blunders of great and 
 good men, and of their failings in duty, there springs up a 
 fellow-feeling between them and ordinary mortals, otherwise 
 hardly possible. How often do we find that one touch of 
 fallen nature makes us kin ! When Moses strikes the rock, 
 when Elijah flies to the desert, when Jonah takes passage in 
 the ship, when Jeremiah pleads his youth, when Paul and Bar- 
 nabas fall out about Mark, we feel that they were men of like 
 passions with ourselves ; and possibly, for this very reason, we 
 appreciate more highly the noble service which, despite their 
 infirmities, they were able to render. We see them not as 
 mere lay figures, invested by fanciful writers with every ima- 
 ginable excellence, and quite beyond the sphere of humanity, 
 of the order of angels rather than men ; but of flesh and blood 
 like ourselves, — not without hasty tempers and carnal fears, 
 hearts that could be moved by temptation, and consciences 
 that could be paralyzed for a time by sin. 
 
 But there is nothing of this kind in our blessed Lord. He 
 never falls, never slips, never sins. It is very remarkable, that, 
 in spite of this, we should feel so near to him. That it should 
 be so, is due to the intensity of his love, the depth of his 
 
474 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 humility, and the fulness of his humanity. He touches us so 
 closely at all points where contact is possible, that we, for the 
 time, are hardly conscious of the points where the distance is 
 so great that contact is not possible. The woman that washed 
 Christ's feet with her tears was separated from him morally by 
 a whole universe, but compassion drew his heart into closest 
 contact with hers. As two houses that are connected by a 
 mutual gable on one side, may be said on the other side to be 
 separated by the whole circumference of the globe, so Christ, 
 in his humanity, could come into closest intimacy even with 
 those from whom, in a higher sense, he was separated by 
 infinity. In his dealings with his disciples, his gentleness, his 
 forbearance, his consideration, broke down every barrier to 
 loving and confidential intercourse. As we study his life and 
 ministry, we come under the influence of this attractive power. 
 
 From the mind of Christ, truth came out, not in little 
 sparks, but in brilliant flashes ; not in drops, but in gushing 
 streams. Unlike Socrates and Plato, and the other wise men 
 of the early world, he did not grope and guess, but he walked 
 steadily, fearlessly erect, through realms of darkness and 
 mystery. He seemed endued with a new spiritual sense. 
 The ways and purposes of God, hidden from our view so far 
 away in the depths, seemed to him a familiar theme. The 
 phrases that are so often in the mouths of the greatest phi- 
 losophers, about the limitation of our knowledge, were never 
 used by him except with reference to one thing, — a day 
 which not even the Son knew, but only the Father. 
 
 He did not, like Newton, compare himself to a child 
 gathering pebbles on the beach while the great ocean of truth 
 lay unc^xplored before him. He did not, like Butler, speak of 
 the government of God as a scheme imperfectly comj^re- 
 hended. He did not, like Paul, contrast the state in which 
 we sec as through a glass darkly, with the state in which we 
 are to see face to face. Not only did he appear to know 
 certain])- all that Ik; taught, but he appeared also to [)ossess 
 great stores of divine truth which he kept in reserve. Nor 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 475 
 
 can it be said that in all this he showed a trace of preten- 
 tiousness. 
 
 His lessons have stood the test of eighteen hundred years. 
 All that time it is his torch that has been flaminof in the van 
 of the truth-loving host, and guiding their steps towards the 
 land of promise. All that time the great spiritual leaders of 
 the race have owned allegiance to him. No spiritual seer has 
 arisen to overtop him, or to give a new direction to the steps 
 of men bent on learning the ways of God. 
 
 CHARLES LORING BRACE. 
 
 [Gesta Christi. New York : 1SS4. Pp. 1-3, 271, 272.] 
 
 At a certain era in the world's history, — not ver}' remote 
 as compared with the duration of the human race on the earth, 
 — there appeared a new moral force in human life. It origi- 
 nated in an obscure tribe of a remote province of the Roman 
 Empire, and was embodied in the personality, life, and teach- 
 ings of a remarkable being, — Jesus the Christ. 
 
 The moral truths of these teachings were not absolutely 
 new, — as indeed the principles of morality rest on the princi- 
 ples of human nature, and must be known more or less clearly 
 to all men, — but they were presented with such unequalled 
 simplicity and earnestness, and illustrated by a life and 
 character of such unexampled elevation and purity, and 
 accompanied with spiritual truths so profound and universal, 
 as well as with supernatural claims, that the whole formed a 
 new power in the moral renovation of man ; in other words, 
 a reliction claimino- to be absolute and universal for all ares 
 and races and circumstances. 
 
 In every age were simple men and vvomen, not known 
 perhaps to history, or even to those of their own time, whose 
 souls and lives were filled with the principles of this new 
 faith. These gradually affected social habits and practices, 
 sometimes changing them before they influenced legislation, 
 
476 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 sometimes by a favoring public accident being able to reform 
 laws and public officials, thus day by day by imperceptible 
 steps purifying Church, State, and people ; gradually causing 
 certain great abuses and wrongs to melt away before the 
 fervency of their spirit and the innocence and beneficence of 
 their lives. These have been inspired by Christ. Though 
 for the most part unknown perhaps to ecclesiastical records, 
 or to the historians of empires, they have illustrated and 
 transmitted the divine truths which they received from him. 
 
 In lives of purity and human brotherhood, in honesty, 
 faithfulness, compassion, and true humanity, they have sought 
 to follow their great leader. They have formed the true and 
 invisible Church of Christ. While living for him, they have 
 lived for the human race. Their spirit and their sacrifices 
 have made it possible that ages hence some of the great evils 
 of mankind should come to an end, that some tears should 
 be forever wiped away, and a fair prospect be held forth of a 
 distant future of humanity, justice, and righteousness. The 
 victories they have won in their silent struggles, and be- 
 queathed to us, were really the Gesta Christi, — the achieve- 
 ments of Christ. 
 
 Christianity purified the morals of woman, bound her to 
 sacred duties as wife and mother, pledged her to labors of 
 humanity when single, and everywhere sought to make her 
 worthy of the homage she began to inspire. It changed the 
 low idea of marriage, common even in the German tribes. 
 It protected woman's rights and her property, and throughout 
 Europe encouraged the system of dower which was so impor- 
 tant a safeguard in a wild age. Family life in these disturbed 
 centuries was first purified by the religion of Christ, and from 
 that has sprung wliatever of good now exists in European 
 social liie. The best human condition which has been trans- 
 mitted, which gives the truest fore-gleams of a higher earthly 
 life yet to be attained, is marriage ; and no power known in 
 history has doiK; so much to elevate and strengthen that, as 
 the teachings of the great Master. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 477 
 
 CYRUS A. BARTOL. 
 
 [Jesus and His Critics. Boston: 1S85. Pp. 10, 11.] 
 
 Are great men so plenty we can aftbrd to throw them 
 away ? You do not try to belittle Homer, Shakspeare, 
 Alfred, Milton, Cadmus the Phoenician, or Columbus the 
 Genoese. You talk of Jesus as disappearing ! You do not 
 ask them to disappear ; and he will not vanish from the mind's 
 eye, or go away from his followers' sight, as long ago he did 
 that he might not overpower or stand between and eclipse 
 God. Free religion, so called, will not displace Christianity, 
 until, beyond notions and words, it shows a higher than 
 Christian character. Fine persons will prevail over fine 
 abstractions. I admire talents ; but goodness is the greatest 
 talent of all. Men may be radical, and also very low ! 
 
 But, does one inquire, what is the Christian religion but a 
 tradition taking the place of the fresh inspiration we need ? 
 I reply, surely the same Spirit as of old lives and works and 
 speaks. It is not dead nor dumb. But our homage is for 
 what it has been and done already. Our love of our race is 
 for what it has been and done. In the boat of humanity, 
 containinof more than Noah's ark, we have arrived thus far on 
 the stream of time. Could you cut off the stream behind, the 
 boat would not go on, but go down by the stern. Only 
 the flow far back, even from the Eternal Fount, enables her, 
 and us in her, to move on another inch ; and we will not throw 
 over the chief pilot still on board, till we can pick up a better 
 on the way ; for he that steers and guides also feeds. 
 
 I saw a cloud of hundreds on hundreds of sparrows 
 yonder; and I marvelled what drew them so together on 
 the street, till I saw one scattering crumbs from a doorway. 
 Human creatures have assembled, and still meet, in the name 
 of Jesus the Christ ; for what reason, but that they have from 
 his hand the bread of life ? By a law of nourishment and 
 subsistence, — a law of individual and social and civilized man. 
 
478 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 however the critical and metaphysical observer in his watch- 
 tower of lonely observation may fancy himself above it, — 
 the condition of the race, from Russia to the United States, 
 by this Christ-ideal has been lifted and sustained, like the 
 continents, by a central force of fire, above the level of the 
 sea ; Jesus in his humility, like a strong man stooping to 
 raise a heavy w^eight, having taken hold of and elevated the 
 world. As, when America or Europe rose from the primeval 
 flood, all the shores and zones rose together, so mankind in 
 all its tribes rises at once; such a religion as ours being not 
 the only exalting power, yet a main motive with the rest that 
 co-operate. The critic says the figure of Jesus has to be pain- 
 fully excavated from the record of the past. But he will 
 please excuse us from his digging ; for to the Christian believer 
 this great Leader is no buried statue, as on the Tiber or Po, 
 and no fossil remain, — but a livinof form outlined with ijurity, 
 instinct with love, and, in a holy imagination, moving and 
 walking still, with no survivors that are too good, or that need 
 to be too proud, to follow in his steps. 
 
 As to this past, whose annals we think so long, what is its 
 memorial but a speck, a pin's point, in the geological and 
 astronomical time of which no register remains ? I profess to 
 you that every so-called ancient worthy I read of, reflected in 
 the mirror of my mind, appears not behind but before me ; 
 and on the circle of the eternal dial, One that was lowly and 
 lordly at the head. 
 
 JOHN S. C. ABBOTT. 
 
 [The History of Christianity. Boston: iSSi. Pp. 495, 496.] 
 
 Socrates, unenlightened by revelation, simply through the 
 teachings of his own honest mind, declares him only to be a 
 good man, who tries to make himself, and all whom he can 
 influence, as perfect as possible. The definition which Jesus 
 gives of goodness, even more comprehensive and bcauiilul. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 479 
 
 is, that man should love his Father God with all his heart, 
 and his brother man as himself. This is the only real good- 
 ness, — angelic goodness, divine goodness. Now, it maybe 
 safely said that you cannot find at the present time, or through 
 all past ages, a truly good man, in either of the above defini- 
 tions of the term, whose character has not been modelled by 
 the principles laid down by Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 ALFRED EDERSHEIM. 
 
 [The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. New York: 1SS4. Vol. i. pp. 4S6, 487.] 
 
 It was evening. The sun was setting, and the sabbath 
 past. All that day it had been told from home to home what 
 had been done in the synagogue ; it had been whispered 
 what had taken place in the house of their neighbor Simon. 
 This one conviction had been borne in on them all, that "with 
 authority " he spake, with authority and power he commanded 
 even the unclean spirits, and they obeyed. No scene more 
 characteristic of the Christ than that on this autumn evening 
 at Capernaum. One by one the stars had shone out over the 
 tranquil lake and the festive city, lighting up earth's darkness 
 with heaven's soft brilliancy, as if they stood there witnesses 
 that God had fulfilled his good promise to Abraham. 
 
 On that evening no one in Capernaum thought of busi- 
 ness, pleasure, or rest. There must have been many homes 
 of sorrow, care, and sickness there, and in the populous 
 neighborhood around. To them, to all, had the door of hope 
 now been opened. Truly a new sun had risen on them with 
 healing in his wings. No disease too desperate, when even 
 the demons owned the authority of his mere rebuke. From 
 all parts they bring them, — mothers, widows, wives, fathers, 
 children, husbands, — their loved ones, the treasures they had 
 almost lost ; and the whole city throngs, a hushed, solemnized, 
 overawed multitude, expectant, waiting at the door of Simon's 
 dwelling. There they laid them along the street up to the 
 
480 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 market-place, on their beds, or brought them with beseeching 
 look and word, \\1iat a symbol of this world's misery, need, 
 and hope! what a s)mbol, also, of what the Christ really is as 
 a consoler in the world's manifold woe ! Never, surely, was he 
 more truly the Christ, nor is he in symbol more truly such to 
 us and to all time, than when, in the stillness of that evening, 
 under the starlit sky, he went through that suffering throng, 
 laying his hands in the blessing of healing on every one of 
 them, and casting out many devils. No picture of the Christ 
 more dear to us than this of the unlimited healing of whatever 
 disease of body or soul. 
 
 ALEXANDER BALMAN BRUCE. 
 
 [The Miraculous Element in the Gospels. New York: 1SS6. Pp. 321-323, 
 
 338-343] 
 
 In nothing is Christ's essential goodness more conspicu- 
 ously apparent than in that department of his conduct in 
 which an undue passionateness of temper is supposed to have 
 revealed itself. His antagonism to Pharisaism meant zeal for 
 the great matters of the law, — justice, mercy, and faith, — 
 neglected under a system which devoted exclusive attention 
 to the petty rules of the scribes ; for the honor of God, 
 whose character was fatally misrepresented by men who 
 claimed to be in specially intimate relations with the Divine 
 Being; for the well-being of the people, tyrannized over by 
 religious guides who laid on their shoulders burdens grievous 
 to be borne, and cursed them when they refused to bear their 
 yoke, it revealed the purity of Christ's spirit, that he dis- 
 cerned so clearly through all plausible disguises the essen- 
 tially immoral, ungodly, and inhuman character of Pharisaical 
 righteousness ; it marks his passionate love of righteousness, 
 that, regardless of consequences, he had the courage openly 
 to express his convictions ; and it shows the depth of these 
 convictions, that he persisted in giving utterance to them with 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 48 1 
 
 ever-increacing- intensity of language, till death on the cross 
 sealed his testimony. 
 
 Along with intense abhorrence of counterfeit righteous- 
 ness, the negative side of goodness, Jesus exhibited in his 
 public conduct its positive side, in the form of an ardent love 
 to man, especially to the poor, the suffering, and the sinful. 
 It was a prominent part of his teaching, that love fulfilled the 
 law ; and if that be a true doctrine, he must be allowed to 
 have satisfied the law's requirements. No fault can be found 
 with him here. Faults, many and grave, were found in his 
 behavior as the friend of man while he lived ; but these faults 
 are now seen to be to his honor. It was simply because his 
 love was so new and unparalleled, that he was blamed. It 
 overflowed conventional barriers, and men exclaimed, " Be- 
 hold a man gluttonous, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publi- 
 cans and sinners ! " 
 
 Love, in Judaea as in all other lands, was deemed a good 
 thinof within certain limits ; but love exceeding these limits 
 had against it the law of public opinion, and average attain- 
 ment. It was wrong to love social and moral outcasts, and 
 unclean Gentiles. Jesus demonstrated at once the originality 
 and greatness of his love, by disregarding all such artificial 
 restrictions. If he did appear to submit to restrictions in 
 reference to Gentiles, the limitation of his love to the Jewish 
 people was not in his heart, but only in his public action. He 
 loved Pagans not less than Israelites ; and the alleged traces 
 of narrow Jewish prejudice are similar to the imaginary dis- 
 coveries of those whose philosophy requires them to convict 
 him of imperfection. In his heart the wall of separation was 
 already broken down, and the sunny isles of Greece shook 
 hands with the barren hills of Palestine. 
 
 The sun is known by the brightness of his beams : no one 
 who has seen both daylight and night-light, can mistake the 
 moon for the sun, or the sun for the moon. Even so, simply 
 by looking at Jesus, and walking in the light of his teaching, 
 we discern him to be the great luminary of the spiritual world. 
 
482 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 The Pure One, as was to be expected, is the one who 
 most clearly sees and shows the nature of God, and of man, 
 and of righteousness. The clearness of his vision is another 
 proof of his purity ; for the source of his knowledge is not 
 books, or the schools, but his own heart. In him is the true 
 light, because in him is the true life. But the point at pres- 
 ent insisted on is, that the light of Jesus is true, genuine, 
 sun-like. Who can doubt it ? What better, more reasonable, 
 more acceptable, doctrine concerning God ever has, or ever 
 can be, tauo-ht, than his doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood ? 
 Compare with it the doctrine of the man who most resembled 
 Jesus in spirit, — Buddha, the " Light of Asia," — which was, 
 virtually, that there is no God distinct from the order of the 
 world. Doubtless the verdict of modern philosophy may be, 
 that Jesus spake the more poetically, but Buddha the more 
 truly. But even philosophers may yet come to see that 
 poetry and truth here go together ; and that where the sub- 
 ject of thought is the Eternal Source and Centre of the 
 Universe, the highest, noblest, most beautiful things we can 
 think are likely to be the truest. Judged by that test, noth- 
 ing can be more credible than Christ's doctrine of God. 
 
 Kindred in character, and equally worthy of acceptance, 
 was his doctrine of man ; which was in effect that human 
 nature is made in the divine image, and that man at his worst 
 is still God's son, redeemable, and worth redeeming. Here, 
 also, he may be thought to have taught rather poetically or 
 pathetically than truly, and to have spoken of man in a way 
 that does credit, indeed, to the kindness of his heart, but 
 does not reveal deep insight into truth. But here again the 
 heart is seen to be the most reliable guide to truth, and love 
 to be the mother of wisdom. The loving heart of Jesus told 
 him that the people who were given up as helpless by the 
 reputedly wise in Israel, were not irrecoverably lost to God 
 and righteousness. It even emboldened him to believe that 
 the last might become first, the greatest sinner the greatest 
 saint ; that from the \ery scum of societ)- might come the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 483 
 
 most devoted citizen of the divine kingdom. To the Phari- 
 sees, such ideas appeared wild absurdities. But, after all, 
 who was right, — the Son of man, or his critics who so often 
 inquired, "Why doth he eat with publicans and sinners?" 
 
 The insight of Jesus has been justified by the history of 
 Christendom, in which his doctrine of the worth of man has 
 borne much beneficent fruit ; by the long roll of saints, which 
 include many who loved much because they had been for- 
 given much ; by the course of all the great social movements 
 which, as Renan has pointed out, have germinated amid the 
 so-called corruption of great cities ; and by the tendency of 
 modern politics to transfer power from the privileged aristoc- 
 racies of wealth, blood, and culture, to the great masses of 
 the people. 
 
 In teaching these two doctrines, Jesus was not only a true 
 light, but in the strictest sense a light of the world. For they 
 are the fundamental truths of universal religion ; they consti- 
 tute together a gospel of hope for entire humanity. They 
 are not only free from all particularistic elements, but they 
 exclude these, and involve the abrogation of all such envious 
 distinctions and restrictions as happen to exist. God, in rela- 
 tion to man, a Father ; man, as such, his child. In what 
 country could these simple yet momentous propositions be 
 either unintelligible or unwelcome ? 
 
 Jesus occupies a different position tow^ards the kingdom 
 from that of ancient seers. To them it was a land afar off, 
 dimly descried, and therefore described in dim outline. He 
 stands within the kingdom, and speaks of all things pertaining 
 to it as matters with which he is thoroughly at home. There- 
 fore his words concerning the kingdom and its righteousness 
 have a different value from those of Old-Testament prophets. 
 Their oracles stand written indelibly in the Hebrew books ; 
 but they have become obsolete descriptions of the Messianic 
 kingdom, and are valuable mainly as witnesses to the exist- 
 ence of such a kingdom. They are like old maps of countries 
 known to exist, but comparatively unexplored, superseded by 
 
484 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 new maps based upon information supplied by travellers who 
 have passed through the once-unknown lands in all directions. 
 The words of Jesus are the new map of the Divine kingdom, 
 which supersedes all the old ones with their large blanks and 
 crude outlines. 
 
 One feature in the wisdom of Jesus has often struck 
 thoughtful readers of the Gospels, which, because it possesses 
 moral significance, may here be noticed. The wisdom of most 
 sages smells of the lamp. They can say very fine things if 
 you give them time to study in their closets. The wisdom of 
 Jesus is unstudied : he says impromptu the best possible 
 things, in the best possible way. His words ?iX^ jeiix d' esprit, 
 — inimitably felicitous, yet as profoundly significant as if they 
 were the result of years of reflection. " Whyeateth the Mas- 
 ter with publicans and sinners ? " — " They that be whole need 
 not a physician, but they that are sick." What a happy, spir- 
 ited, convincing reply, and how^ pregnant with meaning ! And 
 so it is always. What is the meaning of this ? Is it genius ? 
 Yes, and something more. It points to a high habit of spirit- 
 ual life. Jesus speaks thus, because he lives in the unclouded 
 region of truth. We labor and blunder and struggle in utter- 
 ance, because we live low down in the valley of moral com- 
 monplace. We find it difficult to speak wisely, because our 
 lives but seldom touch the heroic. 
 
 A. M. FAIRBAIRN. 
 
 [The Ctty of God. London: 1SS3. Pp. 217, 21S, 235, 236, 303, 304, 312-314.] 
 
 Time and culture have called into the field of human 
 thought the wealth of many centuries and lands, but no ri\al 
 to the words of Jesus has come. They shine peerless as ever, 
 — the sweetest, calmest, simplest, wisest words ever spoken 
 by man to men. So true are they, so mighty in their energy, 
 so soft in their strength, so reasonable, so fitted to make life 
 peaceful, gentle, happ)'. and holy, that men who ha\e wished 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 485 
 
 not to believe the Christian religion have often refused to part 
 with the truths and consolations of Jesus. And he so wove 
 his person and his truth together, that men cannot hold by it 
 without holding by him. His character lends their highest 
 charm to his words ; his words find their most perfect mirror 
 and illustration in his character. No one ever possessed as 
 he did that hardest and noblest veracity which consists in the 
 absolute agreement of doing and saying, being and expres- 
 sion. What he said of his Father in heaven becomes intelli- 
 gible to us through the way in which he lived as the Son. 
 The universal neisfhborliness and brotherhood he enforced 
 and declared found their highest sanction and example, not in 
 his parable of the Good Samaritan, but in his own spirit and 
 conduct, the brotherliness he embodied. The law of forgive- 
 ness he proclaimed, he fulfilled ; and the prayer on the cross, 
 " Father, forgive them," has made more men relent and be 
 merciful than the command, " Until seventy times seven." 
 The truth of the words reflects the truth of the person. They 
 are imperishable because he is universal, and what speaks of 
 him may not die. 
 
 We may not compare Jesus with the authors of the his- 
 torical religions, for the comparisons could be but a series of 
 contrasts. There are, indeed, but three universal religions, — 
 those of Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ. The first and the 
 last may not be spoken of together ; historical truth will allow 
 neither the founders nor the religions to be compared. With 
 Buddha it may seem otherwise. His, as seen through the 
 traditions of his people, was a beautiful spirit, pious, tender, 
 full of great love, the noblest enthusiasm for humanity, will- 
 ing at any moment to become a sacrifice, that he might lift 
 or lighten the world's pain. Buddhism has produced many 
 excellent virtues, sweet graces, meekness, benevolence, love. 
 But the comparison becomes at every point a fundamental 
 contrast. Buddhism has no deity, no real universalities ; may 
 be a missionary and aggressive religion, but is not a religion 
 that evokes and satisfies the ideal of man, making him thereby 
 
486 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 happier, completer, and more progressive. The rehgion of 
 Christ is one of boundless hope, but the religion of Buddha is 
 one of absolute despair. 
 
 Christ came to reveal the Father whence we came, whither 
 we o-o, and in whom we live ; but Buddha reveals only a 
 vacant heaven, a world without a divine heart to bleed for its 
 sorrows or forgive its sins, with only a moral order to control 
 its destinies, punish its crimes, and, what is to it only a less 
 evil or milder form of penalty, reward its virtues. Jesus loves 
 life, brings it and immortality to light, making the darkness of 
 death only the shadow of eternal day ; but Buddha hates life 
 as it now is, as it ever will be, thinks the highest bliss is to 
 escape into everlasting and impersonal quietude. 
 
 Buddha's is a pitiful, but not a human, religion ; is sad 
 and tender over the sorrows of man, but does not awaken, 
 uplift, and inspire his manhood. Its spread is the decay of 
 humanity, the death of the virtues that make a man the stren- 
 uous doer of righteousness, the lover of liberty, the worker of 
 order and progress. Christ is the opposite of all this ; and 
 where the relictions so differ, how can their founders be com- 
 pared? And so we say again, Christ has no fellow: he stands 
 alone. Of the founders of the great historical religions, it 
 may be said, they differ as star from star in glory ; but of him 
 who made the only universal religion, we must say, he is the 
 Sun, whose rising empties heaven of stars by filling it with 
 light. 
 
 There is a Christ of history, and a Christ in history ; and 
 we may say, if the one seems to face our faith like a contra- 
 diction, the other faces it like a victorious vindication. If 
 experience has proved any thing, it is this : the necessity 
 of Christ to the moral well-being and s|)iritual rest of man- 
 kind. It were as impossible to count the spirits to whom 
 he is a supreme necessity and a splenditl joy, as it would be 
 to resolve the stars that lie beyond the reach of the most 
 powerful t(^lescope. 
 
 As the stars of the Milky Way are able from their very 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 487 
 
 multitude, while singly indistinguishable, to girdle heaven 
 with a zone of light, so a cloud of witnesses no man can 
 number, forms the glorious pathway of Christ down the ages, 
 most luminous where the night seems darkest, most beautiful 
 where it melts into the light of day. The glory that lies 
 about his path adds beauty to him who walks in it, and he 
 comes towards us clothed in the radiant crarments woven for 
 him by a faith stronger than time, by a love mightier than 
 death, — "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and 
 forever." 
 
 It is strancre that he should be in his weakness so stronof, 
 in his poverty so rich. Men love power, rank ; feel the very 
 drapery it wears, to be a thing most wonderful. Majesty may 
 not be simple, must show its dignity by its pomp, prove its 
 might by its magnificence. An Augustus Caesar cannot suffer 
 Rome to remain a city of republican brick ; must leave it a 
 capital of imperial marble. But here is the wonder of his- 
 tory : the mightiest Person it knows came of poverty, and 
 died forsaken and alone. Nay, so great is he, that the regal 
 state had lessened rather than enlarged the majesty of his 
 person ; the imperial purple had hidden the glory which the 
 garments of his poverty revealed. 
 
 Caesar, placed in the obscurity which beset the Christ, had 
 been abolished : the Christ, placed amid the splendors of the 
 Caesars, had derived thence no glory, nothing that could have 
 added any thing to his influence or his fame. Strength like 
 his must have nothing between it and our humanity ; must 
 meet it face to face, in naked majesty as it were, that it may 
 the more perfectly subdue the evil, and command the good. 
 
 " The riches of Christ," in this sphere of action, we may 
 not attempt to describe ; they are too " unsearchable." Yet 
 there is one way in which we may, as at a glance, see and 
 measure their extent and variety, as reflected in the conscious- 
 ness of the saved, the hearts of his people. Think what he 
 has been and is, to those who have lived and yet live by faith 
 in him. Look at this moment over Enoland, over the conti- 
 
488 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 nents of the East and the West, and what see you ? Millions 
 of men and women, burdened with sin, laden with sorrow, 
 troubled with the anxieties and weariness of inconspicuous 
 and uneventful human life, possessed of the joys too common 
 to be noted, the hopes too familiar to cheer, have met, or are 
 meeting, to praise his name, to feel for an hour that shall 
 sanctify days penetrated with a new sense of the mercy of 
 God, lifted into fellowship with, and into participation in, his 
 eternity. 
 
 To-morrow, when the tide of busy life rolls high and 
 strong through our streets, it may seem for the time his 
 reign were over : but in lone garrets, where weakness strug- 
 gles with want, the knowledge of his presence is more than 
 strength ; in rooms made dark by the shadow of death, his 
 face sheds light about the spirit, and gives comfort and a 
 courage that fears no evil. He is active every moment, and, 
 at the touch of his hand, eyes red with weeping over sin or 
 loss grow clear and calm ; men tempted to evil turn to good ; 
 and those sick of the mean ambitions of the exchange or 
 the senate or society are born into a nobler manhood by the 
 faith of the Son of God. 
 
 Turn now toward the past, and ask whether any conscious- 
 ness has been so rich and varied in its riches as the con- 
 sciousness of obligation to Christ. Here come toward us an 
 army of great thinkers led by Paul the Apostle, bringing in 
 their ranks fathers and schoolmen, reformers and statesmen, 
 philosophers and divines, — men who by arduous thought 
 have builded systems, striven to interpret the universe, to 
 spell out the mysteries of the Divine nature, and to read the 
 riddle of the human ; and they come confessing that the spring 
 of all their actions, the one point that sheds liglit into the 
 darkness, order into the confusions of being, was the knowl- 
 edge of Christ. 
 
 There follow an imm(mse host of poets, headed by the 
 great masters of th(; Christian epic ; the sad and banished 
 Florentine who set before us in measures of wondrous nuisic 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 489 
 
 the hell that was a pit of darkness and house of pain, and the 
 heaven which was a mount of hght and home of joy ; and 
 the still sadder Englishman, whose " soul was like a star, 
 and dwelt apart," whose " voice had a sound as of the sea ; " 
 and they bring with them, out of many ages and lands and 
 tongues, the singers of sweet songs, giving words and wings 
 to the faith and hope, the penitence and joy, the aspirations 
 and the peace, of the saved soul ; and, as the host advances, 
 it breaks into a hymn in praise of him who woke their spirits 
 to music by filling them with the harmonies of his own rich 
 love. 
 
 And who are these that stand beside the poets ? Painters, 
 are they not ? The men who made our modern art, and made 
 it so full of light and tenderness and love, an interpretation 
 of the grace of heaven as it strove to create the graces of 
 earth. Builders, too, are there, — men who so believed and 
 loved, that they made the very stone quick with their faith 
 and affection ; and there, too, are the masters of music, — 
 men who heard harmonies human speech could not utter, 
 and translated them into a language so woven of multitudi- 
 nous sweet sounds, that the many-voiced orchestra alone can 
 express it. 
 
 And what do all these say ? To whom do they trace their 
 inspiration ? Whence have they their sublimest theme ? Do 
 they not, with the poets and thinkers, the saved and the 
 saintly of all Christian ages and tongues, join with one accord 
 to ascribe all praise unto him who, " though rich, yet for our 
 sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be 
 rich " ? 
 
 JAMES STALKER. 
 
 [The Life of Jesus Christ. Edinburgh: 1S80. Pp. 78-80, 88, 138.] 
 
 Love to men was the passion which directed and inspired 
 him. How it sprang up and grew in the seclusion of Naza- 
 reth, and on what motives it fed, we have not been informed 
 
490 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 with an)- detail. We only know that when he appeared in 
 public it was a master-passion, which completely swallowed up 
 self-love, filled him with boundless pity for human misery, and 
 enabled him to go forward, without once looking back, in the 
 undertaking to which he devoted himself. We only know in 
 general that it drew its support from the conception he had of 
 the infinite value of the human soul. It overleaped all the 
 limits which other men have put to their benevolence. Dif- 
 ferences of class and nationality usually cool men's interest in 
 each other. In nearly all countries it has been considered a 
 virtue to hate enemies, and it is generally agreed to loathe and 
 avoid those who have outraged the laws of respectability. But 
 he paid no heed to these conventions ; the overpowering sense 
 of preciousness which he perceived in enemy, foreigner, and 
 outcast alike, forbidding him. This marvellous love shaped 
 the purpose of his life. It gave him the most tender and 
 intense sympathy with every form of pain and misery. It 
 was his deepest reason for adopting the calling of a healer. 
 Wherever help was most needed, thither his merciful heart 
 drew him. 
 
 The crowning attribute of his human character was love to 
 God. It is the supreme honor and attainment of man, to be 
 one with God in feeling, thought, and purpose. Jesus had 
 this in perfection. To us it is very difficult to realize God. 
 The mass of men scarcely think about him at all, and even 
 the godliest confess that it costs them severe effort to disci- 
 pline their minds into the habit of constantly realizing him. 
 When we do think of him, it is with a painful sense of dis- 
 harmony between what is in us and what is in him. We 
 cannot remain even for a minute in his presence without the 
 sense, in greater or less degree, that his thoughts are not our 
 thoughts nor his ways our ways. With Jesus it was not so. 
 He realized God always. He never spent an hour, he never 
 did an action, without direct reference to him. 
 
 God was about him like; the? atmosphere he breathed, or 
 the sniili'-lu in which he walked. His thouohts were God's 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 491 
 
 thoughts, his desires were never in the least different from 
 God's ; his purpose, he was perfectly sure, was Ood's purpose 
 for him. How did he attain this absolute harmony with God ? 
 To a large extent it must be attributed to the perfect harmony 
 of his nature within itself, )et in some measure he got it by 
 the same means by which we laboriously seek it, — by the 
 study of God's thoughts and purposes in his Word, which, from 
 his childhood, was his constant delight ; by his cultivating, all 
 his life long, the habit of prayer, for which he found time even 
 when he had not time to eat ; and by patiently resisting temp- 
 tations to entertain thoughts and purposes of his different from 
 God's. This it was which Qrave him such faith and fearlessness 
 in his work. He knew that the call to do it had come from 
 God, and that he was immortal till it w^as done. This was 
 what made him. with all his self-consciousness and originality, 
 the pattern of meekness and submission ; for he was forever 
 brineingr everv thought and wish into obedience to his Father's 
 will. This was the secret of the peace and majestic calmness 
 which imparted such a grandeur to his demeanor in the most 
 trying hours of his life. He knew that the worst that could 
 happen to him was his Father's will for him, and this was 
 enough. He had ever at hand a retreat of perfect rest, silence, 
 and sunshine, into which he could retire from the clamor and 
 confusion around him. This was the great secret he bequeathed 
 to his followers when he said to them at parting, " Peace I leave 
 with you, my peace I give unto you." . . . 
 
 The sinlessness of Jesus has often been dwelt on as the 
 crowning attribute of his character. The Scriptures which so 
 frankly record the errors of their very greatest heroes, such as 
 Abraham and Moses, have no sins of his to record. There is 
 no more prominent characteristic of the saints of antiquity than 
 their penitence ; the more supremely saintly they were, the 
 more abundant and bitter were their tears and lamentations 
 over their sinfulness. But, although it is acknowledged by 
 all that Jesus was the supreme religious figure of history, he 
 never exhibited this characteristic of saintliness : he confessed 
 
492 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 710 sin. Must it not have been because he had no sin 
 to confess ? Yet the idea of sinlessness is too negative to 
 express the perfection of his character. 
 
 He was sinless, but he was so because he was absolutely 
 full of love. Sin against God is merely the expression of 
 lack of love to God ; and sin against men, of lack of love to 
 men. A being quite full of love to both God and man cannot 
 possibly sin against either. This fulness of love to his Father 
 and his fellow-men, ruling every expression of his being, 
 constituted the perfection of his character. . . . 
 
 No life ends for this world when the body by which it has 
 for a little time been made visible disappears from the face of 
 the earth. It enters into the stream of the ever-swelline life 
 of mankind, and continues to act there with its whole force 
 forevermore. Indeed, the true magnitude of a human being 
 can often only be measured by what this after-life shows him 
 to have been. So it was with Christ. The modest narrative 
 of the Gospels scarcely prepares us for the outburst of crea- 
 tive force which issued from his life when it appeared to have 
 ended. His influence on the modern world is the evidence 
 of how 8freat he was ; for there must have been in the cause 
 as much as there is in the effect. It has overspread the life 
 of man, and caused it to blossom with the vigor of a spiritual 
 spring. It has absorbed into itself all other influences, as a 
 mighty river, pouring along the centre of a continent, receives 
 tributaries from a hundred hills. And its quality has been 
 even more exceptional than its quantity. 
 
 But the most important evidence of what he was is to be 
 found neither in the general history of modern civilization, 
 nor in ..le public history of the visible Church, but in the 
 experiences of the succession of genuine believers, who with 
 linked hands stretch back to touch him through the Christian 
 generations. The experience of myriails of souls, redeemed 
 by him from themsc^lves and the world, proves that history 
 was cut in twain b)' the appearance of a Regenerator, who 
 was not a mere link in the chain of common men, but one 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 493 
 
 whom the race could not from its own resources have produced 
 — the perfect type, the Man of men. 
 
 The experience of myriads of consciences, the most 
 sensitive to both the hoHness of the Divine Being and their 
 own sinfuhiess that the world has ever seen, yet able to rejoice 
 in a peace with God which has been found the most potent 
 motive of a holy life, proves that in the midst of the ages 
 there was wrought out an act of reconciliation by which sinful 
 men may be made one with a holy God. The experience of 
 myriads of minds, rendered blessed by the vision of a God 
 who to the eye purified by the word of Christ is so completely 
 light that in him there is no darkness at all, proves that the 
 final revelation of the Eternal to the world has been made by 
 one who knew him so well that he could not himself have 
 been less than divine. 
 
 The life of Christ in history cannot cease. His influence 
 waxes more and more. The dead nations are waiting till it 
 reach them, and it is the hope of the earnest spirits that are 
 bringing in the new earth. All discoveries of the modern 
 world, every development of juster ideas, of higher powers, 
 of more exquisite feelings in mankind, are only new helps to 
 interpret him ; and the lifting-up of life to the level of his 
 ideas and character is the programme of the human race. 
 
 GEORGE C. LORIMER. 
 
 [Introduction to Stalker's Life of Christ. Chicago: 1881. Pp. 3, 4.] 
 
 The. life of Christ is an exhaustless theme. It reveals a 
 character of greater massiveness than the hills, of serener 
 beauty than the stars, of sweeter fragrance than the flowers, 
 higher than the heavens in sublimity, and deeper than the 
 seas in mystery. 
 
 Christ in history is undoubtedly more marvellous than 
 Christ in Galilee. Since his ascension he has removed from 
 the nations the veil of mental darkness, has imparted moral 
 
494 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 health to entire communities, has satisfied the long-ino-s of 
 millions for the imperishable bread, and has rescued tribes, 
 races, and peoples from the dreariness of spiritual death. 
 
 For nearly nineteen centuries he has been the real leader 
 of the world's progress. Its majestic movements, surprising 
 revolutions, startling reformations, upheavals, convulsions, and 
 transformations are traceable to his influence. His name, and 
 the power of his name, are written in the learning, art, science, 
 government, of all these ages; and they blaze conspicuously 
 on the fair brow of modern civilization. How intensely inter- 
 esting and how immensely important, then, must be the biog- 
 raphy that explains the secret of such measureless potency, 
 and that lays bare the cause of such gigantic and practically 
 boundless sovereignty ! 
 
 Only in the faithful record of the life, — in the narrative 
 of its origin, surroundings, vicissitudes, peculiarities, and con- 
 summation, — can the true solution of the problem involved 
 be discovered ; and it is this conviction that leads so many 
 thoughtful students to lavish the wealth of their learning on 
 biographies of Jesus, and that constrains so many more ear- 
 nest inquirers to ponder unweariedly the results of their labors. 
 They alike delve among the roots, that they may understand 
 the flower ; they dive into the spring, that they may compre- 
 hend the stream ; they uncover the footprints, that they may 
 measure the feet ; and they lift once more the dead hand into 
 life, that they may ascertain how it sways so mighty a sceptre. 
 
 EDWARD CLODD. 
 
 [Jf.suS OF Nazahktii. London: iSSo. Pp. 359, 360.] 
 
 That which Jesus did was to diffuse a common spirit of 
 sweet charity and selflessness among men regarded as a 
 brotherhood, because the offspring of one Father; and to pull 
 his sayings apart, in search for this, were as vain as to scatter 
 the petals of a flower that we mioht sec the scent. \'o\- the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 495 
 
 highest truth is that which cannot be defined or prisoned in 
 any form of words; and the secret of the enduring influence 
 of Jesus is in this, that he announced principles of world-wide 
 application, leaving men free to connect them with any out- 
 ward forms if they so willed, )et ever reminding them that 
 " the letter killeth, and the spirit giveth life." . . . 
 
 The love of God shown forth in love of man, which was 
 but a maxim of repeaters in his time, and to w4iich all gave 
 assent of lip, but few assent of life, was, so to speak, arrested 
 in him, and drew toward him the quenchless affection of the 
 sinful and the suftering. This, more than all the creeds about 
 him, is the secret of an influence which, bounded by a few 
 months and a narrow tract of country, has filled centuries 
 since from East to West with adoring followers, and kept 
 aglow their ardor to serve him and their fellow-men. And if 
 it moves us to like service, our life cannot be vain or harmful ; 
 because it will nourish and diffuse the spirit which, dwelling in 
 high-souled men of other lands and ages, abode in richest 
 measure in Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 CHARLES BEARD. 
 
 [Unitarian Christianity. London: i88r. Pp. 131, 137, 142, 145, 149.] 
 
 " What think ye of Christ ? " There is a sense in which 
 this is the deepest and most urgent question that theology 
 can ask. . . . But it is something more than a mere theologi- 
 cal question. Upon the answer which we give to it depends 
 our whole interpretation of human history- for the last eighteen 
 hundred years. . . . For putting aside all specifically theolo- 
 gical considerations, and looking at the matter from the simply 
 human and historical point of view, Christ is the strongest, 
 most endurinor, most vivid force that was ever introduced into 
 the world. Measured by the mere amount and weight of 
 their actual influence, the greatest names pale before his. 
 Plato has not moulded so many minds ; Alexander did not so 
 
496 TESTIMONY OF NIXETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 change the course of history ; the unity which Rome imposed 
 upon civiHzed peoples extended over a smaller area than the 
 unity of Christendom ; Buddha and Mohammed won their 
 triumphs over only the secondary races of the world. It was 
 the strangest and most unexpected of intellectual revolutions, 
 — a revolution which Tacitus and Seneca would have con- 
 temptuously pronounced impossible, — that Jerusalem should 
 teach Athens and Rome ; now stranger still to us, for we 
 recognize it as the religious blending of Semitic with Aryan 
 thought. 
 
 Whence this brilliant manifestation of the force and beauty 
 possible to humanity ? Whence these pregnant and piercing 
 words, this winning charm of goodness, this inspiring faith in 
 human nature, this completeness of self-consecration, this 
 sureness of ethical touch, this clearness of religious insight, 
 this abiding sense of God's help and presence ? When we 
 look at Christ, what are we to think of patriarchs and prophets 
 of old, of all sweet singers in Israel, of the strength of the 
 hero, and the whiteness of the saint, and the wisdom of 
 the rabbi ? 
 
 Still more, can we brinor into relation to him the old 
 Greek sages, with their earnest, childlike search into the 
 mysteries of the universe ? The latest Evangelist supplies 
 the answer. All wisdom, all goodness, all strength, are but 
 manifestations of that Word of God, that Divine Reason, 
 which is his essence. The true light is known by its univer- 
 sality : it is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into 
 the world. It shineth in darkness, and the darkness compre- 
 hendcth it not ; but not the less is it the source of all truth, 
 the inspircr of all goodness, the light of all our seeing, the 
 life ot all our strength. No human soul but is warmed and 
 illumined by some spark of this divine fire, — a fire that, 
 however neglected and quenched, can never be wholly extin- 
 guished while there are those whom it kindles into heroism, 
 or moulds, alter long discipline, into saintliness, or inspires 
 with thoughts that breathe and words that burn. 
 
UrVfKmMIH 
 
 O ffl 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 497 
 
 And Christ is the finished manifestation of what God can 
 and will do for a faithful human soul. He is the perfected type 
 of a process which is begun in every man, yet complete in none. 
 He is the most signal proof of the fact that God is not only 
 about us and above us, but in us. Humanity finds its highest 
 realization, not in stoical self-reliance, but in childlike trust ; 
 he is most truly man who stands in closest union with God. 
 Christ is the first-born of many brethren : humanity claims 
 him as its own. His strength is our strength, his victory our 
 victory, his God our God ; the help which was his waits for 
 us also, and he leads us into the presence of the universal 
 Father. 
 
 I find no fault in Jesus. To criticise his words, to sub- 
 ject his actions to keen dissolvent analysis, to form another 
 estimate of his career than that which lies on the surface of 
 the record, — are things which would never have suggested 
 themselves to me. I am content to abide in the admiring 
 love of a disciple. I am ready to believe that even in words 
 of Christ w^hich I only half understand, there are unexplored 
 depths of wisdom. I do not wish any speech of Christ's 
 unspoken, or any deed of his undone. To me, words, char- 
 acter, life, are blended into full harmony, and unite to form 
 " one entire and perfect chr^'solite." When new religions 
 ask my allegiance, or philosophy assures me that in the light 
 of fresh knowledre it is time to have done with religion, I 
 am content to say with Peter, "Lord, to whom shall I go ? 
 Thou hast the words of eternal life." 
 
 It is possible to make an anthology from Greek poets and 
 philosophers, from Roman moralists, from the traditions of 
 the rabbinical schools, from the records of Indian wisdom, in 
 which every moral precept of the New Testament shall find 
 a place. Such an anthology could not indeed be substituted 
 for the New Testament ; it would have neither life, fire, nor 
 constraining force ; but it would show that upon the ethical 
 field little had been left for Christ to discover and proclaim. 
 But that is so far from being a weakness of Christianity, as 
 
498 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 some persons thoughtlessly suppose, as in fact to constitute 
 a large part of its strength. For it is not the nice distinctions 
 of casuistry which sway men, or any unfamiliar reading of the 
 facts and obligations of life, were such possible ; but the moral 
 impulses which have been slowly accumulating in the blood 
 of many generations, and are to wake into action at a powerful 
 voice of inspiration. 
 
 A great writer of our own country died with the simple 
 words upon his lips, " Be good, my dears, be good." It is 
 the one thing needful. We all understand it. There can be 
 no intellectual originality in the statement of it, but how to 
 utter it with so persuasive a voice as to touch the heart, and 
 quicken the conscience, and steel the will. This is precisely 
 the marvellous power of Christ : not that he saw life in an 
 ethically new light, but that he poured around old affections 
 and obligations a lio^ht and a charm all his own. And this it 
 is, too, which makes the universality of his moral claim. His 
 distinctive principles, if he can truly be said to have any, are 
 as wide as human nature. They underlie difterences of age, 
 sex, race, circumstance, and go down to those depths of 
 humanity in which we are all alike. There is no uncorrupted 
 heart which they do not make throb with a quicker pulse. 
 There is no unspoiled conscience in which they do not wake 
 an answering echo. 
 
 Shall we say, then, that Christianity was no more than a 
 finer Judaism ? Or was there nothing in Christ's theism 
 which gave it a color of Its own ? Yes, the characteristic 
 theology of the Gospel is shut up in one word : God, the 
 Infinite, the Omnipotent, the Eternal, the Maker and Ruler 
 of countless worlds, is the Father of mankind, in the hollow 
 of whose hand we He always, who has numbered the very 
 hairs of our heads, who watches over us with a very perfect 
 love and a compassion that cannot change. No one will ask 
 me to prove that this Is an idea unknown to ethnic religions 
 and philosophies ; but it may not have occurred to you how 
 there is in the Old Testament only the faint adumbration of 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 499 
 
 it. The great religious poet, to whom we owe the one 
 hundred and third Psahn, does not speak of it except in the 
 hesitating voice of metaphor : " Like as a father pitieth his 
 children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." The later 
 Isaiah comes nearest to it when he says, " Doubtless thou 
 art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel 
 acknowledge us not." 
 
 But these utterances, which stand almost if not quite 
 alone in the old Hebrew literature, beautiful and touching 
 as they are, fall far short of the grand and infinitely pathetic 
 thought of Christ, — that there is no weak, ignorant, sinful, 
 rebellious son of Adam, but may lift up hands of supplication 
 to the All- Holy, with the cry, " Abba, Father ; " and that as no 
 earthly father who was worthy of the name could ever close 
 his heart to the son of his flesh, who, whatever his offences 
 against the sweet sanctities of home, longed with the longing 
 of genuine repentance for return and pardon, so God is not 
 only always waiting to be merciful, but goes out to meet the 
 prodigal on the way. This, to me, is the centre-point and 
 heart of Christianity. It differentiates it from all religions 
 before or since. I should look upon faithfulness or unfaith- 
 fulness to it, as indicatinor the true relation of a man or a 
 church to Christ. 
 
 ADOLF HAUSRATH. 
 
 [History of the New-Testament Times. London: 1880. Pp. 145, 147.] 
 
 Those have been called geniuses and God-sent prophets 
 who " once again go back to the beginning," and present a 
 new question to the world. The new question which Jesus 
 presented was the word directed to the God of the Jews : 
 Art thou truly a God of wrath ? and is the world truly misera- 
 ble only because thy curse rests upon it ? The law answered 
 Yes, to this question ; but the whole world answered a thou- 
 sand times. No. This it was which appeared to the people 
 so surprising, new, and comforting in his preaching, the word 
 
500 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 new to Israel, that God was the loving Father 'of men. The 
 fundamental presupposition of all Judaism, and the motive 
 power of all Pharisaic laboriousness, was, in fact, the convic- 
 tion that God was a jealous God, visiting the sins of the 
 fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth gen- 
 eration. If the Pharisee busied himself about fulfilling a 
 thousand minute scrupulous precepts, if the Essene afflicted 
 himself in circumspect loneliness, if the Sadducee made him- 
 self of importance in the temple service and sacrifices, if the 
 people were filled with anguish at the sense of their estrange- 
 ment from God, and God's desertion of them, it was because, 
 as the pivot of their whole theory of life, stood the belief 
 in an angry and avenging God, who inexorably demands a 
 righteousness for which he has nevertheless made man much 
 too weak. Then, in the very face of all the signs of the 
 Divine wrath, which weigh upon the people, and set the 
 activity of the masters in Israel in motion, there comes a 
 new prophet with the message, never heard before, that God 
 is the P^ather of men, and that he has loved them from the 
 very beginning of the world ; and in proof of this he points 
 to the lilies of the field, and the birds of the air. That an 
 eternal compassion is poured upon the world, that an eternal 
 love watches over the turmoil of human life as much as over 
 the stillness of the lonely hillside, — this had his heart first 
 discovered in that secret communion with God, which caused 
 him to say, "No man knoweth the Father, save the Son." . . . 
 We have now come to a point at which the new that 
 is coming into existence can no longer be derived in any 
 way from existing conditions, but springs immediately from 
 the personal spiritual life of Jesus. How came Jesus to 
 recognize God as the Father ? is a question which men have 
 already attempted to answer on purely contemporary historical 
 grounds. From contemplating the errors into which Judaism 
 fell when seeking to reconcile her angry God, say some. But 
 then, others also had seen these aberrations, and yet had not 
 cried, Abba, Father. Was it in contemplating the glory which 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 50 1 
 
 God has poured over his world ? But the HHes of Gahlee 
 have bloomed for others also, and the heavens were equally 
 blue for Pharisee and Sadducee. Consequently all such 
 attempts at derivation are futile. It is the personality which 
 is the source whence the historical antecedents immediately 
 spring-, and where the Interpretation of the operating condi- 
 tions ends. Here is the thread which leads immediately to 
 the region of Divine creating ; and not even can a secular 
 genius, nor a true individuality, be demonstrated to be the 
 mere resultant of antecedent circumstances. This, however, 
 we can say : This strength of the filial consciousness could 
 have been developed only in a mind which was pure, blame- 
 less, and sinless in the sight of the Deity, in which all human 
 restlessness and discontent were removed, upon which lay no 
 anguish of a finite world, no tormenting consciousness of 
 being only a mere fraction of that which it ought to have 
 been. 
 
 The sinful man, the stained or even the merely disturbed 
 conscience, must always see God opposed to himself as 
 wrathful and avenging ; but the revelation that God is the 
 Father of men could only arise in a mind in which the image 
 of God was reflected undisturbed, because the mirror was 
 without blemish. The revelation of God as the Father is the 
 strongest proof of the absolutely normal state of the human 
 nature in Jesus. 
 
 JOHN MONRO GIBSON. 
 
 [The Fouxdations. Chicago: 18S0. Pp. 80-S4.] 
 
 You cannot think of a single excellence of character that 
 does not shine out in the wonderful life of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 If you take single features separately you may be able to think 
 of some of earth's great ones whom you could put beside him ; 
 but when you take the combination of them all, he manifestly 
 stands absolutely alone. Not only is there not in all history 
 one single person that can stand beside him, but there is not 
 
502 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 in all fiction a single ideal character that will bear comparison. 
 Even such distinguished character-painters as Shakspeare, for 
 example, or George Eliot in our own time, who have had all 
 the advantage of his character to model after, do not in their 
 loftiest creations approach to the elevation and grandeur of 
 the character of Jesus of Nazareth, as depicted in the simple 
 language of the Four Evangelists. 
 
 Now consider, for a moment, what a strong position we have 
 here. We could even build an argument, apart from histori- 
 cal evidence, at this point. There we have before us the life 
 of Christ by Matthew, However it came there, there it is. 
 That life was either a creation of Matthew, as Hamlet was a 
 creation of Shakspeare, or else it is a true portraiture of what 
 Christ actually was. If it was a creation of Matthew's genius, 
 then this Matthew, who seems to have been quite an obscure 
 man, must have had a superhuman genius, so that even Shak- 
 speare himself could not compare with him. Do you believe 
 that? And, even if you could, the question would still remain, 
 How could it happen that there should be four men of such 
 transcendent genius at the same time, whose creative powers 
 all led them to produce the same character from different 
 points of view, and yet these same men be all unknown to 
 fame in any other way ? The idea is in the last degree absurd. 
 Nobody believes it, or can believe it. Since, then, the char- 
 acter of Jesus of Nazareth was not, as it certainly could not 
 be, the creation of these four men, it follows that it is a true 
 portraiture of what this Jesus actually was. And if the very 
 conception of such a character cannot be accounted for except 
 on the supposition of superhuman genius, how much less can 
 the actual living of such a life be accounted for on any other 
 supposition than that he who lived it was indeed what he 
 solemnly claimed to be, — " the Christ of God " ! 
 
 The evidence of the divine mission of Jesus which his char- 
 acter furnishes is one which grows upon you more and more, 
 the more you examine into it. It is (]uite possible to read 
 the Four Gospels over and over again without discovering the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 503 
 
 wonders of the character which they depict ; but let any one 
 make It a matter of earnest thought and careful study, and he 
 will continually discover new features to admire, and new com- 
 binations of excellences that are never found in combination 
 in other lives. . . . 
 
 From his life we pass to his words. Claiming, as he does, 
 to be the revealer of God, we should reasonably expect not 
 only a superior character, but superior wisdom. If what he 
 says be poor, empty, or of little consequence, or If It be only 
 a reflection of the mind of his age, with all Its errors and 
 imperfections traceable through it, then we may set aside his 
 claim, because his spoken words do not bear it out. But is It 
 so ? Do not his spoken words bear it out ? Can it not be 
 said with as great emphasis as ever, after so many centuries 
 of progress, " Never man spake like this man " ? 
 
 Take the first discourse we meet with as we turn the pages 
 of the first Evangelist, the Sermon on the Mount. Is it feeble? 
 Is there any thing in all literature that can be placed beside 
 it ? Is it not as fresh as ever to-day ? Does not every line of 
 it bear out his claim to speak in the name of God ? Or take 
 the last discourse in the upper room, beginning, " Let not 
 your heart be troubled." Where can you find any thing in all 
 literature outside of the Bible, that has been cherished as these 
 words have been cherished, or that has brought such conso- 
 lation to millions of troubled hearts ? From first to last, the 
 words he speaks amply justify his claim. 
 
 Think, too, how easily these words of wisdom fall from 
 him. He does not retire to his study (he seems to have had 
 none), and read what the philosophers before him had written, 
 and painfully think out a system of truth. He stands on the 
 grassy plain, or In the little boat beside the shore, or anywhere, 
 and pours out, without the slightest effort, though only turned 
 thirty, such words of heavenly wisdom as the greatest of the 
 philosophers, after a long life given to study and meditation, 
 or even all the philosophers of the world together, after all 
 their labor, had never been able to equal. Does not this. 
 
504 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 too, correspond with his claim ? He needs no stimulus of an 
 appreciative audience, even, to draw out his powers. When 
 he speaks to an obscure woman, who has come to draw water 
 at the well where he is resting in the heat of the day, his words 
 are as full of thought and heavenly wisdom as when the great 
 multitudes are thronging around him. 
 
 THOMAS HILL. 
 
 [The Natural Sources of Theology. Reprinted from Bibliotheca Sacra, October, 
 
 1874, and January, 1875.] 
 
 We were recently reading to a friend the report of a scene 
 in the National Academy of Sciences, The superintendent 
 of the Coast Survey had poured out with great earnestness a 
 chapter of his " Linear Associative Algebra," which he deemed 
 of the highest importance ; but it was necessarily clothed in 
 language perfectly unintelligible to a majority of his hearers. 
 When he had closed, and all were sitting in silent bewilder- 
 ment, Agassiz arose, and said in substance, " I must confess 
 that I have not understood one word of this communication ; 
 but I have heretofore had such ample reasons for believing 
 in the speaker's clearness and soundness of thought, that I 
 accept what he has now said as undoubtedly true, and un- 
 questionably to become of great practical value." When I 
 had finished reading the anecdote, my friend surprised me 
 by saying with decisive clearness, " That is precisely my 
 position with regard to Jesus Christ. Jesus assures me of 
 the paternal character of God, and of the immortality of the 
 individual soul ; how he gets his knowledge, I do not know ; 
 I cannot see those truths clearl)' written on the world, nor 
 on the soul ; without Christ I could only hojje they were true : 
 but I have seen, and do see, so many proofs of the wonderful 
 wisdom and clearness of thought and holiness of character in 
 Jesus Christ, that, when he says that he knows they are true, 
 I believe that he does know. Theorizers may debate as they 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 505 
 
 will concerning- the character and degree of his inspiration, 
 in what manner or sense he was an incarnation of God : it is 
 enough for me that the whole record of the New Testament 
 gives me perfect faith in his wisdom, his holiness, and his 
 truth, so that when he says that he knows that God is our 
 Father, I know that he knows it, and therefore I know it." 
 Nor was my friend unwise, much less unreasonable, in thus 
 accepting, upon the authority of competent testimony, truths 
 consonant with the intuitions of his soul, but beyond the 
 reach of his faculties to attain. 
 
 Christian saints believe, and we devoutly believe with 
 them, that the great light which is to break upon us when 
 the shadows of death flee, has already dawned and spread 
 its reviving light from over the hills of Galilee. They find 
 in the person of Jesus of Nazareth a light clearer than the 
 noonday sun, and revealing to us more truth than the light 
 of nature ever could reveal. They recognize in him an 
 image of God, answering, far more perfectly than any ideal 
 being whom we could portray, to our best conceptions of 
 perfection. The ineffable tenderness of his love towards 
 men, the gentleness of his dealings with sinners, give men 
 a confidence which no mere words could give, that the awful 
 sacrifice on Calvary was indeed for the many, for the remis- 
 sion of their sins ; and that he who thus suffered rose again, 
 to pour down upon his Church the manifold gifts of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 It has not pleased him to make further revelations of 
 truth concerning God than was necessary for the salvation 
 of sinners ; and upon those truths, or upon nearly all, we had 
 a glimmering light before Christ came. But he has made the 
 important truths plain and certain ; such truths as these. — 
 that God is, through Christ, reconciling men unto himself; 
 that he will forgive those who trust in Christ for forgiveness, 
 and turn away from sin ; that he will inspire such with a new 
 power to live holy and useful lives ; that both the Father and 
 the Son dwell in the heart of a penitent believer, and fill him 
 
5o6 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 with the Holy Spirit that leads to victory over the tempter, 
 over sin and death. The history of the Christian Church 
 abundantly witnesses the truth of these promises. In that 
 Church, despite its manifold corruptions, failures, and sins, 
 there has always been a large body of men distinguished for 
 excellence of priv^ate character, far beyond those who have 
 been alien from the Church. With this excellence of charac- 
 ter has been joined clearness and strength of religious faith. 
 The fact that in all communions of the Christian world we 
 find the holiest and purest men substantially agree on the 
 great doctrines of religion and morality, and that the best 
 and clearest thinkers of other great religions agree in the 
 same essential doctrines of central Christianity, is in itself a 
 very strong argument in support of those doctrines, an evi- 
 dence both of the truth of these points in natural religion 
 indorsed by Christ, and of the value of his indorsement. 
 
 JOHN WORDSWORTH. 
 
 [The Oxe Religion. New York: iSSi. Pp. 210, 212.] 
 
 Even if we take human ideals at their best, not at their 
 worst, we may be thankful that we are not left to ourselves to 
 frame the pattern of the God-man. Observing what virtues 
 are chiefly valued by mankind, apart from the exceptional and 
 transient thoughts of one or two philosophers, we can easily 
 picture the Christ who would have been created by human 
 imagination. In the first place, he would have been many, 
 and not one. To the Oriental mind, generally, he would have 
 been the embodiment of gigantic force ; to the Persian, per- 
 haps, of truthfulness and labor ; to the Chinese, of regularity 
 and dutifulness ; to the Greek, of beauty and intelligence ; to 
 the Roman, of imperial majesty; to the Teuton, of calmness 
 and thoughtfulness. Other races would have had other noble 
 thoughts of like sort. I^^ach nation would have endowed him 
 with the best ([ualities of its own character, omittinor the rest. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 507 
 
 But the supreme virtues of holiness and humiHty would have 
 been, to all appearances, omitted by all. 
 
 It needed the actual appearance of Christ in the flesh to 
 give unity and reality to these ideals, and to give them those 
 qualities which they all lacked. It needed the manger of 
 Bethlehem, and the village seclusion of Nazareth, and the 
 little success of his ministry in Judsea and Galilee, and the re- 
 jection by his own people, and the mocking of Pilate's judg- 
 ment-hall, and the marring of his visage upon the cross, and 
 the whole life, in its outer seeming, capable of despite and 
 disreo-ard. All this was needed to fulfil God's design in turn- 
 ing men forcibly back from belief in power and glory, and 
 even duty and labor and truthfulness, to belief in simple good- 
 ness as the ideal of man's offering to God. Holiness and 
 humility are the foundation of the Christian character, and of 
 all that is best in modern life. Holiness and humility shine 
 out from every page in the New Testament ; but the world 
 would have never known and loved them, had they not been 
 visibly set forth in Christ. It is something, that the world to 
 some extent does love them, and has acknowledged itself 
 conquered by the cross. 
 
 ROBERT A. WATSON. 
 
 [Gospels of Yesterday. London: 1888. Pp. 215, 216.] 
 
 In Jesus Christ the Divine light of compassion and right- 
 eousness burns into a focus, the clear radiance of which 
 illuminates the dark regions of human experience. What 
 is Mr. Arnold's Christ? An accident, — a unique and fortu- 
 nate accident of human development ? An absolute f But 
 why? How can Mr. Arnold, on his own premises, be so sure 
 that Christ is an absolute 9 Wliy not Plato ? Why not 
 himself? . . . The supremacy of Jesus, — what is it? That 
 of One who confidently ofters our race what no other acknowl- 
 edged leader ever thought of offering in his own name, — his 
 
5o8 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 own power. And yet he, in whom we reverence a majestic 
 type never reaHzed elsewhere, of truth, dignity, and holiness, 
 is not self-centred, but testifies of his relation to a Father 
 who sent him, — a Father to whom we also are related, to 
 whom we must come to be one, as he is. He sweetens 
 responsibility to us by undertaking duties like ours, a burden 
 like that we have to bear ; and his life and death bring 
 redemption by lifting us out of sin and weakness into his 
 own freedom and exaltation, his own life of obedience and 
 love, which is eternal. 
 
 G. FREDERICK WRIGHT. 
 
 [The Logic of Christian Evidences. Andover: iS8o. Pp. 137, 146, 148, 266, 281.] 
 
 From whatever point of view we regard the Gospel his- 
 tory, Christ intensifies beyond measure the antecedent argu- 
 ment for personal immortality. If the Christ of the New 
 Testament is divine, what an exalted creature must man be, 
 to be worthy of such a visitation ! 
 
 " My God ! what is a heart. 
 That thou shouldst it so eye and woo, 
 
 Pouring upon it all thy art, 
 As if that thou hadst nothing else to do?" 
 
 If, on the other hand, Christ be naught but human, what 
 must humanity be, that it has given forth such a flower as a 
 product? And what must the appropriate fruitage of that 
 blossoming be ? Or, if the character of Christ be a m)'th, 
 how marvellous the mythical which produced it ! If a fabri- 
 cation, how lofty the conceptions of the fabricator! On any 
 theory regarding the history of Jesus, man is revealed of such 
 proportions, that immortal life is the appropriate complement 
 of this. 
 
 Looking first at the positive results of Christianity, we 
 observe, that, notwithstanding the disabilities of his earthly 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 509 
 
 condition, the Christian bcHever does learn to look upon the 
 personal temptations, disappointments, infirmities, and sor- 
 rows of this life, as blessings in disguise, and that to him 
 death itself is robbed of its terrors. 
 
 Through weary years of sickness, the invalid is sustained 
 by the Christian hope that all things work together for good 
 to them that love God. 
 
 In view of the fatherhood of God as revealed in the New 
 Testament, the countenance of the mourner lights up with 
 smiles, and he rejoices in saying, " Not my will, but thine, be 
 done." 
 
 Through the promises of the Gospel, the poverty-stricken 
 have hope of treasures that cannot be taken away ; and those 
 of a humble heart have faith that, though despised of men, 
 nothing can separate them from the love of Christ, The 
 widow and orphan are comforted in their sorrow. The lowly 
 are set on high. Through the overmastering hope of a 
 Christian faith, the death-bed of the believer becomes like 
 the couch of a weary traveller. To the Christian hero, it 
 matters not where death may overtake him. 
 
 " Heaven is as near by water as by land." 
 
 It may come as to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, with book in hand, 
 calmly waiting for the waves and storm to do their utmost ; 
 or as to Sir John Franklin, amid the unknown snows of 
 arctic wastes ; or as to Livingstone, amid the pestilential 
 swamps of Africa ; or as to Havelock, on the hard-won field 
 of Lucknow. Our friends may die far from us, in the ever- 
 glades of Florida, or on the plains of Mexico, or they may 
 die at home : in any case, death removes them from our 
 sight, and remits their bodies to their original dust; but the 
 hope of life and immortality, brought to light through the 
 Gospel of Christ, equally remains to comfort in bereavement, 
 and to stimulate to patient continuance in well-doing. 
 
 Through the New-Testament doctrine of Divine forgive- 
 ness, and through the assistance to virtue furnished by the 
 
5IO TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 history of Christ, this hope of a hfe to come becomes a most 
 powerful incentive to noble action among great multitudes 
 of the human race. The whole present civilization of the 
 world is permeated with these thoughts. They have stamped 
 themselves on our art and literature, and on our laws and 
 institutions. . . . 
 
 The aro-ument for the genuineness and authenticitv of the 
 New-Testament history is not complete till, to the perfection 
 of complicated historical adjustment, and subtile internal har- 
 mony, already indicated, there are superadded some further 
 statements touching the originality and the beauty of the 
 character of Jesus, and concerning the simple and unaffected 
 style of the narratives in which it is portrayed. 
 
 We cannot refrain from remarking also, that, though from 
 one point of view we speak of the biographies of Jesus as 
 artless, from another they must be pronounced the consum- 
 mate embodiment of the highest design, — but such design 
 as is elsewhere observable only in the works of nature, and 
 may here be denominated supernatural. The New-Testa- 
 ment narrative is too large in its conceptions, and too free 
 from errors and incongruities, for us to regard it as any thing 
 but genuine history, even though in this case, as so often in 
 others, truth should prove stranger than fiction. 
 
 Adopting the happy expression of Mr. INIartineau, that 
 nothing can be evolved from nature which is not first involved, 
 w-e ask what there was in the times when Jesus lived, to pro- 
 duce his character, and to make its influence so potent in the 
 world ? Is the character of Jesus the natural product of his 
 age ? Or w^as he from above ? 
 
 How harmonious have been the lineaments, and how 
 powerful the picture, which the world has ever beheld in the 
 character of Jesus as delineated by the fishermen of Galilee! 
 From generation to generation, adoring millions have ad- 
 dressed him as their " Redeemer," — "the Anointed King of 
 Israel," — and "the Son of the living God." And yet with 
 what singular indifference to apparent eflect, as if themselves 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 5 1 1 
 
 enchanted by their own work, did these men throw away the 
 brush the moment his form was sufficiently outhned for those 
 in distant ages to see it ! The utmost effect seems to have 
 been produced with the smallest amount of material. 
 
 No other personage in history is so vividly portrayed by his 
 biographers as Jesus ; and yet the brevity of the Gospels, and 
 the dispassionate character of their narrative, is most remark- 
 able indeed. The moderation and self-restraint of the first 
 disciples, as depicted in the New Testament, is by itself a 
 most conclusive answer to the charge of self-delusion ; for, in 
 view of ordinary experience, it is incredible, that, in recording 
 the life and sayings of the Master whose power they repre- 
 sented as so great, and whose spirit so charged and absorbed 
 their own, the four Evangelists should have limited them- 
 selves to twenty or thirty chapters apiece, and should have 
 abstained so scrupulously from attempting to gratify the idle 
 curiosity of man. 
 
 EDWARD FARWELL HAYWARD. 
 
 [EcCE Spiritus. Boston: 1S81. Pp. 52-54, 125-129, 136-138, 140.] 
 
 Jesus is the phenomenal Man by reason of no attainment 
 of virtue which merely outshines the ordinary in the degree of 
 its possession of his nature, but because of the dominance 
 in him of a manhood distinct in consciousness and standard 
 from any yet seen or inculcated. He had not to give them 
 any thing, for he possessed no arbitrary power, but simply to 
 bring out that which was latent in them, to life. They were 
 spiritual in possibility, but did not know it ; and herein lay 
 the key to the sadness of the situation. Jesus, seeing man 
 from another standpoint, did not merely ask him to accept 
 this or that virtue or abandon that vice, but demanded an 
 entire change of outlook, working down at the roots of being, 
 and purifying the springs of action at their source. It was 
 more than a revelation, — a revolution sweeping and radical, 
 which was to leave nothing unchanged in the structure of 
 
512 TESTIMONY OF NLXETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 man's thoughts and motives. It was man he modified, not 
 the teaching of the schools. 
 
 Our measure of the highest in man must answer to a 
 threefold test : it must be that which is rarest, most compre- 
 hensive, and most exalted. That spirituality meets the first 
 condition, the age in which Jesus lived, as well as every sub- 
 sequent one, sufficiently attests. The cultured are to the 
 uncompromising as a million to one. The perception of good 
 is far in advance of its realization. Consciousness speaks 
 once of things real and eternal, where speculation and doubt 
 are heard a thousand times. 
 
 That it is comprehensive, no one will question when it is 
 seen to include all there is of a man, all that can go to the 
 make-up of his possible holiness, all science, culture, art, 
 equally the true, the beautiful, the good. It refuses no fact, 
 and scorns no inspiration. It welcomes all into the mighty 
 human possibility. It absorbs from all sides, but never com- 
 promises, never ceases in its inclusiveness to remain itself, 
 one and entire. 
 
 It takes all there is of a man to be spiritual — head, heart, 
 limbs, and life ; all thought, all emotion, all love, while spirit- 
 uality is itself their co-ordination or control. It will not be 
 classified nor divided, is neither morality nor religion, but 
 that in which they, as ministering functions, become one. 
 The reason why there are so few spiritually great characters 
 is because of the almost irresistible human tendency to be 
 one-sided and partial. Men of the latter description are the 
 kind of men we commonly remark and honor ; while the spir- 
 itually great, by reason of the roundness and balance of their 
 faculties, often escape the notice so easily gained by the nar- 
 row specialist. There are religionists great in organization, 
 pietists with a peculiar genius for evangelization, moralists 
 apt at precept. There are natures fiery with the enthusiasm 
 of reform, or dry and compendious with the nicely graded 
 ethics of tlie schools. But the race of tuhole men began and 
 ended with Jesus. Me was no specialist, neither ascetic nor 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 513 
 
 prodigal, certainly not a moralist in the sense that Moses and 
 Confucius were, and least of all an ecclesiastic. His man- 
 hood was complete and entire, yet through all the spiritual 
 was distinct and dominant. 
 
 Yet, although he was inclusive and cosmopolitan in the 
 matter of his human interests, his breadth did not diminish 
 the loftiness of his range. If there were none broader than 
 he, there was also none more exalted. He would stop no 
 step this side of the Supreme Being. It was God, uncondi- 
 tional purity and truth, life consciously akin to divine life, he 
 alone accepts. He put every thing but this under his feet, 
 and could in that act go no higher. His spirituality does not 
 despise the earth ; but it has a winged step, and moves high 
 up among the realities. 
 
 Jesus assumed no pedagogic gown, stepped upon no 
 rostrum, and accepted no acolytes that were not able to live 
 the life he did. The hand of anointing had been laid within ; 
 and he had little to say, but vast life issues to work out and 
 enforce. His first and only disputation was in the temple, 
 but all his positive and authoritative utterances were given in 
 the fields or the living rooms of humble people, into the 
 sphere of which his earliest inclinations led him. Indeed, 
 there has been nothing more painful to the countless 
 Christians who have looked for light from him amid the 
 inadequacies and cruelties of the creed, than this paucity of 
 utterance. 
 
 Why did he say so little, where so much was needed ? 
 And yet, more would have been too much. The minute he 
 had formulated any thing, we should stop there, and there 
 would be no longer any hope of life. He gives us the ger- 
 minal truth, the all-inclusive principle, not in its abstraction, 
 nor yet in its complete logical statement, if such a thing 
 were possible of a living and eternally progressive reality, but 
 in vital personal fusion. Make the life yours, and you have 
 it all. But Jesus declines to do the work for us, and utterly 
 refuses to surround the one pure spiritual influence the world 
 
5 14 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 has had, with the dangers of attempted definitions. Christi- 
 anity must not be caught in a mesh of words, but must 
 remain a hfe influence, tending toward Hfe. We hear the 
 sound of the Spirit, and know absolutely of its reality and 
 power, but happily cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it 
 goeth, except as these things are in God. 
 
 Jesus cared not where he gathered his congregation. 
 Indeed, it was always round him, and his method was the yet 
 untried one of nature. He put his heart close to the bare, 
 empty spots in human experience, and whispered low, or 
 uttered forth in silence the living language of that answer 
 which had been wrought out in him. He did, in truth, 
 enlighten and enlarge the comprehension of men, and infi- 
 nitely elevate their outlook ; but he was not a dogmatist, and 
 had little to do with the teacher's superficial methods. He 
 struck at the roots of being, using such instruction as the 
 situation unconsciously required. But he was peculiar in 
 this : that, so far as he was a teacher, he addressed himself to 
 the very quick of conscious experience. He had a wonderful 
 faculty of keeping down to the vital need. He reveals him- 
 self in the fact, not in the elaboration of his message. He 
 addresses the experience and the motives with a subtler logic 
 than that of the intellect, which the intellect nevertheless 
 confirms and strengthens at every point. 
 
 Jesus is the only character of history who impresses him- 
 self deeply upon human thought and life, and has had an 
 enduring claim to grateful remembrance, simply by reason of 
 what he was. Unlike others, he cannot be contemplated out- 
 side of his work, nor can his work be separated from him. 
 His work had become personal, and himself a doubly 
 energized personality. 
 
 Then for the first time in history appeared a man who was 
 himself, utterly, wholly, unreservedl)\ The message he bore 
 had become a revelation in and through himself, so that, while 
 he in no sense elaborates spirituality, he yet lives and enforces 
 it. What he said has value as teaching, but his mission was 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 5 1 5 
 
 SO close to life that it can be fully received only by some 
 degree of spiritual contact. 
 
 Spirituality is the only thing you cannot teach. The 
 higher the sutgect, the farther is it removed from prescribed 
 methods of instruction. We can teach letters, but not life. 
 The latter impresses us more directly, turning mental pro- 
 cesses into motives. We can impart all symbols, types, and 
 illustrations of life, but not that elusive but most central reality 
 which inheres in and appeals to consciousness alone. Con- 
 sciousness can be quickened, awakened, formed, but not 
 informed from any outside source. It can gain every thing, 
 but be given nothing. What another has can never be 
 ours ; but we may be so moved by him as in time to possess 
 like realities. 
 
 Manifestly, one can teach nothing of God, except that 
 which he himself knows ; and it is one of the truisms of 
 spiritual experience, that what we know of God we can never 
 tell. Our neighbors will in countless ways discover the fact, 
 which we shall shrink from even the attempt at uttering, just 
 in proportion to the genuineness of our knowledge. Lan- 
 guage is a wonderful vehicle in the hands of a master, but it 
 utterly fails to circumscribe the facts of consciousness. The 
 nomenclature of a nation is solidified long- before its best 
 experience comes ; so that, in the dearth of fitting words, 
 consciousness must needs find other and subtler means of 
 communication. 
 
 Even in the sphere of the common affections, there is no 
 language of the heart. What two people, keenly sympathetic, 
 feel in communion, is revealed in no other way than by a 
 silence which each, nevertheless, fully understands. The word 
 of intensest meaning would strike like a chill of avowed 
 unworthiness on that eloquent stillness. Acquaintances, 
 meeting, find no difficulty in expressing their formal interest 
 in each other's welfare ; but the nearer companionship, that 
 is, the parent of the glory and despair of life, goes unspoken. 
 in spite of all the novels and poems to the contrar)\ It would 
 
5l6 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 be indeed a hopeless task for him who would attempt to con- 
 vey in words the deepest that he knows and feels. 
 
 There can, therefore, be no school of the real theologies. 
 What men have known of God is not in the boojcs, but in the 
 soul. What Jesus knew of God is not in the Gospel state- 
 ment, nor did he ever intend that it should be. It was in 
 him ; and we see it, feel it, know it, wherever and whenever 
 we meet him. In this sense, and it is the only essential one, 
 Jesus has been given us in the Gospels with utter faithfulness. 
 Though the writers erred occasionally in their interpretation, 
 they never failed in the man. His message and meaning 
 always shine out clearly through the partialness of their 
 comprehension. 
 
 The true science of God is in the processions of the soul. 
 Experience knows, while our intellectual statements only hint 
 at him. Spirituality alone reveals and commands the spiritual, 
 and for this reason Jesus came a man of few words. Sur- 
 face and show, and the elaboration thereof, were all around 
 him ; and he stood uncompromisingly for a realization of that 
 about which others only talked, and for an attestation of it 
 which could never be perverted by the limits of a definition. 
 
 An ideal for humanity must be one to lead all human 
 progress, to inspire its study and effort forever ; so high that 
 the histories of the centuries will be that of an ever-nearer 
 approach to its comprehension and realization. This is why 
 the power of true Christianity is perennial. Nineteen centu- 
 ries, with their accumulated culture and their intenser con- 
 sciousness, have only brought men a little nearer to the heart 
 of its sul)lime reality ; and the widening science and deeper 
 personality of the future will be the key to yet clearer under- 
 standing of those apparently mystical, but eminently simple, 
 statements of life as it was in Jesus. For his own time they 
 were sufficient as they stood. Wonder and childlike awe at 
 any form of actual superiority, however imperfectly under- 
 stood, had not yet exhausted themselves. What the world 
 was not then prepared to comprehend was. nevertheless, able 
 
rO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 5 i 7 
 
 to be a vast power of subjugation over the lower in its nature ; 
 while the advancing life of all time would find in its higher 
 and completer statement a perpetual goal of promise and 
 attainment. 
 
 Nothing short of this would have answered the require- 
 ments of a mission such as that of Jesus, and surely nothing 
 less could have furnished mankind with a truth which is ever 
 an incentive rather than a sedative. It is not the truth sim- 
 ply and abstractly which Jesus has in view, so much as the 
 truth embodied in life. The race is to work toward it, to 
 make it its own, to identify it with its entire growth. It is 
 not for men as yet to say that they comprehend it: they may 
 now comprehend only its drift and purpose; its reality is 
 beyond every thing else. It is not for us, even though with 
 tears in our eyes, to complain that our consolations are not 
 yet complete. They are enough when rightly understood ; 
 and, for the rest, there is work for us to do. We are not 
 left to stagnate in our finalities, but are invited, nay, forced 
 onward, to the blessed consummations of life. 
 
 In order to understand the peculiar make-up of Jesus, we 
 must keep in sight the character of his object, and its accom- 
 panying influence on his life. This was of no ordinary kind, 
 and held with no common devotion. It was not a part, how- 
 ever inspiring, of the kingdom of truth, but the very highest 
 and most inclusive of all of its realities. It was God, and all 
 possible communion with him, and man at his hitherto 
 unknown possibility, including the entire range of the vast 
 thing so often named but so seldom understood as life, that 
 he had in hand. To have been burdened with the secret of 
 some farthest star on the boundary of human knowledge, 
 would doubtless have been much ; but to have come from 
 God and the one closest insight and communion ever vouch- 
 safed to man, and from the outmost limit of life's unseen pos- 
 sibility, was an endowment so much greater than the highest 
 common to men, as to have eliminated the element of egotism 
 from its possession. 
 
5l8 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Other men have had this in faint approaches to the clear 
 reaHzation which came to the mind of Jesus. But, unHke 
 them, he never doubted nor questioned nor speculated. It 
 was consciousness that spoke in him, and made possible the 
 clear, calm certainties of his life, the almost utter absence of 
 the things that cloud and embitter our experience. He talked 
 of God as if he had but just left him, as in truth he really had. 
 It never occurred to him to prove his existence. That attempt 
 was left for an aee stranded on the shallow reaches of scien- 
 tific certainty. He introduced no mathematics into the 
 demonstration of facts that are so consciously real. If he had 
 stooped to the poor expedient of external proof, the world 
 might well have doubted his claim to any thing but the 
 knowledge of the empiricist. 
 
 FREDERIC GODET. 
 
 [Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. New York: 1881. Pp. 197, 230, 
 
 234, 240.] 
 
 The progress of humanity reaches its goal in Jesus, who 
 is, in relation to the 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 development 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 07ie is not the highest aim of a God of 
 love. As it is true that Jesus is the perfect man, so it is also 
 true that the purpose of God is not attained in 07ic Jesus : he 
 desires many thousands of such. He desires as many as there 
 are men. He desires a Jesus-like humanity. — the reproduc- 
 tion of this perfect and glorious type in each believer, by the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 519 
 
 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 arise when he will appear but 
 as the first-born among many brethren. 
 
 Would it be true to say that by establishing the perfect 
 holiness of Jesus Christ, we 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 character- 
 istic 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 unmistak- 
 ably stamps of humanity, such as distinguish it clearly from 
 the holiness of God. 
 
 The holiness of God is unchangeable ; it is incapable of 
 growth. Like God himself, it is. 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 favor with God and 
 man " ? This apparent growth was not a mere illusion : it 
 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 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 intercessions ; then at the age of adolescence, 
 when the sentiments of patriotism make their appearance in a 
 
520 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 young and noble heart, of that of his nation, which presented 
 itself to him in its entirety as his family. His determination 
 to labor 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 egotis- 
 tic inclination needing to be rooted out. To open his heart, 
 with ever-growing sympathy, to the ever-new creatures of God 
 whom his Father presented to his love, till at last he felt the 
 burthen of the whole human race laid upon his heart, con- 
 scious 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 b)' 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. 
 
 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 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, that he became, 
 in the full sense of that expression, the Holy One of God. 
 
 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, eftort, have no place in God : " God cannot be 
 tempted of evil." But Jesus had a conflict to go through. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 52 1 
 
 The wilderness and Gethsemane were two fields of battle 
 which the Church will not forget, and they are not the only 
 ones. 
 
 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 labor of quite another kind, to earn a living for those 
 whom Providence has intrusted to your care. There is a 
 conflict to which you are called, 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 )our 
 native land is in dangfer 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 rush to the field of 
 battle. Is there here no conflict, — not between moral good 
 and evil, but between two kinds of good, which occupy 
 different ranks in the moral hierarchy ? 
 
 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 distinguished 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 patriot- 
 ism would have found in him, could he have given himselt 
 up to them, the most heroic organ for their exercise. It is 
 enough to recall his last words to his mother, and to the 
 
522 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 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 legitimate indulgences of lawful 
 inclination, 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 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 of 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 that he was made perfect 
 and learned obedience by the things that he suffered. Prog- 
 ress, conflict, — are not these the marks of a holiness truly 
 human ? In the wilderness and at Gethsemane it was per- 
 fectly possible to be in the fore-courts of heaven, but assuredly 
 not in heaven itself. 
 
 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, fac- 
 similes of their prototype. It even succeeds in communicat- 
 ing to them something of the life which vivifies themselves. 
 Just so, by the power of the Divine Spirit, Christ repro- 
 duces himself in the hearts and lives of believers. If we 
 place ourselves assiduously before him, In the 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 ar<; 
 contemplating: he himself begins to live in our soul. Ho 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 523 
 
 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." 
 
 WILLIAM L. CHAFFIN. 
 
 [The Intellectual Greatness of Jesus. Unitarian Review, February, r88o. 
 Vol. xiii. pp. 106, III, 114, 118, 119.] 
 
 It has long been a growing conviction with me, that Jesus 
 was a master mind among the great thinkers of our race ; 
 that what Plato was in philosophy, Newton in science, and 
 Shakspeare as an interpreter of human nature, that, and 
 more, was Jesus in the realm of morals and religion. It 
 appears to me plainly evident that he was a gifted genius, a 
 profound intellect, a most masterly thinker. . . . 
 
 Take the Sermon on the Mount, for instance. What new 
 light and glory are thrown upon the lowly attributes of human 
 character ! In what contrast do they stand with the estimate 
 of the world ! Not the warrior, but the peacemaker ; not the 
 mighty, but the meek ; not the proud ecclesiastics, but the 
 pure in heart ; not the rich or great, but the humble and 
 merciful, — are pronounced blessed. The doers of God's will 
 are the great and fortunate. Sincerity and simplicity are the 
 essence of true worship. Mercy is more pleasing to God than 
 sacrifice. Personal goodness, purity, kindness, service, simple 
 devoutness, are the main thing. How clearly he distinguishes 
 between the spirit and the letter, substance and form, essential 
 and unimportant! "The sabbath is made for man, and not 
 man for the sabbath," gives a comprehensive principle that 
 covers all ceremonial, custom, and institution. " He that will 
 do his will shall know of the doctrine," or spiritual conviction 
 by obedience, is another principle of deepest truth and signifi- 
 
524 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 cance. What condensation of devout thought in that litany 
 of the ages, the Lord's Prayer ! What a consummate generali- 
 zation of human duty in the two great commandments, love 
 to God and man ! What beauty and searching force in the 
 Golden Rule ! and what an absence of all allusion to any thing 
 ceremonial, official, institutional ; to rites and forms, to the 
 sacrifices, the beliefs, sacraments, and atonements, by others 
 even to this day regarded as all-essential. . . . 
 
 How can we avoid the conclusion that his intellectual 
 powers were of the highest order, to enable him to sift the 
 vast amount of material known as religious belief and opinion, 
 and from it to extract the pure gold of truth ? It can only be 
 because we are so familiar with it, if we are unappreciative of 
 the real depth and comprehensiveness of his work. 
 
 Another thing deceives us as to the greatness of his work. 
 Jesus gives us results only. We have precise conclusions, 
 not labored processes of thought. He was not an author. 
 He wrote no book, gave us no record of arguments and 
 elaborate reasonings. Had he done so, — had he left huge 
 volumes of speculations and investigations of truth, writing 
 down the history of his thought in theological treatises and 
 religious discourses, doubtless many would be far more ready 
 than now to regard him as a great thinker. But, in fact, no 
 one in all his writings has left us such a substance and amount 
 of truth as Jesus ; and the real greatness of a philosopher and 
 thinker ought to be estimated by the actual contributions he 
 makes to truth, and to new and living statements of truth; 
 just as the genius of a sculptor is shown, not by the amount 
 of material or time he has used, or efforts put forth, but by 
 the completed work he has carved in wood or stone. 
 
 Thus Swedenborg wrote volume after volume upon reli- 
 gious subjects ; but we could spare all his writings better than 
 a dozen sentences that might be selected from the sayings of 
 Jesus. Greatness of mind is indicated, not by the dust and 
 commotion made in the discussion of truth, but by the quality 
 and amount of wisdom added to the work!, in the crucible 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 525 
 
 of his wonderful mind, Jesus separated the gold of truth from 
 the dross of error, and transformed it into that ready coin that 
 so marv^ellously enriches mankind. What would the world 
 do, if forced to search through long treatises and volumes of 
 speculation for the truth so much needed, — through Plato or 
 Swedenborg or other writers that are only for the scholar ? 
 Instead of gleaning in such vast fields for the scattered grains 
 of truth, the Gospel has garnered it, has winnowed it from 
 the chaff, and brought it to the very door of the humblest 
 soul. . . . 
 
 Another evidence of the superiority of the mind of Christ 
 is the remarkable manner in which he saw the universal in 
 the particular, found suggestions of the grandest truths in the 
 simplest facts and incidents, looked from facts to principles, 
 and penetrated to the all-embracing laws of things. Those 
 of us who have been in the society of great minds must often 
 have noticed and admired their ability, from the smallest arc 
 of fact and incident, to construct the complete circle of the 
 law or principle that holds this fact or event in its majestic 
 sweep. Time need not be taken to illustrate what is so 
 evident upon nearly every page of the Gospels ; but it is a 
 subject of delightful and interesting study, from which few 
 will arise without renewed admiration and reverence for the 
 subtlety and comprehensiveness of the mind of Christ. 
 
 Every thing he saw instantly became a living symbol of 
 truth. The falling sparrow, the lily of the field, the wine-skins, 
 the flocks of sheep upon the hillside, the fields white for the 
 harvest, the wheat and tares, the vineyard, the bread and 
 wine upon the table, — these became suggestions of deep 
 and universal truths. i\nd from the incidents of the hour, — 
 the man asking Jesus to divide the inheritance, only to get a 
 lesson on covetousness ; his kindred interrupting him. only 
 to hear that his mother and sister and brothers are those 
 who do God's will ; his conversations with his opponents, in 
 which he pfoes down beneath all traditional doctrine and 
 custom to the essential principles of life and conduct, — from 
 
526 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 all these we may find abundant illustrations of his power to 
 see the universal in the particular. The clear-cut precision 
 of his thought, its condensation, the point and pertinency of 
 his illustration, his freedom from extraneous allusion, giving 
 us the thing itself, and not mere talk about it ; his practical 
 wisdom, his power of arresting attention and stamping the 
 truth upon the memory, are proofs of his intellectual mastery 
 of the great subjects with which he has to deal. . . . 
 
 Who is the superior, or even rival, of Jesus ? Who will 
 correct, improve, or disprove his Gospel ? Where is the 
 successor of Christianity ? This is the marvel, — that eighteen 
 centuries of thought and investigation have passed without 
 discrowning this king of truth, or disproving his pre-eminence 
 as the spiritual leader of mankind. 
 
 The prophet of Nazareth is not outgrown nor left behind 
 in the progress of the ages ; and this proves his pre-eminence 
 over all others. Indeed, he is far in advance, leading us yet ; 
 and we have no more mastered the full significance of his 
 teachings than we have matched and surpassed the greatness 
 and beauty of his character and life. 
 
 EMILE BOUGAUD. 
 
 [An Argument for the Divinity of Jesus Christ. London : 1882. Pp. 22-29, 3^1 34-] 
 
 According as criticism becomes more searching, observa- 
 tion more thoughtful and more exact, features are discovered 
 in the character of Christ which the ancient apologists did 
 not suspect. Christ stands forth under the gaze of criticism 
 like the firmament when examined with a powerful instrument 
 of modern science. 
 
 Beyond the definite qualities of which we have spoken, 
 and which, carried to their highest perfection and harmoni- 
 ously blended together, stamp such a royal human beauty 
 on the physiognomy of Jesus Christ, we begin to discover in 
 him what is less easy to lay hold of, what is without limit and 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 527 
 
 « 
 bounds. You feel that he is man, but always that he is more 
 than man. There is something of the universal and the 
 inexhaustible, which warns you that the ordinary limits of 
 human nature have been passed. Consider, one by one, his 
 moral perfection, his personality, his mind ; you may discover 
 the form, you will never fathom the depth. 
 
 The depth of his moral perfection ! You will find it when 
 you can find any thing- that can be compared to it. But 
 where will you find this ? I will not speak of antiquity ; such 
 an ideal was not even imagined. " Jesus, by his greatness 
 and goodness," says Channing, " throws all other human 
 attainments into obscurity." 
 
 And not only the human perfections of those who pre- 
 ceded, but also of those who followed him, — such perfections 
 even which owed their origin to him ; for his appearance was 
 like a flash of lightning, which revealed an ideal unknown till 
 then, and which created an all-absorbing desire to imitate him. 
 
 For eighteen centuries has this ideal been before the 
 world ; for eighteen centuries millions of men have tried to 
 reproduce it, and proportioned to the closeness of the copy is 
 the beauty to which they attain ; but to none has it been 
 given to equal it. In these numberless imitations, there are 
 many that challenge admiration, — some by their purity, some 
 by their strength. But not one can compare, even at a dis- 
 tance, with the beauty of Jesus ; for the unique beauty of 
 Jesus surpasses not only all created beauty, it is without limit. 
 No ideal prepared the way for it. . . . 
 
 All our efforts to find an ideal Christ — that is to say, a 
 beauty distinct from the beauty which he realized, and 
 superior to it — are vain. In contemplating Jesus Christ, it 
 is not our ideal which we see arising, escaping from us : it is 
 he, as portrayed in the Gospels, who rises, and escapes from 
 us, whom we cannot reach, either by the pencil or the chisel, 
 either by the pen or by the heart. It was this incapacity for 
 reproducing such beauty, which drew tears from the blessed 
 Angelico of Fiesole ; it was this which caused the brush to 
 
528 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 9 
 
 fall from the hand of Leonardo ; it was this which caused 
 a Bossuet and a Pascal to despair. For the first, perhaps for 
 the only time in the history of art, its highest perfection falls 
 short of the truth, and the imagination even of genius to 
 idealize the reality. 
 
 This reflection alone ought to be sufficient to make every 
 serious mind recognize that the character of Jesus Christ, 
 although truly human and natural, has a superhuman eleva- 
 tion ; but I would have you consider something more won- 
 derful, a further perfection much more inexplicable. We 
 have found no limit to his moral beauty, to his perfection. 
 Let us now seek the limit to his personality. 
 
 Personality is limited by time, place, and race. However 
 great a man may be, he was born here, he lived there, sprang 
 from a certain race, he carries the stamp of that race. Look 
 at the greatest men : they belong to their time. They eagerly 
 espouse its interests, passions, joys, and griefs. We observe 
 this in politicians, in lawgivers, in conquerors. On what 
 would they depend to govern the world, and to raise it, if they 
 did not belong to their time ? But do not mere abstract 
 thinkers, solitary speculators, poets, philosophers, artists, 
 those whose life consecrated to the worship of the ideal goes 
 deeper into human nature, and passes less quietly, — do they 
 not also belong to their time ? Through the music of their 
 poems, do we not hear mingled with the voice of human 
 nature the voice of their age ? mingled with the sighs of 
 the human soul, do we not hear the sighs of the people 
 of the century, of the city, where that human soul prayed, wept, 
 suffered, and loved ? Call over the roll of great men, — 
 Homer, Job, .^schylus, Isaiah, Socrates, Phidias, Sophocles, 
 Plato, Virgil, Tacitus, Dante, Michael Angelo, Shakspeare, 
 Milton, Corneille, Racine, Bossuet. What are they? The 
 incarnations of Greece, of Arabia, of Judaea, of pagan Rome, 
 of Christian Italy, of Spain, of France, of England. And 
 the greater they are, the more perfectly they embody in 
 themselves with the genius of the human race, the genius 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 529 
 
 of that part of the human race of which they are more 
 directly the offspring. Homer is the great Pelasgian, 
 i^schylus is the great Greek, Job is the great Arab, Isaiah 
 is the great Hebrew. Tacitus is the great Roman, Dante 
 is the great Itahan, Shakspeare is the great EngHshman, 
 Bossuet is the great Frenchman. And what is Jesus Christ ? 
 Neither Hebrew nor Greek ; neither ancient nor modern. 
 He is a man : or, rather, he is the man. In the others, you 
 do not find human nature in its fulness : you meet with a 
 limit. In Jesus Christ you meet no limit. 
 
 And remark, that this universality does not imply the 
 absence of individuality. For what individuality was ever so 
 manifest, so sharply defined ? Who ever spoke of himself in 
 such a tone of authority ? Where is there a more complete 
 independence to be found ? On whom is he dependent ? 
 Not on the multitude who cheer him, not on his disciples, not 
 on his century, not on the ideas and customs in the midst of 
 which he lives. None can claim to have been his master. 
 It is by the sublimity of his individuality, that he attains to 
 that singular universality. Moses is a Jew in his thoughts, 
 his feelings, his manners, and his habits, even more than 
 in his origin. Socrates never raised himself above the Greek 
 type. Mohammed was an Arab. La Fontaine and Moliere 
 are French to such a degree, that the English have as much 
 trouble in understanding them as the French have in appre- 
 ciating Goethe. All these great men have something in them 
 that is local and transient, — which cannot be understood 
 beyond the mountain or the ocean, which cannot be every- 
 where imitated ; something which dies with the age, which 
 springs up again sometimes in another age, but again to pass 
 away by a strange vicissitude, which shows that the)- are but 
 men, although the greatest among men. 
 
 In Jesus Christ there is nothing of this sort. His physiog- 
 nomy shares no such limit. Human nature is there, but 
 nothing to circumscribe it. He is the universal model pro- 
 posed for universal imitation. All copy him, — the child, the 
 
530 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 maiden, the mother, the old man, — all, whatever their condi- 
 tion, whatever their age, come to him to find consolation and 
 strength : the poor as well as the rich, the prisoner in his 
 dungeon, and the king upon his throne. To no purpose are 
 fresh actors brought upon the scene, by the progress of the 
 world and of civilization. Jesus Christ is a stranger to none, 
 — not to the Greek, although he cared little for philosophy ; 
 not to the Roman, though he may never have gained a 
 battle ; not to the barbarian of the fourth century, nor to the 
 polished citizen of the nineteenth century, although their ideas, 
 their habits and manners, are so wholly dissimilar. He has 
 been adored by the redskins of America, by the negroes ot 
 Africa, by the Brahmans of India ; and this adoration created 
 in them virtues as pure, and the same, as those which sprang 
 up in the degenerate Romans of the Lower Empire. 
 
 His character so embraces all, touches the sympathies of 
 all, appears to be within the reach of all, is imitated by all, in 
 all times, though never equalled. 
 
 His influence has no limits, either in time or in space. It 
 has no bounds an^^vhere, in any direction. Above all, no 
 age has escaped from it. The human race progresses, it 
 presses forward rapidly like a messenger running in hot haste. 
 It blesses and hails in its path the geniuses which are to carry 
 the torch before it. Then very soon it leaves these geniuses 
 behind. The philosophy of Plato was once good, but it no 
 longer serves our purpose. The science of Newton was 
 wonderful, but it has been outstripped. The human race 
 advances, kindles fresh torches. Hippocrates, Archimedes, 
 Galileo, Lavoisier, — all have been left behind ; but not Jesus 
 Christ. . . . 
 
 It even seems, that, the more the human race progresses, 
 the more striking becomes the influence of Jesus Christ. On 
 each new horizon, it throws a sudden ray of light ; to each 
 new want it provides a remedy till then unknown. What 
 marvels are there not, which the Christians of the first century 
 never suspected, yet of which we are compelled to say, they 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 53 i 
 
 were present to his mind ; and what marvels that we do not 
 perceive, of which our descendants will say, he foresaw these 
 also. And at the same time that it extends through centuries, 
 and is renewed with every advance of civilization, this influence 
 of Jesus Christ loses nothing of its intensity. After the lapse 
 of eighteen centuries, it masters souls as it did on the first day. 
 
 THOMAS WELBANK FOWLE. 
 
 (CELLARIUS. PSEUDONYM.) 
 
 [A New Analogy between Revealed Religion and the Course and Constitu- 
 tion OF Nature. London: 1881. Pp. 157, 158, 162-180.] 
 
 The history of Jesus Christ can be presented in the three- 
 fold aspect of life, character, and teaching, in each of which 
 respects the question of "naturalness" can be submitted to 
 the decision of reason. But, to a considerable extent, the 
 question in each case is decided by the New-Testament record 
 and by the common confession of mankind, as soon as it is 
 asked. ... 
 
 The history, by merely passing touches, takes care to let 
 us know that he discharged excellently all the common rela- 
 tionships of life, such as son, brother, master, servant, host, 
 guest, friend, citizen, patriot, and king, thereby showing how 
 a religious life might be lived on earth and by man. He loved 
 flowers and children, because, in addition to their natural 
 charms, they taught him something about God. The ver\" 
 weakness of human nature, he so endured as to consecrate it 
 to God, and to a divine purpose ; and the tears of Christ are 
 stored in the treasure-house of human memory. That he was in 
 all things like unto us, — sin only excepted, — was one of the 
 most certain impressions made upon the minds of those who 
 had the best means of knowing him ; and it is because they 
 have so depicted him, that he has gained so complete a hold 
 upon the heart of mankind. And all this was done by men. 
 who, believing in his supernatural origin and destiny, had the 
 
532 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Strongest inducement to pass over the merely human aspect 
 of his life. And we may surely assert, that if the account of 
 him were merely a tradition of a noble life, by devoted follow- 
 ers, this belief of theirs would have added some touch of 
 naturalness, or betrayed some lack of sympathy with custom- 
 ary order, that would have marred the completeness of our 
 Exemplar, and so hurt our faith. 
 
 That our Lord's conformity to nature was not merely acci- 
 dental, but formed part of his own self-conscious intention, 
 proof of a very remarkable and convincing character can be 
 alleged. As a mere matter of historical criticism, no portion 
 of his life presents so much difficulty as the account of his 
 temptation, which must, to be true in any sense at all. repre- 
 sent his own views and thoughts about that mysterious event. 
 And yet, if we look at it, it is clear that the victory consisted 
 in the determination of a Being, conscious of supernatural 
 powers, not therefore to depart from the order of nature, but 
 to do his work in life as other men do theirs. The induce- 
 ment to error in this way constitutes the entire force of at 
 least two out of three temptations ; namely, to support the 
 wants of nature then and thereafter by miraculous power, and 
 to gain the adherence of the people by miraculous defiance of 
 nature's laws. It seems, we must venture to say, almost im- 
 possible to overestimate the conclusiveness of such an analogy 
 as this, all the circumstances being taken into account. 
 
 Nature's first and simplest demand would seem to be that 
 the perfect man should possess the various qualities which are 
 called virtuous or good. But as these arc made up of con- 
 trasts, i.e., those that are associated with what we call strength 
 or weakness, respectively, there is an inherent difficulty in 
 combining them in one character, — over which polytheism 
 stumbled, and ended by assigning various characteristic quali- 
 ties to different divinities, in despair, it would seem, ot con- 
 centrating them in one ; and thus it failed in the task which 
 nature sets the reason to do. 
 
 This task, however, has been accomplished in the revela- 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 533 
 
 tion of Christ. For it is this very combination of two sets of 
 qualities, that gives him the first moral claim upon (nir alle- 
 giance. On the one hand we have tenderness, meekness, 
 humility, sympathy, patience, and many more similar qualities ; 
 on the other hand we have heroism, physical and moral cour- 
 age, indignation, the love of liberty, the spirit of command. 
 For the most striking illustration of this, let us take his public 
 entrance into Jerusalem, which we boldly call the most heroic 
 act in history, and which, nevertheless, was specifically associ- 
 ated with meekness and sorrowful weeping. 
 
 So, again, we have united the royal dignity of a king, and 
 the absolute humility of the Saviour ; the strenuous will, 
 and the submissive resignation ; the lofty resolution, and the 
 patient endurance. But not to go further into detail, we 
 assert, perhaps without the chance of being contradicted, that 
 the account of Christ's moral qualities has been so arranged 
 as to leave that impression of symmetrical completeness which 
 nature asks for. 
 
 Nature's second demand of the perfect man may be 
 described as that abstract quality called holiness or righteous- 
 ness, which is always predicated of God wherever the mind 
 of man has apprehended the unity of the Divine Being. . . . 
 That this ideal is fulfilled in the account of Jesus Christ, can 
 hardly, we think, be denied, especially in view of the plain 
 fact that criticism has hitherto failed to make an impression 
 upon it. The word "character," which has come to be applied 
 to his moral being, conveys an erroneous notion about him. 
 For character, as the word implies, is a very marked and 
 definite thing ; it is the stamp impressed upon a particular 
 man's moral constitution, so engraved and fashioned, raised 
 here, depressed there, light in one place, dark in another, as 
 to afford a distinct notion what manner of man he is. But 
 this is quite unlike the account we have of Christ, of whom 
 we surely cannot say that he is better in one respect than in 
 another ; or that he diverged from the standard of goodness 
 which Nature has taught us to set up or to acknowledge 
 
534 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 when set up by him ; or that he was of any particular type 
 or cast of character at all. However we may explain the 
 fact, it remains true that the history is so devised as to place 
 him above the power of moral analysis, in the same sort of 
 way as nature is planned to reveal the incomparable and 
 indefinable holiness of the Creator. 
 
 Nature's third demand, which concerns rather the working 
 of the perfect character in actual practice, is that it should 
 display a constant sympathy with good, and antipathy towards 
 evil : a truth which the religious instinct has expressed in the 
 doctrine common to all mankind, that the gods punish wick- 
 edness, and reward virtue. Now, it is one of the happy 
 results of recent discoveries, that the justification of this 
 demand, together with the meaning of this sympathy and 
 antipathy, are found embedded, as it were, in the moral strata 
 of nature itself. For the modern doctrine is, that by the 
 course of nature is meant an increasing tendency on the part 
 of man, to improve himself and his surroundings according 
 to the law of development which nature lays down for reason 
 and experience to find out and profit by. Whence it follows 
 that all men who would be accounted good must love that 
 which makes for the carrying-out of nature's plan, and hate 
 that which makes against it. 
 
 Now, it is not too much to say, that the moral history of 
 Christ, in its practical aspect, may be summed up under one 
 or other of these two conceptions, and that he realized abso- 
 lutely nature's ideal. 
 
 The last demand that nature makes is, that the perfect 
 man should have that complete sympathy with herself, with 
 the course and order of things, which may be termed happi- 
 ness in living, or the mere joy of existence. . . . 
 
 The deeper research of modern days has come in, to 
 sanction this association of the sense of joy with the course 
 of nature, and to justify the demand for it from any charac- 
 ter claiming to be perfect. . . . The capacity for joy lies at 
 the moral heart of nature ; let it be taken away, and there 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 535 
 
 •would be no reason why sentient being should care to prolong 
 life or to continue the conflict. So that nature cannot choose 
 but demand of all who would represent her moral character- 
 istics to perfection, that they should discern and appropriate 
 this joy of progress as being the necessary condition of all 
 moral continuance. 
 
 Now, as we well know, this is not the first nor the most 
 cha.racteristic view of things which the Christian revelation 
 presents to our notice : rather it protests against the mere sat- 
 isfaction with things as they are, and against the mere enjoy- 
 ment of the best of all possible worlds, as sure to end in 
 terrible moral confusions. And so Christianity makes its first 
 appeal to the heart of man, by depicting the Man of sorrows 
 as expressing the Divine sympathy with the sorrowfulness of 
 life ; and this, in obedience to the cry of humanity, which 
 suffers so much at the hands of nature, whose very joy is a 
 survival out of much unhappiness. 
 
 And this first impression, with its inexhaustible cup of 
 consolation for the sinner and the sufferer, endured for many 
 ages of moral disorder and deep misery, until, in accordance 
 with a law from which not even the greatest truths, if they 
 are one-sided, are exempt, it was seen to be in imperfect 
 harmony with nature, and so gave rise to re-actions which had 
 their roots and justification in the purely natural gladness of 
 living. Thus in the semi-pagan revival before the Reforma- 
 tion, and in the movement of the eighteenth century, of 
 which nature was the pass-word, the principal actors were 
 thrilled with the joy of life, action, knowledge, and humanit}-. 
 To them, nature was all-sufficing ; and they insisted, often 
 with forced laughter echoing over a troubled scene from sad 
 hearts, that men had only to follow the leadings of nature, 
 and be happy. And so, resenting the sorrowful view of life, 
 they fought Christianity to the very death, in the ver)- spirit 
 of an overwrought, and therefore not permanent, re-action. 
 
 This re-action has now in great measure abated, in pro- 
 portion as earnest minds have come to see how true the story 
 
536 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 of the Man of sorrows is to experience, and how essential 
 to any adequate moral rendering of the world in which we 
 live. Now, therefore, if ever, is the opportunity for Christi- 
 anity to do its part in the work of reconciliation, by complet- 
 ing its own representation of the moral being of its Master. 
 And this it can do by claiming more distinctly than hitherto, 
 upon the plain testimony afforded by Christ's words and life, 
 that joy of existence which nature demands, and he so plainly 
 possessed. For, be it observed that he himself never speaks of 
 his sorrowfulness (as an abiding quality), more than once 
 of his joy ; nor does his life present merely the aspect of 
 unceasing sorrow, but also a cheerful, hopeful, laborious 
 energy, lived indeed towards the latter part in the deepening 
 gloom of the shadow of the cross, which again was relieved 
 by the radiance of the resurrection. It affords, perhaps, a 
 hint how much more is yet to be got out of the Christian 
 religion, that it might be difficult to quote one discourse of 
 any celebrated preacher in which the joy of Christ is expressly 
 and exhaustively treated. . . . 
 
 But what forever determines this question for Christians 
 is his own testimony to his spiritual joy. As though to leave 
 this last impression upon the heart of man, he goes to 
 betrayal, agony, and death, with the words " my joy " repeated 
 emphatically in his last discourse and closing prayer to God. 
 And all analogy, now that men have begun to understand 
 the course of things, justifies the assertion that he bore and 
 conquered death because of the supreme joy of existence to 
 which he testified. If he was human in the perfection of his 
 sorrow, he was divine, as nature accounts of divineness, in 
 the perfection of his joy ; so that we do him wrong if in his 
 name, or to carry on his work, we throw ourselves out of 
 sympathy with the natural gladness of things : although this 
 fault is not to be confounded with that stern and necessary 
 protest against selfishness, self-satisfaction, and deadness to 
 sin and suffering, which the contemplation of the joyful side 
 of nature, taken by itself, is apt to promote. The tendency of 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 537 
 
 the life of Christ, as of nature, is always towards unity, whole- 
 ness, combination of opposites, adjustment of contradictions. 
 
 But without entering further on the joy of Christ, which 
 we suspect to be full of hidden beauties and deep analogies, 
 to be revealed hereafter, we say simply, that, contrary to what 
 might have been expected beforehand, it betrays a complete 
 resemblance to that which nature suggests as being the most 
 suitable spirit for her children to be possessed by. 
 
 The naturalness of Christ's teaching to which we now turn 
 might almost be taken as conceded by fair opponents ; at any 
 rate, the answer which Revelation makes to the demand of 
 nature becomes more decisive as the demand assumes a more 
 peremptory tone. . . . Now, this being so, we are to remem- 
 ber that not by one single word did Christ give any opinion 
 about natural phenomena, or assign for them supernatural 
 causes. He did not interfere in his teaching with any knowl- 
 edge that men have, or may acquire, of the universe, of its 
 laws and processes ; nor is there any thing that men say or 
 think at the present moment in the investigation of nature, 
 which requires to be altered because of any thing that Christ 
 said or taught. In every thing, he paid scrupulous deference 
 to the prerogatives of reason, and never committed himself to 
 any opinion that reason can even criticise, still less pronounce 
 inaccurate. This is, of course, as it must needs be, one of 
 those general statements that are asserted as true, subject to 
 disproof from facts, which in this case can be safely challenged ; 
 but there is also one piece of positive proof as well. 
 
 All religious systems must contain a cosmogony of some 
 sort, and it is here that they come into conflict with science ; 
 even the primitive and artless cosmogony of the Hebrews 
 having been subjected to the common lot of being strenuously 
 disputed over. But the Christian cosmogony as contained in 
 the first thirteen verses of St. John's Gospel (for so it certainly 
 is), presents nothing which can conflict with any positive 
 demonstration of reason from the apprehension of phenomena. 
 It is a purely spiritual or religious account of creation, so 
 
538 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 constructed as to fall in with any material or scientific account 
 that the human mind may attain unto. . . . 
 
 Surely no one ever made so natural a use of natural 
 scenes as Christ did. He grasped clearly the secrets of God's 
 working- in nature, and thus was able to use it to explain and 
 illustrate the same working in the spiritual order, bringing out 
 at every step in his teaching analogies the most beautiful 
 and subtile. Thus, to take the first few examples that present 
 themselves : he spoke of himself under such illustrations as 
 light, food, drink, a vine, a shepherd, a bridegroom, and the 
 like. His parables ranged over the common scenes or duties 
 of daily life. He said one of the finest and deepest things 
 ever said concerning flowers, in order to contrast the beauti- 
 fulness of God's creation with man's artificial splendor. 
 
 The sight of children suggested to him a living picture of 
 the heavenly disposition. The sun and stars above, moun- 
 tains and hills below, were also pressed into the same service. 
 And so he drew religion from nature as other men draw poetr)-, 
 art, law, or morals, which he for his part left to each man to 
 do in his own sphere as God had appointed, never interfering 
 with the march of the human intelligence in pursuit of its own 
 proper aims, but submitting himself, as became a dutiful Son, 
 to the conditions and limitations which his Father has 
 imposed upon his created work. 
 
 JOHN WILLIAMS. 
 
 [The World's Witness to Jesus Christ. New York: 1882. Pp. 38-43, 49, 50.] 
 
 There were religions and philosophies in the world when 
 Jesus of Nazareth was born in Judcxa. What one of these, 
 if any, has taken up those various elements that we behold, 
 and used them all for the advancement of the race ? What 
 one of these has proved itself possessed of the capability of 
 universal adaptation, of a permanence which is living and 
 not fossilized, and of the power of continuous and limitless 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 539 
 
 expansion ? These three marks or signs I hold to be not 
 only noteworthy, but crucial. A system in which they are 
 not found — whether it contains doctrinal or ethical truth, or 
 both — cannot be one fitted to meet the hopes, or fulfil the 
 destinies, of man. It may contain elements of truth, and 
 those elements may give it — must give it — a certain degree 
 of power. They may adapt it, within circumscribed limits, to 
 the attainments of a race, an age, or a country. They may 
 give it a permanence which turns out, on examination, to be 
 the permanence of a sealed-up corpse that crumbles into dust 
 when light and air are let in upon it. They may work for it 
 an expansion that may continue for a time, but that comes at 
 last to an end. Such a system carries within itself its own 
 doom of death. It proves itself incapable of doing that for 
 humanity which the very instincts of humanity demand. 
 
 There is still another question that may well be asked, 
 although it may appear to be covered by those that have 
 gone before. What system has most thoroughly developed 
 human intelligence, and given the greatest impulse to the arts 
 and industries that in our time have achieved such triumphs ? 
 I hold that any system, institution, religion, which, in the 
 lapse of ages, has shown itself competent for such achieve- 
 ments as these questions indicate ; which has been able to 
 gather up all those preparations of all previous time, and use 
 them for the best interests of the race ; which has shown 
 itself possessed of capabilities of adaptation to all nations, 
 under all conditions of life, raising them meantime towards, 
 if not to, its own ideal of what men should be ; which has 
 proved itself permanent, not as being fossilized into immo- 
 bility, but possessed of an ever-animating life ; which has 
 exhibited a power of expansion, that, though sometimes 
 checked, has never been destroyed, and to whose advances 
 no limits can be set ; which has most thoroughly developed 
 human intelligence, and given the largest impulse to those 
 arts and industries that contribute to the noblest civiliza- 
 tion, — I hold that such a system or religion has vindicated 
 
540 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 its rights to hold the world as its heritage, and the nations as 
 its possession. 
 
 More than that, I claim for it the right to demand, that, in 
 the absence of any other adequate explanation of its origin, 
 its nature, and its powers, its own account shall be accepted. 
 Nor is more included in this demand than a truly scientific 
 method must necessarily require. Canons of historical criti- 
 cism can no more rightly be, a priori, arbitrary and antece- 
 dent to the facts of history, than canons of good writing can 
 properly be, a priori, arbitrary and antecedent to good models 
 in composition. All true canons of criticism, whether his- 
 torical or literar}', are — as Pope said long ago of the latter 
 — " discovered, not devised." In either case, facts precede 
 theories. Theories, indeed, must come out from facts, and 
 not be imported into them. 
 
 Taking, then, the testimony of almost nineteen centuries, 
 what answer do we obtain to the questions, gathered up into 
 one, that we have been asking ? Where do we find the 
 system, religion, or institution, which has met the conditions 
 presented to us, and accomplished, with whatever drawbacks, 
 the work for the race for which all previous history had been 
 the unconscious preparation ? 
 
 I anticipate your answer to this question, as you anticipate 
 mine. In truth, there is but one answer that can be given: 
 It is the system of Christianity, the religion of Jesus Christ, 
 the institution known as the Christian Church, that has accom- 
 plished this ; not Confucius, not Buddha with the Sutras, not 
 Mohammed with the Koran, not any thing that has been, or 
 that is, in the world, has accomplished this, except Jesus Christ 
 and his Church. 
 
 Of Christianity only, can that be said which Montesquieu 
 has .said of it: "The religion of heaven has not established 
 itself by the same methods as the religions of this world. 
 Read over the history of the Church, and you will see the 
 jjrodigies of the Christian religion. Has it resolved to enter 
 a country? It knows how to open the gates of that country, 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 541 
 
 and can use all instruments that present themselves. Some- 
 times God employs a few fishermen, sometimes an emperor 
 on his throne. Does the Christian religion conceal itself in 
 subterranean hiding-places ? Wait a moment, arid you will 
 hear the imperial majesty speaking in its behalf. It crosses 
 seas, rivers, mountains : there are, in truth, no obstacles that 
 can arrest its march. Are human minds repugnant to it? It 
 overcomes that repugnance. Are customs, usages, edicts, 
 laws, opposed to it ? It will triumph over natural conditions, 
 over laws and legislators." Strange and striking words these ! 
 But how strictly true ! What a picture they present of the 
 march of Christianity along the historic pathway of the world, 
 taking up as it advances all the factors that the ages have 
 prepared for a possible future, and from them, and with them, 
 enabling men — by its spirit, in its power, through its life — 
 to work out all that is best and noblest in that civilization of 
 whose triumphs, on every side and in all directions, we are 
 never weary of making our boast ! 
 
 No man, indeed, but one who has carefully investigated 
 the subject, can have the smallest idea of the extent to which 
 Christianity has permeated, vitalized, and enlarged the lan- 
 guages of civilized nations ; so that if you could eliminate 
 from them its influence and work, you would not only greatly 
 narrow their limits, and abridge their fulness, but you would 
 almost be compelled to learn them over again, before you 
 could use them intelligently. And then, besides, what a mass 
 of the noblest and best literature must be utterly disfigured, 
 if not absolutely destroyed ! This would be an invasion of 
 barbarism in very truth. 
 
 Why, the very language in which unbelief voices its 
 attacks on Christianity, is language that largely owes its 
 capacity to express the ideas that unbelievers seek to com- 
 municate, to the influence of Christianity itself. 
 
 There are, however, hieher thino-s to be considered in 
 civilization, as vitalized by Christianity, than science, indus- 
 trial arts, language, or letters. We have also to look at the 
 
542 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 moral training and advancement of civilized nations. Here 
 is, after all, the crucial test. With this, we may well press 
 upon men's thoughts the influence of Christianity in the vari- 
 ous matters named, and in others like them. But without 
 this, all those other things would amount to nothing, and 
 would not be worth the trouble of considering. 
 
 Let me then state this higher aspect of the influence of 
 Christianity in the shortest and most comprehensive form : 
 The influence of Christianity on the moral education of 
 nations is the great fact of modern times. 
 
 GEORGE C. LORIMER. 
 
 [Jesus the World's Saviour. Chicago : 1883. Pp. 7, 8.] 
 
 Jesus is the source, the supreme and ultimate source, of 
 the most sacred hopes of the race, and the only perfect model 
 of every thing that beautifies it in character and dignifies it in 
 conduct. In the sphere wherein he moves, he is absolutely 
 the sole and exclusive teacher, and the unparalleled and un- 
 matched exemplar. In comparison with him and his influ- 
 ence, all other careers, even the most saintly, are as trivial and 
 unavailing as the shadow of a cloud falling on sea or mountain. 
 
 From the window of the room where these words are 
 penned, the Lake of Lucerne, in all its transparent and placid 
 loveliness, is visible, and recalls the part it plays in common 
 with other inland waters in the physical economy of Europe. 
 The glacier floods flow into the lakes of Switzerland, where 
 they are sunned and purified, that they may thus be rendered 
 wholesome before they stream forth as rivers on their fertiliz- 
 ing mission. 
 
 And thus the blessed Christ receives humanity, sin-soiled 
 and surcharged with the elements of moral death, and does 
 what no other being, even the best, can do, — transforms it 
 by contact with himself into his own image, and sends it forth 
 in sacred ministries of grace and healing. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 543 
 
 RICHARD S. STORRS. 
 
 [The Divine Origin of Christianity. New York: 1884. Pp- 35- 53,60-63,90,94, 
 
 267, 271, 279, 329.] 
 
 That a new and nobler conception of God has been 
 common among men since Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed his 
 religion, it seems quite impossible to doubt ; and that change 
 and elevation of thought on this supreme theme have been 
 radically due to his sovereign instruction and his efficacious 
 and undecaying influence, appears equally evident. But 
 certainly, if this be admitted as true, it cannot be dismissed 
 as of trivial importance. It must be conceded to be of a 
 really royal significance. 
 
 No greater intellectual or spiritual gain can be conceived 
 for any man than that which is implied in a more vivid, 
 just, and inspiring conception of him from whom his nature 
 came, and with whom he stands, by reason of that nature, in 
 essential relations. No object can be conceived more worthy 
 the aim of a Divine revelation than to give men precisely 
 this uplift and advancement in the knowledge of their Creator. 
 It has to do with their mental progress, in power and in 
 culture. It is intimately connected with the training of con- 
 science, and of the sweetest and noblest affections. There is, 
 in fact, no element in our energetic and complex natures 
 which should not take beauty and blessing upon it from a 
 clearer and larger apprehension of God. As flowers and 
 trees respond with blooms brilliant and fragrant to the kiss 
 of the sunshine when spring replaces the icy winter, so what- 
 ever is noblest in man, and whatever is most delicate, must 
 answer the appeal of a radiant discovery of that presiding 
 Personal Glory, from which order and life, power and love, 
 incessantly proceed. . . . 
 
 When Christianity was proclaimed in the earth, it did two 
 things in regard to the immaculate purity immanent in God. 
 It illustrated more fully its meaning and energy, and it made 
 
544 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 that the possession of mankind which before had pertained 
 to a separated people. Jesus himself, as admitted by all, was 
 intolerant of sin, though inviting and welcoming toward each 
 who turn from it. 
 
 With flaming eye, and a voice whose intonations still 
 reverberate from the page, he rebuked pride, greed, malice, 
 and undue passion, though aroused for himself; the simulation 
 of unreal virtue ; the lust within, even if unexpressed in the 
 life; a mere indifference to spiritual welfare. 
 
 Not in the Decalogue, not in the sternest warnings of Old- 
 Testament prophets, is the Divine pureness of thought and 
 will so radiantly apparent as in the sermon preached by him 
 on the grass-covered ridge of the Horns of Hattin. It is 
 incorporate in his life, in every action which illustates his spirit. 
 The Divine purity, resplendent in Jesus, must make, as it has 
 made, an incessant and an indelible impression on the mind 
 of the world. As exhibited in him, giving him his lordship, 
 constituting- the lig^ht to enlighten the nations, it smote with 
 instant and powerful impact on the souls of his disciples ; and 
 the final description, by his last surviving personal disciple, 
 of him who is utterly righteous and true, surrounded by those 
 redeemed and renewed to a similar righteousness, only answers 
 to all which had gone before in setting forth this perfect 
 holiness. As the indestructible azure in sea or sky. as the 
 golden beauty in the sunshine, this character appears, through- 
 out both the Testaments, immortal in God. 
 
 I match every other conception of God ever known in 
 the world, even that which obtained among the instructed 
 Hebrew people, against this which is radiant in the New 
 Testament ; and all the others — of philosophers most enlight- 
 ened, of rapt and fine poetic spirits — are as painted dust in 
 the comparison, torch-lights beneath a meridian sun. tinted 
 vapors before the heaven-high crystal air. It ma)' truly be 
 said, as it has been said many times, that if Jesus had done 
 nothing more than to teach men to say " Our Father," in the 
 Christian sense, his Divine legation would have been justified. 
 
THE FRIENDS OF JESUS REMOVE HIS BODY FROM THE CROSS. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 545 
 
 History has ceased to be an enigma, beneath the discover)' 
 of an order of events foreseen by him who is thus declared 
 sovereign in energy, and prescient in thought. There is now 
 majestic rhythm in it. It is felt to be moving toward fresh 
 consummations. Even nature has been enjoyed with fresh 
 enthusiasm, in the light of the new and larger knowledge 
 of him who ordained it ; and a love of landscape, unfamiliar 
 to the world of heathen thought, is almost as present as 
 household affection in the realm of modern life and letters. 
 
 There is a courage and hopefulness of spirit not felt 
 before ; an expectation of better ages. There has passed a 
 transcendent impulse into poetry ; and songs are now heard 
 such as never before had stirred the air, exalting the spirit as 
 with the rush of angelic plumes. Philosophy itself takes a 
 finer exactness, on higher levels with larger range ; while the 
 characteristic spiritual life of the modern believer infolds ele- 
 ments unparalleled, unimagined in the earlier time. The 
 lowliest feel themselves related in spirit to the Lord of the 
 universe. The little child feels it as well as the mature ; the 
 savage just enlightened, as well as the cultured Christian disci- 
 ple ; the peasant, uninstructed in human knowledge, only more 
 easily than the savant. It is not strange to such, henceforth, 
 that God has builded a city above, and has crowded it with 
 glories which men cannot prefigure, that they at last may 
 share his rest. It is not strange, or passing belief, that the 
 hand which holds the universe together should wipe the tears 
 from human eyes. 
 
 The grandest, tenderest, most inspiring thought which the 
 mind of the world has ever received is this of God, now made 
 familiar to it through Jesus. Even the sceptic has to admit it 
 the loveliest of dreams, while the discerning student of history 
 finds in it the source of a vast prophetic change in the life 
 of mankind. I do not argue, you observe, for the truth of 
 this conception of God ; but I point to the majesty, harmony, 
 and impressiveness of it, and to its effects, as vital and grand 
 beyond possible cavil. It holds its place while ages pass, as 
 
54^ TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 unaffected by changes of custom or mutations of states as the 
 atmosphere is by the waving of trees. It involves supremest 
 blessing and promise. All character, rooted in love to the 
 Highest, takes from that a superior glory ; philanthropy, 
 heroism, domestic affection, the very passion of patriotism 
 being ennobled and consecrated by it. Self-surrender for the 
 truth, self-sacrifice for others, which were the rare experience 
 of the few, have become the familiar enthusiasm of the many, 
 since the divine authority and splendor appeared in Jesus ; 
 and no occasional fitful ecstasy of Philo or Plotinus could 
 rival that sweet and solemn joy which has come to millions 
 of human souls since the God of the New Testament was 
 declared to the world. 
 
 There is no department of human experience on which 
 there does not fall to-day a beneficent force from that declara- 
 tion. The change from the old world to the new, in this 
 regard if in no other, can only be compared to the change of 
 which the voyager is sensible when, turning his keel from 
 arctic seas, he meets on the mighty oceanic currents airs 
 prophetic already of the softness, the fragrance, and the 
 serene brilliance of unreached tropics. 
 
 If the religion announced in words so strangely simple, 
 yet so full of authority, from the rugged and lowly hills of 
 Galilee, had done nothing but make this impression on the 
 life of mankind, it would take its place as the highest, most 
 positive, and beneficent energy which the earth has contained ; 
 surpassing arts, and arms, and ethics, as the unsounded skies 
 surpass our roofs. It might, assuredly, have come from God, 
 — whether in fact it did so or not, — if only for this purpose 
 of teaching mankind what before had not been affirmed or 
 surmised concerning him whom all the peoples had dimly felt 
 or keenly feared, but the picture of whose radiant and sove- 
 reign holiness, vital with love, was hung up on no celestial 
 constellations, was imaged on no poetic fancy, is only shown 
 to the world which it blesses in the mission, the words, and 
 the face of Jesus. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 547 
 
 However men have quarrelled with the supreme require- 
 ment of the Scripture in both the Testaments, " Be ye holy, 
 since God is holy," no one can deny that it contains the 
 noblest eulogy on human nature, in its constituent moral 
 powers, which was ever pronounced. We cannot rival God in 
 power, — the angels cannot, — or in the measureless infinitude 
 of his knowledge. But in that which is grander than power 
 or knowledge, in the character, of sovereign and unspeakable 
 glory, to which all else in him is subordinate, men are required 
 by this religion to rival God : through perfect love to be as 
 holy as himself, as the single drop in its sphericity is as per- 
 fect as oceans ; as the single sun-ray, slanting through the 
 crevice, is as perfect in its intrinsic splendor as measureless 
 floods of the solar effulgence. 
 
 To the slave at Corinth, the despised, rebellious, and pas- 
 sionate Jew in the Roman Ghetto across the Tiber, this was 
 a measure of character as far surpassing the reach of his 
 powder, as he yet knew this, — and knew not the grace which 
 might assist It, — as It would be to climb on star-beams to the 
 sky, or to take up the piles of Lebanon In his fingers. 
 
 But he could not but feel — as no one now can refuse to 
 feel — that he who presented a requirement like that, put 
 Immensest honor on human nature, an honor simply unpar- 
 alleled and supreme. To have offered man a garland of suns, 
 would not really have attested so supremely the divine honor 
 put upon him. . . , 
 
 Certainly, no other eulogy so sublime has been pro- 
 nounced on human nature as that which was thus pronounced 
 by Christianity when it broke Into the history of the world, at 
 the outset of our era, which Is Implied In It to-day, w^herever 
 its astonishing messages are carried. I find it hard sometimes 
 to entertain sincere respect for many of the arguments 
 brought against the religion \vhlch has changed so substan- 
 tially the life of the world. But that which seems the foolish- 
 est of all — a mere mephltic waft of air — is the allegation 
 which occasionally Is made, which has been rampantly made 
 
548 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 in our time, that it degrades the nature of man, and puts too 
 low an estimate upon it ! How soon will men complain that 
 showers bring drought, and that sunshine makes darkness too 
 complete ! 
 
 Character was the essential thing under Christianity. It 
 portrayed this as it ought to be. It demanded it with a per- 
 emptory, with what seemed an intolerant, tone of authority. 
 It made men's entire future experience depend on its posses- 
 sion, and brought the unmeasured pressure of celestial 
 motives to prompt to its attainment. And so it smote the 
 slumbering conscience as the clangor of a thousand trumpets 
 in the air could hardly have smitten the startled sense. 
 
 Not content, however, with delineating this character in 
 words, however glowing with inward lustre, it showed it 
 in vivid realization, in the personal Head of that religion, in 
 whom charity and power both passing the limits of historical 
 parallel were declared to have been inseparably joined ; in 
 whom no trace of the evil had appeared which infected 
 society ; who suffered, though sovereign ; who was patient 
 amid incessant provocation ; who claimed for himself the 
 highest place, and the largest authority over human souls, but 
 who yet gave his life to win the wandering, to enlighten the 
 obscure, to save the condemned. 
 
 According to the early Christian conception, this un- 
 matched character had appeared in the world, at once to glorify 
 and to condemn it, in him whom his disciples loved as a brother 
 while reverinof him as their Lord. No matter now when the 
 Gospels were written, or when the oral tradition presupposed 
 became compact and current : this conception of the Christ 
 was certainly in the Church when Paul's principal Epistles 
 were written ;' and it had been, as appears from those Epistles, 
 from the beginning. They who early followed the Lord 
 certainly believed what Athanase Coquerel eloquently said, 
 in answer to Strauss, that " Jesus is the ideal of virtue ; so 
 perfect that all the efforts of the most delicate conscience, the 
 most fertile imagination, the most expansive charity, cannot 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 549 
 
 add to it the least trait ; " and they also believed, with the 
 same enthusiastic and untrammelled preacher, that the ideal 
 thus exhibited was a practical ideal ; that while we admire, 
 extol, and worship, we are also under supreme obligation, 
 through the help which he offers, to aspire to resemble him. 
 
 Men had, therefore, by degrees, to recognize the fact that 
 a new character had appeared in the world, among men like 
 themselves : a character in which gentleness, sweetness, and 
 saintliness of demeanor were combined with enthusiasm and 
 inflexible zeal ; in which was a joy that blended inseparably 
 with supreme self-devotion, and a conquering hope that no 
 enmities could crush. It was an evangel in human life ; a 
 discovery of something transcendent in the spirit ; a living 
 revelation of forces supernal. 
 
 No matter what the explanation may be, the fact remains 
 indestructible in history, that the religion preached by Jesus, 
 simple as it seemed, and wanting in any equipment whatever 
 of secular force, with no slightest aid from army or navy, 
 treasury or senate, and with all the letters and arts of the age 
 for its unwearied moral opponents, took the foremost peoples 
 and cities of the world, at the time when vice in every form was 
 most triumphant and most universal, and wrought a change 
 unprophesied and unmeasured. It conquered, where philoso- 
 phies had failed. It exalted, where arts had degraded. It puri- 
 fied, where religions had polluted ; and, in the eloquent words 
 of another, it made " the instrument of the slave's agony a 
 symbol more glorious than the laticlave of councils or the dia- 
 dem of kings." The splendor of that supreme achievement no 
 scepticism can shadow, no lapse of time rob of its brightness. 
 
 In a memorable passage by Macaulay, in his essay on 
 Mitford's " History of Greece," he says of Athens, with a 
 scholar's enthusiasm:." Her power is indeed manifest, in the 
 senate, on the field of battle, in the schools of philosophy. 
 But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles 
 sorrow or assuages pain, wherever it brings gladness to eyes 
 that fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark 
 
550 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 house and the long sleep, — there is exhibited, in its noblest 
 form, the immortal influence of Athens." 
 
 In only a more reverent and affectionate spirit, and surely 
 with a justice still more apparent, we may say of Christianity, 
 that while it transformed the savage and sensual life of the 
 Empire, while it mastered the barbarians who broke upon that 
 in successive terrific inundations of destruction, while it has 
 changed the face of Europe, building cathedrals, hospitals, 
 universities, and has covered this country with at least the 
 foundation and lower stories of its appropriate civilization, 
 while it has made the enlightened and aspiring Christendom of 
 to-day the fact of chief importance thus far in the progress 
 of mankind — its true glory is that it has wiped the tears of 
 sorrow from the eyes of its disciples, and has comforted hearts 
 which were desolate with grief; that it has given celestial 
 visions to those who dwelt beneath thatched roofs, and has 
 taught a happier humility to the proud; that it has shed 
 victorious tranquillity on those who have seen the shadows of 
 death closing around them, and has caused to be written over 
 their graves the lofty words of promise and cheer, " I am the 
 resurrection and the life." 
 
 This is the diadem of this religion : sparkling with gems, 
 lucid and vivid, such as never were set in any philosophic or 
 poetic crown. Because of these effects, and not merely for 
 its influences upon cosmical progress, men have loved this 
 religion with a passionate intensity beside which all other 
 enthusiasms were weak. Because of these, if for nothing else, 
 it will live in the world till human hearts have ceased to beat. 
 
 ISAAC AUGUST DORNER. 
 
 [System of Christian Ethics. Now York : 1S87. Pp. 346, 347.] 
 
 Christ unveils the law of life perfecdy and efl"ectively by 
 the example and pattern which he affords ; or, in other words, 
 he unveils it by fulfilling it. By this means the law remains 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 55 I 
 
 no longer in an impersonal form ; but as personal, holy love, 
 it assumes an attractive and lovely shape. Christ encourages 
 us to fulfil the law by showing that it can be fulfilled, and 
 thus establishing our belief in its perfect validity. . . . 
 
 Christ unveils the whole counsel and will of God from its 
 very foundation. He does not, therefore, reveal will merely 
 as holy and just, and so making demands upon us, but also 
 in its sanctifying and pardoning character, and so as bestow- 
 ing something upon us. The divine law of life made manifest 
 in him becomes fruitful and efficacious, only by his being at 
 the same time the law of faith. ... If he were merely a 
 teacher and moral lawgiver, his person would have only an 
 accidental significance like that of Moses, or one of the 
 prophets. But Christ is what he teaches. 
 
 Christ, moreover, though he is an individual man, can be 
 the all-embracing law for all men. The form of personality 
 is not a limitation for love, it is rather the means by which 
 love manifests itself. It is in the nature of love to take up 
 its abode in individuals ; and the divine ofood comes to actual 
 historical existence in the person of him who, on his human 
 side, possesses every requisite for its manifestation. Thus is 
 he the Son of man ; he is of universal significance, and has 
 the same relation to all. It is a duty incumbent upon the 
 universal human conscience, to acknowledge Christ as the law 
 of faith ; for he is the objective conscience of humanity, its 
 ethical truth and wisdom. 
 
 THEODORE KEIM. 
 
 [The History of Jesus of Nazara. London: 18S3. Vol. ii. pp. 65, 66; vol. vi. pp. 
 
 3S9-392, 403, 404, 416.] 
 
 We have no special desire to think of the creative action 
 of God as thoueh it were different in kind in the sendincr of 
 Christ from that operation of God by which he calls into being 
 the great leaders of every century. For it will seem to us to 
 
4 
 552 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 be the same God, who, far beyond the boundaries of surround- 
 ing circumstance, of age, of general development, brings 
 forth in one place the towering heights of thought, and in 
 another, as here, a model unique of its kind, not indeed of 
 the whole territory of life, but of moral and religious perfec- 
 tion. In opposition to those timid ones, who tremble lest by 
 such a comparison they should lose the dignity and singleness 
 of Jesus, we should find that dignity sufficiently preserved in 
 the fact that it is the holiest centre of humanity, the real point 
 of union between the spirit of man and of God, in which the 
 perfection of Jesus was built up ; and that no progress of ages, 
 though it even overthrow and surpass sublimest worlds of 
 thought, is able to outshine the diamond once set in full, pure 
 nobility of a godlike life, and of a godlike mind, as though 
 it were an old curiosity gone dull with years. And yet we 
 should not do full justice to the greatness of Jesus, unless 
 we distinguished the creative action of God in his person from 
 every other in point of energy, and so far ultimately in kind 
 as well as something by itself and special. 
 
 All else which we may regard in any way as a deed of 
 God, within the lines of humanity, has always after all a meas- 
 ured movement of more or less, a mingling of perfection and 
 of deficiency, strength and weakness, of that which excels 
 with that which may be surpassed; sparks thrown by God into 
 the dark earthy formation, drops of the life of God in the 
 broad and troubled river of humanity, no godlike world of 
 light, no godlike sea of life. But here the divine energy, say 
 we rather the divine self-communication, is one that with 
 unbroken might breaks through : it is a whole, full, blameless 
 life, no piecework, no mixture of the lofty and the base ; it is 
 a divine creation in full force of largest love ; for it is ilie 
 completion of man as man, the issuing of the creation into 
 the being of the Creator, the blest repose of God in the work 
 of his own hands. . . . 
 
 What has lie himself, the most appropriate and best in- 
 formed witness, said about his work and his person in relation 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 553 
 
 to the Deity and humanity, and to the course of universal his- 
 tory ? There is no doubt, that, notwithstanding the great 
 humihty which he always exhibits towards God and the divine 
 law, he makes great claims. Though he recognizes the an- 
 cient relation as of perpetual validity, though he often repre- 
 sents his own new revelation of the Father to be a primitive 
 truth accessible to every one from the days of the creation, 
 he is nevertheless undoubtingly conscious, and in exalted 
 moments of self-examination and self-disclosure he admits to 
 himself and to others, that he knows God more profoundly 
 and truly than did Moses and the prophets ; nay, that he 
 knows God in a unique and unsurpassable manner ; that he 
 has discovered an easy and rest-producing yoke of piety, con- 
 trasting strongly with the oppressive burdens of the scribes ; 
 and that by words and deeds, from the novel miracles of his 
 power and compassion to his sacrificial death, he has initiated 
 for his people, whose unconditional obedience he yearns for, 
 that prosperous condition of the golden Messianic age for 
 which, out of the obscure past, the Old-Testament saints had 
 eagerly longed. . . . Yet he knows himself to be, in his 
 understanding, in his life, in his action, a master exalted above 
 all past, present, and future, the final messenger of God, and 
 more than that, the well-beloved, the Son of God above all 
 sons, in the knowledge and fellowship of whom the Father 
 finds satisfaction, as he in the Father. 
 
 If by the side of these assertions about himself — which, 
 diminished by some and magnified by others, in a welcome 
 manner lift, though they do not altogether remove, the veil 
 from the enigma of this character — we place the testimony 
 of his history, the latter brilliantly confirms and completes the 
 chief points of what Jesus has said of his work. 
 
 It is beyond all question, that the leading features of Jiis 
 religion are the most precious and the most enduring acquisi- 
 tions of the human mind. God the Father of man ; man akin 
 to God by nature, and the beloved ward of God ; every human 
 life an existence of eternal value and of eternal destiny ; the 
 
554 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 genuine service of God, purity of heart ; brotherly love without 
 measure ; the tie that binds men co-extensive with the race ; 
 even terrestrial matter no stumbling-block to piety, but a 
 mirror of God, a sphere of joy and enjoyment, of bidden and 
 unbidden labor ; the family a sanctuary ; a man's vocation a 
 praise ; the state-law a right ; the cultivation of wisdom and art 
 a glorifying of God, — this religion, without adornment and 
 modernizing, understood and experienced as it stands in letter 
 and spirit, is in truth the highest and last word that has been 
 spoken upon earth, and is ever commending itself afresh as a 
 constraining necessity to those who can neither with piety, 
 nor without all their thinking and contriving, find any thing 
 truer, more spiritual, more moral, more human. 
 
 If it is not enough to mention the fact that the world has, 
 until now, lived upon this religion, and that every bold attempt 
 to better the world — when it has not preached a total subver- 
 sion of accepted principles — has been satisfied with petty 
 patchwork on the basis of a great antiquity, without showing 
 even a shadowy outline of a third teacher to follow Moses and 
 Jesus ; if it does not suffice to mention this, we may yet find 
 our confidence established by the important comparisons which 
 thinkers and poets, down to Goethe, Schiller, and Hegel, and 
 which even foes, from the angry Celsus down to the embit- 
 tered Platonists of the fourth and fifth centuries, not to men- 
 tion recent names, have brought as rich and reverential ofterings 
 to the religion of Jesus, and chiefly to its doctrine of divine 
 humanity, its foundation of true human sentiment. When we 
 recall its symmetrical combination of philosophy and popular- 
 ity, of religion and morality, of humility and pride of freedom, 
 of idealism and realism, of recognition of the claims of both 
 this world and the next, of internality and tendency to exter- 
 nal expression, of passivity and heroic action, of loving reten- 
 tion of the old and most daring reformation, who can exhaust 
 its praise ? . . . 
 
 The first great fact in the personal existence of |(^sns is, 
 that his wh(3le being was constantly full of the idea of God in 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 555 
 
 the sunny expansion of God into the Father; and the second 
 great fact is the complete domination of the idea of moral 
 good, which is indissolubly connected with the former as 
 explanation and expression. It is usual to call the former his 
 unbroken fellowship with God, and the latter his unsullied 
 sinlessness. And if there exists the possibility of showing 
 both in him in full vigor, there can be no doubt that the lofty 
 religion which he preached assumed flesh and blood first in 
 his own person, and that in a unique manner, because imper- 
 fection reigns in others. The Church lives upon this belief; 
 and this belief seems to be established, without need of further 
 proof, by the fact that Jesus' religious preaching originated 
 essentially in his personal religion ; and his wonderfully lofty 
 and spotlessly pure religion is therefore the outcome of the 
 personal perfection of religious experience and moral prac- 
 tice. . . . 
 
 Belief in the Father, and the consciousness of fellowship 
 with him, filled Jesus' soul and every feature of his terrestrial 
 life, as in the case of no other man. The general belief in 
 the favor of God, and in his own personal vocation in the 
 name of God, was never in him, as in the most pious, and 
 even in chosen messengers of God, the subject of question 
 and doubt for a moment, not even in his hours of weariness, 
 not even in the outwardly and inwardly critical hours of dis- 
 tress and death. Finally, out of the feebleness and hesi- 
 tancy of every critical situation there sprang up again, without 
 protracted oppressive pause, rest in, reliance upon, and ardor 
 towards God, as a higher necessity, as the only natural con- 
 clusion ; and after the testing and purifying influence of such 
 tempests, the Son's confiding cry to the Father was marked 
 by a tone of increased intensity of consecration. Thus even 
 these hesitancies not only betray human characteristics, but 
 also cover great victories ; nay, every human characteristic 
 that makes its appearance in this conflict and struggle, and 
 in this perpetual, sober, chaste humility, keeping in view the 
 separateness even in the unity, — these results, never violently 
 
556 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 achieved by means of obscure sentiment, ecstatic visions, and 
 fanatical union with God ; these creature-limitations, never 
 deceitfully extended and overpassed, — these are surest guar- 
 anties of the soundness, the truth, and the spiritual-moral 
 reality of the new religion which Jesus discovered, and which 
 he was the first to exhibit in his own life. . . . 
 
 It is not with him as with the other great characters among 
 men. With him the facts, great or small, patent or hidden, 
 are not forever reminding us painfully of the distance of the 
 actual from the ideal. Even where his history is related most 
 simply and with least adornment, or where it is without great 
 public features, but leads for the most part into the quietude of 
 private life, — even there the impression is more than one 
 of dignity, it is affecting. No oppressive doubt obtrudes itself 
 between the ideal which faith requires in him, and his person ; 
 and, however steadily and minutely we examine in order to 
 arrive at a conclusion without any fallacy, we are still able to 
 retain the strong and joyful conviction that it was Virtue 
 herself that trod the earth in him, and that the dolorous con- 
 fession made by antiquity, of the impossibility of sinlessness, 
 and of the non-existence of the ideal of virtue and wisdom, 
 found in him its refutation and its end. 
 
 WILLIAM CONNOR MAGEE. 
 
 [The Gospel and the Age. London: 1884. Pp. 128, 129.] 
 
 The law of righteousness, which St. Paul recognized as 
 the law of his beincr, was never absent from the mind of 
 Christ. How comes it, then, that in all his life there never 
 once appears the slightest trace of St. Paul's consciousness 
 of failure to realize that ideal? In no one of all his utter- 
 ances concerning himself, in none of the records of his 
 temptations, his trials, his fears, his hopes, his most secret 
 and inmost thoughts and prayers to God, do we ever find so 
 much as a hint of his imperfection. Never once do we hear 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 557 
 
 from him a prayer for forgiveness, a cry for deliverance from 
 sin. How is this? Surely it is he who has the highest ideal, 
 who is ever most distressed at his own failure to realize it. 
 Surely we might have expected that the soul, which in all 
 human history has the highest and loftiest ideas of holiness, 
 would feel most keenly its own failure to be holy. How is it, 
 then, that we find in him only the most calm, serene, and 
 unbroken self-approval ? How is it that the spiritual percep- 
 tions of Jesus seem at once so much higher, and yet so much 
 lower, than those of all other men ? 
 
 How came he to be at once so far beyond St. Paul in his 
 ideal of perfection, and so far below him in the consciousness 
 of his own imperfection ? Is his love for holiness an hypoc- 
 risy, or his belief in his own holiness a miserable delusion ? 
 Is this life of Christ, that for eighteen centuries has drawn to 
 it the admiring gaze of friends and foes, nothing after all but 
 the strangest and saddest of all monstrosities, the most incon- 
 ceivable mystery of united contradictions ? And if it be not 
 this, what else can it be, but just the realization of that very 
 ideal of humanity, the fulfilment of that dream of righteous- 
 ness which has haunted every righteous soul that ever sighed, 
 and sighed in vain, after perfection, — a human nature freed 
 from all taint of evil, all flaw of imperfection, a victory and 
 a victor manifest in the flesh ? 
 
 EDWARDS A. PARK. 
 
 [Discourses. Andover: 1885. Pp. 319, 320.] 
 
 Among all the productions of the Divine Mind, there is 
 not one, perhaps, which will ever attract so many admiring 
 eyes as the triumph of his wisdom in fashioning the character 
 of the man who, from the babe of Bethlehem, grew up into 
 " the merciful and faithful High Priest," who can be " touched 
 with the feeline of our infirmities," and who endears himself 
 *o his friends on earth, " in that he himself has suffered, being 
 
558 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 tempted," and " is able to succor them that are tempted." 
 There will be many brilliant luminaries in the firmament of 
 heaven. But the Redeemer says, " I am the bright, the 
 morning star." 
 
 It was meet that the character which is to be the model 
 for all the race to imitate should be formed with special care. 
 It was meet that the stamp which was to be impressed on all 
 the plastic minds of all the chosen of God, through all time 
 and all eternity, should be wrought out with a divine watchful- 
 ness and an infinite taste. Every lineament must be drawn 
 with exactness, for it is to be copied and recopied on earth 
 and in heaven ; and all the graces of all the redeemed are to 
 be photographed from this one standard of beauty. 
 
 The Divine mind employed upon the man Christ Jesus all 
 the instruments of human art and of outward nature, of the 
 Bible and of temptation, — temptations of sorrow and joy, de- 
 feat and triumph, — in order that wherever we roam we may 
 have a faultless pattern, and amid all our queries how to 
 conduct ourselves we may look unto Jesus, and learn in an 
 instant how to act and speak and think and feel. 
 
 When we are under the parental roof, or conversing with 
 the ministers of religion, or journeying by day near the fields 
 already white for the harvest, or walking by moonlight through 
 the shrubbery of a garden, or sitting way-worn and weary 
 near a fountain of water, or sailing over a smooth sea. or lying 
 down in a boat tossed by the storm, or looking from a moun- 
 tain-top upon the magnificent palaces of a city, or rejoicing at 
 a wedding festival, or going to the grave to weep there, or 
 conversing in sacred confidence with our friends, or listening 
 to the taunts of our enemies, or holding an office of trust, or 
 standing as a subject or prisoner before a ruler, or bond 
 or free, or in health or sickness, or hungering or thirsting, or 
 pierced or bruised or wounded or bleeding or dying, — in 
 all conceivalile circumstances of our spiritual life, we may look 
 up, and "behold the Man." 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 559 
 
 HANS LASSEN MARTENSEN. 
 
 [Christian Ethics. Edinburgh : 1SS5. Pp. 242-246, 257.] 
 
 The individual who, as Saviour and example, is to be all 
 diings to all men must be the isolated, or unparalleled in 
 history, of the human race. He must be like us, must be 
 a true man, subject to a human development of life and 
 conditions ; for otherwise he could not be our pattern, our 
 Saviour. . He must be unlike us ; for otherwise he could not 
 be that one whom we should all imitate, and of whose fulness 
 we must all partake. There are modern pictures of the char- 
 acter of Jesus, which, in the supposed interest of the ethical, 
 lay stress on his humanity so as to lower him, to represent 
 him as like us, without acknowledging the essential dissimi- 
 larity. But if Christ is to be our Saviour and our example, 
 he must even as a man be tcnlike its. And the perfection of 
 this human dissimilarity between him and us Is the first step 
 in the knowledge of Christ, the way to perceive him as the 
 only begotten of the Father. . ,. . 
 
 That Christ, even as a man, is unlike us, that he as a man 
 is the isolated in history, is a perception which must force 
 itself on every serious contemplation, whether we fix our 
 view on the work he has accomplished, and the influences 
 which have proceeded from him, or fix our view upon his 
 person. A naturalistic system of contemplation has desired 
 to assign to Christ a place among "the great men" in the 
 history of the world. But every comparison between Christ 
 and "great men" must lead to the conviction that his 
 greatness is of a totally different nature from theirs, and 
 cannot be explained by the principles of ordinary human 
 nature. 
 
 We may, while fixing our glance on the work of Christ, 
 take our starting-point from Schleiermacher's treatise on the 
 concept of " the great man," whose characteristic he asserts 
 to be, that he exerts a moulding influence on society. By 
 
560 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 this definition, Schleiermacher has the merit of bringing back 
 to its rightful owners the predicate of "great man," which 
 most writers are disposed to distribute with too great Hber- 
 ahty. 
 
 If we inquire concerning the scale of historic greatness 
 which must be adjudged to individual personalities, then the 
 great and the small can only be measured and determined by 
 the relation of the individual to society, — by the intellectual 
 power belonging to the individual, and the infiztences he thereby 
 exerts on the whole. Whilst the category of the small and 
 the insignificant finds its application in those persons who are 
 lost in the mass, in those from whom no special influence 
 on society proceeds, but who rather, in their whole mode of 
 existence, show themselves as a product of society, since 
 they only mirror back the spirit of the times, and of their own 
 surroundings ; we apply, on the other hand, the category of 
 great to the men whose individuality has so much original 
 force, independence, and power, that it stamps society with its 
 impress, — nay, that society even appears as the product of 
 such, as the work of their individuality. 
 
 Between these extreme points are found such persons 
 as develop themselves in a mutual relation to society and 
 their individuality, a reciprocity of productivity and recep- 
 tivity, of giving and receiving, an interchange of intellectual 
 endowments. In this great middle class, which embraces an 
 infinitude of diversities, we find not merely the commonplace, 
 but also the excellent, the distinguished, and the prominent ; 
 but not the great par excelleiice. The great men in the high- 
 est sense of the term are the heroes, who predominantly relate 
 themselves to society, not as receiving but as bestowing, and 
 arc tlicrcforc entitled the benefactors of the people. Though 
 they may receive influences from society, they have no in- 
 dependent significance, becoming only means and material 
 for their own unfettered creative activity. 
 
 The great man is not only the genius ; for, although this 
 is inseparable from him, yet the genius is by no means always 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 56 1 
 
 a great ma7i. Shakspeare is a great poet, Raphael and 
 Mozart are great artists ; but on that account alone to call 
 them great men would be a misapplication of terms. It 
 necessarily belongs to the great man, that the influence of 
 genius should be inseparable from the infiiLence of personality, 
 and that he not merely applies himself to one side of human 
 receptivity, not merely works on individual circles of society, 
 but affects society as a totality, by his creative activity calls 
 forth an organization of society with the whole multitude of 
 circles, powers, and objects. 
 
 If this view bring along with it the admission that the 
 great man cannot be found in the domain of art and science 
 because these agencies are too narrow and one-sided for him, 
 then, doubtless, sceptical objections may be brought against 
 it. Thus to take an example instai'' otnniitm, it may be asked 
 if Socrates, the founder of ethics, who, just on account of his 
 personality, exercised so great an influence, ought not to be 
 reckoned among the great ? We reply, there are great men 
 who distinguish themselves by an inward greatness which is 
 not measured by the relation to the historic development of 
 society, but in relation to the ideal of personality, even if, like 
 Socrates, their relation towards it is only one of inquiry ; and 
 by the relation of the individual to the majority of those, 
 never at any time a numerous class, who aspire after personal 
 perfection ; and this internal greatness may be found with 
 men who have no place at all in the history of the world or 
 of the nation, but lived an unmarked every-day life. However 
 high we then would place Socrates as a thinker and as a man, 
 however high we may rate the intensive in his greatness, still 
 the extensive, the historic influences on society, which have 
 proceeded from him, are proportionately small, because his 
 influence has only produced philosophic schools, only addresses 
 itself to the philosophic, and thus to the men of a special 
 stamp of mind and a determined stage of progress, but has 
 not been able to penetrate a community in all its circles, far 
 less to mould it or create it anew. 
 
562 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 And even if we should make the boundaries which Schlei- 
 ermacher in his treatise has drawn indefinite, still we are 
 always brought back to the fact that the highest historic great- 
 ness, if it be at once intensive and extensive, can only show 
 itself in the domain of the State, the Church, or of religious 
 society ; that great men, in the highest sense of the term, are 
 those who have founded states, or restored those which were 
 decayed, who have caused a new social life to bloom forth 
 amidst ruins; as also those who have been founders of religion, 
 or religious reformers, and have produced new organization in 
 the domain of religion. Only in these territories can there be 
 exercised those all-embracing influences which penetrate all 
 classes and circles of society. 
 
 If we, then, retain the idea of the founding and moulding 
 of society as the characteristic mark of great men, there is 
 here certainly a formal resemblance to Christ. But if we 
 go into a real comparison, the essential dissimilarity appears. 
 The great men of history are, for instance, under this limita- 
 tion, that their influence is confined to a single nation, or at 
 most to a single portion of humanity, to an mdividual genera- 
 tion, which is essentially their work. 
 
 No founder of religion, with the exception of Christ, has 
 established a world-wide religion. In Christ, on the other 
 hand, we behold an individual man who, in his personality, 
 has a power, whose influences extend over all races of people, 
 under every clime of heaven, throughout all ages. He does 
 not enter into relation with a single portion of humanity, 
 but with the entire race, as not in a merely relative sense, but 
 absolutely as the Giver, — as he by his religion has bestowed, 
 not on a sino-le "feneration, but on the whole world, a new 
 form ; has established a new development of the world, a 
 new course of the world, a new humanity extending through- 
 out the range of centuries. On him we cannot bestow the 
 appellation "the great man." To him we can only apply 
 the words of the; angel spoken to Mary, " He shall be called 
 great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High." 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 563 
 
 But the dissimilarity is still more apparent when we 
 contemplate Christ's work according to its principle, aim, 
 and means. Every one who acknowledges the principle of 
 causality must, from the vast world-determining influences 
 which have issued, and still continue to issue, from Christ, 
 and with which no other historic influence can be compared, 
 infer power which infinitely exceeds all others. But if we 
 inquire concerning the essence of this power, of the principle 
 of Christ's all-powerful influence, we can only name the world- 
 emancipating and world-redeeming liberty and love. 
 
 Christ's historic greatness indicates an inward holy great- 
 ness in his personality, through which he is infinitely distin- 
 guished, not merely from all who have exerted influences on 
 the history of the world, but also from all who have aspired 
 after personal perfection. The aim which he proposed to 
 himself and carried through was to redeem not only his own 
 nation, but the world, from the dominion of sin, and by his 
 life to leave behind to latest generations an example for 
 Imitation, — in fine, to found God's kingdom upon earth, — 
 an aim which none of the great men have ever proposed to 
 themselves, the necessity of which few among them have felt, 
 and which not one individual of their number has been able 
 to accomplish. Not one of them has assumed the task of 
 becoming the Redeemer of the world, not one has grasped 
 the idea of setting forth his own life as an example which 
 should remain universally valid, even to the last generation 
 which shall inhabit the earth. 
 
 The dissimilarity in aim corresponds with the dissimilarity 
 in the means. For the means by which Christ executes his 
 work lie not in any 'thing external to himself, but only and 
 alone in his personality. Doubtless from every truly great 
 man, there proceeds a great personal influence. But, on the 
 one hand, the ethical is not seldom restrained by an impure 
 intermingling with the natural intellectual power of genius ; 
 on the other hand, this personal influence only appears at the 
 outset of their work, which in course of time develops itself, 
 
564 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 or comes to an end, independently 0/ their person. But Christ's 
 work is carried on throughout the lapse of ages, only in this 
 manner, that not merely his teaching, but his personality, con- 
 tinues to exert its influences on the human soul. 
 
 As with no other, there is in Christ an indissoluble connec- 
 tion between his personality and his work ; and this connection 
 has from the very first stood before him in the full clearness 
 of consciousness. He desires to redeem the human race to a 
 kingdom of sanctified personalities ; he desires to destroy the 
 old abnormal development of the world, in order to introduce 
 a new development ; he will remove the world's centre of 
 gravity, which has been displaced by sin, and bring it back to 
 its original position in God. 
 
 But this he can only execute by himself, by his own per- 
 sonal self-participation in it, or by transplanting his own 
 personal life into the race. No one can here help him, or be 
 his counsellor. His work stands exclusively in his person, 
 and the smallest abnormality in his personal condition and 
 development would destroy his work entirely. 
 
 This connection between the highest aim on earth con- 
 ceivable — the foundinof of God's kino^dom — and his own 
 human individuality, in which he stands as the isolated One 
 in the human race, who must himself create the new commu- 
 nity, embracing all races and all ages, the ideal which his 
 thought has framed, gives him a greatness which surpasses all 
 human measure. . . . 
 
 Just because he came to draw all men unto himself, to 
 redeem all human talents and all human will, to make every 
 one perfect, to help him to achieve the essential aim of life, 
 which is for each to become a ma7i : just on this account must 
 he come to us, not as an individual man, in this or that special 
 endowment, this or that special vocation, but as the viafi, as 
 the point of union of all human talents and all human wills; 
 just on this account, although he appears in a particular cen- 
 tury, and among a single people, his whole revelation bears 
 the stamp of eternity, and is fitted to impress on all times and 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 565 
 
 all races the universal-human and the closest brotherhood, 
 and must awaken an echo in every human breast, be it man 
 or woman, which is not closed by sin against him who cometh 
 to his own. 
 
 The words of Pilate : Ecce Homo ! Behold the man ! 
 receive here their true and just significance. And this is 
 the marvel, that he, as the universal man, does not make the 
 impression of the abstract, uniform, and colorless, the indefi- 
 nite and misty, but in the Gospels stands before us in all 
 the freshness of the most distinct, most strongly marked 
 individuality, that this human form of brightness shows itself 
 before us in an infinite number of individual refractions, an 
 inexhaustible variety of the finest individual traits. 
 
 MATTHEW SIMPSON. 
 
 [Sermons. New York : 1885. Pp. 122, 302, 304, 451.] 
 
 The words of great men have frequently given to nations 
 or races increasing influence. What did Plato, Aristotle, and 
 Homer, for Greece ? What did Bacon, Shakspeare, and 
 Milton, for England ? The example and teaching of one 
 philosopher may elevate many. How many erring Greeks 
 did Socrates turn to higher thouo-hts and nobler life ? Alex- 
 ander, we are told, so admired Homer, that he slept with a 
 copy under his pillow, and Homer's heroes inspired him with 
 bravery and daring. But if God speaks to man, if from the 
 depth of eternity, and from the height of his glory, he utters 
 words not only of wisdom, but of love, — if he offers rest 
 for the weary, extends his arms to every repentant prodigal, 
 and promises a crown to every faithful ser\'ant, — how power- 
 fully must such words affect the hearts and lives of men ? . . . 
 
 Jesus showed how truly his words were spirit and life. 
 The prophets had foretold his wonderful works, and their 
 prophecies he fulfilled. The sick, the blind, the dumb, the 
 deaf, the cripple, the leper, the paralytic, and the demoniac, 
 
566 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 were brought to him, and by a word " He healed them all." 
 Nor were these expressions of sympathy, or manifestations 
 of power, designed merely for the friends of the sick or dead. 
 He spoke through them to the hearts of parents, widows, and 
 sisters, of all lands and of all ages, his sympathy for suffering 
 men, and gave the blessed assurance that " earth has no sor- 
 rows which heaven cannot cure." Think, also, how simple 
 were his words, how apparently without any effort Divine 
 power accomplished its grand results ! How quietly he speaks 
 to the winds, how calmly he blessed the bread ! All he did 
 was by a word, a breath, and nothing more. There was no 
 second trial, no experimenting, but an evident consciousness 
 of exhaustless power. . . . 
 
 Wherever Christ has been preached, all other systems of 
 worship have passed away. How can you account for it ? 
 At the time he appeared, there was a beautiful system of wor- 
 ship in Greece. The Parthenon, one of the most splendid 
 buildings man ever erected, crowned the Acropolis of Athens. 
 There were statues of Jupiter and Venus and Juno, Minerva 
 and Diana, not only throughout Greece, but throughout the 
 then civilized world. At the altars hundreds of sacrifices 
 were offered. Men came to wash away sins. They implored 
 these deities as protectors of their town, their cities, their 
 families. In almost every house there was an altar. Christ 
 began to be preached, and under the preaching of Christ the 
 whole system has passed away. To-day there is not a man in 
 the world who worships Jupiter ; there is not one who bows 
 the knee to Juno or Minerva. The people might cry for two 
 hours, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians ! " But no man 
 now bows the knee to Diana ; no man makes her images, or 
 sells her shrines. 
 
 There is idolatry still in the world, but it is an idolatry 
 of ignorance. Go into India, and visit the temples, and take 
 the idols there, and they are objects of terror and aversion. 
 Th('r(! are idols in Africa, but they are of rough stone or wood 
 — images deformed and base. Every attribute of beauty is 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 567 
 
 stripped from idolatry. All the worship of art has departed 
 from heathen systems ; and to-day the art of the world, the 
 statuary of the world, the architecture of the world, gather 
 about Christianity. The pictures in your homes are the Ma- 
 donna and the Infant Child, or Faith and Hope and Charity. 
 Mankind recognize these. No one wants the forms of 
 heathenism ; but the pure, inspiring truths of Christianity 
 have come to us. And how is it, I ask, that the thought of 
 Christ has swept away all other thoughts, if Christ be not 
 divine ? . . . 
 
 The thought of Christ is the inspiration of literature. 
 There are unbelievers among us; and they sometimes assume 
 a lofty importance, and try to look down on Christians. 
 These very unbelievers have any importance, because they 
 are the children of Christian mothers. They learn the name 
 of Christ in infancy, and grow under Christian civilization, 
 wear Christian clothes, eat Christian food, breathe Christian 
 air, read Christian books, travel Christian railroads, and get 
 their thoughts by Christian telegraphs. They are living on 
 Christianity, growing by Christianity, and yet they Xxy to 
 deride Christianity. If Christianity be untrue, let these men 
 go where the truth is, build up a civilization without Christ, 
 and then Xxy^ if they can, to construct a society. . . . 
 
 Paul wrote, and Paul's writings remain : his words were 
 of Jesus and the Church ; and as he connected himself with 
 these orreat themes, the words live on. Paul was a student 
 of Gamaliel. Where are Gamaliel's words? And if Paul 
 had taken Gamaliel's seat, if he had been chief of the 
 Sanhedrim, had been looked up to by every one throughout 
 Palestine, and had written, his writings would have perished 
 too ; but he wrote of Jesus, and his writings live. 
 
 Peter might have gathered fish on the Sea of Galilee ; 
 he mieht have amassed wealth ; a bold man, he might have 
 been their leader ; he might have delivered stirring orations, 
 and inspired his people to deeds of daring : but his words 
 would have been unknown in the ages. He wrote to sundry 
 
568 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 strangers scattered throughout Pontus and Bithynia, and every 
 word remains. 
 
 John might have been considered amiable, kind, even 
 brilhant possibly ; but it was because that he laid his head on 
 Jesus' bosom, that we see in him loveliness. It was because 
 he wrote visions of Jesus, that the visions have not faded 
 away. John connected himself with Christ ; and he lives on, 
 and lives forever. 
 
 JOHN CAIRD. 
 
 [Sermons. Edinburgh and London: 1885. Pp. 104-107, 113.] 
 
 In the moral beauty of his character and life, does Jesus 
 Christ declare or manifest the unseen God. God is mirrored 
 in the moral being of Christ. In that pure and lofty nature 
 there was exhibited an image or likeness of the holy and 
 spiritual God, such as the world before had never witnessed. 
 Of all God's works, the soul of man is that by which he can 
 best be manifested ; by its structure it is the most transparent 
 medium of the Divine. There is, indeed, much in God which 
 humanity, even in its purest and loftiest type, is inadequate 
 to represent. There is much in a great painting which the 
 engraving taken from it fails to convey to the eye ; for, though 
 it may be an accurate representation of the drawing, it tells 
 nothing of the beauty and harmony of color in the original. 
 There is much in the glorious landscape, or the living ani- 
 mated countenance, which the sun-picture, however correct 
 up to its measure, leaves unexpressed ; lines, form, contour, 
 relative proportions, may be accurately rendered, but the 
 color, the expression, the variety, the life, cannot be arrested 
 and reproduced, even by the limner power of light. 
 
 So there is that in the nature of the infinite God which 
 no copy graven on a finite soul, however noble, no reflection 
 caught and fixed on the page of a human life, however holy 
 and beautiful, can, in the very nature of things, fully render. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 569 
 
 Yet, though the finite can never be an exhaustive represen- 
 tation of the infinite, — of all finite manifestations of God, a 
 perfect soul, a pure and holy mind, would be the noblest and 
 the best. 
 
 God can be imaged in a great and holy life, as he cannot 
 be by the grandest objects which the material universe con- 
 tains. For, of a spirit, a spiritual being alone can be the true 
 portraiture. Matter can be moulded into the likeness of 
 matter ; mental and moral glory can be reflected and repre- 
 sented only by a mind. There may be something of God 
 discoverable in " the light of setting suns, and the round 
 ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky ; " but a living, 
 thinking, loving soul has in it that which mute and material 
 things, however noble, can never possess, — a direct affinity 
 with his own spiritual nature. Man alone, of all God's works 
 in the universe, is made " in his own image, after his own 
 likeness ; " and therefore, if God would reveal himself to us, 
 the form under which the revelation can best be .given is that 
 of a human character and life. 
 
 But in all ordinary specimens of humanity the medium 
 has become sullied, dimmed, distorted, so that the heavenly 
 light cannot shine through it, or, if at all, only brokenly and 
 fitfully. Only once in its history has the world witnessed a 
 perfect human nature, a flawless, stainless, unmarred soul. 
 Only once has humanity found a medium through which, in 
 its unmingled brightness and beauty, the moral glory of God 
 might pour its beams. In the profound wisdom, in the serene 
 purity, in the tenderness, the forbearance, the persevering 
 love, the combined magnanimity and lowliness, of the fault- 
 less life of Jesus, we " behold, as in a glass, the glory of the 
 Lord." As we ponder the record of his wondrous history, 
 who shrank with the recoil of infinite holiness from those 
 unuttered thoughts of evil which only omniscience could 
 discover, the mind is borne upwards to him who, while he 
 searches the hearts of the children of men, yet is of purer 
 eyes than to behold iniquity. As we follow in his mission 
 
570 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 of unwearied beneficence, that gentle compassionate being in 
 whom sorrow ever found its best consoler, and penitence its 
 pure yet pitying friend ; as we note how, wherever he came, 
 the cry of the wretched awaited him ; wherever he went, the 
 blessings of them that were ready to perish followed his 
 steps ; how the hungry blessed him for food, the homeless 
 for shelter, the heavy-laden for rest ; how one touch from his 
 hand, and the frozen blood of the leper flowed with its warm 
 pulse of health ; one word from his lips, and the eyes of the 
 blind gleamed back their gratitude upon him ; how, too. far 
 deeper ills than these, the pangs of conscious guilt, the woes 
 of the troubled conscience, the incurable wound of remorse, 
 the inner maladies that oftenest baffle mortal skill, found 
 ever in him their most tender yet most potent healer ; and 
 finally, as we observe in the agent of all this wondrous 
 working, a simplicity, a self-forgetfulness, a certain calm 
 unobtrusiveness, that in his mightiest acts bespeaks no effort 
 and courts no observation or applause ; as we witness all this 
 prodigality of goodness and majestic ease of power, does not 
 the mind involuntarily ascend to that Being whose name is 
 Almighty Love ? does not the exclamation rise spontaneously 
 to the lips, " Surely God is here ! " 
 
 He had nothing in common with the spirit of the times 
 in which he lived. His views, principles, motives, associa- 
 tions, object of life, were not those of his own nation, nor 
 of any land or clime on earth ; they were drawn from the 
 infinite, the eternal. Nothing can be clearer, from the simple 
 narratives of the Gospels, than that to those among whom 
 the earthly life of Jesus was spent, he was an unintelligible 
 being; that they could not comprehend him, however much 
 they might be constrained to love him. He moved among 
 a narrow-minded, grovelling, sensual race, breathing a spirit 
 of ineffable purity and holiness. Cast upon an age and 
 among a people intensely selfish, in a state of society where 
 the; conflicting passions of hostile classes and races surrounded 
 him with an atmosphere of bigotry and contention. Ids mind 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 5 7 1 
 
 was ever calmly revolving designs of universal benevolence, 
 of self-sacrificing love to all mankind. And whilst his whole 
 life passed away, whilst every day, and almost every hour of 
 it, in intercourse with those whose minds never travelled 
 beyond the petty circle of their own national prejudices and 
 passions, his inner being was yet ever filled with thoughts 
 that wandered through eternity, that communed with invisible 
 intelligences, that mused upon the affairs and destinies of 
 the universe. 
 
 Oh, what depths there were in that mighty spirit that 
 none could fathom ! What ineffable joys and mysterious 
 sorrows, unintelligible to the beings with whom he consorted 
 as to the veriest children ! The seclusion of the wilderness 
 could not have increased an isolation like this. He was 
 solitary amid crowds. He "trod" the path of life "alone, 
 and of the people there was none with him." 
 
 ANDREW PRESTON PEABODY. 
 
 [Baccalaureate Sermons. Boston: 1S85. Pp. 268, 270-273.] 
 
 Let us first look at the person and character of Jesus 
 Christ. For he is his religion. It is impossible to separate 
 his teachings from his life. In this respect he stands alone 
 in all these ages. There are other great teachers whose 
 words would be worth as much as they are, were they anony- 
 mous ; some, like Seneca, whose words would be of much 
 greater significance and impressiveness, were they not at 
 harsh variance with what is known or suspected of their char- 
 acters. On the other hand, there are good lives, which we 
 contemplate with love and admiration, yet which at the best 
 teach us nothing new, — generally deriving their lustre as 
 reflected light from Christ, and differing from him in that 
 they reflect his light unevenly ; that they are models of some, 
 not equally of all, virtues ; that they have about them the 
 
572 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 birth-marks of countr}', time, and circumstance ; that they are 
 not cosmopolitan in such a sense that they are equally 
 impressive, edifying, and instructive to persons of all ages, 
 lands, and conditions ; and that they are not inexhaustible 
 and ever-new in their interest, and most earnestly and dili- 
 gently perused by those most familiar with them. 
 
 Think one moment. These four inartificial memoirs of 
 Christ have been read for nearly two thousand years, by 
 myriads of people, in public and in private. We grow 
 familiar with their words. Thousands upon thousands know 
 them by heart, yet never read or hear a portion of them 
 with weariness. They are read through twice a year in the 
 services of some churches, as often in many Christian families. 
 Yet no one says, " Lay them aside, and read something 
 else in place of them. Let us have some other good life, 
 and not the perpetual repetition of this which we know well 
 enough already." That books will last and wear like these, 
 indicates something unique in the life which they portray. 
 They alone, of all books, are like the great works of the crea- 
 tion, like the flowers, and the stars, and the glowing sunsets, 
 and the sparkling waters, which we never behold to satiety, 
 but which are more beautiful to us the lono-er we live. 
 
 Consider, too, how he is at once identified with, yet 
 detached from, his surroundings, and he could not be the one 
 without being the other ; for those traits of perfect human- 
 ity that were in him could have their manifestation only in 
 the actual world in which he moved. Yet they are to that 
 world like the circumambient air about us, which is in contact 
 with every being and substance, while never yielding up its 
 specific properties, — with and in all, yet its identity un- 
 changed. Though among Jews, he is no more a Jew than 
 had he lived in Arabia. We never feel that the peculiarities, 
 much less the prejudices, frailties, or follies, of his age and 
 people, cleave to him, or dim his lustre as the Sun of right- 
 eousness for our whole race ; or make his example any the 
 less the c)nosurc for those of all nations, for man so long as 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 573 
 
 he shall Hve upon the earth, for man so long as he shall live 
 with God in heaven. 
 
 This character which grows upon us whenever we attempt 
 to define it, so that in no other office do words so utterly fail 
 to overtake thought and feeling, is the essence of Christianity, 
 — at once its body and its soul. It has been, beyond a 
 question, the greatest force in human history. Its influence 
 has, from its first appearance among men, culminated without 
 decline. It has formed the best and most noble minds and 
 souls of each succeeding age, those most loved and honored 
 of their race ; and they who have won the crown of surpassing 
 excellence have always been the most ready to cast down 
 their crowns before him, and to cry, " Thou alone art 
 worthy." 
 
 Such till now has been the aspect which Jesus has borne ; 
 such the light in which he still is seen. He lived in an age, 
 in point of knowledge, of science, of the humanities, if not of 
 the luxuries of civilization, far beneath our own ; in a country 
 on which the rays of classic culture shone only by dim and 
 distant reflection, and where the refinements of the world's 
 great capitals had hardly modified the simpler manners and 
 habits of provincial life. 
 
 We have his picture painted for us by men of scanty 
 education, of a narrow range of thought, and of obscure social 
 position. It may have been no marvel if they accounted him 
 great. But they do not say so. 
 
 They waste no words in panegyTic. They give us a plain, 
 unambitious narrative of what they heard and saw ; a story 
 so simple that we can account for its unemotional, prosaic 
 style only by its literal truth, — by their having been so inti- 
 mately familiar with the wondrous life that it had ceased to 
 surprise them, just as dwellers in Alpine regions might write 
 coolly and calmly about " signs and wonders of the elements," 
 of which the very thought stirs our pulses to a quicker throb. 
 We have Jesus as he appeared always to their upturned view. 
 
 The ages have piled up vast masses of intelligence and 
 
574 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 erudition, of proud names, great examples, glorious achieve- 
 ments. We stand on the mountain : they were on the plain, 
 far, very far below. We from our eminence look down on all 
 that the intervening ages have brought forth. To him alone 
 must we look up. He holds in our time the same moral, 
 spiritual pre-eminence in which he was beheld by the humble 
 fishermen of Galilee. The same yesterday, to-day ; how 
 can we fail to add, " and forever" ? 
 
 ARTHUR BROOKS. 
 
 [The Life of Christ in the World. Sermons. New York: 1887. Pp. 31-40, 
 
 140-144.] 
 
 Christ, as the Gospels represent him, is at the centre 
 of human life. It is useless, it is vain, to leave any point of 
 human life, and to go to another, in hopes of getting nearer 
 to him ; for straight from him to every point there is a direct 
 line, down which the ready soul may look, up which the ready 
 saving power will move. 
 
 The power of living thoughts and words is greater in 
 the world to-day than ever before. The changes of circum- 
 stances, through which the world has passed so rapidly since 
 Christ came, have made the material surroundings and actions 
 of past ages almost unimaginable to us. And yet from those 
 ages, both in religious and in secular history, the words of 
 great men live among us with all the power of their original 
 utterance. There is a supernatural power to words, that is 
 strangely pervasive. They pass from age to age, and from 
 country to country. They know no limits of climate or of 
 race ; the human heart recognizes their power, no matter 
 where it beats, or how it is clothed. 
 
 The religion of Christ, intended for all times, received 
 its most potent earthly instrument in the spoken words of its 
 Founder; ])y lliose it was sure of perpetuity and of diffusion. 
 Going into times when miracles had ceased, and visions were 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 575 
 
 treated as the vagaries of a disordered brain, they would carry 
 that which all men would appreciate ; they would be the gate 
 of approach to a deeper study, a fuller comprehension, and a 
 maturer faith in the great Master. The embodiment of his 
 power in his words was a prophetic look by Christ into the 
 times to come. Institutions would change ; temples would 
 decay ; the very face of nature would not remain the same. 
 
 The living thing from those days, sent forward into the 
 times of universal literature which were to come, was to be 
 the words of Christ. They would not be bound to the soil, 
 accessible to a few travellers alone ; they would not be 
 wrapped up in antiquities, known only to scholars. They 
 would be carried into connection with individual lives ; they 
 could be treasured in the homes and the hearts of every man 
 and of every class. Still more, to exalt the function of words, 
 was to give value and currency to a universal coin in which 
 every man's purse abounded : it was to make the possibility of 
 following in the line of the Master's work the possession 
 of every man to whom breath had been given. It stamped 
 Christianity as the gospel of humanity, calling out the pov.er, 
 and intensifying the responsibility, of every human soul. 
 
 Despite the material researches and speculations of these 
 times, they are times in which spiritual force, as it passes from 
 age to age, and from country to country, is more evident 
 than ever before. The orrowth of mutual intercourse, and 
 the progress of learning, have given the spiritual power in 
 man an audience which knows no limits of time or space. 
 Amid all these voices which come to us from every side, the 
 words of Jesus of Nazareth are more prominent than ever. 
 The expression of a band of Jewish officers, with their proba- 
 bly slight acquaintance with literature or orators, was merely 
 a strong statement : " Never man spake like this man." To- 
 day it has a literal meaning. No words have touched so 
 many hearts ; none have appeared so wonderful in their sim- 
 plicity and their depth ; none have been found to be so free 
 from petty prejudice, and so tender of every feeling ot the 
 
576 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 human heart ; none have stood, as they have, the ever- 
 renewed comparison with each successive generation of writ- 
 ers ; none have been able to endure so calmly amidst all 
 misinterpretations alike of enemies and of friends ; none 
 have revealed such new resources of meaning, as new emer- 
 gencies have driven men to them for help. These are facts 
 which each new race of critics makes stronger ; they are 
 facts which, in their historical reality, appeal to men living in a 
 world of realities, which, in their spiritual signifiance, speak 
 to the richest sensibilities of the human soul. 
 
 The words of Christ are a test of earnestness. Does a 
 man want the best in life, the most thoroughly tested sources 
 of wisdom, the words which all, from different points of view, 
 unite in praising? then he must make himself acquainted with 
 the words of Jesus ; he must study them more thoroughly 
 than any others ; he must never let them go until he has 
 an understanding of their wonderful power. No sneer at a 
 book reliofion, no indignation at the inferences which others 
 have drawn from those words, absolve from that duty. In 
 the midst of the Qfreatest confusion of mind, or difficulties of 
 soul, here is an ultimate duty on which a man can rest ; one 
 which comes to him indorsed by all the best analogies of life, 
 and authority of experience. When the history seems tradi- 
 tional, and the doctrine enigmatical, still the clearness of that 
 from Christ's own words stands forth. 
 
 If the field is narrowed, what remains becomes all the 
 more wonderful and imperative. Lives which have been 
 severed in other sympathies can meet there, and, under the 
 leadership of the one Master, strive to find the way together 
 into the perfect light. To-day, more than ever, the words 
 of Christ ought to be in the hands and the minds and the 
 hearts of all men. . . . 
 
 What Christ said at the well near Samaria may be said 
 alike of all systems of religion with prescribed duties and 
 ceremonies, of all codes of action which the successive Chris- 
 tian generations have laid down, of all expedients of organi- 
 
rO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 577 
 
 zation and reformation in civil and social life which are offered 
 to the ills of suffering humanity: "Whosoever drinketh of 
 this water shall thirst again." Over and over again the pro- 
 cesses of such systems will have to be repeated. 
 
 We need say no more to rebuke or to check them than 
 Christ would have said to those Samaritans to prevent them 
 from coming to that well with their buckets for the water 
 which would supply and refresh all their daily life. But, like 
 him, we can add of him and of his truth, " Whosoever drink- 
 eth of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst ; but 
 the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water 
 springing up into everlasting life." He is a spring of moral 
 power that never fails. If men leave him, if his words are 
 neglected, it is because the sources of life are not wanted ; 
 because temporary expedients are overvalued ; because the 
 present, with its methods, occupies the whole range of vision ; 
 because we are back with the Jews of the first century, and 
 do not stand with the Christ of every century. One word of 
 his, lifting the whole range of duty, placing each man in the 
 presence of God his Father, rightly heard with willing heart, 
 must make men exclaim, " Never man spake like this man." 
 
 Jesus is always falling short of men's ideals. There arose 
 the ideal of the ascetic : that was the holiest, the best, the 
 noblest life, to men's minds; and that man whose life was 
 open to all the influences of his fellow-men, that man who 
 was reproached by the malicious distortions of his enemies 
 as a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, could no more fit that 
 character than he could that of the sacrificing priest of the 
 ancient temple. The time of chivalry and the crusades exalted 
 the warrior; and he who sent forth his disciples without 
 sword, and healed the ear of Malchus, was no figure to \'ie 
 with the bold knights in their valorous reputations, any more 
 than the plain garments of the humble Galilcean could shine 
 beside the imposing vestments of Jewish priests. Or, come 
 down to modern days, and take the standard of any class in 
 life to-day. The scientific thinker asks for facts, for analysis, 
 
578 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 for knowledge of the structure of earth and heaven ; and 
 those beautiful parables and wonderful miracles enter into no 
 such detail ; and Jesus in a scientific assembly to-day would 
 be as completely out of place as he would have been beside 
 the high priest in the Holy of holies. And the business, the 
 commercial ideal of life, does not look for its leader to him 
 who said, " Lend, hoping for nothing again," and "Take no 
 thought for the morrow," any more than priest and Levite 
 consulted Christ as to the best mode of offering sacrifices. 
 Politics and society would find it equally impossible to dis- 
 cover their ideal in him who originated no new system of 
 government, and associated always with the lowly. 
 
 Men are listening for the words that shall help them in 
 their lives ; and when they do not hear it in their religion, 
 they will look for it elsewhere ; and so men will be more 
 attracted to their newspapers than to their Bibles. How 
 quickly churches could be filled if some great authority 
 as to the making of money were expounded, Sunday after 
 Sunday ! Men, too, who have had their eyes fastened on a 
 certain ideal, find it hard to respond to the greatness of one 
 who is deficient in that particular direction, just as men who 
 had looked with respect on priest and king, found it hard 
 to acknowledge the greatness of him who came without the 
 crown of either the temple or the palace. 
 
 We need not inveigh against the earnestness of pursuits 
 which have erected such ideals, any more than this writer 
 found it necessary to heap reproaches on the Jewish system 
 of priesthood, because it found no place for Christ within it. 
 Would Jesus lead the life of the modern clergyman to-day ? 
 is the taunt which, from the outside, may be thrown at tlie 
 preaching of his Gospel. Better than to answer it by asking 
 whether he would find it possible to lead the life of the 
 modern merchant or statesman or scholar, — better is it for all 
 of us to recognize that he would lead the life of no one of us. 
 It is easy to make such contrasts, but there is one great truth 
 behind them : no forms of action which we find it necessar)- to 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 579 
 
 observe could hold the power of that divine life, any more 
 than the life of an ordinary Jewish priest, God-ordained as he 
 was, could be the measure of the life of a Saviour of the 
 world. 
 
 And so we say that we reach the ground of the solution 
 which is given to this difficulty. Jesus was not a priest of the 
 old covenant, because he was the Mediator of a new and 
 better covenant ; he was not a priest in descent from Aaron, 
 because he was a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec. 
 
 The glory of Jesus was in his limitations ; the fact that he 
 does not claim any of these ideals of earthly greatness is 
 because he sets up a greater ideal, to which they all belong. 
 
 He stands far above, though never apart from, every 
 standard of human attainment. He helps every one of them 
 as he brings them all into connection with the very centre of 
 life. He sets forth forever the truth that the life of the lower 
 is to be found in the higher. 
 
 J. W. LEE. 
 
 [The Conservation of Spiritual Force. From vol. v. of Christian Thought. 
 
 New York : 1887.] 
 
 It would be impossible to recount all the institutions, 
 books, civilizations, laws, discoveries, inventions, homes, and 
 hearts, into which the force of Christ's life has, for the past 
 nineteen hundred years, been lifting itself. As the sun 
 expresses itself in the meadow, and lifts itself into the trees 
 of the forest, so Christ has been embodying himself in the 
 institutions, homes, and thoughts of men. 
 
 The scientists say all force can be accounted for. When 
 force has risen up at one point, it has subsided at another ; 
 the amount rising up being the exact equivalent of the 
 amount subsiding. Upon this principle we are seeking to 
 account for all this force, that, coming from Christ, has 
 expressed itself in the domestic, social, political, and ecclesi- 
 
580 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 astical institutions of men. More has arisen than can be 
 computed by human arithmetic, or compassed by human 
 imagination, or comprehended by human thought. Where 
 did it come from ? Where did it subside ? At what point did 
 it disappear, to rise again in such overwhelming volume and 
 such sweeping and far-reaching influence ? 
 
 We go back through eighteen hundred years ; we are 
 standing in Jerusalem. We hear conflicting reports of a 
 strange, daring young man. At length he is pointed out to 
 us. There is nothing remarkable about his appearance. He 
 is a Jew ; he was born among the poor ; he is not noted for 
 culture ; he has no social position ; he has no money ; he 
 has no political power of prestige ; he has no army at his 
 command ; he is connected with no academy ; he is only 
 thirty years old. His words are contained in no books : they 
 are simply in the memory of his disciples. His own disciples 
 do not know what to make of him. Finally he is arrested 
 and tried and condemned and crucified. He dies bet^veen 
 two thieves, scorned, scoffed, buffeted, and friendless. Keep 
 in mind the principle we are considering. All force can be 
 measured. No more force rises up than subsides. Action 
 and re-action are equal. We are seeking to account, in 
 accordance with this principle, for the vast amount of force 
 Christ has poured into the institutions of humanity. Is this 
 young man's life, seemingly so insignificant and weak, the 
 exact equivalent of all the churches, schools, colleges, arts, 
 literature, homes, governments, sacrifice, heroism, good works, 
 patience, love, and hope, that have, by general consent, 
 resulted from his existence in the world ? If so, was he only 
 a man ? 
 
 Multiply thirty-three years by poverty, toil, contempt, 
 sorrow, and crucifixion, and you have one product. Multiply 
 nineteen hundred years by millions of churches, schools, and 
 homes ; by millions of books, paintings, and poems ; by 
 social position, wealth, and power ; by success, triumph, and 
 conquest ; by love, mercy, and truth ; by a hold upon 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 58 1 
 
 humanity unequalled, and by an intluenci: on home and 
 thought unrivalled, — and you have another product. The 
 question is, Does one of these products seem to be the 
 equivalent of the other ? Does not the outcome by an infi- 
 nite degree surpass the income ? Is not the evolution out 
 of all proportion to the involution ? Is there not much more 
 power, seemingly, on this side of the cross, than there was 
 on the other ? Manifestly and clearly, Christ's life and work 
 cannot be accounted for by the principle of the correlation 
 of forces. 
 
 It is impossible to account for the life and work of Christ 
 by the principles with which physical force and merely human 
 force and thought are measured. The sun is the centre 
 of the system of nature, — a system designed to end, a system 
 the centre of which is gradually losing itself, to find itself no 
 more forever. 
 
 Christ is pouring his force into the system of which he is 
 the centre ; but by such a process he is not losing his force, 
 but increasing it. By losing himself he finds himself. The 
 universal law of the system of which he is the centre, is 
 the law of communion. The force he gives away comes 
 back to him augmented by the personalit}^ of all who partake 
 of it. Instead of becoming poorer by giving, he becomes 
 richer. 
 
 EDWARD W. BLYDEN. 
 
 [Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race. London : 1S87. Pp. 134, 177, 197.] 
 
 The germs of all the sciences, and of the two great reli- 
 gions now professed by the most enlightened races, were 
 fostered in Africa. Science, in its latest wonders, has nothing 
 to show equal to some of the wonderful things even now to 
 be seen in Africa. In Africa stands that marvellous architect- 
 ural pile — the Great Pyramid — which has been the admira- 
 tion and despair of the world for a hundred generations. 
 Though apparently closely secluded from all the rest of the 
 
582 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 world, Africa still lies at the gateway of all the loftiest and 
 noblest traditions of the human race, — of India, of Greece, 
 of Rome. She interming-les with all the divine administra- 
 tions, and is connected, in one way or another, with some of 
 the most famous names and events in the annals of time. 
 
 The great progenitor of the Hebrew race, and founder 
 of their religion, sought refuge in Africa from the ravages of 
 famine. . . . Jacob and his sons were subsequently saved 
 from extinction in the same way. In Africa, Moses, the great- 
 est lawgiver the world has ever seen, was born and educated. 
 To this land also resorted the ancient philosophers of Greece 
 and Rome, to gaze upon its wonders, and gather inspiration 
 from its arts and sciences. . . . 
 
 If we come down to New-Testament times, we find again 
 Africans and their country appearing In honorable connec- 
 tions. When the Saviour of mankind, born in lowly circum- 
 stances, was the persecuted babe of Bethlehem, Africa 
 furnished the refuge for his threatened and helpless infancy. 
 African hands ministered to the comfort of Mary and Joseph 
 while they sojourned as homeless and hunted strangers in 
 that land. In the final hours of the Man of sorrows, when his 
 disciples had forsaken him and fled, and only the tears of 
 sympathizing women following in the distance showed that 
 his sorrows touched any human heart ; when Asia, in the 
 person of the Jew, clamored for his blood, and Europe, in 
 the Roman soldier, was dragging him to execution, and after- 
 wards nailed those sinless hands to the cross, and pierced 
 that sacred side, — what was the part that Africa took then ? 
 
 She furnished the man to share the burden of the cross 
 with the suffering Redeemer. Simon the Cyrenian bore the 
 cross after Jesus. " Fleecy locks and dark complexion " thus 
 enjoyed a privilege and an honor, and was invested with a 
 glory, in which kings and potentates, martyrs and confessors, 
 in the long roll of ages, would have been proud to partici- 
 pate. . . . 
 
 One of the chief hinderances to the progress of the truth 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 583 
 
 in Airica has been the constant desire to give prominence to 
 deductions made by men from the great facts of revelation, 
 instead of Hfting up Christ, and beheving the words that he 
 spake unto his disciples : " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all 
 men unto me ; " " Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in 
 heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls ; " " Come unto me, 
 all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give )ou 
 rest," These are the words that bring light and beauty and 
 encouragement and strength to the benighted. Instruct 
 them by the simple teachings of Christ, — the Sermon on 
 the Mount, and the Lord's Prayer. Instruct them by the 
 simple method of Christ. He moved through the ordinary 
 life of men, and drew his teachings from every thing he saw, 
 — the sower and the seed, the field, the fishermen, the boat, 
 the rain that fell, the ways of the sheep, the vine and the 
 branches. Through all these he taught his disciples, and 
 brought instruction and refreshment to their souls, illustrating 
 by his surroundings — by the birds of the air and the lilies 
 of the field — the tender care of Go*d the Father over all his 
 children. 
 
 This is the teaching that will save men of all races and 
 climes, — adapted to men in the lowest stages of society, 
 and adapted to men in the highest walks of life. 
 
 LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON. 
 
 [The Simplicity that is in Christ. New York: 1886. Pp. 65, 69, 71.] 
 
 You will find in the story of the Gospels, as others have 
 before you, the traits of a man of exceptional and wonderful 
 endowments of intellect, of heroic courage, of dauntless 
 tenacity of principle and purpose, and of a dignity and stain- 
 less purity of character and an impassioned love of righteous- 
 ness which cause him to be thus reckoned incomparable 
 among the human race ; at the same time, a man of singular 
 humility and modest forgetfulness of self, who, endowed with 
 
584 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 every faculty for great achievement, seemed to have escaped 
 " the last infirmity of noble minds," and to be without ambition 
 to achieve any thing that the world calls great ; who accom- 
 plished no stroke of battle or of state, put in operation no 
 organized society, constructed no philosophical or ethical 
 system, left no writing behind him, whom nevertheless subse- 
 quent ages and distant natigns and races have crowned with 
 that honor which he never sought, accounting his teaching 
 the last authority in ethics, theology, and law, his person to be 
 an object worthy of the highest reverence, and the epoch of 
 his birth as the golden milestone from which to measure in 
 either direction the paths of history ; a man who was withal 
 poor, despised, and a sufferer, and yet in poverty and suffering 
 most sublime, and in his malefactor's death glorious beyond 
 the power of envy, prejudice, and unbelief to behold undazzled; 
 whose grandeur of intellect, dignity of character, and religious 
 elevation of soul, are nevertheless to men's eyes so outshone 
 by his attributes of love and gentleness, wider than the earth 
 and stronger than death; that the former are forgotten in the 
 latter. 
 
 Looking at him as the fourfold picture of his life revolves 
 before us, we find the first impressions of admiration and love 
 which are irresistibly made upon our minds, confirmed by the 
 general suffrage of mankind. You have not forgotten that 
 impressive consensus of testimony from men whose distinction 
 in history has been the suspicious and incredulous jealousy 
 with which they have denied and contested every ascription 
 of honor to the person of this man Jesus but those which 
 are undeniable and incontestable, — with what singular una- 
 nimity they agree in declaring him to be the perfect tnan, the 
 type of an ideal humanity, the sum of every human virtue. 
 We are here on ground so nearly uncontested among all 
 thoughtful and serious readers of the Gospels, Christian, 
 unchristian and antichristian, that we may speak with very 
 little hesitation of the symmetry and harmony of a perfect 
 human character as illustrated in Jesus. And this is the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 585 
 
 one thing that humanity beside, in all its generations, fails to 
 show us. 
 
 I asked a studious artist, once, about the famous Belvidere 
 torso of Hercules, — whether in all his studies of living 
 models, chosen for their physical perfection, he had ever met 
 with its counterpart in muscular development ; and, as I 
 expected, he told me, No. It was not infrequent, he said, to 
 find some parts or members thus exceptionally developed, — 
 as in the right arm of a smith, or the thighs of a porter, — 
 but never the whole system as in the torso. Besides, he said, 
 you see in the torso the entire muscular system in a state of 
 simultaneous activity, which is hardly true to nature. You 
 can hardly expect to find the whole system in vigor at once. 
 The antagonist muscles, as the extensors and the flexors, can 
 hardly be in tension at the same time. When one set is con- 
 tracted, the other set will be relaxed. We must consider the 
 torso as the fragment of an ideal figure. 
 
 So we make our allowances for the moral constitution of 
 human nature. Some qualities of humanity seem hardly 
 compatible in the same subject ; and there are what might be 
 called antagonist virtues, of which one sort seems to be held 
 in suspense or abeyance when the other is in exercise. We 
 pretty much give up looking to find a whole manhood both 
 strong and symmetrical, and wholly righteous in all virtuous 
 acts, thoughts, and feelings, at once. We try to make up such 
 a character by combining in our picture the highest qualities 
 of more than one ; and when we have finished, the critics cry 
 out upon our delineation for an impossibility, not resembling 
 any real man or woman that anybody knows. 
 
 Now, the thine that has moved the unanimous wonder of 
 the cold-blooded and not too friendly critics whom I have 
 quoted to you, is not so much the prodigious development ot 
 some astonishing quality in Jesus, as this blending of seeming 
 incompatibles in a perfect manhood. The qualities that seem 
 to pull in opposite directions seem in his person to find their 
 radiating centre and focus of convergence. Courage and 
 
586 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 heroism, profound sagacity of intuition, exquisite sense of 
 right and fitness, are joined with a lofty and severe justice, a 
 greatness and purity of soul, which mean and evil motives 
 dared not approach, or approaching found nothing in him. 
 And to all these were united in highest perfection the 
 eminently human virtues, — the virtues that characteristically 
 belong to a finite, dependent being, such as great humility, 
 modesty, self-denial, submissiveness to authority, deference to 
 public ordinance even on questionable points, tolerance of 
 personal wrong and injury ; insomuch that the epithet which 
 has passed like a surname into common speech is this, " the 
 meek and lowly Jesus." Joined with these were a reverence 
 before God, a childlike trust in God, and a habitual prayer- 
 fulness and obedience toward God, which were like a crown 
 of light on the head of his perfect character, outshining all 
 his other human virtues, and yet by its shining making them 
 all the lovelier. 
 
 JOSEPH COOK. 
 
 [Boston Monday Lectures. Boston: 1888. Pp. 50, 51.] 
 
 Have we yet reached the highest fountain-head in philoso- 
 phy and ethics ? What should be added to all that is now 
 current in the schools, to bring us abreast of our opportunity ? 
 More than once on this platform I have ventured an assertion 
 which is dear to me, because lying close to any religious life 
 I may possess, — that human nature can be understood only 
 when studied in its one perfect example. 
 
 There has appeared on earth once, and but once, a being 
 who never committed sin. Christ was man at his climax. It 
 is too late for you to doubt that there did appear in Palestine 
 a perfect life ; and I hold also that the sinlessness of Christ 
 forbids his possible classification with man. Lotze himself has 
 taught that God was in Christ as in no other soul. 
 
 Looking now not at all beyond the range of mere ethical 
 science, and not speaking from the point of view of revela- 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 587 
 
 tion, I affirm that the soul of Christ must be taken as a lesson 
 in the capacities of man, and that our philosophy does not 
 reach the proper height until it shows us how we can harmon- 
 ize all our faculties with conscience on the plan on which they 
 were harmonized in Christ's soul. We have this vast faculty 
 in which God dwells, though we do not obey it. We must 
 ultimately secure peace with our own souls, if we are to be 
 delivered from perdition, which comes from the war of faculty 
 upon faculty forever. There is no possibility of peace, except 
 in the imitation of Christ. The human soul, with every faculty 
 at its best, can be harmonized with itself only by that imitation. 
 In the foremost circles of philosophical and ethical inquir- 
 ers, the cry now is, Back to Kant ! I hope it will not seem 
 too bold, if, in the name of philosophy and ethical science, I 
 seriously supplement this watchword by the cry^ Back to 
 Christ ! who was man at his climax. I maintain that in 
 scholarly ethics, and in philosophy, strictly so called, the time 
 has come to proclaim that the Christ-like is the natural, and 
 tnat nothing else can be. 
 
 THOMAS DE WITT TALMAGE. 
 
 [Around the Tea-Table. New York : 1S85. P. 414-] 
 
 There is no warmer Bible phrase than this: "Touched 
 with the feeling of our infirmities." The Divine nature is so 
 vast, and the human so small, that we are apt to think that 
 they do not touch each other at any point. We might have 
 ever so many mishaps, the Government at Washington would 
 not hear of them ; and there are multitudes in Britain whose 
 troubles Victoria never knows : but there is a Throne against 
 which strike our most insignificant perplexities. 
 
 What touches us touches Christ ; what annoys us annoys 
 Christ; what robs us robs Christ. He is the great nerve- 
 centre to which thrill all sensations which touch us who are 
 his members. 
 
588 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 HERMANN LOTZE. 
 
 [MiCROCOSMUS. New York: 1886. Vol. ii. pp. 270-273, 282, 283.] 
 
 Christianity offered infinite stimulus to the understanding 
 without binding it down to a narrow circle of thought ; and 
 ^ to the heart it offered full as much. For, according to Chris- 
 tianity, the sole truth and the source of reality with all its 
 laws was something of which the eternal worth must be felt 
 in order to be known ; from the reality thus known through 
 feeling, man's understanding can reach back to that which is 
 divine, and can very often conclude from it to the divine, as 
 from the ground of demonstration to that which is demon- 
 strable. In this it met the eternal longing of the human 
 heart, and satisfied it in a fashion wholly new. The con- 
 sciousness of finiteness has always oppressed mankind ; but 
 however much moral contrition we may find in the enthusiasm 
 of the Indians, however much dread of self-exaltation in 
 Greek circumspection, however much fidelity to duty in Roman 
 manhood, yet everywhere this finiteness was felt to be merely 
 a natural doom by which the less is given into the power of 
 the greater, and its existence irrevocably confined within 
 limits, whilst within these limits the finite is destined to attain 
 by its own strength its highest possible ideal. 
 
 The Indian sought to extort eternal life by frightful pen- 
 ances ; the Greek was afraid of arousing the envy of the gods 
 by pride, but he aimed at perfecting himself, and it seemed 
 to him that virtue might be taught as any craft may be ; the 
 Roman, knowing nothing of a blissful life of the gods beyond 
 his own, went self-renouncingly to death for duty's sake, — 
 an honest man whom yet no god had helped to be what he 
 was. The characteristic of humility and submission, that is 
 lacking even in the most mournful expressions of this sense 
 of finiteness in antiquity, was brought for the first time by 
 Christianity into the heart of men, and with it hope came too. 
 It was a redemption for men to be able to tell themselves 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 589 
 
 that human strength is not sufficient for the accompHshment 
 of its own ideas ; hence from this time mankind no longer 
 seemed to be an isolated species of finite being, turned out 
 complete by the hand of nature, and destined to reach, 
 unaided by innate powers, definite goals of evolution. Freed 
 from this isolation, giving himself up to the current of grace, 
 which as continuous history combined infinite and finite, man 
 is enabled to feel himself in community with the eternal 
 world, which he must stand outside of as lonpf as he desired 
 to be independent, or believed that he must be so. And 
 since the mere belonging to a particular race was now no 
 longer a source of justification or condemnation, — salvation 
 needing to be taken hold of by the individual heart, which 
 must be willing to lose its life in order that it might find it 
 again, — there now began to be developed for the first time 
 that personal consciousness which thenceforward, with all its 
 problems, — freedom of the will and predestination, guilt and 
 responsibility, resurrection and immortality, — has given a 
 totally different coloring to the whole background of man's 
 mental life. 
 
 This momentous content has, indeed, never reached the 
 clearness of calm comprehension in the minds of all mankind 
 to whom it was proclaimed ; but even those who tried to 
 resist it have never been able to get rid of its influence. It 
 has remained the centre about which the civilization of later 
 times has always revolved, in hope or doubt, in assurance or 
 fear, in zeal or scorn. 
 
 To him who so regarded the eternal connection between 
 earth and the kingdom of heaven, all earthly history must 
 seem but a preparation for the true life, not valueless, since 
 it aims at this goal, not yet burdened by the tremendous 
 seriousness of absolute irrevocability. Therefore Christianity- 
 proposed to the will only such commands as require perma- 
 nent goodness of disposition ; from the ordering of human 
 affairs by ceremonies, law, and government, it stood indefi- 
 nitely far. It could do without that which the heathen 
 
590 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 theocracies were compelled to demand ; since what it asked 
 for God was God's, it could give to Caesar that which was 
 Caesar's. As for it God was not primarily revealed in nature 
 in the manifold forms of his creation, from which the grounds 
 of reverence might be deduced, so life was not primarily an 
 established order of moral relations within which man might 
 walk with a sense of security along paths definitely marked 
 out ; but to man's inner life was intrusted the work of gradu- 
 ally raising the forms of society to relations which were in 
 harmony with his spirit. 
 
 Therefore the attitude of Christianity towards the external 
 conditions of mankind was not that of a disturbing and sub- 
 versive force, but it deprived evil of all justification for its 
 permanent continuance. It did not forthwith abolish the 
 slavery which it found existing, but in summoning all men to 
 partake in the kingdom of God it condemned it nevertheless. 
 At first it let polygamy continue where it existed ; but this 
 must necessarily disappear spontaneously where the spirit of 
 Christian faith made itself felt in all relations of life. . . . 
 
 Without having been organized into a church, Christianity 
 would hardly have weathered the storms of those times, and 
 could have exercised but little of its beneficent influence 
 upon temporal life. By the help of transmitted culture, and 
 through the resources which its authority enabled it to com- 
 mand, the Church was partly able to keep invading barbarism 
 at bay, partly to press forward itself and fill the still darkened 
 Northern countries with those churches, m'onasteries, episcopal 
 residences, and agricultural settlements from which there 
 were diffused not only the art of husbandry, but also that 
 of gardening ; not only the elements of knowledge, but also 
 those of technical crafts, and under the walls of which, grad- 
 ually reviving trade held its markets whilst within their gates 
 the sick and weary found tendance or healing. 
 
 Thus, in the early period of the Middle Ages, the Church 
 was in many respects at the head of progress and of civiliza- 
 tion ; from it proceeded the majority of such establishments 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETJI. 59 1 
 
 as were of general utility ; from it the ignorant sought teach- 
 ing, for it alone possessed the treasures of transmitted 
 learning ; to it alone could the longing go for consolation and 
 for the resolution of their doubts, for it alone had studied all 
 the relations of human life, and with active enthusiasm com 
 bined the results of its reflection into one comprehensive 
 philosophy; finally, it was to the Church that the oppressed 
 appealed for help, for it was the Church alone that, amidst 
 the general license and the thirst for adventure; recognized 
 and taught a truth that was valid for all men, and a divine 
 order of things independent of all human caprice, obeying 
 these in a life of strict discipline, and not unfrequently assert- 
 ing them with courageous self-sacrifice in defending the 
 weakness of the oppressed against the violence of the strong. 
 
 HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS. 
 
 [Sermons. New York: 1887. Pp. 287, 333-3^.] 
 
 "Who do men say that I, the Son of man, am?" We 
 reply, The Church universal, all Christendom, unite in saying 
 that you are the all-sufficient Saviour, the light of the moral 
 world, the pattern of all graces and perfections, the only 
 perfect humanity the race has seen. They say truly that 
 about you have crystallized the affections of all the purest 
 saints, and the reverence of all the devoutest hearts. They 
 say that you are nearest to God, and that you stand, and will 
 stand, the blessed Mediator between your brethren and your 
 Father and theirs. They say that your words remain true in 
 all ages, and that your example never grows antiquated or 
 needless. They say that in your life and character and spirit 
 God has revealed all that can be considered necessary or 
 useful for men to know concerning his moral purposes and 
 spiritual affections. They say that your insight into your 
 Father's will verifies Itself by all who trust it ; that your guid- 
 ance never misleads a faithful follower, and that ages on ages 
 
592 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 only add to its significance and value. They say that every 
 superstition and old theory which sought to make you great 
 according to mere human standards, when it falls away, only 
 discloses higher claims, until your authority is independent 
 of doubtful testimony and of supports that are adventitious 
 or questionable, and stands, in its own self-evident weight and 
 worth, more immovable than the mountains. . . . 
 
 The common faith believes that with Jesus Christ began 
 a new era of hope and life for humanity, and that it is not 
 without reason that we date our epoch from his birth. It 
 believes that Jesus Christ sustained peculiar, exceptional, 
 indissoluble relations with God, and that his name, his pre- 
 cepts, his life, his spirit, his death, are intimately, sacredly, 
 and gloriously connected with the salvation of men. It 
 believes that Jesus is the Christ, and that the Christ is the 
 name for God's anointed Son. I am not talking of what men 
 profess to believe, but only of what they do believe. And 
 after deducting all that is local, sectarian, peculiar, theologi- 
 cal, theoretic^, ineffective, I find this common faith to have 
 established itself in the Christian world, and to be shared 
 by men in general, irrespective of their churches, creeds, or 
 even their shades of character or schools of thouQ-ht. I do 
 not see a whit's difference in respect to this article of faith 
 among Catholics and Protestants, Trinitarians and Unitarians, 
 theologians and the common people. Of course it is con- 
 nected with various theories of ontology, affirmation of mira- 
 cles or denial of miracles, assertion of Christ's pre-existence 
 or of his natural birth ; of Jesus as the fulfilment of prophecy, 
 or the outcome of original spiritual genius ; with different 
 conceptions of revelation and inspiration, different notions of 
 the Divine plan in raising many spiritual leaders in different 
 ages, or only one : but under all lies the acknowledgment of 
 Christ's having established a new and transcendent epoch 
 in man's spiritual history, and of his being himself the leading 
 factor in our moral destiny. 
 
 Men may differ about the origin, purpose, and intentions 
 
CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 593 
 
 of the Pyramids ; but there they are, and they cannot be got 
 rid of. It is very much so with Christ's place and influence 
 in history. It is a fact. There he is at the entrance of modern 
 history, the creator and inspirer of a new life for humanity ; 
 a personage too grand, sacred, and influential to be over- 
 looked, to be overthrown, to be treated with any thing but 
 reverence. Modern doubters or denials of his miracles or 
 his supernatural origin, men like Strauss, Renan, Mill, are 
 just as much impressed with the magnitude, sublimity, and 
 sacredness of his figure, as the most implicit believers in his 
 divine mission. Indeed, in some sense they are compelled 
 to magnify his personal genius, his sublime insight, his very 
 character, to account for the hold he got upon his time and 
 upon human fortunes. 
 
 If he was not inspired, sent supernaturally, then he was 
 a greater genius than Plato, Aristotle, Shakspeare ; for he 
 invented and illustrated truths that belong to the highest 
 sphere of thought and experience, in a manner so perfect 
 that nineteen centuries have not been able, with all our prog- 
 ress, to add any thing to the ideal man he was, or to the 
 religious faith he taught and personated. 
 
 JULIAN K. SMYTH. 
 
 [Footprints of the Saviour. Boston: 1S86. Pp. 133, 135. 141.] 
 
 The sanctity of Christ is essential to Christianity. Differ- 
 ently from every other teacher, he places himself before his 
 teachings. It is not merely a new philosophy, or code of 
 ethics, that he brings : it is himself. His claim is far greater 
 than that he knows the truth and can therefore proclaim it. 
 He is more than a teacher of it. He declares himself to be 
 the perfect embodiment of it. In short, he is the Truth. — 
 the Word made flesh ; the Truth living and breathing. Now, 
 every true teacher is presumably in the effort to come into 
 correspondence with his teachings. But of whom, save the 
 
594 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Lord Jesus Christ, could we say that the correspondence 
 attained is so perfect and absolute as to entitle him to declare 
 himself to be the Truth ? Socrates discourses beautifully of 
 immortality. What if he had said to those gathered about 
 him in his cell, " I am the Resurrection and the Life " ? 
 
 It is rightly claimed that the Sermon on the Mount con- 
 tains the rules of the highest possible morality and religion. 
 But what if the Saviour had simply appeared on that one 
 day, and preached that sermon ? What if we knew nothing 
 of him who sat on the mountain slope and said, " Blessed are 
 the poor in spirit " ? Truth in the abstract ! Cold rules tell- 
 ing us how we should live ! How long would Christianity 
 have lasted ? What power of resistance would it have had 
 against persecution ! How far beyond a few schoolmen, who 
 might have studied them as they studied the philosophy 
 of Plato, would Christ's teachings have spread ? Would the 
 common people have flocked to the academies to learn of this 
 new religion ? And if they had, would they have been 
 affected by it, or even understood it, in its impersonal form ? 
 Was it not its personal quality which gave it such power, — 
 the life that had been lived for them ; the suffering which had 
 been endured for them ; the death that had included them ? 
 The truth became clear and dear to them just so far as they 
 saw it in him. . . . 
 
 We realize how inadequately this word "sinless" ex- 
 presses the truth of Christ's sanctity. It is too negative. It 
 is nerveless and colorless. Not to be evil, is one thing: to 
 be genuinely and positively righteous, is quite another thing. 
 Now, Christ's life was of all things supremely positive. Let 
 any one put into his mouth such utterances as these : " I am 
 not selfish," " I am not worldly," " I am not evil," and we feel 
 at once that the whole conception of Christ is changed, if not 
 destroyed. 
 
 But instead, what do we find ? The one truly positive 
 life. Sinless ? Yes. Blameless ? Yes. Not, however, by 
 mere self- repression, but by absolute holiness. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 595 
 
 SAMUEL HARRIS. 
 
 [The Self-Revelation of God. New York: 1887. Pp. 142, 523, 527-529.] 
 
 Except Jesus, there is no personage of antiquity who has 
 such a hold on the interests of men that so many biographies 
 and investigations of his hfe and work, popular and scholarly, 
 could be written within a single generation, and be eagerly 
 read and everywhere discussed. Before the publication of 
 Strauss's work, lives of Christ were scarcely known. He set 
 out to show that the historical narrative of the life of Jesus is 
 of no account, that the whole sigrnificance of his life is in the 
 truth which it expresses. Instead of accomplishing this, he 
 accomplished just the contrary. He concentrated the thought 
 of all Christendom on the study of the story of Christ's life, 
 on the study of Jesus as an historical personage, and of his 
 history, teaching, and influence among men. And the result 
 is, that men are seeing, as they never saw before, that the 
 great evidence of Christianity is in Christ himself, that his 
 human life and influence can be accounted for only by admit- 
 ting that he is divine. They have also come to understand 
 more fully than ever before the profound and far-reaching 
 significance of the Incarnation, and the peculiar richness and 
 practical power of the revelation of God made in the humilia- 
 tion of the Logos and in the earthly life of the Christ. . . . 
 
 God is revealed in Christ reconciling the world to himself, 
 redeeming man from sin to the knowledge of God and to 
 union with him, educating and developing him to the realiza- 
 tion of his ideal as set forth in Christ, pervading the world 
 with the influence of the Divine Spirit, and progressively 
 transforming society into the kingdom of God. This revela- 
 tion of God is also the highest possible revelation of the 
 capacities and possibilities of humanity, of the worth of man 
 and the sacredness of his rights, of the obligation of all to 
 live in the love and service of man, and of his capacity for 
 wise thouehts and ereat deeds and noble character. It is the 
 
596 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 revelation of man to himself as really as it is the revelation of 
 God to man. 
 
 In Christ is the ideal of humanity in a human person and 
 a human life, the law of love revealed in the concrete ; in him 
 also is the love of God embodied and revealed in a living man 
 and a human life. Here are at once the law, the motive and 
 inspiration to obey it, and the divine grace seeking man in his 
 sins to inspire and quicken, to guide and strengthen him in 
 the way of life, and the divine promise stimulating hope and 
 courage, and giving assurance, to all who seek, that they shall 
 find the realization in themselves of the ideal of manhood 
 presented before them in Christ. It is true that God reveals 
 himself in humanity. But this revelation can never be com- 
 plete, for the history of humanity will never be completed. 
 
 In Christ, the ideal man, the whole contents of that reve- 
 lation of God in humanity are summed up in brief. He is 
 the ideal of man in union with God, and the recipient of his 
 spirit and grace. He is the ideal of man in the perfection of 
 his being: "When he shall appear, we shall be like him." 
 He is the ideal man, loving all with a divine love, coming not 
 to be ministered unto, but to minister, taking the form of a 
 servant, and spending his energies working with the Father 
 to save from sin, to develop him to his true manhood in the 
 likeness of God, and to build human society into a kingdom 
 of righteousness and good-will. He is the ideal man in his 
 subjection to privation, suffering, and death, in his conflict 
 with sin, his triumph over all the powers of evil, and his 
 ascension glorified to the life immortal. 
 
 In Handel's " Messiah," poetry and music combine to give 
 expression to the significance of this revelation of God in 
 Christ, and of this revelation in Christ of what humanity is 
 and is to be. " He sliall reign for ever and ever." Neither 
 music nor poetry, neither philosophy nor religion, neither law 
 nor gospel, can transcend this. It is the highest consumma- 
 tion of thought, feeling, and life ; it is the union of the human 
 with the divine. In worshipping God in Christ, we worship 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 597 
 
 him in humanity. The Christian has in Christ and God's re- 
 demption of man real ground for reverence for humanity, not 
 to be compared with any possible reverence for the fiction 
 which the Positivists worship. 
 
 It is the Christ alone who reveals the true significance of 
 humanity and its highest possibilities and noblest destiny. 
 And through him come the spiritual agencies and motives 
 which quicken men to the new spiritual life, and bring them 
 to concentrate their energies on the service of God and man 
 in the life of universal love. He meets all man's spiritual 
 needs by bringing him to union with God in the life of faith 
 and love, and to reconciliation, communion, and peace with 
 God. He reveals the kingdom of God on earth and in 
 heaven as the realization of the perfect unity and community 
 of men, and of the highest possibilities of humanity. 
 
 And in this he reveals the true worth and dignity of man, 
 the sacredness of both his obligations and his rights, the 
 brotherhood of men as the children of God and redeemed 
 through Christ, the common Saviour, and all those great ideas 
 which have guided and inspired the true political and social 
 progress of man in modern times. Christianity, and it alone, 
 takes up the whole man, spiritual and natural, and the whole 
 sphere of his action, individual and social, all his interests and 
 possibilities, science and industrial invention, morality and 
 economics, literature and aesthetic art, work and play, politics 
 and business ; it takes them up with spiritual light and love 
 and power adequate to quicken, inspire, and guide the prog- 
 ress of the individual and of society toward the realization of 
 the ideal perfection of humanity. 
 
 Thus the historical action of God in Christ is the basis of 
 the only true and complete philosophy of human history. 
 Man and his history and destiny can never be understood 
 without recoenizine his relation to God, the fact of sin and 
 God's gracious action in redemption, and the existence and 
 growth of God's kingdom on earth. Christ is central in 
 human history. On him all the lines of divine action and 
 
598 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 influence before his coming converge, and from him all divine 
 action and influence in redemption go forth into the subse- 
 quent life and history of man. Christianity lives in the his- 
 tory of man, its roots struck down into the depths of the past, 
 and in prophecy and promise its branches lifting its verdure 
 and blossoms and fruit to all the heights of the future, — the 
 veritable tree Ygdrasil, around which the moral world is built, 
 and on which its stability depends. 
 
 And because the religion of Christ is comprehensive of 
 all spiritual light and life and power, and is to satisfy the 
 spiritual needs of man in all ages, it is tested by the progress 
 of thought and civilization through all time. Christ challenges 
 this test. A god of the Scandinavian mythology was once 
 tested in various ways to prove his power. Among other 
 trials, he was challenged to a race, and was outrun. He 
 afterwards learned that his competitor in the race had been 
 Human Thought. In all which pertains to man's moral and 
 spiritual life, Christ has been tested in the race with human 
 thought for eighteen hundred years, and has been always in 
 advance. In fact, it is much more than this. He has kept 
 the lead, while, by his spiritual quickening of men, it is he 
 himself who has given to human thought its power and speed. 
 
 JOHN WILLIAM COLENSO. 
 
 [Natal Sermons. London: i8S6. Vol. i. p. 315-317 ; vol. ii. p. 325.] 
 
 We often say that our Lord's example is to be the guide 
 to us in all the duties of life. And so, indeed, it should be, 
 yet not in the way that many seem to suppose, — by his 
 having actually shared in the performance of those duties, 
 and resisted the temptations more especially connected with 
 them. . . . 
 
 Of his childhood and boyhood we know scarcely any 
 thing ; of his youth we know nothing. We have very little 
 to show us how he acted as a son or a brother ; we have no 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 599 
 
 example in his life of a husband or a parent, no exact pattern 
 for students, or men of business, for artisans, domestic ser- 
 vants, village laborers, for professional men, soldiers, or 
 statesmen. The duties of middle later life and of old age 
 were not discharged by him ; the lot of the noble, wealthy, and 
 powerful was not experienced by him, nor that of the pauper 
 in the poorhouse, of the prisoner immersed for years in the 
 dungeon of the oppressor, or the patient racked with pain, or 
 worn with lingering disease, in the wards of the hospital. 
 
 The example which he has actually given us in the Bible 
 is chiefly that of an active ministry of almost three years 
 in the prime of life, under circumstances which can never 
 happen again in the history of the world. . . . 
 
 How is it, then, that we are able at once to appeal to 
 Christ's example as the perfect model of what human beings 
 ought to be, or ought to do, under all circumstances ? It is 
 because we appeal to the spirit of his life, — to the principle 
 which ruled it, — to that conformity to the perfect will of 
 God, that desire to please his heavenly Father, that surrender 
 of his own will to God's will, which he manifested on all 
 occasions. 
 
 And taught as we are ourselves by the Divine word, enlight- 
 ened by the Divine light which is the light of men, we are 
 able in our own minds to fill up that which is wanting for 
 our actual guidance amidst the duties of life ; to say to our- 
 selves, in different situations, " In this way Christ would act, 
 or would have acted." We are able to set before us an ideal 
 Christ, a perfect image of the Divine Man. That image of 
 perfect beauty and holiness — of the perfect Man — which 
 we thus by divine grace behold each in our own mind, is not 
 set before us in full length in the Gospels, nor could it possi- 
 bly be ; no record of his life could have supplied minutely all 
 the details needed for this purpose, for setting a mere copy, 
 which we are closely to follow in all our different relations of 
 life, even if our Lord had actually entered into human relation- 
 ship more fully than he has done. 
 
6oo TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 It is, I repeat, to the spirit of his Hfe, — to the principle 
 which ruled it, — that we must be appealing continually day 
 by day and hour by hour, if we would " put on Christ," put 
 on the Christian spirit. . . . 
 
 The example, then, of Christ is not less available to us, 
 because the details of his life are few, and leave many and 
 most important points of our lives without models of conduct. 
 Our following of any model, to be true, to be of any worth, 
 must not be an imitation of certain acts, of certain demeanor, 
 appropriate to this or that situation or relation in which as 
 human beings we may be placed. . . . 
 
 Christ is our great Example because he came not to do 
 his own will, but the will of the Father who sent him, — 
 because he sought not his own glory, but in all that con- 
 cerned him was simply obedient, leaving his cause in God's 
 hands ; because he bore witness for the truth on all occa- 
 sions, regardless of consequences. 
 
 In the life of Christ, slight as is the sketch which we have 
 of it in the Gospels, the leading idea is of one who lived 
 wholly for others, to comfort and to heal ; above all, to bring 
 home to God the lost sheep of the flock, to waken penitence 
 in the sinner, and to assure the penitent of pardon and peace. 
 And if the history in the Gospels of the life of our Head is 
 but a sketch, it is in a measure filled up by the lives of the 
 members of the body of Christ, of all his true followers in 
 every age. 
 
 J. PETER LESLEY. 
 
 [Shall We Call Him Master? The Forum, January, iSSS. Pp. 492-496.] 
 
 I SEE no incompatibility of the religion of Jesus with 
 modern life, provided the letter of his teaching be subordi- 
 nated to its plainly expressed spirit ; and that is why I can 
 call him Lord and Master. As a man of science I should 
 not, will not, dare not, " swear in the words of any master; " 
 but the whole life of a man of science disciplines him into a 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 6oi 
 
 positive and habitual worship of genius ; makes him an enthu- 
 siastic admirer and imitator of the spirit of every master in 
 science. Why not in morals? Why not far more, infinitely 
 more, in morals ? As the conduct of life is every way grander 
 than any scientific work can possibly be, so the Sun of right- 
 eousness must outshine the lesser luminaries of physical 
 knowledge. Therefore I recognize no incongruity when 
 Keplers and Newtons, a Linnaeus, a Davy, a Joseph Henry, 
 or a Cuvier, worship Jesus of Nazareth ; or when a Washing- 
 ton or a Lincoln confesses to the self-mouldine of his whole 
 life on the well-known, perfecdy comprehensible and compre- 
 hended Christian model. It is then with a sense of buoyant 
 exaltation that I, as a man whose whole life has been devoted 
 to exact science, say that I worship Jesus of Nazareth as the 
 ideal man, and therefore King of men. His reported words 
 are but the locks of hair upon his head, the folds in his robe. 
 His metaphors are merely the colors of the spectrum of the 
 sunshine of the man, refracted by a Hebrew, an oriental, 
 prism. Nor is the word "worship" a whit too strong. . . . 
 
 Now, if Jesus stood for a special theological reformer, like 
 Luther or Mohammed, or Gautama, or for a mere special phi- 
 losopher, like Confucius, it would be out of reason to worship 
 him as the ideal man, the man of all ages and races, the 
 image of the realized perfection in human living, the risen 
 Sun of righteousness, the Son of God — meaning by God 
 all that is best, and by Son the best personified in man. But 
 as his character, so far as we can study it, exemplifies and 
 enforces contentment and docility enough to suit the East, 
 practical energy and common sense enough to suit the West, 
 heroism and self-sacrifice enough to suit the Arctic tribes, 
 and a flaming imagination and passionate heart, and infinite 
 devotion for the unseen cause of all duty and utility, such 
 as may satisfy the most tropical climes, — there is ample 
 reason for placing him historically at the head of the human 
 race ; nor can I see how we independent citizens of the 
 great republic can shake off our spiritual allegiance to him, 
 
602 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 or cease to love and worship him as our natural judge and 
 leader. . . 
 
 Call him what you please, he was an avatar of the God of 
 justice, love, and order ; and as such I worship him. I look 
 in vain to Benares, to Pekin, to Mecca, to Athens, or to any 
 other nucleus of mental and moral activity, in past or present 
 times, for such an original and complete guide through the 
 labyrinth of practice and opinion. He speaks indeed in 
 parables, but a child can understand them. His reported 
 utterances are extravagant, oriental, unpractical, inapplicable, 
 impossible, if you will : but for all that, they never deceive ; 
 they never mislead or seduce from the noblest path a human 
 being walks. He was a mystic, but sends no man into dream- 
 land. He was a socialist, but left each human being to apply 
 the principles of communism to daily business according to 
 an inward impulse to do all possible good, and avoid all 
 possible evil. 
 
 What is true democracy, what is ideal republicanism, what 
 is modern philanthropy, but the flower and fruit of the divine 
 socialism of Jesus ? He preached meekness and content- 
 ment ; but who was ever bolder, more uncompromising, more 
 energetic ? Has Christianity ever retarded the development 
 of industry, invention, or enterprise ? Will any one be hardy 
 enough to assert that the ruling presence of Jesus in the 
 market, the exchange, the railroad directors' room, the Masonic 
 lodge, the workingmen's association hall, the court of justice, 
 now, in the nineteenth century, would not be as divinely bene- 
 ficial as it was at Capernaum in the time of Augustus Caesar ? 
 
 We are makino- a new world. Some think it cannot be 
 successfully, or at least properly, made on the basis of the 
 religion of Jesus. I think it can. The millions are, in fact, 
 making it upon that basis ; and in the end the millions do 
 what is right ; at all events, the millions, while at their work 
 of making this new world, worship Jesus. Therefore is his 
 name above every name, — the most precious legacy of time 
 to the ages. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 603 
 
 ARTHUR JAMES MASON. 
 
 [The Faith of the Gospel. London: 1S88. Pp. 157-159.] 
 
 In the unity of Christ's person all contradiction was 
 reconciled, and the same things which became him as Son of 
 God became him as Son of man ; and the very same line 
 of events showed him throughout as the ideal representative 
 both of the one nature and of the other. This double aspect 
 of each and all of our Lord's works must never be forgotten. 
 He was not by one series of acts showing himself as Son of 
 God, and by another as Son of man. There was in him no 
 alternation between two parts which were to be played. Thus 
 we may, for clearness of study, contemplate his whole life and 
 death, first as the manifestation of God to man, and secondly 
 as the representation of man to God. . . . 
 
 To the minds of the heathen in general, God was no 
 better than men, and would condemn himself if he con- 
 demned them ; or he was indifferent to their actions, and, as 
 an early controversialist against Christianity affirmed, was "no 
 more angry with men than with apes or flies ; " or God was 
 capricious and revengeful and implacable, and the utmost that 
 could be done was to endeavor to keep him in good temper 
 with fair words and frequent offerings ; or perhaps he 
 appeared, as in some of the higher Gentile systems, and to 
 some amongst the Jews, as a sternly pure being, extreme 
 to mark what was done amiss, who might give a happier lot 
 in another world in exchange for ascetic self-torture in this, 
 or for rigid observance of a rule more exact than that which 
 he had himself imposed. But in whichever way the error 
 travelled, mankind at large had lost the true conception of 
 God as a righteous Father: that is, as one who must needs 
 be at war with sin wherever sin was to be found, but who at 
 the same time loved men with an intense and personal affec- 
 tion, and was therefore impelled equally by love and by right- 
 eousness to seek to deliver them from sin. 
 
604 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 This was the character displayed in Christ to draw men 
 back to God. Prophets among the IsraeHtes had striven to 
 portray such a character, and more dimly moral philosophers 
 among the Gentiles had set forth fragments of it. 
 
 But the fullest of inspired descriptions could not have the 
 same effect as the sight of an actual life lived among men, 
 simply and necessarily exhibiting at every turn the mind of 
 God. In all the infinitely varied circumstances of that life, 
 in dealing with saints and in dealing with sinners, there was 
 one continuous manifestation of the Father's heart ; so that 
 without a touch of exaggeration Christ could say, " He that 
 hath seen me hath seen the Father." For, although they did 
 not see the Father in person, they saw one who not only 
 resembled him exactly, so that there was nothing in the Son 
 unlike that which was in the Father, but he whom they saw 
 was so entirely one with the Father that he could have no 
 imaginable being apart from the Father, nor the Father apart 
 from him. 
 
 HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 
 
 [The World and the Kingdom. New York: i88S. Pp. 62, 97, ^Z j-^^.] 
 
 I HESITATE not to assert, with thousands of thoughtful 
 men, that for the men of his day, or indeed any day, to have 
 imagined and wrought out the conception of Jesus Christ, 
 would have been a wonder more unexplainable, more bewil- 
 dering, than any miracle or all the miracles recorded in Old 
 Testament or New. . . . 
 
 But how to account for this Jesus of Bethlehem, — Jesus 
 Christ of Nazareth ? Can you account for any ultimate 
 germ ? Science is dumb on ultimates ; it traces up causes 
 from effects, link by link of the long chain. At last one link 
 is reached, and beyond there is nothing. Omne exit iii mys- 
 teriiim. The last step is into the profound. But is the end 
 reached ? Are there no causes and no consequences beyond 
 the touch of material hand and the sight of material eye ? 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 605 
 
 We can account for other men by things upon the earth. 
 Can we account for Jesus Christ? Is he the product of the 
 earth, and can we find that out of which he grew? Is he, 
 Hke other men, a development from visible sources? All 
 other men are. In a most true sense, every man is a devel- 
 opment. Let him be as exceptional as you will, he is the 
 natural product of natural causes upon which you may lay 
 your finger. 
 
 Plato is as genuine a Greek product as the Parthenon. 
 Under no other sky could the one have grown, or the other 
 been builded. . . . William Shakspeare, exceptional as is his 
 vast genius, is an Englishman in every fibre, — just as natural 
 a product of English soil and English air as an English oak 
 or an English daisy. There are causes sufficient, if not to 
 account for his exceptional genius, quite enough to account 
 for the form that genius took, for his whole moral make-up 
 and tendencies, for his character and his influence. Of all 
 the lands on earth, we are sure England alone could have 
 given him birth. 
 
 And not only England, but England at a particular time. 
 He is a man of his country, but also a man of his day : a 
 product of his race, but a product at a particular point in its 
 development ; he is an Elizabethan Englishman ; he belongs 
 where Spenser, Bacon, and Raleigh belong ; he has the 
 common stamp of the great queen upon him, as they all 
 have. Before or after there could have been no Shakspeare, 
 as there has not been. . . . You see what I mean, and also 
 why we naturally, I might almost say instinctively, turn to 
 the examination of the causes which have produced any 
 special character, and expect to find them. They may, 
 indeed, themselves be the germs of great consequences, the 
 original sources of vast results ; but they are not ultimates. 
 They have their own causes on the earth, and are but single 
 links in the vast chain which stretches backward into the 
 unknown past, as it does onward into the unknown future. 
 Is it thus with Jesus Christ ? 
 
6o6 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 And here, mark, Jesus Christ was expected. It is his own 
 claim that he was expected ; that he was the fulfilment of 
 the expectations of thirty centuries ; that he was looked for, 
 longed for, prayed for. No other man ever was expected. 
 Christ is sinofular in this. 
 
 The literature of a whole people is filled with an expected 
 man. Indeed, on close examination, the expectation of a man 
 is the central meaning of that literature. The kind of man 
 desired is clearly laid down. There is no place either to 
 doubt the character of him who was to be the culmination, 
 the splendid blossom, of a long history and a nation's epic. 
 The ideal is magnificent, and it is also distinct. 
 
 It is the vision of all the seers, the proclamation of all the 
 prophets. It begins at the gate of Paradise, with the seed 
 that tramples on the serpent ; grows clearer to Abraham and 
 Jacob ; distinctly defines itself to Moses ; is sung by David 
 to his lyre ; in Solomon's great temple, swells in magnificent 
 chant upon the incense-laden air, while the trumpets peal, 
 and the harp-strings quiver in the chorus. Amid the ruins 
 of the* temple and the city, the expected man is still the 
 burden of Isaiah's song ; and his splendid coming flames afar 
 through Jeremiah's tears. In captivity, by the waters of 
 Babylon, still the man is expected. And the literature of a 
 whole people ends where it begins, with a prophecy of his 
 quick coming, and the manner of his appearance. Malachi 
 closes the book. It is still the old story. "The Lord whom 
 ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messen- 
 ger of the covenant, whom ye delight in ; he shall come, 
 saith the Lord of hosts." . . . And the man expected is a 
 Prince, a Conqueror, a Deliverer. He comes in might, he 
 comes with joy, he comes with terror. " Who may abide the 
 day of his coming ? Who shall stand when he appeareth ? " 
 " A refiner and purifier of silver." By the red furnace-mouth 
 he sits, and the white flame leaps and glows ; and there in 
 the fierce blinding heat, he tries the souls of men. 
 
 Surely the brooding of three thousand years shall bring 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 607 
 
 its birth. Surely a nation's long yearning after its ideal shall 
 see the ideal realized. If there be power in ancestral desire, 
 in hereditary type, in the fixed conception of the generations, 
 we shall know the man when he comes, and say, " Out of a 
 race's throes this man was born. He bears the marks of 
 his descent. The race has stamped him for its own, and 
 acknowledges its son, — the son of its heart and its long 
 desire." 
 
 And is this the outcome, — this child the shepherds find 
 in the cattle-trough ? Does the vision of ages end in this ? 
 a nation's hopes fulfil themselves here ? 
 
 Do you wonder "his own received him not"? I say he 
 claims to be the one expected, and lo ! he is denied. " He 
 hath no form nor comeliness that " they " should desire him." 
 The verdict of the race was, that he was not a development 
 from any thing among them. They declined to recognize 
 him as any product of their religion or their prophecy. He 
 was a blank disappointment ; and, above all men, they ought 
 to have known. . . . 
 
 But if the age-long yearning for a particular type had no 
 result in this man, if three thousand years of intense national 
 character and national desire cannot account for the man who 
 claimed to fulfil that character, and be that desire, can the 
 existing national character and condition at the time account 
 for him as its result ? 
 
 His environment is distinct enough. The national influ- 
 ence into which he was born was one of the most powerful 
 and well-marked ever known.. Is there any thing in it to 
 account for Jesus of Nazareth ? There was intense race 
 prejudice and coherence. The Jew was a narrow, isolated 
 man, who w^ould neither dwell nor eat with any not a Jew. 
 All other men were counted alien from his sympathy or asso- 
 ciation. Could the man who told the story of the Good 
 Samaritan — and the Samaritans were most hated and despised 
 — be the product of the Jewish feeling of his time ? . . . His 
 life was spent wholly in Judaea. There is no record, not even 
 
6o8 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 a suspicion, of his having been subjected to any other than 
 IsraeHtish influences. He was, hke his great apostle, a 
 Hebrew of the Hebrews ; but not hke him a Roman citizen, 
 and a man trained in Greek philosophy. 
 
 But, admitting it possible that Roman and Greek influ- 
 ences were in the air, can one or both account for Jesus of 
 Nazareth ? 
 
 There is no mistake possible about the outcome of Greek 
 thought, or the character that Greek influence would form. 
 There was the worship of beauty in sculpture, painting, or 
 literary expression ; the passionate search for, and the admi- 
 ration of, clear human thinking and its expression. " The 
 Greeks seek after wisdom." There was the pride of culture, 
 and the confidence in human reason ; and a contempt for the 
 uncultured, the barbarians, in fit ratio. 
 
 Is this word from the Academy or the Porch ? " Blessed 
 are the meek ; blessed are the poor in spirit ; blessed are 
 they that mourn." One can scarce imagine any thing more 
 foreign to Greek thought and Greek philosophy than the 
 whole teachino- and the whole life of Christ. Whatever else 
 may be said of him, the slightest knowledge of the question 
 compels one to say this man was no Greek. 
 
 Was he a Roman ? Born in the Roman Empire he was, 
 and about him were the Roman laws and the Roman arms. 
 Was he a product of the mighty force that built the seven- 
 hilled mistress of the world, and ruled the nations at her 
 feet? . . . "Blessed are the peacemakers." Is that word an 
 echo from the Senate Chamber or the shouting Forum? " He 
 that is greatest among you shall be your servant." " The 
 Son of man came not to be served, but to serve." Can one 
 imagine words more utterly against every Roman conception 
 of human life and fitting human opinion? And the manner of 
 the life, and the end of the life, both outrage every Roman 
 sentiment of duty, fitness, and human dignity. 
 
 By the law of the case, there must be cause sufficient to 
 explain every man. He is what he is, from sufficient power 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 609 
 
 to make him so. He is a product. Heredity, environment, 
 and the rest make him. But when you try the law on this 
 man, it fails. The human intellect is challenged to explain 
 him by the known methods of making men. He has no race- 
 mark. He bears no birth-mark. Intellectually, morally, he 
 is like his shadowy type in the elder day, Melchizedek, 
 "without father, without mother, without descent, having 
 neither beginning of days nor end of life." He stands in 
 lonely majesty a man, simply the Son of man, as he called 
 himself, the type of the race as it should be, with no narrower 
 character upon him than manhood ; so infinite a manhood, 
 that Jew and Greek and Roman accept him as their brother 
 and their king; that savage man and civilized man, black 
 man and white, the man of Jerusalem and the man of New 
 York, alike recognize him as their vision of human perfection, 
 of human beauty, wisdom, goodness, and power. 
 
 He is of no race, therefore he is of all. And each sees in 
 him his own. The painters are our witnesses. The Italian, 
 filled with his conception of the perfect humanity, paints an 
 Italian Christ ; the German, putting his ideal upon canvas, 
 paints a German Christ ; and the English painter makes the 
 face looking down upon you an English face. Even the poor 
 village artist of Central America, working with pigments from 
 the leaves and roots of the forest, to make a picture for the 
 rude parish church, will paint an Aztec Christ. 
 
 Jesus Christ is himself, then, one of the ultimate producing 
 forces. We are driven back to that. The child in the man- 
 ger is an ultimate germ ; the seed itself, as he is the branch ; 
 the root of Jesse and of David. . . . For this child was born 
 in the fulness of time, at a particular period, and in a par- 
 ticular place, when the world was ready for him, and the 
 development might begin. To speak in the tongue of our 
 time, the environment was prepared by natural development 
 for the new germ, while the germ itself was a new seed, to 
 begin a new era. . . . 
 
 To make the world ready for the child in the manger, and 
 
6lO TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 what the child should bringr, the legions marched, and the 
 proconsuls ruled ; the Senate decreed ; the augurs looked 
 for the auspices; the "twelve gods" stood in marble silence 
 behind their altars. 
 
 For this, Pompey conquered the East ; for this, " the fore- 
 most man of all the world " shook the German forests and 
 the far-off shores of Britain with the onset of the invincible 
 arms ; for this, Augustus ruled with all his political cunning ; 
 for this, he decreed that "all the world should be taxed," — for 
 this, that the child should be born in Bethlehem, be cradled 
 in the manger of the crowded khan, and die, at last, a Roman 
 death, under a Roman indictment, by the cross, and not a 
 Jewish death by stoning. 
 
 But Roman preparation was not enough, even in its ripe- 
 ness. The hour waits till Rome has not only done her own 
 work, but absorbed the work of others, reaching her own 
 crisis, gathering into herself the past. 
 
 Not peace only, and an ordered world, and the settled 
 facilities of intercourse over vast spaces, among the men of 
 three continents, were needed for the carriage and the spread 
 of the world's new story from the manger, but a language in 
 which to tell it, a universal tongue spoken in Asia, in Africa, 
 in Europe, in Marseilles, in Alexandria, in Jerusalem, and in 
 Rome, — a language of common intercourse in the mart and 
 the quay, that common men might hear, and yet a language 
 so developed by orator and poet and philosopher, that it 
 might fitly hold this most wondrous of all stories, and convey 
 the spiritual power it enfolded. 
 
 The Roman had no word for repentance, no word for 
 Saviour, none for the Anointed himself. He did not repent, 
 the stern materialist, the stoic of time. He needed no Sav- 
 iour. The pilum and the short-sword should save him, or 
 he died. His tongue was barren of spiritual power. It must 
 be converted itself before it could say the alphabet of the 
 child. The Roman must absorb Greece before he found a 
 language for the good news of Bethlehem. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 6 1 I 
 
 And there the language waited for St. Paul at Athens, for 
 the Gospel of St. John, for the plain though hesitating pen 
 of St. Peter. The richest and most wonderful tongue ever 
 •spoken among men receives into its most permanent litera- 
 ture, and as the choicest treasure it holds for all ages, the 
 New Testament, all penned by foreign hands, all tilled by 
 thought foreign to Greek intellect. 
 
 And we may say that Homer wandered and sang the 
 " Ballad of Troy Town ; " that zEschylus wrought high trage- 
 dies ; that Demosthenes thundered in the Agora ; that Socra- 
 tes questioned among his scholars, and Plato taught and 
 thought and wrote ; that Themistocles and Miltiades fought ; 
 that Alexander conquered ; that Athens shone white across 
 the sea, and the Acropolis gleamed in pillared splendor, — that 
 all the story of Greece, like all the story of Rome, unrolled 
 and developed till the time came for the child in the manger. 
 
 HENRY NORRIS BERNARD. 
 
 [The Mental Characteristics of the Lord Jesus Christ. New York: 1888. 
 
 Pp. 19, 26, 33.] 
 
 Every thing that is good, or praiseworthy, or noble, or 
 lovable in man was found in its highest perfection in Jesus 
 Christ. Think of all the persons whose names history has 
 handed down ; is there any among them so human as was 
 Christ? Call to mind all the heroes ever read of in romance ; 
 is there any that can for one moment be compared with 
 Christ ? There is no need to point out that nearly all the 
 goodness and virtue which ennobles man at the present time 
 is due largely to the example of Christ and to his teaching. 
 If the noblest of the old Greeks could be revived, — men 
 such as Plato or Demosthenes, — with their idea of morality 
 unchanged, they would not be tolerated in our midst. Francis 
 Newman once attempted to draw a comparison between 
 the Lord Jesus Christ and Fletcher of Madeley. No one 
 
6l2 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 — not the author himself — ever cared to revert to the 
 illustration. 
 
 But even had any comparison been possible, was not 
 Christ the very source from which the nobility and beauty 
 of character of such men as St. Francis Xavier, or Fletcher 
 of Madeley, was derived? It was because they were disciples 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, that something of the glory and 
 grace of his character was reflected in them. 
 
 The thought of Christ's love for children seems so in 
 accordance with his character, that we never pause to think 
 that it was any thing unusual or uncommon. But we do not 
 find, as a rule, earth's greatest men loving towards children. 
 I do not remember to have read that Caesar, or Charlemagne, 
 or Charles the Fifth were much interested in children. I 
 never heard of Frederick the Great, or Napoleon, or even 
 Carlyle, dandling children on their knees. I doubt if the 
 widow's son was a playmate for Elijah. I do not think that 
 St. Paul ever mentions children with any special tenderness. 
 Luther, indeed, was an exception ; in this he followed the 
 Master whose honor he upheld so bravely. Even to the dis- 
 ciples, who more than others were acquainted with his ways 
 and thoughts, it seemed an act unworthy of the Messiah's 
 dignity, that he should take the children into his arms, and 
 bless them. It is a thing well worthy of notice, how often the 
 Lord speaks of little children. He cites them as types of 
 those worthy to enter into the kingdom of God. He instances 
 them as examples of guilelessness. A child is taken and set 
 in the midst of the disciples, in order to teach them humility. 
 One of Christ's solemn warnings is suggested by the sight of 
 children at their games. They are to be treated with rever- 
 ence, because their angels behold the Father's face in heaven. 
 Children's voices are welcome to Christ, and must not be 
 silenced as, attending his entry into Jerusalem, they shout 
 their glad hosannas. Nay, we are told that whosoever 
 rcceiveth th(^ child in Christ's name receiveth Christ himself. 
 If it had been otherwise, if Christ had passed by the children 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 6 1 3 
 
 as other men pass them by, how much the world would have 
 missed, how much of the exceeding beauty of the Saviour's 
 character would have been lost to man ! 
 
 The study of the mental characteristics of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ is of the deepest importance, because the power of 
 Christianity rests on the person of Christ. The Evangelists 
 ever keep before our view the personality of the Saviour. 
 The Gospels are memoirs of the person of the Son of man. 
 We can see, touch, and handle him. We can hear his voice ; 
 we can see, as it were, his very gestures. 
 
 The Gospel is not the exposition of a doctrine, but the 
 story of a life. Christianity is based, not so much upon a 
 system of doctrines, as upon the person of Christ. The 
 relationship between Christ and his people is a personal 
 relationship. If Christianity is regarded as a system of 
 doctrines, its doctrines, glorious as they may be, are mere 
 empty husks unless there is in them the presence and power 
 of a living personal Saviour. If Christianity is regarded as a 
 great moral law, — and what law was ever so beautiful in its 
 purity, or majestic in its holiness, as the Gospel? — the moral 
 law is powerless, unless, by union with the person of the Law- 
 giver, grace and strength are drawn to enable men to keep it. 
 If Christianity is viewed as a means of redemption, the very 
 object of redemption is to unite man, by the removal of sin, 
 in living personal communion with God. 
 
 The morality of the Stoic philosophers could not regener- 
 ate the Roman Empire. The lofty ideals of the Platonists 
 failed equally. It was Christianity which saved the world. 
 It was Christ which saved the world. It was not the Sermon 
 on the Mount, however far-reachino- to the heart's lowest 
 depths that sermon went. It was Christ, the living, personal 
 Saviour. His living influence, gaining to himself man's 
 affections, subdued the prevailing evils ; his personal presence, 
 felt and realized in men's hearts, regenerated society. 
 
6 14 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 WILLIAM ALEXANDER. 
 
 [The Great Question. London: 1S87. Pp. 4-7, 9-1 1, 18-25, 288.] 
 
 " What think ye of Christ ?" 
 
 I. Starting from the lowest point, we "think" that he is 
 exceptional in the spiritual world. For, first, accepting the 
 Gospels only in the most general sense as a true record, we 
 come to this entirely exceptional fact, — a perfectly holy man 
 who proclaims that he is so. 
 
 Consider here one law of the spiritual order, and the 
 solitary exception to it. 
 
 The law to which I refer is that the holiest men are ever 
 most conscious of their own sinfulness. 
 
 No wonder. The artist paints, and the poet writes. 
 Those who are content with their own productions may have 
 dexterity in manipulation, or the facility in fluent rhyme which 
 wins prize poems, or even places them among " the mob of 
 gentlemen who write with ease ; " but they have not that rest- 
 less yearning after an unattained ideal which is the heritage 
 of genius. They are self-convicted of second-rate aspirations 
 and an inferior aim. No finer ether clothes their fields, no 
 amplitudes of light. They do not see widely over that which 
 Isaiah calls, in his royal style, " the land of farnesses." And 
 so a self-satisfied man may possess a certain mechanical 
 regularity of conduct. He may be a very respectable 
 Pharisee. But he has none of that sublime dissatisfaction 
 with self which is the peculiarity of the saints of the Church. 
 
 To this law there is one solitary exception. Jesus, as we 
 know, has the witness of his enemies. The Jews, Pilate, Judas, 
 — the man who above all others was interested in blackening 
 his character, — alike attest his innocence. He has a witness 
 harder to gain, — that of friends. Every very considerable 
 man at least is having materials for his life written as if with 
 a pen of iron that never blunts, with an ink that never fades, 
 with a curiosity that never falters. He is watched by unsus- 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 6 1 5 
 
 pected eyes, and reported by unexpected hands. Christ's 
 disciples had been with him in all circumstances of familiarity. 
 They had tenanted the same narrow chamber ; they had rocked 
 in the same little boat. One hasty word, one questionable 
 look, one act of selfishness, would have caused the light to 
 fade from his face and the diadem to pale upon his brow. Yet, 
 writing long years after, his nearest intimate can say, " We 
 beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten from the 
 Father." But, above all, he has his own witness. True with 
 a perfect truth, conscious how his nights and days were spent, 
 he can say, "As the living Father hath sent me, so I live by 
 the Father." We have one long soliloquy of his soul with 
 God. There is in it no utterance of conscious sin, no half-sio^h 
 of confession. In the last moments of existence, with the 
 light of eternity breaking around him, he can look up and 
 say, " I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." 
 His language leaves no doubt that he cannot include himself 
 among sinners. 
 
 When, then, he who spoke the Sermon on the Mount tells 
 us that he lived it, we are already in possession of a unique 
 fact. We may chop logic about miracles as much as we like. 
 We are In presence of a 77tiracle. 
 
 " What think ye of Christ ? " 
 
 2. That he is " Firstborn from the dead." 
 
 With a manly confidence in historical truth we meet a 
 criticism which sometimes affects the passionless precision of 
 logic, and is sometimes tinctured with the airy colors of 
 romance. 
 
 The resurrection is not a fraud. The despised apologetics 
 of the last century have at least done this service, that they 
 have blown this coarse and clumsy theory into space. The 
 resurrection is not a singular recovery of a lacerated and 
 tortured man, awakened from a death-like swoon by the cool- 
 ness of a rocky chamber or the pungency of the spices. We 
 have to account for cowards turned into heroes, for the faith 
 that overcame the world. The Gospels imply the lustre and 
 
6l6 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 beauty of a new life, — a form with the suffering Hfted off 
 until it seemed " other," A brow marked with thorns ; a 
 frame cramped with agony ; a lamed man ; a crawling spectre, 
 skulking and whispering, — could that have seemed the risen 
 Lord, the Prince of life ? Strange source of deathless joy ! 
 Strange spring for that full tide of which each Easter is but 
 one flashing ripple ! Nor, again, is the resurrection the 
 projection of a creative enthusiasm. As the Church is too 
 holy for a foundation of rottenness, so is she too real for a 
 foundation of mist. 
 
 Here are two propositions of which we need not be 
 ashamed : — 
 
 (i) It is impossible to account for the existence of the 
 Church, without a belief in the resurrection on the part of 
 the primitive witnesses. 
 
 (2) It is impossible to account for that belief without its 
 being founded on reality. 
 
 Faith did not create the resurrection : the resurrection 
 created faith. 
 
 We " think," then, that as Christ was exceptional in his 
 life, and in the benefits which he conferred upon humanity, so 
 was he in his victory over the grave. 
 
 " What think ye of Christ ? " 
 
 3. In this ancient home of Christian learning, we answer 
 with the Wisdom of Proverbs, " I am understanding ; " with 
 St. Paul, " Christ the wisdom of God." 
 
 How can that be ? some may ask. What were once 
 called " the evidences of Christianity " have been suddenly 
 struck by bolts from the clouds, and their splinters are still 
 white upon the ground. Butler and Paley, the great aca- 
 demic apologists of Oxford and Cambridge, are no longer 
 names to conjure with. Butler's argument no longer tells. 
 A generation which has killed religion at its very roots is 
 impervious to any answers which are conclusive only for those 
 who believe that nature comes from a conscious, personal, 
 designing God, and which only meet such objections to the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 6 1 7 
 
 Christian scheme as are equally valid against the constitution 
 and course of nature considered as divine. Paley's defence 
 of the resurrection is a defence against one line of attack, 
 which no one cares to adopt. The syllogisms of Christianity 
 are traversed by tremendous negations. Its Church has lost 
 the mysterious awe which brooded over her altars. The most 
 venerated pages of its Bible have been gnawed away by the 
 rats of criticism. Its creation is an obsolete theory. Its 
 redemption is undermined by the annihilation of the myth of 
 the fall, and the work of the second Adam evaporated by 
 the proved non-existence of the first. To these things lie is 
 committed of whom you speak as the Word and the Wisdom. 
 
 I will not enter upon any defence of those words which 
 have created Christendom and civilization, — into whose clear 
 spiritual depths eighteen centuries have gazed down, and 
 never seen the very last of their meaning. I will not attempt 
 to show how truly they do, not of course anticipate, but " run 
 round the margin of all possible discovery." Any grave and 
 serious demur to this statement can only come from the doc- 
 trine of evoliitioii and its supposed consequences. On this 
 subject I will therefore venture three remarks. 
 
 (i) As regards the difficulty of reconciling creation — 
 as recorded by Moses, and accepted by our Lord — with 
 evolution, let us remember that long centuries before the birth 
 of modern science, one of the greatest of Christian thinkers 
 (St. Augustine) clearly perceived that creation was not the 
 exclusively momentary act which it was generally supposed 
 to be in all Christian schools. He bids us " consider the 
 beauty of any tree in trunk, branches, leaves, fruit. All 
 these things were in the seed, not materially and in bulk, 
 but potentially and inclusively. What is there hanging 
 from or growing out of that tree which is not evolved from 
 the hidden treasure of the seed ? So with animals, so with 
 the world. Not only heaven and earth and sea, but those 
 things which earth and water produced potentially and caus- 
 ally before they passed through the necessary delay of time 
 
6i8 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 into the shape in which they are known to us, are those 
 works which God is working even now." 
 
 So far St. Augustine. In point of essential principle, that 
 " inagnus opinator " might have had the same difficulty in 
 kind in saying, " I believe in God, . . . Maker of heaven 
 and earth," which is supposed by some to be so incumbent 
 upon us as cultivated beings nowadays. More and more do 
 we find illustrations of the pregnant saying which reminds 
 us, that, in regard to great discoveries of thought, opinion 
 invariably passes through three stages, which may be ex- 
 pressed in three sentences, — first, " That is absurd ; " then, 
 " That is impious ; " finally, " Everybody knows that." 
 
 (2) The fact that as to our bodily organization we were 
 moulded by evolution, is a fact which was known to, and delib- 
 erately developed by, a psalmist. The threads of a strange 
 embroidery are, he tells us, shot through the woof that 
 covers the spot where human life lies folded in its ante-natal 
 cell. The Psalmist knew it. Did he draw the lesson of 
 atheism from histology and embryology ? Nay, strengthened 
 by his faith, I, the creature of evolution, dare to say to you, 
 the creatures of evolution, " My substance was not hid from 
 thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in 
 the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my sub- 
 stance, yet being unperfect ; and in thy book all my members 
 were written. . . . How precious are thy thoughts unto me, 
 O God ! How great is the sum of them ! " 
 
 (3) Evolution is a chain which has as many gaps as 
 links. 
 
 Tile difficulty is not only one of abstract thought. If, 
 indeed, there was no mind in the universe before the prin- 
 ciple of evolution came into action, that principle must have 
 sprung from notJiing. Then the mindless universe becomes, 
 as has been well said, " a great bank without a banker, 
 which is nevertheless constantly accumulating at compound 
 interest advantages which spring out of nothing, and are 
 prolific of every thing." 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 619 
 
 But, beyond this, evolution does not account for all. 
 Perhaps for the horse's hoof, with its distinctly marked stages; 
 scarcely for the song of the nightingale, or the glory of the 
 peacock, or the fragrance of the rose ; certainly not for the 
 secret behind the embryo, not for the mystery of music, not 
 for infinite capacity of thought, not for the subtle many- 
 chorded instrument of speech. Possibly it may account for the 
 conscience of the pointer which crouches after misbehavior ; 
 certainly not for the conscience of the man, with its strange 
 awakenings and exquisite delicacy. It may account for utilita- 
 rian adaptations in nature ; not for the law of beauty, which 
 tells us that as the symbols of things, when they are painted 
 or written, are the creations of mind, so the very things 
 themselves are the creation of an almighty Poet and Artist. 
 Evolution cannot account for the passage from the inorganic 
 to the organic, from matter to life. No generatio cBquivoca 
 has cashiered the living God. 
 
 It may fare with this as with previous theories. The 
 battle-guns which one generation has turned upon the lines 
 of the army of Christ may be melted into church-bells for the 
 next. 
 
 Thus, to sum up our answer to the question, " What think 
 ye of Christ?" beginning from that which is plainest and 
 most obvious, because it is part of the picture which looks at 
 us from the pages of the Gospels, we answer that the man 
 there presented to us is the solitary exception to the most 
 general law of the spiritual w^orld, which makes a deeper 
 sense of sinfulness the invariable result of a deeper holiness. 
 Comparing the life of the Christian Church and of Christian 
 nations with that which is found outside the atmosphere 
 which we breathe in Christ, we reply that this man is the 
 creative beginning of a new and Divine creation of holiness 
 and beneficence, and we understand something of St. Paul's 
 meaning, when, in the Episde to the Colossians, he holds 
 him up to gnostic Judaism as one " who is the beginning." 
 
 Turning to the central point of his history about whom 
 
620 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 we inquire, — his resurrection, — we find that it is not to 
 be accounted for by fraud, or unusual recovery, or creative 
 enthusiasm. We have here a rock from which all the ham- 
 mers of criticism have never chipped a single fragment. But 
 looking upon him as the one sinless man, the beginning of 
 the new creation of God, the first-begotten from the dead, 
 our answer naturally rises so as to take in the incarnation. 
 For in the Gospels we have a character, not sketched in 
 outline, but detailed ; witnessed to by enemies, by friends, 
 by himself. We search the histories of philosophies, and 
 the calendars of religions, even the delineations of romance. 
 We summon before " the sessions of sweet solemn thought" 
 the gentlest and purest who have passed from our shores. 
 " Oh, loving hearts ! " we cry to them, " shall we deem you 
 entirely pure and sinless, robed as you are in death's awful 
 whiteness ? " They cannot abide our questioning ; they point 
 to stains. And then One passes by, like us in form, feature, 
 function, language, thought, affection, tears, blood, and says, 
 " Which of you convinceth me of sin ? " In earth or heaven, 
 only the Galilaean peasant can stand our scrutiny. How can 
 we account for this ? . . . 
 
 Christianity Jias a history, but is not a history. Chris- 
 tianity has a book, but is not a book. An idea may be great, 
 a history may be great ; but a person is greater. Luther's 
 work, or Napoleon's work, is now linked to Luther's or 
 Napoleon's ideas or history, and to nothing else. We have 
 the ideas and the history of Christ in the Gospels and 
 Epistles, — the most efficacious of all ideas, the most true 
 and living of all history. But Christ's work continues linked 
 to Christ's life. Listen to the last words of the record of the 
 life in the second Gospel : " They went forth and preached 
 everywhere, the Lord working with them." Listen to the 
 first line of the first history of the Church : " The former 
 treatise have I made of all that Jesus bcc^an both to do 
 and teach." Just so. The Gospel itself is but the beginning 
 of that vohiminous speech, of that crowded epic of works of 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 62 I 
 
 love and wonder. Christ is not merely the central ri<rure 
 of the Galilaean idyl, or a form nailed to a crucifix, or a 
 pathetic memory. Our relation to him is not merely one of 
 idea, or of recollection, or of literary sympathy. It is a pres- 
 ent union of life with life. He does not say, " Because my 
 words shall be gathered up and written down with absolute 
 truth, my religion shall live." He does say, " Because I live, 
 ye shall live also." 
 
 LEO N. TOLSTOI. 
 
 [My Religion. New York: 1885. Pp. 46, 48, loi, 112, 157, 179, 192, 239, 262.] 
 
 When we once understand the doctrine of Jesus in all its 
 bearings, with all its consequences, we shall be convinced that 
 his doctrine is not contrary to human nature ; but that its sole 
 object is to supplant the chimerical law of the struggle against 
 evil by violence, — itself the law contrary to human nature, 
 and productive of so many evils. 
 
 Do you say that the doctrine of Jesus, " Resist not evil'' 
 is vain ? What, then, are we to think of the lives of those 
 who are not filled with love and compassion for their kind, — 
 of those who make ready for their fellow-men punishment at 
 the stake, by the knout, the wheel, the rack, chains, compul- 
 sory labor, the gibbet, dungeons, prisons for women and 
 children, the hecatombs of war, or bring about periodical 
 revolutions ; of those who carry these horrors into execution ; 
 of those who benefit by these calamities, or prepare reprisals, 
 — are not such lives vain ? 
 
 We need only understand the doctrine of Jesus, to be con- 
 vinced that existence, — not the reasonable existence which 
 gives happiness to humanity, but the existence men have 
 organized to their own hurt, — that such an existence is a 
 vanity, the most savage and horrible of vanities, a veritable 
 delirium of folly, to which, once reclaimed, we do not again 
 return. . . . 
 
 u 
 
62 2 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 The prophet Elijah, a fugitive from men, took refuge in a 
 cave, and was told that God would appear to him. There 
 came a great wind that devastated the forest ; Elijah thought 
 that the Lord had come : but the Lord was not in the wind. 
 After the wind came the thunder and the lip^htnino- but God 
 was not there. Then came the earthquake ; the earth belched 
 forth fire, the rocks were shattered, the mountain was rent to 
 its foundations : Elijah looked for the Lord, but the Lord was 
 not in the earthquake. Then, in the calm that followed, a 
 gentle breeze came to the prophet, bearing the freshness of 
 the fields ; and Elijah knew that God was there. It is a 
 magnificent illustration of the words, " Resist not eviir 
 
 They are very simple, these words ; but they are, never- 
 theless, the expression of a law divine and human. If there 
 has been in history a progressive movement for the suppres- 
 sion of evil, it is due to the men who understood the doctrine 
 of Jesus, who endured evil, and resisted not evil by violence. 
 The advance of humanity towards righteousness is due, not 
 to the tyrants, but to the martyrs. As fire cannot extinguish 
 fire, so evil cannot suppress evil. Good alone, confronting 
 evil, and resisting its contagion, can overcome evil. And in 
 the inner world of the human soul, the law is as absolute as 
 it was for the hearers by Galilee, more absolute, more clear, 
 more immutable. Men may turn aside from it, they may hide 
 its truth from others ; but the progress of humanity towards 
 righteousness can only be attained in this way. Every step 
 must be guided by the command, " Resist not evilT A disci- 
 ple of Jesus may say now, with greater assurance than they 
 of Galilee, in spite of misfortunes and threats, "And yet 
 it is not violence, but good, that overcomes evil." If the 
 progress is slow, it is because the doctrine of Jesus (wliich. 
 through its clearness, simplicity, and wisdom, appeals so inevi- 
 tal^ly to human nature), — because the doctrine of Jesus has 
 been cunningly concealed from the majority of mankind, under 
 an entirely different doctrine falsely called by his name. . . . 
 c Our existence is now so entirely in contradiction with the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 623 
 
 doctrine of Jesus, that only with the greatest difficulty can we 
 understand its meaninof. We have been so deaf to the rules 
 of life that he has given us, to his explanations, — not only 
 when he commands us not to kill, but when he warns us 
 against anger, when he commands us not to resist evil, to 
 turn the other cheek, to love our enemies ; we are so accus- 
 tomed to speak of a body of men especially organized for 
 murder, as a Christian army ; we are so accustomed to prayers 
 addressed to the Christ for the assurance of victory, we 
 who have made the sword, that symbol of murder, an almost 
 sacred object (so that a man deprived of this symbol, of his 
 sword, is a dishonored man), — we are so accustomed, I say, 
 to this, that the words of Jesus seem to us compatible with 
 war. ... 
 
 Why is it that men have not done as Jesus commanded 
 them, and thus secured the greatest happiness within their 
 reach, the happiness they have always longed for, and still 
 desire ? The reply to this inquiry is always the same, although 
 expressed in different ways. 
 
 The doctrine of Jesus, we are told, is admirable ; and it is 
 true that if we practised it, we should see the kingdom of 
 God established upon the earth : but to practise it is difficult, 
 and consequently this doctrine is impracticable. The doctrine 
 of Jesus, which teaches men how they should live, is admir- 
 able, is divine ; it brings true happiness : but it is difficult to 
 practise. We repeat this, and hear it repeated so many, many 
 times, that we do not observe the contradiction contained in 
 these words. 
 
 It is natural to each human being, to do what seems to 
 him best. Any doctrine teaching men how they should live, 
 instructs them only as to what is best for each. If we show 
 men what they have to do to attain what is best for each, how 
 can they say that they would like to do it, but that it is im- 
 possible of attainment ? According to the law of their nature, 
 they cannot do what is worse for each, and yet they declare 
 that they cannot do what is best. 
 
624 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 The reasonable activity of man, from his earUest existence, 
 has been appHed to the search for what is best among the 
 contradictions that envelop human life. Men struggled for 
 the soil, for objects which are necessary to them ; then they 
 arrived at the division of goods, and called this property ; 
 finding that this arrangement, although difficult to establish, 
 was best, they maintained ownership. Men fought with one 
 another for the possession of women ; they abandoned their 
 children ; then they found it was best that each should have his 
 own family ; and although it was difficult to sustain a family, 
 they maintained the family, as they did ownership and many 
 other things. As soon as they discover that a thing is best, 
 however difficult of attainment, men do it. What, then, is 
 the meaning of the saying, that the doctrine of Jesus is admir- 
 able, that a life according to the doctrine of Jesus would 
 be better than the life which men now lead, but that men 
 cannot lead this better life because it is difficult ? 
 
 If the word " difficult," used in this way, is to be under- 
 stood in the sense that it is difficult to renounce the fleeting 
 satisfaction of sensual desires that we may obtain a greater 
 good, why do we not say that it is difficult to labor for bread, 
 difficult to plant a tree that we may enjoy the fruit ? Every 
 being endowed with even the most rudimentary reason knows 
 that he must endure difficulties to procure any good superior 
 to that which he had enjoyed before. And yet w^e say that 
 the doctrine of Jesus is admirable, but impossible of practice 
 because it is difficult! Now, it is difficult, because in follow- 
 ing it we are obliged to deprive ourselves of many things 
 that we have hitherto enjoyed. Have we never heard that it 
 is far more to our advantage to endure difficulties and priva- 
 tions, than to satisfy all our desires? Man ma)- fall to the 
 level of the beasts, but he ought not to make use of his 
 reason to devise an apology for his bestialit)-. From the 
 moment that he begins to reason, he is conscious of being 
 endowed with reason, and this consciousness stimulates him 
 to distinguish between the reasonable and the unreasonable. 
 R(;ason does not proscribe : it enlightens. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 625 
 
 Suppose that I am shut into a dark room, and in searching 
 for tiie door, I continually bruise myself against the walls. 
 Some one brings me a light, and I see the door. I ought no 
 lonofer to bruise myself, when I see the door ; much less 
 ouofht I to affirm, that, although it is best to to out throuorh 
 the door, it is difficult to do so, and that, consequently, I 
 prefer to bruise myself against the walls. . . . 
 
 The circus at Berditchef is in flames. A crowd of people 
 are struggling before the only place of exit, — a door that 
 opens inward. Suddenly, in the midst of the crowd, a voice 
 rings out : " Back ! stand back from the door ! The closer you 
 press against it, the less the chance of escape ! Stand back ! 
 That is your only chance of safety! " Whether I am alone in 
 understanding this command, or whether others with me also 
 hear and understand, I have but one duty, and that is, from 
 the moment I have heard and understood, to fall back from 
 the door, and to call upon every one to obey the voice of the 
 savior. I may be suffocated, I may be crushed beneath the 
 feet of the multitude, I may perish ; my sole chance of safety 
 is to do the one thino- necessarv to o-a-in an exit. And I can 
 do nothing else. A savior should be a savior ; that is, one 
 who saves. And the salvation of Jesus is the true salvation. 
 He came, he preached his doctrine, and humanity is saved. 
 
 The circus may burn in an hour, and those penned up in 
 it may have no time to escape. But the world has been burn- 
 ing for eighteen hundred years ; it has burned ever since 
 Jesus said, " I am come to send fire on the earth ; " and I 
 suffer as it burns, and it will continue to burn until humanity 
 is saved. Was not this fire kindled that men mi^ht have the 
 felicity of salvation ? Understanding this, I understood and 
 believed that Jesus is not only the Messiah, that is, the 
 Anointed One, the Christ, but that he is in truth the Saviour 
 of the world. I know that he is the only way ; that there is 
 no other way for me, or for those who are tormented with me, 
 in this life. I know that for me, as for all, there is no other 
 safety than the fulfilment of the commandments of Jesus, 
 
626 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 who gave to all humanity the greatest conceivable sum of 
 benefits. ... 
 
 Jesus did not ask us to pass from better to worse, but, on 
 the contrary, from worse to better. He had pity upon men, 
 who to him were like sheep without a shepherd. He said 
 that his disciples would be persecuted for his doctrine, and 
 that they must bear the persecutions of the world with resolu- 
 tion. But he did not say that those who followed his doctrine 
 would suffer more than those who followed the world's doc- 
 trine : on the contrary, he said that those who followed the 
 world's doctrine Vv^ould be wretched, and that those who fol- 
 lowed his doctrine would have joy and peace. Jesus did not 
 teach salvation by faith in asceticism or voluntary torture ; but 
 he taught us a way of life, which, while saving us from the 
 emptiness of the personal life, would give us less of suffering 
 and more of joy. Jesus told men that in practising his doc- 
 trine among unbelievers, they would be, not more unhappy, 
 but, on the contrary, much more happy, than those who did 
 not practise it. 
 
 Jesus declared, it is true, that those who follow his doc- 
 trine must expect to be persecuted by those who do not follow 
 it, but he did not say that his disciples will be the worse off 
 for that reason : on the contrary, he said that his disciples 
 would have here, in this world, more benefits than those who 
 did not follow him. That Jesus said and thought this, is be- 
 yond a doubt ; as the clearness of his words on this subject, 
 the meaning of his entire doctrine, his life, and the life of his 
 disciples, plainly show. But was his teaching in this respect 
 true? 
 
 When we examine the question as to which of the two 
 conditions would be the better, that of the disciples of Jesus 
 or that of the disciples of the world, we are obliged to con- 
 clude that the condition of the disciples of Jesus ought to be 
 the most desirable, since the disciples of Jesus, in doing good 
 to every one, would not arouse the hatred of men. The dis- 
 ciples of Jesus, doing evil to no one, would be persecuted 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 627 
 
 only by the wicked. The disciples of die world, on the con- 
 trary, are likely to be persecuted by every one, since the law 
 of the disciples of the world is the law of each for himself, the 
 law of struggle ; that is, of mutual persecution. 
 
 Moreover, the disciples of Jesus would be prepared for 
 suffering, while the disciples of the world use all possible 
 means to avoid suffering ; the disciples of Jesus would feel 
 that their sufferings were useful to the world, but the disciples 
 of the world do not know why they suffer. On abstract 
 grounds, then, the condition of the disciples of Jesus would 
 be more advantageous than that of the disciples of the world. 
 But is it so in reality ? To answer this, let each one call to 
 mind all the painful moments of his life, all the physical and 
 moral sufferings that he has endured, and let him ask himself 
 if he has suffered these calamities in behalf of the doctrine of 
 the world, or in behalf of the doctrine of Jesus. Every sincere 
 man will find, in recalling his past life, that he has never once 
 suffered for practising the doctrine of Jesus. He will find 
 that the greater part of the misfortunes of his life have resulted 
 from his following the doctrines of the world. 
 
 In my own life (an exceptionally happy one from a w^orldly 
 point of view), I can reckon up as much suffering caused 
 by following the doctrine of the world, as many a mart}T has 
 endured for the doctrine of Jesus. All the most painful 
 moments of my life, — the orgies and duels in which I took 
 part as a student, the wars in which I have participated, the 
 diseases that I have endured, and the abnormal and insup- 
 portable conditions under which I now live, — all these are 
 only so much martyrdom exacted by fidelity to the doctrine of 
 the world. But I speak of a life exceptionally happy from a 
 w^orldly point of view. How many mart}Ts have suffered for 
 the doctrine of the world, torments which I should find 
 difficulty in enumerating ! 
 
 We do not realize the difficulties and dangers entailed by 
 the practice of the doctrine of the world, simply because we 
 are persuaded that we could not do otherwise than follow that 
 
628 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 doctrine. We are persuaded that all the calamities that we 
 inflict upon ourselves are the result of the inevitable condi- 
 tions of life ; and we cannot understand that the doctrine of 
 Jesus teaches us how we may rid ourselves of these calamities, 
 and render our lives happy. To be able to reply to the ques- 
 tion, Which of these two conditions is the happier? we must, 
 at least for the time being, put aside our prejudices, and take 
 a careful survey of our surroundings. 
 
 Go through our great cities, and observe the emaciated, 
 sickly, and distorted specimens of humanity to be found 
 therein ; recall your own existence, and that of all the people 
 with whose lives you are familiar; recall the instances of vio- 
 lent deaths and suicides of which you have heard : and then 
 ask yourself for what cause all this suffering and death, this 
 despair that leads to suicide, has been endured. You will 
 find, perhaps to your surprise, that nine-tenths of all human 
 suffering endured by men is useless, and ought not to exist ; 
 that, in fact, the majority of men are martyrs to the doctrine 
 of the world. 
 
 If the practice of the doctrine of the world were easy, 
 agreeable, and without clanger, we might perhaps believe 
 that the practice of the doctrine of Jesus is difficult, frightful, 
 and cruel. But the doctrine of the world is much more diffi- 
 cult, more dangerous, and more cruel, than is the doctrine 
 of Jesus. Formerly, we are told, there were martyrs to the 
 cause of Jesus ; but they were exceptional. We cannot count 
 up more than about three hundred and eighty thousand of 
 them, voluntary and involuntary, in the whole course of eigh- 
 teen hundred years; but who shall count the martyrs to the 
 doctrine of the world ? For each Christian martyr there have 
 been a thousand martyrs to the doctrine of the w^orld ; and 
 the sufferings of each one of them have been a hundred limes 
 rpore cruel than those enduretl by the others. The number 
 of the victims of wars in our century alone amounts to thirty 
 millions of men. These are the martyrs to the doctrine of 
 the world, who would have escaped suffering and death even 
 
 i 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 629 
 
 if they had refused to follow the doctrine of the world, to say 
 nothing of following the doctrine of Jesus. 
 
 The doctrine of Jesus does not exact martyrdom similar 
 to that of the doctrine of the world : it teaches us, rather, 
 how to put an end to the sufferings that men endure in the 
 name of the false doctrine of the world. The doctrine of 
 Jesus has a profound metaphysical meaning; it has a meaning 
 as an expression of the aspirations of humanity : but it has 
 also for each individual a very simple, very clear, and very 
 practical meaning with regard to the conduct of his own life. 
 In fact, we might say that Jesus taught men not to do foolish 
 things. The meaning of the doctrine of Jesus is simple and 
 accessible to all, . . . 
 
 Like the insensible ether filling universal space, envel- 
 oping all created things, so the doctrine of Jesus is inevitable 
 for every man, in whatever situation he may be found. Men 
 cannot refuse to recognize the doctrine of Jesus ; they may 
 deny the metaphysical explanation of life which it gives (we 
 may deny every thing) ; but the doctrine of Jesus alone ofters 
 rules for the conduct of life, without which humanity has 
 never lived, and never will be able to live, — without which 
 no human being has lived or can live, if he would live as 
 man should live, — a reasonable life. The power of the 
 doctrine of Jesus is not in its explanation of the meaning of 
 life, but in the rules that it gives for the conduct of life. The 
 metaphysical doctrine of Jesus is not new ; it is that eternal 
 doctrine of humanity inscribed in all the hearts of men, and 
 preached by all the prophets of all the ages. The power of 
 the doctrine of Jesus is in the application of this metaphysical 
 doctrine to life. . . . 
 
 Men are united by error into a compact mass. The pre- 
 vailing power of evil is the cohesive force that binds them 
 together. The reasonable activity of humanity is to destroy 
 the cohesive power of evil. Revolutions are attempts to 
 shatter the power of evil by violence. Men think that by 
 hammering upon the mass, they will be able to break it in 
 
630 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 fragments ; but they only make it more dense and imperme- 
 able than it was before. External violence is of no avail. 
 The disruptive movement must come from within, when mole- 
 cule releases its hold upon molecule, and the whole mass 
 falls into disintegration. Error is the force that welds men 
 too-ether : truth alone can set them free. Now, truth is truth 
 only when it is in action, and then only can it be transmitted 
 from man to man. Only truth in action, by introducing light 
 into the conscience of each individual, can dissolve the 
 homogeneity of error, and detach men one by one from its 
 bonds. 
 
 This work has been going on for eighteen hundred years. 
 It began when the commandments of Jesus were first given 
 to humanity; and it will not cease till, as Jesus said, ''all 
 things be accomplishedy The Church that sought to detach 
 men from error, and to weld them together again by the 
 solemn affirmation that it alone was the truth, has long since 
 fallen to decay. But the Church composed of men united 
 not by promises or sacraments, but by deeds of truth and 
 love, has always lived, and will live forever. Now, as eigh- 
 teen hundred years ago, this Church is made up not of those 
 who say " Lord, Lord," and bring forth iniquity, but of 
 those who hear the words of truth, and reveal them in their 
 lives. The members of this Church know^ that life is to them 
 a blessing as long as they maintain fraternity with others, 
 and dwell in the fellowship of the Son of man ; and that the 
 blessing will be lost only to those who do not obey the com- 
 mandments of Jesus. And so the members of this Church 
 practise the commandments of Jesus, and thereby teach them 
 to odiers. Whether this Church be in numbers little or 
 great, it is, nevertheless, the Church that shall not perish, the 
 Church that shall finally unite within its bonds the hearts of 
 all mankind. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 63 1 
 
 THE GOSPEL FOR THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 [London: 1S80. Pp. 1-4, 8-1 o, 49-60.] 
 
 The power of example is so well known, that to those 
 who believe in a God and in his providential government of 
 the world, it must seem reasonable that he should teach men 
 by the force of example. If God had a purpose in creating 
 man, and if that purpose were the formation of a being capa- 
 ble of moral improvement, it would seem reasonable that he 
 should watch over the moral development of the race, should 
 train and educate it. In doing this, he would doubtless make 
 use of the means best suited to the end. Having given man 
 a moral nature impressible by the force of example, he w^ould 
 make use of this force to educate his moral nature. 
 
 There are some few men so elevated above the ordinary 
 level of humanity, that we may well believe that they were 
 specially designed to raise others by their example. 
 
 History has enshrined the names and the memory of some 
 of these. But there must have been many others who, in 
 their day, had equal claims to the reverence of their fellow- 
 men, of whom no record has been preserved, who lived and 
 died unknown to fame. Yet even the most humble of these 
 cannot have failed to exercise some influence upon those with 
 whom they were brought into contact. Such is the inherent 
 power of goodness, when seen in a living example, that men 
 are constrained either to love or to hate it. It has a mag- 
 netic power to attract or to repel, according to the positive 
 or negative moral condition of those w^ho are brought within 
 the sphere of its influence. But this sphere is limited. Men 
 must be brought into contact with goodness ; the living 
 example must be before their eyes, or they will not feel its 
 power. When death removes the example, it is as when the 
 magnetic current is cut off; that which has been a living 
 force is felt to be so no longer. For a few short years the 
 personal influence of the departed is felt among those with 
 
632 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 whom they hved. In the next generation, if their memory 
 remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen, it is Httle 
 more than a name which remains. They may have a place 
 in the Pantheon. Perhaps, now and then, their patriotism or 
 their valor may be used by the orator to excite others to 
 emulate their virtues ; but beyond, the influence of their 
 example does not extend. It is a thing of the past. The 
 marble bust of the departed is not more different from the 
 living man than is the example of the dead from that of 
 the living. 
 
 Such, then, being the transitory nature of the influence 
 exercised by the greatest and best of those whose names live 
 in the hearts of nations, it is clear that if any great and lasting 
 influence is to be produced by the force of example upon the 
 race at large, it can only be in one or other of the following 
 ways : either by a perpetual succession of individual exam- 
 ples, numerous enough to influence every sphere of human 
 life ; or by one example lifted up before the eyes of the 
 world, visible to every sphere of life, and made living to all 
 aoes. 
 
 Now, we are not in a position to say, on a priori grounds, 
 which of these two methods would be the most successful. 
 But we are in a position to say, as a matter of fact, that there 
 has been one life, and only one, which has fulfilled the last- 
 named conditions ; there has been one example which has 
 been lifted up before the eyes of men in every sphere of life, 
 and which has been made living to all ages. . . . 
 
 We are not now inquiring how this is to be accounted for. 
 At this moment we merely point to the fact. We say that 
 this fact stands without parallel in the history of the human 
 race. When Socrates and Antoninus died, their example 
 died with them. When jesus of Nazareth died, his example 
 did not die. So far was his example from perishing when 
 he died, that it was then that it became a more living influ- 
 ence than ever. During his life he was followed by a band 
 of disciples, who loved him and listened reverently to his 
 
TO JESOS OF NAZARETH. 6^^^^ 
 
 teaching. But his example seemed too far above their heads 
 to be followed to any extent. The histories of his life repre- 
 sent them as very unlike him in every way ; they were weak, 
 simple-minded men, with the ordinary faults of human nature. 
 Their one distinoruishinsf characteristic seems to have been 
 a sincere affection and reverence for him. They believed 
 in him as the Christ ; but we can trace no likeness to him in 
 them at any time. It was not so after his death. At first 
 that event put an end to all spiritual life and hope in them. 
 But a little while passed, and every thing was changed. They 
 grew like him. They were literally new men. It is not too 
 much to say, that they were transformed into his likeness. 
 The virtues of his life were reproduced in them ; his example 
 had become a living influence to them. And not only to 
 them, but also through them to thousands who had never 
 seen his face. 
 
 And from that day to this, his example has been a living 
 influence among men. "Through the darkest and most cor- 
 rupt periods Christianity has raised this torch on high, — has 
 kept this object of veneration and imitation before the eyes of 
 men." Here is a fact which demands attention. There are 
 some who cannot receive the statement of his biographers 
 that he rose from the dead, who are themselves witnesses to 
 the fact that his example has risen from the dead. This is a 
 resurrection as exceptional as that of the body. That the 
 influence of example should survive the grave, should remain 
 a living influence indestructible by those laws of decay and 
 oblivion which sweep all things human before them, is a fact 
 which, from whatever cause it may arise, stands alone in the 
 history of man. . . . 
 
 The lowliness of Christ Is seen in striking relief side by 
 side with another characteristic. No one can read the Gospels 
 attentively without being struck by the consciousness which 
 he invariably feels of his divine authority and mission. It 
 has been well remarked by Channing, than whom no one has 
 written on the character of Christ more beautifully and forci- 
 
634 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 bly, that though " he makes no set harangue about the grand- 
 eur of his office and character, yet the consciousness of it 
 gives a hue to his whole language, breaks out in indirect, 
 undesigned expressions, showing that it was the deepest and 
 most familiar of his convictions." The consciousness of his 
 divine mission, of his relation to the whole human race, and 
 of his still closer relation to the Father, is seen in all that he 
 said and did. Yet with this consciousness, strong even in 
 boyhood, he is content to pass thirty years or more of his life 
 in obscurity, fulfilling the duties of the humble station in which 
 he was born, known only among men as the carpenter of 
 Nazareth. He who had come to reveal God to man — in 
 whose breast glowed the consciousness of a divine mission to 
 the world — was content to live for thirty years in retirement, 
 obscurity, and humble toil. And why? Because his mission 
 was not only to reveal God to man, but also at the same time 
 to set before man a perfect human example. During the 
 three years of his public ministry he taught, speaking as never 
 man spake. But more eloquent still are those thirty years of 
 silence. Even his lips could not teach the sacredness of life's 
 duties, the dignity of labor, and the loveliness of humility, so 
 eloquently or divinely as the silent example of those thirty 
 years spent in the cottage and the carpenter's workshop at 
 Nazareth. 
 
 We would fain have known more of the life of jesus at 
 Nazareth ; but enough is told to show us that it was in every 
 respect a real human life, with the same lights and shadows, 
 the same trials and discipline, which mark our own lives, save 
 that it was not darkened to him by any sins of his own, as our 
 lives are. It is very necessary that we should realize the fact, 
 that, with this exception, his life during all those years was 
 as the life of any other man. In his public ministry we see 
 him wielding extraordinary power, and enduring extraordinary 
 trials. I lere we see him livincr amoncj men as one of them- 
 selves, without any exercise of supernatural power, performing 
 the lowliest duties, and bearing the most ordinary trials of daily 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 635 
 
 life. We know not what these trials of his life were, but this 
 is comparatively unimportant to us ; that which is important 
 for us is to know that his life in the cottage, in the workshop, 
 and in the village of Nazareth, among his kinsfolk and his 
 neighbors, was not more free from daily trials than our lives 
 commonly are. This may be difficult to realize, but it is not 
 for that reason any the less true ; and in proportion as we 
 realize it, shall we understand the perfection of his example. 
 
 One trial we know that he must have had. His life in its 
 deepest moods must have been solitary. Notwithstanding 
 the closeness of the tie between the mother and the son, there 
 must have been that in him which, with all her reverence, she 
 could not understand, with all her love she was unable to 
 sympathize with. We know how great a trial it is to one 
 possessing a very gifted mind, to live with those whose mental 
 powers are vastly inferior. The man who is altogether in 
 advance of his age lives a solitary and often an unhappy life. 
 He is not understood, and meets with little sympathy. So in 
 a pre-eminent degree it must have been with Jesus of Naza- 
 reth. In dwelling, as we are accustomed to do, upon his 
 moral perfections, we must not overlook the superiority of his 
 intellectual endowments. If ever man was possessed of 
 transcendent powers of mind, it was the son of Mary. The 
 wonderful originality of his mind strikes even those who do 
 not believe in his divine mission. This transcendent mental 
 superiority must have brought with it more than the usual 
 penalty. He must have been in many things alone, even in 
 the home which was brightened by a mother's love ; how much 
 more among the peasants and the artisans of despised 
 Nazareth ! 
 
 And for thirty years of his life it was thus that he lived ! 
 He, the greatest and the most highly gifted of the sons of 
 men, of whom even an unbeliever confesses that in him 
 " there is a stamp of personal originality, combined with pro- 
 fundity of insight, which must place him in the very first rank 
 of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast." 
 
636 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 This is the lowest view of his character : ,yet, even v/hen it is 
 seen from this point of view, how wonderful was that life of 
 lowly toil ! And when we contemplate his character from the 
 higher and truer point of view, when we call to mind that to 
 this acknowledged mental superiority he added the conscious- 
 ness of a divine mission to the world, the life of those thirty 
 years stands before us a marvel of unequalled, inconceivable 
 lowliness. To the High and Holy One who dwells with the 
 humble of heart,- what sacrifice could be more acceptable ? 
 
 It may perhaps be thought that the humility of Christ 
 does not sufficiently account for the lowly station which he 
 filled, since a high station in the w^orld is not inconsistent with 
 deep humility. But it is obvious that only thus could he have 
 personally reached the mass of the people whom it was his 
 object to influence during his ministry. Nothing so divides 
 man from man as caste ; therefore he chose the lowest station, 
 that no such artificial barrier should come between himself 
 and the lowest of those he came to teach. It was fitting, too, 
 that he, whose mission it was to be the example of all men, 
 should occupy such a position in life. The greater number 
 of the human race must in all ages live by the labor of their 
 hands ; it was necessary, therefore, that he too should lead a 
 life of toil, and should know by experience its usual accom- 
 paniments, — poverty and hardship. He could not have been 
 the laboring man's example if he had not done so. He has 
 shown that it is possible to live in uninterrupted communion 
 with God in the midst of a life of bodily toil. Moreover, it 
 was needful for the rich that he should occupy this position 
 in life, since nothing could show better the emptiness of all 
 merely worldly distinctions. He did not do away with those 
 distinctions of rank which are of God's ordering ; but, in 
 taking the lowest rank, he gave a death-blow to that pride 
 of caste which is directly opposed to the spirit of true 
 brotherly love. 
 
 The lesson of unworKllincss is one of the most imi)ortant 
 lessons for men of all ranks to learn. The example of Christ 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 6^,^ 
 
 teaches this lesson in perfection. Few faults are more 
 common, even in religious persons, than worldliness. Indeed, 
 there is a kind of religion which finds it possible to reconcile 
 Christianity with an extreme degree of worldliness. No 
 worldliness is so intense as religious worldliness ; no pride is 
 so intense as spiritual pride : yet both are found among those 
 who call themselves followers of him whose distino-uishinp- 
 characteristics were his utter un worldliness and his deep 
 lowliness of heart ! 
 
 The only marked feature, then, of the first thirty years of 
 the life of Christ, as recorded in the Gospels, is its lowliness. 
 Nor when he left the seclusion of his humble home, and entered 
 upon his public ministry, did he lay aside that lowliness of life. 
 " Never for a moment falling below the dignity of his high 
 claims," he yet lived the same unostentatious, simple, humble 
 life as before. He assumed no outward state, ever shrank 
 from display, refused to have earthly greatness thrust upon 
 him, did not even exchange his simple peasant's robe for the 
 garb of the prophet, but lived with disciples (chosen from a 
 humble rank) as one of themselves, travelling with them on 
 foot, or sailing in their fishing-boat ; sharing their fare ; having 
 no settled home, not even where to lay his head ; often sleeping 
 with them upon the ground ; willingly accepting the hospi- 
 tality of the poorest and most despised ; sitting in their 
 homes ; teaching by the wayside, in the street, by the sea- 
 shore ; not disdaining the society of the outcast ; eating with 
 sinners ; turning a deaf ear to no cry for help, it mattered not 
 from whom ; owning every man as a brother ; caring most for 
 those who were uncared for ; refusing no toil ; shrinking from 
 no touch ; heeding no obloquy ; dreading no contamination ; 
 stooping to the level of the lowest, that he might raise them ; 
 becoming the servant of all, that he might cleanse them. 
 
 Such was his life throughout his ministry, strikingly and 
 beautifully illustrated by almost his last act of loving farewell 
 to his apostles on the evening before his death, when, their 
 last meal together being ended, " he rose, and having laid 
 
638 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel," he 
 kneeled beside them, and performed the lowliest act of per- 
 sonal service that one can perform for another. " He poureth 
 water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and 
 to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded." 
 
 We know not which touches us most, the tenderness of 
 this last act of personal service, or the unspeakable lowliness 
 of it. There was a deep significance in both. What could 
 be more touching and beautiful than this farewell, since the 
 feet which he washed had trodden for three years with him 
 the weary and toilsome way ? And now that he and they 
 are to be fellow-travellers no longer, he would cleanse and 
 bless the feet which had followed in his steps. And what 
 could be more significant as a lesson of humility, since he did 
 not except from this last labor of love even the feet which 
 had followed only to betray him ? Faithful picture of his 
 ministry, truest emblem of his character, in which lowliness 
 and love met together in their perfection ! 
 
 One of the most remarkable features in the life of Christ 
 is, that, notwithstanding his lofty claims, he should have left 
 to us this example of perfect humility. If we had not his 
 life before us, we migrht have thought that the two thino-s 
 were wholly incom.patible. But here we see the extraordinary 
 union of conscious and transcendent greatness with deep 
 humility. It is not only that we see lowliness of life. This 
 outward lowliness betokened inward lowliness ; it was the 
 true expression of a lowly heart, for true humility shows 
 itself in a desire to avoid all personal exaltation. The 
 dislike of Christ to all personal display is a very marked 
 feature in his character. He was obliged to place himself 
 prominently before the eyes of men ; yet, in doing this, he 
 never laid aside his lowliness, he never sacrificed his humility. 
 He told men that he was their Example, their Master, their 
 Lord ; yet he remained ever their servant, not in name, but 
 in very deed and truth. It was a wonderful union, which 
 illustrates, perhaps better than any thing else, the extraordi- 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 639 
 
 nary perfection of his example. Self-assertion was a necessity 
 of his position, yet self-abasement was the rule of his life. 
 He declared himself to be the perfect example, yet he made 
 himself of no reputation. 
 
 We see, then, in the life of Christ, a convincing- proof of 
 his lowliness of heart. He was, without doubt, perfectly 
 humble-minded. If it be asked how a humble mind could 
 be consistent with such a consciousness of greatness as he 
 manilested, the answer is at once suggested by his own 
 repeated declarations that his goodness was not his own. 
 He distinctly referred the glory of all that he had, and all 
 that he did, to the Father. The words that he spake, the 
 works that he did, were not his, but the Father s who sent him. 
 He was a perfect man, but the perfection of the creature is 
 derived from the Creator. This excludes all ground for pride 
 in every human being. It is the true foundation of humility, 
 and it was clearly the foundation of Christ's humility. The 
 perfection of the creature is to refer all perfection to the 
 Creator. It was in this that Christ's perfection as man was 
 shown ; for pride is essentially an imperfection. Other men 
 are proud because they are imperfect. He was perfect, and 
 therefore humble. His perfect humility was the highest mark 
 of his perfection. What better reproof of human pride can 
 there be than this, — the only perfect man zvas Jinmble f 
 
 And what could so forcibly recommend this virtue to the 
 Christian ? There are some virtues which need nothing to 
 recommend them, and which most of us would like to possess; 
 but humility is not one of them. We like it in others, but 
 we do not care to possess it ourselves. It needs, therefore, 
 something to commend it to us ; and it finds the highest 
 commendation here : it was seen in perfection in Christ. 
 
 There are some jewels which are so brilliant that they are 
 worn for the sake of their beauty. There are others which 
 we do not care to wear on account of their beauty, but 
 because they were worn by some departed friend who was 
 very dear to us : these have a value beyond all price. Such 
 
640 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 a gem is humility. It may not be attractive enough in our 
 eyes to make us eager to possess it ; it is not a showy virtue ; 
 it does not catch the light, or glitter and sparkle before our 
 eyes : yet it should be dear to every Christian. It should be 
 sought after and prized and loved, for it was worn on the 
 heart of Jesus ; and he has bidden his disciples prize it and 
 wear it for his sake. 
 
 MARK EVANS. 
 
 [The Gospel of Home Life. London: 1877. Pp. 47-50, 71, 204-210.] 
 
 The consciousness of One better than the best conceivable 
 seems never to have deserted man ; if it ever should do so, 
 religion will cease to exist. When, for One better than the best 
 conceivable, man substitutes tJie best lie knows, his aspirations 
 must need be short-lived, and the seen and temporal will 
 satisfy his every craving. Jesus, as the objective revelation 
 of the Father, laid claim to the same universality as had 
 marked the subjective revelation. He was the light of the 
 world ; he was to draw all men unto him. His claim to 
 universality is therefore a stamp of truth. It was a thing 
 foreign to the teachers of the great religions of the world. 
 An influence over all men, a kingdom established in the 
 hearts of all men, are conceptions of Jesus, and none other, 
 and are in harmony with the universal consciousness. 
 
 And yet another conception is his, and only his ; viz., that 
 the glory of the revelation was to belong to every brotJier and 
 sister of his. His own ideal was the ideal which he set before 
 each one of us, — " Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven 
 is perfect." His it was to manifest that perfection, attained 
 through unimpaired communion with the ideal ; ours it is to 
 pant and strive after it. In ever-faithful souls does the 
 brightness of his glory grow. Even here they are a faint 
 image of him, the light of the world ; yet a little while, and 
 they shall be like him, for they shall see him as he is. The 
 
"BEHOLD, 1 STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK.'^ 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 64 1 
 
 glory that excelleth shall be their ever drawing nearer and yet 
 nearer to that eternal iincreate ideal of whom Jesus was the 
 earthly manifestation. The knowledge, that in their human 
 nature there has been that manifestation, becomes to them a 
 source of strength and hope ; but for themselves, the nearer 
 they grow into that likeness, the more are they conscious of 
 their distance from it. For them there is the everlasting joy, 
 wifuljillcd aspiration, because the ideal of Jesus w^as One 
 better than the best they caji co7iceive. Filled with their ideal, 
 yet never containing him, they shall wake up after his likeness, 
 and be satisfied with it. To deny the existence of purified 
 souls, were to disregard the words of Jesus. Many there are 
 on earth who are to us as stars in a night of weary waiting 
 for the moon : many more there must be in the w^orld beyond 
 the seen, whose light, like that of some of the far-off suns, 
 has not yet reached us ; and thinking of them, we can with 
 a deeper meaning use the poet's words, as he gazed on the 
 fair creation : — 
 
 " O God, O good beyond compare ! 
 If thus thy meaner works are fair, 
 How glorious must those mansions be, 
 Where thy redeemed shall dwell with thee ! " 
 
 But we see not any other than Jesus, who is the perfected 
 manifestation of the way unto the Father. Search from the 
 greatest of ancient religious teachers to the least, — they 
 give, some of them, an almost perfect system of ethics ; but 
 it was not for a perfect system that the spirit of humanity 
 w^as craving. A new and living way unto the Father w^as 
 what was hung-ered and thirsted for ; and from Zoroaster to 
 Comte, there has been but One who has offered himself 
 to man, claiming to be the bread which came down from 
 heaven, and the water of which if a man drinketh he shall 
 never thirst. 
 
 The complete answer to the difficulty we are considering 
 is given us by Jesus himself: "None \i2L's> full knowledge of 
 
642 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 the Father, save the Son." No one but the perfect Son can 
 know perfectly the Father. To be conscious of the Father is 
 the birthright of us all, as sons of God. It is just because 
 we are sons, that the Spirit within us teaches us to call upon 
 the Eternal as our Father. An ever-growing knowledge of 
 him is the hope of the present and the hereafter ; but a 
 perfected knowledge, as will be seen presently, it can never be 
 ours to possess. The unimpaired consciousness which Jesus 
 had, and his unswerving loyalty to the consciousness, is the 
 answer to the high priest's question, " Art thou the Christ, 
 the Son of the Blessed ? " . . . 
 
 The success of Christianity cannot be attributed merely 
 to its ethics, for these were not new. Jesus appealed to the 
 old revelation, made aforetime through the religious sense in 
 mankind ; a revelation not only inspiring conduct, but becom- 
 ing its guide. " If thine enemy hunger," said Jesus, " feed 
 him." " If a man does me wrong," was the teaching of 
 Sakya-Mouni, " I will return him the protection of my love ; 
 the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from 
 me." " Love your enemies, and bless them which persecute 
 you," was the first and last word of the ideal Son. " Let every 
 thorn which people sow in thy path, bloom in the lustre of 
 thy smile," is the maxim of the Persian poet. How comes it, 
 that, while the voice of Jesus is soundirfg throughout the 
 earth, the voices of those who aforetime were among the 
 greatest prophets born of women, whisper fainter and ever 
 fainter? How comes it, that within hearing of the one the deaf 
 hear, the blind see, and the dead are raised ; and that the 
 others fall unheeded, and half intelligible, on ears that are 
 heavy, and will not hear? Does Mr. Arnold's "method and 
 secret " of Jesus supply an explanation ? or is the fact ac- 
 counted for by the patronizing concession of the author of 
 " Supernatural Religion," that Jesus presented the rare specta- 
 cle of a life, so far as we can estimate it, noble and consistent 
 with his own lofty principles ? 
 
 There is an explanation more simple, intelligible, and 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 643 
 
 reasonable, and one which therefore bears the marks of truth. 
 The past success of the faith of Jesus is owing to, and its 
 future triumph is assured by, his being the completion of the 
 Divine revelation. Distorted by the inventions of men, 
 clouded by metaphysicians and theology-makers, misrepre- 
 sented by professed preachers, the good news has gone 
 forth conquering, and to conquer ; because it is no mere 
 message, no system of ethics, but an opening-up of the way 
 to that object of universal longing. One better than the best 
 conceivable, — the Heavenly Father. . . . 
 
 In most striking contrast with the effusiveness of the 
 Christian world, on the character and enjoyment of a future 
 life, is the reticence, nay almost the silence, of Jesus. That 
 life was always present to him, and his references to it were 
 frequent. But his heaven was not the paradise of our hymn- 
 ology, but the life everlasting ; to be confessed as brethren by 
 him before the Father, to shine forth as the sun in the king- 
 dom, was the natural, intelligible end of loyalty to the ideal 
 Son. To sit on his rio-ht hand was not his to eive, but it 
 was his to proclaim that no man's sacrifice of self should fail 
 of acceptance with the One above self. To them who came 
 asking "What shall we have?" he had no golden crowns 
 to offer, but he could promise that in the resurrection they 
 should be as the angels of God. 
 
 In a word, the glory of the hereafter, the glory that 
 excelleth, as revealed by Jesus, was the fulness of answer to 
 the spiritual craving and thirst of humanity. We know what 
 that was ; w^hat it must ever be, unless the universal conscious- 
 ness be a fiction. Truer apprehension of the Divine better 
 than the best conceivable ; deeper, purer communion with him, 
 was the goal of " the pilgrim pining for his distant home." 
 Kingdoms and the glory of them ; palms and shining streets; 
 all these will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship 
 me ! w^as not the offer of Jesus ; it was an offer to him from 
 the adversary within. He crushed it with a withering sarcasm 
 as the orrossest insult that could be offered to a son of God. 
 
644 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Shall we, his brothers and sisters, put baubles before our eyes 
 to take away our gaze from the Divine Ideal ? worship the 
 great white throne more than him that sitteth thereon ? Do 
 not be deceived by any talk about the value of symbols. The 
 moment we put parable in place of the truth it is meant to 
 illustrate, when we put men's visions in place of divine 
 revelation, we are on the verge of Idolatry. Children must 
 be taught by pictures, but we are not to be always babes in 
 Christ. As the little ones come naturally to distinguish be- 
 tween the truth, and the rough way in which it was presented 
 to their minds, so should we, If we would only let our spiritual 
 nature have its freedom, come to smile at the uncouth repre- 
 sentations which even the best of men sometimes make when 
 they seek to bring us into the presence of the eternal beauty, 
 righteousness, and order. Men cannot show it, for the king- 
 dom of God Is within us. Let us be loyal to the ideal, not to 
 the best we know, but to One far exceeding what we know, 
 and the Ideal will possess 7is, reveal itself to us. In the glory 
 of Its light we shall for the time be unconscious of aught else ; 
 but, as our spiritual sight groweth, we shall be able to trace 
 our homeward path onward to the source of light, to the glory- 
 that excelleth. And as when, following some picturesque line 
 of coast, we find to our surprise that the goal is still separated 
 from us by many an ascent or winding of the cliff, so must It 
 be when we turn the point which conceals the invisible from 
 us. Freed from the trammels of sense, God only knows how 
 blinding for the moment may be the beauty of the Ideal which 
 shall flash upon faithful souls ; but If we accept the divine 
 revelation, this much is certain, — that the uiicreate ideal iinist 
 be forever the object of our worship, 7iot of our co7?iprehcnsion. 
 Thus does the revelation check those " unnatural " ideas 
 about God, which drive men Into idolatry for which there is 
 cause to pity them, but none to ridicule. It does not take of 
 the things of men, and make thereof gods for us ; but it takes 
 of the things of God, and shows them unto men. If it came 
 claiming power to show us all things that were of God, it 
 
 i 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 645 
 
 would stand convicted of falsehood by the religious sense ; for 
 if the better tJian tJie best coiiceivable could be ever fully attained 
 unto, it would fail to satisfy the universal thirst which must 
 need drink at an inexhaustible fountain. 
 
 The stamp of truth is on the Gospel of the Father and the 
 Son, because it brings to man exactly what he must have, or 
 die, — aspiration after his ideal filled and yet never fulfilled. 
 The appeal of Jesus was to the subjective universal revelation 
 of the Fatherhood of God ; but what is fatherhood to a little 
 child, save an unknown entity manifested indeed to him in 
 action, but which, until the relative position of father and 
 child be altered, he can never comprehend ? The revelation 
 of Jesus was the glory of sonship ; but as to the Eternal 
 purpose, not even the Son knoweth, but the Father only, — 
 was his teachinof. 
 
 The great religions which men have set up in the world 
 are convicted of human origin, just as the religion of Jesus 
 proves itself divine. Buddhism has a Nirvana for the few, 
 where aspiration dies, for consciousness itself ceases. The 
 positive creed, whether of Confucius or of Comte, has noth- 
 ing better to offer man than the best known. Mohammedanism 
 would supply the faithful with " bright maidens and unfailing 
 vines, such as in dreams would hardly soothe a soul that 
 once had tasted of immortal truth," Judaic Christianity has 
 its New Jerusalem. Popular theology has a cunningly con- 
 trived scale of rewards and punishments. The revelation of 
 Jesus is the revelation of a development of aspiration after 
 One better than the best conceivable, — a development wdiich 
 can therefore have no end, and which can be insured by every 
 single child of the Eternal Father, in loyalty to the new and 
 living way opened up unto him, — ideal sonship ; free, loving 
 obedience. 
 
 The Gospel of the hereafter is, then, like the others, a 
 common Gospel ; not for the few favored ones, not for a class 
 or a caste, but for the whole family of the All-Father. Its 
 glory is not to burst on us as though some new and strange 
 
646 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 thing had happened unto us; but it will be the gradual devel- 
 opment of our present, however rare, moments of communion 
 with our Divine Ideal, Rare enough they are, God knoweth, 
 for we are so much taken up with our business or our pleas- 
 ure or our sins, that there is little time for even the contem- 
 plation of an ideal.; still, to all of us, let us hope that the 
 
 " Good God not only reckons 
 The moments when we do his will, 
 But when the spirit beckons." 
 
 Assuredly he does ; how can it be otherwise ? for is not 
 the one, as much as the other, the influence of the Divine 
 within us ? These aspirations after the glory of the hereafter 
 are for all men, in all the circumstances of their life ; they come 
 to us in our work, and make the music of the heavens sound 
 above the hum of machinery and the hubbub of the street. 
 They whisper to us in sorrow, drawing us out of ourselves, 
 with the thought that the sufferings of this present time are 
 not worthy to be compared with the glory which is about to 
 be revealed in us. They throng around us in worship, like 
 bands of angels, ready to bear us far away from the seen and 
 the temporal. They speak also of the glory of sonship, for 
 they are common to the malefactor and the saint ; and thus, 
 testifying to the reality of the brotherhood of Jesus, they bring 
 within the grasp of our apprehension that supremest glory of 
 the Fatherhood of the Eternal One, which, knowing neither 
 beginning nor end, embraces creation as with the perfection 
 of the circle. 
 
 Aspirations after the One better than the best C07iceivable 
 are indeed the birthright of humanity, and evidence relation- 
 ship with their source. The Gospel of Jesus, whom we call 
 the Christ, makes its appeal to these aspirations, recognizes the 
 truth of our birthright, and l)ids us be loyal to it. It does not 
 demand acceptance on the groimd of " authority ; " it docs 
 not come disguised as an ecclesiastical s)-stem ; it does not 
 depend upon wonders and miracles, save so far as it works 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 647 
 
 wonders and miracles in ourselves and those around us ; it 
 does not separate us as do the creeds of men, but it binds in 
 one brotherhood the whole family of man. It offers " reason- 
 able satisfaction to the religious sentiment in the nature of 
 man," because it gives an explanation of those aspirations 
 which are ourselves, — making them tiie never-ending steps of 
 divine progression. . . . 
 
 In place of the material, Jesus offers us the ideal; and 
 nothing on earth can withstand it. Creeds may rot and crum- 
 ble away, churches may rock to their centre ; but the " immov- 
 able basis of the religious sentiment " must abide. Earth's 
 joys may dim, its glories pass away; but the Gospel of the 
 hereafter, which tells us of Divine aspiration filled and yet 
 never fulfilled, an everlasting approach to One better than the 
 best conceivable, remaineth for us all, — for every child of 
 the Eternal who through the new and living way draws near 
 unto the Father. 
 
 WASHINGTON GLADDEN. 
 
 [Being a Christian. Boston: 1S76. Pp. 85-88.] 
 
 The Christian life is, as we have seen, not only allegiance 
 to a government, but devotion to a person. It begins with 
 a surrender of the soul, in an entire and unfaltering trust, to 
 Jesus Christ the Saviour. Love to him, faith in him, union 
 with him, are its constant inspiration. Now, it is not difficult 
 for any of us to tell whether or not we are cherishing a 
 personal affection for those who are nearest us in this world. 
 The dutiful child is in no doubt as to whether he loves his 
 mother or not. The parent does not need to stop and search 
 his heart, to see whether he can find any traces of affection 
 for his child. Your chosen friend, your most intimate com- 
 panion, — you know what your feelings are toward him. 
 Why should there be any more uncertainty in your mind 
 concerning your love for Christ ? You have not seen him, 
 
648 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 but you may communicate with him every day and every 
 hour. The bodily form in which he appeared to men is not 
 with us, but " we have the mind of Christ." His thouorhts 
 are not only recorded for us in the New Testament, but 
 they are given to us by direct inspiration, whenever we open 
 our minds to receive them. His love was not only manifested 
 to us on the cross, but it is revealed to us every day in care the 
 most constant, help the most loving, comfort the most sweet 
 and precious. The fact that we cannot see him is no reason 
 why we should not know him. Very likely there are persons 
 in this world whom you have never seen, for whom you have 
 conceived a strong affection. You have been in communica- 
 tion with them : their thoughts and feelings have been known 
 to you ; and though you have not seen their faces, or touched 
 their hands, you know their minds ; and all love that is genu- 
 ine has a great deal more to do with the mind than with the 
 face or the hands. Now, communication with Christ is much 
 more direct, and may be much more constant, than with any 
 earthly friend, far or near ; and there is no reason why our 
 affections for him should not constantly deepen and strengthen, 
 — no reason why we should not be quite as sure that we love 
 him, as that we love any other friend. For, the faculties of 
 the soul which are called into exercise in lovino; him are the 
 same faculties which we exercise when we love our children 
 or our parents or our companions ; and there is no more 
 mystery in their use in the one case than in the other. 
 
 The Christian life may also be considered as a hungering 
 and thirsting for righteousness. This, as we have seen, is 
 the principle from which it starts, and the goal toward which 
 it travels. You go to Christ because you hate sin, and desire 
 to overcome it. You follow Christ because he promises to 
 enable you to make his righteousness your own. Now, you 
 know of a certainty whether or not this is your purjiose ; 
 you know whether you have set before yourself righteousness 
 rather than happlnc;ss, as your being's end and aim. If this 
 is the ruling motive of your life, if you want to be pure and 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 649 
 
 true and good more than you want any thing else, and if by 
 Christ's grace you mean to be, then you are a Christian. 
 And there is no more difficulty in your knowing that this is 
 your purpose, than in knowing that you have decided to buy 
 a house, or to make a journey, or to study a profession. 
 
 THOMAS HENRY STEEL. 
 
 [Sermons. London: 1882. Pp. 159-164.] 
 
 Childhood, youth, and the prime of active Hfe enlist on 
 their behalf all our human sympathy now, even as they must 
 have enlisted of old that of every spectator in Judaea or 
 Galilee. And when men's hearts were thus opened, how 
 overpowering must have been the influence of One whose 
 heart, as it were, beat in unison with theirs, and under whose 
 gende touch, even in the display of his divine power, 
 trembled responsive the finest chords of human feeling ! 
 Think for a moment what the effect would have been in our 
 own case. In many, if not in most of your families, 
 Jairus' daughter must have her counterpart. There may be 
 some sister " about twelve years of age," innocent, pure, 
 inexpressibly dear, one whose beauty makes the beholder 
 glad, and fills a father's eyes with light, winning all hearts 
 by her loving playfulness ; and yet already, through a fine 
 unconscious instinct, purified by some touch of maiSenly 
 reserve ; one whose presence by a subtle influence refines, 
 you know not how, your coarser thoughts and feelings, and 
 whose very image, when absent, haunting the chambers of 
 your memory, will help you resist the sudden temptation 
 to evil. Some subtle poison pervades the atmosphere, some 
 unseen injury impairs the body's delicate organization ; and 
 the flower that lately bloomed so sweet and fresh, now droops 
 its languid head. The hurried pulse, the hectic cheek, the 
 eye's feverish brightness, the subdued gentleness of voice, 
 the sweet mournfulness of the smile, — all speak too clearly 
 
650 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 to the mother's heart that the touch of the Angel of Death 
 has hallowed her child. While she prays that if it be possible 
 this cup of sorrow may yet pass from her, the struggle is 
 over. The child is dead. 
 
 " Maid, arise ! " Oh, were it possible that these words of 
 mercy and power should at this day sound once more in our 
 ears, were it possible that at their bidding the departed 
 spirit should return to animate again the frame it had seemed 
 to have left forever, should we not bow down in adoration 
 before him whose lips had uttered them ; and while fear 
 came upon us, mingled with our joy, acknowledge with 
 thankful hearts that God had indeed visited his people ? 
 
 And does there not rise also before the mind of many of 
 us the imaofe of some one cut down like that widow's son at 
 Nain, in the very pride and bloom of opening life, just when 
 every promise shone before him of a useful and brilliant 
 career, and the active mind was rising to the duties of a 
 wider and higher sphere ? Nay, even the very tablets behind 
 me, do they not vividly remind you that even here the Angel 
 of Death waves his unseen wings, and woos too early, as we 
 often deem it, some of the brightest and purest souls among 
 you to their rest in the home of heaven ? Yes, it is often 
 thus, that on the very edge of the battle the Christian soldier 
 who has but just girded on his harness is not suffered to 
 stain it in the dust and heat of the conllict. He who seeth 
 not as man seeth, removes him perhaps from evils which he 
 alone can foreknow. But human affection can seldom see, 
 nor can we think it was meant to see, the desire of our eyes 
 thus taken away with a stroke, and yet neither mourn nor 
 weep, nor let the tears run down. The mother's heart still 
 yearns as of yore, for her lost son, and at times refuses to be 
 comforted. And it is this heart that will always feel, as the 
 well-known story of never-ceasing interest is read again and 
 again in our ears, what rapture those words, as the reality of 
 their power became manifest, must have stirred within the 
 widow's heart ; what conviction in the minds of all, that an 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 65 I 
 
 unusual Presence was there, that the Lord of life was among- 
 them, that the expected salvation was near, the Desire of all 
 nations was perhaps already come. 
 
 In the story of Lazarus, which the peculiar tenderness of 
 St. John seems by some inherent right to have appropriated 
 to his pen, we have the third type ; the type not of the child, 
 nor of the youth, but of the full-grown man, struck down in 
 all the fresh vigor and prime of life. It is with this case, most 
 of all the three, that we, and not you, we who are in the midst 
 of the heat and turmoil of life's conflict, must have especial 
 sympathy. The time will soon come, no doubt, when you 
 also will, many of you, feel the shock that some of us have 
 more than once already felt, when a fellow-soldier, perhaps, 
 who has long through weal and through woe fought the 
 battle of life along with you, is about to be struck down, as 
 it were, by your side. But to pass on : those well-known 
 sisters, who from him that loved all men were yet blessed in 
 winning especial love, seem, when we hear of them, to be 
 no longer guarded by the superintending care of parents or 
 older friends. Their brother must have been to them as 
 father and mother. See how strongly the love of each 
 towards the object of their common affection shines forth ; 
 with something of contrast also, arising from their difference 
 of character. Martha, as soon as she hears that Jesus is 
 coming, goes forth at once to meet the friend of her lost 
 brother, and, engrossed by her earthly sorrow, seems but little 
 comforted in her present grief by the knowledo-e that he that 
 was dead should rise again at the last day. Mary sits still in 
 the house, and awaits the message from her sister ; and even 
 when she eoes forth to meet lesus, she is believed bv those 
 around her to be eoine, as no doubt was her wont, unto the 
 grave, to weep there. And yet the first words of both are, 
 " Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died," 
 — words soon to be verified far beyond all they could have 
 hoped. Their common love, their common faith, received 
 their fruition ; and out of those words, which seemed onl)- to 
 
652 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 restore a lost brother to their arms, the Church of Christ has 
 now for nearly two thousand years drawn the earnest of that 
 hope, which points to that far nobler resurrection, of which 
 these miracles were but types and outlines, when this corrupt- 
 ible shall once for all put on incorruption, and this mortal 
 put on immortality, and death be forever swallowed up in 
 victory. 
 
 BURKE AARON HINSDALE. 
 
 [Internal Evidence of the Authenticity of the Gospels. Christian Quarterly, 
 
 vol. iv. pp. 74-77 ] 
 
 The inimitable character of Jesus cannot be accounted for, 
 but upon the hypothesis that it is drawn from life. 
 
 Men recognize two kinds of ability, — the ability of the 
 creator, and the ability of the critic. The one is genius, 
 the other criticism. The first gives us great conceptions in 
 statuary, in painting, in architecture, and in poetry ; the 
 second passes judgment on their merits. Genius is by far 
 the higher and rarer gift. But what is its range ? To 
 hold the mirror up to nature, to be true to originals, to 
 discern and portray facts as they are, — this is the farthest 
 reach of genius. To make their characters think, feel, and 
 act, as men think, feel, and act, — in a word, to represent men, 
 is the task of our novelists and dramatists; and to say they 
 have failed, is to pass such sentence on them as admits of 
 no commutation or pardon. In this field our Scotts, Goethes, 
 and Shakspeares have won their renown. Shall we be told 
 that a few Galilaeans of commoni)lace faculties, of narrow 
 culture, and of so little command of language that their style 
 constantly labors and halts under the weight of meaning, shall 
 we be told that their imagination " bodied forth " and their pen 
 " turned to shape " the Christ of the Gospels ? The hypothe- 
 sis will not stand the test to which hypotheses are subjected. 
 To say nothing of the absence of the usual indications of 
 the creative imagination, and of the intense seriousness of the 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 653 
 
 writers that precludes the possibihty of artistic creation, the 
 task was plainly bc)oncl the reach of their powers. Nay, we 
 go farther, and say it was beyond the reach of the greatest 
 powers and the ripest culture. 
 
 Our argument cannot be presented in its full force without 
 a careful analysis of the character of Jesus. Such an analysis 
 would render it necessary to consider such topics as these : 
 The childhood of Jesus, the manner in which he used the 
 miraculous power attributed to him, the wonderful equipoise 
 and balance of his nature, and the superlative excellence of 
 his teaching. But such discussion fannot here be attempted ; 
 we can only offer a reflection or two on the two last-mentioned 
 topics. Before we offer these, however, we must remind the 
 reader that we do not assume the authenticity of the record, 
 we only argue from its character that it must be trustworthy. 
 
 Let it, then, be first noted that the Evangelists never tell 
 us, after the manner of spectators, that Jesus exhibited a 
 wonderful equipoise of nature, that he was always master of 
 himself and of the situation. To do that, were a work of no 
 difficulty. But they give us a person, historical or imaginary, 
 who evinces this power in a manner, and to a degree, that 
 commands universal admiration. He is equal to all emer- 
 gencies, not only among the simple people of Galilee, but 
 also among the ingenious casuists and shrewd politicians of 
 Jerusalem. He triumphantly answers the most ingeniously 
 framed questions, and extricates himself from the most trying 
 dilemmas. He traverses every plane of social and religious 
 life, and is never thrown off his guard, never loses command 
 of himself, but proves himself equal to every emergency, and 
 exhibits a fertility of resource and a power of address that 
 constantly checks and overawes his antagonists. He is loved 
 by the poor, and courted by the rich : yet he never speaks in 
 the tone of the demagogue to the one, or prostitutes himself 
 to the other. Some phases of his character are thus felici- 
 tously touched by Mr. Beecher in his new " Life of Christ : " — 
 
 " There is a poor kind of dignity that never allows itself 
 
654 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 to be excited, that is guarded against all surprises ; that 
 restrains the expression of sudden interest, that holds on its 
 cold and careful way as if superior to the evanescent moods of 
 common men. Such was not Christ's dignity. No one seemed 
 more a man amongf men in all the inflections of human moods 
 than did Jesus. With the utmost simplicity he suffered the 
 events of life to throw their lights and shadows upon his soul. 
 He was 'grieved,' he was ' angr}^' he was 'surprised,' he 
 ' marvelled.' In short, his soul moved through all the moods 
 of human experience ; and, while he rose to sublime com- 
 munion with God, he was also a man among men ; while he 
 rebuked self-indulgence and frivolity, he cheerfully partook of 
 innocent enjoyments ; while he denounced the insincerity or 
 burdensome teachings of the Pharisees, he did not separate 
 himself from society or from social life, but even accepted their 
 hospitality, and his dinner discourses contain some of his most 
 pungent teachings." 
 
 The conception of Christ, from whatever source it came, 
 would have been a failure, had it not been sustained by an 
 unparalleled teaching. It is not sufficient for a literary 
 creator to say his hero was a sage or a philosopher. He 
 must make him act, and, above all, speak, like one. Sir 
 Walter Scott has not entered on the difficulties of his task 
 when he says Jeanie Deans spoke with a simple tender 
 eloquence that touched all hearts : he must make her speak 
 so as to move the hearts of his readers. 
 
 The Evangelists do tell us that Jesus was an unparalleled 
 teacher. " He spake as never man spake." " The common 
 people heard him gladly." " All bare him witness, and 
 wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his 
 mouth." " Men were astonished at his doctrine." They 
 asked, "Whence hath this man this wisdom ?" To compare 
 such statements as these, involves no difficulty. But to set 
 down in writing what it was that so arrested the attention of 
 men, to give the teaching itself, is, upon the hypothesis that 
 the Evangelists did not paint from life, the crucial test. But 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 655 
 
 how completely is the claim sustained ! After reading these 
 glowing encomiums, we read the teaching itself as the 
 Queen of Sheba listened to the wisdom of Solomon. — 
 the half has not been told us. The question recurs, Did the 
 Evangelists have a living original? " It is more inconceiv- 
 able," says Rousseau, " that a number of persons should agree 
 to write such a history, than that one should furnish the sub- 
 ject of it." " Shall we be told," asks Theodore Parker, "such 
 a man never lived, the whole story is a lie ? Suppose that 
 Plato and Newton never lived. But who did their works, 
 and thought their thoughts ? It takes a Newton to forge a 
 Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus ? None 
 but a Jesus." The argument is an old one. When Panaetius 
 held that the " Phaedo " was spurious, he was conclusively 
 answered by the line, — 
 
 " If Plato did not write me, there must have been two Platos." 
 
 This field stretches away before us, boundless in extent, and 
 inexhaustible in fertility. We quit it wi'th reluctance, but with 
 the conviction that we have established the authenticity of 
 the Gospels. We conclude with a sentence from Rousseau : 
 "The history of Socrates, which no one presumes to doubt, 
 is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ." 
 
 STEPHEN GREENLEAF BULFINCH. 
 
 [Manual of the Evidences of Christianity. Boston : 1869. Pp. 18, 19, 22-24.] 
 
 Among the virtues there are some which have attracted 
 the admiration of mankind in every age, and which were held 
 in high honor alike by Jews and heathen at the time of the 
 Saviour. Such are active courage, friendship, and patriotism. 
 There are others to which less of popular favor has been 
 given, but which are no less important to human happiness, 
 and in themselves no less worthy. Such are meekness, 
 patience, forgiveness. The former class are in accordance 
 
656 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 with the natural impulses, the latter imply their restraint. 
 An uninspired leader would have advocated the popular 
 virtues more than the unpopular, because he would have 
 shared the popular feelings. An ambitious leader would 
 have pursued a similar course, because he would have ex- 
 pected thus to gain favor. But Jesus gave his influence for 
 the unpopular virtues, commending a meek, yielding, and 
 peaceable course of conduct, directing us to love our enemies, 
 and to return good for evil, — precepts which would appear 
 impracticable if his own example had not illustrated them. 
 This course showed at once his divine wisdom in enforcing 
 those virtues which most needed commendation, and his 
 superiority to all attempts to gain popular favor, while it 
 renders the success of his relioion the more wonderful. 
 
 It has been erroneously argued, even by some defenders 
 of Christianity, that the Saviour, in thus doing, discounte- 
 nanced the manly virtues, — courage, friendship, and patriot- 
 ism. But this is going beyond the truth. He did not 
 expressly commend these virtues, because they needed no 
 commendation, being already favorites with the world ; but 
 he inculcated the principles from which they must proceed, — 
 reverence for God rather than man, which is the source of 
 true courage ; and love, of which friendship and patriotism 
 are only applications. 
 
 Christianity goes deep into the cause of existing evils in 
 society, and thus directs efforts more effectually to their 
 removal. It does not ascribe these evils to the constitution 
 of society, to defective institutions, to deficiency of wealth, 
 or superabundance of population, but to sin ; and it comes to 
 free mankind from this evil. Other reformers have endeav- 
 ored to remove particular forms of suffering and wrong, and 
 have thus often done well, carrying out various portions of 
 the great design of Christianity ; but the Gospel itself strikes 
 at the root of all, representing the original evil of all to 
 be man's disobedience to the Divine law, and directing its 
 strongest efforts to remove this. This is not the ground 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 657 
 
 which a fanatic would have taken ; for honest enthusiasm, 
 excited by the view of visible wrongs, would have attacked 
 them directly. Nor could such ground be taken by an impos- 
 tor. The loftiest moral truth could not be discovered by one 
 who himself was utterly untrue. . . . 
 
 In most systems, the personal character of the founder 
 is comparatively of little importance. The works of Plato 
 command admiration from the intellectual greatness they 
 display, not from the moral qualities of the writer. Even the 
 laws of Moses derive their sanction in a very slight degree 
 from the personal character of the great lawgiver. But when 
 a teacher claims the love of his followers, he must display 
 those qualities by which love is won. This claim is made by 
 the Author of Christianity. He calls his disciples friends; he 
 requires them to commemorate him by a personal act of 
 affection. Neither a fanatic nor an impostor would have been 
 likely to do this ; for the feelings of the one would have 
 been exclusively engaged on the object of his enthusiasm, 
 and the other would have been without genuine feeling. 
 
 The character of the Saviour, as presented by the Evan- 
 gelists, combines the strength of man with the tenderness of 
 woman. He is faithful to every duty ; and the virtues of the 
 citizen, the friend, and the son, including some which his 
 religion has been wrongly supposed to depreciate, are all 
 righdy balanced. . . . Forbidding avarice, and censuring the 
 faults of the rich and powerful, he teaches the poor and 
 oppressed lessons of patience and faith, and refuses to inter- 
 meddle with the distribution of property. He makes claim 
 to the highest dignity, yet simply and unaffectedly ; and 
 without impairing his dignity, he performs a menial office, 
 when he can thereby teach an important lesson. He calls 
 all men to come to him, yet, instead of using flattering per- 
 suasions, warns them that they will encounter obloquy and 
 persecution. 
 
 But it is as the period of his sufTering draws nigh, that the 
 beauty of his character most fully appears. The wise and 
 
658 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 tender counsels to his friends, the prayer with his disciples, 
 the struggle with himself in Gethsemane, the dignity with 
 which he meets his captors, asking only that his disciples 
 may be spared, the patience he shows under the abuse of 
 the Sanhedrim, the look that brings repentance to the disci- 
 ple who has denied him, the answers and the bearing that 
 almost subdue the pride and policy of the Roman governor, 
 — these prepare us for the still higher sublimity of the cross. 
 Here we see him praying for the pardon of his enemies, and 
 urging the only plea that could be available for them ; in his 
 own agony showing mercy to the penitent thief, and love 
 and consideration for his mother, and with his last breath 
 commending his soul to God. 
 
 If this holiest of all characters did not exist, whence came 
 its delineation ? It is one of the highest achievements of art, 
 to represent a perfect human form. What, then, must the 
 artist be that could portray a perfect human soul? Writers 
 of fiction seldom, if ever, create incidents ; they merely vary 
 and combine incidents from real life. And the occurrences 
 which have been here presented had no prototype except in 
 Jesus himself. The prayer for his murderers has often been 
 imitated by his followers, but it was first uttered by himself ; 
 and the more than royal exercise of mercy from a cross, instead 
 of a throne, was unexampled in the history of the world. 
 
 C. S. WALKER. 
 
 [The Theism of Jesus. From The New Englander, vol. vii. pp. 107, loS, no, iii.] 
 
 Jesus convinced men that his doctrine of God was true, 
 by directing their attention to the magnificent system of 
 religion and morality which he built upon it. He establislied 
 Christianity as a fact in the world, grounding it upon the one 
 underlying principle: God is, — out of which he made all the 
 doctrine and practice to come. The stability of the fabric 
 proves the foundation. If the stream be sweet, the source 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 659 
 
 cannot be bitter. If the fruit be good, the tree cannot be 
 corrupt. 
 
 It would give a false impression to say that Jesus proved 
 the existence of God. He was not accustomed to argue with 
 men. He was no sophist or dialectician, manipulating prem- 
 ises and conclusions. He was a seer, revealing God to men 
 by making a powerful appeal to his own testimony, to the 
 authority of the Scriptures, to the book of nature, to the voice 
 of conscience, and to the kingdom of heaven established on 
 earth. He simply removed the veil, opened blind eyes, and 
 said, Behold ! The truth spiritually discerned needed no 
 proof. He began with the spirit of man, and by clarifying 
 that stimulated the spiritual man so that he might gain access 
 to the right point of view, and, from its exalted position, 
 behold the truth in its own light and glorious reality. 
 
 Such was Christ's conception of God. It proves its own 
 truthfulness. It is a thought which needs only to be received 
 into the mind of any truth-loving soul, to be at once recog- 
 nized as true. It surpasses any and every human idea of 
 God. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, David, and the prophets 
 knew something of God ; but they knew him only in part. 
 Now and then they caught glimpses of him, as one sees a 
 distant mountain when for a moment the haze is blown away 
 and the clouds lift. Personally theirs was an inadequate 
 knowledge of God, however much in advance of the popular 
 idea, because it was a conception colored and shaped by their 
 own imperfect life and experience. Nowhere in the Old 
 Testament can we find such a glorious portra)-al of the being 
 and character of God as Jesus has given us. Nowhere in 
 Homer, in Plato, in Cicero, in the Vedas, in the whole realm 
 of classic literature, is there to be found a conception of God 
 comparable with Christ's revelation of Deity. Has modern 
 life, with its keen-eyed science, evolved a God that shall set 
 aside the theism of Jesus ? Who is this God of to-day whom 
 they would have us accept in the place of our Father whom 
 Christ has taught us to love? The God of these philosophers 
 
66o TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 is one of human revelation, if not of human invention ; for 
 the fundamental principle of their science is the rejection of 
 every thing supernatural. Their God is unknowable. He 
 may exist, or he may not. If he be the creator of the world, 
 he has left it to run itself without any personal supervision. 
 He is no prayer-hearing God, Breath spent in prayer is 
 wasted in self-delusion. Those who worship him cannot 
 worship him in spirit, for there is no spirit. All things are 
 material ; what is called spirit Is only a function of the body 
 or a mode of motion. There can be no such thing as sin, 
 for all things are fixed by unchanging law. Murder, lying, 
 sensuality, are the incidental results of climate and the devel- 
 opment of human nature ; unfortunate, indeed, but to be 
 expected in the nature of things, to be tabulated as statistics, 
 and to be compensated for by other adjustments. The indi- 
 vidual has little worth compared with the sum total of all 
 things, and has no assured hope of immortality In spite of 
 this latest result of the effort to produce a conception of Deity 
 that shall set aside the Fatherhood of God as revealed by 
 Jesus, it is still true that Christ's portrayal of the Divine 
 being and character is indisputably the very best the world 
 has ever seen. That portrayal was eminently his. A few of 
 its elements had been perceived by different sages before his 
 day, but no one had combined them all into one harmonious 
 and perfect character. Much less could any one else have 
 transfused this conception into the spiritual life of mankind, 
 so as to make it the organic force that has for eighteen hun- 
 dred years been developing in church, society, and state the 
 most stable and yet progressive results of true thought and 
 noble action. Christ's portrayal of God involves no error, 
 and lacks nothing. Whence did Jesus get his idea of God ? 
 Was it the shrewd invention of an impostor? the dream of 
 a fanatic? the fantasy of an insane person? No; this match- 
 less portrayal of the character of God is itself a proof of its 
 truth. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 66 1 
 
 BROOKE FOSS WESCOTT. 
 
 [The Revelation of the Risen Christ. London; iSSi. Pp. 7-12.] 
 
 The revelation of the risen Christ is indeed, in the fullest 
 sense of the word, a revelation ; an unveiling of that which 
 was before undiscovered and unknown. 
 
 Nothing perhaps (if we may anticipate results yet to be 
 established) is more surprising in the whole sum of inspired 
 teaching, than the way in which the different appearances of 
 Christ after his resurrection meet and satisfy the aspirations 
 of man toward a knowledge of the unseen world. As we fix 
 our thoughts steadily upon them, w^e learn how our life is 
 independent of its present conditions ; how w^e also can live 
 through death, how we can retain all the issues of the past 
 without being bound by the limitations under wdiich they were 
 shaped. Christ rose from the grave, changed and )-et the 
 same ; and in him we have the pledge and the type of our 
 rising. Christ was changed. He was no longer subject to 
 the laws of the material order to wdiich his earthly life was 
 previously conformed. As has been well said : " What was 
 natural to him before is now miraculous ; what was before 
 miraculous is now natural." Or, to put the thought in another 
 form, in our earthly life the spirit is manifested through the 
 body ; in the life of the risen Christ, the body is manifested 
 (may we not say so ?) through the spirit. He '' appears," 
 and no longer is seen coming. He is found present, no one 
 knows from whence ; he passes away, and no one knows 
 whither. He stands in the midst of the group of the apostles 
 when the doors were shut for fear of tJie fezus. He vanishes 
 out of the sight of the disciples, whose e)'es were opened that 
 they should know him. And at last, as they were looking, he 
 was taken up, and a cloud received Jiim out of their sight. 
 
 The continuity, the intimacy, the simple familiarity of 
 former intercourse, is gone. He is seen and recognized only 
 as he wills, and when he wills. In the former sense of the 
 
662 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 phrase, he is no longer with the disciples. They have, it 
 appears, no longer a natural way of recognizing him. Feeling 
 and thought require to be purified and enlightened in order 
 that he may be known under the conditions of earthly life. 
 There is a mysterious awfulness about his person, which first 
 inspires fear and then claims adoration. He appointed a 
 place of meeting with his apostles, but he did not accompany 
 them on their journey. He belongs already to another realm, 
 so that the ascension only ratifies and presents in a final form 
 the lessons of the forty days, in which it was included. 
 
 Thus Christ is seen to be changed, but none the less he is 
 also seen to be essentially the same. Nothing has been left 
 in the grave, though all has been transfigured. He is the 
 same, so that the marks of the passion can become sensibly 
 present to the doubting Thomas ; the same, so that he can 
 eat of the broiled fish which the disciples had prepared ; the 
 same, so that one word spoken with the old accent makes him 
 known to the weeping Magdalene ; the same, so that above 
 all expectation, and against the evidence of death, the apostles 
 could proclaim to the world that he who suffered upon the 
 cross had indeed redeemed Israel ; the same in patience, in 
 tenderness, in chastening reproof, in watchful sympath)-, in 
 quickening love. In each narrative the marvellous contrast is 
 w'ritten — Christ changed, and yet the same — without eftbrt, 
 w^ithout premeditation, without consciousness, as it appears, 
 on the part of the Evangelists. And if we put together these 
 two series of facts in which the contrast is presented, we shall 
 see how they ennoble and complete our prospect of the 
 future. It is not that Christ's soul lives on, divested of the 
 essence as of the accidents of the earthly garments in which 
 it was for a time arrayed. It is not that his body, torn and 
 wounded, is restored, such as it was, to its former vigor and 
 beauty. P)Ut in him soul and body, in the indissoluble union 
 of a perfect manhood, are seen triumphant over the last 
 penalty of sin. In him first iJic corniptible puts on incornip- 
 iion, and the mortal puts on iininortality, without ceasing to 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 66 
 
 o 
 
 "be" so far as it has been, that in him we may learn some- 
 thing more of the possibiHties of human Hfe, which, as far as 
 we can observe it with our present powers, is sad and fleeting ; 
 that in him we may be enabled to gain some sure confidence 
 of fellowship with the departed ; that in him we may have our 
 hope steadfast, unmovable, knowing that our labor cannot be 
 in vain. 
 
 Now, if this be so, if the Lord after his resurrection laid 
 open to men, as they could bear it, a new life, it will 
 be evident upon reflection that this knowledge could only be 
 given to the faithful. God gave him to be made manifest, not 
 to all the people, but zcnto ivitnesses that zvere cJioscn before by 
 God. 
 
 The revelation was a revelation to believers. This is the 
 second characteristic which we have marked. If we compare 
 the scenes of the passion with the scenes of the resurrection, 
 we shall realize the significance of the contrast. If we com- 
 pare the teaching of the life of humiliation with the teaching 
 of the life of glory, we shall realize the Divine necessity. 
 That which is of the earth can perceive only that which is of 
 the earth. Our senses can only grasp that which is kindred 
 to themselves. We see no more than that for which we have 
 a trained faculty of seeing. If, then, the life of the risen 
 Lord had been simply a renovation or a continuance of his 
 former life, subject to the same conditions, and necessarily 
 destined to the same inevitable close, then the experience of 
 unbelievers would have been sufficient to test, the witness 
 of unbelievers would have been adequate to establish, the 
 reality of the resurrection. But if it was a foreshadowing of 
 new powers of human action, of a new mode of human being, 
 then, without a corresponding power of spiritual discernment, 
 there could be no testimony to its truth. The world could 
 not see Christ; and Christ could not — there is a Divine 
 impossibility — show himself to the world. To have proved 
 by incontestable evidence that Christ rose again as Lazarus 
 rose again, would have been not to confirm our faith, but 
 
664 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 to destroy it irretrievably. Only the believer who, however 
 imperfectly yet vitally, had felt Christ's power, and known 
 him, could grasp and harmonize the two modes of the 
 revelation of his Person. 
 
 GEORGE PARK FISHER. 
 
 [Manual of Christian Evidences. New York: iSSS. Pp. 32-36.] 
 
 The character of Jesus as depicted by the Evangelists is 
 one of unequalled excellence. This is universally admitted. 
 It is not a character made up of negative virtues alone, where 
 the sole merit is absence of culpable traits. It has positive, 
 strongly marked features. It combines piety, an absorbing 
 love and loyalty to God, with philanthropy, — a love to men 
 without any alloy of selfishness, and too strong to be con- 
 quered by their injustice and ingratitude. It unites thus, 
 in perfect harmony, the qualities of the saint and of the 
 philanthropist. It blends holiness with compassion and gen- 
 tleness. There is no compromise with evil, no consent to the 
 least wronof-doinpf, even in a friend or follower. But with this 
 purity there is a deep well of tenderness, a spirit of forgive- 
 ness which never fails. With the active virtues, with an 
 intrepidity that quails before none, however high in station 
 and public esteem, there are connected the passive virtues of 
 patience, forbearance, meekness. The world beholds in Jesus 
 its ideal of goodness. 
 
 Now, there are conclusive reasons for affirming that this 
 character is not the product of the imagination of the Evan- 
 gelists. It is an original character, and one which those who 
 describe it could never have invented. In the first place, it 
 stands out in bold relief, and in obvious contrast with the 
 imperfections of those to whom we owe the portrait of it. 
 With no model in actual life to follow, how could the fisher- 
 men of Galilee put on the canvas this figure, — the central 
 figure in the world's history? 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 665 
 
 In the second place, It is not a character which Is formally 
 delineated. It is not set forth in a string of epithets or 
 abstract statements, or by vague, indiscriminate laudation. 
 The impression which we gain of the character of Jesus Is 
 from a large collection of incidents and of sayings recorded in 
 the Gospels. Our Idea of him is the effect of a great variety 
 of facts. To the production of such an effect by such means, 
 the writers, had they drawn upon their own Imagination, or 
 that of others, would have been manifestly Incompetent. 
 Finally, the character of Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, 
 has an unmistakable air of reality. 
 
 We may go forward with safety a step farther. Jesus, as we 
 become acquainted with him in the Gospel narratives, which 
 are to this extent self-verifying, was, literally, a sinless person. 
 We have here a character of immaculate purity. This, to be 
 sure, Is a point which cannot be demonstrated, since no one 
 can discern the motives of action ; but it can be established 
 beyond reasonable doubt. In all that Is recorded of him there 
 is no evidence of moral fault. There Is nothing that he did 
 or said which can justly be made a ground of reproach. It is 
 incredible that the Evangelists, even on the supposition of a 
 plan on their part to make him out to be better than he was, 
 could have selected their materials — putting in this and 
 leaving out that — in such a way as to accomplish the pur- 
 pose. The task would have been too great for their powers. 
 It would imply not only a perfect ideal in their minds, but, 
 also, an Impossible skill in realizing it In a narrative form. 
 
 IMoreover, while Jesus was obviously holy beyond all 
 example, and had the clearest, most penetrating discernment 
 of moral evil, and while he condemned even the least 
 wrone in the inmost thoughts and intents of the soul, there Is 
 not a trace of self-reproach on his part. Had he anywhere, 
 even In his prayers to God, Implied that he was guilty of 
 fault, some record of his self-accusation would have been left. 
 It would have found Its way Into the traditions concerning 
 him. When his cause was prostrate, and nothing but an 
 
666 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 ignominious death awaited him, in the hours of anguish some 
 expression implying penitence would have escaped him. Not 
 only is there no trace of such a feeling on his part, but it will 
 scarcely be denied that he made on his followers, who were 
 intimately associated with him, the impression that he was 
 absolutely free from moral fault. 
 
 Those who are convinced that Jesus was without sin may 
 find in the fact a cogent argument for the supernatural origin 
 of Christianity. In the first place, there is no reason to think 
 that any other faultless and perfect man has ever existed among 
 men. Jesus is thus an exception to a universal fact respecting 
 the race. To account for this exception, to explain this one 
 instance of spotless purity, it is reasonable to assume an 
 extraordinary relation to God on his part, — to assume some- 
 thing that is equivalent to a miracle. In the second place, 
 his sinlessness gives credibility to his testimony respecting 
 himself. That he claimed to be the Son of God, the Messiah, 
 is beyond all dispute. On this charge he was crucified. It 
 will not be questioned that the position wdiich he claimed, and 
 persisted in claiming, was of an exceptional and exalted kind. 
 It will not be questioned that he considered himself the 
 spiritual guide and deliverer of mankind. To acquit him of an 
 unheard-of arrogance and self-deception, we must give credit 
 to his judgment and testimony concerning himself. If we 
 discredit this judgment and testimony, w^e must conclude 
 that perfect moral purity, and humility wathal, are consistent 
 with a self-exaltation alike baseless and really without a jiarallcl 
 in the extent to which it was carried. We must ascribe to 
 him an enormous self-delusion. We must conclude of the 
 only pure and perfect one, that the light that was in him was 
 " darkness." 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 667 
 
 WILLIAM CONVERSE WOOD. 
 
 [Jesus' Greatness as Man estimated by His Life- Work as Saviour. From The 
 Church Union, Dec. 30, 1S76.] 
 
 Jesus contained the germs of all greatness in his natural 
 composition. There are casual and incidental, but sufficient, 
 indications of the widest range of natural powers in him ; not 
 all of them — from the very fact of his utter subordination 
 to his work — fully developed and conspicuous, but existing 
 among the natural gifts of his mind, part of the fulness of 
 the perfect man. 
 
 Most men do not think of Jesus as one who could have 
 written poetry ; but what sweeter verse than " Consider the 
 lilies of the field"? And Renan insists on speaking of the 
 idyls of Jesus. Yet Jesus never attempted to write poetry. 
 Most men do not think of Jesus as one who could, like 
 Homer, have written an epic: yet Jesus lived one epic — the 
 Temptation — which Milton has simply penned as " Paradise 
 Regained ; " and he had in his mind from his boyhood the 
 conception of a life and death which he accomplished, and 
 might have written, as the world's great epic. Yet Christ 
 never wrote epic or tragedy. 
 
 You have never thought of Christ as general : yet mobs 
 became pliant in his hands ; they saw a leader in him ; he 
 spoke with authority, and men feared him. In one momen- 
 tary gleam of thought, he imagines himself leading and using 
 legions of angels. With a general's skill, he reduced in a 
 few minutes a confused multitude to order by seating five 
 thousand in companies of fifty. Yet Christ never would lead 
 an army. 
 
 It is difficult to think of the Man of sorrows as a tempo- 
 ral king : yet his disciples, as we know, for a long time could 
 think of him in no other light ; the people " would make him 
 king." He could start at will a triumphal procession into 
 the nation's capital ; he made Herod and Pilate feel like ser- 
 
668 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 vants when he addressed them. Yet Jesus would not mount 
 a throne. 
 
 You have never thought of Jesus as a great orator : yet 
 the common people heard him gladly on spiritual subjects, 
 the most difficult, perhaps, of all. And an opponent said, 
 " Never man spake like this man." But Jesus never tried to 
 astonish admiring audiences by his eloquence. 
 
 We cannot think of Jesus first of all as a philanthropist ; 
 but Shaeffer paints him as he was, CJiinstiLs Coiisolator, his 
 hands outstretched, dropping balm and benediction upon all 
 classes. Yet Jesus did not worship humanity. 
 
 You have never thought of Jesus as possessing a scien- 
 tific mind : yet how carefully he had noted the smallest seed, 
 the weather signs in the sky, the habits of the eagle ! But 
 Jesus never pretended to teach science. We do not think 
 of Jesus, as we do of Emerson, as an analyst of mind and 
 character : yet, when we reflect, we feel that he read clear 
 through at a glance, discriminatively and appreciatively, the 
 mind and motive of every man who passed before him, — 
 judged Herod instantly as a " fox," and John the Baptist the 
 greatest of the prophets ; and chose his prime disciples, 
 Peter, James, John, unerringly as " pillars of the Church," and 
 Paul as unerringly for a " chosen vessel to bear his name 
 among the nations." Yet Jesus does not make reading of 
 character his specialty. 
 
 Thus the germs and manifestations of all intellectual energy 
 were in Jesus. He might have been poet, general, scientist, 
 orator ; but he gave them all up, that he might be what he 
 alone could be to this world, — Saviour. His powers gleamed 
 out in his work incidentally, but he made no display of them. 
 He was great in what he did not do, as well as in what he 
 did. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 669 
 
 EDWARD B. MASON. 
 
 [Sermons by the Monday Club. Fourteenth Series. Boston, 1SS9. Pp. 66-69.] 
 
 When Jesus, having been a long time away, came back 
 again to his own country and to his own city, the people 
 there only saw a poor man followed by poor men. Flesh 
 and blood revealed nothing unto them. No halo of glory 
 encircled his head. There was nothing to distinguish him 
 from those who were with him. What beauty or moral 
 loveliness any man is able to see in Christ, depends almost 
 wholly upon what light is shining in at the time upon his 
 own spirit. An untutored savage, looking up into the heavens 
 at nieht, fails to see what the learned astronomer sees. 
 Great discoveries of truth are made not to the body, but 
 to the spirit. Newton had seen a thousand apples fall to the 
 ground without learning any thing from the sight ; but at 
 last he saw one fall which showed him something he had 
 never perceived before. Spiritual things are spiritually dis- 
 cerned. 
 
 Nevertheless the coming of this poor man produced a 
 great sensation in Nazareth. He was a Nazarene among 
 Nazarenes. He had come back to his own countr}^ His 
 name was ringing through the land. His fame had gone 
 into all the region. Crowds followed him from city to city, 
 and into the desert places : they hung upon his lips, eager to 
 catch every word ; they sought to touch even the hem of his 
 garment, thinking that virtue would come out upon them and 
 heal them. This mighty Teacher and Healer had come back 
 to the town in which he had been brought up. 
 
 And when the sabbath was come, he entered the syna- 
 gogue, as his custom was, and began to teach. Many were 
 out that day. Hearing him, they " were astonished, saying, 
 Whence hath this man these things ? and, What is the wis- 
 dom that is given unto this man, and what mean such mighty 
 works wrought by his hands ? " 
 
670 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 Here was something not to be accounted for in the ordi- 
 nary way ; something not in their books. It was common 
 enough to find a man with less wisdom and power than he 
 oiio-ht to have, but here was one who had more wisdom and 
 power than his teachers. He had more wisdom and power 
 than circumstances seemed to warrant. The authority and 
 force of his teaching went beyond any thing they had heard. 
 He had ventured to surpass their trachtions. The wisdom 
 and power they could not deny. All who heard him were 
 astonished and charmed by the gracious words proceeding 
 out of his mouth. 
 
 Whence did he get such wisdom ? By what power were 
 such mighty works wrought ? He came from no accredited 
 school ; he had upon himself the stamp of no master in 
 Israel ; there was absolutely no one to vouch for him, and 
 he spoke wholly on his own account. He had been appro- 
 bated by no association, ordained by no council, and was 
 without sanction from the doctors. All this was irregular and 
 unpardonable. What right had a carpenter to instruct them 
 in the things of the kingdom of God? "Is not this the 
 carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses 
 and Judas and Simon ? and are not his sisters here with us ?" 
 The fact that his sisters were there with them, was, of course, 
 the best of reasons why they should refuse to listen to his 
 heavenly wisdom. 
 
 '* To assign," says Coleridge, " a feeling and a determina- 
 tion of will as a satisfactory reason for embracing or rejecting 
 this or that opinion or belief, is of ordinary occurrence, and 
 sure to obtain the sympathy and suffrages of the company." 
 This method of proceeding, Coleridge goes on to say in the 
 same note, " seems little less irrational than to apply the nose 
 to a picture, and to decide on its genuineness by the sense 
 of smell." Perhaps such proceedings are not unheard of in 
 our own day. It may be that Christ is now rejected for no 
 better reason. He was one of their own number, a man like 
 themselves : therefore they would not hear him. They were 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 67 1 
 
 offended in him. They had not yet learned that truth so 
 finely expressed by Browning : — 
 
 " O Soul ! it shall be 
 A face like my face that receives thee ; a man like to me, 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by forever ; a hand like this hand 
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee. See the Christ stand." 
 
 They saw the Christ stand in the streets of their own 
 village, but he seemed to them only a poor man. No light 
 was shining in on their spirits. Perhaps the evil suggestions 
 of envious Jews were right. Possibly he had a devil, and did 
 his mighty works by the power of Beelzebub. So the scribes 
 had said. Their amazement turned rapidly to hostility. Did 
 he come by his knowledge and eloquence in fair and honest 
 ways ? Might it not be unhallowed wisdom ? No wonder 
 Jesus said, " A prophet is not without honor save in his own 
 country." 
 
 The same blindness and folly appear on a smaller scale 
 in our own day. Some years ago Professor Wilson wrote, 
 that, "As the Northern Highlanders do not admire Waverley, 
 so, I presume, the South Highlanders despise Guy Manner- 
 ing. The Westmoreland peasants think Wordsworth a fool. 
 In Borrowdale, Southey is not known to exist. I met ten 
 men in Hawick who do not think Hogg a poet ; and the 
 whole city of Glasgow think me a madman." . . . 
 
 Into strange and foreign countries must the gospel go, to 
 find willing and obedient hearts. He who marvelled at the 
 great faith found not in Israel, but in the breast of a Roman 
 centurion, marvelled also at the great lack of faith shown by 
 those who lived in his own country. He had not expected 
 to be so disappointed in them. He really marvelled, with a 
 feeling of genuine surprise. A great light was shining in 
 the darkness, and it was not taken down into the darkness ; 
 the darkness comprehended it not. 
 
672 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 WILLARD G. SPERRY. 
 
 [Sermons by the Monday Club. Fourteenth Series. Boston : 1SS9. Pp. 17S-1S0.I 
 
 The Pharisees, with a few honorable exceptions, were 
 hostile to Christ during- his ministry. They were a party 
 much more numerous than the Sadducees, and nearer to the 
 hearts of the common people. The elders and scribes and 
 "the members of the great council were Pharisees. These 
 were more patriotic, more zealous in religion, more merciful 
 as judges, than their rivals. And yet they were spiritually 
 blind, and so were unfit to be religious leaders. They were 
 hypocrites, personating a holy character which was not their 
 own. 
 
 It is very remarkable that our Lord nevfer tried to conciliate 
 them. He never excused their faults or extolled their virtues. 
 To him their religious zeal was detestable. " Ye compass sea 
 and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye 
 make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves." 
 The twenty-third chapter of Matthew records seven woes 
 which he pronounced against them. Nothing in the denun- 
 ciations of John the Baptist approaches in awful severity 
 this arraignment of the Pharisees. Christ never souo-ht or 
 accepted their patronage. No doubt he would have welcomed 
 them as disciples, — with one who came to him by night, he 
 conversed calmly and kindly, — but they seemed to him the 
 most hopeless class with which he had to deal, and with 
 unsparing hand he hurled against them the thunderbolts of 
 righteous indignation. It is no wonder that the Pharisees 
 hated Christ intensely. 
 
 They watched him, sent spies to entangle him in his talk ; 
 and, failing to make headway against his teaching and inilu- 
 ence, resolved to compass his death. It boded no good to 
 the cause of justice, when Sadducees and Pharisees, laying 
 aside for the time their hatred of each other, united against 
 him. 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 673 
 
 TJie motive ivas envy. Two Evangelists have been careful 
 to tell us that the chief priests were " moved with envy," and 
 that the motive was known to Pilate, 
 
 The earthly life of the Son of God was in many respects so 
 unenviable that the thought of envy at first occasions surprise. 
 He was a man of Nazareth ; at home a carpenter, and abroad 
 a humble wayfarer. He had no advantage of wealth or 
 station. He made no attempt to secure the patronage of civil 
 or religious leaders. He was far too modest and unpretending 
 to use any politic arts for the sake of pushing his claims. His 
 limited successes in preaching the Gospel of his kingdom 
 were chiefly among poor and despised classes. How came 
 it about, then, that rich and haughty Sadducees envied him ? 
 The truth is, that envy is a passion of blacker face than the 
 mere feeling of disquiet at sight of the worldly success of 
 others. In a heart which is wholly at peace with God, and 
 which delights in him, envy cannot find a place. The feeling 
 of pain or discontent in view of the goodness or happiness or 
 power of another, will not be likely to enter, and it cannot 
 remain, in the heart which keeps itself " in the love of God." 
 " Love envieth not." But the heart that is apart from God 
 and unreconciled to him, lacking a worthy object for its affec- 
 tion, is a prey to unrest. Sometimes it must needs be discon- 
 tented. And then the sight of spiritual peace and happiness 
 in others awakens that sense of lack and that pain of contrast 
 which we call envy. 
 
 It may be hardly more than a tinge of feeling, or it may 
 grow to be a dominant and malignant passion. Lord Bacon 
 said : " A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth 
 virtue in others, for men's minds will either feed upon their 
 own good or upon others' evil ; and who wanteth the one will 
 prey upon the other ; and whoso is out of hope to attain 
 another's virtue, will seek to come at even hand by depressing 
 another's fortune." It is not strange, then, that in the disor- 
 dered souls of men in every age the base passion of envy has 
 had a large place. Cain looked with envious eyes upon Abel, 
 
674 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 unto whose offering " the Lord had respect." The patriarchs 
 envied Joseph because he was the son of Israel's old age, 
 and especially beloved. Unjust citizens of Athens voted for 
 the banishment of Aristides the Just. Themistocles envied 
 him, and aroused an envious hatred in the hearts of others. 
 A whole chapter of moral philosophy is contained in the case 
 of that ignorant man, who, when about to vote for the banish- 
 ment of Aristides, was asked if Aristides had done him wrong. 
 " No," he replied, " and I do not even know him; but it irri- 
 tates me to hear him everywhere called The JustT 
 
 In like manner the wisdom and goodness and power of 
 our Lord irritated the Sadducees. They came to look upon 
 it all as a personal injury. How could they maintain their 
 place as spiritual leaders, and keepers of the law, if he were 
 allowed to teach in the temple ? Their envy darkened into 
 malignant hatred. Envy nailed Christ to the cross. Whenever 
 we feel the smallest stir of envy within our own souls, we 
 ought to implore the loving Spirit of God to drive it out. For 
 envy is a cancerous malady. It " keeps no holidays." Well 
 saith the proverb, " A sound heart is the life of the flesh ; but 
 envy is the rottenness of the bones." 
 
 C. J. VAUGHAN. 
 
 [University Sermons. London: iS88. Pp. 47-51.] 
 
 Take into your hand one of these four biographies of 
 Jesus Christ. Come afresh, as far as possible, out of the 
 light of previous faith and previous knowledge. If I had 
 this only, what should I think of Christ ? Stand in the first 
 place at some distance from the picture ; lose its separate 
 lines, and view it only in its effect. If this were all I knew, 
 what should I think of Christ ? 
 
 I am struck first of all by hi'- conformity with the name 
 by which he commonly described himself, that of the " Son 
 of man." I am struck in every sense by his humanity. Such 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 675 
 
 a man, such a real man, in every sense : so manly, so manful, 
 so humane, so human. Such a strength, such a tenderness, 
 such help, such sympathy, such power, such love. So I run 
 on ; and I love to do so, because I am persuaded that it is in 
 such general reflections as these that the foundation of faith 
 is laid. We must begin with the Son of man, before we 
 can hope to end with the Son of God. " What think ye of 
 Christ ? Whose Son is he ? " We must speak of him as 
 David's Son, before we can rise to the contemplation of him 
 as David's Lord. 
 
 Let me draw out this conception into a few particulars. 
 I am perplexed where to begin : let me begin anywhere ; it 
 matters not. 
 
 ( 1 ) What a force of will ! Who ever said of him that he 
 was not firm, first of all, with himself? Who ever pretended 
 to say that he was not holy, self-governed, his own master, 
 resolute to deny himself that which was wrong, absolute in 
 his refusal ever to indulge himself to the neglect of duty, 
 perfect in his control over the power of temptation ? Stand 
 forth, ye his enemies, and cast a stone, if you can, at the 
 spotlessness of his character ! 
 
 (2) What a perfect sincerity! When did he ever stoop 
 to the language of complaisance or flattery? In what in- 
 stance did he ever call a word or an act by a false name ? 
 How boldly did rebuke vice ! If I might say it (and you 
 know that I do say it) with entire reverence, what an exam- 
 ple was he of our English virtues ! That perfect straight- 
 forwardness, that freedom from artifice and from finesse, that 
 directness of purpose, and that plainness of speech — oh, let 
 us not fail to recognize in him who is called in prophetic 
 language " the Desire of all nations," the desire, the satisfac- 
 tion, the resting-place, of this ! 
 
 (3) Yet, on the other hand, what a tenderness of feeling, 
 what a gentleness of spirit ! It is not often that strength and 
 sweetness meet in one person : when they do meet, the 
 union, even the imperfect union such as we see it sometimes 
 
676 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 in ,man, is irresistibly attractive. But when were these two 
 quahties ever so united as they were in Christ ? The sight 
 of suffering — of bodily suffering, of mental suffering, of 
 spiritual suffering — touched him to the quick. And yet his 
 own life was a life of suffering made up of all these. He 
 himself hungered ; no stone would he turn into bread for his 
 own relief. But when he saw the multitudes distressed for 
 food in a desert place, instantly he had compassion, and could 
 not bear to let them depart without a bountiful, if it were 
 even a miraculous, supply. He was houseless and homeless ; 
 he was lonely in heart ; he was falsely accused ; he was 
 scorned and taunted and malisfned : all these things he re- 
 ceived as his daily portion, and saw in them the very cup 
 of sorrow which his Father gave for his drinking. But when 
 he saw another's soul sad, or suffering, or sorrow-laden, the 
 sympathy which he asked not for himself was ever ready on 
 his part for another. 
 
 (4) And thus we reach the unselfishness of his character. 
 What a life of self-denial, of self-sacrifice, of self-forgetful- 
 ness, was his ! What a long and weary day was each one of 
 the days of that life ! From early morning till late evening, 
 he v/as ministerino- to others ; teaching, healino-, listenincr to 
 sorrows, and relieving them ; opening heavenly things to the 
 ignorant and the earthly-minded, and then turning to make 
 earth itself less dreary to the careworn and the broken- 
 hearted. He never said to any one that he was too hungry, 
 or too weary, or too sad at heart, to attend to him, and that 
 instantly. On his way to the house of mourning, he is 
 thronged and pressed by conflicting applications. Never 
 did he express impatience of any importunity ; never did 
 he ask a moment's respite from the oppressive monotony 
 of supplication, 
 
 (5) And look, once again, at the humility of the charac- 
 ter ; the absence of all parade and all display in its benevo- 
 lence. Many men and many women, living a life of devoted 
 charity, have been the heralds of their own virtues ; with 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 677 
 
 whatever professions of humility, they have taken pains to 
 let others hear of their deeds : sometimes they have been 
 visibly elated by their own triumphs, and have shown a sen- 
 sitiveness to reproof or disparagement contrasting somewhat 
 painfully with loud professions of self-knowledge and self- 
 abasement. How unlike is this to him whose servants they 
 call themselves ! Those repeated charges to the subjects of 
 his marvellous cures, that they should not make him known ; 
 that habit of withdrawinor himself from admirinof crowds, and 
 refusing popular demonstrations ; that description of him, in 
 the words of prophecy, by an eye-witness of his ministry, 
 " He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any man hear 
 his voice in the streets," — do not these things add a yet 
 further mark of perfection to that unexampled character, and 
 crown with a distinctive glory the person of the Son of 
 man ? 
 
 (6) And then we pass to the elevation of Christ's charac- 
 ter. What a superiority we see in him to all the infirmities, 
 and to all the littlenesses, of human nature ! How did he 
 rise above all considerations of earthly position and advan- 
 tage ! What an indifference did he show to the inconven- 
 iences, and to the slights, of poverty ! With what a majesty 
 of conscious independence did he confront the arrogance 
 alike of temporal and of spiritual authority, — giving honor 
 where honor was due, but assertinof for himself that freedom 
 of speech and of will which is the attribute and birthright of 
 man ! How did he dignify and ennoble the state of the poor, 
 and equalize (in the only just sense) all ranks and conditions 
 of men in reference to the two chief tribunals, of God and 
 of conscience ! And how did he show in his own example 
 the perfect compatibility of this moral and spiritual equality 
 with the most entire obedience to law, and the most becoming 
 respect for station and office ! For this reason, it may be, 
 amongst others, he chose for himself upon earth the condi- 
 tion of the workingman and of the poor, that he might show 
 forth at once the duty and the dignity of that largest class of 
 
678 TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 mankind : its duty in obedience, its dignity in free will ; its 
 duty in observing order, and in paying respect to power ; its 
 dignity in being inwardly, in heart and in soul, not the servant 
 of man, but of God only. 
 
 WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS. 
 
 [Sermons by the Monday Club. Thirteenth Series. Boston: 1SS8. Tp- 32-36, 39.] 
 
 Jesus in Phoenicia ! To the Jerusalem Jews, this north 
 land was a sink of idolatry. Even the Galilseans spoke of 
 their frontagers as " dogs," " heathen," " unclean," " outcasts." 
 Uncircumcised aliens, left unextirpated by Joshua and his 
 conquering soldiers, were these Gentiles. Out of this ill- 
 omened quarter had come Ethbaal and Jezebel, and the 
 priests of Astarte, border-ruffians in the days of the judges, 
 and the raiders who in the days of the kings had desolated 
 Israel. Apparently only twice was Syrian contact wholesome 
 to the Holy Land and people. These were when Hiram the 
 king and Hiram the architect, with Phoenician lumber and 
 Phoenician art, contributed to the glory of Solomon's temple, 
 and again when Elisha won trophies of grace in Naaman 
 and his company. Except one or two bright lines of asso- 
 ciation, the whole spectrum of memory was that of darkness. 
 Added to all else was the thought of Phoenicia, the slave-land 
 to which Judah's children had been sold in the days of Joel. 
 
 We, who are not bound to inherit the prejudices of 
 bigoted Jews, have mental associations quite different. To us, 
 Phoenicians are equally human with Jews or Samaritans. We 
 remember that Phoenicia gave us alphabets, inventors, bold 
 navigators who sailed even to Britain ; while to the inartistic 
 Jews she gave artists, sculptors, decorators, jewellers, and 
 even the very letters with which Holy Scripture was written. 
 We remember that the father of the Jews was once " a 
 Syrian ready to perish ; " that to Sarcpta, as Jesus recalled, 
 came Elijah to bring relief, and himself to receive succor from 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 679 
 
 a poor widow ; that the elect leper, saved by faith, was of the 
 same nation. To us, taught by the Saviour of all mankind, 
 a Syro-Phoenician woman is as human as is a Hebrew. 
 
 Driven out by heresy-hunters, hounded by malignant 
 Pharisees, Jesus would escape for a while the turbulence of 
 Galilee, consequent upon the execution of John the Baptist, 
 and seek seclusion on the edge of his native land. 
 
 Though that part of the earth in Palestine trodden by the 
 man Jesus is no larger than the State of Delaware, yet this 
 village to which he came was probably the northern limit of 
 the Christ's journeyings. Only once, as a babe, a refugee to 
 Egypt, had Jesus been outside of Palestine. His temporary 
 home was now, most probably, not beyond the border-line. 
 Yet even here was his privacy intruded upon. Necessity of 
 mother-woe knew no law. A woman, a mother, had seen and 
 felt so profoundly the sorrow of another, even a child, that it 
 had become her own. Yet vicarious mental suffering had 
 brought no relief to the body of the pain-racked child. . . . 
 
 How much of selfishness, how much of convenience, was 
 there in the disciples' importunate request, " Send her away, 
 for she crieth after us " ! There was not much patience, we 
 trow, in this. It was a ready way of getting rid of a possible 
 " scene." There is no ring of truth in their easy solution 
 of the trouble in hand. It reminds us too much of Caiaphas. 
 How often in this life do we find proffered politeness a stiletto 
 thrust, while under seeming severity lurks love ! Faithful are 
 the wounds of a friend. 
 
 Even the answer of Jesus, when made, seems to repel. It 
 is Jewish, or, if of the quality of ordinary' human nature, is 
 like that of the Sychar woman, and not of the good Samari- 
 tan. Quite different from his " Other sheep have I." The 
 case for the mother seems desperate. She must be bolder 
 than Esther, to proceed further. Yet we should like to have 
 seen his face as he said, " It is not meet to take the children's 
 meat, and cast it to the dogs." 
 
 Evidently she studied that face. She comes near, aiid 
 
68o TESTIMONY OF NINETEEN CENTURIES 
 
 worships him. She has learned what the Son of man wanted 
 her to know and to do truly. He was to her no longer a 
 wonder-working Jewish Messiah. The preconceived Christ 
 of vulgar tradition and Judaean expectancy faded from her 
 thoughts. She saw the Son of man, the Saviour of all men. 
 Dropping then a borrowed form of words, ignorantly used, 
 she cries out, " Lord, help me ! " 
 
 To such of the disciples and spectators, if any, who sympa- 
 thized with the woman, the answer of Jesus must have seemed 
 a dark saying ; but to the woman with the " ready wit of faith," 
 it was a parable, a lamp that struck a long bright ray of hope 
 on her path. Literature, with all her treasures of ages and 
 nations, contains no pearl more lustrous than this conversa- 
 tion : — 
 
 Jcsiis. — It is not proper to take the children's loaf, and 
 throw it to the dogs. 
 
 Woman. — No, but just as you say, Lord ; for the pet 
 does do eat the crumbs which fall from their masters' tables. 
 
 Like a skilful musician she had caught the strain and 
 finished the strophe. To the Jewish ear, the Master had 
 begun to tell a parable of the elect and reprobate, cov^enant 
 and aliens, of the home and the outcasts, of the children and 
 the curs. She, with her faith's power and in the light of that 
 eye, read between the lines the tiny parable of the children 
 and their pets, even the parable of humanity and its Saviour. 
 Her gentleness had made her great ; her trust had made her 
 mighty. No longer Canaanitish or Syro-Phcenician, she is 
 forever in sacred story as the woman great of faith, on whose 
 will was laid answer to prayer from the Holy One of God. 
 Her heart ringing chimes of joy, she goes homeward to fmd 
 her daughter no longer demon-smitten and possessed, but laid 
 in rest, thougli prostrate, " upon her bed." . . . 
 
 How sharply contrasting are the scenes of modern Chris- 
 tendom with those of the ancient world, — of London and New 
 York, with Benares and Canton ; of Christian with Pagan 
 lands! How manifold are the charities of the civilization 
 
TO JESUS OF NAZARETH. 68 1 
 
 based on the Bible ! " Buddhism covered China with monas- 
 teries and images; Christianity covered Europe with churches 
 and charitable institutions," says Edkins, long resident in the 
 Middle Kingdom. Yet the spirit of Jesus has caused the 
 asylum and hospital and life-saving station to spring up. 
 Christendom but repeats the scenes of healing on the 
 Galilaean hills. Now, as then, Jesus is the centre. In every 
 missionary dispensary, where, as of old, the blind, dumb, halt, 
 diseased, and possessed of mysterious malady, are cast at the 
 physician's feet to be healed, Christ is there, for he sent 
 missionary and physician. We believe in the faith-cure, 
 rightly understood. We rejoice also in every real discovery 
 or improvement in science, anaesthetics, surgery, and medi- 
 cine, for " this also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, who 
 is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working." 
 
INDEXES. 
 
 683 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 Abbott, Edwin A., 320, 424. 
 Abbott, Jacob, 129. 
 Abbott, John S. C, 478. 
 Abbott, Lyman, 125. 
 Adams, Nehemiah, 197. 
 Alexander, James W., 237. 
 Alexander, William, 614. 
 Alexander, William L., 167. 
 Allon, Henry, 173. 
 Andrews, Samuel J., 196. 
 Armitage, Thomas, 158. 
 Arnold, Matthew, 374. 
 Arnold, Thomas, 179. 
 Auberlen, Carl August, 84. 
 Augustine, 34. 
 Austin, William, 85. 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 40. 
 Bacon, Leonard W., 583. 
 Barker, Joseph, 260. 
 Barnes, Albert, 203. 
 Barrow, Isaac, 68. 
 Barrows, E. P., 273. 
 Bartlett, Samuel C, 272. 
 Bartol, Cyrus A., 477. 
 Bathgate, William, 266. 
 Bayne, Peter, 29S, 343. 
 Beard, Charles, 495. 
 Beard, John R., ui. 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 383. 
 Bellows, Henry Whitney, 242, 591. 
 Bernard, Henry Norris, 61 1. 
 Bernard, Thomas D., 154. 
 Bersier, Eugene, 284. 
 Bixby, James Thompson, 393. 
 Blackie, John Stuart, 250. 
 Blaikie, William Garden, 473. 
 BIyden, Edward W., 581. 
 Boardman, George Dana, 411. 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 87. 
 Bossuet, Jacques Benigne, 43. 
 
 Eougaud, £mi!e, 536. 
 Boyle, Robert, 81. 
 Brace, Charles Loring, 475. 
 Brooke, Stopford A., 150. 
 Brooks, Arthur, 574. 
 Brooks, Phillips, 315, 431. 
 Browne, Edward Harold, 300. 
 Bruce, Alexander Balman, 480. 
 Buckminster, Joseph Stevens, 96. 
 Bulfinch, Stephen Greenleaf, 655. 
 Bunsen, Christian C. J., 153. 
 Burgh, James, 79. 
 Burnap, George W., 121. 
 Bushnell, Horace, 219. 
 Butler, Joseph, 431. 
 
 Caird, John, 56S. 
 Cairns, John, 448. 
 Campbell, Alexander, 98. 
 Candlish, Robert S., 3S0. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 169. 
 Chaffin, William L., 523. 
 Chadwick, George A., 365. 
 Chalmers, Thomas, 94. 
 Channing, William Ellery, 210, 405. 
 Chapin, Edwin Hubbell, 244. 
 Chateaubriand, Fran9ois A., 63. 
 Christlieb, Theodore, 256. 
 Chubb, Thomas, 45. 
 Clarke, James Freeman, 393, 470. 
 Clement of Alexandria, 33. 
 Clement of Rome, 33. 
 Clodd, Edward, 494. 
 Cobbe, Frances Power, 356. 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 105. 
 Collier, Robert Laird, 246. 
 Colenso, John William, 598. 
 Conder, Eustace R., 316. 
 Cook, F. C, 3S9. 
 Cook, Joseph, 586. 
 Coquerel, Athanase, 261. 
 685 
 
686 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 Crosby, Howard, 438. . 
 Cunningham, John, 265. 
 Cyprian, 36. 
 
 Dale, R. W., 171. 
 Delitzsch, Franz, 141. 
 Dewey, Orville, 243. 
 De Wette, Wilhelm M. L., 342, 
 Dickens, Charles, 2S9. 
 Diman, J. Lewis, 146. 
 Dorner, Isaac August, 550. 
 Drummond, James, 131. 
 
 Eclectic Review, 276. 
 Edersheim, Alfred, 479. 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 78. 
 Emerson, Ralph W., 149. 
 Encyclopasdia Britannica, 446. 
 Erskine, Thomas, 84. 
 Evans, Mark, 640. 
 Everett, Edward, 191. 
 Ewald, Heinrich, 126. 
 
 Faber, Frederick W., 115. 
 
 Fairbairn, A. M., 439, 484. 
 
 Farrar, Frederick W., 290. 
 
 Fichte, Johann G., 62. 
 
 Fisher, George Park, 143, 664. 
 
 Foss, Cyrus D., 351. 
 
 Foster, John, 85. 
 
 Fowle, Thomas Welbanke, 352, 531. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 60. 
 
 Furness, William Henry, 363. 
 
 Gannett, Ezra Stiles, 377. 
 
 Geikie, Cunningham, 294. 
 
 Gibson, John Monro, 501. 
 
 Gladden, Washington, 647. 
 
 Gladstone, William Evvart, 217. 
 
 Godet, Frederick, 320, 518. 
 
 Godman, William D., 409. 
 
 Goethe, Johann W., 285. 
 
 Goodwin, Henry M., 164. 
 
 Gospel for the Nineteenth Century, 631. 
 
 Greg, William Rathbone, 175. 
 
 Greenleaf, Simon, 313. 
 
 Griflis, William Elliot, 678. 
 
 Griffitii, Tiiomas, 418. 
 
 Griffiths, William, 372. 
 
 Grotius, Hugo, 39. 
 
 Guizot, Fran9ois V. G., 65. 
 
 Hall, Newman, 278. 
 Hall, Robert, 82. 
 
 Hanna, William. 86. 
 Hardvvick, Charles, 255. 
 Harris, John, 302. 
 Harris, Samuel, 595. 
 Hartley, David, 80. 
 Hase, Karl, 109. 
 Hausrath, Adolf, 499. 
 Hayward, Edward Farwell, 511. 
 Hedge, Frederic Henry, 275, 429. 
 Hegel, Georg W. F., 64. 
 Hill, George, 187. 
 Hill, Thomas, 504. 
 Hinsdale, Burke Aaron, 652. 
 Hodge, Charles, 142. 
 Hooker, Richard, 46. 
 Hopkins, Mark, 326. 
 Hughes, Thomas, 174. 
 Huntington, Frederick D., 319. 
 Hulton, Richard Holt, 434. 
 
 Ignatius, 37. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 50. 
 Johnson, Herrick, 152. 
 Johnson, Samuel, 49. 
 Josephus, Flavius, 38. 
 
 Kant, Immanuel, 51. 
 Keim, Theodor, 551. 
 Kenipis, Thomas a, 40. 
 King, Thomas Starr, 247. 
 Kingsley, Charles, 202. 
 
 Lacordaire, Jean B. H., 156. 
 Lange, Johann Peter, 162. 
 Law, Edmund, 66. 
 Law, W'illiam, 72. 
 Leathcs, Stanley, 2S8. 
 Lecky, William E. H., 170, 376. 
 Lee,J. W., 5:9. 
 Leighton, Robert, 59. 
 Lesley, J. Peter, 600. 
 Liddon, Henry Parry, 333. 
 Livcrmore, Abbott A., 370. 
 LocJve, John, 75, 402. 
 Lorimer, George C, 493, 542. 
 Lotze, Hermann, 588. 
 Lowrie, John M., 296. 
 Luthardt, Ch. Ernst, 177. 
 Luther, Martin, 38. 
 
 Macaulav, Thomas B., 180. 
 MacDonald, George, 416. 
 MacLarcn, Alexander, 225. 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 687 
 
 Magee, William Connor, 556. 
 Magoon, Elisha L., 151. 
 Martyr, Justin, 37. 
 Martensen, Hans Lassen, 559. 
 Martineau, James, 341, 382, 433. 
 Mason, Arthur James, 603. 
 Mason, Edward B., 669. 
 Massillon, Jean B., 45. 
 Matheson, George, 396. 
 McCosh, James, 226. 
 Mill, John Stuart, 324. 
 Milman, Henry Hart, 139. 
 Moorhouse, J., 163. 
 Mozoomdar, Protap Chunder, 441. 
 Mulford, Elisha, 445. 
 Miiller, Julius, 217. 
 Munger, Theodore T., 456. 
 Murphy, Joseph J., 165. 
 
 Naville, Ernest, 128. 
 Neander, Johann A., 91. 
 Newcome, William, 56. 
 Nicoll, W. R., 140. 
 Norton, Andrews, 176, 322. 
 
 Olshausen, Hermann, 116. 
 Origen, 35. 
 
 Paine, Thomas, 52. 
 Paley, William, 6r. 
 Palfrey, Cazneau, 465. 
 Palfrey, John Gorham, 227. 
 Park, Edwards A., 557. 
 Parker, Joseph, 234. 
 Parker, Theodore, 239. 
 Pascal, Blaise, 41. 
 Peabody, Andrew P., 336, 571. 
 Peabody, Ephraim, 258. 
 Perowne, E. H., 144. 
 Picton, J. Allanson, 265. 
 Pierson, Arthur T., 403. 
 Pinnock, W. H., 141. 
 Plumptre, Edward Hayes, 236. 
 Polycarp, 35. 
 Porter, Noah, 166. 
 Post, Truman, 287. 
 Porteous, Beilby, 83. 
 Pressense, Edmond de, 117, 160. 
 Priestley, Joseph, 52. 
 Punshon, William Morley, 174. 
 Putnam, George, 339. 
 
 Quarterly Review, 269. 
 Quinet, Edgar, 103. 
 
 Raleigh, Alexander, 296. 
 Ranke, Leopold, 76. 
 Reid, John, 147. 
 Reinhard, Francis V., 194. 
 Renan, Joseph Ernest, 155. 
 Richter, Jean Paul, 369. 
 Riggenbach, Christoph J., 113. 
 Ritschl, Albrecht, 102. 
 Robertson, Frederick W,, 214. 
 Rogers, Ebenezer P., 421. 
 Rogers, Henry, 223. 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 47. 
 Roussel, Napoleon, 251. 
 Row, Charles Adolphus, 318, 333. 
 Ruskin, John, 455. 
 
 Schaff, Philip, 344. 
 
 Schenkel, Daniel, 104. 
 
 Schmid, C. F., 317. 
 
 Scougal, Henry, 77. 
 
 Sears, Edmund Hamilton, 325. 
 
 Seeley, John Robert, 198. 
 
 Sen, Keshub Chunder, 18S. 
 
 Shakspeare, William, 48. 
 
 Simon, D. W., 391. 
 
 Simpson, Matthew, 565. 
 
 Smith, G. Vance, 362. 
 
 Smith, Goldwin, 279, 381. 
 
 Smith, Henry B., 264. 
 
 Smith, John Pye, 99. 
 
 Smith, R. Bosworth, 274. 
 
 Smyth, Julian K., 593. 
 
 Smyth, Newman, 452. 
 
 Sperr3% Willard G., 672. 
 
 Spinoza, Benedict, 42. 
 
 Spurgeon, Charles Haddon, 469. 
 
 Stalker, James, 4S9. 
 
 Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, 257. 
 
 Steel, Thomas Henr\% 649. 
 
 Stier, Rudolf, 105. 
 
 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 273. 
 
 Storrs, Richard Salter, 361. 543. 
 
 Strauss, David Friedrich, 2S6, 368. 
 
 Swing, David, 432. 
 
 Talcott, Daniel Smith, 286. 
 Talmage, T. De Witt, 5S7. 
 Tauler, John, 441. 
 Tayler, John James, 337. 
 Taylor, Isaac, 100. 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 44. 
 Tholuck, Friedrich A. G., 124. 
 Thom, John Hamilton, 1S6. 
 Thompson, Hugh Miller, 604. 
 
688 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 Thompson, Joseph P., 159. 
 Thornwell, James 11., 274. 
 Tischendorf, Constantine, 368. 
 Tolstoi, Leo Nikolaevich, 621. 
 Townsend, Luther T., 249. 
 Trench, Richard Chenevix, 119. 
 Tulloch, John, 245. 
 Tyler, William S., 386. 
 
 Ullmaiin, Karl, 107. 
 
 Van Oosterzee, John Jacob, 118. 
 Vaughan, C. J., 674. 
 Verplanck, Gulian C, 92. 
 Vincent, Marvin R., 440. 
 Vinet, Alexander, 125. 
 Voltaire, Frangois M. A., 46. 
 
 Walker, C. S., 658. 
 
 Walker, James, 235. 
 Walker, James B., 137. 
 Ware, Henry, jun., 169. 
 Washburn, Edward A., 267. 
 Watson, Robert A., 507. 
 Webster, Daniel, 185. 
 Weiss, Bernhard, 444. 
 Wescott, Brooke Foss, 661. 
 Wesley, John, 49. 
 Whately, Richard, 97, 414. 
 Williams, John, 538. 
 Williams, William R., 135. 
 Winthrop, Robert C, 192. 
 Wood, William Converse, 667. 
 Wordsworth, John, 506. 
 Wright, G. Frederick, 508. 
 
 Young, John, 181. 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Abba, Father, 499. 
 
 Abbott, Edwin A. Founder of Christian- 
 ity, investigate like any other, influence 
 on his enemy Paul, type of sonship to 
 God, Teacher and Reformer, authority 
 to supersede Sabbath, visible centre of 
 religion, image of invisible Father, his 
 principle of Brotherhood the hope of the 
 race, how could he have been deceived, 
 as Son of God, 322-330. Allowed no 
 distinctions of rank, unlike Lycurgus, left 
 only himself and not law. Brotherhood 
 and Fatherhood, simplicity, but greatest 
 social Reformer, not disorganizer but 
 organizer, against worship of might, con- 
 structiveness consisted in being what he 
 was, his kingdom of God fundamental, 
 Christ's grand scheme, 424-429, Preface. 
 
 Abbott, Jacob. His Perfection blinds to 
 his excellence, example, courage, rebukes 
 Peter's mistake and Judas' treachery, his 
 mission conducted fearlessly, could use a 
 scourge, 129-131. 
 
 Abbott, John S. C. Love to God, love 
 to men the only goodness, " no good man 
 not moulded by the principles of Jesus of 
 Nazareth," 478, 479. 
 
 Abbott, Lyman. " If only a Galilaean 
 rabbi, justly condemned," not by side of 
 the sages, "either Son of God, or false 
 prophet," 125. 
 
 Abraham, 63, 145, 606, 659. 
 
 Achilles, 367, 371. 
 
 " Adamantine Fortitude," 379. 
 
 Adams, Nehemiah. "Never was such a 
 heart," "his great love made him Saviour," 
 "his nature to love," " Length, breadth, 
 depth, height," will love old as well as 
 young, 197, 198, Preface. 
 
 Adrian, erected temples to Christ, 62,- 
 
 Advocate, Bossuet, 44. 
 
 .^neid of Virgil, 207. 
 
 ^schylus, 209, 528, 529, 61 r. 
 
 Africa and Christ, 5S2. 
 
 " Africa bore his cross after him," 582. 
 
 Agamemnon, 371. 
 
 Agassiz, 504. 
 
 Aged, Jesus loves, 198. 
 
 Ajax, 145. 
 
 Alexander, 89, 127, 158, 209, 235, 253, 346, 
 371,440, 467.496, 565, 611. 
 
 Alexander Severus, Emperor, had Christ's 
 statue, 63. 
 
 Alexander, James W. Person of Christ, 
 perfect model. Founder of Christianity, 
 unique, original, unexplainable by any 
 thing previous, cannot be traced to age 
 or country, cannot parallel or reproduce, 
 satisfies moral nature, our Lord, his life 
 the world's great moral lesson, 237-239, 
 Preface. 
 
 Alexander, Willlim. Exceptional in the 
 spiritual world, the witness of his enemies, 
 and friends, no consciousness of sin, first- 
 born from dead, the Wisdom of God, "his 
 words created Christendom and civili- 
 zation ; the creative beginning of new 
 creation of holiness and beneficence," 
 614-621. 
 
 Alexander, Wm. Lindsay. "Absolutely 
 faultless," combination of excellences. 
 Meekness and Majesty, Firmness and 
 Gentleness, Zeal and Prudence, Calmness 
 and Warmth, Patience, 167-169. 
 
 Alexandrian Library, 456. 
 
 Alfred, 477. 
 
 Allibone, Preface. 
 
 Allston, Washington, 327. 
 
 Allon, Henry. "The one perfect life," 
 "all human excellence blended," self-con- 
 sciousness peculiar to him, asserts his 
 faultlessness, and the source of humanity's 
 life, 173. 
 
 "Alps of goodness," Reid, 14S. 
 
 689 
 
690 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Andrews, Samuel J. "Christianity is 
 Christ," Jesus " the Living One," " Chris- 
 tianity lives as long as he lives," 196, 197. 
 
 Angelico, P'ra, 527. 
 
 "Anno Domini," 314, 406, 414. 
 
 Antony (Monk), 205. 
 
 Apollo, 405 ; Apollo Belvidere, 205, 207, 
 324- 
 
 "Arabian Nights," 210, 381. 
 
 Archimedes, 42, 530. 
 
 Aristides, 47, 674. 
 
 Aristotle, 127, 158, 323, 354, 375, 405, 565, 
 
 593- 
 
 Armitage, Thomas. "Wide empire of 
 thought," "nothing ill-balanced," Love 
 and Light blend, 158, 159, Preface. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew. " He restored the 
 intuition," hence he saved, gave eternal 
 life, repentance his method, peace his 
 secret, 374-376. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 39S, 454, 456, 642. 
 
 Arnold, Thomas. "Riches of his wis- 
 dom," " light growing more brilliant," 
 "universal range," "light and life of 
 every new country our minds discover," 
 179, 180. 
 
 Arnold, Thomas, 193. 
 
 Ascension, 39, 76, 83, 85; compared with 
 Elijah's, 125, 409, 461, 493. 
 
 Asceticism, not Christ-like, 61, 70, loi, 195, 
 274, 2S3, 294, 301, 426, 625. 
 
 Astarte, 67S. 
 
 Atonement, 447. See Cross, Sacrifice. 
 
 Aukerlen, Carl August. Resurrection, 
 Humanity's Ideal Crown of our race. 
 Surety and guaranty of our perfection, 84. 
 
 Augustine. Teacher (a great sea), Christ 
 Crucified, Miracle-Worker, 34, 35, Preface. 
 
 Augustine, 253, 268; six creative days, 617, 
 618. 
 
 Augustus, Caesar, 272, 361. 
 
 Austin, William. Command, but Gentle- 
 ness, Self-command, opposite traits 
 blended naturally, Meekness and Firm- 
 ness, Wisdom and Simplicity, no Stoic 
 severity, did no violence to human na- 
 ture, 85, 86. 
 
 Author, Jesus not, 5S4. See Writer. 
 
 Authority, command, 15, 20, 51, 54, 66, 89, 
 1 68, 221, 413. 
 
 "Avatar of God," 255. 
 
 Babel, salvation without Christ, Spurgcon, 
 469. 
 
 Bacon, Francis. Sacrifice for sin. Saviour, 
 E-tample and Pattern, Preacher, Founda- 
 tion, Intercessor, Lord, Miracle-Worker, 
 Resurrection, Redemption, finished his 
 Father's work, 40. 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 135, 294, 302, 321, 405, 565, 
 605, 616; on envy, 673, Preface. 
 
 Bacon, Leonard Woolsey. " Incom- 
 parable among the human race," his birth 
 the golden milestone of history, the con- 
 sensus of testimony, Christian, unchris- 
 tian, antichristian, symmetry and harmony, 
 unanimous wonder at Christ's perfect 
 manhood, 583-5S6. 
 
 Baptism into him, 15. 
 
 Barnabas, 473. 
 
 Barker, Joseph. Excited his nation, 
 keeps the world in a ferment, left a soci- 
 ety the wonder of the world, 260, 261. 
 
 Barnes, Albert. Perfection (Cicero), 
 Christ perfect, eighteen centuries, every- 
 where, evangelists describe perfect in all 
 circumstances, four men so describe him, 
 nothing like Christ in fiction, difficulties 
 of inventing character perfect for all time 
 overcome in Christ, placed him in situa- 
 tions, his life no fiction, 203-210, Preface. 
 
 Barrow, Isaac. Saviour, Goodness, Wis- 
 dom, Resurrection, Reason, Example, as 
 of best painters and generals, Sinless- 
 ness. Light, Calmness, Star to mariner. 
 Pillar of Fire, Sun of universe, Captain- 
 General of mankind. Perfect Example, 
 Heavenly Workmanship, Image, open to 
 Imitation, Condescension, Simplicity, no 
 Asceticism, Sun, Prayers not prolonged, 
 Zeal without violence, Obedient and Or- 
 derly, 68-72, Preface. 
 
 Barrows, Elijah P. No Asceticism or 
 Stoicism, made no war with human affec- 
 tions, lived among men, yet heavenly- 
 minded, his virtues not monarchical, 
 philosophic, monkish, but human, 273, 
 274. 
 
 Bartlett, Samuel Colcord. "Supreme 
 ascendency," Light of world. Renovation 
 of souls. Elevator of woman, 272. 
 
 Bartol, Cyrus A. Free Religion will 
 not displace Christianity, Goodness the 
 greatest talent, the Chief Pilot, the multi- 
 tudes have the bread of life from him ; 
 the law of nourishment and subsistence, 
 the Christ-ideal uplifts, the Lowly and 
 Lordly, 477, 478, Preface. 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 691 
 
 Bathgate, William. Transcendent mor- 
 al worth, his morality inconsistent with 
 deception in miracles, bent not to preju- 
 dices of the age, his miracles daily things, 
 and daily the Redeemer, 266, 267, 
 
 Bayne, Peter. Scepticism finds no flaw, 
 honest and pure, no character has had 
 such scrutiny, suffrage of the race pro- 
 nounces pure, a beam of white radiance, 
 as light of God's throne, influence on 
 institutions. Light of world. Example 
 inimitable, 29S-300, Preface. Infidel ad- 
 miration of Christ, Christians discern 
 holiness and celestial beauty, impressive 
 manifestations of supernatural power, 
 "one tear of Jesus over Jerusalem," 
 prayer for his murderers, Christianity 
 gives a Divine Spirit to reveal his beauty, 
 
 343> 344- 
 
 Bayne, Peter (Winthrop), 193. 
 
 Beard, Charles. "The strongest, most 
 enduring, most vivid force," " the great 
 names pale before his," "finished mani- 
 festation," "no fault in Jesus," God the 
 Father of mankind, 495-499. 
 
 Beard, John R. Founder of Christianity, 
 Divinity, Saviour, Miracle of Character, 
 "Jesus was, Jesus />," Humanity's Head, 
 Compassion for Sinful, Obedience, "sur- 
 passes all men in all virtues," 111-113. 
 
 Beatitudes, 308, 456 ; "peaceful," 523. 
 
 Beauty (art). See Jesus in Art. 
 
 Beauty (moral), 66, 76, 2,t,i, 343, 344, 370, 
 371, 377, 420; "perfect chrysolite," 496, 
 526; "unique, without limit," 527, 568, 
 669. 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward. No portrait, no 
 determination of personal appearance, a 
 personal power without a form, united 
 in himself all nationalities, Christianity is 
 faith in Christ, to live in him the marrow 
 of his teaching, he was universal, 383- 
 3S6. Christ's dignity was to be a man 
 among men, in all the inflection of human 
 moods, 654, 655. 
 
 " Be good, my dears." Scott, Walter, 49S. 
 
 Bellows, Henry Whitney. "A mighty 
 and shaping influence, a holy will, a 
 spiritual sovereignty," the Gulf-Stream, 
 242. All-sufficient Saviour, nearest to 
 God, Mediator with Father, words true 
 for all ages, " invented and illustrated 
 truths of highest thought and experience," 
 591-593- 
 
 Benedict (Monk), 206. 
 
 licncfactor, Massillon, 45. 
 
 Benevolence, 39, 43, 44, 45, 53, 56, 63, 77, 97, 
 107, 138, 142, 195, 303, 332, 336, 414, 485. 
 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 326. 
 
 Bcrditchcf circus, Tolstoi, 625. 
 
 Bernard, Henry Norris. "Everything 
 good in highest perfection," mental char- 
 acteristics, Fletcher of Madeley, Person 
 of Christ the power of Christianity, not 
 the Sermon on the Mount but the living 
 Saviour, 611-613. 
 
 Bernard, Thomas Dehany. "Sinless 
 humanity," "indwelling Godhead," Jesus 
 of the Gospels "a vivid reality," "con- 
 spicuous for truthfulness and life," 154, 
 
 155- 
 
 Bersier, Eugene. No miracles by John 
 Baptist but (same narrators) everywhere 
 by Jesus, the narrative no myth, nor mist}', 
 but clear, 2S4, 285. 
 
 Bible, " the moon of our darkness," 418. 
 
 BiXBY, JamesThompson. " I am the Life," 
 Truth's rough diamonds he cut, polished, 
 set in royal diadem, originality, changed 
 fishermen into preachers and martyrs, 
 the Life then the Life now, created 
 institutions, transformed men like Saul, 
 Teacher of Brotherhood, influence for 
 freedom and progress, slavery, gave 
 practical turn to religion, 393-396. 
 
 Blackie, John Stuart. The formative 
 Person of the Church, a Redeemer, Foun- 
 dation, P'ountain, Vine, Saviour, Resur- 
 rection, 250, 251. 
 
 Blaikie, William Garden. Never shows 
 kinship with our sins, never falls, sli|)s 
 or sins, "did not grope and guess, but 
 walked a seer," reserved truths unspoken, 
 the leaders are in allegiance to him, 473- 
 475, Preface. 
 
 Blyden, Edward W. Jesus in connection 
 with the African race, Africa " bore his 
 cross after him," 581-5S3. 
 
 Boardman, George Dana. Fresh, vital 
 Teacher, unlike Hillel and Shammai, 
 Teaching described. Methods, no System, 
 no Rhetoric, not Incidentals but Essen- 
 tials, profound and radical, did not give 
 details, e.g , how often to pray, no mar- 
 tinet disposition, not what to do but be, 
 taught with authority of his character, 
 Anno Domini, men cannot fight charac- 
 ter, 41 1-4 14, Preface. 
 
692 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Boehme, 344. 
 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon. Genuineness of 
 his testimony; Christ an astonishment, 
 greatness of spirit, nothing human, his 
 Religion from God, not a philosopher, 
 Miracle-Worker, Original, deals with the 
 soul, a Master, Gospel purest morality, 
 compared with Caesar and Alexander, 
 empire of love, sinless character, majes- 
 tic and simple, firm and gentle, Chris- 
 tianity embraces universe, Brotherhood 
 of man. Son of the Eternal, taught Eter- 
 nity, Divinity, aim the world's meliora- 
 tion, creates love, " his greatest miracle 
 the reign of charity," 87-90, Preface. 
 
 BossuET, Jacques Benign6. Redeemer, 
 Compassion, Benevolence, Son of God, 
 Pontiff, Advocate, Intercessor, King in 
 love, 43, 44. 
 
 Bossuet, Jacques Benigne, Preface, 52S, 
 529. 
 
 BouGAUD, £mile. Jesus like the firma- 
 ment under the telescope's examination, 
 royal human beauty, man but more, uni- 
 versal and inexhaustible, unfathomable, 
 perfect and imparts perfection, the ideal 
 of eighteen centuries, an ideal Christ not 
 found outside of Christ, the despair of 
 art, personality, a Jew but not Judaistic, 
 universal yet positive and individual, no 
 national limit, 526-53 r. Preface. 
 
 Boyle, Robert. Example, Divinity, Sin- 
 lessness, recognized by the Father, his 
 life a Law, surpasses heathen moralists. 
 Teacher Divine, persuades, 81, 82. 
 
 Brace, Charles Loring. A new moral 
 force in human life, the renovation of 
 man, a religion absolute and universal, 
 for all ages, races, circumstances, 475, 
 476, Preface. 
 
 Brahmans, 255, 530. 
 
 Bread, Jesus, 17. 
 
 Bronte, Charlotte, Preface. 
 
 Brooke, Stopford. Loving Kindness, 
 Penetrating Love, Knowledge of Men, 
 Forgiveness of Injuries, his motive, "Our 
 Father," 150, 151, Preface. 
 
 Brooks, Arthur. At the centre of human 
 life, his words a test of earnestness, never- 
 failing spring of moral power, High Priest, 
 574-579- Piefacc. 
 
 Brooks, Phillips. Work of Incarnation 
 reveals men as (iod's chiUIien to make 
 sons of God, 315; Crown of Manhood, 
 
 he is manly, completest human character, 
 yet men admire incompleteness, 431, Pref- 
 ace. 
 
 Brother, 27, 28, 78, 279, 405, 463, 519, 548. 
 
 Brotherhood of Man, 90, 139, 141, 261, 293, 
 
 295. 395' 425. 447- 
 
 Brothers and sisters, 20, etc. 
 
 Browne, Edward Harold. " Sublime 
 simplicity, went about doing good, cour- 
 age, " the ideal of humble-hearted, active- 
 spirited, pure-minded, high-souled hu- 
 manity," influence on character, dearer 
 than all friends, 300-302, Preface. 
 
 Browning, Robert, Preface, 671. 
 
 Bruce, Alexander Balman. "Essential 
 goodness," "undue passionateness " ex- 
 amined, zeal, abhorrence of hypocrisy, the 
 pure shows God, his doctrine of God and 
 man, stands zvilhin the kingdom of God, 
 480-4S4, Preface. 
 
 Buckminster, Joseph Stevens. Character 
 proves divine, Sun in cloudless sky. Dele- 
 gate of the Father, Sublimity, Fearlessness, 
 Meekness, Prophet, Messiah unexpected, 
 Miracle-Worker, Son of God, Benevo- 
 lence, Humility, 96, 97, Preface. 
 
 Buddha, Gautama, Sakya Mouni, 125, 127, 
 160, 245, 246, 255, 256, 269, 286, 292, 316, 
 354. 3S5. 400, 45' ; "Light of Asia," 482, 
 4S5 ; " reveals a vacant heaven, Jesus, 
 a Father in Heaven," 486, 496; Sutras, 
 540, 601, 642, Preface, 6S0, 68 1. 
 
 Budgett, .Samuel, 193. 
 
 BuLKiNCH, Stephen Greenleaf. Jesus 
 praised the unpopular virtues, meekness 
 and the like, his claim to be loved, his 
 character a combination, manly and wom- 
 anly, 655-658. 
 
 BuNSEN, Christian Karl Josias. One- 
 ness with God in holiness, God and Man, 
 history since Jesus presupposes him as 
 " the cause of the revolution of man's view 
 of the universe," Teacher, his Divine 
 Consciousness, 153, 154. 
 
 Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias, preface, 337. 
 
 Burgh, James. Founder of Christianity, 
 character, not an invention. Saviour, 
 greatness larger, different from other 
 greatness, 79, Preface. 
 
 lUirkc, l-'.dmund, 159. 
 
 liURNAP, George W. "His birth the 
 ejioch of the ages," Spotless, his Life a 
 Miracle, Teacher, compared with hea- 
 then philosophers, his Impression, Forti- 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 693 
 
 tude, Patience, " a class by himself," 
 Holy by volition, i2i-[24. Preface. 
 
 BusHNELL, Horace. Poor Man's Philos- 
 opher, Jesus is the Truth, Teacher, 
 " never anxious for success," " a lamb in 
 innocence, a God in dignity," Original, 
 Wise, the one perfect character, has 
 changed the world, cannot be got out of 
 the world, 219-223, Preface. 
 
 Butler, Joseph. Son of God loved us in 
 love surpassing friendship, 431. 
 
 Butler, Joseph, 268, 474, 61S, Preface. 
 
 Cadmus, 477. 
 
 Csesar, Augustus, 4S7, 602, 610. 
 
 Cassar, Julius, 89, 127, 159, 209, 235, 253, 
 270.346, 37 1 > 440, 590.612. 
 
 Caesar, Tiberius, 63, 367. 
 
 Caiaphas, 231, 679. 
 
 Cain, envy, 673. 
 
 Cairo, John. "God mirrored in Christ's 
 moral being," never before witnessed, 
 " we behold as in a glass the glory of the 
 Lord," works of goodness, nothing in 
 common with the spirit of his times, 56S- 
 
 571- 
 Caird, John of Errol (Wmthrop), Preface, 
 
 193- 
 
 Cairns, John. Person of Christ the key 
 of the conflict of faith, that grand central 
 figure a fact not delusion, to have a 
 centre a presumption of truth, the life a 
 historic reality, compared with Moham- 
 med, etc., the Gospels and their- agree- 
 ment, religion of the future, 448-452, 
 Preface. 
 
 Calendar changed through Christ, 314, 406, 
 414. 
 
 Calmness, 144, 167, 249, 295, 300, 363, 3S0, 
 409, 652. 
 
 Calvin, 379. 
 
 Campbell, Alexander. A Person, with 
 positive attributes, radiating as sun in 
 heaven, his character more than his mira- 
 cles, wisdom and science pale before him 
 as meridian sun, originality, unity of 
 character, grandeur, 98, 99. 
 
 " Candle of the Lord," Brooks, Preface, 
 
 431- 
 Candlish, Robert S. No violence of 
 power, no artfulness of wisdom, calmness, 
 simplicity, repose, almost unconscious- 
 ness, grandeur of his character, Wisdom 
 of God, 3S0. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas. A present God, our 
 divinest symbol, peasant saint, the splen- 
 dor of heaven, light shining in great dark- 
 ness, 169, 612. 
 
 Caste, 636. 
 
 " Catholic Presbyterian," Bersier, 284. 
 
 Cato, 428. 
 
 "Cellarius" (Thomas W. Fowlc), 531. 
 
 Celsus, 63, 209. 
 
 "Centre and Reason," Pascal, 41. 
 
 Chadwick, George A. Inspiration needful 
 to strike out new path. King, Proph- 
 et, Priest, "completely and supremely 
 unique," imitating none, satisfying all, the 
 race traditions to him Galahad piers to 
 the crown, no unreal personage could 
 wield his power, leads wakeful quest of 
 the world, his party the holy church, 
 eagle with sun-sustaining eyes, no earthly 
 taper but pure light of heaven, 365-367, 
 Preface. 
 
 Chaffin, William L. Jesus a master 
 mind in morals and religion, a genius. 
 Sermon on Mount, Sabbath, Lord's Prayer, 
 Golden Rule, no one left so much truth, 
 gold without dross, saw universal in par- 
 ticular, clear and precise in thought, who 
 is superior or rival.' far in advance, lead- 
 ing us yet, 523-526, Preface. 
 
 Chalmers, Thomas. Saviour, Miracle- 
 Worker, lavish to relieve sickness but not 
 hunger, would not encourage indolence, 
 Teacher, promoter of self-denial, lesson 
 in economics, 94-96. 
 
 Channing, William Ellery. "Singular 
 excellence," perception blunted by famil- 
 iarity, changed moral aspect of the world, 
 power in heaven, his words beyond all 
 others, Miracles, Majesty, Gentleness, 
 Brother, no invention. Son of God, Sav- 
 iour, "still lives," character original, 
 could not have been a fiction. Benevo- 
 lence, diffused the spirit of humanity, 
 Divine, 210-214. His chosen sphere 
 revealed mind and character, a mind of a 
 nexu order, association with lowly and 
 enemies brings out his goodness, 403, 
 404. Mind and character infinitely impor- 
 tant, the greatest good, the affection he 
 inspires, Jesus the Life of his religion, 
 "an incarnation of the unbounded love 
 of the Father," I know heaven in his spirit 
 of heaven, 405, foil. "Christ's goodness 
 throws all oiher human attainments into 
 
694 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 obscurity," 536; ("than whom none has 
 written more beautifully and forcibly on 
 Christ's character ") " the grandeur of his 
 office and character the deepest, most 
 familiar, of his convictions," 634, Preface, 
 271,370. 
 
 CHAriN, Edwin Hubuell. Christ has en- 
 larged Life of humanity, made the eter- 
 nal world real, imparted what humanity 
 wanted, 244, 245, Preface. 
 
 Character, Sketch or analysis, Preface, 
 "Character of Christ an impregnable 
 citadel," 56 foil., 58, 71, 77, 80, 83, 85, 89, 
 96. " Proves divinity," Buckminster, 97. 
 Unity, Originality, 99. " Perfection of 
 contrasts," 100, loi, 112,113, 122, 124, 130. 
 " Superhuman," 139, 147, 148, 157, 163, 16S, 
 170, 175, 181, 208, 210,214,326. "Like 
 great mountains and starry heavens," 
 Hopkins, 330. "Crystalline character," 
 362, 3S0, 403, 404, 409, 410, 413. " Unim- 
 peached," 416, 429, 480, 531. 
 
 "Character of Christ," Fowle, 352. 
 
 " Character of Jesus," Schenkel, 104. 
 
 Charities of the world, 680. 
 
 Charlemagne, 159, 612. 
 
 Charles Fifth, 612. 
 
 Chateaubriand, Francois Auguste. 
 New System of Morals, Divinity, King 
 over Men, Sinlessness, Miracle- Worker 
 (Celsus, Julian, Volusian), Pious, Re- 
 deemer, Image of God, Benevolent, Sav- 
 iour, E.xample, 63, 64. 
 
 Children and Childhood, "Suffer to come," 
 21. Webster, 186, 225, 304, 34S. "Colored 
 girl singing," 363, 386, 405, 416, 531. Love 
 for, not a quality of great men, 61 2. Jairus's 
 daughter, 649. 
 
 Christ in Art, Madonna, Faith, Hope, 
 Charity, 567. Handel's "Messiah," 596, 
 ideal without nationality, 609. See Jdsiis 
 in Art. 
 
 "Christ a Friend," Adams, 197. 
 
 "Christ and Christendom," Plumptre, 236. 
 
 "Christ and Christianity," W. L. Alexander, 
 167. 
 
 "Christ and his Religion," Rcid, 147. 
 
 "Christ and Humanity," Goodwin, 164. 
 
 "Christ and Man," Bathgate, 266. 
 
 "Christ and other Masters," Hardwick, 2155. 
 
 "Christ bearing Testimony to himself," 
 Chad wick, 365. 
 
 "Christ in the Christian Year," Huntington, 
 3'9- 
 
 "Christ: Nature and Work," Armitage, 
 1 58. 
 
 " Christ: Nature and Work," Foss, 351, 
 
 "Christ; Nature and Work," Rogers, 421. 
 
 "Christ: Nature and Work," Washburn, 
 267. 
 
 "Christ of History," Young, iSi. 
 
 " Christ of Renan," etc., Roussel, 251. 
 
 "Christ of the Gospels," Tulloch, 245. 
 
 "Christ our King," Pinnock, 141. 
 
 Christ proves Christianity, 262. His words 
 a chrysolite, 495-499. 
 
 " Christ the central evidence of Christian- 
 ity," Cairns, 448. 
 
 "Christ the Desire," etc., Trench, 119. 
 
 " Christ the Life," 393. 
 
 Christian, Christianity, "Christian fiction 
 aims at moral ideal," 3S1. The "vision 
 of a beautiful life," 401. Cosmogony in 
 John, 537. Christianity came from kis 
 religion, 555. 
 
 "Christian, The," Naville, T28. 
 
 "Christian Dogmatics," Oosterzee, 118. 
 
 "Christian Ethics," Dorner, 550. 
 
 " Christian Ethics," Martensen, 559. 
 
 "Christian Evidences," P"isher, 664. 
 
 "Christian Evidences," Whately, 414. 
 
 " Christian Evidences and Modern Thought," 
 Row, 353. 
 
 "Christian Life, The," Bayne, 343. 
 
 "Christian Perfection," Law, W., 72. 
 
 " Christian Register," 465. 
 
 "Christianity and Humanity," King, 247. 
 
 "Christianity and Mankind," Bunsen, 153. 
 
 "Christianity and Modern Thought," 
 Hedge. 429. 
 
 " Christianity and Positivism," McCosh, 226. 
 
 " Christianity and Scepticism," Post, 287. 
 
 " Christianity and Science," Peabody, A. P., 
 
 336- 
 
 " Christianity, Islam, and Negro Race," 
 Blyden, 581. 
 
 "Christianity's Challenge," Johnson, 152. 
 
 Christlieu, Theodor, Person of Christ, 
 Moral Grandeur, ideal of perfection. Son 
 of God and Son of man. Redeemer, union 
 to him salvation, 256. 
 
 Christmas, universally kept, Everett, 191. 
 Winthrop, 192, 193. 
 
 "Christus Consolator," 668. 
 
 Chrysolite, beauty, 496. His words, 497. 
 
 CmiBii, Thomas. E.\ample, Humility, 
 Modesty, Benevolent, Smlessness, Mir- 
 acle-Worker, 45. 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 695 
 
 Church, Relation to Church, 26. Paul, 26, 
 36, 37, 126, 141, 197, Communion of be- 
 lievers, 318, 339, Protector, 339, "His 
 holy party," 367, 368, " The society of the 
 inner life," 3S2, 396, " A spiritual Sparta," 
 42, " Has saved mankind from ruin," 427, 
 eccUsia, convention, 432, " In centre of 
 history," 450, 458, "Church first, then a 
 Book," 467, Those who continue Gesta 
 Ckristi, 469, 476, Witness to Christ's 
 promises, 506, 519, 540, Its conquests, 
 540, 541, Weathered storms, 590, 591, and 
 world, 619, "Church of deed of truth 
 and love," Tolsto:, 630. 
 
 Cicero, 159, on perfection, 203, 467, 659. 
 
 "City of God," Fairbairn, 484. 
 
 Clarke, James Freeman. Historic Christ 
 not outgrown, will be centre of the new 
 theology, his life lifts to higher plane, 
 brought God to man, lifted man to God, 
 393. Highest because deepest. Creator 
 of better faith, combined opposite virtues, 
 shortest of prayers, made time and eter- 
 nity one, Saint, Master, Sage, Reformer, 
 Philanthropist, yet we never call him 
 these, perfection of fulness, "Leader of 
 that part of the race which leads the 
 rest," 470-473, Preface. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria. Teacher, Benig- 
 nity, Lord, Salvation, Truth, -^,2,, 34- 
 
 Clement of Rome. Saviour, High Priest, 
 Light, Eternal Knowledge, 33. 
 
 Clodd, Edward. Diffused sweet charity 
 and self-lessness, as brotherhood, love to 
 God flows in love to man, he drew the 
 quenchless affection of sinful and suf- 
 fering, " an influence which has filled 
 centuries from East to West," 494, 495. 
 
 Clovis wished his soldiers had been at 
 Calvary, 262. 
 
 Cor.BK, Frances Power ("Broken 
 Lights"). "Noblest countenance smiled 
 on Palestine," "full of grace and truth," 
 "the greatest soul of his time, of all 
 time," would take a Jesus to forge a 
 Jesus, superior moral reformer but more, 
 his ethics not so important as his reqen- 
 eration, leaven working in souls, turning- 
 point " between old world and new," 
 "opened the endless progress," "the 
 world has changed," the man to receive 
 God's inspiration, 356-361, Preface. 
 
 CoLENSO, John William, Lord and 
 example, because of his spirit, surrender 
 
 of his will to God, "the way Christ would 
 act," 59S. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor ("Aids to 
 Reflection "). Christianity not a specula- 
 tion but a life, proved by history and 
 individuals ; Holy, Teacher, E.\ample, 
 new command of Love, "a charity wide 
 as sunshine," 105-107. On " Belief," 670. 
 
 Collier, Robert Laird. Highest idea of 
 man, highest idea of God, himself the 
 Revelation, " perfect man," Light of the 
 world "has girdled the earth," 246, 247. 
 
 Columbus, 244, 404, 477. 
 
 Combination of qualities "surpasses all 
 men in all virtues," 113, 167, 336. Oriental 
 and Occidental, 601. 'itt Harmony, Vir- 
 tues, etc. 
 
 " Comforter," Kempis, 41. 
 
 Command, 336, 533. See Authority, etc. 
 
 Comparison or contrast of Jesus with 
 others, "comparisons with religious 
 founders are contrasts," 485. " His great- 
 ness of a different nature," 559. See 
 Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Fletcher 
 of Madeley, Alexander, Ccrsar, A^apoleon, 
 Lycurgus, etc. 
 
 Compassion, 20, 38, 43, 44, 67, S3, 84, 109, 
 112, 114, 144, 243, 307, 378, 419, 676. 
 
 Comte, Auguste, 641, 645. 
 
 Conder, Eustace R. (" Basis of Faith "). 
 One form holds our gaze, compared with 
 sages, valid knowledge of God, his age 
 does not account for him, perfect ideal, 
 symmetry conceals colossal proportions, 
 no exaggeration, no deficiency, sympathy, 
 accessibleness, the Good Shepherd, 316, 
 Preface, 317. 
 
 Condescension, 67, 70, 1S7, 336 
 
 " Confessions," Augustine, 34. 
 
 " Conversations with Eckermann," Goethe, 
 285. 
 
 Confucius, 52, 125, 127, 26S, 286, 292, 316, 
 354, 400, 45'. 513. 5-40, 601, 645. 
 
 Consciousness, "filial," 501, 511, 517, 518, 
 534. "God consciousness," 554. See 
 Self- Coiiscictisness. 
 
 "Conservation of Spiritual Force," Lee, 
 
 579- 
 
 Conversion, " George Eliot," 461. Of the 
 world, S3. 
 
 Cook, F. C. Personality, Divine Teacher, 
 Words and Life his great evidence, 
 " unapproachable excellence," subordi- 
 nation of love, 389, 390. 
 
696 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Cook, Joseph ("Boston Monday Lec- 
 tures). " Human nature can be under- 
 stood only studied in connection with its 
 one perfect example," never committed 
 sin, man at his climax, no possible peace 
 except in imitation of Christ, Back to 
 Christ, the Christ-like the natural, 5S6, 
 587. 
 
 CoQUEREL, Athanase. Moral revolution, 
 "all things new," peace, forgiveness of 
 injuries, charity, of which antiquity was 
 ignorant. Saviour, "eighteen centuries of 
 events," " Christianity the history of the 
 eighteen centuries," originality, ideal of 
 virtue, in what could he have done better ? 
 his virtues possible, perfect, but open to 
 imitation, 261-264. '"Jesus the ideal of 
 virtue, cannot add the least trait," 548, 
 549, Preface. 
 
 Corneille, 528. 
 
 Cornelius, Bossuet, 43. 
 
 "Corner-Stone," Abbott, Jacob, 129. 
 
 Courage, 58, 129, 174, 191, 281, 300, 320, 533, 
 5S6, 656, 667. 
 
 "Creed of Christendom," Greg, 175. 
 
 Cromwell, 467. 
 
 Crosby, Howard. Conversation practical, 
 no false enthusiasm, no Delphic air, Mo- 
 hammed and Jesus, Jesus of the Gospels 
 the embodiment of truth, 438, 439. 
 
 Cross, 38, 135, 191, 200, 243, 260, 272, 274, 
 296, 342, 355, 356, 360. " Cross his coro- 
 nation day," 365, 382, 391 ; the Crusades, 
 392, 400, 421, 447, 507. 
 
 "Crown of manhood," Brooks, 431. 
 
 " Crowned with glory," Hebrews, 28. - 
 
 Crucified, 38. See Cross, Sacrifice. 
 
 Crusades, 172, 392. 
 
 Cunningham, John. Manifested God, 
 "God a Spirit," revolutionized world's re- 
 ligions, no local God, but Father of man- 
 kind, corrected Jew and Gentile ideal, 265. 
 
 Cuvier, 244, 6or. 
 
 Cyprian. Humility, Example, patience 
 even with Judas and Jews, Head of Church, 
 Lord, 36, 37. 
 
 Dale, R. W. " The Atonement," his great 
 sacrifice for the world, the Crusades " proof 
 of the power of Christ's death," 171-173, 
 Preface. 
 
 "Daniel Deronda," 461. 
 
 •Dante, 349, 371, 430, 4S3, 528, 529. 
 
 David, 365, 432, 433, 606, 609, 618, 659. 
 
 Da Vinci, Portrait of Christ, 384. 
 
 Davy, Humphry, 601. 
 
 " Dawnings for Germany," Richter, 369. 
 
 " Deans, Jeanie," 654. 
 
 Death, voluntary, Voltaire, 46. Rousseau, 
 48. Oosterzee, 118, 391. "btt Resurrection, 
 etc. 
 
 "Defence of Christian Faith," Godet, 518. 
 
 " Defence of Eclipse of Faith," 223. 
 
 Delitzsch, Franz. Founder of new re- 
 ligion, of "Humanism undreamt before," 
 Brotherhood, Divine Love, breaks down 
 Jewish barriers. Benevolence, forgiveness 
 of injuries, "the world's progress the ra- 
 diation from his light," 142, 143. 
 
 Demosthenes, 159, 383, 521, 611. 
 
 Descartes, 452. 
 
 De Wette, Wilhelm M. L. "The most 
 excellent character and purest soul history 
 presents," "walked over the earth like 
 some noble being, scarce touching with 
 his feet," 342. 
 
 Devvey, Orville. Character receives 
 moral suffrages of mankind. Cross and 
 Death the great revelation, "a renovating 
 power has gone forth," Compassion, Gen- 
 tleness, Philanthropy, 243, 244. 
 
 Dickens, Charles. Lord, Saviour, Teach- 
 er, of New Testament, commends to his 
 children, 2S9. 
 
 Dignity, 336, 377. See Son of God, Majesty, 
 etc. 
 
 "Dignity of Human Nature," Burgh, 79. 
 
 DiMAN, J. Lewis. " Man's normal nature 
 seen in him," Son of man. Saviour of the 
 world. Spotless Excellence, "the Man," 
 "he rules more and more," 146, 147. 
 
 "Disabilities of Jews," Macaulay, 180. 
 
 " Discourse on Religion," T. Parker, 239. 
 
 " Discourses," Tayler, 337. Park, 557. 
 
 " Divine Footsteps," Griffiths, 372. 
 
 "Divine Origin of Christianit}," Storrs, 
 
 543- 
 
 "Divine Revelation," Auberlen, 84. 
 
 Divinity, 38, 45, 46, 49, (>i, 64, 66, 78, 8r, 88, 
 90,97, 104, III, 115, iiS, 196, 268, 402. 
 
 "Divinity of Jesus Christ," Bougaud, 526. 
 
 "Doctrine of Religion," Fichte, 62. 
 
 Door, Jesus, 17. Ignatius, 37. 
 
 DoRNER, Isaac August. Perfect unveil- 
 ing the law by his pattern, by his fulfil- 
 ment, perfect, holy love, Christ is what 
 he teaches. Son of man, of universal sig- 
 nificance, 550, 551. 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 697 
 
 Drummond, James. "Outburst of reli- 
 gious light," Person of Christ and faith, 
 Son of God, Divine, " his words a Divine 
 Voice," a " superhuman Presence," ap- 
 peal to conscience, the " Eternal Word," 
 the Revealer of God, 131-135, Preface. 
 
 Duncan (Macbeth), 367. 
 
 Durer, Albrecht, 349. 
 
 " Ecce Deus," Joseph Parker, 234. 
 
 " Ecce Homo," Pilate, 565. 
 
 "Ecce Homo," Seeley, 198. "Review of 
 Ecce Homo," Gladden, 217. 
 
 "Ecce Spiritus," Hayvvard, 511. 
 
 Eclectic Review. Christ the miracle of 
 Christianity, not accounted for humanly, 
 sceptics cannot let him alone, " infinite 
 thought, infinite refreshment," "not a 
 past tense," 276-278. 
 
 Economics, "a lesson from Christ," Chal- 
 mers, 96. Whately, 97. 
 
 Eddy's " Life of Jesus Christ," Storrs, 361. 
 
 Edersheim, Alfred. "Christ a consoler 
 in the world's manifold woe," 479, 480. 
 
 Edessa Portrait, 377. 
 
 Edkins. "Christianity covered Europe 
 with churches and charitable institu- 
 tions," 68 1. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan. Infinite Greatness 
 and Goodness, Divinity and Humanity, 
 Holiness, Brother, Humility, Meekness, 
 
 • 78. 
 
 Elijah, 14, 473, 612, 621, 678. 
 
 " Eliot, George " (Mrs. Lewes), 461, Preface. 
 
 Elisha, 678. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 605. 
 
 Eloquence, 159. "The world listens," 
 " almost the only example of natural 
 eloquence," 250, 293, 301, 346, 412. 
 Orator, 668. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. " His name 
 ploughed into the world's history," In- 
 sight, only Estimator of humanity, re- 
 spected Moses but superseded, 149, 668. 
 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica. Transcend- 
 ent power of Personality, perfect Ideal, 
 his teaching unique, had sovereign author- 
 ity, breadth and power, flowed forth on 
 occasion, no sentence not impressed and 
 treasured in memory, complements as 
 well as surpasses all truth, made holiness 
 a common possession, gave meaning to 
 "Charity" and " Humility," 446-448. 
 
 Entry into Jerusalem, 612. 
 
 Envy, victim of, Voltaire, 46. Killed Christ, 
 673' 674- 
 
 Epistles: Clement of Rome, 33; Augustine, 
 34; Polycarp, 35; Ignatius, 37; Jeffer- 
 son, 50; Franklin, 60; Erskine, 84. 
 
 Equipoise, 409. See Calmness. 
 
 Erskine, Thomas. Revealer of the Father, 
 saved the lost. Sympathy, Miracles acts 
 of compassion more than of power, 84. 
 
 Essays, Macaulay, 180. 
 
 "Essence and Evidence of Christianity," 
 Burnap, 121. 
 
 " Essence of Christianity," Collier, 246. 
 
 Essenes, loi, 2S3, 244. 
 
 Esther, 679. 
 
 Ethbaal, 678. 
 
 Evangelists, on Jesus, 56. Could not invent 
 Jesus, 61, 1S3, 204, 655. Life, not fiction, 
 79, 8r. Artless, composed, historians not 
 partisans, 92. A lesson in biographic 
 composition, 100. Could not create Jesus, 
 114. Candor and honesty, 145. Simpli- 
 city and truth, 187. Difficulty of contriv- 
 ing character of Jesus, 205. The Gospels 
 not mythical, 217. Candid, no invention, 
 no motive for imposture, opposed to Jew- 
 ish thought, incapable of Christ's philan- 
 thropy, must have had living prototype, 
 227, 253. Did not eulogize but describe 
 Christ, 270. Portrait, 317, 330. If not 
 narrators, highest geniuses, 328. Do not 
 praise or blame, no surprise at miracles, 
 no denunciation, effect beyond creations 
 of genius, 355. Their agreement of great 
 consequence, 369. Our failure in descrip- 
 tion a foil, 373. Do not know the beauty 
 of their description, 398. Unstudied, no 
 panegyric, 414. Only Christ could invent 
 Christ, 429, 665. Give Person, but do not 
 praise, 633, 665. Could not devise sinless 
 person, 665, Preface. See Gospels. 
 
 Evans, Mark. " One better than the best 
 conceivable," the objective Revelation of 
 the Father, only One offered himself as 
 bread from heaven, his voice sounds 
 clearer, other voices grow fainter, the 
 complete Divine Revelation, the Zz/e'^TYr- 
 lastin^. the uncreate Ideal, the inexhaust- 
 ible Fountain, 640-647. 
 
 Everett, Edward. Universality of Christ- 
 mas celebration. Love the central duty of 
 our religion, Polytheism cared not for the 
 poor. Vestals but not Sisters of Charity, 
 191, 192, 159, Preface. 
 
698 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 "Evidences of Christianity:" Alexander, 
 J. W., 237 ; Bulfinch, 655 ; Campbell, 98 ; 
 Hopkins, 326; Palfrey, 227. 
 
 " Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth 
 Century," Barnes, 203. 
 
 "Evidences of Revealed Religion," Ver- 
 planck, 92. 
 
 "Evidences of Religion," Locke, 402. 
 
 Evolution and Creation, 617-619. 
 
 EwALD, Georg Heinrich August. Divine 
 cheerfulness of Love, "most glorious 
 picture of the Eternal," only true Messiah, 
 Eternal King of God's kingdom, .Son of 
 God, Word of God, Perfect Humanity, 
 Socrates did not even discern, compared 
 with Stoics, Buddha, Confucius, the One, 
 the consummation of Israel, 126-128. 
 
 Example, Pattern, Model, 35, 36, 39, 40, 44, 
 45. Imitable, 64, 68, 70, 72, 77, 81, 82, 
 105, 129, 140, 143, 151, 200, 202, 225, 259, 
 269, 283, 287. Exemplar, 299, 324, 329 ; 
 and model of every virtue, 347, 36S ; and 
 Pattern, 3S9, 522, 532. Li all conceivable 
 circumstances, 558, 559, 59S, 638. 
 
 "Existence of God," Kant, 51. 
 
 F.vBER, Frederick William ("Bethle- 
 hem "). Eternal, Grandeur, the knowledge 
 of him a science, and joy. Incarnation at 
 bottom of all science. Immortality, 115, 
 1 16. " The Incarnation the world in which 
 we live," 362, Preface. 
 
 Fairbair.n, a. M. Problems of history 
 centre in Christ, not individual but gen- 
 eral, most powerful spiritual force in the 
 world, created the typical virtues and 
 moral ambitions, living ideal, a world's 
 imperishable wonder, his person the 
 source and basis of Christianity, " he made 
 it, he is it," 439, 440, Preface. Words 
 mighty in energy, soft in strength, "no 
 rival to the words of Jesus," his Person 
 and truth woven together, his religion 
 boundless hope. Buddhism and Christian- 
 ity, Christ of history, Christ in history, 
 weak, strong, poor, rich, " riches of Christ 
 unsearchable," 484-489. 
 
 " Faith and Character," Vincent, 440. 
 
 " Faith and Freedom," Brooke, i 50. 
 
 "Faith and Philosophy," Smith, H. B., 
 264. 
 
 Faithfulness, Grotius, 39. 
 
 " Faith of the Gospel," Mason, 603. 
 
 Fakirs of the East, Paley, 61. 
 
 Faraday, 337. 
 
 Farrar, Frederick W. Gospels cannot 
 be touched without marring. Apocryphal 
 Gospels dishonor, revealed the Eternal 
 as the Unseen not the Future, God the 
 Father, Teacher, compared with sages, 
 Christianity does not wither but revive the 
 nations. Eternal, glorious kingdom. Elo- 
 quent, expelled cruelty, righted wrongs, 
 created homes, 290-294, Preface. 
 
 Father, relation to Father, 14, 15. Does 
 will of, 14. Baptism, 15. Works like him, 
 i5. Witness, 17. Honored as Father, 
 sent by Him, 17. Revealer, 19. In Fa- 
 ther's name, 19. Voice (Mark), 20. Only- 
 begotten, in beginning with Him (John), 
 22. God and Father of Christ (Paul), 
 25. Father loveth the Son, 29. "Power 
 of the ineffable Father" (Ignatius), 37. 
 Power of, Justin, 37. Fulfiller of Father's 
 work (Bacon), 40. Sent as Teacher, 56. 
 Honors Father, 67. Father recognizes, 
 81 ; approves, 81, 83. Father revealed by 
 Christ, 84. Delegate, 97. Revelation, 98. 
 Father's "doctrine," in. Image, 118. 
 We see the Father, 134, 139. "Organ of 
 Divine will," 320, 447. "Abba," 499, 519, 
 5-0, 551. 604, 634, 642, 645. See Image, 
 Son of God, etc. 
 
 " Feminine, but not effeminate," 419. 
 
 Fenelon, 268, 337. 
 
 FicHTE, Johan.n Gottlieb. Perception of 
 God and man, no speculation or intel- 
 lectual questioning, Self-Consciousness, 
 "the absolute Reason clothed in self- 
 consciousness," 62, 63. 
 
 Fichte, bids us watch him, because in what 
 he "does, lives, and loves," God is re- 
 vealed to us, 344, Preface. 
 
 Firmness, 167, 191, 336. 
 
 Fisher, George Park ("Beginnings of 
 Christianity)." King, "regal office," his 
 Sermon on Mount, " moral guidance of 
 mankind," "the grandest revolution," 
 143. "Unequalled excellence of charac- 
 ter," positive, strongly marked features, 
 combination, originality, the invention of 
 Jesus impossible, not formally delineated, 
 no self-reproach, 664-666. 
 
 Fletcher of Madeley, comparison with 
 Christ, by Newman, 6n, 612. 
 
 Flowers, lilies, 538, 668. 
 
 " Footprints of the Saviour," Smyth, J. K., 
 593- 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 699 
 
 Forgiveness, 82, 150, 166, 261, 322, 363, 426, 
 485, 505, 509. 
 
 Fortitude, 99, 123, 320, 378. See Courage, 
 etc. 
 
 Foss, Cyrus D. The Five Gospels, the 
 fifth Christianity, " most wonderful man," 
 "more famous than any other man," infi- 
 dels admit, morally and intellectually 
 unique, never says when questioned "De- 
 cision reserved," answers profoundly on 
 the instant, 351, 352, Preface. 
 
 Foster, John. Receives affection, Saviour, 
 Ascension, loved by martyrs, incitement 
 to labor, a splendid fact in world's history, 
 tribute of mankind to the Redeemer, 85. 
 
 Foster, John (Winthrop), 193. 
 
 Foundation, of Rock (Jesus), 13, 23, 40, 251, 
 
 339. 374- 
 " Foundations, The," Gibson, 501. 
 " Foundations of our Faith,'" Riggenbach, 
 
 "3- 
 
 Founder of Christianity, 15, 38, 39, 50, 79, ^t^, 
 102, 103, tii, 141, 171, 195, 19S, 209, 275, 
 320, 322, 355, 357, 376, 396, 397, 402, 432, 
 45'. 574. 657, Preface. 
 
 Founder of religion, Renan. 
 
 "Four Phases of Morals," Blackie, 250. 
 
 FowLE, Thomas Welbank ("A New 
 Analogy," etc.). His self-consciousness 
 a consciousness of the Father, to be 
 unique in history is to be divine, 352, 353 
 Life, Character, and Teaching, endured 
 and consecrated human nature, his Temp- 
 tation difficult and mysterious, " Natural 
 ness," " loved flowers and children," met 
 the polytheistic stumbling by combining 
 all excellences, entry into Jerusalem as 
 a specimen. Holiness, realized Nature's 
 ideal, entered into the joy of progress, his 
 "joy," naturalness of his teaching, 531- 
 538, Preface. 
 
 Fo.x. George, " a latent Christ in every 
 soul," 466. 
 
 Francis, Saint, 467. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin. " His system of 
 morals and religion the best the world 
 has seen or will see," 60, 344. 
 
 Franklin, Sir John, 509. 
 
 Frederick the Great, 612. 
 
 " Freedom of Faith," Munger, 456. 
 
 Friend, Friendship, 217, 29S, 304, 329, 40S, 
 431, 656. 
 
 Fry, Elizabeth, 193. 
 
 Fulfiller of Law (Jesus), 13. 
 
 FuRNESs, William Henry. " A vital idea," 
 adamantine hold on the world, like God, 
 like Nature, unconscious wonder-worker, 
 never tried to strengthen himself, delicate 
 spiritual sense, no culture can look down 
 on him, inborn royalty, sceptre never to 
 be broken, forsaken but not unkinged, 
 the Cross his Coronation Day, 363-365, 
 Preface. 
 
 Galahad, piers towards the crown, 366. 
 
 Galileo, 244, 294, 530. 
 
 Gamaliel, 380 ; and Paul, 567. 
 
 Gannett, Ezra Stiles. Character of 
 Christ comprises God and human duty, 
 sinless and perfect, withdraw any attrib- 
 ute will make loss, no greater miracle than 
 himself, his life a revelation, Son of God, 
 learned through the heart, great writers 
 cannot get away from their littleness, 
 Christ always great, never sat at Gama- 
 liel's feet, 377-380. 
 
 Gautama, 457, 601, Preface. See Buddha. 
 
 Geikie, Cunningham. Mohammedans call 
 him Messiah, no ascetic like John, a man 
 among men, unselfishness his unique 
 charm, Gospel of love divine, demands 
 repentance, no need of repentance him- 
 self, Patient, Meek, yet extraordinary 
 personal claims. Dignity, Calmness, mys- 
 tery of the ideal man, 294-296. 
 
 General, Jesus might have been, 667. 
 
 "Geniuses have empire over soul," Pascal, 
 4T. 
 
 "Genius of Christianity," Chateaubriand, 
 
 Gentleness, 38. 82, ^-^^ 85, 90, 99, 117, 167, 
 178, 190, 196, 244, 250, 303. 473, 675. 
 
 "Genuineness of the Gospels," Norton, 322. 
 
 Genuineness of the Gospels, Wright, 510. 
 See Gospels. 
 
 "George Eliot," 461, 502, Preface. 
 
 "German Literature," Selections, Tholuck, 
 124. 
 
 "Gesta Christi," Brace, 475. 
 
 Gethsemane, 52!, 522, 658. 
 
 Gibbon, 209. 
 
 Gibson, John Monro. No excellence lack- 
 ing, if Matthew created " Jesus " then 
 Matthew was beyond Shakespeare, Re- 
 vealer of God, superhuman character. 
 Wisdom, not a reflection of his age. Ser- 
 mon on Mount, unstudied flow, needs no 
 fine audience, 501-504, Preface. 
 
700 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 50S. 
 
 " Girard Will case," Webster, 1S5. 
 
 Gladden, Washington ("Being a Chris- 
 tian"). The Christian life an allegiance 
 and devotion to Christ, a communication 
 with him, desire for his righteousness, 
 647-649. 
 
 Gladstone, William E. "Our Lord," 
 Teacher and Benefactor, Authority, 
 Humanity and Divinity, Sun, Friend, 
 Consoler, Guide, Priest and King, 217. 
 
 Glory of Christ, the preacher's view, Leigh- 
 ton, 60. 
 
 GoDET, Frederick. Normal representa- 
 tive of humanity, elevation of human 
 nature, organ of Divine will, bridge be- 
 tween finite and infinite, a real Man and 
 perfect, 320. Man's progress finds goal in 
 Jesus, Perfect Man, God desires a Jesus- 
 like humanity, his ample human powers, 
 Socrates, Demosthenes, affections, subor- 
 dinated to his work, "beholding, changed 
 into his image," 51S-523, Preface. 
 
 "God in History," Bunsen, 153. 
 
 " God-Man," Townsend, 249. 
 
 God manifested by Christ, 543. See Father, 
 Son of God, etc. 
 
 GoDMAN, William D. Person glorious, 
 Harmony, Equipoise, Composure, Calm- 
 ness, no family pride, his thoughts as 
 fresh as when uttered, " his sinlessness, 
 a halo of possibilities to the African 
 savage," a Saviour, 409-411, Preface. 
 
 GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON. " The 
 
 four Gospels thoroughly genuine," " a 
 greatness in Jesus as divine as any thing 
 on earth," highest principle of morality, 
 culture and science never will supersede 
 Christianity, 285. "He took the suffer- 
 ing human race," 436. 
 
 Goethe, 529, 554, 652. 
 
 Golden Rule, portable as self-love, measur- 
 ing-rod, makes self impartial judge, makes 
 selfishness destroy itself, 312, 3S9, 524. 
 
 Good Friday, 180. 
 1 Goodness, 68, 77, 83, 99, 225, 480. 
 
 Good Samaritan, had just suffered from 
 Samaritans, 86, 87, 166, 180, 485, 607. 
 
 Good Shepherd, 317, 450. 
 
 Goodwin, Henry ^L Son of Man, 
 " Humanity individualized in one person," 
 Divine Ideal, the universal man, mascu- 
 line and feminine, of all ages, 164, 165, 
 Preface. 
 
 "Gospel and the Age," 556. 
 
 "Gospel for Nineteenth Century." 
 When he died, his example did not die, 
 his example a living influence, the uplifted 
 torch in the ages, his thirty years of si- 
 lence, laboring man's example, unworld- 
 liness, lofty claims but perfect humility, 
 the only perfect man humble, 631-640. 
 
 " Gospel of Home-Life," 640. 
 
 "Gospels, Authenticity," Hinsdale, 652. 
 
 Gospels: Locke, 76; Scougal, 77; Por- 
 teous, 84. Contain purest morality, 88. 
 Apotheosize personality, not Nature, 103. 
 A sure testimony, 105. The Fifth Gos- 
 pel the history of Christianity, 161. The 
 story of Christ, 181, 183. Simplicity, no 
 panegyric, 187, 204, 205. Represent a 
 living original, Channing, 212, 2S0. Gen- 
 uine, Goethe, 2S5. Substantial and per- 
 manent bequest of Mediator of New 
 Testament, 289. Cannot be touched 
 without marring, Farrar, 290. Simplicity, 
 300. Simplicity and graphic character, 
 300. A sj-stem of consolation, 307. 
 Miraculous and moral portraiture no 
 archetype in history, 309. In Gospel, 
 Jesus preaches himself, 318. Not an 
 invention, unless adepts in skill of decep- 
 tion, 315. "The humblest of men 
 preaches himself," 318. Not a fiction, 
 but " portraiture of character," 324, 336. 
 Compared with Xenophon's Affmoral>ilia, 
 337. " Never weary the reader," grow 
 deeper as we fathom, 345. Five Gos- 
 pels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and 
 God's nineteen hundred years of Chris- 
 tianity, 351. "Rare freshness," Furness, 
 363. Explained as reflection and fancy, 
 an error which overleaps the possible, 
 Tischendorf, 369. " Collective reminis- 
 cences of Christ, a portraiture of the dis- 
 position and soul," 3S5. Truths, cut, 
 polished, set in diadem, 394. Portraiture 
 to be accounted for, 396. No panegyric 
 or eulogium, 414. "Spurious Gospels" 
 unlike the real, attempt at panegyric, 415. 
 The life, a reality, a divine story, more 
 than of human construction, achieves the 
 iTiakmg him divine and human, no effort 
 but complete character, the separate tes- 
 timonies prove the reality, the same un- 
 l^arallclcd character, one Gospel a marvel, 
 much more four, one transcendent 
 creation, 448. Difficult of chronological 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 'JO I 
 
 arrangement, 465. "Modest narrative," 
 492. liow could there be four contem- 
 porary men of such creative genius as to 
 create Christ? 502. " Utmost effect with 
 smallest material," " brevity, and dispas- 
 sionate character," "the moderation an 
 answer to 'delusion,'" 511. "Four inar- 
 tificial lives," " they alone are like crea- 
 tion, flowers, stars," Feabody, 572. 
 " Waste no words in panegyric, plain, 
 unambitious narrative, the wonderful life 
 had ceased to surprise them, like the 
 Alps to Alpine dwellers," he holds the 
 same spiritual pre-eminence as ever, 573. 
 "Biography that explains Chrisi's 
 potency," 493. No one says, " Lay them 
 aside," Peabody, 572. A sketch to be 
 filled up by succeeding Christian lives, 
 600. Memoirs of Son of man, not a doc- 
 trine but story of a life, 613. Could a 
 few Galilaeans have equalled Shak- 
 speare and Goethe by the creation of 
 Jesus ? 652. Read afresh as if never 
 read, 674. 
 
 Grandeur of character, 99, 115, 250. 
 
 Greatness, 66. Insensibly presented, 81, 83, 
 85, 235. Unostentatious, 345, 534. 
 
 "Great Question," William Alexander, 614. 
 
 " Great Teacher," Harris, 302. 
 
 Greenleaf, Simon. Gospel narratives in 
 nakedness of simple truth, absence of pa- 
 rade, no marks of wonder, no epithets on 
 crucifiers, disparagement of themselves, 
 perfect character of Christ, supremely 
 wise, supremely good, heathen gods did 
 not equal, in accord with God, simplicity 
 and majesty, overflowing benignity, in all 
 situations the same, " splendor more than 
 human," 313-315, Preface. 
 
 Greg, William Rathbone. His charac- 
 ter exhausts superlatives, "closeness of 
 his communion with the P'ather," "noblest 
 Being," " highest Ideal," perfect religious 
 genius, 175, 176. 
 
 Griffis, William Elliot. Jesus studied 
 as to Syrophenician woman, the steps of 
 his dealing with her, with "ready wit of 
 faith " she caught the parable oi humanity 
 and its Saviour, " how manifold the char- 
 ities of this civilization," "Jesus the cen- 
 tre now, as then," 678-6S1. 
 
 Griffith, Thomas. " Foremost Man," 
 unique Personality, firmness yet flexibility 
 of will, Majesty, answer to Herod, central 
 
 fixity, yet "myriad-minded Man," stern- 
 ness and compassion, went about doing 
 good, his attraction of men, "continually 
 brightening splendor," 418-421, Preface. 
 Griffiths, William. Spotless integrity, 
 deep seriousness, severe and gentle, flat- 
 tery and conciliation unknown to him, 
 "personification of purity and light," 
 good-will to men, did not act greatness, 
 he reached an inconceivable standard, 
 
 372-374- 
 
 Grotius, Hugo. Sinlessness, Example, 
 Patience, Benevolence, Resurrection, As- 
 cension, Faithfulness and Omnipotence, 
 Founder of Christianity, 39. 
 
 Guizot, Francois P. G. Two Christian 
 principles unique, new and sublime prin- 
 ciples, Light from Heaven, Influence on 
 Religion and State, Supernatural, Hu- 
 manity, Divinity, Miracle-Worker, 65, 66, 
 Preface. 
 
 "Guy Mannering," Scott, 671. 
 
 Ilafiz, 443. 
 
 Hall, Newman. "A common love for 
 Gospel and loyalty to our one Brother, 
 Saviour, Lord, the preserver of inter- 
 national concord ; " the cardinal doctrine 
 Jesus Christ and him crucified, 27S. 
 
 Hall, Roisert. Example, Patience, "re- 
 viled, reviled not again," Miracle- W'orker, 
 never used miracles for himself. Gentle- 
 ness, Sympathy, Unselfishness, Forgive- 
 ness, 82, 83. 
 
 Hamlet, 207, 367, 459, 502. 
 
 Handel, "Messiah," 452, 596. 
 
 " Handfuls of Honey," Spurgeon, 469. 
 
 Hanna, William. Gave the Good Sa- 
 maritan when he had just suffered from 
 their intolerance. Benevolence, he was 
 more than Good Samaritan to the race, 
 86. 
 
 Hardwick, Charles. Satisfied spiritual 
 cravings, image of Father, Firstborn of 
 brotherhood. Light, Sovereign Lord of 
 all, 25s. 256. 
 
 Harmony of contrasts. 336, 409. 
 
 Harris, John. His character does not 
 neutralize, but magnify his teaching, 
 he loved man as man. Light and Life 
 of the world, his heart had room for 
 the world, worked for future, neglected 
 not the present, like the Almighty 
 Father sustaining worlds yet helping 
 
702 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 a bird, Philanthropist and Friend, mag- 
 nificent yet unlabored, great yet simple, 
 constellation of virtues, enlightened to 
 save, Gospel to the poor, universal reli- 
 gion. Teacher, his leading topics few, 
 superiority to ingratitude, character a 
 proof of the Gospel, received homage of 
 fallen spirits, character invites inspection, 
 convinces and transforms, gives redemp- 
 tion to depraved, hope to despondent, 
 challenges affection, simplifies the science 
 of morals, enfilades territory of sin, 302- 
 313, Preface. 
 
 Harris, Samuel. No one so many biog- 
 raphies, Strauss did opposite to his inten- 
 tion, stirred the world towards life of 
 Christ, Christ the great evidence of 
 Christianity, the Incarnation, God in 
 Christ reconciling world, humanity in a 
 form of life, love in concrete, God in 
 Christ the basis of philosophy of history, 
 Christ central in history, Christianity the 
 tree Ygdrasil, Christ not outrun like the 
 Scandinavian god, 595-59S, Preface. 
 
 Hartley, David. Character, Love to 
 God, Love to I\Lin, Humility, Self-Denial, 
 Meekness, Patience, Prudence, his char- 
 acter not a fiction but a copy. Gospel 
 gives no encomiums but plain descrip- 
 tions, Messiah, Saviour, Greatness of 
 character, they drew his character by his 
 deeds, not by eulogy, unconsciously, 80, 
 81, Preface. 
 
 Hase, Karl August. Not a writer, Chris- 
 tianity a life, not system of opinions, his 
 gospel preached, combination of powers, 
 love of God in perfect humanity, called 
 the publican, joyful, unlike the Baptist's 
 rigor, not afraid of joys, founded a king- 
 dom, Teacher, his doctrine the communi- 
 cation of the insights of a perfect soul, 
 Messiah, Divinity, Christ a Revelation, 
 tog-i 1 1. 
 
 Hausrath, Adolf. God the living Father 
 of men, not the "jealous God," the filial 
 consciousness which could be only in a 
 pure, l)Iameless mind, sinless to Deity, 
 witiiout human restlessness, absolutely 
 normal state of human nature in Christ, 
 499. 
 
 Havelock, Ilcnry, 509. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Preface. 
 
 Havward, Edward Farvvell. Jesus the 
 phenomenal Man, demanded a new out- 
 
 look in man, rarest, most comprehensive, 
 most exalted, spirituality requires the 
 whole man, " the race of whole men 
 began and ended with Christ," his spirit 
 has a winged step, conclusive and cosmo- 
 politan, gives life, not the form, God and 
 communion, man at his unknown possi- 
 bilities, talked of God as if he had just 
 left him, 511-51S, Preface. 
 
 Healer of sick, Matthew, 20; Ranke, 76, 
 669. Life-saving means and remedies, 
 6S1. 
 
 Heathen philosophers compared, 122. See 
 Socrates, etc. 
 
 Heaven, Christ came from, Jesus, 17 ; John, 
 22. 
 
 Ileber, 193. 
 
 Hecuba, 367. 
 
 Hedge, Frederick Henry ("The Atone- 
 ment"). Hero of all times and climes, 
 will always be centre of history, leagued 
 with him in the central history of life, 
 perfectness of life. Divinity incarnated, 
 his virtues show our defects, yet reveal 
 a Christ in our soul responsive to historic 
 Christ, 275, 276. Only a Christ could 
 invent a Christ, he made the ideal, the 
 ideal Christ the root of the historical, 
 without the antecedent ideal, the history 
 never would have been, 429, Preface. 
 
 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friederich. 
 Compares with Socrates, talents, charac- 
 ter and morals, Sinlessness, Divinity at- 
 tested by the soul, 64. 
 
 Hegel, Preface, " symbol of union of Di- 
 vine and human," 294, 452, 554. 
 
 Henry, Joseph, 601. 
 
 Herbert, George, 268. " My God, what is a 
 heart t " 508. 
 
 Hercules, 242; Belvidere, 585. 
 
 Herder's "Philosophy of History," 135. 
 
 Herod, 231, 346, 419, 667, 668. 
 
 Heroes, comparison, Taylor, 100. 
 
 High Priest, 27; Hebrews, 28; Clement, 
 2^; Ignatius, 37, 120, 143, 217, 557. Better 
 than Melchizedek, 579. 
 
 Hill, Georgf. Perfect character, all vir- 
 tues. Majesty, Condescension, Originality, 
 his character not invention, no panegyric, 
 1S7. 
 
 Hill, Thomas. Cites a friend, " Wit''Out 
 Christ I could only hope things : I be- 
 lieve he knows," the New Testament gives 
 me perfect faith in his wisdom, holiness, 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 I^Z 
 
 truth, a light clearer than noonday sun, 
 tender love, pours down Spirit's gifts, he 
 made the important truths plain and cer- 
 tain, 504-506. 
 
 Hillel, 411, 412. 
 
 Hinsdale, Burke Aaron. Inimitable 
 character, drawn from life, Evangelists 
 could not have created Jesus, analyses of 
 Christ's powers, his wonderful equipoise, 
 they say he taught wonderfully, but his 
 words more wonderful still, who could 
 have fabricated a Jesus ? 652-655. 
 
 Hippocrates, 530. 
 
 " Hiram the king and Hiram the architect," 
 67S. 
 
 " Historic Influence of Death of Christ," 
 Simon, 391. 
 
 " History of Christ," Sears. 
 
 " History of Christianity," Abbott, J. S. C, 
 478 ; Milman, 139. 
 
 " History of European Morals," Lecky, 170. 
 
 " History of Jesus of Nazara," Keim, 551. 
 
 " History of New Testament Times," Haus- 
 rath, 499. 
 
 " History of Popes," Ranke, 76. 
 
 " History of Rationalism in Europe," Lecky, 
 376. 
 
 Hodge, Charles. Mediator, Sinless, Sacri- 
 fice, High Priest, E.xample, 142, 143. 
 
 Hogg, the poet, 671. 
 
 Holiness of Jesus, " Holy Child Jesus," 
 23,42,44, 76, 77, 78, 83, 105, 115, 200, 
 
 343. 507. 533- 
 
 Holy Spirit, penetrated by, Ullmann, 107, 
 134, 200, 255,. 289, 318, 518, 522, 595. 
 
 Homage of fallen spirits, 310. 
 
 Homer, 136, 206, 286, 353, 371, 3S6, 433, 
 440, 477. 528, 529. 565. 6ii, 659, 667. 
 
 Homes, 293. 
 
 Homoousians, etc., 377. 
 
 Hooker, Richard. Visible Presence of 
 Deity, 46. 
 
 Hopkins, Mark. Christ's character the 
 central orb of his system, without which 
 no light or heat, claims affection as well 
 as belief, he is goodness in action, the 
 originality of his conception of moral ex- 
 cellence, we can appreciate though not 
 create, moral genius produces inconceiv- 
 able actions, the highest form of genius, 
 the highest genius to produce human 
 form, the highest genius to produce a 
 perfect human being, Christ majestic, sim- 
 ple, beautiful, perfect, to describe such a 
 
 character great, to be that character won- 
 derful, nothing offensive to taste, suscep- 
 tible to joy and suffering, friendship, the 
 great qualities essential in Messiah and 
 Saviour, more than example, sinless, bal- 
 anced intellect, no enthusiast, no impostor, 
 326-332, Preface. 
 
 " Hours of Thought on Sacred Things," 
 Martineau, 341. 
 
 Howard, John, 193, 354. 
 
 Hughes, Thomas. Courage before Pilate, 
 Wisdom, Sympathy, Head of Humanity, 
 
 174. 175- 
 
 "Hulsean Lectures:" Perrowne, 144; Moor- 
 house, 163. 
 
 " Human Character of Christ," Austin, 85. 
 
 Humanity of Christ, 38. Perfect, Spinoza, 
 43; Voltaire, 46; Jefferson, 50; Paine, 52; 
 Priestly, 55, 66; and Divinity, Guizot, 65, 
 73, 76 ; Edwards, 78. " Crown of our race, 
 surety and guaranty of our perfection : " 
 Auberlen, 84; Neander, 91. "Unrivalled 
 man," 99. Head, loi, 112, God in human- 
 ity, 109, 1 18, 126, 141, " Humanity in Christ 
 is in normal state," 146, 147, Jesus the 
 only estimator, 149, 164, 165, 174, 217, 241, 
 " Humanity's want," Chapin, 245. " Per- 
 fection," Collier, 247, 264, 300, 320, 
 "Complete in compassion compared with 
 others," 325. "Ideal representative and 
 guide," Mill, 325. " Human perfections " 
 not divine perfections out of our reach, 335. 
 " The supreme man," Storrs, 362. Human- 
 ity of Christianity, 42S. Head, 463, 5S6. 
 
 Humboldt, 267. 
 
 Humility and Obedience* Cyprian, 36, 58, 
 66, Pascal, 42, 45, Wesley, 50, 76, P'.d- 
 wards, 78, 80, 97, Isaac Taylor, 100, 138, 
 "A king in humility," 270, 314, 320, 336, 
 377. 478, 507. 533. 5S4. 5S6, 636, 638. 
 
 Hunger he relieved only twice, sickness 
 always: Chalmers, Whately, 97. 
 
 Huntington, Frederick D. The perfect 
 Man, no disproportion to spoil the svm- 
 metry, all tempered faultlessly together, 
 consummate Example, 319, 320. 
 
 Huntington, Lady, 193. 
 
 Hutton, Richard Holt. Divinity, hu- 
 man nature in earthly, Christ stirred all 
 men, " the passion of his will fastened on 
 God," absence of self-reproach, childlike 
 lowliness and perfect kingliness, a filial 
 will, the divinity of his free will, humility 
 but no humiliation, 434-438. 
 
704 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Ideal, "culmination of the race," 409, 439, 
 446, but practicable, 549. Compared with 
 ascetic, chivalric, scientific, commercial, 
 577. Ideal of man in union with God, 596. 
 Divine Man, 59S, 643, " Uncreate Ideal, 
 the object of our worship forever," 644. 
 
 Ignatius. High Priest, Door, Church, 37. 
 
 Iliad, 207, 37 1. " Ballad of Troy Town," 61 1. 
 
 Image of God : Hebrews, 28 ; Origen, 35; and 
 Presence of God, Hooker, 46, 59, 63, 69, 
 91, 118, 126, 186, 445. 
 
 •'Imitation of Christ," Kempis, 40, 
 
 Imitation of Christ, 72, 73; our duty and 
 privilege, 335, 587. See Exaifiple, etc. 
 
 Immortality, Teacher of: Samuel Johnson, 
 49; Jefferson, 50, 56, 58. "Immortality 
 endows virtue, gives advantage to virtue," 
 Locke, 75, 76, 116, 261. 
 
 Impostor, impossible, Hopkins, 332. See 
 JEvangelisis, Gospels. 
 
 "Incarnate Saviour," Nicoll, 140. 
 
 Incarnation, " incarnated from above," 22, 
 115, 116,119,315. " Incarnation the world 
 in which we live," 362, 437, 505, 595. See 
 Divinity, Son of God. 
 
 " Infancy, Gospel of," Arabic, 290. 
 
 "Infidels got their good from Christianity," 
 Simpson, 567. 
 
 Infinite: Jesus, 15; John, 22; Paul, 26, 27. 
 " Greatness and goodness," Edwards, 78, 
 103. Perfection, 187. See Son o/' Got/, etc. 
 
 "Influence of Jesus," Phillips Brooks, 315. 
 
 " Ingham Lectures," Godman, 409. 
 
 Insight of Jesus, 483, 668. See/esns, Son of 
 God, etc. 
 
 Institutions, " hospitals," etc., 395. See C/tcr- 
 ities. Benevolence, Church, etc. 
 
 Intellect, balanced, 333. 
 
 "Intellectual Greatness of Jesus," Chaffin. 
 
 Intercessor: Bacon, 40; Bossuet, 43. 
 
 Interpreter of God and man, Pascal, 42. 
 
 "Interjjrctation of Scripture," Thomas Ar- 
 nold, 179. 
 
 Invention of Jesus impossible, 664. See 
 Impostor, Jesus, Gospels, Evangelists. 
 
 Isaac, 659. 
 
 Isaiah, 22, 432, 528, 529, 606, 614. 
 
 Israel's Glory, 29. 
 
 Jacob, 606, 659. 
 
 Jacobi, " symbol of ideal perfection," 294. 
 
 Jaco])'s ladder like Christ, 145. 
 
 Jairus's daughter, 651. 
 
 James, 22, 227, 34S, 3S6, 60S. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas. Teacher, virtues all, 
 sinlessness, humanity, estimate of his doc- 
 trines, monotheist, benevolence, teacher 
 of immortality, 50. 
 
 Jeremiah, 14, 606. 
 
 Jerome, "majesty of Godhead in his face," 
 291. 
 
 Jesse, 609. 
 
 Jesus' Testimony to Himself. Fulfils 
 law. Judge of all, rock foundation, Lord, 
 Miracle- Worker, 13. King, Messiah, Son 
 of God, Son of man, Judge of all. Arbitra- 
 tor of destiny, Rest-Giver, Yoke-Placer, 
 Greater than temple, Lord of Sabbath, 
 14, 15. Omnipotent, baptism into his 
 name, omnipresent, ransom, Messiah, Son 
 of man. Caller to repentance. Giver of 
 his blood, 15. Resurrection, Life, Raiser 
 of dead. Judge of all, to be honored as the 
 leather, omnipotent, 16. Door, sent of 
 God, voluntary death, came down from 
 heaven, Bread, Light, Resurrection, Truth, 
 Life-Giver, sinlessness, 17. Good Shep- 
 herd, Resurrection, Life, above men's 
 power. Light, will come again with power 
 and angels, omnipotent, 18. Joyful, Vine, 
 Sender of Spirit, came from God, returns 
 to God, " in the Father, . and the Father 
 in me," sinlessness, 19. Miracle-Worker, 
 sight to blind, etc., 20. King of Jews (to 
 Pilate), 31. 
 
 Jesus, character cannot be invention : Rous- 
 seau, 48 ; Newcome, 59 ; Paley, 61. "I Lero 
 of the story," Guizot, 66. "His life not 
 an invention," 79. Compared with heroes, 
 79. His history no fiction, 80, Si. "Not 
 a fiction, but a copy," 98. " Infinite soul 
 of Christ the foundation of all Christian 
 influences," 103. "A revelation of God," 
 III. " No fiction, but history," 113, 114. 
 " Knowledge of him a science," Faber, 
 115. " The Truth, not a truth-seeker," 117. 
 " Greatest miracle, the restoration by love 
 of the human race," 117. " Revelation of 
 God," 119. " His birth the epoch of the 
 ages," 121. "A class by himself," 123. 
 "His life a miracle," 124. "Ascension 
 compared with Elijah's," " their One and 
 All," Tholuck, 125. "His words a di- 
 vine voice," 131. " Superhuman pres- 
 ence," 131. "Exalts the future," 137. 
 "His story not a dream, but a history," 
 140. "The problem of the age," "the 
 standard of the ages," 140. " Never 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 705 
 
 appears strange to himself," 147. "Sur- 
 prises of his goodness," " Alps of good- 
 ness,""a Holy Land," "Has never been re- 
 produced," "a river from eternity through 
 time," 14S. "The only soul in history 
 who appreciates the worth of a man," 
 Emerson, 149. " Every sentence a mas- 
 terpiece of uniqueness," " imperial intel- 
 lect, imperial heart," Armitage, 158. 
 " Like the central link of the Pacific Rail- 
 road binds continents," 160. "His char- 
 acter no invention," Porter, 166. " His 
 doctrine not like those whose works per- 
 ish with the errors they destroy, but a 
 universal code," 177. Not a writer, 177. 
 Story could not be invented, 183. Ibid, 
 1S7. " His similar never reproduced," 
 205. Life cannot be a fiction, 209. His 
 story not an invention, 236, 316. " Never 
 traced to any exemplar," 237. " Jesus, 
 there is no dearer name," poem by Theo- 
 dore Parker, 241. "Only a Jesus could 
 fabricate a Jesus," T. Parker, 242. No 
 portrait satisfies, 253. Seyeddua Eesa, 
 "Lord Jesus, on whom be peace" (Mo- 
 ham.), 275. Could not have been a delu- 
 sion, "not an aping of the Supreme," 
 322. " His portraiture not fabulous, tra- 
 ditionary stories, any more than Apollo 
 Belvedere the work of novice," 324. " His 
 self-assertion does not shock us," Sears, 
 325, 326. " No human invention, his 
 character like great mountains and starry 
 heavens," Hopkins, 330. " The most cer- 
 tain, the most sacred, the most glorious of 
 all facts," too great to have been invented, 
 349. " Only a Jesus could forge Jesus," 
 357. Cannot be a fable or poetry, 362. 
 " No myth, but leads the wakeful quest 
 of the world, fires her energies, the life- 
 giving Spirit," 366. "Eagle with sun- 
 sustaining eyes," 367. " Not a fiction, they 
 could not have depicted," compare with 
 spurious Gospels, Whately, 415. "No 
 dream," 437. Magnet, 441. "A latent 
 Christ in ever}- soul," George Fox, 466. 
 " The sweet Jesus of the Galilee lake," 
 Mozoomdar, 443. " First a church, then 
 a book," 465. " No buried statue, no 
 fossil remain, but a living form," " on the 
 circle of the eternal dial, One that was 
 lowly and lordly at the head," Bartol, 
 478. " The great luminary of the spiritual 
 world," 481. " His words the new map | 
 
 of the divine kingdom," 484. Potentially 
 poet, orator, general, king, scientist, an- 
 alyst of character, 667. 
 
 "Jesus and Hillel," Delitzsch, 141. 
 
 "Jesus and his Critics," Bartol, 477. 
 
 "Jesus, a portrait," Barker, 260. 
 
 "Jesus Christ," Lacordaire, 156. 
 
 "Jesus Christ, European and Asiatic," 
 Keshub Chunder Sen, 188. 
 
 "Jesus Christ; Life, Times, Work," Press- 
 ense, 160. 
 
 " Jesus, greatness as man and Saviour," 
 Wood, 667. 
 
 Jesus in art, " no head of Christ satisfies," 
 Roussel, 253. Handkerchief of Veronica, 
 etc., Lecky, 377. No portrait extant, 
 Beecher, 383. Lentulus, 384, 385. Tra- 
 ditional face universal type, 387. " Long, 
 uncut locks," Mozoomdar, 443. Poets 
 and painters, 489. His portrait adapted 
 by each nation, 609. 
 
 "Jesus of Nazara," Keim, 551. 
 
 "Jesus of Nazareth:" Abbott, L., 125; 
 Clodd, 494. 
 
 "Jesus of the Evangelists," Row, 318. 
 
 " Jesus the World's Saviour," Lorimer, 542. 
 
 Jew, but not Judaistic, 295, 572, 607. 
 
 "Jewish Church," Stanley, 257. 
 
 "Jewish Disabilities," Macaulay, 180. 
 
 Jewish Messiah, 210. 
 
 Jew of Nazareth, 1S5. 
 
 Jezebel, 678. 
 
 Job, 528, 529. 
 
 Joel, 678. 
 
 John Baptist. Lamb of God, Bearer of 
 the world's sins, Pre-existence, Greater 
 than John, Spirit coming on him as Dove, 
 sent of God, Spirit without measure, Bap- 
 tizer with Holy Spirit, Omnipotent, Son 
 of God, 29. 
 
 John Baptist, 14, 20, 24, 216, 294, 447, 668, 
 672. 
 
 JoH.v THE Ev.\NGEi,iST. Word, Word was 
 God, in the beginning with God, all 
 things made through him, Life, Light, in- 
 carnated, only-begotten of the Father, full 
 of grace and truth, Moses' successor, 
 Messiah, 22, 23. 
 
 John the Evangelist, 22, 145, 216, 227, 268. 
 "Person of Christ his theme," 317, 348, 
 372, 379, 3S6, 404. His Gospel, Word of 
 God, but Son of Man, 450, 460, 467, 568. 
 "Christian Cosmogony," 537, 611, 651, 
 668. " The last evangelist," 496. 
 
7o6 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Johnson, Herrick. Founder of Chris- 
 tianity, Jesus tiie cause of Christianit}', 
 the heart of Christianity, 152, 153. 
 
 Johnson, Samuel. Teacher of immortal- 
 ity, 49. 
 
 Jonah, 473. 
 
 Joseph, envied, 674. 
 
 Joseph of Arimathea, 461. 
 
 JosEPHUS, Flavius. Wisdom, man or 
 superior ? Teacher, Crucified, Resurrec- 
 tion, Prophets, Founder of Christianity, 
 attracted Jews and Greeks, 3S, 2S3, 2S4, 
 Preface. 
 
 Joy of soul, Leighton, 59. Of progress, 
 Christ and Christianity, 535, 536, 537. 
 
 Judas Iscariot. Sinlessness, 32. Christ's 
 Patience, Cyprian, 36, 78, 131, 166. A 
 spy and witness, 214, 356, 6:4. 
 
 Judas Maccabaeus, 210, 235. 
 
 Judge of all, Jesus, 13, 14, 17. Peter, 24; 56, 
 loi, 322, 330, 444. 
 
 Judson, 337. 
 
 Jupiter, 405. 
 
 Justice, 336. 
 
 Justification and Reconciliation, 102. 
 
 Justin Martyr. Compared with Socrates, 
 Power of the Ineffable Father, 37. 
 
 Justin Martyr, "Apology," 37. 
 
 Kant, Immanuel. Divinity, Sermon on 
 Mount, Teacher, Example, Founder of 
 Christianity, Church and Kingdom of 
 God, 50, 51. " Symbol of ideal perfection," 
 294. " Starry heavens," 349. " Back to 
 Kant," 5S7. 
 
 Kei.m, Theodore. " A model unique, the 
 Divine self-communication," a master 
 above all past, present, future, the final 
 messenger of God, compared with others, 
 his doctrine of Divine humanity, his God- 
 consciousness, Virtue trod the earth in 
 him, 251-256, Preface. " History has pro- 
 vided no parallel, unique," 271. 
 
 Kempis, Thomas a. Lord, Life, E.\ample, 
 Light, Teacher, Comforts, Good Treasure, 
 40, 41, 268, Preface. 
 
 Kepler, 294, 601. 
 
 King, Kingdom, etc., 14, 19, 30, 41, 42. 
 King and Victor in love, Bossuet, 44, 56, 
 63, no, 116, 119, 126; and Legislator, 
 143. Renan, 156, 217, 298, 50S, 510, 667. 
 
 King, Thomas Starr. Talked to the 
 universal soul, the highest man, greatest 
 benefactor, love and sympathy, meek. 
 
 majestic, highest qualities in the spiritual 
 world, 247-249, Preface. 
 
 KiNGSLEY, Charles. Still lives, sets ex- 
 ample, perfect King of men's spirits, 202, 
 203. 
 
 Klopstock, 349. 
 
 Knowledge of men, 56, 58 ; and God, Fichte, 
 62, 99, 144, 156, iSo, 453. 
 
 Koran, 354, 540. 
 
 Lacordaire, Jean Baptiste Henrl 
 Most venerable form in history, incom- 
 parable Person, analysis of his character, 
 "evangelic unction," compared with war- 
 riors, 156, 157. 
 
 La Fontaine, 529. 
 
 Lamb of God, 28. See Sacrifice, etc. 
 
 Lange, Johann Peter. Made nature 
 shine as mirror of the spirit, transfigures 
 nature and man, every man has met a 
 mirror of him, 162, Preface. 
 
 Laocoon, 207. 
 
 Lao-tse, 400. 
 
 Lassure, " Is God divided t " 271. 
 
 "Last Days of Saviour," Olshausen, 116. 
 
 Lavoisier, 530. 
 
 Law, Edmund. Humility, Greatness, Di- 
 vinity, Humanity, Omnipotence, Lord, 
 greater than Solomon, Obedience, honors 
 the Father, severe against Temple pro- 
 faners, compassion to sinners, conde- 
 scension, 66, 67, Preface. 
 
 Law, William. E.xample, Saviour, Teach- 
 er, Life, Sinless, Humanity, we may 
 follow his spirit if not attain to it, 72-75, 
 Preface. 
 
 Law, Fulfiller, 22, 
 
 Lawgiver, Matthew, 20, 46, 174, 613. 
 
 Lazarus, 33S, 419, 454, 651, 663. 
 
 Lear, 207, 367. 
 
 Leathes, Stanley. Person of Christ his 
 highest evidence, his words im]5ly his 
 works, the centre of Pauline teaching, 
 Christ his own evidence, anomaly in his- 
 tory, not produced by Judaism, 288. 
 
 Lecky, William E. H. Christianity pre- 
 sents an ideal character, his three years 
 of life the regeneration of humanity. 
 Founder of Church, 170, 171. The one 
 religion not subverted by civilization, 
 Christianity has been the moral develop- 
 ment of Europe, its moral progress dis- 
 tinctively Christian, moral division, his 
 ideal traversed the ages, with new strength 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 707 
 
 and beauty, the moral idea clear from 
 dogmatic conceptions, altogether unique 
 in history, highest revelation of Deity, 
 376-380, Preface. 
 
 " Lectures on Matthew," Porteous, S3. 
 
 Lee, J. W. How account for the force of 
 Christ in domestic, social, political, and 
 ecclesiastical institutions .'' his life cannot 
 be accounted for by correlation of forces, 
 the centre, like the sun, he becomes richer 
 by giving, 579-5S6. 
 
 Leibnitz, 262, 302. 
 
 Leighton, Robert. Satisfying, enjoy- 
 ment. Light, a comfort and defence, per- 
 petual glory. Lord and Master, 59, 60, 
 268, 370, Preface. 
 
 Leonidas, 47. 
 
 Lesley, J. Peter. " I call him Lord and 
 Master as a man of exact science. I 
 worship Jesus of Nazareth as the ideal 
 Man, King of men. Nor is worship a whit 
 too strong, historically at head of the race, 
 avatar of God of justice, love and order, 
 the new world on the basis of Jesus, 600- 
 602, Preface. 
 
 "Letter to Stiles," Franklin, 60. 
 
 Letters dated A. D., 406. 
 
 LiDDON, Henry Parry (" Bampton 
 Lectures "). " Moral portrait balanced 
 and harmonious," sincerity, brings others 
 to sincerity, foes and friends, probes 
 them (examples), he was unselfish, 
 '• pleased not himself," self-sacrifice in 
 all its range, Friend of publicans and sin- 
 ners, Consoler, inimitable in activities and 
 temper, his perfections a faultless ideal 
 of beauty, Jesus the highest model, '})},y- 
 
 335- 
 
 Life, 17, 18, 22, 27, 40. Life eternal, Shak- 
 speare, 48, 72, 195, 303, 393. 
 
 "Life and Character of Christ," Edmund 
 Law, 66. 
 
 " Life and Character of Jesus of Naza- 
 reth," Furness, 363. 
 
 "Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," 
 Edersheim, 479. 
 
 "Life and Words of Christ," Geikie, 294, 
 
 *' Life of Christ," Reecher, 3S3, 3S4, 653. 
 
 " Life of Christ," Farrar, 290. 
 
 *'Life of Christ," Neander, 91. 
 
 "Life of Christ," Weiss, 444. 
 
 *• Life of Christ in the World," Brooks, A., 
 
 574- 
 " Life of Jesus," Hase, 109. 
 
 " Life of Jesus," Renan, 155. 
 
 " Life of Jesus," Savage, 162. 
 
 "Life of Jesus Christ," Ewald, 126. 
 
 " Life of Jesus Christ," Stalker, 489. 
 
 " Life of Jesus the Christ," Beecher, 383. 
 
 " Life of God," etc., Scougal, 77. 
 
 " Life of our Lord," Andrews, 196. 
 
 Light, 17, 18, 22, 29. Clement of Rome, 
 Zl^ 40, 59- 142, 188, 247, 256, 303. Light 
 of history and of the soul, 351, 362. " The 
 great luminary of the spiritual world," 
 48 1. See Sun. 
 
 "Light of Asia" and Light of the World, 
 4S2. 
 
 Lilies of the field, 329, 667. 
 
 Lincoln, 430. Christ's moulding power, 601. 
 
 Linnaeus, 601. 
 
 " Literature and Dogma," M. Arnold, 374. 
 
 LiVERMORE, Abiel Abbott. Character of 
 Jesus the great proof of divinity of Chris- 
 tianity, even when most at sea, the ever- 
 lasting rock, as a motive force, the leaven 
 in the measures of meal, " glory of God 
 in the face of Christ," " Nothing comes 
 of nothing," and the reverse is true, cre- 
 ated new standard of character, the echo 
 was made by a voice. Original, kings 
 before and again, but no Jesus, a type of 
 his own. One with God, " the ever-renew- 
 ing hope of our civilization," regeneration 
 of men, 370-372. 
 
 Livingstone, Dr., 509. 
 
 " Living words," Chapin, 244. 
 
 Locke, John. Teacher of Immortality, Res- 
 urrection, Ascension, 75, 76. Neither an 
 impostor nor enthusiast, spotless, no vain- 
 glory, his answers to questions, surpasses 
 all moral instructors, 402, 403 ; 337, 362. 
 
 " Logic of Christian evidences," Wright, 50S. 
 
 Lord, of Sabbath, 14, 15; 18, 23, 24, 2,^1 36. 
 40, 50, 56, 60, 66, 97, 107, 118, 179, 217, 
 226, 227, 239, 247, 256, 278, 289, 298, 2,7,h 
 4t6, 598, 63S. 
 
 '■ Lord's conduct as Instructor," Newcome, 
 56. 
 
 Lord's Prayer, " condensation of devout 
 thought," ''litany of the ages," 524, 5S3. 
 
 LoRiMER, George C. Christ in history 
 more marvellous than Christ in Galilee, 
 his work since Ascension, leader of prog- 
 ress, 493, 494. Jesus the source of the 
 most sacred hopes of the race, receives 
 humanity and sends it forth in blessing, 
 like Lake Lucerne, 542. 
 
7o8 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 LoTZE, Hermann. Humility, submission, 
 and liope came witli Christianity, the Life 
 worked into society and life through the 
 Church, 5SS. 
 
 "Lotze taught that God was in Christ as in 
 no other soul," Cook, 586, Preface. 
 
 Love, to God, 77. To God and men, So, 90, 
 107, 108, 109, 117, 126, 140, 141, 142, 150. 
 178, 191, 242. "New and unparalleled," 
 love not "within limits," 4S1. 
 
 Lowell, Preface. 
 
 Lowliness, 633, 637, 638. "The only per 
 feet Man was humble," 639 See Hti- 
 vtility. Meekness, etc. 
 
 LowRiE, John Marshall. Biography 
 abundantly rewritten by friends and foes, 
 most remarkable and permanent power 
 after him, living and life-giving principles, 
 the Gospel became the faith of the Roman 
 Empire, his acts and words more power- 
 ful after death, kingdom of moral prin 
 ciples. Friend, Teacher, Redeemer, Lord, 
 296-298. 
 
 Loyola, 206. 
 
 Lucerne, Lake, 542. 
 
 Luke. Had the power of the Spirit, 
 Teacher went about, famous in his day, 
 inaugural, fulfilled the Scriptures, Lord, 
 21. Paintings, 377, 450. 
 
 LuTHARDT, Christian Ernst. Chris- 
 tianity a fact, the fact of Jesus, he is 
 Christianity, Love, Gentleness, Meek 
 ness, Majesty, Harmony, Vitality, Unity; 
 all previous history a prophecy of him, 
 object of our aspirations, 177-179. 
 
 Luther, Martin. Gentle, compassion- 
 ate, wise, 38. 
 
 Luther, Martin, Parker, 241, 268, 352, 379, 
 430, 601, 612, 620. 
 
 Lycurgus, 424, 425. 
 
 Macaulay, Thomas B. "Jewish Dis- 
 abilities," commanded love, tolerance 
 should be the fruit, 180, 549. 
 
 McCosii, James. Speaks as never man 
 spake, above the sages of antiquity, clear 
 but compassionate, attracts children, 
 preaches Gospel to poor. Lord, 226. 
 
 Macdonald, George. " In my name," 
 receiving child means that Christ is the 
 child, use of the Bible is to make us 
 look at Jesus, 416-418. 
 
 Maclaren, Alexander. The Pattern- 
 Man, the perfectly good, " One entire 
 
 and perfect chrysolite," yet calls us 
 brethren, Sovereignty, Lord of unseen 
 world, 225. 
 
 Magek, William Connor. Gives no sense 
 of imperfection in himself, no prayer for 
 forgiveness, 556, 557. 
 
 Magnanimity, 336 
 
 Magoon, Elisha L. Divinest Theologian, 
 Teacher and Example, pre-existent, 151, 
 152. 
 
 Majesty, 113. Luther, 17S, 187, 248. Seen 
 by personal surroundings, 291, 303, 314, 
 328, 341. Answer to Herod, 419. 
 
 Malachi, 606. 
 
 Malchus, 577. 
 
 Malefactor on Cross. Simessness, 32. 
 
 Manliness of Christ, Brooks, 431. See 
 Humanity, Courage, etc. 
 
 " Manliness of Christ," Hughes, 174. 
 
 Man of Sorrows, 536, 581. 
 
 "Many Infallible Proofs," Pierson, 404. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Preface, 226, 
 632. 
 
 Mark. Messiah, Son of God, Voice from 
 Father, Dove, the Spirit attests, blessed 
 children, 20, 450. 
 
 Martensen, H.\ns Lassen. Christ even 
 as man must be made unlike us, Schleier- 
 macher's test, "great men are influen- 
 tial," applied to Christ, the influence 
 of personality on Church, State, or reli- 
 gious society, Socrates intensively but 
 not extensively, "he shall be called 
 great," makes a kingdom of sanctified 
 personalities, the stamp of eternity, 
 Ecce Homo, the universal man, 559-565, 
 Preface. 
 
 Martha, 18, 651. 
 
 M artineau, James. Moral and Devotional 
 blended in the Son of Man and Son of 
 God, Completeness, we fall into the dis- 
 ciples' place, the marvellous life and har- 
 mony of a nature in perfect i)eace, his 
 picture of kingdom of heaven uncon 
 sciously reflects himself, the wholeness of 
 a balanced nature, 341, 342. Christ gives 
 us the Spirit of God, the universe his scale, 
 the Prophet of Nazareth, our prayer to 
 walk as children of such light, 382. God 
 has made one sun, and one Divine Soul, 
 Christ makes a common spiritual type, 
 434. " Nothing evolved but the involved," 
 510, Preface. 
 
 Murtyn, Henry, 337. 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 709 
 
 Martyrs died for liim, 85. 
 
 Mary Magdalene, 662. 
 
 Mary, Mother, 20, 47, 3S0, 670. 
 
 Mary of Bethany, 224, 454, 651. 
 
 Mason, Arihur James. Unity of his 
 person, an actual life exhibiting the mind 
 of God, 603, 604. 
 
 Mason, Edward B. Beauty to appreciate, 
 we appreciate according to receptivity. 
 Teacher, Healer, Wisdom, unaccounta- 
 ble, a great light shining in darkness, 
 669-67 1 . 
 
 Masonic, 602. 
 
 Massii.lon, Jean Baptiste. Benefactor, 
 Divinity, Transformer of World, 45. 
 
 Master, 638. See Lord. 
 
 Matheson, George. Gospel portraits, 
 boundlessly tolerant, spirituality, regal 
 authority lies with the people, king of the 
 heart, conquered the world's heart, sub- 
 jugated men by the sacrifice of himself, 
 succeeded in his aim, the loyalty of souls, 
 the vision of a beautiful life, his religion a 
 faith and delight in him, 396-402, Preface. 
 
 Matthew. Taught with authority, com- 
 passionate, Miracle-Worker, Healer, went 
 about, 20, 291, 379, 450, 502, 672, 
 
 Mediator, Hodge, 142. 
 
 " Meditations on Christianity," Guizot, 65. 
 
 Meekness, Scougal, 78 ; Edwards, 78, 80, 
 83, 85, 97, 99, loi. " Brings rest," Walker, 
 139; and Majesty, 167, 178, 248, 295, 303, 
 3 [4; and Grandeur, 330. 336, 34 r, 377, 4S5, 
 533, 602, 668. See Humility, etc. 
 
 Melchizedek, 365, 609. 
 
 "Mental Characteristics of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ,"' Bernard, 6ti. 
 
 Meredith, Preface. 
 
 Messiah, Jesus, 14, 15, 16; Matthew, 20; 
 Mark, 20; John, 23; Peter, 23, 24; Simeon, 
 29,81, 97, III, 114, 126, 128, 137, 184, 270, 
 294. 330. "Great qualities necessary," 
 Hopkins, 329. "The secret of man is the 
 secret of the Messiah," Jewish proverb, 
 351, 483, 592. "Anomted One," "the 
 expected of thirty centuries," 606, 625, 633, 
 666. 
 
 " Messiah," Handel, 452, 596. 
 
 ** Method and Secret of Jesus," M. Arnold, 
 642. 
 
 Michael Angelo, 327, 528. 
 
 " Microcosmus," Lotze. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart. A divine personage, 
 and model, available even for unbeliever, 
 
 Christ rather than God the Christian's 
 pattern. God incarnate, "great and salu- 
 tary hold, " unique figure, unlike his pre- 
 cursor, John, and followers, original, 
 sublime genius, ideal representative and 
 guide of humanity, the abstract become 
 concrete, living so Christ would approve 
 a rule of virtue, 324, 39.S, 593. 
 
 MiLMAN, Henry Hart. His moral dif- 
 ference from his age, universal morality, 
 God the Father, Brotherhood, Son of 
 God, Character, Beauty, Superhuman, 
 Knowledge of Men, Love, Wisdom, 138- 
 140. 
 
 Miltiades, 371, 611. 
 
 Milton, John, 206, 294, 349, 352, 371, 430, 
 4S9, 528, 565, 667. 
 
 Minerva, 207. 
 
 Miracles, Jesus, 13, 17, 20; Matthew, 20; 
 Mark, 21 ; Nicodemus, 31 ; Augustine, 34; 
 Peter, 23, Lord Bacon, 40; Celsus, Julian, 
 Volusian (Chateaubriand), 63 ; Guizot, 66, 
 77. " Never used for himself," 82. Acts of 
 compassion, 84 ; Napoleon, 88 ; Chal- 
 mers, 95, 97. ].ess than his character, 98. 
 Christ's character "the Miracle," iii; 
 Olshausen, 116; Pressens^, 117, Seeley, 
 199. No deception, 266. Himself the 
 miracle, 267, 276, 288. " Person of Christ," 
 Schaff, 271. None by John Baptist, but 
 by Christ, 284. Do not awake surprise 
 or comment of Evangelists, 356, 592. 
 Jesus the Miracle, Gannett, 378. 
 
 "Miraculous Element in Gospels," Bruce, 
 4S0. 
 
 Mitford, 549. 
 
 Mithra, 256. 
 
 Model, 318, 362. See Imitation, Example. 
 
 " Modern Infidelity," Christlieb, 256. 
 
 "Modern Scepticism," Browne, 300. 
 
 " Modern Scepticism," Cook, 3S9. 
 
 Mohammed, Mohammedanism, Preface; and 
 Christ compared, 102, 103, 127, 158, 161, 
 compared, 177, 245, 246, 249, and Chris- 
 tianity, 274, 275, 292, 294, 316, 354, and 
 Christ, 43S, 443, 45 r, 457, 485, 496, 529, 
 540, 601, 645. 
 
 Moliere, 529. 
 
 "Monday Club Sermons," Grifiis, 678; 
 Mason, 669; Sperry, 672. 
 
 Monophysites, 377. 
 
 Montesquieu, " The Church shows the 
 prodigies of the Christian religion,' 540, 
 541. 
 
7IO 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 MooRHOUSE, J. Greatness, analyzed, har- 
 monious development, revelation of God, 
 
 163. 
 
 " Moral Argument for the Gospels," Beard, 
 III. 
 
 Morals, system best, Franklin, 60 ; Paley, 
 62. System, Chateaubriand, 63. Moral- 
 ity the purest, Napoleon, 88. Different 
 from his age, Milman, 139, 268. " Rule 
 of virtue to live so Christ would approve 
 our life," J. S. Mill, 325. Moral science, 
 simplifies, generalizes, divides as by 
 geographical circles, map of duty, rests 
 life on principles as in Golden Rule, 311. 
 Moral model the highest conceivable 
 attainment, higher than all artists, 327. 
 
 Moses, 13, 22. Christ his similar, Spinoza, 
 43, 60. And Christ compared, Ritschl, 
 102, 103, 145, 149. 173. 249. 321- Juris- 
 prudence, 365,477, 491, 513, 533, 554, 581, 
 606, 617, 657. 
 
 Mozart, 561. 
 
 MozooMUAR, Protap Chunder. His 
 voice a song of glory, his sentences vis- 
 ions of heaven, what he touches he puri- 
 fies, his every word a revelation, the 
 sweet Jesus of the Galilasan lake, an 
 Eastern Christ the incarnation of love 
 and grace, the Eastern and Western 
 Christ, 441-444, Preface. 
 
 MuiR, Sir William. Mohammedans say, 
 Seyeddna Eesa, our Lord Jesus " on 
 whom be peace," 275. 
 
 Mui.FORD, Elisha. Person of Christ, 
 perfect righteousness, not only sinless but 
 positive, ethical quality, and in perfect 
 unity with man, " a real conflict and a 
 real victory," 445. 
 
 Miiller, Johann, What is world's history 
 without Christ? 135, Preface. 
 
 MiJLLER, Julius. Gospels cannot be myth 
 nor a lie. Redeemer of the world, 217, 
 218. 
 
 Munt-er, Theodore T. A new century of 
 truth and inspiration, not accept my sys- 
 tem but accept me, Truth enters society 
 by person, through love, Revelation by a 
 person, only by person can man be deliv- 
 ered, not ideas but persons arc the world's 
 salvation, an inspiration through hnalty 
 and love, 456-464, Preface. 
 
 MuuPiiY, Joseph John. Christ's origin- 
 ality in nsc of old truths, invented new 
 tyjje of moral excellence. King through 
 
 truth, new motive power in morals, 165, 
 
 166. 
 " My Religion," Tolstoi, 621. 
 " Mystery of Matter," Picton, Preface, 265. 
 
 Naaman, 678. 
 
 Najjoleon, compares himself with Christ, 89, 
 253. 346, 370, 371. 404. 612, 620. 
 
 "Natal Sermons," Colenso, 598. 
 
 " National Subjects," Kingsley, 202. 
 
 " Natural Sources of Theology," T. Hill, 
 504. 
 
 "Nature and Supernatural," Bushnell, 219. 
 
 " Nature shines in his spirit," Lange, 162. 
 
 Naville, Ernest. Love of Christ makes 
 you a grain of salt, ray of light, world 
 crucified but follows him, Socrates, 128, 
 1 29. 
 
 Neander, Johann August \Vilhelm. 
 Originator of Germanic culture and intel- 
 lectual life, developed in Reformation, 
 root of modern civilization. Son of God, 
 Image of God, Humanity, ideal and 
 phenomenal never contradict, teaches 
 necessary laws of our being, 91, 92, 
 Preface. 
 
 Neighbor, Christ's interpretation, 319. 
 
 Nestorians, 377. 
 
 Newcome, William. Lord, Teacher, 
 Teacher of Immortality, sent by Father 
 as Instructor, Redeemer, Judge, King, 
 Benevolence, supernatural truth, sublime, 
 knowledge of men, wisdom, jiarables, 
 sinlessness, humility, courage, fortitude, 
 patience, obedience, omniscience, char- 
 acter could not have been invented, 
 enjoins prayer in his name, 56. Image of 
 God, 59, Preface. 
 
 " New Life of Jesus," Strauss, 36S. 
 
 Newman, Francis, compared Fletcher of 
 Madeley with Christ, 61 1. 
 
 " New Theology," Clarke, J. F., 393. 
 
 Newton, Isaac, 242, 294, 302, t,'^'j. ChiUl on 
 shore, 474, 523, 530, 601. "Takes a 
 Newton to forge a Newton," 655, 669. 
 
 NICODEMI'S, Teacher from Gotl, Prc-c::ist- 
 ence. Miracle- Worker, 31. 
 
 Nicodemus, 55. His "crucifix," 377, 454. 
 
 NicoLL, W. R. The problem of this age, 
 the standard of the ages. Teacher, 
 Prophet, Example, 140. 
 
 Nirvana, 292, 645. 
 
 No consciousness of sin, 614. Sec Con- 
 sciousness, Self- Consciousness. 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 711 
 
 Northmen, valor, 2S2. 
 
 Norton, Andrews. Taught the essen- 
 tials, Wisdom, Saviour, Divinity of his 
 mission, 176, 177. Founder of Chris- 
 tianity, " most wonderful individual," a 
 Jew, humble yet unparalleled effect, 
 moral civilization of the world, not a 
 school of philosophy, but of people to 
 whom he was Saviour and Son of God, 
 character consistent and wonderful, 
 unparalleled, unalterable elevation, not 
 degraded by insult, the unperverted fol- 
 low him, the portraiture of his character, 
 322-324, Preface. 
 
 Obedience, 58, 66; and order, Barrow, 71, 
 113,126,320. Service, 336. Yet freedom, 
 34S, 362, 435, 522 ; and submission, 5S6. 
 
 Oberlin, 337. 
 
 Olshausen, Hermann. Prophet, King, 
 unsurpassed in speech, miracles, king- 
 dom of God, active and passive virtues. 
 Gentleness, Patience, Christ the Truth, 
 not truth-seeker, unity and combination 
 of virtue, 116, 117. 
 
 Omnipotence, Jesus, 15, iS. John, 22. 
 John Baptist, 29. Grotius, 39 ; 66, 7S, S3, 
 
 "5- 
 
 Omniscience, Jesus, 15, 30. 58, 98. 
 
 "One Religion, The," Wordsworth, 506. 
 
 OosTERZEE, John Jacob Van. Sinless- 
 ness, Lord, Image of the Father, Divinity, 
 Humanity, not only speaks the truth, but 
 is the Truth, voluntarily laid down his 
 life. Son of God, Physician of souls. Re- 
 deemer (Rothe), never /earns (Rothe), 
 God's highest revelation, iiS, 119. 
 
 Orations and Essays, Diman, 146. 
 
 Orations and Sjieeches, Everett, 191. 
 
 " Oriental Christ," Protap Chunder Mo- 
 zoomdar, 441. 
 
 Origkn. Son of God, Image. Image of his 
 goodness. Saviour, 35. 
 
 Originality, Napoleon, 87, 98, 165, 1S3, 187, 
 222, 236. " Never attempted to trace to 
 a foregoing exemplar," 237, 261. "In- 
 comparable originality," Coquerel, 26r, 
 301, 324. Of his model of moral excel- 
 lence, 327, 371. The loftiest specimen, 
 471. In use of old truths, 507 ; and 
 beauty of character, 511, 664. 
 
 "Originality of Jesus," Clarke, J. F., 470. 
 
 "Originality of the- character of Christ," 
 Matheson, 396. 
 
 Othello, 207. 
 
 " Our Father," 544. See Lord's Prayer. 
 
 " Our Lord's Life on Earth," Hanna, 86. 
 
 "Outlines of Theology," Vinet, 125. 
 
 " Oxford Sermons," Edwin A. Abbott, 320. 
 
 Paine, Thomas. " Age of Reason," virtu- 
 ous and amiable man. Teacher of morals, 
 not e.xceeded, 52. 
 
 Painting, Angelico wept because he could 
 not reproduce, 527. Leonardo, 528. 
 
 Paley, William. Sober in prayer, ad- 
 mirable discourses, submissive to death. 
 Resignation, practicable, commends not 
 asceticism, not impostor, nor enthusiast, 
 morality above reason, above philoso- 
 phers, system of morals, 6r, 62, 616, 
 617. 
 
 Palfrey, Cazneau. " A complete portrait 
 of an absolutely perfect life," that asser- 
 tion examined, his Person shown first by 
 a church, then by a book, most intense 
 personality, no one ever spoke with such 
 power, his Spirit in the whole enables us 
 to judge of parts, 465-469, Preface. 
 
 Palprey, John Gorham. Evangelists 
 honest, and simple. Master, record their 
 own faults, incapable of conceiving such 
 a character, 227-233, Preface. 
 
 Panffitius, 655. 
 
 Parables, Priestly, 53, 57. Ranke, 76, 166, 
 285, 307. " Seized the imagination of 
 mankind," 446. " None in John's Gos- 
 pel," 450. Compare Arnold's poems, 454, 
 456, 525. "Metaphors the colors of the 
 spectrum," 601. "A child can under- 
 stand," 602. 
 
 " Paradise Lost," 207. 
 
 " Paradise Regained," 667. 
 
 Paris, 284. 
 
 Park, Edwards A. Christ as the work- 
 manship of the Divine Mind, 557, 558. 
 
 Parker, Joseph. Recognized the gieat- 
 ness of human nature. Son of God, his 
 life the world's great influence, 234, 235, 
 Preface. 
 
 Parker, Theodore. Character estimated 
 and studied, a young man unlike Socrates, 
 venerable beauty, humanity, poem, "Je- 
 sus, there is no dearer name than thine," 
 greatest soul of all the sons of men, a 
 genius of religion, love, "onlv a Jesus 
 could have fabricated a Jesus," 239-242. 
 " If I'lato did not write Phaedo, must 
 
712 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 have been two Platos," the inventor 
 must have equalled the invention, 655, 
 Preface. 
 
 Parthenon, 239, 566. 
 
 Pascal, Blaise. Centre, Reason, King, 
 41. 
 
 Pascal, 253. "Suns and stars equal not 
 man," 471, 528. 
 
 Patience, Polycarp, 35. Even with Judas, 
 Cyprian, 36, 78. Grotius, 39. Pascal, 42, 
 58, 80, 82, 83, 86, 117, 123, 167, 250, 295, 
 300, 31S, 320, 443, 533. 
 
 Patriotism, 656. 
 
 Patripassians, 377. 
 
 Paul. Lord, Messiah, Ransom, Vicarious 
 Sufferer, Foundation, Resurrection, Rich 
 became Poor, Pre-existent, Son of God, 
 Divine, 25. Infinite, 26. Ordainer of 
 Church, apostles, prophets, etc., perfect 
 Man, has name above every name, to be 
 worshipped. Head of Church, 27. " Un- 
 searchable riches of Christ," 371. 
 
 Paul, 218, 253, 268. Centre was Christ, 2S8, 
 
 339. 340, 348. 352. 367, 371, 372, 3S6, 39S, 
 404, 430, 447. And Barnabas, 473, 474, 
 488, 523, 548, 556, 557. And Gamaliel, con- 
 trast of influence, 567, 611, 612, 619, 668. 
 
 Peabody, Andrew Preston. Character 
 stands unique in history, harmony of con- 
 trasts, a walk with God yet walk with 
 man, the greatest, wisest, and best approve 
 his character, wins universal recognition, 
 a Jew but not Judaistic, belongs to all 
 ages, "has no secular paralla.x," beautiful 
 to the ignorant and to Fenelon, not a star 
 but a sun, 336, y^-j. " Baccalaureate Ser- 
 mons," Christ is his religion, his life-story 
 like the works of creation, the greatest 
 force in human history, " Thou alone art 
 worthy," " The same yesterday, to-day, and 
 forever," 571-574, Preface. 
 
 Peahody, Ephraim. Perfect humanity. 
 Image of God, " one perfect character 
 shines like star over dark seas," Example, 
 Character of Christ more important to 
 study than his nature, " the character of 
 heaven," "connected with our highest 
 happiness and holiest hope of heaven," 
 Cross, 258-260. 
 
 Perfection, " blinds to his excellence," 
 Jacob Al)bott, 129. Hard to grasp, 14S, 
 175. T^ifficult to study, iSi. Of charac- 
 ter, 187, 2 so. " Perfect but imitablc, ideal 
 but possible," Coqueiel, 264, 309, 319, 320, 
 
 378. "Perfect and alone," 390. "Per- 
 fect life," C banning, 405, 410. Of fulness, 
 
 473- 
 
 Pericles, 383. 
 
 "Permanent and Transient in Christianity," 
 Strauss, 286. 
 
 Perowne, E. H. Calmness, Prophet, Sin- 
 lessness. Knowledge of men, Compassion, 
 not like Ajax but Jacob's ladder. Virtues 
 combined, 144-146. 
 
 Person, Personality, " positive," 98, 256. 
 Grows even when miracles are denied, 
 271. "The centre of religious contro- 
 versy," 276, 317, 369. Beecher, 385, 389, 
 401, 409, 418. Christ is Christianity, 440. 
 " Only Person can deliver," 459, 461, 467, 
 475. Person and truth woven together 
 make him the Teacher, 4S5, 528. The 
 power of Christianity, 613. 
 
 " Person of Christ," Schaff, 344. 
 
 Peter, 14. Foundation, Salvation, Teacher 
 of eternal truth. Holy One of God, mir- 
 acles in his name, Messiah, Crucified, 23. 
 Resurrection, Judge, sinless, suffered for 
 sins, prophets witness, 13, 24. 
 
 Peter, " words of eternal life," Ranke, 76, 
 145, 166, 216, 228, 291. 318, 338, 347, 3S6, 
 404, 460, 479, 567, 611, 668. 
 
 Pharisees, 54, 55, loi, 187, 231, 257, 285. 
 Denunciations, 672, 679. 
 
 Phidias, 3S1, 52S. 
 
 Philanthropy, 274, 304, 378. 
 
 Philip and N.vthanael. Prophet, Rabbi, 
 Son of God, King of Israel, 30, 291. 
 
 Philosophers, 503. See their individual 
 names. 
 
 " Philosophy of History," Hegel, 64. 
 
 " Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation," 
 J. B. Walker, 137. 
 
 Physician of Souls, 119, 470. 
 
 PiCTON, J. Allanson. Marcus Antoninus 
 never saved the world by sacrifice of him- 
 self, that puts Christ beyond rivalry, felt 
 the Father indwelling, viewed all things 
 in light of God, 265, 266, Preface. 
 
 Pierson, Arthur T. No limit of indi- 
 viduality, yet jjositiveness, a response in 
 all kinds of men, sympathizing Brother, 
 ideal manhood, no portrait does justice, 
 art or moral, left all ideals behind, his life 
 the pivot of history, sways the world, we 
 date our letters AD., " lordshij) of the 
 world's calendar," as thouiih all history 
 had a new birth then, his mind and char- 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 m 
 
 acter the great good, the character of 
 Jesus the great impulse, inspires affection 
 as if present, a fame unparalleled, his 
 character the efficiency of Christianity, 
 Jesus the life of his religion, his precepts 
 vital by his life, 404. 
 
 Pilate. Sinlessness, "I find no fault," 31. 
 
 Pilate, 14, 19. "Behold the man," 146, 215, 
 221, 234, 238, 248, 252, 336, 364, 391, 440, 
 507. Testimony, 614, 667. 
 
 Pilate's Wife. Sinlessness, supernatu- 
 ral, "a dream this night," 32. 
 
 Pilate's wife, 215, 23S, 291. 
 
 PiNNocK, W. H. Messiah, Love for his 
 Church, Head of the Church, Resurrec- 
 tion, 141. 
 
 Pious, Porphyry (Chateaubriand), 63. 
 
 Pitt, William. 
 
 Plato, imagined man, Rousseau, 47 ; on Soc- 
 rates, 54, 56, 136, 158, 221, 226, 242, 249, 
 253, 267, 269, 284, 292, 322, 326, 354. 
 Utopia, 381, 385, 412, 474, 495, 523, 525, 
 52S, 530, 593. 594. 605, 611, 655, 657. 
 
 " Plan of Founder of Christianity," Rein- 
 hard, 194. 
 
 Platonists, 554, 613. 
 
 Pliny, witness to innocence of Christians, 
 63, 209. 
 
 Plotinus, 546. 
 
 Plumptre, Edward Haves. Source of 
 Church's teaching, benevolent, "marvel- 
 lous personality, stamped on the world's 
 history, we must accept his claims," 236, 
 237, Preface. 
 
 PoLVCARP. Saviour, sinlessness. Patience, 
 Example, Righteousness, 35. 
 
 Pompey, 610. 
 
 Pontiff, Bossuet, 43. 
 
 Poor, poverty, Edward Everett, 192. "Gos- 
 pel to poor," 226, 293, 305, 346, 3S6; and 
 lowly, 427, 487 ; and hardship, 636, 653, 
 657, 667. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 540. 
 
 Porphyry, 63, 209. 
 
 PoRTEous, Beilby. Founder of Christian- 
 ity, most extraordinary Personage of the 
 world. Teacher, Resurrection, Ascension, 
 his work unparalleled, the conversion of 
 the world, commissioned from heaven. 
 Wisdom, Omnipotence, Goodness, Gen- 
 tleness, Holiness, Compassion, Self-Com- 
 mand, Patience, Meekness, Moral Purity, 
 not indebted to books or education, Son 
 of God, Gospel, 83, 84. 
 
 Porter, Noah. "Boston Lectures," his 
 character no invention, parables, Good 
 Samaritan, Teacher, 166, 167. 
 
 Portraiture of Christ (art), 349, 356, 377, 
 383-385, 3S6, "none does justice," 405. 
 
 Portraiture (moral), 397, 401, 405. "The 
 utmost effect with smallest material," 
 Wright, 511, 664, 658. 
 
 Positivists, Preface, 597. 
 
 Post, Truman. "A new and wonderful 
 moral power in history," reformative en- 
 ergy, moral life-power, no mould of age, 
 vision of the personal God in Christ, with 
 transfiguring charm, 287, 288. 
 
 Practicability of Christ's teaching, Paley, 61. 
 
 Prayer, his delight in, 77. For murderers on 
 the cross, 322, 367 ; shortest, 472. " Lord's 
 Prayer," 524. Prayerfulness, 586. 
 
 Preacher and Teacher, 40. 
 
 Pre-e.xistence, Jesus, 17, 18; John, 22; Paul, 
 25; John Baptist, 28; Nicodemus, 31, 
 152. 
 
 Pressens^, Edmond de. Compared with 
 Socrates and Isaiah, himself the Truth, 
 Gentle yet Powerful, Divine Virtue, mira- 
 cles, "his greatest miracle the restoration 
 by love of the human race," " Divine 
 Love personified," 117, 118. Type of 
 perfection, not like ascetics of India or 
 Mohammedans, Saviour, the Fifth Gospel 
 the work of Christ in the world, 160-162. 
 
 Priestly, Joseph. Compared with Socra- 
 tes, Teacher, authoritative, didactic, para- 
 bolic, Bfnevolence, Sinlessness, Human- 
 ity, 52-56. 
 
 Prince of life, 345. 
 
 " Progress of Doctrine in New Testament," 
 Bernard, 154. 
 
 Prophets, Prophecy, 13, 24, 30, 38, 116, 120, 
 144. 
 
 Prctevangel, 290. 
 
 Prudence, 58, 80, 99, 167. 
 
 " Pseudo-Matthew," 290. 
 
 " Public Ministrj- of our Lord," Blaikie, 
 
 473- 
 Publius Lentulus, " Description of Christ," 
 
 384. 
 
 PuNSHO.N, WiLLiA.M MoRLEY. Lawgiver, 
 174. 
 
 Putnam, George. " Was and was to con- 
 tinue Head-centre, Master, Lord, King, 
 Captain, in supremacy and religion," Son 
 of God, inspired to teach true religion, 
 must permanently triumph, the eminent 
 
7H 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 men not scoffers, theological obscurations 
 removed he stands simple and beautiful, 
 
 339. 340. 
 Pyramids, 593. 
 Pythagoras, 316. 
 
 Quakers, Paine, 52. • 
 
 QuARTERiA' Review. Established a king- 
 dom not of earth but of heaven, a King 
 in humility, inverted all expectations of 
 his disciples, they do not declare but 
 picture him, holiness, union and vk'orking 
 with God, after all criticism will remain 
 admiration for his moral character, image 
 of God's perfection in Palestine, 269-272. 
 
 Queen of Sheba, 655. 
 
 "Quiet Resting- Places," Raleigh, 296. 
 
 QuiNET, Edgar. Gospel apotheosizes per- 
 sonality, not nature, the dominion of a 
 soul greater than universe, the miracle of 
 the gospel, the infinite soul of Christ, 
 infinity, Christianity has consecrated the 
 individual, God-made man, 103, 104. 
 
 Rabbi, Jesus called by disciples, 16; by 
 Philip and Nathanael, 30, 
 
 Rabbinic Schools, 497. 
 
 Racine, 528. 
 
 Raleigh, Alexander. Whatever he 
 touches glorified, Behold the Man, toil, 
 travel, suffering, cross, 296. 
 
 Raleigh, Walter, 605. 
 
 Ranke, Leopold. Humility, Healer, Para- 
 bles, Teacher, Sublimity, Holy, Spirit of 
 God, Eternal Life in his words, Human- 
 ity, 76. 
 
 Ransom, Jesus, 15. 
 
 Raphael, 68, 349, 561. 
 
 " Reality of Faith," N. Smyth, 452. 
 
 Reason, Jesus, Pascal, 41. Absolute, Fichte, 
 63. Absolute Truth, Hegel, 64; Uarrow, 
 68. 
 
 " Reason, Faith, and Duty," J. Walker, 235. 
 
 Redeemer, Hacon, 40; Bossuet, 43, 56, foil, 
 63, 85, iig; Tholuck, 124, 214, 251, 256, 
 277. 298, 331, 332, 444, 510, 563. 
 
 Reformer, 140, 32 1, 324. Supreme moral 
 Reformer, 358. Greatest social Reformer, 
 Abbott, E. A., 425. Great practical Re- 
 former, 428. 
 
 Regenerator, Regencraticm, Regeneration of 
 the race, 345. Regeneration of humanity, 
 and individual, Cohbe, 358. Lodged in 
 vivifying power of Christ, 372. Regen- 
 
 eration and exaltation of souls his ulti- 
 mate aim, 406, 492. 
 
 Reid, John. Simplicity and natural free- 
 dom, " he never appears strange to him- 
 self," had all moral traits, does not change 
 opinions. Teacher, Perfection, hard to 
 grasp, surprises of his goodness, 147-149, 
 Preface. 
 
 Reinhard, Francis Volkmar. His refor- 
 mation for the heart, to embrace all na- 
 tions, " a new moral creation," ruled from 
 within not from without, his religion uni- 
 versal, Benevolence, Founder of Chris- 
 tianity, Life, asceticism none, but joyous, 
 gentle though greatest of Reformers, 
 Divine, 194-196, Preface. 
 
 " Religion, Analogy of," Butler, 431. 
 
 "Religion and Christ," Guizot, 65. 
 
 " Religion of Christ," Leathes, 288. 
 
 Religion of Christ compared with religions 
 of the world, as to vitality, Chadwick, 366. 
 Other religions a kingdom, the Christian 
 religion a faith, 400. 
 
 " Religions before Christ," Pressense, 117. 
 
 Renan, Joseph Er.nest. Son of God, 
 Founder of Religion, his perfect idealism, 
 King, will never be surpassed, 155, 156. 
 
 Renan, Joseph Ernest, 197, 209, 251, 253, 
 "Demi-god," 271, 370, 419, 439, 483, 593, 
 667, Preface. 
 
 "Republican Christianity," Magoon, 151. 
 
 "Republic of God," Mulford, 445. 
 
 Reserve truth he did not give out, 474. 
 
 Resignation, Paley, 61, 99, 336. 
 
 Respecter of authority and order, 58. 
 
 "Re-statements of Christian Doctrine," Bel- 
 lows, 242. 
 
 Resurrection, Jesus, 16, 17, 18; Peter, 24; 
 "first-born," Paul, 26, 38; Grotius, 39; 
 Bacon, 40; Locke, 76, S3, 84, 141, 251, 
 26S, 434,441, 505, 550, 594. Resurrection 
 of his life as exceptional as of his body, 
 633. "Not a fraud," "a coarse and 
 clumsy theory," 615, 652, 661. 
 
 Revelation, interior, as food becomes living 
 brain and nerve, 417. 
 
 " Revelation of God and man," etc.. Thorn, 
 1 86. 
 
 " Revelation of the risen Christ," Wcscott, 
 661. 
 
 Riches, Rich, 104, 386.- Responsibility to 
 society, 426, 636, 653. 
 
 Rinrri'-.R, Jean Paul. " The holiest among 
 the mighty, and the mightiest among the 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 715 
 
 hoh'," etc., 179. "An individual wlio 
 swayed remote ages and founded an eter- 
 nity of his own." Did he exist .•' there is 
 a Providence, " the holiest among the 
 mighty," etc., 369. 
 
 RiGGKNBACH, CHRISTOPII JOHAN.NES. Un- 
 
 calculated character, simple and majes- 
 tic, appeal to conscience, knowledge of 
 men, pitiful, Evangelists did not write 
 fiction but history, compares Socrates, 
 holy, unparalleled, Messiah, sinlessness, 
 wisdom, divinity, 113-115, Preface. 
 
 RiTSCHL, Alkrecht. Founder of Chris- 
 tianity, and relation to his religion, him- 
 self as Redeemer the centre of it, 102, 103, 
 Preface. 
 
 Robertson, Frederick W. Redeemer, 
 sinlessness, Pilate's testimony and Pilate's 
 wife, John Baptist, Son of Man, inwardly 
 and altogether pure, 214-217, Preface. 
 
 Rock of Ages, " Eclect. Rev.," 277. 
 
 Rogers, Ebenezer P. The name Christian 
 given as reproach, has made itself an 
 honor, sympathy, 421-424, Preface. 
 
 Rogers, Henry. Gospels must cease to 
 exist before infidelity can succeed, the 
 tributes of the heart. Son of Man, Son of 
 God, 233-235, Preface. 
 
 Roman Centurion, Sinlessness, 32, 671. 
 
 Rothe, "never learns," 119. 
 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques. Sacred Per- 
 sonage, sublime, pure, and simple, self- 
 control, Plato's imaginary righteous man, 
 Wisdom, Death, his Gospel no fiction, 
 47, 48. Inconceivable that the Gospels 
 should have been invented, the history of 
 Socrates not so well attested as that of 
 Christ, 655, Preface. 
 
 Rousseau impracticable, Paley, 6r, 370,655. 
 
 RoussEL, Napoleon. Veracity his teach- 
 ing and practice, said he was Son of God, 
 lives easily in a superior world, "'heaven 
 his country, holiness his nature, eternity 
 his life," Son of God, his glow of life 
 communicates, his work affects the soul, 
 three hundred millions acknowledge gift 
 of Holy Spirit, 251-255, Preface. 
 
 Row, Charles Adolphus. Not a product 
 of human forces, but superhuman power. 
 Why have not others e.xcited impassioned 
 love to themselves ? none of the sages, 
 avoided political and social legislation 
 which is destructive to Mohammedanism, 
 had he aimed at external, political, social, 
 
 Christianity would not have lived a cen- 
 tury, 353-356, Preface. 
 
 Rubens, 349. 
 
 RusKiN, John. The believers who had 
 Christ, had all. Fortitude, Holiness, Lib- 
 erty, 455, 456. 
 
 Rush, Dr., Letter from Jefferson, 50. 
 
 Rutherford, heart enlarged as big as heaven 
 to hold Christ, 470. 
 
 Sabbath made for man, 523. 
 
 Sacrifice for sin. Bacon, 40; Hodge, 143. 
 See Cross, etc. 
 
 Sadducees, 257, 672, 673, 674. 
 
 Sakya Mouni, 2S6, 291. See BiidJhu, Gau- 
 hi ma. 
 
 Samaritans, 22. Omniscience, 30. Saviour, 
 30. Woman, 150, 22S. 
 
 "Sartor Resartus," Carlyle, 169. 
 
 Satisfaction, Leighton, 59. 
 
 Saviour, Salvation, Peter, 23 ; Paul, 27 ; 
 Hebrews, 28 ; Simeon, 29 ; John Baptist, 
 29; Samaritans, 30; Clement of Alexan- 
 dria, 33; Clement of Rome, 33; Polycarp, 
 35; Origen, 35; Bacon, 40,43, 44; Shak- 
 speare, 48, 64, 68, 72, 79, 81, 85; Chal- 
 mers, 95, 105, III, 124, 136, 146, 168, 176, 
 251, 258, 261, 278, 289, 329. "Little col- 
 ored girl singing," Fumess, 363, 411, 414, 
 469, 505, 559, 591, 597, 613. 625, 647. 
 Subordination of all his gifts, 668. 
 
 Scandinavian god outrun (by thought), 59S. 
 
 Schaeffer, Ary, 668. 
 
 Schaff, Philip. Christ not school-trained, 
 nor "self-made," his alleged contact with 
 Egyptians or Essenes explains nothing, 
 quotes only Old Testament, in religion 
 original and independent, he is the Truth, 
 never became an old man, an uncommon ' 
 personage with astounding claims, great, 
 but unostentatious, conquered more than 
 all conquerors, gave more light than all 
 science, eloquent, set many pens in motion, 
 rules one-third of the globe, rises like the 
 Pyramids, finds disciples everywhere, 
 balanced equilibrium, never needed re- 
 adjustment, of no particular temperament, 
 obedient yet free, above the world yet 
 mingling with it, his virtue healthy, manly, 
 vigorous, never repellant, grows on closer 
 inspection, no parallel in history or fiction, 
 no biographer, moralist, or artist satisfied 
 with his reproduction, rises above all pro- 
 portions of humanity, too great to have 
 
7i6 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 been invented, meets our souls' wants, we 
 are elevated by contemplating Christ, 
 with him, history is a harmonious revela- 
 tion of God, glory of past, life of present, 
 hope of future, we cannot understand 
 ourselves without him, " The secret of 
 man is the secret of the Messiah," Light 
 of history and of the soul, 344-351, 
 Preface. " Person of Christ the miracle 
 of history," 271. 
 
 Schelling, Christ " symbol of union of di- 
 vine and human," 294. 
 
 ScHENKKL, Daniel. Champion of many, 
 friend of poor, Deliverer going to meet 
 death, name shines like a star, 104. " His- 
 tory has produced no parallel," " lives 
 forever in souls," 271. 
 
 Schiller, 1554. 
 
 ScHMiD, C. F. ("Biblical Theology of the 
 New Testament"). His teaching only an 
 initiation into himself, the essence of 
 Christianity, Peter declares sinless and 
 perfect, Model, Pattern, 317, 31 8. 
 
 "Scotch Sermons," Cunningham, 265. 
 
 Scott, Walter, 498, 652, 654. " Waverley," 
 "Guy Mannering," 671. 
 
 ScoUGAL, Henry. Saviour, Example, 
 Holy, Goodness, Love to God, Prayer, 
 Benevolence, Miracles, Omnipresence, 
 Meekness, Patience with Judas, 77, 78, 
 Preface. 
 
 Schleiermacher, a "great man moulds so- 
 ciety," 559, 562. 
 
 "Scientific Basis of Faith," Murphy, 165. 
 
 "Scripture Testimony to Messiah," Smith, 
 J. P., 99- 
 
 Sea, Christ's teaching a great sea, Augus- 
 tine, 34. 
 
 Seaks, Edmund H. " More of a man than 
 any other in history," humanity com])lcte 
 in compass, union, Egoism stupendous, 
 but more than man, not the abnegation 
 of a sage, we are not shocked because a 
 biography like no other, try to fit his 
 self-assertion to any of the sages, 325, 
 326, Preface. 
 
 Sebonde, 377. 
 
 Second Coming, Jesus, 18. 
 
 Sf.kley, John Roi!F.rt. Founder of 
 Christianity, laid man under obligation, 
 transcendent greatness, miracles, Power, 
 Sympathy, Personal pretensions, "Christ 
 the Sun determining our orbit," Christ 
 himself the great Fact, beneficent deeds, 
 
 wise words, Example, habitual Goodness, 
 
 Holiness, gives the Holy Spirit, cross, 198, 
 
 Preface. 
 Self-Assertion, 325, 345. 
 Self-Comrnand, 83. 
 Self-Consciousness, Preface, 16, 17, 18, 19, 
 
 22,66. As Messiah, iii, 186, 216,221, 
 
 266, 319, egoism stupendous and persist- 
 ent. 325. ZZ^^ 352, 436, 446, 474. 536, 
 537. 553- 
 
 Self-Deiiial, 80, 5S6. 
 
 " Self-Revelation of God," Samuel Harris, 
 
 595- 
 
 Sen, Keshub Chundeu. Highest rever- 
 ence for character, and lofty ideal, a ne- 
 cessity of his age, commissioned of Prov- 
 idence, vast moral influence of life and 
 death still lives, stream of Christianity 
 gives enlightenment to the world, Christi- 
 anity Asiatic and Oriental, response of 
 universal consciousness, forgiveness and 
 self-sacrifice, moral serenity, feared no 
 mortal man, consummation on cross, sun 
 in meridian splendor, 1S8-191. 
 
 Seneca, 496, 571. 
 
 Sent of God, Jesus, 17. John Baptist, 
 29. 
 
 Sermon on Mount, Priestly, 55, 143, 166, 
 
 267, 308, 403, 450, 503. " Not the warrior, 
 but the peacemaker," 523, 544, 5S3, 594, 
 613.615. 
 
 "Sermons," Bossuet, 43; Massillon, 45; 
 Buckminster, 96; Kingsley, 202; Robert- 
 son, 214; Maclaren, 225; Newman Hall, 
 278; Putnam, 339; Tauler, 441 ; Simjjson, 
 565; Caird, 56S ; Peabody, A. P., 571; 
 Bellows, 591; Colenso, 598; Steel, 649; 
 Mason, 669 ; Sperry, 672 ; Vaughan, 674 ; 
 Griffis, 678. 
 
 Severe, against profane. Law, 67. 
 
 Shaksprarr, William. Saviour, Life 
 Eternal, 48. 
 
 Shakspeare, William, 205, 206, 267, 286, 
 294, 321, 327, 344, 353, 386, 394, 477. 502, 
 523, 52S, 529, 561, 565, 593. An "Eliza- 
 bethan Englishman," 605, 652. 
 
 "Shall we call him Master.'" Lesley, 600. 
 
 Shammai, 411. 
 
 Shepherd, Jesus, 18. 
 
 Sickness, 34, 76, 94. Always healed, hunger 
 twice, Chalmers, Whatelv, 97, 116, 166, 
 172, 395- 436. 479- 650, 669, 680. 
 
 Simeon. Messiah, Salvation, Light of 
 Gentiles, Glory of Israel, 29. 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 717 
 
 Simon, D. W. The Crucified a factor in 
 civilized humanity, the world not surfeited 
 of the Cross, 391. 
 
 Simon the Cyrenian, 5S2. 
 
 Simplicity, IJarrow, 70; and Wisdom, 86, 
 90, 113, 147, 159, 182, 300, 314, 328, 583. 
 
 SiMi'soN, Matthew. His words were 
 spirit and life, an evident consciousness 
 of exhaustless power, idolatry of igno- 
 rance Christ disjicls, Christ's thoughts 
 sweep away other thoughts, our unbe- 
 lievers were brought up on Christianity, 
 Paul's writings live because he wrote of 
 Christ, 565-568, Preface. 
 
 Sincerity, 39, 58, 130, 333, 334, 439, 675. 
 See Truth. 
 
 Sinlessness, Jesus, 17, 19. Peter, 23, 24. 
 Hebrews, 27, 28. Thief on cross, 32. 
 Pilate three times and Herod, 3t. Pilate's 
 wife, 32. Centurion, 32. Judas, 32. 
 Polycarp, 35. Priestly, 35. Grotius, 39, 
 44. Jefferson, 50, 57, 63, 64, 69, 72, 76, 
 81, 108, 1 14, 1 15, 1 18, 121-124. Voluntary, 
 not impeccable, Hodge, 143, 144, 146. 155, 
 167, 214-217, 238. Above all, 268, 295, 
 318. Must be to be Saviour, yet he 
 claimed, and sustained the unparalleled 
 claim, 330, 331, 337, 390, 402. Absence 
 of self-reproach, 435. Consciousness of, 
 444; and positively ethical, Mulford, 445. 
 Gives transcendent power to his person- 
 ality, claims to be sinless, claim allowed, 
 446. Because full of love, 491. " In the 
 sight of Deity," Hausrath, 501. " Xo 
 prayer for forgiveness," 557. Sanctity, 
 594. No consciousness of sin, 614, 665. 
 
 "Sinlessness of Jesus," Ullmann, 107. 
 
 Slaverv, 272, 393. Cato, work old slaves to 
 death, 428, 448. 
 
 Smith, Adam, 326. 
 
 Smith, Goldwin. Christianity rests on 
 benevolence, love to man, Christ an ab- 
 solute embodiment of love in action and 
 affection, cannot antagonize moral prog- 
 ress of the race, perfect, it is final, hu- 
 manity will advance towards the Christian 
 type, a life of pure beneficence, has not a 
 taint of Jewish, Greek, Roman peculiarity, 
 therefore universal, no factitious virtues, 
 free from asceticism, 279-284. A crisis 
 began with him, commencement of spir- 
 itual life, faith, hope, and charity, new 
 names for new things, introduced moral 
 aspiration, moral ideal not in Arabian 
 
 Nights for example, but in Christian 
 fiction, 3S1, 3S2, Preface. 
 
 Smith, G. Vance. The spirit of Christ 
 the spirit of truth and justice, love to man 
 and God, active obedience, sympathy, 
 prayer to the Father, readiness to meet 
 the Divine will, forgiveness, 361-363. 
 
 Smith, Hlnry V,. HLs historic supremacy, 
 the urn of destiny with no dead ashes, 
 ideal of humanity, his influence the marvel 
 of history, 264, Preface. 
 
 Smith, John Pve. The unrivalled Man, 
 intellectually and morally perfect, gentle 
 virtues, love, resignation, prudence, knowl- 
 edge of man, wisdom, fortitude, greatest 
 moral phenomenon of universe, praised 
 of his enemies, union of wisdom and holi- 
 ness, meekness and majesty, goodness, 99. 
 
 Smith, K. Bosworth. Mohammedans 
 eulogize Christ, " on whom be' peace," 
 grave reserved by side of Mohammed in 
 Medina mosque, 274, 275. 
 
 Smyth, Julian K. It is himself that is 
 Christianity, he is the Truth, Word made 
 flesh, sinless inadequately expresses 
 Christ's sanctity, 593, 594. 
 
 Smyth, Newman. Not all in-seers com- 
 bined saw heaven as the Son of man, 
 " every synagogue a problem of humanity," 
 he walks on the sea of life, 452-455. 
 
 Sociability a part of his religion, 425. 
 
 Socrates, Preface, and Jesus, J ustin MartjT, 
 37. Voltaire, 46. Rousseau, 47. Priestly, 
 52-56. Hegel, 64. Riggenbach, 113. 
 Pressense, 117, 125, 127, 129, 180. Theo- 
 dore Parker, 239, 241, 249, 250, 251, 253, 
 268, 273, 316, 319, 326, 337, 354, 382, 3S3, 
 3S5, 419, 440, 45-. 467. 474. 478, 5-1. 5-8. 
 529, 561. Discoursed on immortality, but 
 could not say, " I am the Resurrection," 
 594,611,632.655. 
 
 " Socrates and Jesus compared," Priestly, 52. 
 
 Solomon, 235, 329, 405, 606, 655. 
 
 Son of David, 291, 410, 675. 
 
 Son of God, Jesus, 14. Peter, 14. Mark, 
 20. Hebrews, 28. Philip and Nathanael, 
 30. Origen, 35. Bossuet, 43. Wesley, 
 50,84. Neander, 91, 97, 119, 131. Renan, 
 155, 225, 234, 252, 256, 264, 267, 271, 277, 
 315, 329, 340. Or audacious blasphem- 
 er, Tischendorf, 369. 37S. 408, 417, 418, 
 431, 444, 450, 485. Son of the living God, 
 510, 533, 538, 562. "The Best personified 
 in man," 601, 603, 642, 643, 666. 
 
7i8 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Son of Man, Jesus, 14, 17, 146, 164, 165, 
 216, 225. 256, 264, 291, 387, 452, 463, 474, 
 482, 519, 551, 603, 613. Humanity, 674. 
 
 " Son of Man," Bibliotheca Sacra, Tyler, 
 3S6. 
 
 Son of Mary, 3S0, 635. 
 
 Sophocles, 209, 528. 
 
 Sorrow, sacred to him, 307, 423, 535, 550. 
 
 Sosiosh, 256. 
 
 Southey, Robert, 671. 
 
 Sparta, 284, 424. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 454. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 605. 
 
 Sperry, Willard G. Never tried to 
 conciliate Pharisees, they envied him, 
 672. 
 
 Spinoza, Benedict. Perfect Man, revealed 
 truth to apostles, Moses' similar, his voice 
 God's voice, Wisdom, Salvation, 42, 43. 
 "The symbol of Divine Wisdom," 294. 
 
 Spirit, Holy, and Jesus, Baptism, Witness, 
 15, 19. Dove, 20. Anointed him, Luke, 
 22, 24. Dove, John Baptist, 29, 76, 338, 
 
 344. 373. 4 '7. 425. 448- 
 
 " Spirit and Mind," Smith, G. V., 362. 
 
 " Spiritual Christianity," Taylor, Isaac, 100. 
 
 "Spiritual Religion," Drummond, 131. 
 
 Sturgeon, Charles Haddon. No salva- 
 tion without a Saviour, Christ himself, 
 not a Physician to heal and then good-by, 
 never can outgrow Christ, Christ alone 
 enough, no candle with this sun, 469, 
 Preface. 
 
 Stael, Madame de, "Two eras, pre-Chris- 
 tian, post-Christian," 135. 
 
 Stalker, James. Love to men his master 
 passion, the crowning attribute love to 
 God, he realized God always, absolute 
 harmony with God, Sinlessness and ful- 
 ness of love, history cut in twain by thi:5 
 Regenerator, 4S9-493, Preface. 
 
 " Stalker's Life of Christ," Lorimer, 493. 
 
 Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn. His coming 
 a " new birth of time," not a conqueror, 
 but life. Oriental, Greek, and Roman in 
 one, took the world by surprise, 257, 25S. 
 
 "Statement of Reasons," Norton, 176. 
 
 Steel, Thomas Henry. The Lord of 
 Life and Jairus' daughter, Lazarus, the 
 Resurrection, 649-652. 
 
 Stier, Rudolph. Son of God, the Gos- 
 pels a sure testimony, the solution of the 
 mystery of history and of each man. 
 Wisdom and Salvation, 105. 
 
 Stoics, 57 ; and Christ, Paley, 61 ; and 
 Christ: Christ did no violence to human 
 nature, 86, 127. Epictetus, 170, 226, 447, 
 613. 
 
 Stone, Foundation, Peter, 23. 
 
 Storrs, Richard S. Brilliant names fade, 
 but name of Jesus continues to command, 
 even more widely, his career remains al- 
 ways in sight, the supreme Man, governs 
 governments, new ages date from him, 
 361, 362, Preface. Gave new and nobler 
 conception of God, the Divine purity re- 
 splendent in Jesus, History made clear 
 with hopefulness and courage in it, exalts 
 man to receive such a revelation of God, 
 Character made essentia], the Church fol- 
 lowed a practical ideal, 543-550. 
 
 SrowE, Harriet Beecher. The most 
 beloved of men, his personality pervades 
 the world, excites men's adoration, all 
 nations, "Whom having not seen, ye 
 love," 273. 
 
 Strauss, David. As little as humanity 
 without religion as little will be religion 
 without Christ, Christ is historical, not 
 myth, the highest model of religion, 286. 
 Jesus in the first class of improvers of 
 ideals, embodied the ideal of human na- 
 ture and gave it vital warmth and by his 
 religious society gave it widest acceptance, 
 his pattern develops every part of love to 
 God and our neighbor, 36S. 
 
 Strauss, David, Preface, 197, 209, 218, 263. 
 "The beautiful nature," 271. " Strauss's 
 later life is more impressed by the char- 
 acter of Christ," 399, 439, 54S, 593. " Ac- 
 complished the contrary of what he in- 
 tended," Harris, 595. 
 
 " Studies in Life of Christ," Fairbaini, 439. 
 
 "Studies in New Testament," Godet, 320. 
 
 "Studies of Christianity," Martineau, 3S2. 
 
 "Studies of the Divine Master," Griffith, 
 41S. 
 
 "Study of History," G. Smith, 279. 
 
 Sublimity, 76, 97, 300. 
 
 Suffering, 443. 
 
 "Suffer little children," 21. Webster 
 (thrice), 1S5, 186, 226. 
 
 Sun, illuminates universe, impartial bount)', 
 Barrow, 69, 70. In cloudless sky, 97. 
 Meridian sun in heaven, 98. As natural 
 as sunlight, 147. Which makes our orbit, 
 Sceley, 199.217. Girdled the earth, lighted 
 the zones with its splendors, Collier, 247. 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 719 
 
 Sun of which heathen mediators are par- 
 helia, 256. In mid-day strength, 26S. Of 
 Righteousness full -orbed, 332. Not a 
 fading star, 337. Of which the Bible is 
 the moon, 418. Sun one, and one Divine 
 Lord, Martineau, 434. "Their emblem 
 the stars, his the sun," Encyc. Brit., 447. 
 No candle to aid this sun, Spurgeon, 470. 
 Known by its beams, 4S1, 572. Outshin- 
 ing all lesser luminaries, 601. 
 
 Superiority to ingratitude, 131, 309, 405. 
 
 "Supernatural Character of Christianity," 
 Allon, 173. 
 
 "Supernatural Religions," 642. 
 
 Sutras, 540. 
 
 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 379, 524, 525. 
 
 Swing, David. His word ecclesia shows 
 religion for the people, Christ reversed the 
 genius of religion, 432. 
 
 Symmetry and Harmony, 5S4. 
 
 Sympathy, 82, 84, 174, 199, 301, 3,7, 3,9^ 
 362, 3S6, 533. 
 
 Syro-Phenician Woman and Jesus, 67S-6S0. 
 
 "Systematic Theology," Hodge, 141. 
 
 " Table-Talk," Luther, 38. 
 
 Tacitus, 209, 496, 528, 529. 
 
 Talcott, Daniel Smith. Sound and 
 balanced human intellect, either what he 
 claims or an impostor, yet devoted to 
 goodness, new style of character in the 
 world, 2S6. 
 
 Talmage, Thomas De Witt ("Around 
 the Tea-Table "). " Touched with the feel- 
 ing of our infirmities," a Throne against 
 which strike our perplexities, the great 
 nerve-centre of all our lives, 5S7. 
 
 Talmud, 34, 210. 
 
 Taoism, 400. 
 
 Tauler, John. Jesus the loadstone and 
 magnet, makes us even rise contrary to 
 nature, 441, Preface. 
 
 Tayler, John James. Full and confiding 
 union with God, as the source and prin- 
 ciple of his moral being, through him the 
 Spirit of the Father spoke clearly and in- 
 telligibly to men, the true believers in his 
 Divinity are those who glo7(i at his life, so 
 the Church will become divine, ^27~jj9^ 
 Preface. 
 Taylor, Isaac. Compared with heroes, 
 his character the perfection of contrasts. 
 Humility yet Head of the human race. 
 Oneness of character, Teacher, Meekness, 
 
 King, Judge of nations, his character un- 
 matched in history, the combination 
 unprecedented, purest morality but no 
 asceticism. Wisdom, harmonies inimit- 
 able, 100-102, Preface. 
 Taylor, Jeremy. Example, excellent and 
 perfect, Saviour, Sinless, Holy, 44, 45. 
 "Not get to Christ, be in Christ" (M. 
 Arnold), 375, Preface. 
 Teacher, Matthew, 20. Peter, 23. Xicode- 
 mus, 31. Clement of Alexandria, 33. 
 Augustine, 34. Josephus, 38. Kempis, 
 40. Jefferson, 50. Wesley, 50. Teacher 
 of morals not exceeded, T. Paine, 52. 
 Compared with Socrates, Priestly, 52-56. 
 System of morals superior to all, Frank- 
 lin, 60, 72, 76, 82, 83, 95, lOI, 105. 
 "The insights of a perfect soul," Hase, 
 119, 122, 137, 140, 148, 151. "Self- 
 consciousness," Bunsen, 154, 179, 217, 
 219, 226. Confident, 249, 267, 269, 
 2S9, 292, 29S, 307. "Immense distance 
 from all others," 319, 321. "Teacher 
 of the wisest and best portion of the 
 race," Hopkins, 332, 340, 3S9, 395. 
 " Surpasses all moral instruction," Locke, 
 403, 40S. "Fresh and vital," 411, 446. 
 Described and analyzed, 447, 475. His 
 words the new map of the Divine King- 
 dom, he says impromptu the best things 
 in the best way, 4S4. His words mighty, 
 soft in strength, P'airbairn, 484. Made 
 the important truths plain and certain, 
 Hill, 505. Addressed himself to the very 
 quick of conscious experience, himself is 
 the great fact, 514. Every thing becomes 
 a living symbol of truth, sparrow, lily, 
 525. Used natural scenes, 537. The kind 
 that will redeem Africa, 5S3. Illustrated 
 and from life, 5S3. " Resist not evil," 
 Tolstoi, 621. " Unparalleled," 654. And 
 Healer, G69. 
 Temptation of Jesus, 667. 
 Tennyson, " In Memoriam," 454, Preface. 
 Terence, 209. 
 Tertullian, 43. 
 
 Testimony, to himself. Preface. See y,s!is. 
 " Testimony of Christ to Christianity," 
 
 Bayne, 29S. 
 " Testimony of Evangelists," Greenleaf, 313, 
 " Theism of Jesus," Walker, 65S. 
 Themistocles, 371, 611. 
 "Theological Essays," Hutton, 434. 
 " Theology of Christ," Thompson, 159. 
 
720 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Theology tht haven of science, Bacon, 135. 
 
 Theophilus, 21. 
 
 Tholuck, Frederick A. G. Left dis- 
 ciples in benediction, Redeemer, Saviour, 
 his Ascension compared with Elijah's, 
 their One and All, 124, 125, Preface. 
 
 Thom, John Hamilton. Harmony of 
 Divine character, Image of the Father, 
 Infinite Perfection, a character not origi- 
 nated by man, but bestowed, 186. 
 
 Thomas, 18, 216, 227, 460, 662. 
 
 Thompson, Hugh Miller. The great 
 Miracle, he was as he claims " the Ex- 
 pected of thirty centuries," neither Jew, 
 Greek, nor Roman, "has no race-mark," 
 the Providence of his appearing, 604-611. 
 
 Thompsov, Joseph P. Simplicity as 
 Teacher, compared with Demosthenes, 
 his truth a part of himself, world has not 
 outgrown, 159, 160, Preface. 
 
 Thornwell, James Henry. Cross ex- 
 hibits love to God, love to man, in meas- 
 ure unrivalled, 274. 
 
 " Thoughts," Pascal, 41. 
 
 " Three Essays on Religion," Mill, 324. 
 
 "Through Nature to Christ," E. A. Abbott, 
 424. 
 
 Tiberius, would apotheosize Christ, 63, 367. 
 
 TisciiENDORF, Constantine ("Bremen 
 Lectures "). Life of Jesus, the great ques- 
 tion of the day. Divine character, the 
 agreement of the Evangelists of greatest 
 consequence, 368, 369, Preface. 
 
 "Toleration," Voltaire, 46. 
 
 ToLsrof, Leo N. His doctrine " Resist not 
 evil," not violence but good overcomes 
 evil, the salvation of Jesus the true salva- 
 tion, the doctrine of Jesus the mercy of the 
 world, the church that shall not perish, 
 621-630. 
 
 Townsem), Luther T. New sunshine in 
 a new world, holds truth m reserve, Calm- 
 ness, Teacher confident rather than mod- 
 est, Gentleness, Grandeur, Patience, 
 Perfection, Eloquent, 249, 250, Preface. 
 
 " Tractatus Theological Political," Spinoza, 
 42. 
 
 Transformer of the world, Massillon, 45. 
 
 Treasure, Kempis, 41. 
 
 Trench, Richard Chenevix. Desire of 
 all nations, the harmony of ail past good, 
 dreams become realities, Son of God, 
 Incarnation, all Fulness, King of Glory, 
 Prophet, Priest, 119-121, Preface. 
 
 "True and Beautiful," Ruskin, 455. 
 
 "True Gospel," Chubb, 45. 
 
 " True Humanity of Christ," Crosby, 438. 
 
 Truth, Jesus, 17; also 19, '^Tj. Embodi- 
 ment, 439. 
 
 "Truths of Christianity," Grotius, 39; 
 Luthardt, 177. 
 
 " Truths of Christian Religion," Hartley, 
 So. 
 
 " Truths of To-day," Swing, 432. 
 
 TuLLOCH, John. Christ is Christianity, 
 the Alpha and Omega, in this different 
 from other religions, character of Christ 
 the motive of Christianity, 245, 246, 
 Preface. 
 
 Tyler, William S. A complete ideal not 
 a fragment, had no individual idiosyn- 
 crasies, not many-sided, but all-sideJ, all- 
 minded, all-hearted, had no prejudices, 
 no national peculiarities, presented great- 
 est but imitable virtue, Son of Man, Son 
 of God, 386, Preface. 
 
 Ullmann, Karl. Lord, penetrated by 
 God's spirit. Benevolence, love of God in 
 human form, sinless, his moral image the 
 dearest possession of humanity, unlimited 
 perfection, unapproachable dignity, un- 
 conditioned action, unity, Art tries to 
 portray, not Christ grows by us, but we 
 grow in comprehending, towers above 
 us, influences in inmost life, part of 
 inmost humanity, 107-109. 
 
 Ulysses, 367. ^ 
 
 Unchangeable, Heljrews, 27, 28. 
 
 " Unitarian Christianity," Beard, 495. 
 
 "Unitarian Review," Liverniore, 370; 
 Clarke, J. F., 393 ; Chaffin, 523. 
 
 Unity of character, "harmonies inimitable," 
 Taylor, 100; Luther, 178. "Like his 
 own seamless garment," combination of 
 elements excites my astonishment, Hop- 
 kins, 330, 603. 
 
 Universal Religion, 189, 305. 
 
 " University Sermons," Vaughan, 674. 
 
 Unselfishness, 595, 334, 335, 405, 676. 
 
 " Unspoken Sermons," Macdonald, 416 
 
 Utopia of Plato, Rousseau, 2S4, 3S1. 
 
 Vaughan, C. J. Gospels read afresh. Son 
 of God, manly, manful, humane, human, 
 fi)rce of will, sincerity, tenderness, unself- 
 ishness, humility, elevation, workingmen 
 and poor, 674-678. 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 72 I 
 
 Vedas, 394, 659. 
 
 Venus di Medici, 207. 
 
 Veracity, 251. See Truth, Siticerity. 
 
 Veronica, 377. 
 
 Verplanck, Gulian C. The Gospels re- 
 markable for artlessness and solemn 
 composure, narrate and do not argue or 
 embellish, 92-94, Preface. 
 
 " Vestals but not Sisters of Charity " in 
 heathendom, Everett, 192. 
 
 Victoria, 5S7. 
 
 Victor in love, Bossuet, 44. 
 
 Vincent, M. R. A nineteei^th-century man 
 must think of Christ, he cannot be ban- 
 ished nor got past, a troublesome fact, 
 "he dieth no more," 440, Preface. 
 
 Vine, Jesus, 19. 
 
 ViNET, Alexander. Christ is Chris- 
 tianity, " one Christian moment more than 
 all unchristian life," 125, 126, Preface. 
 
 Virgil, 206, 371. Fourth Eclogue, 381, 412, 
 433. 440, 528. 
 
 Virtues, all, Rousseau, 48 ; Jefferson, 50. 
 Active and passive, 116. Combined, 
 Perowne, 145. 
 
 Vishnu, Parker, 242. 
 
 "Voices of the Church," Coquerel, 261. 
 
 "Voices of the Church," Miiller, 217. 
 
 "Voices of the Church," Quinet, 103. 
 
 Voltaire, Francois Marie Alouet de. 
 Compared with Socrates, Christian legis- 
 lator, voluntary death. Divinity and 
 Humanity, Patience, Courage, 46. 
 
 Volusian, Chateaubriand, 63. 
 
 Walker, C. S. Christ's revelation of the 
 Deity, involves no error and lacks noth- 
 ing, 658-660. 
 
 Walker, James. His Originality, Great- 
 ness, a miracle that the Evangelists 
 should have conceived it, or even de- 
 scribed it, 235, 236. 
 
 Walker, James Barr. Messiah not of 
 the Greek idea (Teacher), such as to kill 
 selfishness and develop benevolence, Hu- 
 mility, Meekness necessary to rest, 137- 
 139, Preface. 
 
 Ware, Henry, Jun. E.xalted honor his 
 due, receives eloquent tributes from in- 
 fidels, 169, 170, Preface. 
 
 Washburn, Edward A. Son of God, the 
 miracle and makes miracles, teachings 
 satisfy, highest Master of wisdom, none 
 other holds supremacy of the race, his 
 
 enemies waste their wit to find a newer 
 gospel, Sinlessness, Divine Man, Resur- 
 rection, Imitation of Christ the highest 
 morality, 267-269, Preface. 
 
 Washington, George, 430, 467. Christ's 
 moulding power, 601. 
 
 Watson, Robert A. " Gospels of Yester- 
 day," "Divine Light of compassion and 
 righteousness burns into a focus of illu- 
 mination," What is Matthew Arnold^s 
 Christ .'' The Supremacy of Jesus, 507, 50S. 
 
 Watt, James, 404. 
 
 " Waverley," Scott, 671. 
 
 Webster, Daniel. "Suffer little chil- 
 dren," will not be outgrown, 1S5, 370. 
 
 " Week with Jesus," Lowrie, 206. 
 
 Weiss, Bernhard. Sinlessness, consci- 
 entiousness, never prays for forgiveness, 
 445, 446, Preface. 
 
 Wescott, Brooke Foss. The Resurrec- 
 tion, His appearances after Resurrection, 
 the Revelation of the risen Christ, in him 
 first the corruptible puts on incorruption, 
 661-664. 
 
 " Wesen des Christenthums," De Wette, 
 342. 
 
 Wesley, John. Lord, Teacher, Divinity, 
 Son of God, Humility, Gentleness, Found- 
 er of Christianity, 49, 50. 
 
 Wesley, Charles. "Jesus my strength, my 
 hope," 193. 
 
 West, Benjamin, 404. 
 
 Whately, Richard ("Bacon's Essays"). 
 His character proves his religion, three 
 points in Evangelists' account, unstudied, 
 no panegyric, 44-46. Lord, miracles, 
 healed sick, but rarely hunger, economic 
 lesson (see Chalmers), omniscient, 97, 
 Preface. 
 
 Whittier, Preface. 
 
 Widow's mite, 73. 
 
 Will : Shakspeare, 48; Dickens, 289. 
 
 Williams, John. His religion capable of 
 universal adaptation, a permanence not 
 fossilized, a continuous limitless expan- 
 sion, developed human intelligence, the 
 influence of Christianity on the education 
 and morality of the nations the great 
 fact of modern times, 538-542, Preface. 
 
 Williams, William R. Christ the centre 
 of history, his Cross the conservative prin- 
 ciple of literature, philanthropy, Saviour, 
 gospel practicable and utilitarian, "Exalts 
 the future," 135-137, Preface. 
 
722 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Wilson, John, Prof., 671. 
 
 WiNTHROP, Robert C. We reckon from 
 the year of our Lord, as if no time worthy 
 to be counted before, Christmas, the 
 Christian spirit and life, influence of 
 Christ, " new heavens and new earth," 
 
 192, 193, Preface. 
 
 Wisdom : Matthew, 20 ; Josephus, 38 ; 
 Luther, 38 ; Spinoza, 43 ; Rousseau, 48, 
 56, 68, 83; and simplicity, 86; Chalmers, 
 95, 99, loi, 105, 115, 140, 174, 176, 179, 
 
 193. 267, 314, 670. 
 Wolfenbiittel, 218. 
 
 Woman, 272, 348. Elevation by Christ, 476, 
 488, 590. 
 
 Wood, William Converse. Jesus con- 
 tained germs of all greatness, potentially, 
 might have been Poet, General, King, 
 Orator, Philanthropist, Scientist, Analyst 
 of character, but subordinated them all 
 to be Saviour, 667, 668. 
 
 Word of God, John, 22. Of revealing truth, 
 126, 393, 496. Made flesh, 593; and 
 wisdom, 617. 
 
 " Words of Jesus," Stier, 105. 
 
 Wordsworth, John. The pattern of the 
 God-Man, create a Christ by imagination, 
 the Oriental, Persian, Chinese, Greek, 
 Roman, and Teuton, Christ's actual ap- 
 pearance the true Ideal, 506. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 343, 671. 
 
 Workingmen and poor, 677. 
 
 " Works : " Clement of Alexandria, 33 ; 
 Origen, 35 ; Cyprian, 36 ; Bacon, 40 ; 
 Jeremy Taylor, 44; Hooker, 46; Rousseau, 
 47 ; Samuel Johnson, 49 ; John Wesley, 
 49; Jefferson, 50; Leighton, 59; Paley, 
 61; Barrow, 68; Locke, 75; Edwards, 
 78; Hall, 82; Chalmers, 94; Emerson, 
 149; Ware, 169; Webster, 185; Chan- 
 ning, 210; Dewey, 243; Thornwell, 274. 
 
 " World and the Kingdom," Thompson, 604. 
 
 " World's Witness to Christ," Williams, 
 538. 
 
 Wright, George Frederick. His argu- 
 ment for personal immortality, if man is 
 worthy such Divine visitation, if man can 
 produce such excellence, he introduced 
 the over-mastering hope of a Christian 
 faith, Divine forgiveness. Originality and 
 Beauty of Jesus, they manifest human 
 simplicity, but supernatural design like 
 nature, his titne did not produce him, 
 508-511, Preface. 
 
 Writer of Hebrews. Son of God, efful- 
 gence of his glory, Image, Purification, 
 better than angels, crowned with glory 
 and honor and salvation, 27. 
 
 Writer, Jesus not an author, " wrote only in 
 dust," 109, 351, 524. 
 
 Xavier, 206, 612. 
 
 Xenophon, on Socrates, Priestly, 54, 56; 
 and Socrates, 113, 226. 
 
 Ygdrasil, the tree, Christianit)', 598. 
 
 Young, John. Perfection of character, 
 difficult to study, perfect symmetry does 
 not startle, always acts up to the idea of 
 perfect humanity, equal intellect and 
 heart, simplicity, among all classes and 
 conditions, original character, impossible 
 to invent especially such a Messiah, the 
 One vision of humanitj', the Jew of Naza- 
 reth, 181-185, Preface. 
 
 Young, the, Jesus, 21, 186. "A familiar 
 companion," 3S6, 545. 
 
 Zacchaeus, 460. 
 
 Zeal, 71, 99, 167; "never degenerates into 
 
 passion," 348, 414, 482. 
 Zeno, 323, 453. 
 Zeuxis, 68. 
 Zoroaster, 249, 316, 354, 412, 641. 
 
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