Ripley ... Kingswood-Mr. W. Butler, hm. £1 1s; Mrs. Butler, hm. ... ... ... ... ... £1 1s Liverpool-Mr. R. Lloyd, hm. £1 1s; Mr. T. Smith, hm. (Birkenhead) £2 ... ... Sunderland-Mr. J. W. Wayman, hm. £1 1s Bradwell 2 20 3 1 0 200 1 10 0 ... ... ... ... ... Blackburn-Mr. T. Atherton, hc. 10s 6d; Mr. A. Birtwell, South Shields-Mr. T. Airst, 5s; M. C. F. Shotton, hc. 10s; 4 12 11 ... 200 176 030 ... York-Mr. H. Bushell, hm. £1 1s; Mrs. E. Hill, hc. 10s 6d; Perry Hill-Mr. Everden, hc. 10s 6d; Mr. E. Fairbrother, 2 10 0 ... 1 19 0 5 5 0 0 Rochester-A Friend, £5 5s Bayswater-Miss Cox, hm. £1 1s; Mr. R. Moore, hm. WHO WAS JESUS? A Lecture delivered at the Paris Exhibition: Translated and Adapted from the French. BY REV. T. A SEED. "By what authority doest Thou these things?"-Mark xi. 28. THIS is a question not for an age, but for all time. It is the question of questions for you, for me, for all mankind. Everything depends on the answer that is given to it. It is a matter of life or of death, of everlasting life or everlasting death, that we should rightly answer it. "By what authority?" &c. Let us approach the question with becoming gravity. Let us discuss it calmly, but with all the earnestness of those whose everlasting destiny is bound up with it. By these things," then, is meant, not merely the expulsion of the merchants from the Temple at Jerusalem, but the whole work of Christ, of which that act was but a detail more or less characteristic. I want you to consider the whole of His work on earth as it is set before us in the Gospels. And not only that: I want you to consider the establishment of His kingdom in the world as it is related in the history of the Church, and as it is being effected under our eyes. Here is a fact; a visible, patent, striking fact, the work of Christ when He was on earth and since He went away. And what I want you to do is to explain this fact. Who is this Jesus Christ? "By what authority doeth He these things?" This, I say, is the question of questions for the world; and there are only two answers possible to it, as there were only two answers possible to the question as to the Baptism of John. The authority of Jesus Christ is either from heaven, or it is of men. There is no other alternative. Either Jesus Christ is man, and nothing more than man, or He is God manifest in the flesh. And the question is, Which? I. Very well, then; let us first take the former part of the alternative. Let us suppose that Jesus Christ is man; and nothing more than man. There was nothing supernatural in Him; He was simply a mortal like you and me; a child of the night like you and me, to whom the problems of life and death and destiny were proposed as they are proposed to you and me. As such, no doubt, He was an extraordinary man; one of the élite of nature, a clear thinker, a profound philosopher. As such, He would be able, like Socrates and Plato and many others, to interrogate the Sphinx and try to solve its enigma; and, like other philosophers, He would, no doubt, have been able to imagine His little system of truth, and fill the minds of men, for a time, with His explanations and conjectures. But like all these sages, He would only have been able to present Himself before the world as an ignorant man speaking to other ignorant men, as a blind man seeking to lead other blind men in their researches after truth. MAY, 1881. K Well now, it is fair to ask, in the first place, was that the position He took up before the world? Certainly not. You know that, on the contrary, what most impressed His hearers was the authority with which He spake. He always affirmed, and never attempted to prove what He affirmed. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," said He. Born in the midst of a people who expected the Messiah, an extraordinary messenger from God, a King of whom the greatest things were predicted. He gave Himself out without hesitation to be the long-expected Christ. He applied to Himself all the ancient prophecies which were the foundation of the hopes of His nation; He stated frankly and openly in the face of all the world that He was a Being without weakness and without sin; and, most audacious of all on this hypothesis, He passed Himself off as the Son of God, as always doing what was agreeable to the Father, making use of this incredible language, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." He spake of the issues of life with an accent of certitude. There is to be a Day of Judgment, He tells us, and He is to be the Judge, and before Him are to be gathered all nations to receive their doom. He spake to His disciples in this fashion: "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." "In My Father's house," &c. "I go to prepare a place for you," &c. He never says, "perhaps"-"it is probable"—"I hope." These words are not found in His vocabulary. He calls upon all men to forsake all and follow Him. He abolishes the Established Religion to substitute—what? His own. He receives, He encourages on the lips of His disciples such homage as this: "To whom shall we &c.; and "We believe that Thou art the Christ the Son of God." go? "My Lord and my God." When He came face to face with death, what did He do ? He defied it, and announced His resurrection on the third day. Covered with insults and indignities, in the midst of the mob that had been raised against Him, before the very judge that had condemned Him to death, He said, "Yes, I am a king; I came into the world to bear witness to the truth." And on the Cross (which was also a gibbet) when dying, He said to the thief who called Him Lord: "This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise." Well now, I ask you, Who is this, and by what authority did He say and do these things? Will any man tell me that we have here only a Jew like Barabbas, or like Judas Iscariot? I appeal to your common sense. Suppose (as we must suppose if He were a mere man), suppose that the history of Jesus of Nazareth had ended with His crucifixion; suppose, further that, since that time He had been utterly forgotten, and that, by one of those happy discoveries which have been so numerous in our days, that history, as we have it in the Gospels, had been found in some lost volume of Josephus, or of some other historian; suppose that you read it for the first time in one of our magazines or reviews as a literary curiosity, what opinion would you form of such a hero? Would you not besitate to set him down as an impostor or a madman? I think you would. You would almost certainly come to the conclusion that, at all events, He was one of the greatest and best of men. But I have something more to say about this man. When we speak of the work of Christ, when we ask by what authority He acted, we must not limit ourselves to His earthly life. He has left traces of His passage through our world. In His footsteps have sprung up whole harvests of fruits. And we are bound to take into account the results of His lifework, for these were foreseen and foretold by Him. He formed a plan, if I may so speak, and began to carry it out; and so far, at least, His plan has been crowned with marvellous success. When He was only thirty years of age, after an obscure and humble life, this mere man came forward and proposed to do-what do you think? Nothing less than to create a new world. He proposed to abolish superstitions more ancient than the memory of man; superstitions which the nations had conserved as the heritage of their fathers, and for which they were ready to fight more ardently than for dear life itself. He undertook to make them renounce errors, which had struck deep into the soil of human nature, and which sanctioned and encouraged all the cherished vices of that nature. This is what He set Himself to destroy. And what did He propose to put in its place? A holy and uncompromising law, a morality and a religion contrary to all the inclinations of the flesh. What an enterprise! And how did He propose to bring all this about? All the powers on earth were against Him-the sagacity of politicians, the authority of kings, the cruelty of tyrants, the zeal of idolators, the impiety of atheists, the lusts of men. On the other hand, He had none of the resources on which men usually rely. He had neither riches, fame, nor earthly power. He was a poor and humble man. And yet with an ability which confounds all human thought He has succeeded. He has turned the world upside down. But I have not yet done with this hypothesis. When Jesus was on earth He gathered round Him numerous disciples, and since He went away the numbers have gone on increasing. On these disciples He has imposed the law of self-sacrifice and renunciation. Many of them have been literally crucified with Him. For the establishment of His religion He has caused to flow torrents of blood-the blood of His disciples. For His sake untold agonies have been endured, and untold miseries cheerfully borne. But if He be not more than man all these sacrifices have been made in vain. And He has gained them by false pretences. Who then was this man? An impostor! Nay, it is not enough to call Him an impostor. He is the king, the genius, I had almost said the demon of imposture. Consider it well, my friend. It comes to this. If Jesus Christ be but a man; if what He has given us for truth be but the dream of His brain, the invention of His genius; if He induces us to renounce all by making promises He is not able to keep, He must be held responsible for all the tears and all the blood shed, for all the lives sacrificed, for all the hopes deceived, for all the griefs and miseries endured by all His followers through eighteen centuries. Are you prepared for that? Are you pre pared to accuse your Master and mine of the most colossal crime ever committed in this world? If so, let us band ourselves against Him. Are you prepared to see in His work the most stupendous and most frightful hoax ever played upon mankind? If so, let us ask whether He has not had enough victims. Let us try to stop the plague while yet there is time. Let us arise against this firstborn son of Satan, and let us drive his cheating Gospel back to hell. That is the logical conclusion of the theory so much in vogue to-day that Jesus Christ is a mere man. Talk about miracles! The most astounding miracle on earth would be the life and work of Christ if He were not more than man. But is such a miracle possible? I do not believe it is. I am sure that God would not work such a miracle of imposture, and I do not think that He would permit any one else to do The supposition when one gravely contemplates it in all its consequences is so enormous, so monstrous, that the human mind recoils from it and the human heart protests against it. If Jesus Christ was not more than man He was a monster of iniquity. So. II. We must therefore turn to the other part of the alternative, and see whether that is more likely to be true. We will suppose now that Jesus Christ was God; that the authority by which He did these things was Divine. One thing strikes me at the outset : He Himself believed and acted on this supposition. It has been well said that it is difficult to act the king unless one is born to it. What must it then be to act the God? Imagine the embarrassments, the contradictions which must arise in one who should attempt to play such a part. But evidently Jesus made no such attempt. No one ever acted less like a hypocrite. No life was ever more simple; no soul was ever more transparent. When He asserted His Spiritual Royalty, His Supreme Dignity, His Oneness with the Father, He did so with a sweet assurance, with an accent of sincerity, in a tone which carried conviction to all sincere and honest men. It is true He did not convince the scribes and rulers, who were interested in rejecting Him. But He impressed even them, and convinced all who came to Him with true and open hearts. His disciples, who knew Him best, who lived with Him in such intimacy that they would have been able to detect His slightest weakness-His most intimate disciples were the most firmly convinced of His sincerity. A Pharisee like Nicodemus was constrained to say, "We know that Thou art come from God." And even a pagan, like the Centurion who saw Him die committing His spirit into the hands of His Father, said, "Truly this was the Son of God." If Jesus had been an impostor, His life would have betrayed Him; instead of this, His entire life, so transparent, so consistent, bears witness that He spake the truth about Himself. |