made claims so violently opposed to his own clearest teachings that he suffered a slave's death for treason and blasphemy, his followers grossly falsified the events of his ordinary life; and though they were men whose lives and teaching shewed that they would "rather die than lie," yet, suddenly transformed by his utter failure and shameful death from coward fugitives into dauntless missionaries, they either invented or imagined an ignorant story about His resurrection, in attestation of which they were ever ready, with demented enthusiasm, to face the wild beast and stand undaunted in the flame: and that, on this empty teaching and this invented tale, was built a Church which, after eighteen centuries, is still invincible in proportion to its purity and its faith; and were founded the institutes of a new kingdom of God, which, "with the unresistible might of weakness," rising up between an effete Judaism and a guilty heathendom, revolutionized and overcame the world. Is there no cleft here, no broad chasm, no unbridgeable abyss, between the real effect and the imaginary cause? Of the Christian consciousness, of the inward witness of the Spirit, of spiritual things being spiritually discerned, of doing the will and so knowing the doctrine, I say nothing': but I ask whether as a mere matter of criticism and history, this whole structure of rationalism does not, at the mere touch of the Gospels, totter before our eyes, and crumble into a vast incongruous 1 "Philosophia veritatem quærit, Theologia invenit, Religio possidet." Pic. Mirand. Opp. 359 (Raumer, Gesch. d. Pädagogik, I. 54). 88 THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. heap of absurdities and impossibilities'? Oh that each one of us, standing on the mound that makes this ruined Babel of false philosophy, even if he have asked with Nathanael, "can any good thing come out of Nazareth ?" even if he have said with the unbelieving Jews, Iwe know this man whence he is;" nay, even if he have doubted as Thomas once doubted; even if he have denied as Peter once denied; yet, feeling at length that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself," feeling that in Him his yearnings are satisfied, by Him his sins forgiven, may be enabled to raise his eyes to heaven and exclaim from the depths of an adoring and believing heart, "MY LORD AND MY GOD." 1 Really no hypothesis seems too absurd or gratuitous for the exigencies of Rationalism. Comte, for instance, eminent as he is both for the candour, the power, and the historical acuteness of his mind, makes Paul the founder of Christianity, and supposes that he-he "the fusile Apostle,"-he, the a and w of whose teaching was the fact of the Resurrection,-looked out for, and with sublime self-sacrifice subordinated himself to "one of the many adventurers who were naturally led at that time to attempt the inauguration of Monotheism by aspiring, like their Greek predecessors, at divinisation!!" He looked out for another, because "he could not give himself out for an incarnation of the divine without a mixture of hypocrisy and fanaticism incompatible with real superiority of heart and spirit." He thus, i.e. by merely propagating instead of actually inventing a falsehood-"saved himself from all personal degradation, and afterwards got really to venerate a type which he idealized." Comte, Politique Positive, III. 409, 410. And this is a philosophic view of the origin of Christianity! St Paul, we may be sure, would have wished himself plunged in the lowest abyss of "personal degradation" rather than utter one word capable of any interpretation which should thus blaspheme his Lord. ACTS V. 39. But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it. MATT. XV. 13. Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. I COR. I. 25. The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. I HAVE ventured, my brethren, to throw together these three passages uttered, under memorable circumstances by our Blessed Lord, by the wise Rabbi of the Jews, by the great Apostle of the Gentiles-as an authoritative prophecy, as a deeply-seated conviction, as an adequate explanation, of the series of majestic facts, which we shall, with God's blessing, pass in review to-day. For having seen the antecedent reasonableness of our Christian faith, and having examined the value of its records, to-day we must consider the evidence of its history; and that evidence-extending as it does over a continuous period of 1800 years-must be to us decisive. Little as the thought may have been familiar to the ancient world, |