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Christ's Power over Men.

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a hundredfold more cruelly; tender women and children cast to lions and tigers in the circus, bodies covered with oil and made into torches to light up a tyrant's garden, tens of thousands massacred; but men would believe, and through it all the faith ran and made men noble, helping humanity up to better things.

Again in more modern times, men and women have stood like adamant against persecution and ignominy, counting faithfulness to God better than all things, despising the fiery stake, crucifixion, death. A thousand instances could be given to-day of the intellectual awakening and the moral transformation, which take place in individual men as a result of simple faith in Christ. And why? Simply because what Christ brings is to the spirit of man what truth is to the seeking mind, or food to the famishing body. It is by this power over men that Christ is becoming more and more the ruler of the modern world. To understand this power let us look again at our grand ideal man, that secret power of our modern civilization, that unapproachable king of humanity, Jesus of Nazareth. Wherein lay his more than Samson strength? Wherein the lever and the fulcrum with which he has lifted the world? Marvellous man! Men will refuse to believe in him, to follow him, to let him speak for himself, and yet they will exhaust language to express their admiration for him as the peerless among men. Wherever Christ is known at all, only the most depraved and vile can say one word against the faultless man. Listen to rejecters of the Christian religion. Strauss 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." And Keim, an erudite critic of Holland: "His religion is the loftiest idealism, in faith and will, and yet again so entirely measured, and sober; because resting on actually experienced facts and built on earnest deeds of highest, fullest, and truly human, free and reasonable performance." Renan tries to prove that Jesus

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The Secret of his Influence.

[LECT.

was a mere man and thus writes: "Whatever be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without ceasing; his legend will call forth tears without end; his sufferings will melt the noblest hearts; all ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus."

"And now whence these mighty works that do show forth themselves in him? Is not this the carpenter's son, and his brethren are they not all with us ?" Whence the power of this marvellous Jew? Search the record of his life. It is short and easily read. Yes, leave out all that destructive critics would have you throw away. Let the question of inspiration drop, let the subject of miracles lie in abeyance. Just take what the critics must leave, what even fancy cannot destroy, take the very baldest story of his life and work and what do you find? Has he added to scientific or intellectual life? Take out all that is purely philosophical, as men call philosophy, and you do not affect the whole. Is the power in his system of ethics? Take away all that is purely ethical, that springs like human ethics from science, philosophy and experience, and you make absolutely no difference in the record. But now take away all that Jesus said and did that sprang necessarily, directly from a spiritual consciousness of a Spiritual Father God, who through him spake to the consciousness of the immortal spirit of man, and what is the result? The whole record of the New Testament becomes a blank book, without a word. Take the influence of this spiritual teaching out of the world, and all modern civilization vanishes into a dream, the world is hurled back two thousand years and left stranded in despair. Let Herbert Spencer's teaching be true, that there is no personal spiritual God in the universe, who speaks to human hearts, and no immortal spirit in man to respond to such a spiritual God, and you turn the whole life and work of Jesus into one

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Spiritual Revelation to Man.

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gigantic farce, and build all that is noble and good in modern advance on the foundation of a boundless lie. Is that a scientific conclusion to come to ? For we are still on ground, where you can apply your scientific method, as well as to any other phenomena of history. We are dealing with facts. Tell me, does that explain the power of Jesus? Does it all spring from a lie? Does it perpetuate itself by a thousand lies ? and does it go on increasing in power though it brings a message which no true man can honestly believe? And does it go on showering deluges of blessings out of that which the human heart loathes-a perpetual deception? Don't you think it would be more scientific to suppose that all this effect had a logical cause equal to the effect produced? Can we not scientifically say that Jesus met a true constituent of the human constitution, with its true supply, and that thus fruition and harmony and blessing legitimately followed? Just as true food, in which the elements suit the elements in the human body, nourishes and strengthens the frame; as intellectual truths, well reasoned, and suited to the constitution of the mind, bring intellectual satisfaction and strength; as moral truths meet and satisfy our feeling after duty, so these spiritual truths of Jesus seem to fit every phase of the spiritual constitution, forming a leverage to lift up the whole man, and through the man, all mankind and all nations. And only that which stands above the world can thus uplift humanity.

Thus far we have come without unproved assumptions, and on scientific lines. And we find that the peerless man has made plain to us facts within consciousness, and outside of consciousness, which no man by searching has been able to find out before or since on any other line. Facts which are not opposed to Common Sense; facts which no science can gainsay, but which all true science supplements; facts which are ignored only by a philosophy that will not have them, because they

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The Man Christ Jesus

[LECT. clash with a pet theory; facts which are rejected by masses of men, because they simply do not know them and do not search whether they are true or not; facts which open to man his vaster powers and possibilities,-possibilities intellectual, moral, social, political, spiritual, eternal, for under Christ's leadership "Humanity sweeps onward." But Christ's onward is God-ward.

And now let me crave of you patience to go one stage further. We allow science and philosophy to make hypotheses, and then test them; now if you like, let this next step be our Christian hypothesis, to be tested in every possible way and above all by the practical one of asking how it works. Jesus tells us there is a God, who may commune with our spirits. We want to see that God, to be conscious of him, to know him. Jesus stands on heights above us still. Pure unsullied man. We want to ask him. An old sage of ancient days tells us that those who stand on those heights, and see beyond with eyes like Jesus, must have clean hands and pure hearts. Jesus himself says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Now let us as far as possible lay aside prejudice and all but the highest, noblest thoughts we ever held, and with bated breath speak to Jesus on this theme, as we focus our eyes to peer into the profound unknown. "Master, there is just one more thing we would ask. Oh, show us the Father and we shall be satisfied." Listen, he speaks: "Have I been so long time with you, and do you not yet know me? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father also." And we change the focus of our eyes, and look once more nearer home,-look once more in the face of the crucified carpenter. Can this be true? we query. Is this Nazarene the eternal God? The Christian Church has thought she had reason to believe this, and in this faith she has conquered, and in this faith she conquers to-day. Towering intellects have yielded and do yield homage to this faith. And surely it is worthy of being at least examined. Come Science, come Philosophy,

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Shows Man's Relation to God.

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come Common Sense and look these facts and this hypothesis in the face. It is a hypothesis which has given to man his grandest, sublimest ideas of God. Not that He is some gigantic man, with human limitations, but an Infinite God who could veil himself so as to become visible to the human spirit. Nothing in Christ's humanity degrades the idea of an incarnate God; no intellectual flaw, no moral lack, no spiritual faltering. Nothing destructive of his humanity in the idea of the constitution of Infinite Mind, no mutilating of that mind, but a revelation to man of his own high origin, his own high destiny, for we are to be like him. The grandest men of science see nothing unscientific in this, and despite the hooting of owls who see only in the night and sleep when the sun shines, common sense the great earth round is accepting this hypothesis, and finds it work practically and wear well, needing far less credulity than any scientific hypothesis, or philosophical theory which ignores that in man which links itself to, and is a dim reflection of, the spiritual in God.