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 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
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 MRS. MARY WOLFSOHN , 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 HENRY WOLFSOHN 
 
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THE CHRISTIANITY OF CHRIST 
 
 REV. ROBERT F. COYLE, D. D 
 
 Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church 
 Oakland, Cal. 
 
 published by the 
 First Presbyterian Church 
 
 OAKLAND, 1892 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The sermons in this little volume are issued only at the urg^ent 
 request of those who heard them. They were written amid the 
 pressure of duty that belongs to a busy pastorate, and make no 
 pretension to either homiletic or literary excellence. - Their only 
 value is in the precious truth they embody. The "Christianity of 
 Christ" is a great field from which but a few small sheaves are 
 here gathered. For whatever help the author has received, 
 directly or indirectly, by suggestion or otherwise, in the prepara- 
 tion of these discourses, he makes grateful acknowledgment. In 
 sending them forth he humbly prays that their reading may estab- 
 lish some in the "faith once delivered to the saints," and lead 
 others to embrace it. 
 
 R. F. COYLE. 
 
 Oakland, Cal., 
 
 December, 1891. 
 
 I 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF CHRIST. 
 
 [Introductory Sermon.] 
 
 "The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that 
 Jesus began both to do and teach." — Acts 1 : 1. 
 
 TO learn what the religion of Christ is and what it 
 requires, we must turn from the traditions of men to 
 what Jesus himself did and taught. This we have very 
 simply and beautifully recorded in the Gospels, the first 
 three of which are accepted as genuine by skeptics and 
 Christians alike. There is no respectable scholarship 
 anywhere that presumes to discredit the historical tes- 
 timony of Matthew, Mark and Luke; and it is to the 
 last of these that our text refers when it speaks of the 
 " former treatise." 
 
 We have the Christianity of Calvin, and the Chris- 
 tianity of Arminius; the Christianity of Luther, and 
 the Christianity of the Papacy; we have Christianity 
 ritualized as among the High Church people of Eng- 
 land, and Christianity rationalized as among the 
 skeptics of Germany; we have it in a great variety of 
 forms, bearing in every case the impress of the human 
 
 1 58784 
 
— 4 — 
 
 molds in which its raw material has been cast. I do 
 not undertake to criticise an}^ of these forms. That is 
 something for which I am utterly incompetent, even 
 if I had the self-assurance to attempt it. This, however, 
 may be safely said that in so far as these different varie- 
 ties of Christianity abide by that which has been re- 
 vealed, they are true; and, in so far as they have 
 been infiltrated with human speculation and tinct- 
 tured with human prejudice, they contain more or 
 less of error. 
 
 What I desire, let me say specifically, is to bring to 
 your attention and write anew upon your hearts and 
 mind the City of Christ as he himself has set it forth 
 in precept and parable, in word and deed. Instead of 
 drinking of the waters far down from their source, 
 where they have been somewhat mixed and contami- 
 nated with alien streams, we are to go directly to the 
 Fountain Head, flowing clear as crystal from the 
 everlasting Rock, and quench our thirst there. Of 
 course, in entering upon this study I cannot go into 
 all the details of our Lord's life and sayings, but shall 
 select for consideration that which He has made most 
 salient and upon which He has laid most emphasis. 
 In favor of this method it may be said, in the first 
 place, that — 
 
 It will serve to direct our thought to Christianity 
 in its purity and simplicity. In a recent number of one 
 of the reviews that come to my study-table a story is 
 told of a certain spring which for generations supplied 
 an unfailing abundance of clear, sweet water to the 
 
— 5 — 
 
 people of its neighborhood. The owner was justly 
 proud of it; but many years ago he thought to make 
 a shade near the spot, and so planted a tree close to 
 the spring. The tree grew, and its shadow^ fell far 
 and wide, and those who came on a summer noon to 
 take a draught from the refreshing waters were shel- 
 tered from the fierce heat. 
 
 But, alas, the roots of the tree penetrated to the 
 fountain, and the whole was tainted, and now the 
 spring is neglected and its waters forsaken. 
 
 So men have often spoiled the truth as it is in Jesus 
 by attempting to improve it. Instead of accepting it 
 as it is in all its native plainness, undoctored and un- 
 alloyed, they have sought to subtract from it here and 
 add to it there, and thus have either robbed it of its 
 strength and glory, or turned thirsty souls from it 
 altogether. 
 
 Some have endeavored to convince themselves and 
 their fellow-men that there is really nothing to fear, 
 that things are going to come out all right by-and-by, 
 that the infinite goodness of the Almighty will some- 
 how or other throw itself about every wanderer, and 
 woo him safely home at last. They have planted the 
 tree of a broad and easy salvation hard by the Foun- 
 tain of Life, and the result has been that the roots of 
 that tree have reached the spring, and have tainted its 
 healing waters for multitudes of people. They can no 
 longer endure a pure gospel, but must have it diluted 
 and weakened and softened by human infiltrations. 
 
 God is love, and God's love is the arch that under- 
 
lies the whole superstructure of Christianity, but that 
 arch itself rests upon the two pillars of justice and mercy. 
 The God who will allow men to plunge into all sorts of 
 iniquity, and then weep over them and sweep them 
 into heaven on the full and resistless tide of His com- 
 passion, regardless of any change of heart or charac- 
 ter, is not the God of the Bible. A God too weak, too 
 yielding, too sentimental to maintain the integrity of 
 His own moral government, must surely sit upon a tot- 
 tering throne. Let not man think that God's word can 
 be made sweeter, more comforting and more attractive 
 by planting trees of human speculation and philoso- 
 phy on its margin. It is best just as it is, — best for 
 comfort, best for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for 
 instruction in righteousness, — to make the man of God 
 perfect, " thoroughly furnished unto all good works ; " 
 and to attempt to modify it, to add to it, or take from 
 it, is to invite the plagues that are written therein. 
 As no work of art can improve on the simplicity of 
 nature, as no astronomy can add one beam to the 
 sun, so no cleverness of human scholarship, no acute- 
 ness of human genius, can improve on the Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ. We turn, therefore, from human cisterns 
 to drink out of the wells of God. 
 
 Passing from the vestibule with its jangling voices 
 and clashing creeds, we shall enter the temple and 
 walk and talk with Jesus. We go, not to the scribes, 
 not to those who sit in Moses' seat, not to those who 
 have been trained to look through glasses of a certain 
 shade, and who are prone to see everything from a 
 
7 — 
 
 certain ecclesiastical angle, but to the Great Teacher, 
 to the ultimate Authority, " in whom are hid all the 
 treasures of wisdom and knowledge." This will take 
 us out of the haze and confusion, out of the blinding 
 dust stirred up by opposing schools, into the clear 
 shining of the Sun of Righteousness. It will lead us 
 to the original sources, and give us our knowledge of 
 "the old, old story" at first hand, and knowledge so 
 obtained is always fresh and stimulating. Too much 
 of our knowledge of the Gospel is like fruit long since 
 plucked and labeled and put away upon the shelf. 
 The rich flavor, the delicious taste, the juiciness it 
 once had, are gone; but in this study I ask you to 
 come with me and help me to shake the sweet and 
 luscious grapes from the vine. Too long we have 
 been content to take from .this and that basket; but 
 now we are to gather them in the very garden of the 
 Lord. Here in the city we must get our apples and 
 peaches and pears from the fruit-dealers as best we 
 can, after they have come through half a dozen hands, 
 perhaps, and w^e often have to pay high prices for a 
 very poor article. But those of us who have lived in 
 the country know how delightful it is to go back to 
 the old farm, and, wandering out to the orchard, reach 
 up and help ourselves, without money and -without 
 price. Well, something like that is what we propose 
 to do in turning our attention to the Christianity of 
 Christ. 
 
 A second thing that may be said in favor of this 
 study is that it will give us something connected and 
 
— 8 — 
 
 consecutive to think about. Instead of roaming about 
 through the word of God, and taking for consideration 
 a fragment here and a fragment there, as fancy or in- 
 clination may direct, it will chain us down to some- 
 thing solid, and make us familiar not with an occa- 
 sional flower culled from the green pastures, but with 
 large sections of a glorious landscape: not with texts, 
 but with gospels. We need instruction, for without 
 knowledge there can be no conviction, and without 
 conviction there can be no sustained enthusiasm, and 
 the best and most effective instruction is that which is 
 bound together link on link. It edifies, it builds up, 
 it strengthens, it gives symmetry to thought and char- 
 acter. As a preparation for this study, therefore, let 
 me urge you to a careful and systematic reading of the 
 gospels. Read them not by fits and starts, but go 
 through them consecutively, and if you can find time 
 to read one of them at a single sitting, so much the 
 better; it will set the whole story before you in its 
 completeness, you will see the wondrous Man on the 
 hills and on the sea, in the temple, in the home, in 
 the place of sorrow, moving in and out until he 
 expires on the cross, then appears in resurrection 
 glory, soon to ascend to the right hand of the Father 
 Almighty, and as you read your heart will burn, wor- 
 ship will kindle its fires in your soul, and you will con- 
 secrate yourself anew to the Lord's service. 
 
 In favor of this undertaking it may be said, more- 
 over, that it will serve to dear up our ideas as to just 
 what Christianity is. We certainly need to be clear on 
 
— 9 — 
 
 this point. There are some who seem to think that 
 Christianity is a sort of reforming agency; that it is 
 only one of many forces at work in the world to make 
 men better ; that it co-operates with other schemes to 
 elevate mankind. You have seen men put jackscrews 
 under an old dilapidated house, whose sills were 
 rotting away, because it was built on low and miry 
 ground, and lift it up and lay a new foundation 
 under it, and touch it up here and there until exter- 
 nally it was quite attractive, but it was the old house 
 still. There were the old beams, and the old rafters, 
 and the old frame-work, just as they were from the 
 beginning. But utterly different from that is the 
 w^ork of Christianity. We shall find as we look into 
 the gospels that Christianity never came into the 
 world to repair people, to mend them and patch them 
 up and make them look a trifle better; we shall find 
 that it never came to tinker and cobble and fix over 
 the old house and spend its efforts in a little outside 
 daubing. 
 
 "Behold, I make all things new," saith the Lord. 
 A new heart, a new life, a new purpose, a new center, 
 a new man in Christ Jesus. That is Christianity. It 
 is not here to sew the new cloth, woven out of the 
 agonies of the cross, to the old garments of the fleshy 
 nature. It is not here to put the new wine of the 
 kingdom into tlie old bottles. It is not here to graft 
 the new and vigorous shoot of the spiritual life into 
 the old sin-smitten, worm-eaten stock. It is not here 
 to stop a leak or two in the old ship in order to keep 
 
— 10 — 
 
 it afloat till it reaches shore. Christianity is not a 
 scheme to cover up old and unsightly things under 
 a new paint. It is not whitewash on a sepulchre. It 
 is not perfume sprinkled on a dead carcass. It is not 
 a mixture of light and darkness, of health and disease, 
 of purity and impurity, but a new heart, and a new 
 spirit, and a new name, and a new song — everything 
 new. 
 
 I know there are some who think of Christianity as 
 a sort of supplement or appendix to what man has 
 done in order to make his work acceptable. But 
 nothing could be farther from the truth. When a 
 house has been infected with the leprosy or some deadly 
 plague men are not content to simply fumigate its 
 rooms, and scrape its walls, and wash its floors, but 
 they raze it to the ground, and burn it to ashes, and 
 build anew from the bottom up. So Christianity 
 comes to " crucify the flesh, with its affections and 
 lusts." It comes as a new creation, fresh from the 
 hand of God. In one word, it comes not to reform or 
 repair, but to regenerate. This is what we shall learn 
 as we go on with our study. 
 
 As we turn to what Jesus did and taught, we shall 
 find, furthermore, that the Christianity of Christ is 
 not a well-wrought system of theories and specula- 
 tions and inferences and dogmas, all skillfully woven 
 together, but that it is a series of great historical facts. 
 It comes to us with the astounding information that 
 at a given time and in a given way the unseen, eter- 
 nal God, actuated by his yearning love, interposed to 
 
— 11 — 
 
 save the world by the sacrifice of His Son ; and the 
 gospel story contains the history of how that Son came 
 and suffered and died and rose again. Take these 
 facts away and there is nothing left. Every distinct- 
 ive doctrine of our faith comes out of the recorded 
 facts of the gospel as the flower comes out of the seed. 
 Christianity does not rest upon any theory of inspira- 
 tion, verbal or otherwise; it does not rest upon a book, 
 or any number of books, or upon the absolute harmony 
 of every statement in the gospel with every other state- 
 ment, but upon the great facts connected with the life 
 of the Christ. Eliminate these, strike them out, and 
 Christianity evaporates into a thin mist, too light and 
 . airy to bear up our feet as we pass out into eternity. 
 The incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection, 
 the "superhuman intervention of Almighty God to 
 redeem fallen man and restore peace betwixt earth 
 and heaven and give back celestial life to sinners," — 
 if these be not facts, Christianity is a myth and faith 
 is folly. Look at the Apostles' Creed, and you will 
 see that it is simply a series of stupendous gospel facts 
 alleged of one stupendous person. Deny these facts, 
 for the sake of getting rid of difficulty, and you have 
 killed the religion of the cross; nothing is left of it 
 worth' thinking about. If, therefore, this study shall 
 re-impress us with the truth that the Christianity of 
 Christ is a series of historical facts, it will certainly 
 be most profitable. It will show us that certain great 
 doctrines, which we have been taught to believe are 
 fundamental, are not the dogmas of superstitious 
 
— 12 — 
 
 priests, but are the legitimate and inevitable deduc- 
 tions from these great facts of the past. 
 
 There is, moreover, this to be said in favor of what 
 is proposed, viz.: that it will be profoundly 'practical. 
 This is what the age is crying out for. We hear it on 
 every side. "Give us something practical," is the 
 clamor of our times. "Something tangible, some- 
 thing that bears down directly upon the life of to-day." 
 That is the demand of the age, but those who make 
 the cry do not always stop to reflect that nothing can 
 be wholesomely practical that does not come out of 
 principles that reach back to the will of God. How 
 barren, in practical results, for example, is infidelity 
 through all its shades and varieties. What reforms 
 does it start? What rivers does it cause to break 
 forth in the desert? What waste places does it trans- 
 form into beautiful and fruitful gardens of delight? 
 What schools does it plant? What evils does it erad- 
 icate? What man on earth to-day has joined the cru- 
 sade against intemperance, against the saloon-power, 
 against monopoly, against iniquity in high places, 
 because he was inspired by infidelity? And why is 
 it thus barren and useless? Simply because it has no 
 eternal principles to back it up. 
 
 But this is what you will find if you look beneath 
 the surface of the great movements that are blessing 
 and purifying society ; you will find that back of them, 
 inspiring them, pushing them forward, making them 
 instinct with life and force and beneficence, is the 
 Christianity of Christ. What power is it that is send- 
 
— 13 — 
 
 ing young men and women to the interior of Africa, 
 to the idol-cursed lands of India, to the remote and 
 desolate corners of the earth, as messengers of peace 
 and love? What power is it that in our own land, 
 yea, in our own city, is causing men and women to 
 devote their means, their infxuence, and their lives to 
 lift up the fallen, to cheer the discouraged, to snatch 
 the slaves of sin and vice as brands from the burning 
 and set their faces toward better things? I answer, 
 it is the power that has its origin in the Cross of 
 Christ. As all light and heat come ultimately from 
 the sun, as all rivers come from the ocean, so all the 
 streams of influence that are healing and sweetening 
 the life of the world come in their last analysis from 
 that— 
 
 " Fountain filled with blood 
 Drawn from Immanuel's veins." 
 
 Let it not be imagined, therefore, that in turning' 
 back to what Jesus did and taught we shall be turn- 
 ing away from that which is practical and adapted to 
 the life of the hour. Far from it. Far from it. The 
 very opposite is the case. From every point of the 
 compass there comes flaming testimony to the fact 
 that he who would preach a practical religion must 
 never lose sight of the Cross, and that if he w^ould 
 have his people quick to respond to the call of duty, 
 Avith consciences tender and sensitive, he must keep 
 them in the atmosphere of the gospel. I will tell you 
 the kind of preaching that is of no account. It is the 
 sort that abounds in rhetorical fireworks and oratorical 
 
— 14 — 
 
 display, in flowers and fancies, in gush and sentiment. 
 It may entertain an audience, it may win the applause 
 of an hour, people may go home and say, " Wasn't it 
 sweet? Wasn't it beautiful?" and yet all the week 
 long, until the next Sabbath, walk arm in arm with 
 the. world. Over such preaching the wind bloweth 
 and it is gone. There is no substance, nothing that 
 w411 arouse men and w^omen to put their heels upon 
 sin and their hands to the work of the Lord. For 
 practical results, for quickening power, for zeal that 
 will fling its heat from one Lord's day to another, we 
 must turn to the Christianity of Christ. The apostles, 
 you remember, had no elaborate machinery, they had 
 no volumes of learned lore to draw upon, they had no 
 reviews and well-filled periodicals to furnish them 
 with illustrations for sermons, they did not even have 
 the New Testament; all they had was Jesus Christ 
 and Him crucified, but were they not practical ? Did 
 they not accomplish wonders? Did they not shake 
 emperors and make kings tremble on their thrones ? 
 Yes, brethren, the gospel is practical, and in leading 
 you to what Jesus did and taught I am sure I shall be 
 leading you to something that will bear more directly 
 upon your lives and conduct than anything else can 
 possibly do. I shall be leading you to something that 
 will instruct the mind, soften the conscience, improve 
 the life, cheer the heart, and replenish the lamp of 
 Hope. 
 
 There is this to be said in conclusion: I am per- 
 suaded that the Christianity of Christ is what the great 
 
— 15 — 
 
 majority of you want to hear about. A story is told 
 of a young minister who preached a very learned and 
 eloquent sermon. As a piece of literature it was above 
 criticism. It displayed much study and profound 
 thought. But there was no Christ, no gospel in it, 
 and so at its conclusion some hungering soul sent up 
 to him a little piece of paper with these significant 
 words written upon it, "Sir, we would see Jesus." 
 And that is what all you Christian people are saying 
 to-day. The language of your inmost hearts is — 
 
 " We would see Jesus, for the shadows lengthen 
 Across this little landscape of our life, 
 We would see Jesus, our weak faith to strengthen 
 For the last weariness — the final strife. 
 
 " We would see Jesus, the great Rock Foundation, 
 Whereon our feet were set by Sovereign grace. 
 Not life nor death, with all their agitation. 
 Can thence remove us, if we see His face." 
 
 God help us to hold Him up that you may see Him 
 and find solace and comfort and inspiration in the 
 house of the Lord. I. know that some of you are sick 
 and wounded in the battle, and that you want the 
 balm of the gospel. I know that some of you are 
 tired and burdened and long for the shadow of the 
 great Rock in a weary land. I know that some of you 
 are nearing Eternity, already its breath is on your 
 brow, and you want to see Him who is the Lord of 
 death as well as life. Yes, up from every part of the 
 congregation I think I hear voices saying : 
 
 " Tell me the old, old story 
 Of unseen things above, 
 Of Jesus and His glory. 
 Of Jesus and His love. 
 
16 
 
 Tell me the story simply, 
 
 As to a little child, 
 For I am weak and weary, 
 
 And helpless and defiled." 
 
 To tell that story to the best of my ability, to take you 
 back to what Jesus did and taught, to present the gos- 
 pel as it touches the life which now is and the life which 
 is to come, is what I now attempt more fully, more 
 faithfully, than ever before. And, though it will in- 
 volve a great deal of hard work, I undertake it with 
 anticipations of delight. For — 
 
 " I love to tell the story, more wonderful it seems 
 Than all the golden fancies of all our golden dreams; 
 I love to tell the story ! It did so much for me ! 
 And that is just the reason I tell it now to thee." 
 
 And I ask you, dear brethren, to join with me in your 
 prayers, both here and in your homes, that the telling 
 of it may be the power of God unto the salvation of 
 many souls. 
 
WHAT CHRIST TEACHES US TO BELIEVE 
 CONCERNING GOD. 
 
 "No man hath seen God at anytime; the only begotten Son, 
 whjeh is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.— J^oM 
 1:18. 
 
 WHEN the writer affirms that " No man hath seen 
 God at any time," he is not stating an isolated 
 case by any means. It is impossible to see anything that 
 is really great. You see the tree, the flower, the man, 
 but whoever got a glimpse of life? Shakespeare's 
 writings are visible enough, but Shakespeare's genius, 
 Shakespeare's capacious mind — what eye of mortal 
 ever saw that? We have often gone down here 
 to the sea-beach to watch the white-bannered waves 
 charging upon the shore; we have felt the very earth 
 tremble under their dash and shock, but the power 
 that urged them on kept out of sight, and always will. 
 No man hath seen thought at any time, and yet 
 thought is back of all our libraries, and works of art 
 and splendid buildings and endless contrivances. No 
 man hath seen music at any time, nor could he find 
 it though he were to take the organ to pieces and 
 
18 
 
 scrutinize every part of its mechanism. No man hath 
 seen magnetism at any time, and yet see how the 
 needle is held with point to the pole as if in the grip 
 of an invisible hand. Let us not be disturbed, there- 
 fore, when the text declares that " No man hath seen 
 God at any time," for that which is truly great is 
 never seen. A God that we could measure and weigh 
 and photograph would be about as worthless as the 
 Chinaman's wooden idol. 
 
 No man hath seen God, and yet God was manifest 
 in the flesh. That may be a mystery, perhaps, but 
 there is certainly no reason why we should stumble 
 over it. How, for example, do you make your thought 
 manifest? You incarnate it, do you not? You bring 
 your idea out of the unseen and give it shape and 
 form in a dress or a book, or a building, or some busi- 
 ness enterprise. In other words, your thought must 
 be born in some Bethlehem; it must become flesh, or 
 it never can be known. The same thing is true of 
 love. It is impossible to grasp and appreciate it simply 
 as an idea. It must be brought out and embodied in 
 a breathing frame of flesh and blood. I touch upon 
 this to remind you that when God incarnated himself 
 in Jesus Christ he did what we ourselves are con- 
 stantly compelled to do on lower lines. He revealed 
 himself by incarnation; so does every one of us. 
 
 The meaning of the text is very clear, and no time 
 need be spent in explaining it. It teaches us that the 
 unseen, eternal God, has been revealed by Jesus 
 Christ. " He hath declared him." That is, he hath 
 
— 1 
 
 set him forth, or made him known. When a scholar 
 interprets or opens up a passage of Scripture so as to 
 bring its hidden meaning to light, he is called an 
 exegete; and that, precisely, is the term used in our 
 text. The invisible has been interpreted to the un- 
 derstanding of the world by the Lord Jesus. Hence, 
 through this interpretation, we must come to a knowl- 
 edge of God, for there is no other way. 
 
 What, then, does Christ teach us to believe concern- 
 ing God? To answer this inquiry exhaustively, it 
 would be necessary to proceed along two lines of in- 
 vestigation, viz. : Those of his oral instruction, and 
 his life. In other words, we should have to take up 
 for study both the written and the living revelation. 
 But as the latter will come up for consideration in an- 
 other connection, I shall this morning confine myself 
 to the former. In the light of Christ's own recorded 
 declarations, plain, specific and oft-repeated, what are 
 we to believe concerning God ? I trust I realize some- 
 thing of the importance of the question, for the life of 
 every one of us, here and hereafter, will inevitably be 
 shaped by the answer we give to it. The truth is, I 
 feel embarrassed by the very abundance of material 
 that is available. The gospels are full of it. But as a 
 few commanding summits are sufficient to enable us 
 to determine the trend of the mountain range, with- 
 out going to the labor of inspecting every peak, so a 
 few leading points will be enough to show us the char- 
 acter of God. 
 
 First of all, then, Christ teaches us to believe 
 
— 20 — 
 
 that God is a spirit. So he declared in his conver- 
 sation with the woman at the well. This he did to 
 show her that God could not be localized, or re- 
 stricted to any mountain or altar, or monopolized by 
 any special class. He is a spirit — this is his essence — 
 hence he is invisible and everywhere present, in office 
 as well as oratory, in work as well as worship. I 
 know that when we come to talk of spirit we come to 
 something intangible and mysterious, but it need not, 
 therefore, be unprofitable; for we have already seen 
 that the best and greatest things are out of sight. 
 
 When our Lord wanted to give even as learned a 
 man as Nicodemus some adequate conception of God 
 as spirit, he made use of a very simple figure, viz. : 
 that of the wind or air, and we can do no better. The 
 air is all about us and in us, and do what we will we 
 cannot get away from it. Though " w^e cannot tell 
 whence it cometh nor whither it goeth," yet wander 
 where we may, into any desolate and remote corner of 
 earth, whatever else may be wanting, we shall still be 
 in most vital connection with the air. Water may 
 fail, food may fail, but we are always and everywhere 
 sure of the air. 
 
 No man can have a monopoly of it, and no earthly 
 power can restrict it to any little corner. We pay for 
 our light, we pay for our land, we pay for our fuel, we 
 even pay for our water sometimes, but never for the 
 air. It thrusts itself upon all, poor and rich, bond 
 and free, without money and without price. And not 
 only so, but there is no end to the supply. Though 
 
— 21 — 
 
 the whole world is consuming it, there is as much at 
 the close of day as at the beginning, It is mysteri- 
 ous, to be sure, but is there anything more real, more 
 essential? Shut the air out of your lungs for three 
 minutes and you are gone. 
 
 Another very suggestive thing in this connection. 
 Make a vessel to hold water, and the water has to be 
 brought to fill it. Prepare fuel and set it in order, 
 and the fire has to be brought to kindle it. Set your 
 table with the most elegant china, or silver, but the 
 food will never come until somebody goes after it. The 
 air, however, is far more accommodating. All you 
 have to do is to make space for it and it will be on 
 hand . 
 
 There may be death in your house. It may be 
 filled with poisonous gases, but if you will throw it 
 open, if you will lift the windows and swing wide the 
 doors, the sweet, pure air will rush in, laden with life 
 and health. You need not be an expert in science 
 and understand all about the laws of ventilation to un- 
 derstand that. Just trust the wind, remove the bar- 
 riers, let it come in, and all the foul exhalations will 
 make way for it, and your house will be sweetened 
 and purified. 
 
 So, you see, when the Lord teaches us that God is 
 spirit, and then uses the air as a symbol to bring the 
 thought down to the level of our comprehension, he 
 teaches us something most practical and beautiful. 
 What royal bounty, what boundless provision, what 
 fullness and freeness it suggests for all the wants of 
 
— 22— • 
 
 our nature. As spirit be touches every life, he presses 
 upon every heart, he waits for us to make room for 
 him that he may enter in to cleanse and bless. 
 
 Again, Christ teaches us to believe that God's atti- 
 tude toward this sinful, world is one of love. In words 
 that condense into a single sentence the whole mar- 
 row of the gospel he declares that " God so loved the 
 world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoso- 
 ever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
 everlasting life." Instead of standing apart and leav- 
 ing the world to meet the consequences of its sin and 
 guilt, his whole nature went out toward it in love and 
 pity. He sent the Son of his bosom, his only begot- 
 ten Son, that " the world through him might be 
 saved." In other words, the eternal God himself be- 
 came flesh, he entered into vital union with our hu- 
 manity, and voluntarily subjected himself to shame 
 and sorrow and agony and crucifixion and the dark, 
 lonely shadows of the grave to convince wandering, 
 rebellious men of his love. 
 
 It is an old story, I know, but it will bear repeating, 
 and be fresh and sweet until the last tempest-tossed 
 wanderer has rounded the cape and cast anchor in the 
 Port of Peace. Yes, it will inspire the songs of glory 
 while the ages of eternity roll. I trust I may never 
 be charged with neglecting to exalt the cross. I would 
 lift it up and make it so attractive and. inviting that 
 every poor sinner might be induced to flee to its 
 .shelter. I would like every man to build his house 
 on the Rock that was riven, and from Calvary's sum- 
 
— 23 — 
 
 mit look out upon the contending forces of this sin- 
 smitten earth. But at the same time I would have 
 every man remember that Jesus Christ taught that 
 back of Calvary, back of that stupendous sacrifice, is 
 the yearning, infinite love of God, as the fountain is 
 back of the stream. To make this truth plain, to im- 
 press it upon the heart of mankind, was the burden of 
 all his lessons from his baptism to his death. This is 
 the supreme, the crowning thought of the gospel, that 
 God's love is the spring out of which flows salvation 
 with all that it signifies. 
 
 Passing on a step, let me say in the next place, that 
 Christ teaches us to believe that God is merciful. This, 
 of course is, so to speak, but a ray of his love, but it 
 will help us to look at it separately. In the course of 
 his Sermon on the Mount he said to his disciples : 
 " Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is mer- 
 ciful." Again and again our Saviour emphasizes this 
 trait of God's character. He quotes from the Old 
 Testament to show that God loves merc}^ rather than 
 sacrifice. He sets it forth in the parable of the tal- 
 ents, .and with a pathos and beauty that will never die 
 in the parable of the Prodigal Child. He teaches 
 us to believe that God delights in mercy, and 
 that waves of joy surge through his being when he 
 sees a sinner returning to the shelter of his love. He 
 offers it to all as freely as he gives the sunshine and 
 the air. There are some who think that if they were 
 in the church and professed to be christians, that his 
 mercy would be vouchsafed; but as they are only sin- 
 
— 24 — 
 
 liers, only aliens and wanderers, they feel that they 
 dare not go to God. They keep no account in the 
 bank of divine compassion, and hence they conclude 
 that their check will not be honored if they present it. 
 
 But they can make no greater mistake. He delights 
 in mercy, fellowmen, and does not wait for you to turn 
 and repent before he loves you. His love ante-dates 
 all reformation, all regeneration. There is not a thief, 
 not a gambler, not a drunkard, not a soul burning up 
 with bad passions, who has not a right to look up out 
 of the midst of his guilt and say " God help me, God 
 be merciful to me, a sinner." Your vice, your in- 
 iquity, your poor sin-smitten life, is not a reason for 
 keeping away from God. Nay, it is the very reason 
 why you should go to him, just as a man's disease is 
 the reason why he should seek the physician. 
 
 No matter how deep the guilt, no matter how black 
 the sin, no matter how low a man may have fallen, 
 he need never despair of the mercy of God. In the 
 great storm that raged along the Atlantic coast a year 
 or so ago, we are told that immense rocks were car- 
 ried up the beach in the arms of the waves and depos- 
 ited far inland on solid ground. So I care not how 
 vile a sinner a man may be, Christ teaches us to be- 
 lieve that the waves of God's mercy can carry him 
 right up to the safe, immovable, eternal shore. A 
 story is told of a Senator of Athens who, when a poor 
 chased sparrow sought refuge in his bosom, dashed it 
 from him to the ground and put out its life; where- 
 upon it was ordered by the Senate that he should die 
 
— 25 — 
 
 himself. They wouldn't have a man of that temper 
 in their lionorable body. Blessed be God, no poor, 
 hunted soul that seeks shelter in his bosom will ever 
 be cast away. '' His mercy endureth forever," and if 
 in a million years from now a lost soul should come 
 imploring that mercy, it would throw its sheltering 
 wing over him at once, and the armies of heaven 
 w^ould thrust themselves between him and the powers 
 of sin. 
 
 We trim our night-lamps, w^e watch our little earth- 
 lights, lest they go out and leave us in the dark; but 
 we have no anxiety about the sun failing, or the air 
 becoming exhausted. So we need not fear that God's 
 mercy will ever fail. Only let us fear that our dispo- 
 sition to ask for it may cease; that is quite possible. 
 God will always be as merciful as he is to-day, but his 
 mercy may cease to be available by and by through 
 sin and neglect. 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that hard by the city lies 
 the lake with all its boundless supply fed by moun- 
 tain streams; notwithstanding the fact that it was 
 there before ever a human footprint was left on the 
 plains, and will be there ^ when the city's glory 
 shall have crumbled to the dust; yet if the house- 
 holder shuts up his water-pipes and keeps them shut 
 until encrusted with rust and filled with sediment so 
 that not a drop of water can get through, he can- 
 not blame the water. The fault is entirely his own. 
 There is no limit to the water supply, but he has cut 
 himself off from it, and must face the consequences. 
 
— 26 — 
 
 So God's mercy is boundless, from everlasting to ever- 
 lasting, but it cannot come into the soul that has be- 
 come thoroughly hardened by sin and by repeated re- 
 fusals to listen to the still, small voice. Hence, while 
 the thought of God's mercy is full of hope and inspi- 
 ration, the thought that a man may put himself be- 
 yond its reach is full of warning, and ought to arouse 
 from his lethargy every indifferent, careless person 
 here to-day. 
 
 Still farther, Christ teaches us to believe that God 
 is our Father. How constantly he keeps this blessed truth 
 in the front you all know. The Sermon on the Mount 
 is full of it. Fifteen times it is referred to in that brief 
 discourse, and each reference shows us the Father from 
 a somewhat different angle. There is so much under 
 this head that might be said, that I select but two or 
 three points for special emphasis. 
 
 First, Christ teaches us to believe that as a Father 
 God is thoroughly impartial. "For he maketh his sun 
 to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain 
 on the just and on the unjust." The sun takes just 
 as much pains with the Canada thistle or the dog- 
 weed as it does with the apple tree or the splendid oak. 
 It is just as friendly, just as kind to the cockle as to 
 the wheat ; to the rank mullen stock by the wayside 
 as to the grapevine in the arbor. It shines upon the 
 cotter's cabin with no less bounty than upon the 
 prince's palace. The sun makes no distinctions; there 
 isn't the slightest favoritism about it; it has no special 
 regard to show in special places. On it shines, diffus- 
 
— 27 — 
 
 ing itself through the air, and pours itself without 
 partiality and in endless abundance upon all things. 
 Thus it is a beautiful emblem of our Father in heaven 
 who " maketh the sun to rise on the evil and on the 
 good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." 
 
 He does this as a Father. The true parent looks 
 upon his children, and the parental feeling overcomes 
 any differences of talent or appearance there may be in 
 them. One may be more gifted, more handsome, 
 more promising than another, but whatever tincture 
 of favoritism there may be on the surface, compre- 
 hensively he looks upon them all and loves them all 
 as his own dear children. I like to think that God is 
 impartial, that his great heart flows out toward me 
 just as freely, just as indiscriminately as toward the 
 most exalted saint that ever lifted a prayer to heaven. 
 He loves you just as much as he did Paul, and John, 
 and Peter, though you may not be able to contain as 
 much of his love as they did. The receiving vessel 
 may be smaller. The currant bush cannot absorb as 
 much of the sunshine as the wide-spreading maple; 
 but each gets all it can dispose of. So God's love to 
 you and me is limited only b}^ our capacity to re- 
 ceive. 
 
 Most sweetly does our Lord illustrate the impartiality 
 of the Father's love in the parable of the prodigal. Both 
 boys were loved with all the love of the Father's heart. 
 The boy who wandered away no less than the boy that 
 stayed at home. One, however, was loved with the 
 love of compassion; the other with the love of com- 
 
— 28 — 
 
 placency. But any interpretation of the parable that 
 does not give to each an equal place in the Father's 
 affection, I believe to be wrong. Christ teaches us to 
 believe that God loves the sinner, the debauchee down 
 in the gutter, not one whit less than he loves the Chris- 
 tian kneeling at the altar; though of course he does 
 not and he cannot take equal pleasure in them. 
 
 Christ, moreover, teaches us to believe that as our 
 Father God is interested in every phase and item of 
 our experience. "Consider the lilies." "Behold the 
 fowls of the air." If God cares for them, and is 
 interested in them, think not that he will neglect you, 
 "O, ye of little faith." He declares that the ver}' hairs 
 of your heads are numbered. I know that it is diffi- 
 cult for us to realize that God can bestow his attention 
 upon such little things. They seem too trifling, too 
 utterly beneath him. The idea that the eternal God 
 who made the world and holds the stars in the 
 hollow of his hand, should not only stoop to think of 
 every individual man, but should be interested in 
 every incident of his experience, and that his sympa- 
 thy attends every step of human life — that idea when 
 you look at it in the light of his greatness does seem 
 extravagant. It seems out of the question. 
 
 But when we reflect that he is our Father, that he 
 sustains to us the the parental relation, we can see 
 that it must be so. We all know how a kind earthly 
 parent abandons himself to his little, toddling child. 
 No matter how dignified he may be in society, no matter 
 how stately and cultured and self-poised, one appeal of 
 
— 29 — 
 
 that little darling breaks him all up, and he is down 
 on the floor in an instant, as much absorbed in the 
 trifles of the child as he was awhile ago in the greater 
 affairs of the wide world. Well, now take that parent- 
 hood and enlarge it away on all sides until it becomes 
 infinite, yet retaining all its parental instincts, and I 
 think you can understand how God may have an in- 
 terest in you, and in all your little trials and difficul- 
 ties. That he has is most clearly taught by our Lord, 
 and I would have every one lay the sweet lesson to 
 heart and take it out into the din and rush and battle 
 of life. You are his child, however lowly, however 
 sinful and unworthy; and as the mountain puts its 
 strong shoulder under the modest, delicate flower as 
 freely as under the tall pine, so God carries in his 
 bosom the feeblest as well as the strongest. 
 
 I realize that I have only touched my subject at two 
 or three points, but time presses, and I must stop. 
 God is spirit, God is love, God is Father. Thus he is 
 .the author of our existence, the quickener of our 
 moral nature, the Saviour of our souls. In him we 
 live, and move, and have our being. Has he not, 
 then, some claim upon our lives? When the voice no 
 longer needs the singer, when the ray can shine with- 
 out the lamp, when the stream can flow without the 
 fountain, we sliall be independent of God, but not till 
 then. In view, therefore, of what he is, in view of the 
 life he gives and sustains, in view of all his fatherly 
 care and tenderness, shall we not acknowledge his 
 claims and give him henceforth the homage of our 
 hearts? 
 
WHAT CHRIST TEACHES US TO BELIEVE 
 ABOUT HIMSELF. 
 
 " Whom makest thou thyself ?"—^o/iw, 8:5S 
 
 Some forty years ago, when gold was first discovered 
 in California, and the excitement swept over the 
 country like a contagion, men were not content with 
 the rumors and reports that filled the air, but away 
 they started, some across the mountains, some by the 
 way of Panama and some around Cape Horn, to see 
 the famous El Dorado for themselves. What they 
 read and heard only kindled their desire and filled 
 them with a determination never to stop till they got 
 to headquarters and saw with their own eyes and held 
 in their own hands the precious dust. Speaking after 
 the manner of the world that was wise, for men cer- 
 tainly cannot accumulate earthly riches by feeding 
 upon current stories and popular talk. Hearsay may 
 be interesting and even thrilling, but nobody is. ever 
 enriched by it. 
 
 Now, if men would only act toward spiritual things 
 as the gold-seekers did toward things secular ; if they 
 
— 31 — 
 
 would but say, '' Yes, we are thankful for all we have 
 heard and read about Christ; we are grateful for every 
 description we have seen of him, but we can never 
 rest until we see the original and hear what he has to 
 say about himself." If people would thus insist 
 upon going to the very heart and center of Christian- 
 ity at once, instead of stopping at literary and ecclesi- 
 astical half-way houses, as they are too much inclined 
 to do, the world would have a different story to re- 
 hearse, and its pulse would beat with higher hopes 
 and loftier ambitions. 
 
 An artificial flower may be very good as an imita- 
 tion, and there may be a certain sort of beauty about 
 it, but to form any true appreciation of a real rose you 
 must go to the garden where it blooms in all the sweet 
 loveliness of nature. In like manner, to form any ade- 
 quate conception of Him, who is the Rose of Sharon 
 and the Lily of the Valley, we must look at him as he 
 blooms in the garden of the gospel. The great diffi- 
 culty with multitudes is that they are too prone to be 
 content with copies and reports and imitations. They 
 are satisfied to take their theological furniture as it 
 comes to them from the factory, all carved and pol- 
 ished and painted, without going to the trouble of 
 pushing back to the primitive tree out of which it 
 came. The true student, however, the sincere in- 
 quirer, can never rest until he gets as near as possible 
 to the roots of things. 
 
 This morning we are to take a look, here and there, 
 at what Christ teaches us to believe concerning him- 
 
— 32 — 
 
 self. Not in the mood of the Scribes and Pharisees, 
 in no spirit of carping criticism, are we to ask: " Whom 
 makest Thou thyself?" but as devout inquirers we 
 come, I trust, to learn from his own lips who he is 
 and what relation he claims to sustain toward men. 
 We strike out the elements of time and distance, and 
 for a few minutes we are to imagine ourselves in old 
 Judea, following him from place to place in the com- 
 pany of his disciples, sitting at his feet, drinking in 
 his words, receiving his instruction ; and, from what 
 we see and hear, we are to form our opinions as to 
 what he makes himself to be. 
 
 At the very outset we are profoundly impressed. He 
 is so calm, so gentle, so self-controlled. Never for a 
 moment does he yield to excitement. No matter 
 what turbulence there may be about him his tran- 
 quility is always the same. He is solemn, like one 
 charged with infinite responsibility ; as dignified as a 
 king, yet as approachable as a little child. The dew 
 of youth is on his brow, while at the same time he has 
 all the maturity and wisdom of age. Sometimes he 
 comes so near that the Tveary head is tempted to recline 
 upon his bosom. Then in a moment he is far away, 
 as if in communion with other worlds. Now men 
 shrink from him as from a consuming fire, and anon, 
 they are attracted to him as to a garden of delights. 
 Now his eye weeps in pity, and now it flashes with 
 awful indignation. Now his voice is full of tears and 
 compassion, and, in its accent, poor sinners hear the 
 music of hope. Now it pierces like a two-edged sword. 
 
We notice that he is loved as never man was loved, 
 and hated with all the malignity of hell. There is no af- 
 fectation, no putting on airs. We feel that he is truth 
 itself, and so we go with him to see if from his own 
 words and actions we can make him out. 
 
 We learn very early that he puts himself forward 
 as the Great Teacher. He sits down on the hill-side, 
 and, as we range ourselves beneath him on the green 
 slopes, he begins his incomparable lessons. Beatitude 
 after beatitude drops from his lips with such simple 
 eloquence that we are riveted to the spot. Then he 
 calls us the salt of the earth, the light of the world, 
 and carries our poor human life up into most exalted 
 meanings, and shows us what vast possibilities lie 
 along our path. Under such talk our hearts beat 
 faster and our whole nature expands, like a flower 
 wooed and kissed by the sun. 
 
 Passing from that he begins to talk about the law 
 and the prophets. He assures us that they were not 
 temporary expedients brought forward to help the 
 world over a tight place, but that they are to stand 
 until heaven and earth pass away, and that he came 
 to fulfil them and make them glorious. He takes the 
 local and broadens it away into the universal ; takes 
 love, which was a very narrow and one-sided affair, 
 and throws it around enemies and haters and perse- 
 cutors and all the sons of men, as the sun throws its 
 light over the evil and the good. Thus he leads us 
 on, talking about alms-giving and prayer, about enter- 
 ing in at the strait gate and laying up treasure in 
 
— 34 — 
 
 heaven; about judging men by their fruits and not 
 by their words, and reaches the climax of it all by de- 
 claring that the man who builds upon these sayings 
 of his builds upon a rock that never can be shaken. 
 We are sorry to have him close so soon, for we fain 
 would hear more. 
 
 But now, descending with him from the mountain, 
 we are even more charmed and astonished at what we 
 see in the plain. Here we behold him setting himself 
 forth as tht Great Physician. This brings him a little 
 closer. We look and behold he cleanses a leper, ac- 
 tually takes the loathsome creature b}^ the hand; no- 
 body else on earth would do it, but he does it with 
 more than a mother's tenderness, and that touch 
 thrills the poor man with life and health and hope, 
 and fills all his sky with light. He starts with the 
 worst possible case first. After that we are not sur- 
 prised to see him heal palsy and fever and all manner 
 of disease. When we see the joy that springs up in 
 his track over banished pain and restored strength 
 there comes to our mind an old passage of scripture, 
 and with Matthew we say, " Himself took our infirmi- 
 ties and bore our sicknesses." 
 
 But we see more. He not only heals the body but 
 the mind. He casts out devils. He cleanses the soul. 
 On the rocky shore of Galilee we saw him deal with 
 a man who had his dwelling among the tombs, an 
 exceeding fierce man, the terror of the whole neigh- 
 borhood, who, in his paroxysms of madness, cut him- 
 self with stones and uttered the most hideous cries. 
 
-35- 
 
 But we heard Jesus say : " Come out of him thou un- 
 clean spirit," and the effect was instantaneous and 
 marvelous. At once his mental balance was restored. 
 At once the wild man, whom everybody had feared, 
 was clothed and in his right mind and as tractable as 
 a child. Thus this wonderful man makes himself not 
 only master of physical but of spiritual disorders as 
 well. 
 
 As we continue in his company we very soon learn 
 that his relation to man is more intimate, more prec- 
 ious and blessed still. One day at Jerusalem he 
 strikes a higher and nobler key than any he has struck 
 yet. He calls himself the Good Shepherd. Ashe un- 
 folds that idea in one of his matchless talks, we are 
 more impressed than ever with the tenderness, the 
 sympathy, the absolute self-forgetfulness of this Jesus. 
 We hear him say that he is going to lay down his 
 life for the sheep. We don't exactly understand it, 
 but we know that it is just what the true shepherd 
 often does. And as he hints of other sheep which are 
 not of this fold, our vision seems to enlarge, and we 
 get glimpses of great flocks which, in some favored 
 day, are going to follow him and lie down at noon in 
 the green pastures. To be sure our minds are clouded, 
 but the clouds are luminous, with a strange light 
 breaking through which speaks of bright skies and 
 glories to come. 
 
 On another occasion, w4th publicans and sinners 
 all around him, with the fallen, the outcast, the wan- 
 dering, the homeless, looking up into his face through 
 
— 86 — 
 
 their tears and despair, he becomes ahiiost dramatic 
 as he tells what a great-hearted shepherd does when he 
 misses one sheep from the fold. He leaves the ninety 
 and nine, goes out over the sharp rocks and through 
 stinging briars, and never stops till he finds it. Then, 
 instead oi driving the poor lame, wounded thing back, 
 he lifts it to his shoulders, carries it home rejoicing, 
 and is so glad that he calls in all his friends and 
 neighbors to. rejoice with him. When the story is 
 ended we know that Jesus himself is the great-hearted 
 shepherd. 
 
 His talk is getting to be pathetic, and as it grows 
 in pathos it grows in significance, until pretty soon 
 the humble teacher, the tender physician, the good 
 shepherd likens himself to a father, running out with 
 eager haste to meet the returning prodigal, taking 
 him to his heart without one chiding word, and fill- 
 ing all the house with jubilee because the erring boy 
 is home once more. While we wonder what it all 
 means, and are more and more amazed at the audacity 
 of his claims, there crowds upon us the thought that all 
 the time, little by little, he has been leading us up to 
 the sublime, the inspiring conception that he is more 
 than teacher, more than physician, more than shep- 
 herd, more than father even. In one word, that he is 
 the saviour of sinners. This is what he has been pre- 
 paring us for all along. 
 
 Saviour. — That is the name that gathers 
 into itself and explains every other name. Now 
 we know what he meant when he talked about 
 
— 37 — 
 
 the safet}^ of the man who built upon the 
 Rock. Now we know what he was seeking to 
 impress when he cleansed the leper and *cast out 
 devils, and called himself Teacher and Shepherd. 
 Now it is clear enough what he intended to convey 
 when he spoke about healing the broken hearted, 
 preaching deliverance to the captives, recovering of 
 sight to the blind, and setting at liberty them that are 
 bruised. Now we understand what he meant when 
 he said : "I am the door;" "I am the way, the truth 
 and the life;" "no man cometh unto the Father but 
 by me." 
 
 In every talk, in every stor}^ in every illustration, 
 he was giving us hints of his Saviour-hood. His 
 cures, his compassions, his miracles, his nights of 
 prayer and days of toil, all were but scattered rays 
 of which this is the sun. All were but fragments, a 
 few drops as it were of the one great fountain of re- 
 deeming love. We take his several sayings, that he 
 "has power on earth to forgive sins." " Thy sins be 
 forgiven thee;" "The Son of Man is come to seek and 
 save that which was lost." "The Son of Man came not 
 to be ministered unto but to minister and to give his life 
 a ransom for many." "And I, if I be lifted up from 
 the earth, will draw all men unto me," "Verily, 
 verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath 
 everlasting life." We take these sayings of his, and 
 scores of others of like import might be quoted, and, 
 putting them all together, he leaves us no room to 
 doubt that he makes himself to be the only Saviour of 
 
— 38 — 
 
 sinners. To this postion we are bound to come or dis- 
 card every chapter of the gospel story. He is either 
 Saviour or nothing. 
 
 But by what power and authority does he save f He 
 takes special pains to set our minds at rest on this 
 point. We hear him say again and again in terms 
 which cannot be misunderstood that he is God. In 
 the same talk in which he called himself the Good 
 Shepherd he said: "I and my Father are one." 
 Standing under the very shadow of the cross he says 
 to poor Philip, who felt that if he could only see the 
 Father he would be satisfied : "He that hath seen me 
 hath seen the Father." Jehovah, the Hebrew name 
 for the Eternal, he does not hesitate to apply to him- 
 self. Thus, " Before Abraham was, I am.'' One day, 
 entering into conversation with the woman at the 
 well, she said : " I know that Messias cometh," and, 
 quick as a flash, he replied: " I that speak unto thee 
 am He." Again, because Peter confesses him to be 
 the Christ — the Son of the living God — he blesses him 
 and bestows upon him peculiar honor. It is plain; 
 therefore, that he makes himself to be God, and it is, by 
 virtue of his divinity, that he is the Saviour, for only 
 the divine can save. 
 
 But if he teaches us to believe that he is God he 
 is no less emphatic in teaching us to beleive that he is 
 man. He is born of woman, grows up in a Judean 
 home, works in the carpenter shop, toils and suff'ers, 
 hungers and thirsts, eats and sleeps, labors and grows 
 weary, just like us, and because he is like us — bone of 
 our bone and flesh of our flesh. 
 
And his humanity is just as essential to his 
 Saviour-hood as his divinity. God the infinite, God 
 the eternal, filling all space with his presence, lies ut- 
 terly beyond our utmost thought. To know him and 
 love him he must descend to the level of our compre- 
 hension. If he loves us we must see his love so em- 
 bodied that we can understand it. Had he written 
 his love upon the sun and blazed it from every star 
 and thundered it in the boom of the ocean, you and I 
 never could have grasped it until we saw it living and 
 acting, suffering and sympathizing, in a human life. 
 So, blessed be his name, he stooped to our condition. 
 He met us on the plain of our own being. He emp- 
 tied himself of his glory and became manifest in the 
 flesh. 
 
 See how his two-fold nature is constantly empha- 
 sized in the Gospel. As man he feels the pangs of 
 hunger; as God he feeds five thousand in the desert 
 and calls himself "the bread which cometh down from 
 heaven." As man his lips are parched with thirst; as 
 God he stands up and cries : "If any man thirst let 
 him come unto me and drink." As man he is weary 
 and has not where to lay his head. As God he says : 
 "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy 
 laden and I will give you rest." As man he sleeps on 
 the hinder part of a fishing boat; as God, at the ap- 
 peal of the disciples, he rises, rebukes the wind and 
 the sea, and there is a great calm. Thus, his own 
 wordsleave us no room to doubt that he wants us to 
 believe that he is both God and man. That in him 
 
— 40 — 
 
 divinity and humanity are mysteriously blended in 
 two distinct natures, but in perfect unity. 
 
 I do not pretend to understand it, but in nature I 
 find an analogy that helps me to accept it. The Gulf 
 Stream, for example, is a great river flowing through 
 the Atlantic. It is so clearly defined that men have 
 traced it and mapped out its course. No matter how 
 the winds may blow it never loses its identity. There 
 it is; always setting in the same direction, always do- 
 ing the same work, as faithful as the stars. And yet, 
 the ocean and the Gulf Stream are not two but one. 
 I can't understand it. It is a mystery to me why 
 they don't mix and become absolutely lost, one in 
 the other. I only know that there they are, always 
 two and always one, the Gulf Stream in the ocean 
 and the ocean in the Gulf Stream. So it is with the 
 dual nature of our Lord, in which I devoutly and joy- 
 fully beleive, because he himself has so plainly set it 
 forth. He is thus in God and God in him, in order 
 that his combined divinity and humanity he may be 
 the Saviour of Sinners. This does not clear away the 
 mystery, but it does give us the reason for the fact, 
 God was manifested, says John, " that he might take 
 away our sins." In other words, that he might be our 
 Saviour. And this pre-eminently is what he makes 
 himself to be — the Saviour. 
 
 And now, having followed him thus far, having 
 listened to his wondrous words and startling claims, 
 let us continue with him to the end and see how this 
 devoted life is going to pass away. We notice that 
 
— 41 — 
 
 his face grows more solemn, that his earnestness be- 
 comes more intense, that his love for sinners seems to 
 burn with a whiter heat, that his speech gleams like 
 a pure river, holding in its bosom thrilling images 
 and reflections of the sky, and that his words broaden 
 away into meanings that embrace all the future. We 
 have had hints of it before, but here, in these closing 
 days, he makes the astounding declaration that he is 
 the contemporary of all ages. He tells us that it is 
 expedient for him to go, but that he will, neverthe- 
 less, be with us always. He tells us that he is 
 going to prepare a place for us and that he will come 
 again. He tells us about the judgment, about sitting 
 on the throne of his glor}' and coming in the clouds 
 of heaven. He tells us that all nations shall be 
 gathered before him and that he will separate them 
 one from another as the shepherd divideth his sheep 
 from the goats. He tells us of falling stars, of a dark- 
 ened sun, of the moon withholding her light, of the 
 powers of heaven being shaken, of the se^i and waves 
 roaring, and, as he draws the graphic picture, he 
 cries : '' Be ready ; watch and pray, for in such an 
 hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh." 
 
 Hardly, however, have the words fallen from his 
 lips when there transpires the strangest, saddest scene 
 of all. I tremble to touch the immortal tragedy with 
 my poor syllables, lest I should spoil it. The Teacher 
 is arrested and th^ school is closed. The Great Phy- 
 sician is snatched away from his God-like work by 
 the cruel hands of human hate. The Good Shepherd 
 
— 42 — 
 
 is a prisoner and the sheep are scattered. We look 
 and behold he stands there before his accusers, quiet 
 as a statue, firm as a rock, yet unresisting as a lamb. 
 We look again, and they spit upon him and scourge 
 him and mock him and turn his sorrows and agonies 
 into holiday joy. Once more we look, and, through 
 our blinding tears, we see the fainting, bleeding, ex- 
 hausted sufferer staggering away toward Calvary. 
 
 Now the place of skulls is reached, and now, while 
 they drive the nails and thrust the grim, cruel cross 
 into the stony ground, there goes up such a prayer as 
 never before or since fell on the ear of heaven. 
 " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
 do." 
 
 Up goes the accursed instrument of torture, and be- 
 hold an awful gloom loads down the sky with dark- 
 ness. The solid rocks throb and crack as if they feel 
 the pain of the tremendous hour. The great clouds, 
 hanging low, seem to be filled with innumerable eyes 
 peering through, and in the moaning winds we seem 
 to hear the sighs of invisible throngs as they look 
 upon the fearful tragedy. Then a cry of orphanage — 
 of infinite desolation — pierces the burdened air, to be 
 followed in a little while by a ringing cry of victory. 
 " It is finished," and the tragedy is over. 
 
 '* Love's redeeming work is done, 
 The battle fought, the victory won." 
 
 . Now the light Gomes back; now the blue heavens 
 smile again upon the earth, and, in a day or two, this 
 very Christ who was slain stands yonder on a moun- 
 
 i 
 
— 43 — 
 
 tain, just as he stood in the beginning, issuing his 
 commands like a king, speaking great words of love, 
 saying good-by to his disciples, when lo ! stepping 
 into a chariot of cloud, he vanishes from mortal sight, 
 until the end of the age, when he shall come again as 
 he went. Even so come Lord Jesus. 
 
 Now, does anyone ask : " Lord, whom makest thou 
 thyself?" With that life spread out before you the 
 answer must be plain. By all the lessons he taught, 
 by all the burdens he carried, by all the broken 
 hearts he healed, by all the captives he delivered, by 
 all the wanderers he reclaimed, by all the victories he 
 won, he teaches us to believe that he is the Saviour of 
 men. 
 
 And, I presume, we all do believe it in a general 
 sort of a way. But I would like every one of us to 
 make it personal. I would like every one of us to 
 say: "This Jesus, who raises the dead and conquers 
 the grave, and cleanses the leper, and carries people 
 in his arms when the road is rough and the hill is 
 steep, and the wind is sharp and the night is dark, 
 and welcomes poor sinners to his breast. This Jesus, 
 so kingly, yet so tender; so almighty, yet so gentle; 
 so divine, yet so human; this Jesus whose heart burst 
 and poured out its sacred blood for me; this Jesus is 
 mine. I cannot, I will not, live without him. He is 
 all the God I want. I look no higher, for beside him 
 there is none else, and from this day I take him to be 
 my Saviour. Who among you will say that and 
 come with us two weeks from to-day to the commun- 
 
— 44 — 
 
 ion, to joyfully confess him before men and publicly 
 take your stand beneath the banner of the cross ? 
 
 You can easily find fault with us who profess his 
 name. We give you far too much ground for criti- 
 cism. We know, and sorrowfully confess, that our 
 lives are fitful, spasmodic, unsteady, inconsistent, 
 sometimes true and sometimes false. These lower 
 lights burn dimly and uncertainly, and sometimes 
 seem to flicker out entirely. You can easily find fault 
 with the church. She humbly owns that she does 
 not begin to be what she ought to be. She goes too 
 much with the world and gets her feet blistered and 
 her robes stained by walking in forbidden paths. Her 
 wheat is not free from chafif. Her gold is mixed with 
 alloy. Her noblest works are tainted with selfish- 
 ness. But, " what think ye of Christ ? " Have you 
 any fault to find with him? Oh, I would, that" 
 you might be so impressed with his beauty, his pur- 
 ity, his Saviour-hood, as to step over the line of in- 
 difference, of fear, of hesitancy, and make his people 
 your people, his aims your aims, his life your life, and 
 his glory your glory. 
 
 ® 
 
WHAT CHRIST TEACHES AS TO THE HOLY 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 John, 16: 7-15. 
 
 While the Holy Spirit is very frequently referred to 
 in the Old Testament, his person and work are dwelt 
 upon with special fulness in the New. Every careful 
 reader of the gospels and epistles knows how constantly 
 the Spirit is spoken o,f in one relation or another, and 
 especially from the time of the Savior's farewell talk 
 with his disciples in the upper room on to the end of the 
 volume. A distinguished student of the Scriptures has 
 called our attention to the fact that the whole move- 
 ment of the Bible is toward spirituality. We see it in 
 the order of creation, moving up step by step, until it 
 culminates in man. We see it in the Levitical ritual, 
 and in offerings and sacrifices, in types and shadows, 
 which have their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. We see 
 it in the order of the gospels, beginning with the 
 matter-of-fact Matthew and closing with the heavenly- 
 minded John, who keeps us all the time on the sun- 
 
— 46 — 
 
 lighted summits. Hence it seems as natural that the 
 Scriptures should reach their culmination in the dis- 
 pensation of the Spirit as that the bud should enfold 
 into the flower. 
 
 I am well aware that when we come to talk about 
 the Holy Spirit we come to something that is intangi- 
 ble and mysterious; something which to many minds 
 seems too vague and shadowy to be of any interest and 
 importance, and this, perhaps, is the reason why the 
 subject is so often passed over in silence. But w^hat- 
 ever may be our feeling as to the matter, we are bound 
 to admit that our Lord and His Apostles made a great 
 deal of it; that they considered the Holy Spirit's pres- 
 ence the one thing, above all others, indispensable. 
 
 To be sure, we cannot explain the influences of the 
 Spirit; they are past finding out. But so are the 
 movements of the wind. We see its effects, we hear 
 the sound tliereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh 
 nor whither it goeth. But the influence of the Spirit 
 is no more mysterious than a thousand other influ- 
 ences. I do not know how one man can so speak or 
 sing as to stir to tears, or soothe and (^uiet the soul of 
 another. I do not know how strains of music can take 
 hold of a man and lift him up into an atmosphere of 
 hope and joy; or how the rustling of the leaves in 
 autumn, or the sighing of the trees under the touch of 
 the north wind fills him with the feeling of melan- 
 choly. I do not know how certain emotions in me carl 
 awaken similar emotions in you. What is it that 
 moves us to weep with those who weep and rejoice with 
 
-47- 
 
 those who rejoice? How does a mother pour her affec- 
 tion upon the heart of her child? How is it that some 
 force from the outer world carries us away down into 
 the valley of gloom to-day, and another force carries 
 us up to the hill of light to-morrow? We cannot tell. 
 We only know that th^se things are so. But if these 
 secret forces of nature and life should so affect us why 
 should it be thought a thing incredible that God 
 should move upon us by his Holy Spirit? For my 
 part it seems most unreasonable that men who live 
 and move and have their being in mystery should 
 insist upon having all mystery cleared away when 
 they come to religion. I cannot help but feel that it is 
 done too often simply as a pretext for standing out 
 against the claims of the Savior of the world. In 
 considering what Christ teaches us to believe con- 
 cerning the Holy Spirit we shall proceed in the fol- 
 lovv'ing order: First — What the Spirit is. Second — 
 Where the Spirit is, and Third — What the Spirit does. 
 1. First, then. What is the Spirits I have just been 
 using the word influence, and the word force, and 
 these terms, especially the first, are often used in con- 
 nection with the Holy Ghost. So often, indeed, that 
 I fear some of us are misled by them. There is nothing 
 more common, for example, than to hear Christian 
 people, of many years standing even, use the imper- 
 sonal pronoun it in referring to the Spirit. This 
 arises, no doubt, from the habit of regarding the Holy 
 Ghost as an influence or an emanation from God, and 
 not as an actual person. 
 
— 48 — 
 
 But to get rid of all confusion on this point it is 
 only necessary to turn to the language of our Lord. 
 According to Christ, the Holy Spirit " reproves," 
 " guides," " teaches," " comforts," " leads into all truth," 
 "testifies," "brings to remembrance" and "endues with 
 power." To say these things of an influence would of 
 course be absurd. Besides, it is to be noticed that in 
 speaking of the Spirit, Christ invariably uses the per- 
 sonal pronoun "He," " Him," " whom," etc. 
 
 In the fourth of Luke, quoting from Isaiah, he says, 
 " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He hath 
 anointed me to preach." He could hardly say that.of an 
 influence. Again, take the following passage, which 
 has troubled so many : "All manner of sin and blas- 
 phemy shall be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy 
 against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven." A 
 thing, an emanation, cannot be sinned against. It 
 would be just as sensible to talk about sinning against 
 a stone wall as against an influence. An influence 
 cannot think, or feel, or suffer. The words of Christ, 
 therefore, leave us no alternative. He certainly teaches 
 us to believe in the proper personality of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 Not only so, but he teaches us that as a person the 
 Holy Ghost is coequal with himself. Thus, if I say : 
 " I am a Christian and you are another, I affirm that 
 you are likewise a Christian. If I declare that J am 
 an American citizen and you are another, behind that 
 word " another" your citizenship is averred also. So 
 when Jesus says : " I will pray the Father, and He shall 
 
— 49 — 
 
 send you another Comforter," he puts the Holy Spirit 
 in the same class and on the same footing with himself. 
 
 This thought will become clearer if we bear in mind 
 that the Spirit was to take Christ's place. It was said 
 of Beecher, before he departed this life, that no one 
 could ever fill his pulpit. It was felt that every one 
 who came after him to speak from the platform of 
 Plymouth Church would be very much in the situation 
 of a school-boy trying to stand in the shoes of a king; 
 or like a sapling attempting to occupy the place made 
 vacant by the falling of a sky-piercing pine. The 
 same thing has often been said of Spurgeon. When 
 such a man steps off the stage it is no easy matter to 
 find a worthy and competent successor. There never 
 has been but one Shakspeare, but one Paganini, but 
 one Raphael. Ulysses' bow could be bent by no mor- 
 tal but Ulysses, and when such men leave us their 
 weapons can be handled and their places filled only 
 by those of equal genius and calibre and powder. 
 
 But if that is true of these men to whom I have just 
 referred, how much more is it true of the Christ of 
 God ? He had been preaching as never man had 
 preached. His words had thrilled over the hills of 
 Judea and stirred the people and burned into their 
 very souls. Their tenderness, their pathos, their ring 
 of authority, their wisdom and force had called forth 
 the unqualified testimony that "never man spake like 
 this man." When the day came, therefore, for our 
 Lord to vacate His pulpit who should fill it ? What 
 must be the quality, the capacity, the temper of the 
 
-50- 
 
 person sent to stand in the office of Jesus Christ and 
 take up the work where He left it ? Could anybody 
 do it who was His inferior ? But He declares that 
 even greater things shall be done because of the 
 advent of the Spirit than ever He himself had done- 
 and so we must conclude that the Holy Spirit is not 
 only a person, but the equal of the Son of God. 
 
 II. Let us pass now to consider just for a moment 
 what Christ teaches us to believe as to where the Spirit 
 is. I trust that what I am saying may not be regarded 
 as dull and uninteresting. To Christians at least this 
 subject should be profoundh^ practical, for it has to do 
 with the very fountain of all their religious growth 
 and zeal and work and life. Speaking of the Spirit, 
 Jesus says: " If I depart I will send him unto you." 
 Again He says : " He shall abide with you forever." 
 
 Jesus goes to heaven, the Spirit comes to earth. 
 Jesusgoes to the right hand of the Father Almighty, the 
 Spirit comes into the world to be a quickening, living 
 presence among men, especially in the hearts of be- 
 lievers. When Jesus was here in the flesh the Father 
 said : " This is my beloved Son, hear him." But after 
 his ascension Jesus speaks out of the skies and says: 
 *' He that hath 'an ear let him hear what the Spirit 
 saith unto the churches." As certainly, therefore, as 
 the Son of God is there, so certainly is the Spirit of 
 God here. 
 
 He is here in two senses; first as the air, which is 
 universally diff*used, and, second, as water, which is 
 not equal everywhere, coming and going as it listeth, 
 
— 51 — 
 
 but flows in certain channels like our streams or riv- 
 ers. In the first sense, His presence enswathes every 
 life, presses upon every soul, hovers about every relig- 
 ious assembly, and all we have to do is to open our 
 hearts to Him and He will come in to abide with us 
 forever. In the second sense. He has already come in, 
 He has poured himself into the empty vessel which 
 has made room for Him, so that the person thus filled 
 becomes a fountain of blessing to others, or as it is in 
 the prophecy, " rivers of water in a dry place." 
 
 Thus, while the Spirit is all about us He is present 
 as a vitalizing and inspiring force only in the lives of 
 true disciples. His real seat of energy is in every 
 little church whose members have had their hearts 
 cleansed and given up to his indwelling ; and if in 
 any particular church he is not a moving, propelling 
 energy it is because its members are filled with other 
 things. I have seen water in the shape of mist hang, 
 dense and heav^^over hill and plain. Every tree and 
 flower was wrapped in it as in a shroud, but its weight 
 was not felt. It didn't move the smallest machine, it 
 didn't sway a branch or tip a leaf. And I have seen 
 water in the shape of a stream sweep down the valley, 
 turning mill after mill, causing the wheels of industry 
 to spin, and bearing many a craft of commerce to the 
 sea, everywhere the very embodiment of life and 
 power. Thus, while the mist was as truly water as 
 the stream, it was water without concentration, water 
 without a channel, and therefore it was weak, inoper- 
 ative, and practically useless. Brethren, let us take 
 
— 52 — 
 
 the lesson home. The Holy Spirit is here and every- 
 where, he broods over all the world, but he manifests 
 himself in Pentecostal power only when there are cer- 
 tain well-defined channels for him to move in. 
 
 Those channels are Christian hearts and Christian 
 churches. Is there any reason why they should not be 
 our hearts and our church ? 
 
 III. But, without tarrying longer here, let me ask 
 your attention to what Christ teaches us to believe the 
 Spirit does. There is so much that might be said here 
 that I shall have to confine myself to those points 
 which are most salient and practical. 
 
 1. The first thing He will do, says Christ, is to con- 
 vince the world of sin. That is fundamental. Unless 
 a man is thoroughly persuaded that he is a sinner he 
 will never call upon the Savior. If the field of the soul 
 is ever to yield golden sheaves for God it must first be 
 cut and torn by the plowshare of conviction. But that 
 is no easy matter. I can show you sin in the bud and 
 flower and describe it when it comes to the fruitage, 
 but to take you back to its secret beginnings, to the 
 germ out of which it came, is quite beyond me. All 
 men, for example, who have a spark of nobility left in 
 them, condemn murder; but all men do not condemn 
 the unholy anger in which the bloody crime had its 
 start. Every decent man denounces falsehood, and 
 does not hesitate to say that the liar should not be" 
 tolerated in respectable society. But that very decent 
 man himself may act a lie, and live a lie, and do it so 
 constantly that it comes to be the steady habit of his 
 
53 — 
 
 years. When a man gets in that condition, the only 
 agent that can reach him is the lightning of God. Hu- 
 man words will fall upon his ear with no more effect 
 than hailstones on the rock. 
 
 Here is a man who to all appearances has been 
 very benevolent. He has made a large donation to 
 some worthy cause. He did it cheerfully, and with 
 manifestations of delight. The people praise him in 
 the gates and leading articles are written to extol him. 
 Many a heart has been made glad by the gift. On the 
 outside it was very beautiful, and that is as far as the 
 human eye can see. But the Spirit comes, and holds 
 the candle of the Lord over the secret places of that 
 man's heart; he searches his motives, and says to the 
 much-eulogized giver : " Your soul was not in your 
 offering. It was a bribe by which you bought a large 
 place among men. It was a sacrifice to your own van- 
 ity. You were not thinking of doing good, but only 
 of yourself." Certain it is that in such a case as this 
 the Holy Spirit must undertake the work, or it never 
 will be done. The truth is, our very almsgiving 
 may be mockery; our very prayers may be a lie, and 
 our very religion the high-water-mark of our iniquity. 
 Hence the absolute need of the Spirit to keep the con- 
 science sensitive, the inner eye keen, and to show us 
 sin, not in the outward act, but in the hiding-places 
 of the soul. 
 
 2. The second thing the Spirit will do, says Christ, 
 is to teach, to guide you into the truth. If I were to 
 say: "Musical things are musically discerned," you 
 
— 54 — 
 
 would give your assent very readily. No man can 
 see into music who hasn't a musical eye — a musical 
 soul — a nature attuned to harmonious sounds. Math- 
 ematical things are mathematically discerned. Poet- 
 ical things are poetically discerned. Artistic things 
 are artistically discerned. Here there is no disagree- 
 ment. But when we say "Spiritual things are spirit- 
 ually discerned," there are those who charge us with 
 indulging in mystical nonsense or something of that 
 sort. But if to understand and appreciate music, or 
 art, or poetry, or any great and high study, we must 
 bring to it a kindred sympathy, why should not the 
 same thing hold true of the Scriptures? I do not stop 
 to argue the matter. I am content to stand on the 
 rock of the Savior's instruction. We need a Teacher, 
 and that teacher is the Holy Ghost, who has come to 
 guide us into all truth. 
 
 Who taught D. L. Moody so that whenever he opens 
 the word of God to the people they see treasures which 
 they never saw before ? Who taught many a pious old 
 saint, that never saw the inside of a college, and made 
 him wiser in the Scriptures than many a learned, book- 
 worn man, who has gone through all the schools ? It 
 was the blessed Comforter whom Jesus Christ sent in 
 His own name. There are some lessons which can be 
 learned only in the school of the Holy Ghost, and to 
 know the Bible is one of them. I wish that thought 
 might be burned into all of our hearts. 
 
 Suppose you see a man at midnight trying to under- 
 stand a sun-dial. He has a lamp in his hand, and. 
 
— as- 
 holding it up, he tries to trace the figures on the face 
 of the dial. He looks at it, and studies it, and exam- 
 ines it with the utmost diligence, and the result is that 
 while he gains a pretty accurate knowledge of the 
 structure, he complains that he can't understand its 
 purpose. He can't see its practical use. But you tell 
 him to wait till the sun is up. He does so, and in its 
 clear shining he sees not only what he saw before, but 
 that the dial was intended to point out the hours of 
 the day. Well, friends, the word of God can no more 
 be understood in its spirit and purpose without the 
 Holy Ghost than the sun-dial can be understood with- 
 out the sun. 
 
 3. Another thing Christ says about the Spirit is that 
 he brings to remembrance, quickens the memory. 
 Many a man has gone on living in sin, grasping after 
 the things of this life, accumulating treasures that 
 rust and decay, so busy with his muck-rate that he 
 could not see the crown that hung above his head, 
 when suddenly some lesson of long ago, some nursery 
 song, some verse learned on his mother's knee, flashed 
 back through his soul and led him to consecrate 
 himself to God. Yes, many a man has been arrested 
 in his mad career by a memory stirred and quickened 
 by the Holy Ghost. Indeed, I think this re-awakening 
 of the recollection always takes place before a man turns 
 his face toward his Father's house. 
 
 Some of us need it. We need to have old vows, 
 trampled upon for years, brought back to remem- 
 brance. We need to have our memories aroused, to 
 
— 56 — 
 
 recall and re-impress certain solemn pledges which we 
 made away yonder in the past. We need to be re- 
 minded of the covenant we made with God, and of the 
 resolutions we formed to walk in the way of His com- 
 mandments. Aye, and some of us, when the road is 
 rough and the burden is heavy, and the clouds hang 
 dark above, need to be reminded of the sweet, tender, 
 inspiring words of Jesus assuring us of his sympathy, 
 his fellowship and his abiding presence. 
 
 4. But finally, the Holy Ghost, says Christ, gives 
 power. Standing on Mt. Olivet, with angel escorts 
 waiting to attend Him to the courts of glory, He said 
 to His disciples: "Ye shall receive power after that 
 the Holy Ghost is come upon you," and we all know 
 how that promise was fulfilled. He knew that with- 
 out this divine furnishing they would be laughed to 
 scorn. He knew that they would be as helpless to 
 break through crusted forms as a troop of children is 
 to beat down a frowning fortress of granite. What 
 could they do in themselves, without money, without 
 numbers, without social standing, to stem the tides of 
 Pharisaic hate and breast the storms of opposition that 
 swept over Judah's hill? 
 
 And so our Lord would not let them take a step 
 until touched and thrilled by the Holy Ghost. Hence 
 we find them in a receptive attitude, earnestly engaged 
 in prayer, turning the empty vessels toward the skies, 
 and in due time the Spirit came like a mighty rushing 
 wind, and then they were clothed with power, ready 
 to do battle, and go from victory to victory. 
 
— 57 — 
 
 0, for this power to-day. We need it, and we may 
 have it, for it was a permanent gift that was given to 
 the church at Pentecost. We need it to inspire our zeal, 
 to deepen our consecration, to increase our Christian 
 activities. We need it to lift us out of our indifference, 
 to awake us to a sense of our responsibility, to give us 
 the courage to do and dare, to serve and suffer for the 
 honor of our Lord. We need it in the pulpit, and in 
 the pew, and along every line of our work. 
 
 What we need in this church, and in every other 
 church of Christ, the wide land over, is to get back to 
 first principles, and seek for power where alone it can 
 be found. Jesus Christ tells us that He himself was 
 anointed for His great mission by the Holy Ghost. 
 Whenever Peter and the apostles are about to do any- 
 thing great we find the account prefaced by some such 
 words as these: "And being filled with the Holy 
 Ghost." So, in the Old Testament, we read of this 
 man and that man, "The Spirit of the Lord came 
 upon him," and, behold, he went forth to immortal 
 exploits. This is w^hat we need, and this we must 
 have, or we can do nothing. 
 
 In the olden time, when Rome was in the front, and 
 the tramp of her legions shook the world, if the fire went 
 out in the temple of Vesta they would not suffer it to 
 be lighted from another fire. It must be rekindled by 
 drawing a pure, unpolluted beam directly from the sun. 
 So our fire must come not from machinery, not from 
 organization, not from these things which appeal to 
 the eye of sense, but, if it comes at all, it must come from 
 
— 58 — 
 
 above. Aye, and come it will, as certainly as Christ is 
 true, if we prepare the fuel and turn our yearning hearts 
 to heaven. "The promise is unto you and your children, 
 and to all that are afar off." 
 
 We need it, brethren. Don't get impatient with me 
 if I dwell upon it with a good deal of reiteration. 
 There is your engine upon the track. What a piece 
 of workmanship ! Burnished and resplendent, flinging 
 back the sunbeams in a thousand arrows of light. But 
 there it stands — a magnificent machine — useless and 
 powerless. What is the matter? There is no steam 
 in the boiler. Only let that be attended to, and it 
 becomes a very Titan of power and fleeter than the 
 winds. And when we see a magnificently equipped 
 church standing still in the midst of the battle, bear- 
 ing aloft the banner that never yet and never shall go 
 down in defeat, but winning no trophies, gaining no 
 victories, making no inroads upon the enemy's coun- 
 try, need we ask. What is the matter? The answer is 
 plain — the element of power is wanting. The church 
 has not yet received the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Not long ago a great steamship ran upon a bar 
 coming into New York harbor. She was helpless. 
 Tugs were sent for, and tried to pull her ofl", but in 
 vain. Finally the captain said : " We shall have to 
 lighten her up and wait for the tide." And that's 
 what the church needs. She is aground. So heavily 
 is she freighted with the things of this world that she 
 has settled on the bar. Now and then strenuous efforts 
 are made to pull her off, by resorting to human devices 
 
— 59 — 
 
 and clever schemes, but the results are not reassuring. 
 The load is too heavy. Oh, that we, and all who love 
 her, might lighten her up by beginning at Jerusalem, 
 and, by prayer and supplication, wait for the tides of 
 the' Spirit's power. 
 
WHAT CHRIST TEACHES US TO BELIEVE 
 CONCERNING THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 " I lay down my life for the sheep. '^— John, 10:15. 
 
 THIS morning we are to consider what Christ 
 teaches us to believe concerning the Atonement. 
 The etymology of the word gives us the key to its 
 meaning, At-one-ment, that is the bringing together, 
 or the reconciliation of those w^ho have been at enmity. 
 Of course Christ's incarnation and life constitute a 
 part of the atoning plan, but as they look forward to 
 his death on the cross for their efficacy and consum- 
 mation, the atonement is usually understood to mean 
 his sacrifice on Calvary. His work was finished only 
 when by the grace of God he had " tasted death for 
 every man." Then only was the veil of the temple 
 rent in twain and the reconciliation complete. 
 
 By those who would rid the gospel of its distinctively 
 evangelical feature and leave it like a body without a 
 backbone, it is claimed that the atonement "is the in- 
 vention of the apostle Paul and of other philosophising 
 disciples." It is affirmed that the Saviour says noth- 
 
— 61 — 
 
 iiig, or next to nothing, about it; that instead of dwell- 
 ing upon these matters of theology, he tells men to 
 love their neighbors and to be truthful and pure and 
 honest. They remind us that there is no doctrine of 
 atonement in the Sermon on the Mount, or in the 
 parable of the prodigal. The boy gets sorry for what 
 he has done, resolves to do better, starts back home, 
 and is heartily welcomed without the offering of any 
 sacrifice to bring about reconciliation. 
 
 But I submit that it is manifestly unfair to say that 
 Christ did not teach such and such a doctrine because 
 he omitted it from one or two discourses. No minister 
 can be expected to bring out a w^hole system of theology 
 and touch upon all the fundamentals of Christianity 
 in one or two sermons. Nobody is absurd enough to 
 expect it. Why, th^n, should we look for anything so 
 unreasonable in every talk of the Son of God? 
 
 There was good reason why he did not mention the 
 atonement in the Sermon on the Mount. That w^as 
 delivered near the beginning of his ministry, and, like 
 a wise teacher, he would not lead his disciples into the 
 depths until he got them somewhat accustomed to the 
 shallow water along the shore. He kept that which 
 was more difficult until they were better prepared to 
 grapple with it. But that he did say a good deal about 
 the atonement, in a variety of connections, and with 
 very special and solemn emphasis I think you will see 
 before I am done. 
 
 First of all, then, the institution of the Lord's supper 
 shows us that in our Saviour's estimation the import- 
 
— 62 — 
 
 ance of the atonement is supreme. His history is full 
 of great and thrilling events, pre-eminently so, some 
 of them awaking the songs of angels and made 
 sublimely grand and impressive by voices and visitors 
 from heaven. Think of the glories that gather around 
 his advent and of the ineffable splendors of his trans- 
 figuration. Think of that immortal scene when, going 
 down into the Jordan, he is baptised by John, while 
 the Holy Spirit descends upon him like a dove, and 
 out of the sky there come the words, "This is my 
 beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Then fol- 
 lows his temptation, his crucial hour of trial, out of 
 which he comes a conqueror. But of none of these has 
 he left a memorial. No man knows the day of his 
 birth and he never asked his disciples to keep it in 
 perpetual remembrance. He made no request that 
 that great day when Moses and Elias came out of the 
 unseen glory to do him homage should be celebrated. 
 What could be grander than his resurrection when " he 
 burst the bars of death and triumphed o'er the grave." 
 But he left no memorial of that. To be sure tlie chris- 
 tian Sabbath is a memorial of his coming again from 
 the tomb but not by any specific command of his. And 
 what could be conceived of as more awe-inspiring than 
 his ascension when the clouds opened and received 
 him out of sight, but he left no memorial of that. It 
 seems to me it cannot fail to impress us as being pro- 
 foundly significant that the only event of which he 
 said, " Do this in remembrance of me," was his death. 
 On the eve of his crucifixion, with his sorrowing dis- 
 
ciples around him, he instituted the supper to be 
 sacredly observed from generation to generation for 
 the purpose of showing " the Lord's death till he 
 come." • But the very words with which it was estab- 
 lished, '-This is my body broken for you," "This cup 
 is the new testament in my blood which is shed for 
 many for the remission of sins," — these very words 
 gather about the atonement as the great central and 
 vital fact. They declare in words too plain to be mis- 
 taken that the thing above all others which he wants 
 to have remembered is his sacrificial death. They 
 show us that whatever else may be forgotten, he wants 
 the cross to stand out forever conspicuous and to be 
 kept forever fresh and green in the memory of man- 
 kind. 
 
 When anybody tells us, therefore, that Jesus made 
 little or nothing of the atonement, we point him to 
 the last supper and ask him what he has to say in the 
 face of the words, " Do this in remembrance of me? " 
 What stronger proof can we possibl^^ ask to convince 
 us that in his estimation the sacrifice on the cross is 
 the very substance of the gospel? In view of that 
 memorial and of all its profound and pathetic mean- 
 ing I am sure the church is right and in harmony 
 with her great Head when, with swelling heart, she 
 sings, 
 
 " Rock of ages, cleft for me, 
 Let me hide myself in thee." 
 
 The Lord Jesus teaches us to believe that the atone- 
 ment is vicarious. A vicarious sacrifice is one that is 
 
— 64 — 
 
 offered in the place of or as a substitute for another. 
 To illustrate : Here is a man who has been drafted. 
 He must enter the army and go forth to fight the bat- 
 tles of his country. But he has a wife and children^ 
 and to think of leaving them, perhaps forever, breaks 
 his heart. A friend of his, however, who has no ties 
 of home and family, comes forward and volunteers to 
 take his place. He is accepted, starts for the front, 
 and in a bloody engagement, while charging at the 
 head of his company, is cruelly slain by the bursting 
 of a shell. Thus his death is vicarious. He laid him- 
 self upon the altar of his country as a substitute for 
 his friend. The illustration is of course imperfect. 
 It does not begin to cover the case before us, for the 
 Saviour died as a substitute for those who were not his 
 friends, but it may serve to give us an idea of the 
 meaning of the word vicarious. It means that Jesus 
 Christ died in our room and stead, that he took 
 our place and bore our sins in his own body on 
 the tree. Or as the prophet Isaiah puts it, *'He 
 was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised 
 for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace 
 was upon him and with his stripes we are 
 healed." And this agrees exactly with the teaching 
 of Christ. He says in our text, " I lay down my life 
 for the sheep." The same thought is clearly expressed 
 in the words already quoted, "This is my body broken 
 for you." In language still more to the point if pos- 
 sible he says, "The Son of Man came not to be minis- 
 tered unto but to minister and to give his life a ransom 
 
— 65 — 
 
 for many." See how the idea of vicariousness stands 
 out there. A ransom is something "presented as an 
 equivalent to secure deliverance for those on whose 
 behalf it is paid." That is, it takes their place and is 
 accepted as a substitute for them. It may be money, 
 or property, or men, but whatever it is, it is received 
 in lieu of those who have been set at liberty. Hence 
 when the Saviour declares that he gave his life a 
 ransom for sinners, he plainly teaches the vicarious 
 nature of his atonement. 
 
 There are those who tell us that Jesus died simply as 
 a martyr, but no man can be a martyr who lays down 
 his life of his own accord. A martyr is one w^hose 
 sufferings are enforced; he has no power to resist, but 
 Jesus surrendered himself to death by his own choice. 
 Others tell us that he died to display the matchless 
 wealth and depth of his love. No doubt there is a 
 great deal of truth in that, but to put the emphasis 
 there is misleading and mischievious. Most perti- 
 nently has it been said that " no love is expressed by 
 a needless and useless sacrifice." If the suffering is 
 not necessary, if it is not endured to serve some high 
 and holy cause, it is folly, yea, it is more, it is sin. 
 " The lover who blows out his brains to show his devo- 
 tion earns no gratitude by that idiotic display." So 
 if Jesus Christ had died merely for effect, if he had 
 poured out his blood merely for the sake of producing 
 a profound impression, it would have no more practi- 
 cal, uplifting power over men than the performance of 
 the Passion Play upon the stage. It is the great central 
 
— 66 — 
 
 and blessed truth that he died for us that is drawing 
 men and saving them from their sins the wide-world 
 over to-day. His death was vicarious. His bosom 
 received the storm which but for him would have 
 beaten upon us. His back was bared to the smiters 
 that Ave might not suffer. The Rock was cleft not only 
 that it might not fall upon us but that we might find 
 shelter in its riven side. " The Lord hath laid on him 
 the iniquity of us all." 
 
 Against the doctrine of the vicarious atonement two 
 objections are often urged which it may be well to 
 notice in this connection. The first is as to the necessity 
 of suffering to procure the redemption of men. Why 
 must the cross be the way to life ? Why must peace 
 be purchased at the expense of pain? But for those 
 who stumble here it may diminish the difficulty some- 
 what to note how this fact fits into everything we 
 enjoy in the way of temporal blessing. I may safely 
 challenge you to point me to anything that blesses 
 your life to-day and contributes to your happiness, in 
 the way of social and domestic comfort, that has not 
 come to you by virtue of somebody's pain, or along the 
 road of suffering. In order that you may live in com- 
 fortable homes and attire yourselves in comfortable 
 clothing many a back is made to ache and many a 
 liand is blistered. To supply toothsome viands for 
 your tables many an innocent creature must bleed and 
 die. When you sit down around your well-laden 
 boards to-day think back to the source whence these 
 viands came and see if it be not so. Not only is it 
 
— 67 
 
 true that most of our blessings come to us along the 
 pathway of suffering, but the rule is that the higher the 
 blessing the more pain and sorrow it costs; and hence 
 it is certainly in keeping with this universal law that 
 redemption, infinitely the highest blessing of all, 
 should be procured by the keenest and most awful 
 suffering of all. 
 
 The second objection has to do w^ith the imputation 
 of the sins of the guilty to the innocent. I do not 
 pretend to be able to penetrate all its mysteries and 
 solve all its difficulties, but I would like you to 
 remember that the atonement of Christ is not by any 
 means an isolated case. Explain it as we may, there 
 is nothing more common than the fact that everywhere 
 in human life and society the innocent do suffer for 
 the guilty. The back of honest industry is loaded 
 down to support indolence and self-imposed poverty. 
 The law-abiding citizen is taxed and burdened because 
 of the sins of the vicious and criminal classes. People 
 who hate strong drink as they hate a serpent and 
 regard the saloon as the consummate curse of society 
 must nevertheless suffer for drunkenness. The hot 
 lava that pours from these craters of woe and death 
 burns and blisters the feet of thousands who never 
 cross the threshold of a dram sliop. Many an inno- 
 cent child inherits from an intemperate and dissolute 
 father a depraved appetite, an enfeebled constitution, 
 and an awful legacy of pain. His whole life is blighted 
 and blasted and withered by sins which he never 
 committed. 
 
— 68 — 
 
 Now these are hard facts and it will do us no good 
 to quarrel with them, for they meet us at every turn. 
 The reason for them in all its bearings is perhaps 
 beyond our ken, but the thing I want you to notice is 
 that they are right in line with the atonement. I 
 touch upon this simply to show you that this great 
 central truth of Christianity agrees in the main with 
 the facts of the divine government as we see them un- 
 folding in the world around us. You may say it is 
 wrong that the innocent should suffer for the guilty, 
 but before you settle down in that position let me ask 
 you this: Does a mother do any wrong when she 
 suffers for her erring boy? Is it unjust for her to 
 burden and break her heart with the sins of her own 
 child? Or ought she to be indifferent to them and 
 never allow them to cost her a pang? She would cer- 
 tainly be a most unnatural and cruel mother who 
 could do that. 
 
 When the children of a home turn out badly, when 
 they become transgressors of law and run off, like the 
 prodigal, into the far country of vice and iniquity, 
 who is it that suffers most? Is it not the heads of the 
 household? Does it not bring down their gray hairs 
 in sorrow to the grave? Does not the evil of their 
 children pierce them through with pain and anguish? 
 These questions we unanimously answer in the 
 affirmative. Well now, is not God the one great 
 Parent in this house of the universe? Why, then, 
 should it be counted a strange and unjust thing, that 
 he should suffer for his guilty children? In the case 
 
of earthly parents their sufferings cannot, of course, 
 save their children and atone for their transgressions, 
 but is not their pain the same in kind that God en- 
 dures in the room and stead of wandering sinners? 
 
 I am well aware that the vicarious sacrifice of 
 Jesus Christ has often been caricatured, and sometimes, 
 unwittingly, in the house of his friends. Not long ago 
 I received a pamphlet in which the writer repudiates 
 this glorious doctrine and tries to make it odious by 
 the following illustration. I give it to you in sub- 
 stance only, for it is too long to quote. Suppose, he 
 says, that when President Garfield lay dying he had 
 called his beloved son James to his side and addressed 
 him as follows: " My son, I am dying at the hand of 
 Guiteau, the chief of sinners. He had no excuse for 
 the dastardly deed, and the law justly demands his 
 death. But, my son, I love him, I forgive him. I 
 desire that he may live, but that cannot be without a 
 substitute. You must therefore take his place." The 
 son consents, a gallows is erected, and on it dies, not 
 the wretched assassin, but the faithful and loving son. 
 Now says this pamphleteer, " what would be thought 
 in heaven and earth of such a transaction as that? '^ 
 And this he calls a fair presentation of the docirine in 
 question. 
 
 But it would be difficult to conceive of a more 
 hideous and monstrous perversion of the truth. God 
 and his Son are not two but one. The sacrifice on 
 Calvary was the act of the undivided Diety. When 
 the Eternal Fatlier provided an atonement for sin- 
 
— To- 
 ners he did not reach out and lay the penalty of 
 tlieir sins uj^on any second party. He found the 
 ransom price in his own bosom. He took the sacrifice 
 out of his own heart. He and the Son are one, and the 
 Son is God's self brought down to the level of human 
 comprehension. " My Father which dwelleth in me, 
 he doeth the works." ''God was in Christ reconciling 
 the world to himself," and Christ was God, and who 
 will say that it was unjust for God to suffer that we 
 might live? This of course involves the mystery of 
 the Trinity, but we are not going to get rid of 
 mystery. It seems strange that men and women who 
 cannot account for the beating of their own hearts 
 should insist upon it. Seize upon this truth, there- 
 fore, and hold it for evermore, viz. : that, " in the 
 Cross we find the Eternal God taking to himself the 
 consequences of human sin ; himself becoming the 
 propitiation for the sin of the world ; bearing it 
 himself; pressed under it as a cart is pressed under 
 sheaves ; and putting it away." 
 
 Surely it is impossible to see anything wrong in this. 
 We are told that in Bronson Alcott's school, if 
 any of the boys broke the rules and became transgres- 
 sors, instead of inflicting the penalty upon them, the 
 celebrated teacher bore it himself. If that is unjust, 
 if it is a violation of right and equity, for one person 
 to volunteer to suff'er as a substitute for another, then 
 must we expunge from history's page its noblest deeds. 
 
 There are difficulties. I do not seek to disguise that 
 fact, but instead of troubling ourselves with these, the 
 
blessed truth itself ought to draw every one of us to 
 the Crucified to-day. Every burden he carried, every 
 battle he fought, every blow he received, every pang 
 he felt, every woe he suffered, was for us, for us. 
 Surely it ought to warm our hearts and fill our sky 
 with light, as Christian men and women, to have 
 this great theme brought to our attention afresh. It 
 should inspire our hope and strengthen our faith every 
 time the story is rehearsed. Since he has met all the 
 demands of his righteous law as my vicar, my substi- 
 tute; since he has by his own blood maintained the 
 stability of his throne; since his infinite merit has 
 been stretched around my demerit, and the mighty 
 tide of his sacrifice has gone clean over my sin, what 
 have I to fear? I am sure, dear friends, if we did but 
 grasp this idea of the vicarious atonement of Jesus 
 Christ in something of its fullness our trust would be 
 sweeter and firmer, and we would have more steadi- 
 ness in the storm. 
 
 Not only, however, does Christ teach us that the 
 atonement is vicarious, but that it is oivr only hope, our 
 only ground of forgiveness. We have often heard that 
 before, and we thought perhaps it was some priestly 
 formula, some dogmatic statement of narrow theolo- 
 gians. But I want to remind you that wherever we 
 heard it, it was the truth as taught and reiterated 
 again and again by the Son of God. One night he had 
 a memorable talk with a learned Eabbi, Nicodemus 
 by name, in the course of which he said : ^'As Mose& 
 lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must 
 
— 72 — 
 
 the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth 
 in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." 
 Nicodemus was intelligent enough to see the point and 
 force of that illustration, and so is the very least 
 among us. 
 
 Not an Israelite in all the camp could be saved 
 from the deadly poison of the serpent's bite who did 
 not look upon the brazen image lifted up in the midst 
 of the people. Look elsewhere and he must die. 
 There was no help for him. So, in this passage, Jesus 
 affirms that he must be lifted up — that is, crucified — 
 and that only those who turn to him, believing, shall 
 be saved. He teaches that the poison of sin is coun- 
 teracted and destroyed by the look of faith. If that 
 is not the meaning of his words to Nicodemus, what 
 do they mean? 
 
 Thank God, he does not require strong, heroic, 
 mighty faith. No doubt that is greatly to be desired, 
 but it is not essential. A man can look, though his 
 sight be dim, he can look, if he has only one eye, and 
 that almost gone; yea, he can look if he is blind. He 
 can look with the mind. He can turn his attention 
 in the direction indicated, and that is all that is nec- 
 essary. What Jesus wants us to do, what he sol- 
 emnly declares we must do, or perish, is to trust in 
 him alone as our atonement, and he who does that 
 shall be saved, though his faith be as a grain of mus- 
 tard seed, for the salvation is not in the faith, but in 
 faith's object. 
 
 Another striking statement, made at the very close 
 
— 73 — 
 
 of his ministr}^ is all I shall have time to trouble you 
 with. To the two disciples on the way to Emmaus he 
 said: " Tims it is written and thus it behooved Christ 
 to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day, and 
 that repentance and remission of sins should be 
 preached in his name among all nations, beginning at 
 Jerusalem." Here, you observe, he makes his suffer- 
 ings, his atonement, the ground upon which sin is 
 forgiven. It is that sacrifice that enables him 
 to be just and the justiiier of the ungodly. It 
 is that sacrifice that enables him to vindicate 
 his own holiness, while, at the same time he takes 
 the sinner to his heart. But remember that sac- 
 rifice will avail only for those who avail themselves 
 of it. The atonement has been made for all the race, 
 but it never was intended to save the man who will 
 not accept it. God, in his infinite love and compas- 
 sion, provides it, but the sinner must appropriate it, or 
 it is nothing to him. 
 
 There are many of you here this morning who have 
 taken shelter behind the Cross, and have been 
 sprinkled with tKe blood of that great sacrifice. I con- 
 gratulate you upon your deliverance. You have made 
 your calling and election sure by your choice of him 
 that was slain. By the grace of God, which bringeth 
 salvation, your sins have been buried forever under 
 the atonement of Jesus Christ. You are the ransomed 
 of the Lord, and are on your way to glory. I bid 
 you, all hail. The winds may be contrary, storms 
 may beat upon you, temptations may throw them- 
 
— 74 — 
 
 selves across your path and seek to turn you back, but 
 he of the pierced hands and feet will see you through. 
 Your frail craft may pitch and toss about and threaten 
 to go down, but with Christ in the vessel you will 
 reach the shore. I congratul'ate you, and bid you be 
 of good cheer. " His love is a stream that never 
 freezes, a fountain that never fails, a sun that never 
 sets in night, a shield that never breaks in fight; whom 
 he loveth he loveth to the end." Fear not, none shall 
 ever pluck you from God's hand.- It were easier to 
 pluck a star from the brow of heaven. Only see to it 
 that you adorn the doctrine of the hour by a, godly 
 walk and conversation. 
 
 But there are some among you whose faces are the 
 other way. The Good Shepherd is after you. He has 
 traveled far and suffered much to bring you back. He 
 has left his footprints on the jagged mountains, and 
 his blood on the wayside thorns, "as he went to the 
 desert to find his sheep." He has laid down his life 
 to win you, to bring you where you might pillow your 
 weary head close to his beating heart, and can you^ 
 will you, turn away indifferent still? I leave the 
 question with you, only pausing long enough to say 
 that as is your answer so will be your eternity, with 
 Christ or without Christ, inside of that great temple 
 of which he is the Light, or outside. 
 
WHAT CHRIST TEACHES US TO BELIEVE 
 ABOUT THE BIBLE. 
 
 " Making the word of God of none effect, through your tradi- 
 tion, which ye have delivered."— il/arfc 7: IS. 
 
 "And he said unto them, these are the words which I spoke 
 unto you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in 
 the Law of Moses, and in the prophets concerning me." — Luke 
 
 " Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; 
 I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, 
 till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass 
 from the law, till all be fulfilled."— il/a«. 5: 17, 18. 
 
 THE battle for the truth never ceases to rage. Eor 
 those who are in earnest there is no discharge in 
 that war. The contestants are always in the field and 
 the fight is always on. They change their tactics and 
 shift their positions from time to time, but there is no 
 surcease of conflict. A few years ago the tides of bat- 
 tle surged about the Christ. The best scholarship and 
 the keenest criticism of the century were enlisted, and 
 when the atmosphere cleared, as the struggle subsided, 
 there he stood, as always, mighty to save, the wonder- 
 ful, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. 
 
— 76 — 
 
 To-day the Bible is tlie centre around which the 
 contest gathers. The rattle of intellectual artillery is 
 heard all along the line, and splendid flashes of 
 rhetorical fireworks disturb the sky. Even our secu- 
 lar papers have taken si.des, and, as usual, have de- 
 cided the matter with characteristic dispatch. It 
 would be amusing, perhaps, if it were not so absurd, 
 to see with what an infallible air they dispose of the 
 most serious problems that can engage the thought of 
 man. In this case, as might have been expected, their 
 conclusions are in favor of the critics, who, in dealing 
 with the Bible, use the penknife of Jehudi. As to 
 the issue of the battle we have no doubt whatever. 
 The Book will stand in its integrity. It is an anvil that 
 has worn out a great many hammers. It will come out 
 of this, as it has come out of every previous fire of 
 conflict, unscathed and entire, not weakened, but 
 strengthened and glorified by the ordeal. In the 
 meanwhile it will serve to plant our feet more squarely 
 on the Rock, and give firmer fibre to our faith to turn 
 from men and warring schools to see what Jesus Christ 
 teaches us to believe about the Book. 
 
 Before proceeding to this, however, it may be well 
 to ask whether Christ is a competent judge in this 
 case? Is he by grasp of mind, by spiritual insight, by 
 purity of life, and poise of character qualified to sit in 
 judgment upon the Book which we regard as Holy 
 Writ? To ask the question is to answer it. The mar- 
 velous reach of his intellect is everywhere seen in his 
 words and sayings. His mind penetrated at once to 
 
tlie very heart of things and seized upon ultimate 
 principles. To be impressed with the unapproachable 
 quality of his mental calibre it is only necessary to 
 study his answers to certain questions that were put 
 to him. These answers were, in every case, extempo- 
 raneous, unpremeditated, but they were so complete, 
 so crushing, so profound, and yet so plain and pointed, 
 that they effectually silenced his enemies, and those 
 enemies were among the keenest and most able men 
 of their day. For three years they exercised all their 
 ingenuity to entangle him; they brought forward 
 every difficulty they could think of in the Scriptures^ 
 but his replies were so clear, so convincing, so severe 
 upon themselves, that it is said "They durst not any 
 more ask him any questions." 
 
 No matter how high, no matter how deep, the ethi- 
 cal problem, Jesus was at home in it. He dealt with 
 it like one who saw it in all its bearings, near and re- 
 mote. He had read the Scriptures, and read human 
 life, and penetrated both to the very core. His 
 power of condensation was superhuman. He could 
 crowd a whole world of truth into a little sentence of 
 a few simple words. Now all this means transcendent, 
 intellectual force. 
 
 As to his spiritual insight I need not trouble you to 
 speak a word. Every reader of the Gospels knows how 
 he saw into the very depths. When he turned to the 
 law and the prophets he saw not the letter, not books 
 and chapters, but the spiritual truth behind. So. in 
 reading human life. He saw at once the motive, the 
 
i 
 
 spirit by which men were actuated, and not that which 
 was external and mechanical. 
 
 And where else will you find such moral integrity? 
 His life has been scrutinized for nineteen centuries by 
 friends and foes alike, and not a flaw has ever yet been 
 detected. " Which of you convinceth me of sin?," his 
 own challenge to the Scribes and Pharisees, has never 
 yet been answered. Out of all the fires of criticism, 
 out of the crucible of ages of intense investigation, 
 that life has come, unsullied as a sunbeam, pure as the 
 great White Throne. To all this add the fact of his 
 perfect poise of character, his evenness of temper in . 
 every storm that beat about him, his calmness and^ 
 patience under abuse, the absolute impartiality of his 
 judgment, and I think 3'ou will agree with me that 
 he is abundantly qualified to teach us concerning the 
 Bible. We are prepared, therefore, to sit at his feet 
 to learn what he has to say about the Book. 
 
 At the outset, then, he teaches us to believe that the 
 Bible is the Word of God. He so characterizes the en- 
 tire Old Testament. He sharply rebukes. the Scribes 
 and Pharisees for making the Word of God of none 
 effect through their traditions, and by that Word is 
 clearly meant the Holy Scriptures, so far as they were 
 then written. He never questioned the sacred oracles, 
 as he had learned them in the home of Joseph and 
 Mary. He lived in them. He taught them. He 
 bowed before their divine authority. He confounded 
 the Pharisees and silenced the Saducees by quoting 
 from Moses, and, in John 10:35, making the Word of 
 
79 — 
 
 God synonymous with Scripture, he solemnly declares 
 that the Scripture cannot he broken. It is the fash- 
 ion now-a-days, in certain quarters, to rule out some of 
 the alleged writings of Moses, which comprise the first 
 live books of the Bible as not being part of the inspired 
 record, but Jesus quotes from every one of them, and 
 always as the Word of God. So, also, he quotes from 
 Samuel, from Kings, from Chronicles, from the Psalms, 
 from the Prophets, and puts them in the same cate- 
 gory as belonging to the Word of God. Now, Jesus 
 liad studied these writings profoundly in his Nazareth 
 home. He had brought to bear upon them all of his 
 peerless powers, and mastered them, as his facility in 
 quotation shows. Hence, he must have known 
 whether they were true or false, and, especially, since 
 he was the Son of God. But if they are false, if they 
 are not the Word of God, could he have given them 
 his unqualified endorsement, consistently with his pure 
 and holy life? Would a person of such exalted char- 
 acter have resorted to the poor trick of quoting from 
 spurious scriptures to fortify his own claims? Would 
 he, who calls himself the Truth, and who has a right 
 to that pre-eminence, have put his imprimatur upon 
 documents which were counterfeit? To me, at least, 
 such a thing seems not only incredible, but absurd, 
 and I leave the critics to wrestle with it, while I stand 
 with Jesus Christ. What he quotes as the Word of 
 God I believe that you and I are warranted in fear- 
 lessly quoting as the Word of God, also. 
 
 He does not teach any particular theory of inspira- 
 
— 80 — 
 
 tion. He does not tell us how these writings of Moses 
 and the prophets were inspired, whether b}^ dictation 
 or illumination, or a certain superintendency which 
 saved the authors from error, or whether the gold was 
 supplied by the Holy Spirit, and the molds by man. 
 AH such nice questions as these were left to human 
 wisdom. He simply tells us that these Scriptures are 
 the Word of God, and his teaching ought to have its 
 proper w^eight. He claims divine inspiration for his 
 own words. Thus: "The word which ye hear is not 
 mine, but the Father's, who sent me." And in like 
 manner he teaches us the inspiration of the Apostles. 
 He promises them the Spirit who, he declares, will 
 "guide them into all truth," and "bring all things to 
 their remembrance." Hence he teaches us to believe 
 that both the Old and New Testaments are the Word 
 of God. 
 
 Passing from this, let me ask you to notice in the 
 next place that he makes Jiimself the centre upon which 
 all lines of Holy Writ converge. In John 5:39, he says of 
 the Scriptures: " These are they which testify of me.'' 
 And in the 46th verse of the same chapter he speaks 
 as follows: " For if ye believed Moses ye would be- 
 lieve me, for he lurote of me." Again, in the 24th of 
 Luke, beginning at the 44tli verse, he says to his 
 Apostles: "These are the words which I spoke unto 
 you, while I was yet with you, that all things must 
 be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and 
 in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. 
 Then opened he their understanding that they might 
 
— 81 — 
 
 understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus 
 it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and 
 to rise from the dead the third day, and that repent- 
 ance and remission of sins should be preached in his 
 name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." 
 This is certainly remarkable language. Remember 
 that it comes from the lips of the Son of God. He 
 calmly and deliberately puts himself forward as con- 
 stituting the ver}^ sum and substance of law and 
 prophec}^ and psalm. In terms too plain to be mis- 
 understood lie affirms that the Scriptures bear " one 
 common, supreme testimony, not to a shadowy hope, 
 not to a mere human postulate of faith, but to a Per- 
 son, the Saviour, w4io should live and die and rise 
 again for the salvation of man," and that Saviour is 
 himself 
 
 Thus the Word of God is a wondrous house of many 
 mansions, of which Christ is the key. Without him 
 its treasures are locked up, they are hidden, and no 
 human ingenuity can steal its way into their untold 
 wealth. With him every door in its sixty-six apart- 
 ments can be opened and their precious contents 
 brought to light. Apart from Him the Bible is a 
 sealed book. Its types, its symbols, its sacrifices, its 
 prophecies, and many of its historic allusions are in- 
 comprehensible. They are like the hieroglyphics on 
 some ancient obelisk. They evidently mean some- 
 thing, but, without the key, nobody can tell what. So, 
 without Christ, the Word of God is beyond our ken. 
 We have types with no answering antitype. Shad- 
 
— 82 — 
 
 ows pointing to no explanatory light, hints of a Com- 
 ing One that only mock and baffle the searcher after 
 truth, prophecies that never issue in fulfillment. 
 Many a devout student lias found that he could make 
 nothing out of these Scriptures until he began their 
 interpretation .from Christ as the centre. As soon as 
 he did that he was amazed and delighted to see how 
 the Book yielded up its secrets and how^ the light fell 
 upon its dark places. It used to be said in olden 
 times that every road led to Rome; and it is true now, 
 and always, that every pathway in Holy Writ, 
 wdiether marked out by Moses or the Prophets, finds 
 its centre and terminus in Jesus Christ. So he taught 
 himself, and the lesson cannot be too thoroughly 
 written upon our hearts. The scientific student who 
 should undertake to interpret the Mississippi Valley 
 with tlie Father of Waters left out, w^ould have a task 
 no more difficult, to say the least, than would the 
 student who should try to understand the Bible witli 
 the Lord Jesus left out. He is as essential to a correct 
 knowledge of the drift and purpose of the Bible as 
 Hamlet is to a correct conception of the great tragedy 
 that bears his name. 
 
 Moreover, by Jtis own example, he teaches us to rest 
 calmly and confidently on the written and indestructi- 
 ble Word of Cfod. His own attitude toward this book 
 shows more forcibly than any words could, the esti- 
 mate he puts upon it. His utterances standing alone, 
 unsupported by his example, would liave little or no 
 weight; not enough, certainly, to be convincing, i^ut 
 
— 83 — 
 
 he practiced what he preached. If He taught others 
 to confide in the Book [he did so himself most im- 
 plicitly. If lie spoke of the Book with the utmost 
 assurance, he trusted it with the utmost assurance. 
 Here, as everywhere, there is no disparity between his 
 sayings and doings. 
 
 In the Wilderness, when the Tempter came and ex- 
 ercised all his ingenuity to poison his mind with 
 doubt; when he came with his mouth filled with ifs, 
 did Jesus stop to parley? Did he argue? Did he 
 take refuge in his wit or his genius? Not for a mo- 
 ment. But he said, " It is written." He said it three 
 several times, and each time with keener accent. He 
 met the enemy with no untempered blade, but with 
 the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. 
 To beat him, and scathe him, and hurl him back, he 
 laid hold of this battery of heaven and plucked the 
 lightning from the skies. There was no questioning 
 the justice of the fearful struggle. His energies were 
 not allowed to evaporate in vague wondering as to 
 why it was thus and so. He simply threw himself 
 back upon the Word, and there he rested in calm 
 acquiescence with the will of his Father. 
 
 Again, when a certain lawyer came inquiring what 
 he* should do to inherit eternal life, Jesus did not de- 
 pend upon his own skill and cleverness for an answer. 
 He referred him to the Word, and said, " How read- 
 est thou ?" The lawyer quoted the well-known pas- 
 sage about love to God and love to man, and Jesus 
 i^aid, "Thou hast answered right; this do and thou 
 
— 84 — 
 
 shalt live." Scripture was to him the answer to all 
 questions; the solution of all problems bearing upon 
 man's relation to his neighbor and his God. 
 
 In the most solemn hours of his life, in his conflicts, 
 his trials, his sufferings, the Written Word was ever 
 on his lips. He said repeatedly that things turned 
 out so and so in order that the Scriptures might be 
 fulfilled. And when the final storm gathered about 
 him and culminated on the Cross, he rested his soul 
 on that Word, " amid the cyclone of death," and the 
 last sayings he uttered, as he hung upon the tree, were 
 quotations from the Psalms. If, therefore, the testi- 
 mony of Jesus, embodied both in speech and example, 
 i^ to be relied upon, the Scriptures are the Word of 
 God. If we believe Him we must believe them. This 
 assertion will bear investigation, and I commend it to 
 your most careful and candid consideration. 
 
 Not only, however, does He assure us that the 
 Scriptures are the Word of God, and that He is their 
 central theme, but that they are to stand. In his Ser- 
 mon on the Mount he says, ** Think not that I am 
 come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not 
 come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto 
 you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle 
 shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.'^ 
 With still warmer emi)hasis, if possible, he declares in 
 Luke 16:17: "It is easier for heaven and earth to 
 pass than one tittle of the, law to fail." He was not 
 afraid that the Book would become obsolete and per- 
 ish. He was not afraid that the world would out- 
 
— 85 — 
 
 grow it, and the wisdom of man supersede it. He 
 took it up reverently and, looking at it, he said, 
 " This Book is to abide. Think not that it will ever 
 vanish away and be forgotten," and his faith in its 
 staying qualities ought to strengthen ours. 
 
 When the Emperor of Rome was being ferried 
 across a certain stormy, water the boatman became 
 pale with fright. He thought they were going to be 
 swallowed up by the wave, but the Emperor inspired 
 him with courage by saying : " Fear not, you carry 
 Ca)sar." 80, though the storms may rage around it 
 and threaten to engulf, this boat of Holy Writ will 
 ride the billow and outlive the tempest, for it carries 
 the Son of God, whose hand is on the storm. 
 
 Out from the Cape of Good Hope there runs into 
 the sea a dangerous bar some forty or fifty miles in 
 length. The water, we are told, sweeps around it with 
 a treniendous swell, making navigation extremely per- 
 ilous at certain seasons of the year. Around this cape 
 an East Indiaman, called the Lady HoUahd, was 
 fighting her way in the year 1830, bound for Hindoo- 
 stan. For days and days clouds filled the sky. Again 
 and again the vessel was beaten out of her course. 
 Soundings were taken, and the Captain found that 
 the ship was over the bar. Realizing the peril of her 
 position, he was just about to give orders to turn 
 about. , But it was too late. With an awful crash she 
 struck. Her back was broken, and her forepart sank 
 in the wild breakers. As Providence would have it, 
 however, all on board escaped to a little patch of land 
 
— 86 — 
 
 amid the rocks. Among them was a young man 
 from Scotland by the name of Alexander Duff. He 
 was going out as a missionary to India. While the 
 shipwrecked passengers were huddled together for 
 shelter in a wretched little hovel, a sailor, walking 
 along the beach, found a Bible cast up high and dry. 
 He opened it, and found Alexander Duff's name dis- 
 tinctly written in it. Out of a library of 800 volumes 
 which he was taking to India it was the only one 
 saved. AVhat is still more singular, it had been 
 packed with the other books, but had been carefully 
 wrapped in chamois skin, and was not even injured. 
 He took the book, and to the drenched and shivering 
 passengers read the 107th Psalm. * 
 
 The incident made a profound and lasting impres- 
 sion on the young man's mind. He took it as the 
 voice of Providence declaring that the Bible is the 
 ♦Supreme Book for India and for mankind. But the 
 significant part of the story for us is the striking illus- 
 tration it gives us of the history of the Bible, the expe- 
 riences through which it has come, the storms which 
 it has outlived. To wreck it, to destroy it, has been 
 impossible. Men like Cfibbon and Hume, and Vol- 
 taire, and Paine, and Ingersoll, have turned all the 
 artillery [of their wit, their satire, their ridicule and 
 their eloquence upon it, but still it stands, as Jesus 
 .said. To refute it, to prove it unreliable, travelers 
 liave searched the ruins of ancient cities, like Volney, 
 and mighty scholars have ransacked history and sci- 
 
 ***The Inspired Word," page 11. 
 
— 87 — 
 
 ence, but still it stands. To undermine it and gain- 
 say its claims, geologists have digged into the bowels 
 of the earth, and astronomers have delved among the 
 stars, but still it stands. About fifty years ago the 
 higher critics began their attacks. They assaulted it 
 here and assaulted there, now in the Old Testament 
 and now in the New, and their assaults have been 
 kept up and multiplied from year to year, but still it 
 stands. The half century in which it has sustained 
 the most determined and skillful assaults has been 
 precisely the half century of its greatest triumphs. 
 
 KSince John wrote on lonely Patmos, and Paul wrote 
 in his " own hired house " in Rome, the whole face of 
 the world has been changed, turned upside down, em- 
 pires have fallen and empires have risen, science and 
 philosophy have changed front again and again, and 
 hoary systems have dropped from behind the curtains 
 of the past, but the Bible stands. Xot one jot or tittle 
 of God's Word has passed away. Jesus said it would 
 abide, and he knew what he was talking about. What 
 he says is worth believing. Celsus was famous once,. 
 Voltaire was famous once, Bolingbroke was famous 
 once. AVhen they opened their mouths it was as 
 though Sir Oracle had spoken. But where are their 
 books to-day? They are either long ago out of print, 
 or feeding the moth on dusty shelves, or forming 
 buttresses from w^hich the deft spider suspends his 
 web, but the Bible stands, and was never so widely 
 known, or so deeply loved, or so devoutly studied, or 
 so mighty in power, as in this year of grace, 1891. 
 
— 88 — 
 
 Many of the interpretations put upon it by schools 
 and commentators are passing away, but we need not 
 weep over that. Who cares for the scaffolding so long 
 as the building remains? Let it go, if its work is 
 done. The building will look better and be better 
 without it. Interpretations are not sacred. Interpre- 
 tations are not inspired. The scaffolding is useful, 
 but it does not belong to the architect's plan. Interpre- 
 tations are going. They have gone in the past, and 
 they will go in the future, but what of that, so long as 
 the Book interpreted abides? When the rain comes 
 and the water pours in torrents along the streets, you 
 are not afraid that your houses are going to be washed 
 away. The filth will go, the rubbish will go, all un- 
 necessary accumulations will go, but you are glad of 
 that, for it will leave things cleaner and more whole- 
 some. So these showers of investigation, and these 
 torrents of criticism that are falling upon the Book 
 will, no doubt, sweep away some old interpretations 
 which we have loved and to which we have clung, but 
 they will leave, not a mutilated Bible, not a fragment- 
 ary Bible, but the' complete Bible, as we now have it, 
 more perfectly understood and more highly prized 
 than ever. 
 
 We need have no fears for the Book, fellow-men. It 
 will stand, for Jesus said so. It can never die, for He, 
 its heart, its life, is immortal. It will be opposed, it 
 will be attacked with growing fierceness as its victo- 
 ries multiply, but, like the birds which beat them- 
 selves to death against the glass globes that surround 
 
the electric lights of the city, those who assault it will 
 be flung back defeated, baffled, while it shines on 
 with brightening ray as the night of time wears 
 toward eternal dawn. 
 
JESUS CHRIST— MYTH, OR MAN, OR GOD? 
 
 ••In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
 God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning 
 with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was 
 not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life 
 was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the 
 darkness comprehended it noV^— John, 1:1-5. 
 
 AS we approach the Christmas-tide, when the 
 humanity of our Lord will be emphasized, it is 
 fitting that we should fortify our faith in the divine 
 side of His nature. We need to be very sure of His 
 divinity, for our own sakes, and, as we live in a com- 
 munity where His divinity is frequently challenged, 
 we ought to be so thoroughly grounded in this doc- 
 trine as to be able to defend it against all gainsayers 
 for the sake of our Christianity. With these thoughts 
 in mind, therefore, I am to speak to you this morning 
 on the deity of Jesus. I shall endeavor to prove, botli 
 by reason and Scripture, that He is one with the 
 Father, "very God of very God." 
 
 No thoughtful mind can pass lightly over the words 
 of our text. They arrest the attention at once. There 
 is in them the boom of infinity. These are not the 
 waves of any interior lake that we hear splashing 
 
— 91 — 
 
 upon the shore, but the solemn thunder of the bound- 
 less sea. For fullness of meaning, for clearness of state- 
 ment, and for simple majesty of expression, the passage 
 is without a parallel. Francis Junius, the distinguished 
 scholar, who owed to this passage his spiritual enlight- 
 enment, was profoundly impressed with " the authority 
 of the composition," and characterized it as " infinitely 
 surpassing the highest flights of human eloquence." 
 How came a plain, unlettered fisherman to write in 
 this fashion ? 
 
 When a biographer sits down to write a book he 
 usually goes into the ancestry of his subject. He con- 
 siders it important to know something of his pedigree. 
 Accordingly, we And Matthew tracing the descent of 
 our Lord back to Abraham. Luke is still more thor- 
 ough, and traces it from Adam ; but John pushes back 
 into the very home of Eternity, and says : " In the 
 beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God^ 
 and the Word was God." You understand, of course, 
 that he is speaking of Jesus of Nazareth, whose char- 
 acter is simply and fully set before us in the gospels. 
 About this unique and wonderful character innumer- 
 able books have been written. It is admitted by all 
 that it stands alone. It has challenged the admira- 
 tion of the world. The shafts of criticism have fallen 
 about it as impotently as arrows drop to the ground 
 when shot against a ledge of frowning granite. The 
 Person to whom this unrivalled character belongs has 
 been and is to-day accounted for in three ways, whose 
 comparative merits you are now asked to examine with 
 me and carefully weigh. 
 
— 92 — 
 
 I. First, there are those who tell us that Jesus Christ 
 is an invention, a creation of the imagination. This 
 view of the casew^as revived and advocated with great 
 ability some forty or fifty years ago, by David Strauss 
 of Germany, and still has its champions. There have 
 been mythical characters — such, for example, as Wil- 
 liam Tell — which for centuries have been accepted as 
 historical. But it is to be noticed that all such char- 
 acters fall infinitely below that of Jesus. They are 
 imperfect; His is conceded to be perfect. 
 
 In literature, we find that men have attempted, in 
 two w^ays, to draw a perfect character, viz., from life 
 and from the imagination, real characters and ficti- 
 tious characters; but both have failed. In the former 
 case, because there have been no perfect characters to 
 describe; and, in the second case, because an imper- 
 fect imagination is not able to conceive an absolutely 
 blameless manhood. Take Shakespeare, and, with all 
 his matchless genius, has he invented one perfect char- 
 acter? Run through all the masterpieces of fiction 
 and see if you can find a solitary life delineated that 
 will bear the closest inspection on every side. You 
 are sure to detect a weak spot somewhere. Take the 
 most complete model that fiction has ever given to the 
 world, compare it with the model portrayed in these 
 gospels, and see how it darkens, like a candle held up 
 before the sun. 
 
 Now look for a moment at this Jesus as He is de- 
 scribed in the gospel narrative. He is a Jew, " a 
 member of the most exclusive race that ever lived," 
 
— 93 — 
 
 yet He is set before us, and that, too, by Jewish writers, 
 us no respecter of persons. His love is as broad as 
 humanity. He is of the seed-royal, yet the friend 
 and companion of the poor. He is original, but never 
 eccentric; holy, but never sanctimonious; serious, but 
 nev^er sour; stern, but never severe; tender, but never 
 weak. Enamelled hypocrisy He denounces in terms 
 that wither and burn like a fire, but to the poor out- 
 cast, the w^anderer, the prodigal. He speaks in w^ords 
 as sw^eet as heaven. Though born in a manger and 
 schooled in a carpenter's shop, when He opens His 
 mouth men listen, spell-bound, and the ages listen. 
 While He mingles with men, and sits at their tables, 
 and enters into their experiences, yet He seems to 
 walk among the stars. He prays as naturally as He 
 breathes, and talks of God as familiarly as man speaks 
 of his nearest neighbor. As pure as a lily, He is, 
 nevertheless, tempted to sin as no mortal was ever 
 tempted. He provides bread for the multitudes with 
 the utmost ease, yet appeases His own hunger by eat- 
 ing raw corn in the field. Able to bring money from 
 the mouth of a fish to pay the custom dues of Himself 
 and His friend Peter, He is, nevertheless, so poor that 
 He has not where to lay His head. He raises the 
 dead, yet dies Himself by the hand of Pharisaic hate. 
 " He saved others; Himself He could not save," such, 
 very briefi}^- sketched, is the character w^hich the gos- 
 pel writers give us; and no one, so far as I know, has 
 ever yet claimed that they were geniuses. They wxre 
 not even men of learning. Luke was the most schol- 
 
— 94 — 
 
 arly among them, but the style of Greek he uses shows 
 that he was not a highly educated man. 
 
 The question then is pertinent: Did these men in- 
 vent the character of Jesus Christ? Virgil, w^ho lived 
 and wrote just a short time before their day, is con- 
 ceded to have been a great genius. His hero was the 
 pious ^neas, but who would dare to set up the Roman 
 poet's conception against Jesus of Nazareth, whom 
 fishermen and publicans delineate. If it required a 
 genius to invent ^-Eneas, could common men invent a 
 Christ? It is no easy matter to create a great and 
 original character. If you think it is, let the most 
 clever among you try it, and my w^ord for it, you will 
 soon change your mind. Virgil is not original. He 
 borrows from Homer, and Dante borrows from Virgil, 
 and Milton from Dante, and even Shakespeare, w^e are 
 told, " borrowed his plots, incidents and characters 
 without scruple." But from whom did the writers of 
 the gospels borrow? What character could have 
 given them a clew to such a life as that of Christ? 
 
 If they invented Christ, if He is a fabrication, then 
 see what follows. Men without genius, without any 
 special learning, have imagined a character immeas- 
 urably superior in every particular to the loftiest cre- 
 ations of the most gifted writers of all the ages. In 
 the field in which the Shakespeares, tlie Goethes and 
 the Scotts have won their renown, they are infinitely 
 surpassed by four humble and unlearned men. Are 
 we not then inevitably driven to the conclusion so well 
 expressed by Theodore Parker, the distinguished Uni- 
 
— 95 — 
 
 tarian: " Shall we be told," says he, " that such a man 
 never lived — that the whole stor}^ is a lie? Suppose 
 that Plato and Newton had never lived. But who did 
 their wonders and thought their thoughts? It takes 
 a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have 
 fabricated Jesus? None but Jesus." This, then, is 
 the point to w^hich we are driven by calm, unbiased 
 reason, viz., that these gospel writers w^ere not in- 
 ventors, but reporters. The Jesus whom they set 
 before us was not imagined, but drawn from the life. 
 "My friend," says Rousseau, the infidel, " men do not 
 invent like this; and the facts respecting Socrates, 
 which no one doubts, are not so well attested as those 
 about Jesus Christ. These Jews could never have 
 struck this tone, or thought of this morality, and the 
 gospel has characteristics of truthfulness so grand, so 
 striking, so perfectly inimitable, that their inventors 
 would be even more wonderful than He whom they 
 portray." The theory, then, that Jesus is a fiction 
 must be abandoned. It does not explain. The key 
 does not fit the lock. 
 
 II. Since, therefore. He must have been a real 
 person, can He be explained and accounted for on 
 the theory that He w^as only a man ? By friend and 
 foe .alike, it is admitted that His character is perfect. 
 Let me quote, in this connection, the testimony of two 
 or three w^ell known writers who, to say the least, were 
 anything but friendly to the orthodox view of Chris- 
 tianity. Speaking of Christ, John Stuart Mill calls 
 Him " the ideal representative and guide of human- 
 
96 
 
 ity." Strauss, the German rationalist, already re- 
 ferred to, although he adopts the mythical explana- 
 tions of Jesus, says: " 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." Dr. Channing, the famous Unitarian, speaks 
 of Him thus: ''The character of Jesus is wholly in- 
 explicable on human j)rinciples." This testimony, be 
 it observed, is thoroughly impartial, and, I think, you 
 can see its force. The Roman procurator's verdict, 
 " I find in Him no fault at all," is the verdict of the 
 ages. 
 
 Approach His character from what side you will 
 and it is without a flaw. His piety toward God is 
 matched b}^ His benevolence toward man. His life is 
 strictly just, and at the same time beautifully kind. 
 He is temperate, but never austere; courageous, but 
 never rash ; humble, but never servile; dignified, but 
 never cold ; singular, but never affected; devout, but 
 never ecstatic ; independent, but never disrespectful ; 
 intensely in earnest, but never excited. There is no 
 defect and no excess ; not too much of one virtue and 
 too little of another, but an absolutely perfect balance of 
 qualities. It is impossible to conceive of a single 
 point at which his character, as depicted in the Gos- 
 pels, can be improved. It were easier to add a tint 
 of beauty to the rose, or a beam of splendor to the sun- 
 set glory than to amend the character of Jesus. In 
 every otlier exalted personage we find both weakness 
 and strength. There is always something to mar, 
 
— 97 — 
 
 something to break up the consistency. Luther was 
 great, but he sometimes lost his patience and flew 
 into a passion. Calvin was great, but he could not 
 break away wholly from the influence of his environ- 
 ment. Wesley was great, but his views of truth were 
 circumscribed ; he saw only a small arc of the infinite 
 circle. So of all other great leaders and epoch-mak- 
 ers. But in Jesus Christ we find one who is symmet- 
 rical throughout. There is nothing little, nothing 
 narrow, nothing that can be omitted. " When 
 most at sea," says a writer in the Unitarian Re- 
 view, " 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. =1= * * They 
 may hold out successfully against other arguments, 
 but they confess themselves conquered here. The pure 
 spiritual life of Jesus has been tlie leaven in the three 
 measures of meal. The wonderful beauty of his life 
 has been testified to by men of all creeds and of no 
 creeds." This is strong testimony, and I would like 
 3^ou to hold it in mind, as it will bear vitally upon our 
 conclusion. 
 
 It is acknowledged, then, by men of all creeds and of 
 no creed, that the character of Jesus is not only good, 
 but morally perfect. It will be in order, therefore, in 
 close connection with this thought, to consider his 
 claims ; and these, be it remembered, are recorded in 
 the very same gospels that describe his life. See, then, 
 what he claims for himself: 
 
— 98 — 
 
 1. He claims to be all-poiuerful. To his disciples he - 
 said: "All power is given unto me, in heaven and 
 in earth." 
 
 2. He claims to be omnipreseiit. " Where two or 
 three are gathered together in my name, there am 1 
 in the midst of them." " Lo I am with you alway, 
 even unto the end of the world." 
 
 3. He claims to have existed before the world luas. 
 In his prayer in the 17th of John he says : "And now, 
 O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with- 
 the glory which I had with thee before the world 
 was." 
 
 4. He claims to have come from God. Thus : " I 
 proceeded forth and came from God." 
 
 5. He claims to be the judge before whom all men 
 are to be gathered. "When the Son of Man shall 
 come in his glor}^, and all the holy angels with him, 
 then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory, and be- 
 fore him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall 
 separate them one from another." 
 
 6. He claims a right to equal honor with the Father. 
 " All men should honor the Son, even as they honor 
 the Father." 
 
 7. He claims to be one with the Father. " I and my 
 Father are one." " He that hath seen me hath seen 
 the Father." 
 
 8. He claims to be without sin. Conscious of his 
 stainless purity he flings down the challenge: "Wliich 
 of you convinceth me of sin?" 
 
— 99 — 
 
 9. He claims to be able to forgive sin. " But that 
 ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on 
 earth to forgive sin, then saith he to the sick of the 
 palsy: 'Arise, take up thy bed and go unto thine 
 house.' " 
 
 Such are some of his claims. Besides, he calls him- 
 self the '' light of the world," " the bread of life," "the 
 way, the truth, and the life," " the good shepherd," 
 "the door into the sheepfold," "the vine," and so on 
 to the end of the list. If he never made these claims, 
 then we cannot believe the gospel writers. If we can- 
 not believe the gospel writers, then it follows that men 
 who are deceivers and impostors have delineated the 
 only perfect character the world has ever seen. Could 
 such a pure stream come from such an impure fountain? 
 But we have already seen that they could not have 
 been forgers and inventors; that they must have 
 painted from the life. It follows, then, since they were 
 narrators of fact, and not writers of fiction, that Jesus 
 did make these claims. 
 
 Now, one of two things is certain. Either these 
 claims are true or they are false. 
 
 Let us suppose for a moment that they are false. 
 Let us assume that he was not all-pow^erful ; not om- 
 nipresent; not equal with the Father; not an inhab- 
 itant of eternity before the world was ; not able to for- 
 give sin, but simply a man. Then it follows that the 
 spotless Jesus, " the highest model of religion within 
 the reach of our thought," made claims to which he 
 had no right. He claimed to be the Son of God, and 
 
— 100 — 
 
 allowed himself to be worshipped as God. He suffered 
 them to trust in him and to call him " My Lord and 
 my God." If he was only a man this was idolatry, 
 and yet he permitted it to pass without rebuke. The 
 Jews certainly understood him to claim that he w^as 
 God, and for this they condemned him to death ; he 
 w^as also honored as divine by his followers, and if he 
 was not, why did he not disabuse their minds of a de- 
 lusion so cruel? Will a good and pure and noble 
 man allow his friends to entertain opinions of him 
 which are not only utterly false, but which will lead 
 to persecution and reproach and martyrdom? Will a 
 man so wise, so self-poised, so tender and kind, encour- 
 age his disciples to give up everything for his 
 sake, to follow him, even to the death, to love 
 him more than father or mother, or sister or brother, 
 only to deceive them at last and plunge them 
 in despair? It is inconceivable. If, as another has 
 said — and I quote the words with bated breath — if 
 Christ is simply a man, and these claims of his are 
 false, " He has corrupted the whole current of human 
 history. He has deluded millions of people for nine- 
 teen centuries. He is the great impostor of the race; 
 a man so mighty in sin that forgiveness cannot reach 
 him." 
 
 That seems like a terrible thing to say, or even to 
 think, but upon the supposition that Jesus was only 
 a man and these claims false, the language is none 
 too strong. Put these claims upon the lips of any 
 mere man, in any land or age, and they brand him 
 
— 101 — 
 
 either with insanity or infamy. Is it not easy to see 
 that to put such claims on any human lip is to carry 
 blasphemy to its farthest possible extreme ? And yet 
 when Jesus utters them they produce no shock what- 
 ever. 
 
 But these astounding claims for himself are equaled 
 by his claims from men. Once a woman came to him 
 with a box of ointment. It was all she had in the 
 Avorld. But instead of taking a part of it, just to show 
 liis appreciation of her grateful love, he took every 
 particle of it. Could you have done that? Nay, verily. 
 You would have said, "Since you are so kind as. 
 to offer it, I will take just a little. It would be cruel 
 to take it all." Another poor woman came along one 
 day. She w^as in her widow's weeds, and appealed to 
 the sympathy of every great heart as she made her 
 way toward the temple. We would expect to hear him 
 say, " Poor woman ; we cannot take anything from 
 her. She needs every penny she can raise to buy 
 bread for her own household." But he didn't say that. 
 She took out her two mites, cast them into tlie treas- 
 ury, and he received them both. Is that humanity?* 
 And yet his heart was the kindest, the biggest, the 
 world has ever known. 
 
 He never takes a part of anything. He claims all^ 
 and must have it. He does not ask our friendship and 
 sympathy, but claims our very souls; claims them un- 
 conditionally. He claims our time, our talents, our 
 possessions, our entire manhood and womanhood, lays 
 
 * See Dr. Parker's " Inner Life of Christ," vol. iii, 325. 
 
— 102 — 
 
 liis hand upon them all and says: "They are mine." 
 We may safely challenge an}^ man to reconcile these 
 claims, both for himself and from men, with the theory 
 that he is only a man. 
 
 See, then, where the argument leads us, on the sup- 
 position that these claims are false. If they are false, 
 the holiest among the holy led a life of imposture; the 
 " loftiest ideal of humanity " usurped honors to which 
 he had no right; the most lowly and candid being that 
 ever trod the earth was guilty of playing a part ; the 
 most unselfish was the most exacting; the most hum- 
 ble never missed an opportunity to exalt himself; that 
 he who loved most to commune with God was an un- 
 paralleled deceiver; that he who died to establish the 
 world's purest and best religion was, of all men, the 
 most vain and egotistical and corrupt. 
 
 That, fellow-men, is the logic of the situation, and 
 there is no escaping it. Here is his character, pure 
 and spotless as the great White Throne. It is conceded 
 that it could not have been invented. Here are the 
 Gospels which contain these claims. It is acknowl- 
 edged that these writings are the original sources of 
 all we know concerning Jesus. If, then, these claims 
 are false, everything is false, and we find ourselves in- 
 volved in a hopeless tangle of contradictions. 
 
 III. Since, therefore, the two explanations thus 
 far considered are insufficient to account for the Christ, 
 we come now to the third and last, the one that 
 throbs til rough our text and through all the sacred 
 volume. If it is impossible that he should be a 
 
— 103 — 
 
 myth, if the content of the word man falls infinitely 
 short of measuring up to the necessities of the case; 
 then are we forced to the conclusion that his claims 
 are valid, and that he is God. Admit this to be true 
 and difficulties vanish, contradictions are recon- 
 ciled, the sky clears away. It explains his power, it 
 explains his wisdom, it explains the matchless grace 
 and fulness of his speech, it explains the wondrous 
 contrasts that meet in his life, his majesty and his 
 lowliness, his riches and his poverty, his humility and 
 his self-exaltation; it explains his words and his 
 works, his life and his death. Take him at his own 
 estimation, accept his statements, and the music of 
 the Gospels is one, rythmic in its consistency and heav- 
 enly in every burst and throb and strain from prelude 
 to finale. 
 
 Yes, men and women, he Is God. Reason affirms 
 it. The Scriptures declare it. His own lips assert it, 
 and our hearts respond with an unqualified, Amen. 
 For, after all, there is something in these natures of 
 ours deeper than any logic can reach; something 
 back of the intellect, and greater than the intellect, a 
 soul-life, a soul-love, a soul-longing, with eyes keener 
 than any that belong to the understanding. Those 
 eyes penetrate the veil, they look behind into the re- 
 gion of spirit, and they see Him and know Him as 
 God. While I would do honor to the mind, while I 
 would crown and glorify it, yet the heart is greater, it 
 reaches further, it stands for more, and when the heart 
 is appealed to for a verdict, it' cries out: " My Lord, 
 and my God." 
 
— 104 — 
 
 For such a verdict I ask this morning. I trust 
 I have given you something to think about. God for- 
 bid that I should ignore the intellect, but it belongs 
 to the preacher to speak to the whole man, and espe- 
 cially to the deeper man, to that part of his nature 
 which determines his living, viz., his heart and his 
 conscience. So, while I ask you to conclude by intel- 
 lectual processes, I ask you to accept, to lay hold, with 
 the affections and the will. 
 
 He is God, God. He was in the beginning, is now, 
 and ever shall be. Do you admit it? Do you ac- 
 knowledge it on the strength of his own statements, 
 backed up by a character immaculate as a sunbeam? 
 Then why, O why, do you withhold from him your 
 homage and love? You are not asked to wor- 
 slrip an infinite despot, to bend the knee to an Al- 
 mighty Tyrant. You are asked simply to come to the 
 One God, to Jesus Christ, who was the express image, 
 the supreme manifestation of the Father, who made 
 himself a way, a road, over which the weary feet of 
 humanity might come back to the old home-land of 
 heaven. Will you join the returning throng? You 
 are asked to come to the great Burden-Bearer, to the 
 Crucified, but risen God, to heaven's divine Embassa- 
 dor for help, for guidance, for comfort, for pardon. 
 Who in all this company will take the responsibility 
 either of postponement or rejection? 
 
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