imply that His Person is Superhuman. 161

But the miracles which especially point to the Catholic doctrine as their justification, and which are simply incumbrances blocking up the way of a Humanitarian theorist, are those of which our Lord's Manhood is itself the subject. According to the Gospel narrative, Jesus enters this world by one miracle, and He leaves it by another. His human manifestation centres in that miracle of miracles, His Resurrection from the grave after death. The Resurrection is the central fact up to which all leads, and from which all radiates. Such wonders as Christ's Birth of a Virgin-mother, His Resurrection from the tomb, and His Ascension into heaven, are not merely the credentials of our redemption, they are distinct stages and processes of the redemptive work itself. Taken in their entirety, they interpose a measureless interval between the Life of Jesus and the lives of the greatest of prophets or of Apostles, even of those to whom it was given to still the elements and to raise the dead. To expel these miracles from the Life of Jesus is to destroy the identity of the Christ of the Gospels; it is to substitute a new Christ for the Christ of Christendom. Who would recognise the true Christ in the natural son of a human father, or in the crucified prophet whose body has rotted in an earthly grave? Yet on the other hand, who will not admit that He Who was conceived of the Holy Ghost and born of a Virgin-mother, Who, after being crucified, dead, and buried, rose again the third day from the dead, and then went up into heaven before the eyes of His Apostles, must needs be an altogether superhuman Being? The Catholic doctrine then is at home among the facts of the Gospel narrative by the mere fact of its proclaiming a superhuman Christ, while the modern Humanitarian theories are ill at ease

among those facts. The four Evangelists, amid their distinguishing peculiarities, concur in representing a Christ Whose Life is encased in a setting of miracles. The Catholic doctrine meets these representations more than half-way; they are in sympathy with, if they are not admitted to anticipate, its assertion. The Gospel miracles point at the very least to a Christ Who is altogether above the range of human experience; and the Creeds recognise and confirm this indication by saying that He is Divine. Thus the Christ of dogma is the Christ of history: He is the Christ of the only extant history which describes the Founder of Christendom at all. He may not be the Christ of some modern commentators upon that history; but these commentators do not affect to take the history as it has come down to us. As the Gospel narratives stand, they

162 Can our Lord's miracles be denied or ignored?

present a block of difficulties to Humanitarian theories; and these difficulties can only be removed by mutilations of the narratives so wholesale and radical as to destroy their substantial interest, besides rendering the retention of the fragments which may be retained, a purely arbitrary procedure. The Gospel narratives describe the Author of Christianity as the Worker and the subject of extraordinary miracles; and these miracles are such as to afford a natural lodgment for, nay, to demand as their correlative, the doctrine of the Creed. That doctrine must be admitted to be, if not the divinely authorized explanation, at least the best intellectual conception and résumé of the evangelical history. A man need not be a believer in order to admit, that in asserting Christ's Divinity we make a fair translation of the Gospel story into the language of abstract thought; and that we have the best key to that story when we see in it the doctrine that Christ is God, unfolding itself in a series of occurrences which on any other supposition seem to wear an air of nothing less than legendary extravagance.

It may-it probably will-be objected to all this, that a large number of men and women at the present day are on the one hand strongly prepossessed against the credibility of all miracles whatever, while on the other they are sincere 'admirers' of the moral character of Jesus Christ. They may not wish explicitly and in terms to reject the miraculous history recorded in the Gospels; but still less do they desire to commit themselves to an unreserved acceptance of it. Whether from indifference to miraculous occurrences, or because their judgment is altogether in suspense, they would rather keep the preternatural element in our Lord's Life out of sight, or shut their eyes to it. But they are open to the impressions which may be produced by the spectacle of high ethical beauty, if only the character of Christ can be disentangled from a series of wonders, which, as transcending all ordinary human experience, do not touch the motives that compel their assent to religious truth. Accordingly we are warned, that if it is not a piece of spiritual thoughtlessness, and even cruelty, it is at any rate a rhetorical mistake to insist upon a consideration so opposed to the intellectual temper of the time.

This is what may be urged: but let it be observed, that the objector assumes a point which should rather have been proved. He assumes the possibility of putting forward an honest picture of the Life of Jesus, which shall uphold the beauty, and even the perfection of His moral character, while denying the historical

Our Lord's references to His Person. 163

reality of His miracles, or at any rate while ignoring them. Whereas, if the only records which we possess of the Life of Jesus are to be believed at all, they make it certain that Jesus Christ did claim to work, and was Himself the embodiment of, startling miracles. How can this fact be dealt with by a modern disbeliever in the miraculous? Was Christ then the ignorant victim and promoter of a crude superstition? Or was He, as M. Renan considers, passive and unresisting, while credited with working wonders which He knew to be merely thaumaturgic tricks? On either supposition, is it possible to uphold Him as 'the moral ideal of humanity,' or indeed as the worthy object of any true moral enthusiasm? We cannot decline this question; it is forced upon us by the subject-matter. A neutral attitude towards the miraculous element in the Gospel history is impossible. The claim to work miracles is not the least prominent element of our Lord's teaching; nor are the miracles which are said to have been wrought by Him a fanciful or ornamental appendage to His action. The miraculous is inextricably interwoven with the whole Life of Christ. The ethical beauty, nay the moral integrity of our Lord's character is dependent, whether we will it or not, upon the reality of His miracles. It may be very desirable to defer as far as possible to the mental prepossessions of our time; but it is not practicable to put asunder two things which God has joined together, namely, the beauty of Christ's character and the bonâ fide reality of the miracles which He professed to work.

But let us nevertheless follow the lead of this objection by turning to consider what is the real bearing of our Lord's moral character upon the question of His Divinity. In order to do this, it is necessary to ask a previous question. What position did Jesus Christ, either tacitly or explicitly, claim to occupy in His intercourse with men? What allusions did He make to the subject of His Personality? You will feel, my brethren, that it

Ecce Homo, p. 43: 'On the whole, miracles play so important a part in Christ's scheme, that any theory which would represent them as due entirely to the imagination of His followers or of a later age, destroys the credibility of the documents, not partially, but wholly, and leaves Christ a personage as mythical as Hercules.'

Cf. Vie de Jésus, p. 265: 'Il est donc permis de croire qu'on lui imposa sa réputation de thaumaturge, qu'il n'y résista pas beaucoup, mais qu'il ne fit rien non plus pour y aider, et qu'en tout cas, il sentait la vanité de l'opinion à cet égard. Ce serait manquer à la bonne méthode historique d'écouter trop ici nos répugnances.' See M. Renan's account of the raising of Lazarus, ibid. pp. 361, 362.

164 First stage of Christ's teaching, mainly ethical.

is impossible to overrate the solemn importance of such a point as this. We are here touching the very heart of our great subject: we have penetrated to the inmost shrine of Christian truth, when we thus proceed to examine those words of the Gospels which exhibit the consciousness of the Founder of Christianity respecting His rank in the scale of being. With what awe, yet with what loving eagerness, must not a Christian enter on such an examination!

No reader of the Gospels can fail to see that, speaking generally, and without reference to any presumed order of the events and sayings in the Gospel history, there are two distinct stages or levels in the teaching of Jesus Christ our Lord.

I. Of these the first is mainly concerned with primary fundamental moral truth. It is in substance a call to repentance, and the proclamation of a new life. It is summarized in the words, 'Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hands. A change of mind, both respecting self, and respecting God, was necessary before a man could lead the new life of the kingdom of heaven. In a previous lecture we have had occasion to consider the kingdom of heaven as the outline or plan of a world-wide institution which was to take its place in history. But viewed in its relation to the life of the soul, the kingdom of heaven is the home and the native atmosphere of a new and higher order of spiritual existence. This new life is not merely active thought, such as might be stimulated by the cross-questioning of a Socrates; nor is it moral force, the play of which was limited to the single soul that possessed it. It is moral and mental life, having God and men for its objects, and accordingly lived in an organized society, as the necessary counterpart of its energetic action. Of this stage of our Lord's preaching, the Sermon on the Mount is the most representative document. The Sermon on the Mount preaches penitence by laying down the highest law of holiness. It contrasts the externalized devotion, the conventional and worldly religion of the time, created and sanctioned by the leading currents of public opinion, and described as the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, with a new and severe ideal of morality, embodied in the new law of Christian perfection. It stimulates and regulates penitence, by proposing a new conception of blessedness; by contrasting the spirit of the new law with the literalism of the old; by exhibiting the devotional duties, the ruling motives, the characteristic temper, and the special dangers

St. Matt. iv. 17.

No confession of personal shortcomings. 165

of the new life. Incidentally the Sermon on the Mount states certain doctrines, such as that of the Divine Providence, with great explicitness t; but, throughout it, the moral element is predominant. This great discourse quickens and deepens a sense of sin by presenting the highest ideal of an inward holiness. In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord is laying broad and deep the foundations of His spiritual edifice. A pure and loving heart; an open and trustful conscience; a freedom of communion with the Father of spirits; a love of man as man, the measure of which is to be nothing less than a man's love of himself; above all a stern determination, at any cost, to be true, true with God, true with men, true with self;--such are the pre-requisites for genuine discipleship; such the spiritual and subjective bases of the new and Absolute Religion; such the moral material of the first stage of our Lord's public teaching.

In this first stage of our Lord's teaching let us moreover note two characteristics.

(a) And first, that our Lord's recorded language is absolutely wanting in a feature, which, on the supposition of His being merely human, would seem to have been practically indispensable. Our Lord does not place before us any relative or lower standard of morals. He proposes the highest standard; He enforces the absolute morality. 'Be ye therefore perfect,' He says, 'even as your Father Which is in Heaven is perfect ". Now in the case of a human teacher of high moral and spiritual attainments, what should we expect to be a necessary accompaniment of this teaching? Surely we should expect some confession of personal unworthiness thus to teach. We should look for some trace of a feeling (so inevitable in this pulpit) that the message which must be spoken is the rebuke, if not the condemnation, of the man who must speak it. Conscious of many shortcomings, a human teacher must at some time relieve his natural sense of honesty, his fundamental instinct of justice, by noting the discrepancy between his weak, imperfect, perhaps miserable self, and his sublime and awful message. He must draw a line, if I may so speak, between his official and his personal self; and in his personal capacity he must honestly, anxiously, persistently associate himself with his hearers, as being before God, like each one of themselves, a learning, struggling, erring soul. But Jesus Christ makes no approach to such a distinction between Himself t St. Matt. vi. 25-33.

u Ibid. v. 48.