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 i Theological Seminary, 
 
 1 
 
 PRFNCETON, N. J. 
 
 BR 45 .H84 1866 
 
 Perowne, Edward Henry, d. 
 
 1906, 
 The Godhead of Jesus | 
 
 
 1 
 

 
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HULSEAN LECTURES, 
 
 <fec. " 
 
»...*....■ 
 
 KYPIOI MOY KAI '0 0EOI MOY. 
 
THE GODHEAD OF JESUS 
 
 FOUR SERMONS 
 
 (BEING THE HULSEAN LECTURES FOR 1866) 
 
 ^reacbttr before tj)£ ^nibmitg of arambrilrge: 
 
 TO WHICH AKE ADDED 
 
 TWO SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY ON 
 GOOD-FRIDAY AND EASTER DAY, 1866. 
 
 BY THE REVEREND 
 
 EDWARD HENEY PEROWNE, B.D. 
 
 FELLOW AND TUTOR OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, HULSEAN LECTURER, 
 FORMERLY ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S PREACHERS AT THE CHAPEL ROYAL, WHITEHALL. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. 
 
 LONDON: BELL AND DALDY. 
 
 1867 
 
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 That so great a title should preface so small a book 
 may seem to require justification. Of the dispro- 
 portion between them no one can be more sensible 
 than the Author himself. The object contemplated 
 in the following Lectures is not a full discussion of 
 the subject proposed, but a contribution to the study 
 of it. The two Sermons which are subjoined bear 
 upon the same subject, though the reference is spe- 
 cial, and the treatment somewhat different. 
 
 Upon the central truth of Christianity many lines 
 of proof converge. If in the following pages one of 
 these lines is made clearer, the pious design of Mr 
 Hulse, the Founder of these Lectures, will not have 
 altogether failed of its accomplishment. For this 
 result we would humbly ask, in the spirit of his own 
 prayer, '' May the Divine blessing for ever go along 
 with all my benefactions, and may the greatest and 
 the best of Beings, by His all- wise providence and 
 gracious influence, make the same effectual to His 
 own glory and the good of my fellow-creatures !" 
 

 PAGE 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE GODHEAD OF JESUS. 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Matthew XVI. 13. 
 
 When Jesus came into the coasts of Csesarea Philippi, He asked His 
 
 disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am ? i 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 THE SJNLESSNESS OF JESUS. 
 
 John VII. 12. 
 
 And there was much murmuring among the people concerning Him : for 
 some said, He is a good man : others said. Nay, but He deceiveth 
 the people ........... 22 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS. 
 
 I Peter II. 22, part. 
 Who did no sin . . . . . . . . . . 4^ 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE DIVINE NATURE OF JESUS. 
 
 John I. 14. 
 
 The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His 
 glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) fuU of grace 
 and truth ...........61 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 THE LAMB OF OOD. 
 
 (Preached on Good Friday, 1866.) 
 John I. 29. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The next day John seetli Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the 
 
 Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world . . 83 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 THE POWER OF CHRISTS RESURRECTION. 
 
 (Preached on Easter Day, 1866.) 
 
 Philippians III. part of v. 10. 
 
 The power of His resurrection loa 
 
 Appendix (A) u^ 
 
 Appendix (B) 121 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 THE GODHEAD OF J£!SUS. 
 
 MATTHEW XVI. 13. 
 
 When Jesus came into the coasts of Coisarea Philipjn, He 
 asked his disciples, Saying, Whom do men say that /, th^ 
 Son of man, am ? 
 
 The question which I propose to consider in these 
 Lectures may be briefly stated as follows : Is there 
 reason to believe that the Jesus of the Gospels is 
 very and eternal God ? 
 
 To those who are in any degree acquainted With 
 the religious thought and the religious literature of 
 the day, the choice of this subject will appear not 
 only obvious, but (I had almost said) necessary. 
 For, whatever form religious discussion may take, 
 the question I have proposed really lies at the root 
 of all our controversies. And while many shrink 
 from giving a decisive answer to it, and try to keep 
 it out of sight, others more bold, or (as they term 
 it) more advanced, have elaborated an answer in 
 the negative. I do not know whether avowed and 
 formal Arianism has many adherents in England. 
 Some such doubtless there are. But between the de- 
 liberate denial of the Godhead of Jesus of Nazareth 
 p. H. J 
 
2 IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT. [lECT. 
 
 and a hearty intelligent belief in it, there are many 
 stages and degrees of doubt. There is a neutral 
 ground of uncertainty and hesitation, shading off 
 imperceptibly into unbelief, which is only too thickly 
 peopled. And this neutral ground is not a level, 
 but a slope. There is no logical standing: alas! 
 how often is there no practical resting-place between 
 the two extremes*. 
 
 The doctrine of the Godhead of Jesus, whether 
 true or false, is the keystone of the arch of Chris- 
 tianity. So long as it remains unshaken, the whole 
 fabric of the Christian system is secure. Loosen or 
 dislodge it, and not only will the theology of the 
 New Testament become disintegrated, but its mo- 
 rality as a power will vanish, however it may sur- 
 vive as a code. 
 
 The opponents of this doctrine have not failed 
 to perceive its pre-eminent importance. They have 
 been cautious for the most part in their approaches 
 to this citadel of Christianity. One outpost after 
 another has been assailed by battery, or artfully 
 undermined ; and the beleaguering hosts have pushed 
 forward their lines, and closed in upon the fortress, 
 which is the object of final attack. The inspiration 
 and authority of Holy Scripture, and its historic 
 value; the truth of the Mosaic cosmogony; the 
 eternity of punishment; the possibility of miracles; 
 and, lastly, the reality of the Atonement — each in 
 
 ' See page 16 for furtlier remarks on this jioiut. 
 
I.] LIMITATIONS. 3 
 
 turn has been made the subject of free discussion 
 by men who have mistaken hostility for candour, 
 or at least have assumed the position of critics 
 rather than of disciples. But it was not difficult to 
 foresee that all these discussions, so far as their re- 
 sults were adverse to established Christian belief, 
 would serve to clear the way for the discussion in 
 which we are now engaged, and to render it inevi- 
 table. When the king's charter is pronounced a 
 forgery, his royal prerogative abolished, the justice 
 of his decisions questioned, his pardon and his bounty 
 alike neglected and despised, then little remains save 
 the empty title of sovereign; and we are not sur- 
 prised that the annihilation of his power should be 
 followed by ^^iolence to his person. 
 
 In dealing with the question I have proposed, 
 I feel that we ought clearly to recognise the limita- 
 tions under which alone it can be considered. Of 
 these, some are common to all such investigations, 
 others peculiar to our own. To these preliminary 
 topics I have to invite your attention to-day. 
 
 I . Many modern writers refuse assent to a doc- 
 trine, however clearly stated in the Epistles, unless 
 they find it as clearly laid down in our Lord's own 
 discourses recorded in the Gospels. St Paul is too 
 logical. St John too subjective. St Peter too im- 
 petuous. Only St James is left. But, for consist- 
 ency's sake, they cannot retain him while rejecting 
 the other three. So they appeal to the Evangelists. 
 
 1—2 
 
4 SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [lECT. 
 
 But one of these, St John, is found to be so explicit 
 in his statements of doctrine, that his evidence must 
 be got rid of He is again found to be too subjec- 
 tive to be trustworthy. His Gospel, it is alleged, 
 was written long after the events which it records, 
 and the narrative of those events, and especially of 
 our Lord's words, is coloured and distorted by the 
 medium through which the Apostle looked back 
 upon them. Hence we are required to draw all our 
 materials for a life of the Founder of our relisfion 
 from the first three, or Synoptic Gospels, as they 
 are called'. In submitting to this demand, I would 
 not be understood for one moment to allow its jus- 
 tice. I have a conviction of the truth, the inspi- 
 ration, and the equal authority of the whole New 
 Testament and every part of it. Additional study 
 of the Book deepens this conviction. Increased 
 acquaintance with the allegations and arguments of 
 objectors serves also to deepen it. I cannot pro- 
 fess (as some profess) when treating of the topic 
 which I have proposed, that my mind is a tabula 
 rasa, free from all bias or prejudice. If to abandon 
 my most cherished hopes, to uproot my strongest 
 
 ^ Even aa regards the first tliree evidence, and there may be exaggera- 
 Gospels, the anonymous author of tion in its details ; but," &o. For a 
 Fere Homo tells us (p. lo), " Nothing fulk-r discussion of this strange state- 
 is more natural than that exaggera- nicnt see Lecture lir. It is quoted 
 tions and even inventions should be now to shew how meagre and how un- 
 mixed in our biographies with genuine certain is the residuum of historic fact 
 facts." Of the "story of ("hrlst's left us by this free handling of the 
 temptation," he says (p. 17), " It rests sieve, 
 indeed on no very strong external 
 
I.] DISQUALIFYING DOUBTS. 5 
 
 belief, to mistrust those spiritual intuitions which 
 to a Christian man are more certain than logical 
 conclusions — if this is to be free from prejudice, I 
 cannot pretend to be unprejudiced. Nor again do I 
 think that a Christian preacher ought to put himself 
 on the level of the doubter or the sceptic, in the 
 hope of winning such to the faith. If he has doubts 
 himself, he is so far disqualified for discharging the 
 office which he holds, while such doubts remain i. It 
 is the duty of the Christian minister to resolve the 
 doubts of others, not to engender them by parading 
 his own. True philosophy aims at certainty. It 
 regards a state of doubt as a morbid not a healthy 
 condition of mind. It seeks not to stifle doubt with 
 the 'ipse dixit' of authority, but to throw the light 
 of truth on what is obscure, and to confirm what is 
 wavering. I would, in passing, urge on the younger 
 members of our academic body the importance of 
 attaining to certainty on all the leading truths of 
 Christianity, before they take in hand to instruct 
 others either as writers or preachers. It is now too 
 much the fashion to entertain or to affect doubts 
 even on subjects in which from their very nature 
 no new discoveries can be made^ Do not confound 
 
 1 2 Cor. iv. r3. not, pursue in imparting it? On this, 
 
 2 "Amid the manifold improve- however men may delude themselves, 
 ments and developments of our time, like most of the schoolmen, with mere 
 who will say that any fresh light has terms, no step is gained by mere rea- 
 been thrown on the antecedent proba- soning without data : and our age has 
 bilities of revelation, or the methods discovered, it can discover, nothing. 
 which the Almighty might, or might Our best course will be found at last 
 
6 LIMITED KNOWLEDGE. [lECT. 
 
 partial knowledge or ignorance with uncertainty. 
 In reference to all the profounder truths of revela- 
 tion you must be content to say with St Paul, 
 '^ We know in part, and we prophesy in part ;" but 
 you may also say with him, '' I know in whom 1 
 have behoved," and with St Peter, ^' Lord Jesus, we 
 believe and are sure that thou art the Christ, the 
 Son of the living God." 
 
 Without, therefore, conceding the authority of 
 any part of the New Testament, or admitting that 
 jr doubt in matters of religion may be safely acqui- 
 esced in, I shall endeavour to shew from the Gospel 
 narrative that the Jesus, of whom the Evangelists 
 wrote, is very and eternal God. 
 
 Though, as has been observed already, attempts 
 have been made to set aside the historic truth of 
 St John's Gospel, yet I think that to yield to such 
 attempts would be to yield to the claims of a cre- 
 dulity from which an honest and inteUigent man 
 might well shrink. I will however make the con- 
 cession which the author of Ecce Homo^ has made, 
 
 to revert to the sound maxim, that in ^ This author has well said (Pref. 
 
 the things of God Fides prcccedit intel- to 5th ed. p. vii.), "The detection of 
 
 ledum: the maxim which — however discrepancies in the documents esta- 
 
 deiided by these writers under the Wishes a certain degree of independ- 
 
 name of "the religious view, quand ence in them, and thus gives weight 
 
 meme," or as an appeal to faith which to their agreement ; in particular the 
 
 at once does away with the character wide divergence in tone and subject- 
 
 of pliilosophy in the man that makes matter of the Fourth Gospel from the 
 
 it — doe.s in fact stand connected with other three affords a strong presump- 
 
 the highest intellectual development tion in favour of all statements in 
 
 of modern Europe." Mill, Mythical which it coincides with them." 
 Interpretation of the Gospels, p. 84, ed. 2. 
 
I.] ST JOHN'S GOSPEL. 7 
 
 and in the discussion of the question before us will 
 not appeal to the Fourth Gospel, ^'except in con- 
 firmation of statements made in the other Gospels," 
 or in cases ^' where its testimony seems in itself pro- 
 bable and free from the suspected peculiarities ^" 
 But while making this concession I am well aware 
 that it is one which many persons of moderate views 
 would repudiate. The author of Phases of Faith 
 tells us that the late Dr Arnold rested the main 
 strength of Christianity on the Gospel of John. 
 '' Arnold," he says, ''regarded John's Gospel as 
 abounding with smaller touches which marked the 
 eye-witness, and altogether to be the vivid and 
 simple picture of a divine reality undeformed by 
 credulous legend 2." Such was the opinion of one 
 who was well versed in this kind of criticism ; whose 
 eye had detected, and whose firm and fearless hand 
 had weeded out 'credulous legend' from the field of 
 Roman History 
 
 1 Preface to 5th edition, p. xii. tributes to him. This manner of in- 
 
 2 6th ed. p. 81. Contrast with cessantly preaching? and demonstrat- 
 this statement the reiterated contempt ing himself, this perpetual argumen- 
 thrown on St John's Gospel by M. tation, this stage-effect devoid of sim- 
 Reaan in his Introduction : "Far re- plicity, these long arguments after 
 moved from the simple, disinterested, each miracle ; these stiff and awkward 
 impersonal tone of the synoptics, the discourses, the tone of which is so 
 Gospel of John shews incessantly the often false and unequal, would not be 
 pre-occupation of the apologist, the tolerated by a man of taste compared 
 mental reservation of the sectarian, with the delightful sentences of the 
 the desire to prove a thesis, and to synoptics." Ibid. p. 19. 
 
 convince adversaries." P. 17, Eng, '^ All the arguments agcdnst the 
 
 ed. "I dare defy anyone to compose authenticity of St John's Gospel are 
 
 a Life of Jesus with any meaning, to be found in Bretschneider's work, 
 
 from the discourrfes which John at- Probahilia de Evanrjelii et Epistolarum 
 
8 TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. [lECT. 
 
 2. But if the Jesus whose claims we are to con- 
 sider is to be the Jesus of the Evangehsts, as dis- 
 tinguished from the Jesus whom Paul preached and 
 John loved, at least let us understand clearly the 
 limits of the documents which are the sources of 
 our information respecting Him. If our ground is 
 narrowed, at least it should be accurately defined. 
 One result of the critical activity brought to bear of 
 late years on the text of Scripture, has been to 
 produce in the minds of many who have no op- 
 portunity for such studies, an impression not only 
 that the Enghsh version is unsatisfactory, but that 
 great uncertainty attaches to the original text. They 
 hear of a mass of various readings, of certain passages 
 being pronounced spurious, the record of one or two 
 incidents more than suspected, and they conceive of 
 the New Testament as of some old picture, so tam- 
 pered with by being cleaned and repaired and re- 
 touched, that the traces of the painter's hand, and 
 the lines and colour of the original picture are lost 
 beyond recovery. And yet this is to do injustice both 
 to Scripture and to textual criticism. The work of the 
 critic when honestly done, has been to restore, not to 
 efface, to render secure, not to undermine, the sacred 
 text. I would compare that text to some grand cathe- 
 
 loannis, ApostoU, Indole ct Oriyine. wholly surrendered the geuuineuess 
 
 Tliough puhlished as long ago as of the first three Gospels, refers to the 
 
 1 820, it still furnishes weapons for Fourth as ' the Sanctuary and the 
 
 assailants of the fourth Gospel. Ou Truth.'" Tholuck, Introduction to 
 
 the other hand, " Lucke, who in Commentary on St John, § 6. 
 his history of early Christianity has 
 
I.] NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM. 9 
 
 dral erected by the pious munificence of a former age. 
 The fabric in its suhstaiitial parts has been maintained 
 by those who in succeeding times have had the 
 charge and the use of it. But the skill which reared 
 and adorned the edifice is not transmitted; and as 
 here a moulding decays and is dislodged, and there a 
 pinnacle falls to the ground, or the fair tracery of a 
 window crumbles or is mutilated, there is no cunning 
 hand to replace the stone as it was before. The gap is 
 not filled up, or is filled up with an unsightly mass of 
 common brick. But at length the study of ecclesias- 
 tical art is revived, and men think on the stones 
 of that noble Church, and it pitieth them to see it so 
 disfigured and defaced. And a skilful architect sets 
 himself to pick out the fragments from that heap 
 of long neglected rubbish, to compare the claims 
 of each portion to a place in such a wall or on such a 
 buttress. And as his labour of honest love proceeds, 
 guided and encouraged by others skilful and devoted 
 as himself, we see our grand Cathedral gradually 
 restored J i.e. brought back in all its details of grace 
 and beauty to its first condition; and we look not 
 upon an edifice of our own creation, but on that 
 glorious work which on the morning of its completion 
 gladdened the eye and the heart of the architect who 
 long centuries ago designed and built it. The labours 
 of critics have in like manner tended to restore the 
 text of the New Testament to the state in which it 
 left the hands of the inspired writers. And while, as 
 
10 GENERAL TRUTH OF THE GOSPELS. [leCT. 
 
 regards matters of detail, such as the forms or order 
 of words (for it is with such minutiae that textual 
 criticism chiefly concerns itself), each year of research 
 brings us nearer to an accurate text, those who are 
 employed in such research know better than other 
 students, that beneath the surface and ornament of 
 the building on which they are engaged, there is a 
 great fabric of substantial truth which the lapse of 
 centuries bas not availed to weaken or impair. They 
 know that while in other writings of the same age 
 as the New Testament, there are passages so corrupt, 
 that editors are compelled to abandon the Manu- 
 scripts and have recourse to conjecture, there is no 
 such instance to be found in the Gospels or the Epi- 
 stles. This is a fact, which however accounted for, 
 has always struck me as having an important bear- 
 ing on the results of textual criticism and on the 
 genuineness of the New Testament. 
 
 3. If then our copies of the Gospels may be re- 
 garded as approaching so near to the autograph, that 
 the difference is ever becoming smaller and smaller, 
 and may be practically neglected, the enquiry at once 
 suggests itself, ^ Are the accounts given of Jesus by 
 the Evangelists true and trustworthy biographies?' 
 To answer this question fully and completely would 
 be to repeat the arguments which from early days of 
 the Church to the present time have been adduced by 
 Christian apologists in refutation of attacks made on 
 the Gospel narrative. These attacks have varied 
 
I.] PROOF FROM EVIDENCES. 11 
 
 in outline with the ever-shifting modes of human 
 thought and the outward circumstances of the Church. 
 But one principle underlies all the various objections 
 which have been urged, whether by Celsus, by Paine, 
 by Hume, by Strauss, by Newman, or by Renan — 
 and that principle is an invincible repugnance to ad- 
 mit the possibility of a miracle. The difficulty of 
 eliminating the miraculous element has been felt to be 
 so great, that some modern biographers of Jesus have 
 found it necessary to draw largely on their imagi- 
 nation to supply the rents thus made in the simple 
 narrative from which they profess to derive their 
 information. The old, the hackneyed sophism is 
 still propagated as confidently as ever: 'It is not 
 contrary to experience that human testimony should 
 be false, but it is contrary to experience that a mira- 
 cle should be true.' Renan says, " In the name of 
 universal experience we banish miracle from history. 
 We do not say, * a miracle is impossible;' we say, 'up 
 to this time a miracle has never been proved \'" This 
 sophism (for it is nothing better) has been anticipated 
 and refuted by Paley in his work on the Evidences of 
 Christianity — a work, which, amidst many changes in 
 our course of education, has been wisely retained by the 
 University as a subject which every student is required 
 to read. To this, among other causes, we may doubtless 
 attribute the sobriety which has generally characterised 
 the religious investigations of Cambridge men. To say 
 
 ^ Introd. p. 29. 
 
12 MIRACULOUS ELEMENT. [lECT. 
 
 this, is not to ascribe to Paley's treatise freedom from 
 defects. We only desire that it may retain its place 
 in our course of study till a better book is written \ 
 
 But it may be questioned whether, after all, the 
 miracles of the New Testament constitute the chief 
 obstacle to the acceptance of the narrative as histo- 
 rical. It is not merely the supernatural, of which the 
 miracles are the exhibition, at which offence is really 
 taken. The real 'stone of stumbling' is the super- 
 human which is displayed in the life and character 
 and acts of Jesus, and which He is represented to 
 have claimed as attaching to Him. Men will not 
 have this man to reign over them. Feeling that the 
 Jesus of the Gospels occupies a moral and spiritual 
 stage far above themselves, they have either sought 
 with Arius and Socinus and Professor Newman to 
 bring Him down to their own level, or with Strauss 
 and the followers of Hegel on the continent and some 
 of their more cautious imitators in England, they have 
 elevated humanity into a Christ, raising man's nature 
 to that to which no individual could be supposed to 
 attain. In one word, if we will honestly probe the 
 various infidel and semi-infidel theories which have 
 been propounded since the beginning of the Christian 
 era, we shall find the real disease to be the pride of 
 man's heart refusing to own a superior — the sin by 
 which he at first lost Paradise and which evermore 
 hinders his return. This pride of humanity has been 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note (A). 
 
I.] TESTIMONY. 13 
 
 variously developed. It has shielded its attacks upon 
 Christianity, now by a denial of miracles — a refusal to 
 allow the operation of any law which man cannot 
 trace; at another time, by seeking for moral defects ^ 
 
 and imperfections in the character of Jesus; at an- 
 other, by regarding the human race as the truest efflux 
 and manifestation of the Divinity, the only real 
 corporeal Christ, animated by and at one with an all 
 pervading Deity. But the tendency is one and the 
 same. And if we are satisfied that such is the case, 
 we can account for the rejection of a narrative, which, 
 if only as deserving of credit as ordinary biographies, 
 requires our belief not only in the miraculous and the 
 supernatural, but in the superhuman too — a belief in 
 One who being in the form of man was yet more than 
 man, and who though truly man claimed to be the 
 eternal uncreated God. We thus convict objectors of 
 prejudice which is fatal to the impartial estimate 
 of the value of testimony. But on the other hand 
 it has never been shewn that the four Evangelists 
 were not '^competent judges of the facts to which 
 they give concurrent testimony," or that they were 
 all ^' alike actually under some indirect influence in 
 giving it." And, to adopt the words of Bp. Butler, 
 '^ Till this is made out, the natural laws of human 
 action require that testimony be admitted'." 
 
 4. In conducting our present enquiry, it may be 
 necessary, especially in this place, to remind ourselves 
 
 ^ Butler, Analogy, p. ii. c. 7. 
 
14 NATURE OF PROOF. [LECT. 
 
 of the nature of the proof v^hich alone is applicable to 
 questions of this kind. We cannot demonstrate the 
 Godhead of Jesus, as we establish a proposition in 
 pure mathematics; and if we could, the result for 
 moral and spiritual ends would in itself be altogether 
 useless. In abstract science a proposition not only is 
 either true or false, but it is apprehended as such by 
 all men alike, whose previous training enables them 
 to understand the reasoning by which it is establish- 
 ed. In physics, in moral philosophy, and in natural 
 theology, where the steps of the argument are not 
 always strict logical deductions, but often only analo- 
 gies, not necessary conclusions but probabilities, 
 these steps will afford secure or insecure foothold to 
 each traveller, according as the analogies are more or 
 less clear to his apprehension, the probabilities more 
 or less satisfactory to his judgment. We had a re- 
 markable illustration of this truth in the discussion 
 raised a few years ago by the treatise entitled the 
 Plurality of Worlds, and the replies which it pro- 
 voked. It was an instructive spectacle — that yLyav- 
 TofiaxicL in the lofty regions of cosmical speculation — 
 so interesting, so inconclusive. One combatant af- 
 firming what the other tried to disprove, and men 
 equally happy whichever prevailed — not less so, if 
 neither theory could be established. But in ques- 
 tions of revealed religion the case is very different. 
 All the doctrines of Christianity are based upon facts, 
 and our behef in those facts rests upon testimony. If 
 
I.] PREJUDICE AND PREPOSSESSIONS. 15 
 
 the concurrent testimony of four honest men is wor- 
 thy of credit, we have only to ascertain what their 
 evidence is, and accept it forthwith. 
 
 And yet we know that this is not an account of 
 the whole matter. We know that to accept the 
 testimony of the Evangelists, where they agree, will 
 lead us on to conclusions of infinitely greater concern 
 to us, individually, than all the achievements of 
 human genius and labour put together. When we 
 set ourselves to weigh the evidence for the Godhead 
 of Jesus, we need not to be told that our task differs 
 as widely from an ordinary historical investigation, 
 as the position of the presiding judge in a great 
 will-case differs from that of the claimant to the 
 estate. We feel that there are results of our enquiry 
 (more or less remote) which are interwoven with 
 our duties, our happiness, our hopes; and however 
 we may boast of our impartiality, we cannot deliver a 
 verdict on the grounds of objective testimony only. To 
 this must be added the facts of hereditary belief, and 
 early prepossessions, of which the influence upon our 
 minds is as subtle and as penetrating as that of the 
 atmosphere upon our bodily organization. Conscious 
 that these prepossessions are in favour of the claims 
 of Christ, conscious of a bias in that direction, men 
 not unnaturally lean, cl priori to the other side. Some 
 do this from a conviction of the importance of the 
 issue — some from sheer honesty of purpose — some, 
 and especially our younger countrymen, from the 
 
7 
 
 16 DANGER OF INDECISION. [lECT. 
 
 promptings of a chivalrous impulse (not to be con- 
 demned if rightly directed) which stirs them to espouse 
 in debate the weaker or less popular side. The result 
 of these mingled, these conflicting influences on 
 religious investigations is apparent in the indecision, 
 the acquiescent uncertainty, which characterises so 
 much of our modern thought, so marks the temper 
 of nominal Christians in these latter days. I have 
 already said that there is no logical resting-place 
 between belief in Jesus as God and the distinct 
 renunciation of His claims. This cannot remain an 
 open question with any reasonable or conscientious 
 man. For if to worship God is a duty and to worship 
 the creature is a sin, it is important to decide whether 
 He whom the best and most highly civilized men have 
 worshiped for eighteen centuries, is or is not God ; 
 in other words, whether the worship of Christendom 
 during all that time has been idolatrous or not. And 
 while to refuse to worship God is an act of wicked 
 rebellion against Him, to refuse to worship the 
 creature at any cost is a plain religious duty. Upon 
 such questions as these I cannot believe from what 
 I see of the constitution of nature, and know of the 
 history of our race, that God intended any of us to 
 be in doubt. And if we can attain to certainty, 
 indecision is criminal, is perilousV Where there is 
 
 ^ "If," says Bp. Butler (^ ?ta/o^y, Lord, our Saviour, and our God: no 
 
 p. ii. c. i), "Christ be indeed tlie Me- one can say what may follow, not only 
 
 diator between God and man, i. e. if the obstinate but the careless disregard 
 
 Christianity be true— if He be our to Him in those high relations." 
 
I.] WISDOM FROM ABOVE. 17 
 
 a real — and tlierefore an humble — desire in any heart 
 to know the truth, I cannot doubt that the beneficent 
 Author of our being, who is the source of all wisdom 
 will lead that heart to recognise and to embrace the 
 truth. ^^If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of 
 God who giveth to all liberally. Only let him ask 
 in faith, nothing doubting" the goodness or power 
 of the Most High. It w^as with the hope of helping 
 such persons to a right conclusion that this Lecture- 
 ship was established, no less than to confute the 
 assailants of our Holy Religion. My object will be, 
 in the three succeeding Lectures, to state concisely 
 some of the grounds on which we may rest a defence 
 of this doctrine of the Deity of Jesus Christ. The 
 limits prescribed to me do not admit of a full dis- 
 cussion of the subject; and I think it may be more 
 profitable to set before you positive arguments in 
 favour of the doctrine, than merely to examine and 
 answer objections. At the same time such objections 
 will not be wholly lost sight of, especially those which 
 have been advanced by recent writers, or are sug- 
 gested by the tone of modern criticism and the 
 circumstances of modern society 
 
 It is no new edifice that we seek to construct. 
 We would but maintain the old, and encourage men 
 to dwell securely beneath its shelter, by shewing the 
 strength of its foundations and the rock w hereon it 
 is built. It is at least certain that the large, the 
 overwhelming majority of the followers of Christ — the 
 p. H. 2 
 
18 OBJECTS CONTEMPLATED. [lECT. 
 
 members of that unique society, called tlie Church, 
 which has existed so long, and wrought such won- 
 ders in the world — have regarded Jesus of Nazareth 
 as the Founder of Christianity, and have acknow- 
 ledged Him to be God and Lord. Into this city 
 of God we were all of us admitted at our baptism: 
 of its means of grace, its high privileges, its free- 
 dom, its citizenship, we are all by profession par- 
 takers. Thankful shall I be if I am able to shew 
 that there are reasonable grounds for clinging fast 
 to that which Catholic Christendom has ever held — 
 that which we learnt at our mothers' knees and from 
 our fathers' lips — that which we have been taught 
 in catechism and creed — which we have expressed 
 in prayer and confession and eucharistic hymn — 
 that as Jesus of Nazareth is the builder of our city, 
 " its builder and maker is God." Far more thankful 
 shall I be if this attempt, I will not say to establish, 
 but honestly to set forth the claims of our Divine 
 Lord, shall be the means of removing a painful 
 doubt from any heart, or of rousing one amongst us 
 to see that the question of those claims must be set- 
 tled by each one of us for himself; and that in this 
 matter apathy and neglect are sinful. Greater still 
 will be the gain, if we are all of us led to rest our 
 faith so firmly on the broad platform of the incon- 
 trovertible, objective, historic truths of Christianity, 
 that no d priori reasonings, and no critical exceptions 
 can overthrow or even shake it. But above, infi- 
 
T.] HUMILITY ESSENTIAL. 19 
 
 nitely above, all these results, there is one for which 
 I pray, that our study of Holy Scripture may not 
 only satisfy our judgment, but deepen our inner 
 conviction that Jesus is very God — that the voice of 
 Scripture without us and the voice of the Spirit 
 within, may testify to the same truth in unison so 
 perfect that we may never detect a discord between 
 them. As the grounds of our belief become more 
 clear to the understanding may our experience of 
 the truth become deeper and more habitual — so that 
 trusting in Jesus of Nazareth as our Saviour, and 
 adoring and serving Him as our God, we may each 
 one have ^' the witness in himself"! 
 
 Every science has its axioms. These axioms are 
 truths so simple and elementary, that though inca- 
 pable of proof, they are intuitively admitted and 
 accepted. Till they are so admitted, no demonstra- 
 tion is possible. Now religion has its axioms, and 
 this one is common to natural and revealed religion, 
 that an humble teachable posture of mind is the 
 proper attitude of a creature towards the Creator, 
 of the finite towards the Infinite. If this is gene- 
 rally true, it is more obviously so of those investi- 
 gations which concern the being and nature of God, 
 and our own relation to Him. A childlike heart, 
 a deep sense of ignorance, a desire to be taught by 
 God, continual prayer for light and guidance, these 
 are conditions of progress in religious knowledge. 
 At least they are the conditions imposed by Jesus 
 
 2—2 
 
20 HUMILITY ESSENTIAL. [lECT. 
 
 Himself on those who would understand His doc- 
 trine. In opposition to this a modern writer tells 
 us, '^ Displaying before us abundantly the materials 
 of judgment, He (the Supremely Wise) elicits our 
 power; never commanding as to become little chil- 
 dren, but always inviting our minds to grow up into 
 manhood^." A profligate life is not a more certain 
 hindrance to the attainment of this knowledge than 
 a proud, self-satisfied, self-sufficing spirit. The meek 
 will God guide in judgment, and the meek He will 
 teach His way. This humility of heart, this wil- 
 lingness to be taught, has been most conspicuous in 
 men of the greatest intellect. Important in the pro- 
 secution of all scientific or literary study, in religion 
 it is essential. It constitutes that moral receptivity, 
 without which we have no right to look for progress 
 or success. If genuine, it will take us often from 
 our study-table to our knees, and in patient waiting 
 on the Fountain of all wisdom, looking up to our 
 heavenly Father for the promised teaching of the 
 Holy Spirit, we shall acquire better and truer lore 
 than books or teachers can supply. God will reveal 
 His Son not only to us, but in us, and we shall find 
 in the realities of personal experimental Christianity 
 that to which all true theology bears witness, and 
 without which the most elaborate system of evi- 
 dence, or the most plausible of mythic theories, or 
 the most sentimental dreams of religious fiction, are 
 
 * Prof. Newman's Dlxrorn'se of/ahiKt Hero makiiKj, p. 25, iS6^. 
 
I.] HUMILITY REWARDED. 21 
 
 alike practically worthless. It is as unphilosophical 
 as it is unchristian to regard God as the author of 
 moral influences, and not as the source of intellectual 
 light. They who most deeply feel their dependence 
 on Him for everything will penetrate farthest under 
 His guidance into the mysteries of the seen and the 
 unseen world. Frail, feeble, foolish creatures as they 
 are, He takes His children by the hand and leads 
 them into the very adytum of truth, that they may 
 ^' dwell in the secret place of the Most High." And 
 there they learn the things of which their Master 
 spoke when He said, " I thank thee, O Father, Lord 
 of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things 
 from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them 
 unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good 
 in Thy sight!" 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE 8INLESBXESS OF JESUS. 
 
 JOHN VII. 12. 
 
 And there luas much murmuring among the people concerning 
 Him: for some said. He is a good man : others said, Nay, 
 hut He deceiveth the j^eople, 
 
 '^In what single moral or religious quality Jesus 
 was superior to Paul, I find myself unable to say*." 
 Such is the deliberate statement of one who has 
 told us that ^' the beginning and foundation" of his 
 faith in years long since past was '^ an unhesitating, 
 unconditional acceptance of whatever was found in 
 the Bible." In the course of less than fifty years 
 he has learnt that the picture of Jesus in the fourth 
 Gospel is "essentially irreconcileable with that in 
 the three which precede, and is neither trustworthy 
 nor credible 2." He has further arrived at the con- 
 clusion that "into the narratives and discourses of 
 Jesus so much of legendary error has crept, that wo 
 may write or wrangle about Him for ever';" and 
 having thus spent his great jiowcrs of mind, and 
 wellnigh half a century of study in learning to dis- 
 
 ^ Newman's Dlnrunrsc arjaindllcro- 2 pjiascs of Faith, p. i, 6th cd. I S6o. 
 
 maklnr/, p. 28, 1864. 3 Jjiscourse, p. 28. 
 
LECT. II.] UNFAIRNESS OF OBJECTORS. 23 
 
 believe the four Evangelists, from whom alone (on 
 his own shewing) he can know anything of Jesus, 
 he tells the world that he really cannot say in what 
 single moral or religious quality Jesus was superior 
 to Paul. If the Gospels are false, how can he know 
 enough of Jesus to compare Him with Paul ? Such 
 criticism is suicidal, and its author, while thinking 
 himself safely perched in the tree of knowledge, has 
 really been cutting through the bough which sup- 
 ports him. If, on the other hand, the narratives of 
 the Gospel are in any sense historically true, then 
 I hope to shew that they record the life of One in 
 whom every ^^ moral and religious quality" (to adopt I v 
 Mr Newman's phrase) was developed in perfection, j 
 and who therefore can in respect of these qualities 
 be compared with Paul, or any other of His fol- 
 lowers, only as the perfect with the imperfect, the 
 infinite with the finite. 
 
 It might seem that statements so extreme as 
 that I have quoted are unworthy of refutation or 
 even of notice. And yet it is instructive to observe 
 the want of argumentative justice which they in- 
 volve — the intellectual blindness, or perverted moral 
 sense, of which they are the offspring. No fair com- 
 parison can be instituted between the religious qua- 
 lities of Jesus and Paul without a reference to the 
 genuine writings of the latter which have come down 
 to us. From a man's correspondence we may learn 
 less of the incidents of his life than from a formal 
 
24 ST Paul's self-estimate. [lect. 
 
 biography, but we learn more of the man. Now 
 from St Paul's Epistles we gather the following 
 particulars: that at a certain period in his life he 
 had a vision of Jesus which produced an entire 
 change in his religious conduct and character : that 
 whereas he had previously regarded Jesus as an im- 
 postor, he thenceforward worshiped Him as God, 
 devoted his energies exclusively to preaching Jesus 
 and the resurrection, and described himself as having 
 no hope, or motive, or happiness, which was not in- 
 volved in this new, but powerful faith. Nay, he 
 assures us of his attachment to Jesus in terms so 
 strong as might have laid him open to a charge of 
 extravagant hero-worshij), had we not his own de- 
 claration that 'Hhe Jesus of Nazareth," born of 
 the seed of David according to the flesh, was " over 
 all, God blessed for ever." To compare then the 
 religious character of St Paul with that of Jesus 
 Christ, is to institute a comparison from which the 
 Apostle himself would have shrunk with utter ab- 
 horrence. Whether he was rio-ht or wrono^ in his 
 estimate of their respective moral qualities, such 
 passages as the following clearly shew what that 
 estimate was, *^ Christ Jesus came into the world 
 to save sinners, of whom I am chief." " God hath 
 made Ilim who knew no sin to be sin for us, that 
 we might be made the righteousness of God in 
 llim." St Paul regarded himself as a sinner, and 
 Jesus as free from all taint of sin ; himself as needino^ 
 
H.] disciples' estimate of JESUS. 25 
 
 an atonement by reason of his sin, Jesus as making 
 that atonement by virtue of His sinlessness. And 
 if it should be said that St Paul displayed the virtue 
 of humility in his estimate of himself, we can have 
 no high opinion of his ^'religious qualities," if his 
 estimate of Jesus was wrong. For surely to wor- 
 ship a sinful man as God is not religion, but blind 
 superstition and idolatry. 
 
 The comparison of Jesus, as to His moral and 
 religious character, with any mere man, is of course 
 only possible for those who doubt or deny the Deity 
 of our Blessed Lord. But the result must in every 
 case be such as that at which we have just arrived 
 in the case of St Paul. If there is one fact of 
 Christian history which we may regard as beyond 
 question, it is this — that of the first followers of 
 Christ, the four of whose lives we have any consider- 
 able particulars, St Luke, St Peter, St Paul, and 
 St John, firmly believed in the Godhead of Jesus. 
 Three of the four have distinctly stated that belief, 
 and have also ascribed to Him as man, moral and 
 religious perfection. Indeed in the mind of a pious 
 Jew such perfection was absolutely inseparable from 
 the object of his worship. And while these four 
 writers would one and all have confessed that ^^ if we 
 say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves," they 
 would have considered it equally an act of self- 
 deception to attribute sinlessness to any other, save 
 to Jesus of Nazareth. Could all be so Wind as to 
 
26 ''holt, harmless, undefiled." [lect. 
 
 have overlooked their Master's imperfections, if he 
 had any, or so dishonest, as to have denied their 
 existence ? To believe this is to display credulity 
 worthy of an infidel. 
 
 But dropping comparison, let us turn to the 
 Synoptic Gospels, and see how far this belief in the 
 moral perfection of Jesus is supported by the narra- 
 tives of His life. It is not a little remarkable, that 
 those who in modern times have denied the human 
 perfection of our Lord, have directed their attacks 
 not against His personal character or private con- 
 duct, but against His official acts and the doctrine 
 which He taught. They have felt that there is 
 nothing in the Gospel narrative to bear out the 
 charge which the Evangelists honestly record as 
 having been urged during our Lord's ministry, that 
 He was ''a gluttonous man and a winebibber," 
 addicted to sensual pleasures and depraved associ- 
 ates. All must admit that to unsullied purity of 
 outward life, the negative side of virtue. He added 
 wondrous goodness in its active form of beneficence ; 
 that not useless and ascetic austerity, but noble 
 unselfishness and self-sacrifice were the law of His 
 being. As St John tells us (and we may credit his 
 report, for it agrees in substance with the reports of 
 the Synoptists), Jesus put the fearless challenge to 
 those who had abundant opportunities of observing 
 Him, and whose malice prompted them to watch 
 Him closely, " Which of you convinceth me of 
 
II.] ^'without blemish and without spot." 27 
 
 sin?" The challenge was not accepted. At least 
 the Evangelist says nothing of any reply on the part 
 of the Jews, save the general one, that He was 
 ''a Samaritan, and had a devil." This abuse was 
 doubtless called forth, not by any flaw which they 
 had detected in the life or actions or spirit of 
 Jesus, but by the rebuke which our Lord had just 
 administered. 
 
 It is most important to establish the absolute 
 freedom from sin which characterized our Blessed 
 Lord as the Son of Man ; for if this be admitted, we 
 shall have less difficulty in accepting His teaching 
 as authoritative, and bowing reverently to His 
 claims of Messiahship and Deity. We shall not 
 then, with Benan, regard Him as conniving at the 
 false ideas w^hich His hearers entertained on the 
 most momentous subjects, or speak of Him as 
 emj)loying like Joan of Arc an '^ innocent artifice^" 
 to gain adherents. So exclusive has been the atten- 
 tion bestowed of late years on the human life of our 
 Lord, that men have begun to regard Him as alto- 
 gether such an one as themselves. Forgetting His 
 perfect Godhead in the close study of His humanity, 
 they have passed on imperceptibly to conclusions 
 which cannot consist with a belief in His Godhead 
 at all, or even with a belief in His human goodness. 
 It is in this doctrine of the sinlessness of the man 
 Christ Jesus that we have the one key which will 
 
 ^ Life of Jems, p, T33, Eng. ed. 
 
 y 
 
 u 
 
28 EVIDENCE OF SYNOPTISTS. [lECT. 
 
 unlock the mystery of that unique human life. 
 Accept the doctrine, and all becomes, I will not say 
 clear, for great and profound is the mystery of 
 godliness, but consistent and harmonious. Reject 
 it, and the narratives of the Evangelists become 
 strangely contradictory and confused, and must be 
 ruthlessly tampered with, before even the wretched 
 fictions can be produced which have been offered to 
 the Church of the 1 9th century as ' Lives of Jesus.' 
 
 Let us test this doctrine by the phenomena of 
 the first three Gospels. And, first, we observe 
 that Jesus is represented by all three Evangelists 
 as claiming the power of working miracles. The 
 question is not whether He actually wrought them 
 or not, but whether He openly asserted or at least 
 tacitly admitted His ability to perform them. If 
 we believe the miraculous power of Jesus, we shall 
 be led by the old route of evidential proof to the con- 
 clusion which I seek to establish. But I am now 
 endeavouring to establish it by a method more in 
 accordance with the temper and the thought of the 
 present day. I am willing to suppose, for argu- 
 ment's sake, that the theory of Strauss or that of 
 Kenan is correct, and that the fact of the miracles 
 must be abandoned. Even if this be so, at least it 
 is certain that the Evangelists not only ascribed to 
 Jesus miraculous powers, but that they represent 
 Him as claiming for Himself such powers. These 
 claims are of such various kinds, and repeated under 
 
II.] OUR lord's own claims. 29 
 
 so many different circumstances, that we cannot 
 doubt that whether Jesus believed that He pos- 
 sessed superhuman^ powers or not, He permitted, 
 He encouraged, He taught, He commanded others 
 to beheve it. Both St Matthew and St Luke record 
 the mission of the two disciples of John the Baptist, 
 who came to Christ with the question, ''Art thou 
 He that should come, or do we look for another?" 
 "In the same hour," we are told, ''Jesus cured 
 many of their infirmities, and plagues, and of evil 
 spirits; and unto many that were blind He gave 
 sight'." It has always seemed to me extraordinary 
 that any one could explain away the reality of 
 miracles, wrought in such presence and in answer 
 to such a question. But assuming that they were 
 only apparent, that Jesus was a clever physician 
 or mesmerist, and able to Vork a multitude of in- 
 stantaneous cures ; or that, as others will have it, 
 no real cures were effected ; still if there be any 
 fragment of historic truth in the narrative at all, 
 Jesus sent back the messengers of John to their 
 master with a report, not that one miracle but that 
 many and divers miracles had been wrought before 
 their eyes. It is important to notice the necessity 
 of this conclusion. The question was not, "Art 
 thou Elias, the forerunner?" but "Art thou the 
 
 * I prefer this word to superna- some undiscovered natural law. 
 iural; "because it may be that miracles ^ Luke vii. 21 ; comp. Matt, xi, 5. 
 
 are only the result of the operation of 
 
30 CLAIM OF MIRACULOUS POWERS. [lECT. 
 
 Messiah?" 2t) el 6 ep^oi^evos \ And a report of won- 
 derful natural cures would have been no answer 
 to that question at all. If Jesus was the Messiah, 
 our present discussion is superfluous, for His moral 
 perfection is bound up in His Messiahship^ But 
 if He was not the Christ whom John expected, and 
 yet sent to John a message calculated to deceive 
 him on the subject, it is hard to reconcile such 
 disingenuousness with the general truthfulness of 
 Jesus. It is worse than idle to say that our Lord 
 practised an ''innocent artifice." Must we not 
 regard such miserable criticism as the result of a 
 philosophy which, while affecting to set free the 
 intellect, enslaves and debases the moral faculty ^ ? 
 The notice of this incident by M. Renan is very 
 meagre and superficial, indeed it w^ould have been 
 dangerous for him to analyse it fairly. But he 
 admits that the works which Jesus enumerated 
 and performed were tliose which ought to charac- 
 terize the coming of the kingdom of God. And 
 yet, if that kingdom be a kingdom of truth, how can 
 we believe that the King at the very outset practised 
 deception — a pious fraud, forsooth ! on His impri- 
 
 ^ See Dr Reinke's Disscfiatio de presumption in making free with God's 
 
 Divina McssicB Nalurain LlbrisSacris naane, and sa3'ing (virtually), 'Thus 
 
 Veteris Testamenti. Monasteri West- saith the Lord,' when the Lord hath 
 
 phaliorum, 1836. not spoken." Abp. Whately's 17/scc^ 
 
 ^ " A truly pious and at the same lancous Remains, p, 215. Comp. some 
 
 time truly ui)iight man will regard a forcible remarks to the same effect 
 
 pious fraud as superadding to the in Dr Mill's work on the Mythical 
 
 general atrocity of falsehood the addi- Interpretation of the Gospels, p. 61, 
 
 tional giiilt of profane and imjnous ed. 2. 
 
II.] CLAIM OF MIRACULOUS POWP^RS. 31 
 
 soned herald and forerunner ? This was not a weak- 
 ness incident to human imperfection. It was fraud 
 practised without any such object as even a Jesuit 
 moralist would have approved of, and by One from 
 whose general character it was w^holly alien'. Nor 
 was this a solitary instance. In the case of the 
 woman whose issue of blood was healed at the word 
 of Jesus, as St Matthew relates the incident, or by 
 the touch of His garment, as related by St Mark, 
 two particulars are to be noticed, ist, that the wo- 
 man regarded Him as endowed with superhuman 
 powers ; and, 2ndly, that so far from disclaiming such 
 powers, our Lord ascribed the w^oman's cure to this 
 very belief on her part *. ''Thy faith hath made thee 
 whole." It is beside the purpose to say that faith in 
 the skill of a physician is acknowledged to be condu- 
 cive to the recovery of the sick. Jesus never pre- 
 tended to be a mere physician. It was as a teacher 
 of morals and reliofion that He demanded the sub- 
 mission and the allegiance of mankind. And His 
 character as a moral teacher would have been over- 
 thrown, had those whom He healed been able after- 
 wards to say, " The Master who cured our bodies 
 cared nothing for our souls. We believed a lie, 
 and He told us that such belief was the means by 
 
 ^ In addition to the passage already ter will not dare to leave any one in 
 
 quoted from the Remains of the late darkness whom he is able to enlighten ; 
 
 Abp. Whately, there is one so charac- or to practise or to connive at any- 
 
 teristic, and withal so pertinent, that thing of a pious fraud on the ground 
 
 I cannot forbear to subjoin it: "A of a supposed expediency." p. 376. 
 truly honest and conscientious minis- 
 
J 
 
 32 OTHER CLAIMS OF JESUS. [lECT. 
 
 which we were restored to health." The same remarks 
 apply to the cure of the two blind men recorded by 
 St Matthew (ix. 27, &c.) and to many other instances. 
 
 If we had not St John's Gospel, we should yet 
 gather from the other Evangelists that Jesus, so far 
 from disclaiming superhuman power, so far from 
 denying (as St Peter denied') that by His own 
 power or holiness He had wrought wonders among 
 the people, intended His miracles to be o-jy/meFa, 
 tokens and credentials, of His Divine nature and 
 ofSce. If He was sinless, we shall have no difficulty 
 in reconciling such claims with His supposed cha- 
 racter. But if He was not absolutely free from sin, 
 if He was not, while sharing man's nature, exempt 
 from man's moral imperfections, we are driven to 
 a conclusion which must be fatal to all confidence 
 in Him as a teacher or as a guide. 
 
 But again, unless Jesus was sinless, we must not 
 only believe that He habitually practised and en- 
 couraged deception in reference to His own claims, 
 but that He was influenced by ihe worldly vanity 
 and ambition which He so strongly condemned in 
 others. He who forbade His disciples to assume or 
 to bear the title of Master, assigned this as the reason 
 of the prohibition, that He was their one and only 
 Master and Lord. Had He stopped here, we might 
 have acquitted Him of vanity. We might have re- 
 garded this self-assertion as justifiable in a great 
 
 ' Acts iii. 12. 
 
II.] CLAIM OF MESSIAHSHIP. 33 
 
 religious reformer, the founder of a new religious 
 system. But Jesus claimed to be more tlian Master. 
 St Matthew tells that when to our Lord's enquiry, 
 ^^ Whom say ye that I am ?" Peter answered, "Thou 
 art the Christ, the Son of the living God," Jesus did 
 not correct him as being mistaken. He did not say, 
 '^ Your attachment to me has blinded your judgment. 
 I am not the Christ." Far, very far from it. This 
 was his answer, "Blessed art thou, Simon, Barjona; 
 for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, 
 but my Father which is in heaven." The same 
 Evangelist records the interview between Jesus and 
 the mother of Zebedee's children. She came to Jesus 
 and asked Him to grant that her two sons might sit 
 the one on His riofht hand and the other on His 
 left in His kingdom. His reply is unfortunately 
 rendered in the Authorized English version. By the 
 omission of the words in italics, which are inserted 
 to the prejudice of the sense, it will run thus, That 
 which you ask " is not mine to give save to those for 
 whom it is prepared of my Father." Now if we 
 suppose with M. Benan that in this, as in man}^ 
 similar instances, our Lord acted bond fide, that He 
 really fancied Himself to be Messiah the Prince, of 
 whom Daniel had prophesied, and for whom the Jews 
 were lookino: — if we assume that ''the admiration of 
 His disciples carried Him away'," that He was lifted 
 
 1 Life nf Jesuit, English e<l. p. 83. 
 P. II. 3 
 
 / 
 
34 OUR lord's death voluntary. [lect. 
 
 on the wave of circumstances, and stranded on these 
 hio'h pretensions without aim or effort of His own — 
 we have before us the strange yet inevitable conclusion, 
 that One whose great characteristic was lowliness 
 and humility was betrayed into the habitual and 
 systematic indulgence of a pitiable vanity by the 
 adulation of His own followers. And that this vanity 
 should have still been the ruling passion when He 
 stood in the high-priest's palace and in Pilate's 
 judgment-hall, when all His followers had forsaken 
 Him, and one had betrayed Him and one had denied 
 Him, that danger and suffering did not dissipate it, 
 but that it retained possession of Him to the last— 
 this involves an inconsistency which may make 
 us doubt the reality of the portrait thus presented, 
 or moral weakness, which, however suited to the 
 character of the Arabian impostor, would be fatal to 
 the character which Christians ascribe to the Founder 
 of their religion. 
 
 In one other and most important particular we 
 have to choose between accepting the doctrine for 
 which I contend, and admitting the truth of a 
 charge which (if established) would entirely destroy 
 the moral value of our Lord's death. It has been 
 often urged, sometimes openly and sometimes by 
 implication against Jesus, that by needlessly pro- 
 voking opposition and hostility He threw away 
 His life. This charge has been clearly stated by 
 the writer to whom reference has been often made 
 
Il] self-sacrifice of JESUS. 35 
 
 already ^ He asserts with truth that all Christendora 
 has always believed that the death of Jesus was 
 voluntarily incurred. He points out that when Jesus 
 resolved to go up to Jerusalem He was warned 
 by His disciples of His danger ; but so far w^as He 
 from being blind to it, that He distinctly announced 
 to them that He knew He should die in Jerusalem 
 the shameful death of a malefactor. On His arrival 
 in the suburbs His first act was to ride into the city 
 amidst the acclamations of the multitude in order to 
 exhibit Himself as having a just right to the throne 
 of David. He thus gave a handle to imputations of 
 intended treason. He provoked the indignation of 
 the magistrates and others by turning the traffickers 
 out of the temple. He hurled terrible denunciations 
 against priests and scribes and influential Pharisees 
 and rulers. And when He had thus incurred the 
 rage of His own countrymen so that they thirsted for 
 His life, and had given colour to the charge of 
 political rebellion. He put Himself deliberately into ', 
 the power of His enemies, and knowing that His i 
 hour was come and who it was that should betray ' 
 Him, He sought and found death. 
 
 If this conduct of Jesus be fairly weighed in the 
 balance of human ethics, most men will sav with 
 Professor Newman, that it was neither laudable nor 
 justifiable, but far otherwise; and apart from the 
 
 P liases of Fa till, p. 159. 
 
 3—2 
 
 y 
 
J 
 
 36 SELF-SACRiFlCE OF JESUS. [lECT. 
 
 gross moral delinquency which must dethrone Him 
 from His seat as a great religious teacher, we detect 
 once more such inconsistency as to throw discredit 
 on the whole truth of the Gospel narratives. That 
 He w^ho refused at the devil's bidding to cast Him- 
 self from the pinnacle of the temple^ w^ho eluded 
 the murderous hands of the men of Nazareth, who 
 more than once sought safety from His countrymen's 
 anger in flight, and who in the very hour of His ap- 
 prehension assured His followers that He had at 
 His command more than twelve legions of angels \ — 
 that He should voluntarily provoke a shameful death 
 at the early age of little more than thirty years, 
 this involves an inconsistency which might shake 
 our faith in the historic truth of the Gospels alto- 
 gether. We should be required to believe in a series 
 of psychological marvels which will tax our credulity 
 far more than those miraculous accounts w4iich were 
 believed by Bacon and Newton, but, without fresh 
 data, are neglected as impossible by some modern 
 savans. We must believe that Jesus of Nazareth 
 was a man of the most simple truth-loving character, 
 wdio yet practised habitual systematic deception on 
 His followers ; that being eminently unworldly and 
 unselfish, His whole heart was filled and His acts 
 prompted by vanity and hollow ambition; that 
 knowing better than other men the value and the 
 
 ^ Matt. xxvi. ^^. 
 
11.] ONLY ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION. 37 
 
 mystery of life, and feeling more deeply than other 
 men His moral responsibility, He purposely rushed 
 on a death which he might have avoided. We must 
 believe further that those who knew Him best, and 
 who have united with Him in giving its moral tone 
 and standard to Christendom, regarded such a cha- 
 racter and life as morally perfect, and that from this 
 source of falsehood and vanity and violence have 
 flowed streams of truth and righteousness and peace 
 which have for eighteen centuries purified and re- 
 freshed a sick and weary world. 
 
 From such conclusions we can only escape by 
 one path, that trodden by those best qualified to be 
 our guides. All the writers of the New Testament 
 without exception believed in the moral perfection, 
 the entire sinlessness of Jesus of Nazareth. With 
 the higher nature which they attributed to Him we 
 are not at present concerned. I am simply testing 
 the correctness of their belief in the perfection of 
 His human nature— a belief, be it remembered, 
 which from the day of St John to our own, not only 
 has never died out, but has been maintained and 
 cherished by the large majority of those who bear 
 the name of Christ. Among these may be reckoned 
 men of independent thought, of judicial acumen, of 
 scientific attainment, of pure life, of charitable spirit 
 — men who like Paul had groaned under the burden 
 of their own sin, and had found comfort and strengtli 
 in the sinlessness of Jesus. Theological dogmas 
 
 V 
 
88 MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. [LECT. 
 
 apart, it is quite certain that in every age of the 
 Church Jesus of Nazareth has been the object of 
 worship, of trust, of imitation to thousands who 
 would have neither worshiped, trusted, nor imi- 
 tated Him had they doubted His moral perfection. 
 They who regard Him as God cannot believe that 
 Deity could be united to a sinful humanity, perfect 
 holiness to imperfect morality, in one and the self- 
 same Person. They who trust in Him as an atoning 
 Saviour will not believe that He needed an atone- 
 ment for Himself While they who seek to regulate 
 their lives by His life are assured that every step 
 they set in the footprints of Jesus brings them 
 nearer to God. This assurance would be destroyed, 
 had His steps ever strayed or His feet gone out of 
 the way. 
 
 I have endeavoured to point out to-day some of 
 the results to which a denial of the moral perfection 
 of Jesus must inevitably bring us. I see not how 
 any man can logically acquiesce in such a denial 
 without rejecting the historical origin of Christianity 
 and the story of the Founder's life as a cunningly, 
 but not very skilfully, devised fable. If we are not 
 prepared for such a conclusion, let us see how far 
 the assertion of the sinlessness of Jesus of Naza- 
 reth agrees with the phenomena of His life. This 
 I hope to do in the next Lecture, and I trust to be 
 able then to shew not only that the doctrine of our 
 Lord's sinlessness is in harmony both with the ge- 
 
II.] HIS SINLESSNESS. 89 
 
 neral tenour and the more detailed phenomena of 
 the Gospels, but that it is not an ultimatum. It is 
 a truth, not a complete truth — a stage in our inves- 
 tigation, of the utmost importance and essential to 
 the conclusion, not the conclusion itself I believe 
 that we can no more stop at the establishment of 
 our Lord's human perfection than we could stop at 
 its denial, if we would criticise Scripture honestly, 
 and reason justly. 
 
 It may be said that we have not distinctly re- 
 ferred the character of Jesus to any definite moral 
 standard. And yet surely in the use of the words 
 sin and sinlessness such a standard is implied. It 
 has been well observed by an able writer, that we 
 never speak of virtue as an attribute of God. He 
 might have added that few persons, if any, apply 
 the term virtuous to Jesus. Can the reason of this 
 be that men instinctively shrink from sitting in judg- 
 ment on the Son of Man, and testing His character 
 by the moral maxims which they apply to themselves 
 and one another? However this may be, it is cer- 
 tain that the true idea of moral perfection in man 
 is the perfect agreement of human will with the 
 will of God. The will of God as revealed in the 
 Bible bears upon our relation to Him as well as to 
 our fellow-men. And when we say of Jesus that 
 He knew no sin, we mean that His will was in both 
 respects in such perfect harmony with the will of 
 His heavenly Father, that in no moment of His life, 
 
 
40 '' CHRIST JESUS OUR HOPE." [lECT. II. 
 
 in no wish or thought, in no word or act, was there 
 the faintest discord or contrariety between them. 
 
 Can we contemplate such an One as this, One in 
 human form, the sharer of human weakness, the vic- 
 tim of human want and pain, One tempted in all 
 points like as we are, yet without sin — can we think 
 of Him, as at once so near us yet so far above us, 
 without inly exulting at the hope which is thus dis- 
 closed? If One born of woman has possessed this 
 moral perfection, then there is hope for all the race. 
 Then God has not forgotten His sinful, rebellious 
 children, nor doomed them to wander for ever at a 
 distance from their home. He has not left them to 
 the guidance of their instincts, or fancies, or senti- 
 ments. He has given them a perfect Example, and 
 He has lighted their path with a reflection of His 
 own uncreated glory. Then is there hope, nay, an 
 assurance that sin shall not always have dominion ; 
 that sorrow, its firstborn, shall be banished; and 
 death, sin's penalty, shall be no more exacted. The 
 devil shall be bruised, man shall be restored, and 
 Jesus the sinless man, Jesus the Lord Omnipotent, 
 shall reign for ever and ever. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE SIFLESSNFSS OF JESUS. 
 
 1 PETER II. 22, part. 
 Who did no sin. 
 
 In the last Lecture I endeavoured to shew that the 
 life of Jesus as described by the Evangelists must 
 present insuperable difficulties to those who deny 
 His moral perfection as the Son of Man. Such 
 denial, accompanied as it ever is by the rejection of 
 His claims to miraculous powers and a Divine na- 
 ture, must lead in all log^ical fairness to the abandon- 
 ment of the Gospels as historic records, and ultimate 
 disbelief in the person and religion of Jesus. Un- 
 happily, instances are not wanting of men who 
 having started from such denial have drifted ever 
 onward over a trackless sea of religious speculations 
 till they have landed at last on the dreary shore of 
 practical atheism. It may be that such instances 
 are rare ; that some who admit the premiss do not 
 accept the conclusion. Yet if the legitimate conclu- 
 sion is one from which we shrink, it is because the 
 premiss is false ; because Jesus of Nazareth, perfect 
 man though He was, yet was free from all taint of 
 human sin. His will was at every moment of His 
 
42 INWAllD CALM 0¥ JESUS. [lECT. 
 
 life in entire agreement with the will of God. In 
 Him at all times was the Father well pleased. 
 
 And now let us see how consistent this view of 
 the human nature of Jesus is with the portraits pre- 
 sented to us by the Evangelists. There is one 
 characteristic of Jesus of Nazareth which thousrh 
 not thrust upon our notice, or reiterated in set 
 terms, has impressed the minds of all who read the 
 Gospel narratives with attention, and has been speci- 
 ally pointed out by a recent writer in a work of great 
 notoriety. I allude to that deep, unbroken tranquil- 
 lity of soul, that profound calm within, which lay too 
 deep for the storms even of His troubled life to 
 ruffle it. In many, perhaps most of those who have 
 played a distinguished part on the world's stage, 
 who have been the leaders of thought or of action to 
 their fellow-men, this equipoise of soul (for it is more 
 than a balance of mind) this inward calm has been 
 conspicuously wanting. Some few men of cold, 
 stoical temperament may by the force of circum- 
 stances be thrown up above the surface of society, 
 as pebbles are washed up by the sea-wave or shot 
 into tlie air by the action of a volcano. Some have 
 marched on to conquest and distinction over the 
 prostrate minds or bodies of their fellows, heedless as 
 the car of Juggernaut or the wild tornado of the 
 havoc they have made. But such insensate, heart- 
 less conduct no one would ascribe to Jesus of Naza- 
 retli. And it may be, after all, that the world's 
 
in.] EQUIPOISE OF SOUL. 43 
 
 stoics, if undisturbed by the sentiment of pity, are the 
 slaves or the playthings of passion or of pride. Most 
 men of lofty views are subject to alternations of 
 elation and depression, the result of a susceptibility 
 of temperament which is especially sympathetic. 
 To this sympathy they owe the influence which they 
 exercise on other men. And yet in Jesus Christ, 
 grand as was the object which He proposed to Him- 
 self, magnificent beyond all parallel the end on which 
 His heart was set, we detect no flutter of vanity, no 
 eager panting of ambition, no cowardly apjorehen- 
 sion of failure, no despair, nor even despondency 
 in the hour of danger and of death. If we remember 
 that He came not like Moses to propound a law, 
 not like many a Jewish prophet to restore the reli- 
 gious and moral tone of his countrymen, not like 
 the Baptist to herald a coming Messiah, but that 
 He felt it was His vocation to establish a world- 
 wide kingdom, and to save His subjects from sin 
 and destruction, then we may gaze with admiration 
 approaching to awe upon the holy calm with which 
 His soul was filled. A Galilean peasant conceives 
 and sets Himself to carry out a work harder and 
 grander than entered the mind of Alexander or 
 Napoleon in their wildest dreams of ambition. In 
 the prosecution of His design, in the midst of circum- 
 stances most calculated to disturb the equanimity of 
 ordinary men, Jesus preserves inward peace and 
 tranquillity for which but one explanation can be 
 
44 SELF-CONTROL OF JESUS. [LECT. 
 
 given. ''A man of sorrows and acquainted with 
 grief/' He allowed no murmur to escape His lips. 
 Perfect man in His susceptibility to pain, He asked, 
 that if it were possible the cup of agony might pass 
 from Him. Perfect in submission to the will of 
 God, He added, ''Yet not my will, but thine be 
 done." 
 
 The whole description of the passion and cruci- 
 fixion of our Lord, though given by the Evangelists 
 with some variation in the details, yet must, I think, 
 convey to any unprejudiced reader the impression, 
 that under suffering the most intense, both bodily 
 and mental, Jesus maintained the same inward calm 
 for which He had been remarkable during His 
 earthly ministry. The character of Jesus, as we 
 may gather it from the Gospel, is free alike from 
 cowardice and presumption. In the wise caution with 
 which He avoided danger we detect no undignified 
 haste, no weak abandonment of purpose, no conces- 
 sion of principle In the fearless reproof which He 
 uttered, the denunciation against sin and hypocrisy 
 and irreligion, there is no tone of personal asperity, 
 no ebullition of ill-temper, no needless provocation 
 of hostility. Once only is He said to have looked 
 on men with anger ; but it was not caused by any 
 insult or injury offered to Himself; it was righteous 
 indignation, such as a good man may feel and sin 
 not. Of the countless misrepresentations with which 
 Renan's '' Life of Jesus" abounds, this is one. He 
 
III.] SELF-CONTROL OF JESUS. 45 
 
 tells us that in driving the traffickers out of the 
 Temple, Jesus was ^' carried away by His anger." 
 The incident is mentioned by all four Evangelists. 
 St John alone mentions '' the scourge of small cords'' 
 which Jesus used, and he tells us that there were 
 "sheep and oxen^" to be expelled as well as men'. 
 But without laying undue stress on this fact, we may 
 observe that so far as the fourfold narrative is con- 
 cerned, there is no hint of our Lord being " carried 
 away by anger." It was " the zeal of God's house," 
 by which He was absorbed ; and for this explanation 
 we are indebted to St John only — the Evangelist, 
 be it remembered, who asserts most clearly the 
 Godhead of Jesus. 
 
 And as we detect no surging of earthly passion 
 in the soul of Jesus, so we see no flash of earthly joy 
 lighting u]3 the dark valley through which His path 
 lay. As He had checked the carnal indignation of 
 the sons of Zebedee, so He had corrected the mis- 
 placed and selfish rejoicing of His disciples. But as 
 once He was angry, so once, once only, He is said to 
 have rejoiced. And as His anger was provoked, 
 not by wrong offered to Himself, but by despite 
 done to the grace and love of His heavenly Father, 
 so that joy, so touching, as one bright spot in the 
 
 ^ John ii. 14, 15, It is curious to pose to do so. The shaft that piercis 
 
 observe how writers who reject the the eagle is winged with his own fea- 
 
 Gospel of St John as unauthentic, tht-r. 
 
 quote from it when it serves their pur- '^ See Appendix, Note (B). 
 
46 PERSEVERANCE OF JESUS. [lECT. 
 
 life of the Man of Sorrows, was not exultation at 
 His own success, or triumph over His adversaries. 
 It was a joy, welling up from the depths of a soul 
 in close union with Godhead, at the contemplation 
 of the mysteries of the Divine counsels. " In 
 that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank 
 Thee, O Father, I-iord of heaven and earth, that 
 Thou hast hid these things from the wise and 
 prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes : even 
 so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sights" 
 
 And this perfect tranquillity of soul, thus un- 
 broken by passion, unimpaired by the weakness of 
 a mortal nature, and wholly superior to the most 
 adverse external influences, was proof against those 
 inward misgivings which are almost inseparable from 
 pure efforts in a sinful world. Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, 
 John the Baptist, Luther — these, the greatest of 
 social and religious reformers, under pressure of 
 opposition from without, and lack of sympathy 
 around, and failure of faith within them, each in 
 turn sate down despondent before his work was done, 
 ready to turn back ere the goal was reached, or to 
 abandon the object to which his life was devoted. 
 No such misgiving seems to have thrown a shadow 
 over the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. From first to 
 last He persevered in His wondrous task. Weariness, 
 opposition, desertion, danger, all combined, could 
 not stop Him. He finished the work which was 
 
 ^ Luke X. 21. Comp. Matt. xi. 25, 26. 
 
1!I ] HIS UNDEVIATING PROGRESS. 47 
 
 given Him to do ; finished it without misgiving or 
 hesitation or murmur. It is a gratuitous assump- 
 tion of the French novelist (shall I call him ?) that 
 Jesus in His last agony ^'saw only the ingratitude of 
 men/' and that ^* He perhaps repented suffering for a 
 vile race^" If the narratives are to be our guide, He 
 no more repented of the work He had undertaken 
 when hanging on the cross than He repents it now 
 when in the salvation of each penitent sinner He 
 sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied. 
 
 And this thought suggests another feature in our 
 Lord's history, which is in perfect keeping with the 
 theory of His sinlessness, and with no other supposi- 
 tion. If that wondrous calm of which I have spoken 
 be, as I believe, the result of a moral harmony within 
 Him, a perfect agreement between the human will 
 of Jesus and a law external to Him, even the will 
 of His heavenly Father, we must attribute to the / 
 same cause (for no other is adequate) our Lord's 
 undeviating onward progress both personally and 
 officially. As a teacher, a prophet, the founder 
 of a religious society. He never corrected Him- 
 self, never contradicted Himself, never built the 
 
 ^ Renan, Life of Jesus, p. 290. which He must ere long accomplish at 
 
 Of such repentance there is not Jerusalem, and the cry wTung from 
 
 a hint in the Gospel narrative. That Him in the hour of its accomplish- 
 
 exceeding bitter cry, " My God, my ment by the agony He endured, was 
 
 God, why hast thou forsaken me?" not the expression of recreant weak- 
 
 implies no regret at the work He had ness ; it was nature; sinless human 
 
 undertaken and the suffering it in- nature, uttering its instinctive protest 
 
 volved. From the outset of His earthly against sin as the cause of suffering, 
 ministry He had foreseen the decease 
 
7 
 
 48 EVER ONWARD. [lECT. 
 
 lesson of to-day on the ruins of yesterday's dis- 
 course, or limited the generality of a hasty maxim 
 by the result of wider induction. Say what you 
 will of the great Prophet of Nazareth, you cannot 
 say that He ever retraced a step or retracted a 
 word. Can you say as much of any mere man 
 without calling him very blind and very obsti- 
 nate too ? And yet, as regards what we com- 
 monly call intellectual culture or attainments, there 
 is nothing to place our Lord on a higher level than 
 many of those whose public career has wanted the 
 unity by which His whole life was characterized. 
 As a child He increased in wisdom with advancing 
 years ; but we read nothing in Scripture of any 
 remarkable displays of original genius or power of 
 apprehending or acquiring secular knowledge. In 
 this, as in other respects, His character was at once 
 '^perfectly human, and devoid of human peculiari- 
 ties \" We cannot, therefore, ascribe His superior 
 consistency of life to His adoption of a purer or more 
 practical system of ethical and social philosophy than 
 other reformers have espoused. If He never re- 
 traced a step, it was because no step He set was 
 doubtful or false. If His teaching was uniform, it 
 was because He spake with authority, and as never 
 man spake. 
 
 ^ See a letter by Professor Gold- before the University of Oxford, ChriH 
 win Smith, prefixed to an able Ser- the Rcreakr of the Will of God. Ox- 
 mon by Rev. S. J. Hulme, preached ford, J. H. and J. Parker. 
 
III.] UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN. 49 
 
 Whether then we regard the surface of the Ufe of 
 Christ, His words and deeds, they are marked by 
 iindeviating consistency ; or whether we contemplate 
 the prevaihng tone of His mind, the permanent con- 
 dition of His inner life, it is a deep, unbroken tran- 
 quillity, a perfect, never-varying balance of soul. 
 This outward uniformity and this inward calm, each 
 absolutely perfect, yet both maintained under cir- 
 cumstances the most trying and adverse, are unique 
 phenomena in human history, for which one and but 
 one adequate cause can be assigned. I do not assert 
 that these phenomena at once suggest and enforce 
 the inference that Jesus was perfectly free from sin. 
 But knowing that the disturbing element in human 
 life is sin — knowing that the wicked are like the 
 troubled sea, shifting, wavering, restless, that to such 
 there is no peace, —I say that if the creed of Christen- 
 dom is correct, if Jesus is (as His followers have 
 held in every age) absolutely sinless, I should expect 
 to find in Him those very characteristics of which 
 we have spoken. Had they been wanting, we might 
 have doubted His moral perfection. Their presence 
 is in agreement with, and so far a confirmation of, 
 the belief that Jesus of Nazareth knew no sin. 
 
 But there is yet another feature in our Lord's 
 character, which, if honestly considered, must to a 
 pious mind carry a strong conviction of His sinless 
 purity — I mean His own unconsciousness of sin. 
 I suppose no law of our spiritual life is more inflex- 
 p. H. 4 
 
 V 
 
50 TEST OF HOLINESS. [LECT. 
 
 ible than this, that the better a man becomes, the 
 more sensible he is of his own defects. If it is by 
 the contemplation and imitation of the Divine per- 
 fections, by union and communion with God, that 
 man grows in holiness and in likeness to God, this 
 spiritual growth will be ever commensurate with his 
 progress 'in the knowledge both of himself and of 
 God. And while his heart and his life become really 
 purer, his standard of holiness becomes higher, his 
 ability to detect sin more sensitive, his distrust of 
 self more habitual, his hatred of sin more instinctive. 
 Like the Alpine traveller, the higher he ascends the 
 more sensible is he of the vastness of the summits 
 yet to be scaled. The nearer he approaches to the 
 source of light, the more manifest become his own 
 defects. In every age of the Church the ever-deep- 
 ening sense of sin and unworthiness has been the 
 mark of the advanced saint of God. In the writings 
 of Paul and Peter and John the expression of this 
 feeling is frequent, while the traces of it are every- 
 where discernible. In the lives of all the true 
 saints of God the sense of their sin has been a con- 
 spicuous feature. As the saintly Leighton says in 
 that great sermon on '^ The nature and properties of 
 heavenly wisdom," "The most purified Christians 
 are they that are most sensible of their impurity." 
 I might go one step further, and speak of the result 
 of this sense of sin : liow it has led good men to seek 
 an atonement for their sin, and righteous men to 
 
III.] ''who knew no sin." 51 
 
 seek a better righteousness than their own. But I 
 will not weaken my position by narrowing its ground. 
 If it be true that in the holiest and best of men a 
 sense of their sin is commensurate ever with their 
 progress in holiness, and if this sense of sin (as 
 Christian biography abundantly demonstrates) finds 
 its expression in words and acts of repentance, in re- 
 tractation, and regret, and restitution, — how is it 
 that from the first chapter of Matthew to the last 
 of John we read nothing of sucli expression on the 
 part of Jesus ? Does He call Himself the chief of 
 sinners, as did St Paul' ? Does He, like St Peter^, 
 rejoice in a vicarious sacrifice for His sins? Like 
 St John^, does He bless One who has loved Him and 
 washed Him from His sins in His own blood ? Like 
 the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, does He 
 include Himself in an exhortation to lay aside every 
 weight and sin which doth so easily beset US'*? Far, 
 very far otherwise. In all His discourses, whether 
 addressed to His disciples or to the multitudes, often 
 as He warned men against sin, both in its grosser 
 and more subtle forms. He never once either directly 
 or by implication included Himself in the prohibi- 
 tion. He always spoke as if from a higher plat- 
 form; He spoke as one who could sympathise with 
 all the human frailty of His hearers, as one who 
 needed not that any should testify to Him of man, 
 for that He knew what was in man, but yet as one 
 
 1 I Tim. i. 15. ^ I Pet. ii. 24. ^ Rev. i. 5. ^ Hob. xii. r, 2. 
 
 4—2 
 
52 NO CONFESSION OF SIN. TlECT. 
 
 who was exempt from the sin which He condemned, 
 and who needed not the pardon which He promised 
 and bestowed. And while in His conversations 
 with men He betrayed no consciousness of sin, in 
 the ghmpses which we have of His intercourse with 
 Heaven, the same unconsciousness is apparent. Min- 
 gling with His prayers for support under suffering 
 there is no confession of sin, no cry to God for its 
 forgiveness. When I remember the candour of the 
 Evangelists, their evident freedom from dishonest 
 artifice, I cannot but think that the silence of Jesus 
 on this matter was real — that He neither believed 
 Himself, nor encouraged others to believe, that He 
 had any sin to confess. And if it were so, then of 
 a truth that silence is more eloquent and more con- 
 vincing than a thousand disclaimers. And unless 
 we are prepared to accept our Lord's estimate of 
 Himself — and say that He confessed no sin because 
 He knew no sin — we must charge Him with such 
 spiritual blindness and self-deception as would be 
 fatal at once to His character as a man and His 
 claims as a religious teacher. 
 
 And as Jesus never confessed sin to God or 
 man, so in the few instances which are recorded of 
 an audible testimony given to Him from heaven, 
 that testimony, while not asserting, is yet perfectly 
 consistent with. His freedom from sin. To take 
 one — the most signal instance. Tlie Synoptic Evan- 
 gelists record our Lord's Baptism in the river Jor- 
 
III.] DIVINE ACQUITTAL. 53 
 
 dan. They all tell us, in nearly identical language, 
 that after Jesus came up out of the water a voice 
 came from heaven, saying, ^^Thou art my beloved 
 Son, in whom I am well pleased ^" Now to those 
 who explain away that celestial utterance as an 
 interpretation put on a thunderclap by the heated 
 imagination of the bystanders, this argument will 
 have little weight. But even if unsound it will not 
 vitiate our reasoning generally, nor invalidate our 
 conclusion. The removal of one pillar will not in- 
 volve the safety of the edifice. But most persons 
 will agree that this expression of approval, which 
 each of the first three Evangelists twice afftrms to 
 have come from heaven, and which St Peter records 
 in terms the most distinct and solemn, was a real 
 audible utterance, unless we are to reject testimony 
 altogether, and say that all men are liars. I do not 
 say that this celestial witness decides the controversy; 
 but it is in perfect harmony with the doctrine of our 
 Lord's sinlessness, and will perhaps help to convince 
 many minds of the truth of the doctrine, because 
 the testimony is indirect and co-incidental. 
 
 We have thus tested the two estimates of the 
 
 ^ John's baptism was ' the baptism a manifest token of Divine approval 
 
 of repentance,' but there is no word of is given by the descent of the Holy 
 
 repentance here. Others were bap- Ghost in the form of a dove, and a 
 
 tized and washed away their sins, but voice comes from the excellent glory, 
 
 here we read neither of sins to be not promising pardon, but expressing 
 
 washed away, nor of any profession of the fullest satisfaction and approval, 
 
 faith on the part cf Jesus, nor any It said not, "Son, thy sins be for- 
 
 assurance of forgiveness on the part given thee," but "This is my beloved 
 
 of the Baptist. Heaven is opened, and Son, in whom I am well pleased." 
 
54 SUPERHUMAN NATURE OF JESUS. [lECT. 
 
 human character of Jesus by the phenomena of His 
 life. We have seen that the denial of His moral per- 
 fection involves results which it is impossible to 
 acquiesce in — results against which reason and ex- 
 perience and the better instincts of humanity alike 
 revolt. We have further applied the opposite estimate 
 of Jesus to the narratives of His life contained in the 
 Gospels, and we have found that the hypothesis of 
 His perfect sinlessness is borne out not only by the 
 detailed events of His history, but by the general 
 tone which pervades the character there described, 
 by the conspicuous absence of some particulars, and 
 the striking, because incidental, mention of others. 
 
 I have done little more than indicate one method 
 by which this doctrine of the human sinlessness of 
 Jesus may be established. I have but pointed out 
 the path which leads to such a conclusion. 
 
 If any of you. Christian brethren, will study the 
 Gospels with earnest prayer for Divine guidance, 
 applying to each passage of our Lord's life the two 
 theories (and remember there can be but two — for 
 either Jesus was sinless or He was not), you will 
 find everything to confirm and nothing to shake 
 your faith in Jesus, as the pure, the spotless, the 
 sinless Son of Man. 
 
 In arriving at this result we have reached a stage 
 in our upward course at which we may pause, but 
 cannot linger. Taking from this position a general 
 survey of the life and character of Jesus, we see in 
 
III.] ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 55 
 
 His moral perfection presumptive grounds for be- 
 lieving that He was, while man, yet more than man — 
 invested with a superhuman and therefore a Divine 
 nature — I say, 'therefore Divine/ for if the higher 
 nature of Jesus be not Divine, it must be created. 
 And, if it be created, then we must suppose a union 
 of two created intelligences, each endowed with moral 
 responsibility in one and the same person — a concep- 
 tion which may safely be banished to the region of 
 Chimt3eras and Sphinxes, and there claim precedence 
 in monstrosity. 
 
 Now when we review the history of the human 
 race, we observe that as regards physical and intel- 
 lectual development no one individual has ever been 
 so distinguished above his fellows as to challenge 
 universal admiration — to be the admitted leader and 
 chief — 'cui nihil viget simile aut secundum.' It may 
 fairly be questioned whether as regards man's bodily 
 constitution, as tested by longevity or muscular de- 
 velopment or even freedom from disease, there is 
 any generic progress at all. In the earliest days as in 
 later times there have been individuals of huge stature ; 
 but these, though surpassing other men, have done so 
 within certain narrow limits; and of these giants you 
 cannot name one as so far exceeding the rest of the 
 species as to stand alone without a rival — one whose 
 head has pierced the clouds while his feet rested on 
 the ground. And yet if such an one had ever lived, 
 his physical superiority to the rest of the race could be 
 
56 ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. [lECT. 
 
 measured, as being finite. But the moral superiority 
 of the sinless One to the rest of the human family 
 is greater still; for by the hypothesis it is infinite. 
 Look again at the sages and philosophers of the 
 world — those who have discovered or invented or 
 applied and extended the discoveries of others — and 
 two facts are at once apparent; fir,st, that such men, 
 however distinguished in one department of science, 
 were not distinguished in all branches of human know- 
 ledge ; and secondly, that no one man has yet arisen, 
 or is likely to arise, as the intellectual head and chief 
 of the whole race. Judging from analogy, I should 
 say that the same law would apply, perhaps even 
 more rigorously, to moral development. I should 
 think that civilization might do more for the body 
 and the mind of man than for his moral nature — and 
 that if it failed to raise the former above a certain fixed 
 level, there was little reason to expect for the latter 
 great excellence, much less unique perfection. And 
 yet here is One born of woman who rises in moral 
 grandeur, not like Ajax in the Grecian host, the 
 highest of earth's demigods, not as the tallest pillar 
 amidst a group of stately columns, not as the highest 
 peak among other peaks of a vast mountain-range, 
 not floating in His unsullied purity above the sin- 
 stained race whose nature He shares ; but, like Jacob's 
 ladder — blessed emblem! — resting on this earth of 
 ours and yet reaching far above human pride and 
 passion and sin, penetrating this lower atmosphere of 
 
Ill ] INCARNATION. 57 
 
 human life, and stretching ever onwards, ever up- 
 wards, till its top enters the high court of heaven 
 itself. It is not in the practice of one virtue that 
 Jesus excelled, but in all ; not in one relation of life 
 that He was siuless, but in all. And while Moses the 
 meekest man sinned in anger, and Abraham the 
 father of the faithful in unfaithfulness, and Peter the 
 fearless in cowardice, and John the apostle of love in 
 vindictiveness, Jesus, Jesus alone, never sinned. Let 
 him who knows anything of his own inner life and of 
 the requirements of God's spiritual law say whether 
 the moral superiority of Jesus to himself is or is not 
 as I have described. He who is most closely follow- 
 ing and who most nearly resembles Jesus, will con- 
 fess that as high as the heaven is above the earth so 
 far is the sinlessness of Jesus above his own imperfec- 
 tion and sin. 
 
 Such a man, as he gazes with admiration on 
 the unique display of moral perfection, to which he 
 finds nothing analogous in the physical or mental 
 history of the species, may not unreasonably con- 
 clude that he has found in Jesus of Nazareth that 
 which by instinct or by tradition men in every age 
 have believed possible or probable — an incarnation of 
 the Deity. And this presumption that Jesus was 
 God manifested in the flesh will be confirmed by 
 many weighty considerations. One only of these can 
 be mentioned now ; the rest are of a different order 
 and must be reserved for a future occasion. 
 
58 JESUS THE CENTRE OF TRUST. [lECT. 
 
 No one can deny the fact that since the death of 
 Jesus upon the cross, thousands and tens of thou- 
 sands of His followers have trusted in Him with a 
 confidence such as none ever reposed in a mere man. 
 Many of the holiest and best and wisest, men of 
 the purest life and loftiest aims, have staked their 
 present life and their eternal destiny on their faith in 
 Jesus of Nazareth. The noble army of martyrs, who 
 laid down their lives rather than deny the Master 
 whom they had served, and Who had never wronged 
 them — these all died in faith, trusting in Jesus as 
 their Saviour, and following Him (as they believed) 
 by the path of suffering to everlasting glory. And 
 not they alone, but a countless band of whom the 
 world takes little note ; young men and maidens, 
 old men and feeble women, and children of tender 
 age, these all have leaned on Jesus, ivhile He leaned 
 on none. They called Him Master and Saviour 
 and Intercessor. He was their strength, their righte- 
 ousness, their peace, their wisdom, their hope ; but I 
 read not that He ever called any man His Saviour, or 
 craved a better righteousness than His own. Around 
 that son of the carpenter, that peasant of Galilee, as 
 some take pleasure in styling our Blessed Lord, 
 around that human form once so lowly and so suffer- 
 ing, now so highly exalted and so glorious, there is 
 grouped an exceeding great multitude of worshipers 
 whom no man can number, of all people and nations 
 and kindreds and tribes ; and as they bow before 
 
III.] PARDON AND PEACE. 59 
 
 Him, and acknowledge Him, the sinless Son of Man, 
 to be the King of Glory, the Everlasting Son of the 
 Father, He accepts their faith and adoration as His 
 due, nor bids them trust in another. 
 
 I cannot foro^et that some of those who hear me 
 this day have but recently come to the University, 
 and are entering on a new stage of life, a stage the 
 importance of which to themselves, to our country, 
 to the world, can scarcely be overrated. If I had 
 set myself to choose a topic on which to speak to 
 them, I know of none more suitable than that which 
 we have been considering. We have seen that our 
 Blessed Lord enjoyed as man the two blessings 
 which all men most need^ — inward peace and a clear 
 conscience. As man He possessed these blessings, 
 and as God He imparts them to all who seek them 
 at His hands. Brethren, at the outset of your under- 
 graduate course, on this your first Sunday in Cam- 
 bridge, in the retirement of your rooms ask for these 
 blessings. To any man this peace is desirable, but 
 to a student especially. Better than Stoic apathy 
 or Brahminical abstraction, it does not destroy but 
 cherish and develope all the kindlier virtues of which 
 man's nature is capable, and all the intellectual facul- 
 ties with which man is endowed. '' My peace," He 
 said, '^ I give unto you." Oh ! to share that peace ! 
 a peace too deep for life's sorrows to destroy, too 
 vital for death to terminate, but which shall result 
 
60 PARDON. [LECT. III. 
 
 in that fulness of joy which is at God's right hand 
 for ever. 
 
 The other blessing which Jesus as man possessed 
 you cannot have as He had, but you may have it as 
 really nevertheless. His conscience was unclouded 
 because He knew no sin. No remembrance of duty 
 omitted or guilt incurred ever stained His pure soul 
 with dark defilement. With us, alas ! it is not so. If 
 we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. 
 But this we know, that the blood of Jesus, when ap- 
 plied by faith, will purge the conscience, and cleanse 
 us from all sin. Seek, I repeat it, brethren, of Him 
 who has purchased them for us, and who is able and 
 ready to impart them, these great, these necessary 
 blessings, pardon and peace. Ask for them in the 
 words of the Collect for this day ^, ask for them in the 
 words of that sweet prayer of our scriptural Litany, 
 ''O Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the 
 world. Grant us Thy peace, Have mercy upon us ! " 
 
 ^ Collect for 21st Sunday after Trinity. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE DIVINE NATURE OF JESUS. 
 
 JOHN I. 14. 
 
 The Word luas made flesh, and dwelt among us, {and we 
 beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the 
 Father,) full of grace and truth. 
 
 '^That Jesus never dreamt of making Himself 
 pass for an incarnation of God is a matter about 
 which there can be no doubt. Such an idea was 
 wholly foreign to the Jewish mind, and there is no 
 trace of it in the Synoptical Gospels ^" This start- 
 ling passage, when reduced to its simplest terms, 
 consists of two propositions — ist, that the idea of an 
 incarnation of God was w^holly foreign to the Jewish 
 mind ; and, secondly, that there is no trace in the 
 first three Gospels of Jesus having entertained such 
 an idea in reference to Himself. With the first of 
 these propositions we are not now directly concerned ; 
 but it seems to me that, whether true or false, it 
 cannot much affect our decision on the second. It 
 is certainly strange that any one acquainted with 
 
 ^ Renan, Life of Jesus, p. i8i, Eug. ed. 
 
62 INCONSISTENCY OF M. RENAN. [lECT. 
 
 the Old Testament should fail to find in those records 
 of the Jewish people what we find imbedded in the 
 creeds of almost all Gentile races, and expressed in 
 their mythology. It would be no difficult matter to 
 shew that the idea of an incarnation was one wdth 
 which the Jews of our Lord's time must have been 
 familiar. But were it otherwise, were Kenan as cor- 
 rect in his statement as he is confident, surely if 
 Jesus came in any sense to make a revelation from 
 God, if He was in any true sense a prophet, it was 
 quite within His mission to enlarge the circle of His 
 hearers' ideas, as well as to rectify their mistakes. 
 In one respect He is admitted on all hands to have 
 introduced into His teaching and His practice an 
 idea entirely foreign to the Jewish mind^ — I mean, 
 the equality of all men in the sight of God, and the 
 admissibility of Gentiles to the spiritual privileges of 
 Israel. We know how reluctantly St Peter and the 
 other apostles accepted this new idea. Such reluct- 
 ance stands in marked contrast to the unhesitating, 
 easy way in w^hicli they grasped the idea, and 
 believed and taught the fact of the Incarnation; 
 prepared to sacrifice life itself sooner than abandon 
 such belief. If there was something entirely foreign 
 to the minds of these Jews in the idea of an incarna- 
 tion, and if such an idea never entered the mind of 
 
 ^ It will be observed that I have constantly employed in the Vie de 
 used the word ' idea'' in the loose and Jesus. 
 un philosophical sense in which it is 
 
IV.] NEGATIVE ARGUMENT. 63 
 
 their Master, or escaped His lips, what account is to 
 be given of the belief so soon unanimously held 
 and proclaimed by those who had been His com- 
 panions and the depositaries of His instructions ? 
 Wondrous, indeed, must have been the impression 
 made by the life and character of Jesus to produce 
 such a result. If Renan is right, this belief in the 
 Godhead of Jesus, novel in idea and unwarranted in 
 its application, sprang up in hearts unprepared to 
 receive it, solely as the consequence of familiarity 
 with our Blessed Lord. Thus, unconsciously, does a 
 writer who impugns St John's veracity confirm the 
 Apostle's statement, ^^We beheld His glory, the 
 glory as of the only-begotten of the Father." 
 
 But it is not enough to shew the inconsistency of 
 modern idealism. We seek to establish a positive 
 truth, a truth deliberately denied in the second 
 of the two propositions already quoted. It is said 
 that there is no trace in the first three Gospels of 
 any claim or consciousness of Godhead on the part of 
 Jesus of Nazareth. Now it may be observed in the 
 first place, that we have no grounds, a priori, for 
 expecting that an incarnation of the Deity must 
 always be accompanied by an explicit self-declaration. 
 The claims of Jesus to a Divine nature would not 
 necessarily be invalidated, even if it could be shewn 
 that He did not Himself uro^e them at all on His 
 followers or on the world. I can no more predict 
 the mode in which God will make a revelation to 
 
64 CONSCIOUS AUTHORITY OF JESUS. [lECT. 
 
 man than I can anticipate the nature or the objects 
 of such a revelation. It must be admitted that the 
 Synoptists do not assert the Godhead of Jesus with 
 the same distinctness as does St John. But it can- 
 not be admitted that they deny it or discourage a 
 behef in it. 1 may not be able to explain why they 
 are less explicit on this great question than St John, 
 but I shall endeavour to shew that the doctrine is 
 not only implied in, but clearly deducible from the 
 Synoptic narratives. Let it be borne in mind that 
 in preceding Lectures the attempt has been made to 
 establish the perfect sinlessness of Jesus from the 
 consideration of these documents ; and that we have 
 already a strong presumption in favour of His being 
 more than a sinless man, of His possessing a higher, 
 a Divine nature, in union with His perfect humanity. 
 Starting from this point, we proceed to examine the 
 record of our Lord's own discourses ; portions of 
 which, at least in substance, (for we can afford to be 
 very liberal in our concessions,) have been preserved 
 to us by the first three Evangelists. 
 
 Now in these discourses, whether didactic or pro- 
 phetic, there is one feature so strongly marked that 
 no honest critic or expositor can ignore it. I refer 
 to the tone of independence, the air of authority with 
 which He ever spake. To this independence there 
 is nothincf analo2fous in the most fearless utterance of 
 an Elijah, a Malachi, or a John Baptist, a Peter, or 
 a Paul. These servants of the Most High ever ac- 
 
IV.] INDEPENDENT AUTHORITY. 6^ 
 
 knowledged tbeir legation. The Old Testament pro- 
 j)liets spoke in the name of Jehovah. They intro- 
 duced their message by the words ^^Thus saith the 
 Lord." Jesus never did this. With Him it was 
 " Verily J_ say unto you." Compare His language 
 with that of the old prophets. When He corrects a 
 wrong conception of the meaning of the Decalogue 
 you will observe that He puts His own interpretation 
 and expansion of it on a par with the original law. 
 *^ You have heard that it was said," i.e. by God to 
 the ancients, your forefathers, " 'Thou shalt not kill,' 
 but I say unto you," an angry thought is murder in 
 the sight of God. Mark tho parallelism. As He 
 quotes the words of the Decalogue, it is as though 
 He had said, " God said to your fathers, ' Thou shalt 
 not do this.' I say unto you ' Thou shalt not purpose 
 this/" If we compare with this language of our Lord 
 the terms in which Isaiah comments upon another 
 command of the Decalogue, the original Sabbath law^, 
 we must be struck by the difference of tone as well 
 as expression between the son of Amoz and the Son 
 of Man. '' For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken 
 it," this is Isaiah's warrant; ''I say unto you," at 
 once the claim and the credentials of Jesus. 
 
 And what is true of our Lord's moral teaching, 
 is equally true of what may be termed His theology. 
 He told men more of the Divine character and at- 
 tributes and of man's destiny than any prophet had 
 revealed before. But these truths were not specially 
 p. II. 5 
 
 K 
 
66 PROPHETIC AUTHORITY. [lECT. 
 
 made known to Him by vision, or by audible ut- 
 terance from Heaven. He does not come forth like 
 other teachers to deliver a specific message, to speak 
 the words which God at some time put into His 
 mouth, and no others During His whole ministry, 
 in solitude and in public, in the circle of His own 
 discij)les or before an unbelieving multitude. He is 
 in this respect the same. He not only makes a 
 revelation; His every utterance, His whole life. He 
 himself {s a revelation. 
 
 Most of what has been said of our Lord's teaching 
 applies equally to His prediction of future events. 
 Of these the most striking was His prophecy of the 
 downfall of Jerusalem before the conquering arms of 
 the Roman general, and its long subsequent desola- 
 tion. '^Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gen- 
 tiles till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." A 
 French philosopher, starting with the assumption that 
 prophecy is impossible, might try to persuade us that 
 our Lord's prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem 
 was written after its overthrow by Titus ^ But he 
 cannot so tamper with the whole prophecy. Jerusalem 
 has been for eighteen hundred years trodden down 
 of the Gentiles. The zeal of Crusaders and the 
 deathless patriotism of Jews, the efforts of Christian 
 monarchs and the enterprise of private individuals — 
 all have failed to arrest that terrible doom, have 
 
 ^ Renan tells us that "the si)eech conceived except after the siege of the 
 to the women of Jerusalem (Luke year 70." — Introd. p. -24, note, 
 xxiii. 28, 29) could scarcely have been 
 
^V.] CONSCIOUS DEITY. Q7 
 
 failed, because the times of the Gentiles, Kaipo\ eOvJ^r, 
 their opportunities of embracing the Gospel, have 
 not yet run out. I do not refer to this prophecy as 
 proving the Godhead, or as tending to establish the 
 Divine Mission of Jesus, but only as illustrating that 
 feature of His teaching which I have noticed, that 
 from His lips truth flowed s]Dontaneously as from its 
 source. He speaks not as a commissioned man, but 
 as a present God. 
 
 Compare again the terms in which our Lord is 
 said to have addressed the corpse at the gate of Nain 
 with the language of Elijah when he raised another 
 widow's son. Jesus does not pray that the soul of 
 the dead man may return to the lifeless body. He 
 touches the bier and says, " Young man, I say unto 
 thee, arise." '^ And he that was dead sat up and began ^ 
 to speak." I might go through our Lord's miracles, 
 and shew that Vv^hile He never acknowledged that the 
 power He exercised was delegated pro hac vice — 
 while with authority He commanded unclean spirits 
 to depart and diseases to succumb — He often em- 
 ployed language in connection with His mighty works 
 which plainly asserted His Deity. Conscious — may 
 we not, must ^NQ not say? — of His own Divine na- 
 ture. Lie seems at times to speak as if God were 
 there or nowhere ; as if in Himself dwelt all the fuL 
 ness of the Godhead bodily — as if (in one word) He 
 was either an atheistic man in a godless world, or 
 an Incarnate God. If there is an exception to this 
 
 5—2 
 
68 DOCTRINE OP THE TRINITY. [lECT. 
 
 general rule, it is to be found in the account of the 
 raising of Lazarus given by St John. There our 
 Lord is said before workins: the miracle to have 
 acknowledged that the power He exercised was 
 granted in answer to prayer. But they who refuse 
 to believe St John will of course reject the whole 
 passage; and they who believe the fourth Gospel 
 will not need to be convinced that Jesus is very 
 God. 
 
 And this suggests a remark which in these days 
 is especially necessary. Many persons, finding in the 
 New Testament expressions which seem to imply 
 some kind of inferiority on the part of Jesus to His 
 Heavenly Father, have overlooked the truth that 
 such inferiority (if indeed such a term is admissible) 
 is not of nature or substance, but of office and relation. 
 That for which I contend is that Jesus is God — verily 
 and indeed. 
 
 If this He be, He is, in respect of His Godhead, 
 placed as far above the men He came to save, as the 
 Infinite is above the finite, the Creative First Cause 
 above the creation of His hands. If this He be, 
 then however He may have emptied Himself and 
 made Himself of no reputation out of love to the 
 race whose nature He deigned to assume, however He 
 is inferior to the Father as touching His manhood, 
 yet is He equal evermore and one with the Father 
 as touching His Godhead. 
 
 I dwell on this distinction because through in- 
 
IV.] JESUS AN OBJECT OF WORSHIP. 69 
 
 attention to it some even within the pale of the 
 Church, and the whole body of Unitarians, have 
 denied that there is Scripture warrant for addressing 
 prayer to Jesus. Is such prayer any where forbidden 
 or discouraged? I fearlessly answer, 'Nowhere/ 
 As God, He is entitled to our worship, and though 
 He took upon Him our nature that He might bring 
 us to the Father, yet He does not refuse our adoration 
 or spurn us from His feet. He has told us that the 
 man who honours not the Son, honours not the Father \/ 
 who sent Him ; and we would fain anticipate the 
 time when all creation shall bow the knee at the 
 sacred Name of Jesus, and w^hen every tongue shall 
 confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, not to the dis- i 
 honour, but to the glory of God the Father. 
 
 But further, the neglect of the distinction of 
 which I have spoken might lead us to draw erro- 
 neous conclusions from passages which, if rightly 
 understood, confirm the great doctrine of the God- 
 head of Jesus. Two of these passages I will quote, 
 one from St Matthew, found also in St Luke, the 
 other from St Matthew only. In the first we are 
 told that Jesus said, '' All things are delivered unto 
 me of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son but 
 the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save 
 the Son and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal 
 Him^" "Where can a parallel to such language be 
 found? That it is correctly reported I should infer 
 
 1 Mi.tt. xi. 27. 
 
 v/' 
 
70 CONSCIOUS OMNIPOTENCE. [lECT. 
 
 (even if I did not believe in the inspiration of the 
 New Testament), both from its being contained in 
 two Gospels and from the context with which it 
 stands connected in that of St Matthew. It intro- 
 duces those 'comfortable words' of our Saviour Christ, 
 ''Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest." To this well sus- 
 tained claim of Omnipotence that offer of rest OAves 
 all its sweetness and its preciousness. I cannot think 
 that St Matthew, who has recorded that wondrous 
 offer, has forged the claim on which it rests. And 
 if Jesus really spoke those words, " All things are 
 delivered to me of my Father/' — If! alas that in 
 this place such a proposition should be hypothetical. 
 But assuming the genuineness of the passage, we 
 must observe the terms in which it is couched. They 
 are very similar to those of the other passage already 
 referred to. In the verse before us Jesus says, " All 
 things are delivered to me of my Father," in the 
 other, " All power is given unto me both in heaven 
 and in earth." We have seen the superstructure of 
 comfort which is based on the former. On the latter 
 rests, shall I say, a nobler edifice? I must take 
 heed what I say. But Jesus said, "Go ye there- 
 fore, and make disciples of all nations." It is as if 
 He had placed His own Omnipotence in the hands 
 of His Apostles, as constituting their commission, 
 their warrant, their encouragement, their strength. 
 And the rest of that closing passage of St Matthew 
 
IV.] EQUAL TO THE FATHER. 71 
 
 bears as clearly on the question before us as the 
 verse I have quoted. Before, however, noticing the 
 Baptismal formula contained in it, and the promise 
 of our Lord's continued presence with His Church to 
 the end of the world, with which the Gospel con- 
 cludes, I would direct your attention to the terms in 
 which our Lord's claim to Omnipotence is couched in 
 the two verses I have quoted. He does not say, as 
 He might have said, and as, methinks, an impostor 
 claiming omnipotence would have said, ^^I possess 
 all power and all knowledge ; I am lord and owner 
 of all things." We do not read of any religious 
 teacher who claimed as much as Jesus did, but I 
 think that any other would not have claimed so 
 much without claiming more. There is something 
 striking, something convincing in this moderation, 
 shall we term it ? of our Blessed Lord. It agrees 
 perfectly with the hypothesis that He possessed a 
 nature capable of wielding unlimited power and uni- 
 versal dominion, united to a human nature and 
 clothed in human form. It consists, further, with 
 the doctrine taught by the first followers of Jesus, 
 that while there is a subordination of office or re- 
 lation, there is no inferiority of nature separating 
 Him as the Son of God from His heavenly Father. 
 It is alleged with the confidence beneath which so 
 often lurks a sophism, that while Jesus is called in 
 the Scriptures the Son of God, He is not spoken of 
 by any writer of the New Testament as God the 
 
72 BAPTISMAL FORMULA. [LECT. 
 
 Son. The question is not one of terms or of nomen- 
 clature. Men who do not scruple to apply to Jesus 
 the designation of a ' Galilean peasant' — a phrase not 
 employed by any of the Evangelists — ought not to 
 take exception to a title which, if not originated, is 
 at least supported by the writers of the Kew Testa- 
 ment. The real question to be decided by each one 
 of us is, not whether Jesus of Nazareth is, what 
 every true servant of God is, a son of God, but 
 whether He is very and eternal God, and as such 
 demands our worship and obedience and trust. 
 
 To the arguments already adduced, in support of 
 the catholic doctrine of the perfect Godhead of Jesus, 
 I will only add two drawn from the Synoptic 
 Gospels. St Matthew, after reciting the claim of 
 Jesus to Omnipotence, and the commission to His 
 apostles thereon founded, to go and teach all nations, 
 informs us of the institution of the rite of baptism, 
 the rite by which converts were to be admitted into 
 the outward Church. They were to be baptized 
 ''in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
 of the Holy Ghost." We know that this same form 
 of words is employed at the present day whenever 
 Christian baptism is administered, and we can trace 
 its use backwards to the early part of the 2nd cen- 
 tury, when it would seem, from the language of 
 Justin Martyr, to have been already established and 
 habitual. Justin's words are these : he tells us that 
 the candidates for baptism in his day bathed in the 
 
IV.] BAPTISMAL FORMULA. 73 
 
 water, *'in the name of God the Father and Lord of 
 the Universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and 
 of the Holy Ghost'." Can we believe that One so 
 pious, so humble, so truthful as Jesus of Nazareth, 
 would have coupled Himself with the Father in this 
 formula of admission to the society He established, 
 had He thought it robbery to be equal with God? 
 How are we to account for this formula being re- 
 tained in the purest and noblest and most exalted 
 civilization the world has ever witnessed, rising 
 buoyant above the waves of pagan persecution and 
 philosophical contempt, and floating down the stream 
 of eighteen centuries, like the Indian lamp on the 
 breast of the Ganges, its flame erect, its brilliancy 
 undimmed ? How are we to account for this same 
 form of words maintaining its place among us still 
 in this 19th century — the welcome at once and the 
 consecration of infant princes and peasant babes 
 in England, and of the children of Africa and the 
 East, when by the preaching of the Gospel they 
 become obedient to the faith ? I can only account 
 for it in one way: because it embodies a truth which, 
 like God its author, cannot die. And because that 
 truth is no mere abstract, but one which nearly con- 
 cerns mankind, one which fills a great blank in man's 
 spiritual being, gives his life a meaning and his acts 
 an aim, therefore the Lord of life and the Lord of 
 
 ^ €ir OPOfxaTos rod Harpos t(2u 6\cji/ 'Ayiov to iv t<^ vSart t6t€ \ovTp6v ttoi- 
 Kal decTTTOTOv QeoO kuI tov SwTTypos ovurac. Apol. I. c. 61. 
 -qixQv 'Ir](Tov Xpiarov Kal Uveufxaros 
 
74 APOSTOLIC COMMISSION. [lECT. 
 
 truth, the Author of man's being and Giver of all 
 good, has enshrined the deathless truth in a formula 
 of His own choosing. Translated into every lan- 
 guage, uttered in every land, it is inscribed on the 
 portals of that spiritual temple which is the Church 
 of the living God. 
 
 The concluding verse of St Matthew's Gospel 
 might seem to a careless or prejudiced reader to 
 contain little more than a general provision for the 
 development of that society of which all admit Jesus 
 to have been in some sense the Founder. And yet 
 the language of that verse ought not to be thus sum- 
 marily dealt with. From its agreement and cohe- 
 rence with what precedes, and from its fulfilment in 
 the subsequent history of the Church, we must, on all 
 principles of fair criticism, admit its genuineness. 
 And if so, it would seem that the commission given 
 by Jesus to His disciples was, that they should teach 
 their converts to observe all that He had command- 
 ed, and further, that He promised to be wdth them 
 always, all the days^ till the end of the dispensation. 
 If He who uttered that command and that promise 
 was not God, He was guilty of such presumption as 
 must dethrone Him from His place in the respect 
 and admiration of His followers. And if Pie was 
 not God, then the fulfilment of such a command and 
 the accomplishment of such a promise are historic 
 phenomena, of which no solution has yet been at- 
 
 ^ irdaas rds ij/xipas. Matt, xxviii. 20. 
 
IV.] APOSTOLIC COMMISSION. 75 
 
 tempted. If we would see how the command has 
 been obeyed and the promise fulfilled, we need not 
 to study the records of the past. The proofs are 
 around us^ and in the midst of us — in the populous 
 parishes of our native land and in missionary stations 
 beyond the sea. Wherever Christ's law of love has 
 been proclaimed, and His work of love made known, 
 and His Gospel of love preached, there men have 
 subjected their wills to His will, and have worship- 
 ed Him, not only as God, but God Incarnate, as 
 that which He promised to be to the end of the 
 dispensation, Emmanuel — God with us. 
 
 But we cannot within the limits prescribed pur- 
 sue the argument further ^ I have tried to adapt 
 my treatment of this great question to the mode of 
 thought which prevails amongst educated men in the 
 present day. Conceding (for argument's sake) all 
 that even the most exacting could demand, I have 
 endeavoured to shew that an honest study of the 
 first three Gospels in their broadest features might 
 lead us to that conclusion in which the majority of 
 Christians have acquiesced, and for which they have 
 contended, that Jesus is very and Eternal God. If 
 it be asked, why this doctrine is not more explicitly 
 
 ^ Two prominent events of our all, but signal instances of the truth 
 
 Lord's history, His temptation and which we have endeavoured to trace 
 
 His resurrection (which have been — diflfering from other marked events 
 
 passed over without special discussion), as one star differeth from another star 
 
 point, when read aright, to the same in glory, but obeying the same law 
 
 conclusion as those incidents we have and proclaiming the same Deity, 
 already considered. They are, after 
 
76 ANALOGY. [lECT. 
 
 stated in the first three Gospels, we should at once 
 answer the question by another. Why are diamonds 
 hidden in the mines of Golconda and gold in the 
 heart of the Brazilian hills, instead of lying in starry 
 heaps on the sea-shore, or in ingots paving the high- 
 way of the world's traffick ? Why must human toil 
 and skill and patience be so lavishly expended before 
 man can bring food out of the earth, wine to make 
 glad his heart, and oil to cause his face to shine, and 
 bread to strenofthen man's heart ? I see enouo^h of 
 man's present condition to be convinced that he is 
 here in a state of probation, and that God has in 
 love and mercy ordained that no great treasure, no 
 necessary good, physical or intellectual, shall be his, 
 without exertion on his part to obtain it. And if 
 this law extends to the spiritual world, it confirms 
 my belief in God as a supreme and absolute ruler in 
 all places of His dominions. He who has not writ- 
 ten on the sun's disc, in so many words, as the 
 atheist might require, ^' There is a God," has not 
 written on the page of the Synoptists, "Jesus of 
 Nazareth is God." Condescending to make Himself 
 known to His creatures in the book of creation, or 
 the book of Inspired Record, He would not force 
 His revelation on man, and so abolish faith, and leave 
 no scope for honest investigation, and reduce man 
 from a moral agent to a mere machine of flesh and 
 blood. As the heavens so declare the glory of God 
 that those who behold it not close their eyes against 
 
IV.] SIN AND DEATH. 77 
 
 the liglit, so verily they who see not the Eternal 
 power and Godhead of Jesus in the Inspired Kecords 
 of His life and in the phenomena of His spiritual 
 kingdom, are equally without excuse'. 
 
 Starting from the familiar point of our Lord's 
 human life, we have arrived at the assertion of His 
 proper Deity. Had we, in accordance with the 
 method of a past age, tested the doctrine by the 
 writings of the New Testament indiscriminately, 
 especially those of St John and St Paul, we should 
 have arrived at the same result. But there is yet 
 another line of argument by which we may approach, 
 if we cannot reach this result. In the adaptation of 
 the doctrine in question to the present constitution 
 of man and to the supply of his deepest wants, there 
 is a confirmation of its truth, so much the stronger, 
 as lying outside the record to which we have hitherto 
 exclusively appealed. 
 
 Sin and Death ! Words how familiar, yet how 
 full of terrible meaning ! Sin, which was born in us 
 and has grown up with us, twining ever around our 
 hearts, poisoning the fountain of our actions, corrupt- 
 ing our affections, dimming our mental vision, and 
 alienating us from the source of Good. How shall 
 we get rid of it ? Guilt, the dark shadow which sin 
 throws on the conscience, guilt, the ruthless avenger 
 with its two attendants, remorse behind and fear be- 
 
 1 '^Scripture and U altar ian'usm ap- to both,"— Al)p. Whately, Remains^ 
 pear to any thinking person so ntterly p. 259. 
 irreconcileable, that he cannot adhere 
 
78 JESUS ALMIGHTY TO SAVE ALL [lECT. 
 
 fore, who shall rescue us from its grasp? Death, the 
 certain, yet uncertain heritage of one who knows that 
 death cannot quench his immortality, that it is but a 
 curtain hiding a life beyond the grave. Who shall 
 spoil death of his terror, and tell me something cer- 
 tain of the land that lies beyond ? These questions 
 men have asked in every age, not always in words, 
 sometimes in groans of agony, sometimes in shrieks 
 of fear. They are questions to which but one satis- 
 factory answer has been given. And that answer 
 for its truth and its power depends entirely on the 
 doctrine of the Godhead of Jesus. If He who came 
 to save us from sin, to purchase forgiveness, to bestow 
 eternal life, is not God, then He is not, He cannot be 
 mighty, almighty to save. If He is less than infinite, 
 that is less than God, what sure confidence can any 
 sinner place in His mercy or His promise? I know 
 enough of my own sin to know that no ordinary 
 love can save me, no common, no human blood re- 
 deem me. But there are depths of guilt below, far 
 below all which my self-examination has fathomed; 
 there are mountains of transgressions rising above 
 me which my mental eye dimmed by self-love can 
 never grasp, and I want to be saved to the utter- 
 most, every sin fully atoned for, all unrigliteousness 
 perfectly and for ever covered. Nor can I rest satis- 
 fied with an atonement whicli shall not include all 
 who need it. If He who gave Himself a ransom for 
 many is a finite Being, however great His merits, 
 
IV.] WHO COME TO GOD BY HIM. 79 
 
 I have no assurance that they will embrace every 
 sinner who comes to God by Him. And if so, I may 
 be excluded ; if the ark is not large enough to con- 
 tain all who seek admission, you may be shut out, 
 you or those nearest and dearest to you, the loved 
 one whom you laid in the grave in sure and certain 
 hope of the resurrection to eternal life through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. By His resurrection He was 
 declared to be the Son of God ; death hath no more 
 dominion over Him. He is alive for evermore, alive 
 to make intercession for His redeemed, and able to 
 save to the uttermost all who come unto God by 
 Him. 
 
 The doctrine which we have been discussing is 
 one on which I would once more beseech you, my 
 younger brethren, to make up your minds without 
 delay. There are indications around us and in the 
 midst of us of indifference, of hostility to the claims 
 of Jesus to be God and Lord. Beware of such 
 indifference. It is more dangerous than open infide- 
 lity, while equally fatal, because it is less shocking, 
 less revolting. Remember the words of the Lord 
 Jesus which He spake, ^^ He that is not with me is 
 against me." Think not to occupy a border-land 
 between Unitarianism and Christianity. If Jesus 
 is God, worship Him ; and if not, what shall we 
 say ? do despite to reason, and disbelieve testimony, 
 and abandon the faith of your childhood, and brand 
 all Christendom as idolatrous ; but do not betray the 
 
80 CONCLUSION. [lECT. IV. 
 
 Son of Man with a kiss. Do not try by misty lan- 
 guage or metaphysical reasonings to bridge over the 
 great eternal gulf which is fixed between the truth of 
 God and the devils lie. Do not become ministers of 
 a Church whose Creeds you must subscribe in a 
 ' non-natural sense/ and whose Liturgy you vilify or 
 misrepresent. In an hour when the love of many 
 has waxed cold, and the faith of many has been per- 
 verted, this Church and realm of England look to 
 you, my younger brethren, look to you with anxious 
 prayerful expectation, to see whether you will be 
 true to England's God. And from many a home in 
 this land I well know that a mother's prayer has 
 gone up to Him whose ear is ever open, and whose 
 grace is omnipotent, praying that you may be en- 
 abled to contend earnestly fur the faith which was 
 once delivered to the saints. 
 
 And, even as I speak, a voice comes, addressed 
 to every heart. It comes from Him, who, once 
 crucified for us in weakness, now sits in glory at 
 God's right hand. And as He sees some who bear 
 His name false to Him, and some denying Him, 
 and some doubtful in their allegiance, He asks in 
 those accents which His sheep know well, '^ Will ye 
 also go away?" God grant that this may be the 
 honest answer of each and all of us, ^^Lord Jesus, to 
 whom shall we go ? Thou hast tlie words of eternal 
 life ; and we believe and are sure that Tliou art the 
 Christ, the Son of the living God !" 
 
SERMONS, &c. 
 
 p. H. g 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 THE LAMB OF GOD. 
 
 (Preached on Good Friday, t866.) 
 
 JOHN I. 29. 
 
 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, 
 BeJiold the Lamb of God, which taketh aiuay the sin of 
 the tuorld. 
 
 There are few passages of Holy Scripture with 
 which we are more famiUar than this — few titles of 
 our Divine Lord which we employ more frequently 
 or more readily than that by which the Baptist 
 here designates Him. Conscious of sin, of want, of 
 misery, Christian hearts have for eighteen centuries 
 put up the prayer, ^^O Lamb of God, that takest 
 away the sins of the world, Grant us thy peace ; Have 
 mercy upon us." They have felt the need of some 
 sacrifice wherewith to come before the Lord, and 
 they have believed that Jesus Christ is the Lamb 
 which God Himself has provided. They have longed 
 for deliverance from guilt, and they have found 
 comfort in the assurance that Jesus saves His people 
 from their sins. Such has been, such is, the faith 
 
 6—2 
 
84 THE LAMB OF GOD. [SERM. 
 
 of the Church; such the lesson which her ministers 
 have drawn from the testimony borne to our Lord 
 by His forerunner John the Baptist. And yet, 
 simple as are the w^ords themselves, evident as the 
 allusions appear to most minds, certain as is the 
 doctrine to be drawn from them — this passage is 
 described by an eminent modern commentator as 
 ''one of the most important and difficult sayings in 
 the New Testament." Its importance all must ad- 
 mit. Its bearing on the fact w^iich we specially 
 commemorate to-day few Christians will deny. Its 
 sup23osed difficulty need not deter us from consider- 
 ing it at a time when with tearful eyes the Church 
 is gazing on the dying agony of her Lord, and pious 
 hearts are mourning for the sins which crucified 
 Him. God forbid that we should at such a time 
 substitute the discussion of a hard text for the 
 attempt to bring home to every heart the lesson of 
 the Cross! Cold textual criticism and theological 
 controversy must this day at least give place to de- 
 vout meditation and thoughts of charity. And if 
 in our consideration of the passage which I have 
 chosen as my text we find ourselves face to face 
 with false teaching, if in the effort to throw light 
 upon the truth we expose the antagonist error, let 
 the light which we employ be that which beams 
 from the bleeding brow of the Crucified, not the cold 
 light of scholarship or polemic orthodoxy; not the 
 chill sickly rays of an indifierent liberality, but the 
 
I.] THE LAMB OF GOD. 85 
 
 living fire from heaven which consumed the sacrifice 
 on the altar of Calvary. In the presence of that 
 display of infinite love we may well obey the Apo- 
 stle's injunction, '^Let all your things be done with 
 charity \" 
 
 ^^The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto 
 him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God." Though 
 different explanations have been suggested of the 
 phrase here employed, ^'the Lamb of God," no 
 doubt has been, or could reasonably be, entertained 
 of its application to the Lord Jesus. Our Blessed 
 Lord after His baptism had, under the leading of 
 the Holy Ghost, sought the retirement of the desert. 
 There in solitude He had fasted and prayed, and 
 had been tempted of the devil. There He had 
 grappled single-handed with the evil one, and had 
 defeated His foe. And now the meek Conqueror 
 was returning from that wondrous battle-field. He 
 rides in no triumphal car. No victor s wreath is on 
 His brow. No angel legions follow in His train. 
 No mighty Capitol welcomes His approach. He 
 walks alone across the desert sands to His Gali- 
 Isean home, there to carry on that great redemptive 
 work which had been so auspiciously begun. But 
 on His way He has to cross that valley of the Jor- 
 dan which was the scene of John's preaching and 
 of His own baptism. It may be (as Theophylact 
 suggests) that our Lord sought His herald for the 
 
 ^ 1 Cor. xvi. 14. 
 
86 THE LAMB OF GOD. [SERM. 
 
 express purpose of drawing from him this noble 
 testimony — in order that, having in His baptism 
 fulfilled as man the law which is binding on men, 
 He might now be declared to be more than man, 
 needing not like others the baptism of repentance; 
 haviner not like others to make confession of sin, 
 but Himself bearing and removing the sin of the 
 world. He comes to John, and He finds him sur- 
 rounded by a crowd of his countrymen. Not only 
 had Jerusalem and all Judaea and all the region 
 round about Jordan gone out to John, to be baptized 
 and to confess their sins, but the Jews had sent a 
 special deputation of priests and Levites from Jeru- 
 salem to ask the prophet who he was. These priests 
 and Levites had come to him the day before that on 
 which Jesus appeared. Owing to the distance they 
 had to travel they would seem to have remained till 
 the next day. At any rate, in the words which follow 
 my text, John the Baptist is evidently addressing 
 those whom he had addressed the day before. ^This 
 Lamb of God,' said he, ^ is He of whom I told you 
 yesterday ; He of whom I said. After me cometh a 
 man who is preferred before me, for He was before me.' 
 And I cannot but think that in this fact we have a 
 clue to the meaning of the words ^ The Lamb of God.' 
 As addressed to Jewish priests and Levites they 
 must have had a special, a definite significance. These 
 men were by their very vocation familiarized with 
 the sacrificial system of the Temple worship. They 
 
I.] THE LAMB OP GOD. 87 
 
 were priests — not scribes — and they probably knew 
 more of the Pentateuch than of the Prophets or the 
 Hagiographa — more of the writings of Moses than of 
 David or Isaiah. John had already told them that 
 he was the herald of a greater than himself — and 
 when Jesus appeared, he said, ^'This is He of 
 whom I spake to you. This is the Lamb of God 
 who taketh away the sin of the world." I do not 
 know whether we have ever formed an adequate 
 conception of the prominence given to the rite of 
 sacrifice in the daily life of the Jews. I believe that 
 to a Jewish priest the lamb must have become the 
 very symbol of sacrifice. Not only on the great 
 annual festivals was a lamb the victim offered on 
 behalf of the people, but the same animal was slain 
 morning and evening, day after day, and year after 
 year, and century after century, as an expiatory 
 sacrifice ; and there was a provision for a similar 
 offering to be made on many other special occasions. 
 Thus the very mention of " the lamb " must have 
 suggested to him the idea of sacrifice; just as to us 
 the crown or the sceptre is symbolical of royalty, — 
 nay, just as with us the words Maily bread' include 
 all that is needful to support life. And when to this 
 title of our Blessed Lord the further description is 
 added, ^^ which taketh away the sin of the world," we 
 can hardly doubt that, however the hearers may have 
 limited the word Svorld' to the Jewish nation, they 
 must have understood John to refer to those sacri- 
 
88 THE LAMB OF GOD. [SERM. 
 
 fices which were originally instituted as expiations for 
 human sin. 
 
 We observe — alas! that it should be needful to 
 lay stress on the remark — that the holy Baptist 
 describes our Blessed Lord not as a lamb, i.e. one of 
 God's lambs, but as the Lamb of God. He did not 
 cast about for a term which would have classed Jesus 
 with, and on a level with, those He came to redeem. 
 John had doubtless read the 23rd Psalm, and knew 
 that God was his shepherd. For him, as for the 
 Psalmist, God had prepared a table in the wilderness. 
 For him, as for all God's flock, there was a sure 
 provision and sure protection and sure guidance and 
 sure comfort and sure victory. For him, as for all 
 God's flock, there was that inward peace, which re- 
 liance on an Almighty Shepherd alone can inspire. 
 And can we bring ourselves to believe that when 
 John pointed to Jesus and said, "Behold the Lamb 
 of God," he only indicated One "whose confidence 
 had never been disturbed, whose steadfast peace no 
 agitation of life had ever ruflled " ? Was he only doing 
 " obeisance to the royalty of inward happiness^" ? Was 
 he worshipping a state of mind which diflered from his 
 own and from that of all God's servants only in degree, 
 but not in kind ? Was he so imbued with the 
 imagery of the 23rd Psalm as altogether to forget 
 Exodus and Numbers and the 53rd chapter of Isaiah? 
 Strange, if it were so, that he should have employed 
 
 ' Eccc Homo, p|). 6, 7. 
 
I.] THE LAMB OF GOD. 89 
 
 a word which can hardly be said to embody that 
 imagery, and which must have suggested (as we have 
 seen) a very different image to his hearers. Stranger 
 still, that he should have confirmed the suggestion, 
 and led away his hearers further from the image which 
 possessed his own mind, by adding those remarkable 
 words, ^' which taketh away the sin of the world." 
 
 But admitting, as on every sound principle of 
 interpretation we must admit, that the Baptist's 
 words had reference to the sacrificial lamb of the Mosaic 
 ritual, we are met by the objection, that according 
 to that ritual the lamb was not used as a sin-offerinof 
 properly so called and known. If such was not 
 the character of the type, how can it be so 
 expressly affirmed of the antitype ? If the Paschal 
 lamb was not expiatory, and the morning and evening 
 sacrifice was not a sin-offering, how could they pre- 
 figure Him whose office it is to take away the sin of 
 the world ? I cannot but think, that they who see no 
 connexion between the Paschal rite and expiation 
 or atonement, overlook or allow scant weight to the 
 fact, that the Passover was instituted to commemorate 
 a great temporal deliverance, of which the Bedemption 
 of the world by the death of Christ is the spiritual 
 counterpart. The prominent, the essential features 
 of the Passover ceremony, those which characterised 
 it no less in the time of Solomon than at its first 
 institution, those which remained unchanged when 
 much else was altered or modified, were these — the 
 
90 THE LAMB OF GOD. [SERM. 
 
 slaying of the lamb and the sprinkling of its blood. 
 This greatest of Jewish feasts seems to combine and 
 include within itself every form of offering, at once 
 propitiatory and eucharistic. And as the Israelites 
 kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest 
 He that destroyed the firstborn should touch them \ 
 so Christ our passover is sacrificed for us"^; Christ, 
 whose blood is the propitiation for the sins of the 
 whole world, speaking better things than the blood 
 of Abel's sacrifice or the Jewish Paschal lamb. 
 
 And it may be further remarked that the ex- 
 pression, the Lamb of God, seems almost to limit the 
 reference to the Paschal lamb. In two passages of 
 the book of Exodus, God speaks of this victim as 
 peculiarly His own. He terms it ^^my sacrifice V* 
 It was in an especial sense the lamb of God, not in 
 the highest and fullest sense, but so as to distinguish 
 it from all other victims, and to render it specially 
 typical of the coming Kedeemer. It was during 
 the Passover festival that our Lord was crucified, 
 that His blood was shed. Nor can we call it a mere 
 coincidence, that when the soldiers had broken the 
 legs of the two robbers who were crucified with 
 Him, they came to Jesus, and finding that He was 
 dead already they brake not His legs. St John^ tells 
 us that this was done that the Scripture should be 
 fulfilled, ''A bone of him shall not be broken." The 
 Scripture referred to is Exod. xii. 46, where it is 
 
 ^ Heb, xi. 28. - I Cor. v. 7. ^ Exod. xxiii. i8 = xxxiv. 25, * John xix, 36. 
 
I.] THE LAMB OF GOD. 91 
 
 commanded, "Tliou.shalt not carry forth ought of 
 the flesh abroad out of the house, neither shall ye 
 break a bone thereof/' This was part of the original 
 institution, and therefore an essential part of the rite. 
 The injunction was repeated (Num. ix. 12) two 
 years later, when the tabernacle was fully set up and 
 furnished, and its ritual fully established (Num. vii. i). 
 From this passage we may gather that the evangelist 
 St John regarded our Blessed Lord in His crucifixion 
 and death as the true Paschal victim, God's own sacri- 
 fice, the true lamb of God who taketh away the sin of 
 the world. But in the expression '' the Lamb of God," 
 there is doubtless included still more than a reference 
 to that victim which was specially designated the 
 sacrifice of Jehovah. Christ is the lamb of God because 
 He was destined by God, provided by God, accepted 
 by God, as a propitiation for human sin. In the 
 book of the Eevelation^ Christ is spoken of as 'Hhe 
 lamb slain from the foundation of the world." St Peter 
 reminds his brethren that they had been redeemed 
 with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb 
 without blemish and without spot, who was fore- 
 ordained before the foundation of the world and in 
 these latter days manifested. In the purpose of 
 God (as we are wont to say) this sacrifice was de- 
 signed long before the creation of the world, in the 
 far off fathomless depths of an eternity stretching 
 back for ever in the rear of time. The death of 
 
 1 c. xiii. 8: comp. i Pet. i. 12, 20. 
 
92 THE LAMB OF GOD. [SERM. 
 
 Christ was not an afterthought of the Divine 
 economy, it was part of a great scheme of infinite 
 wisdom and goodness. It is the eternal purpose of 
 One with whom there is no past, or future ; One 
 not Hmited by the same conditions as His creatures, 
 with whom purpose and act are one, for whom " all 
 is one and at once\" And as Christ was thus the 
 designed and provided Lamb of God, so also was He 
 accepted of God as a full, perfect, and sufficient 
 sacrifice for the sin of the world. This truth was 
 prefigured not only by the sacrifices of the Mosaic 
 law, but by pre-Mosaic history and by post-Mosaic 
 prophecy. The animals whose skins were employed 
 by God Himself to clothe our first parents after the 
 fall must have been slain, slain by Divine appoint- 
 ment, or, it may be, in a miraculous manner. And 
 viewing this fact in the light of subsequent 
 revelation, we see in it the first institution of sacrifice, 
 the first germ of the doctrine of expiation. And when 
 on the road to mount Moriah the father of the 
 faithful told his son that God would provide Himself 
 a lamb for a burnt offering^, we cannot doubt the 
 reference. And though Abraham may not have 
 clearly understood all that his own words im- 
 plied, or all that we understand them to mean, 
 yet we know that He rejoiced to see the day of 
 Christ, that he saw it and was glad^ 
 
 ^ Westcott, 77<c Gospel of the Roturrection, p. 20. 
 2 Gen. xxi. 8. ' John viii. 56. 
 
I.] THE LAMB OF GOD. 93 
 
 Passing over the Divinely appointed sacrifices of 
 the law, of which we have already spoken, we come 
 to the prophecy of Isaiah, and specially to the great 
 Messianic chapter, the 53rd. In this chapter a suffer- 
 ing Messiah is clearly predicted ; but the prophet does 
 not lay any stress on the symbolical meaning of the 
 Jewish sacrifices. The allusion to those sacrifices is by 
 no means clearly marked; for in the one verse where 
 Christ is said to be led as a lamb to the slaughter. 
 He is also compared to a sheep before its shearers. 
 It is for this reason that I have forborne hitherto 
 to refer the Baptist's words to the prophecy of Isaiah, 
 that I have supposed him to allude primarily to the 
 Paschal lamb when he cried, ^^ Behold the Lamb of 
 God." And yet when the Baptist tells us that Jesus 
 is not only the Lamb of God but the sin-bearer too, 
 when he speaks of Him as the author of a deliver- 
 ance greater than that from Egypt, and tells us how 
 that deliverance was accomplished, then we are led to 
 exclaim, ^' This is He of whom not only Moses in the 
 law, but of whom the prophets did write." And as 
 every Scripture is insph'ed by one and the self-same 
 Spirit, so He of whom those Scriptures testify is the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. 
 
 ''He taketh away the sin of the world." What 
 is the meaning of that wonderful statement? Tn 
 what does the removal of sin consist? And how is it 
 accomplished? The word which is rendered '' taketh 
 away " is used elsewhere in two distinct senses. Some- 
 
94 THE LAMB OF GOD. [SERM. 
 
 times it means, to carry, and so, to endure, to bear. 
 At other times it has the sense of removing, or taking 
 away. In the text both senses are combined. Christ 
 bears the world's sin; and He takes it away or 
 expiates it. In that solemn act of the Jewish ritual, 
 in which the hand of the worshipper was laid on the 
 head of the victim before it was slain, there was a 
 typical transference of guilt from the sinner to the 
 sacrifice ; and then death, the penalty of sin, was in- 
 flicted on the sin-bearer. Thus the obedient Israelite 
 was taught to believe that a transference of guilt was 
 not only possible, but that it was an ordinance of 
 Jehovah. Nor can I think that any man who rightly 
 estimates the burden of sin, who rightly regards 
 Christ as bearing the nature of man, can hesitate to 
 admit that to save man He bore the burden of human 
 guilt. Theoretically, I know, men cavil at the notion 
 of a transference of guilt. But such cavils are not 
 the utterance of the heart. What is the language 
 of the conscience-stricken sinner? 'I have sinned, 
 I have incurred guilt. A sin committed like a word 
 spoken cannot be recalled. I have offended God, I 
 have polluted myself. Christ may shew me how to 
 suffer. He might even suffer for me. But He can- 
 not bear my sin. I must bear it myself. Tt clings to 
 me like the poisoned robe of Nessus. It eats into 
 my very vitals. And unless I can get rid of it, I am 
 undone for ever.' To such an one the Gospel says, 
 Christ bears the sin of the world. His blood sprin- 
 
I,] THE LAMB OF GOD. 95 
 
 kled on the conscience cleanses it from its defilements. 
 All the types of the law, all the teaching of the pro- 
 phets, all the doctrine of the Apostles, nay, the self- 
 proclamation of Jesus Christ Himself, diverse in 
 time, in manner of utterance though they be, all unite 
 in one glorious testimony to the everlasting truth — 
 the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 
 As the Israelite — look at the passage, Leviticus iv. 
 27, 28 — it is very touching — as the Israelite, I say, 
 one of the common people, when he sinned through 
 ignorance, doing somewhat against the command- 
 ments of the Lord, or when he sinned and knew that 
 he was guilty, was commanded to bring an offering 
 and lay his hand upon the victim's head, and the 
 priest made an atonement for the sin he had com- 
 mitted and it was forgiven him, even so it is now. 
 The sin of every penitent believing sinner is laid on 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. The guilt is transferred, the 
 penalty has been undergone, an atonement has been 
 made, the sin is forgiven. 
 
 But more than this. It is sadly strange how un- 
 willing sinners are to accept the salvation which our 
 Blessed Lord has purchased. Some have told us that 
 Christ as the Lamb of God bore the sin of the world 
 only by enduring the wickedness of men, the contra- 
 diction of sinners against Himself This He did, but 
 this many of His servants have done too. Paul and 
 Polycarp and Luther and Latimer did this, but none 
 said of them that they took away the sin of the 
 
96 THE LAMB OF GOD. [SERM. 
 
 world. They were martyrs and confessors. No one 
 of them was called, or was, the Lamb of God. 
 
 And shall we say that the declaration of the 
 Baptist was fulfilled in the moral effects which have 
 followed the proclamation of the Gospel ? Can we 
 affirm that Christ's rehgion takes away, however it 
 may lessen, the sin of the world? As regards one form 
 of evil at least, that which displays itself in violence, 
 we know that Christ Himself said, I came not to send 
 peace on earth but a sword. Society, that is, the 
 world, is but an aggregate of individuals; and as in 
 this present dispensation there is no man that doeth 
 good and sinneth not, so even in Christian lands it 
 cannot be said that sin in this sense is taken away. 
 And in reference to the moral results of Christianity 
 generally, we know that one, and not the weakest 
 argument of the unbeliever in every age has been 
 drawn from the apparent results which have attended 
 the proclamation of the Gospel I think that if this 
 had been the Baptist's meaning, he would have 
 described our Blessed Lord not as one who takes, but 
 who will take away the sin of the world. 
 
 Yet the question remains, How is sin taken 
 away, not sins (though we are wont and rightly so 
 to adapt to prayer the Baptist's words), but sin ? The 
 word will include not only each sinful act, but that 
 fault and corruption of our nature which is termed 
 original or birth-sin. The sin, the guilt, of the world 
 is laid upon Christ. And wliat more shall we say ? 
 
I.] THE LAMB OF GOD. 97 
 
 We have been told that He, as the representative 
 man, though sinless, suffered as a sinner, that He 
 performed the greatest moral act ever done in the 
 world; and we are left to imitate Him if we can, and 
 to draw what comfort we can from the spectacle of 
 His Passion thus mterpreted. '' Ecce homo !" was 
 the careless, the contemptuous exclamation of Pilate. 
 ' Behold the fellow' — is perhaps a fairer translation 
 of his words \ He who so spoke of our Divine Pe- 
 deemer was one who had asked, as some ask now, 
 'What is truth V and who, though he had scourged 
 Jesus and allowed Him to be crowned with thorns 
 and buffeted, twice declared that he found no fault in 
 Him. Pilate, the very type of the natural man, the 
 man who lives in a world of sense, and counts as 
 realities only what he sees and hears, counted Jesus 
 as a man — a slave, but faultless nevertheless. 
 
 If our Blessed Lord was only a faultless sinless 
 man, free from actual and from original sin. Himself 
 He might save, but we have no surety that He could 
 save others. He might have endured the persecution 
 of sinners. He might have set an example of holiness. 
 He might have been the prophet of God, the servant 
 of God, the saint of God ; but He could not have 
 claimed to be the Lamb of God who takes away the 
 sin of the world. No ! my brethren. He of whom 
 John witnessed thus must be very and eternal God. 
 Thus only does He accomplish the prophecies which 
 
 1 Classical scholars are familiar with this use of 6 &v6po:iros. 
 
 P. H. 7 
 
08 THE LAMB OF GOD. [SERM. 
 
 went before and the types of the older dispensation. 
 And thus only can He justify the language of apostles 
 and evangelists concerning Him, or satisfy the deep- 
 est want of the haman heart. If the Old Testament 
 foretells (as it certainly does) a suffering Messiah, 
 it foretells Him no less certainly as a Divine person. 
 The child born, the son given, is the mighty God, the 
 everlasting Father. It is against the Shepherd, the 
 companion of the Lord of Hosts, that the sword is 
 commanded to awake\ They shall look upon Me 
 (Jehovah is the speaker), upon Me whom they have 
 pierced I Such quotations might be multiplied were 
 it necessary. While the New Testament is so full of 
 the Godhead of Him who died upon the cross, that it 
 is strange that any one who believes the book should 
 doubt the doctrine. 
 
 My younger Christian brethren, satisfy your- 
 selves without delay as to the nature of Him whom 
 the Baptist called the Lamb of God. You are living 
 in days when men can tacitly deny the Godhead of 
 the world's Ecdeemer, and yet pass for good Chris- 
 tian men. You are living in days when the press 
 pours forth floods of literature, attractive in style, 
 charitable in spirit, religious in tone, but the tendency 
 of w^hicli is to make love to man the fulfilment of 
 the law, and to eliminate the superhuman both from 
 Scripture and from life. It is the fashion to publish 
 professed biographies of Jesus Christ in which the 
 
 ^ Zech. xiii. 7, - Zocli. xii. 10. John xix. 37. 
 
I.] THE LAMB OF GOD. 99 
 
 human only is portrayed and the Divine ignored. 
 Perverse ingenuity and misplaced labour are employed 
 in unravelling the web of the life of Christ as recorded 
 in the Gospel^ in drawing out and casting aside the 
 golden warp of his proper Deity, and so destroying 
 the matchless, the perfect fabric. A history of the 
 man Christ Jesus as distino^uished from the Divine 
 "Word ought to have no attractiveness to a Christian 
 man. It is not such a Saviour that the Church has 
 known and worshiped ever since the time when 
 that small persecuted band met at daybreak to sing 
 hymns to Christ as God. Since then the ceaseless 
 song has gone up : " Thou art the king of glory, O 
 Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father." 
 Such a history is the history of an idea, a life of one 
 who never lived. It is fiction and worse than fiction, 
 because it misrepresents Him who in His cradle and 
 on His cross was as really the mighty God as He is 
 now in His celestial glory the Lamb that was slain. 
 Thus to describe Him is to strip Him of the crown 
 of Deity, and leave Him only the crown of thorns. 
 In the temptations and the sorrows of life, happy is 
 he who keeps firm hold of this cardinal truth. He 
 who in the days of His flesh suflfered being tempted 
 is able, because omnipotent, to succour as well as to 
 sympathise with His tempted people. And when the 
 remembrance of sin — sin black, repeated, aggravated 
 ^rushes with torrent force over the soul, when guilt 
 becomes a reality, and is felt to be more than abroach 
 
 7—2 
 
100 THE LAMB OF GOD. [SERM. 
 
 of charity — an offence against God, a violation of His 
 law, and an insult to His love, happy he who can lay 
 fast hold on the truth, that the eternal Judge is the 
 merciful Saviour too, that the Author of the law is 
 the victim of the Gospel, the Lamb of God, God 
 of God, whose blood therefore cleanseth us from all 
 sin. 
 
 Here, Christian brethren, we have the true 
 eipYiviKov. This truth it is which gives peace upon 
 earth, peace in the heart, peace in the world. The 
 Baptist, raised by Divine inspiration above Jewish 
 prejudices, had before told his countrymen that God 
 was able of the stones of the desert to raise up chil- 
 dren unto Abraham; and he now proclaimed Jesus as 
 the Saviour not of the Jew alone, but of the world. 
 He is (said the other John) the propitiation for our 
 sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the 
 whole world. And in this He was typified by the 
 Paschal Lamb; for we read that when Israel had 
 been delivered out of the house of bondage, there 
 went up with them out of Egypt a mixed multitude 
 for whose participation in the Passover a special 
 provision was made. Thus at the very institution 
 of that festival there was a foreshadowing of the 
 admission of the Gentiles to the Gospel feast. And 
 by that mixed multitude who went up out of Egypt 
 with Israel, are we not reminded of that glorious and 
 blessed consummation, when that great multitude, 
 which no man can number, of all nations and people 
 
I.] THE LAMB OF GOD. 101 
 
 and tongues shall stand before the throne and before 
 the Lamb, clothed with white robes and with palms 
 in their hands, crying with a loud voice, ^' Salvation 
 to our God which sitteth on the throne, and to the 
 Lamb"? 
 
 Of that multitude it is said, "They have washed 
 their robes, and made them white in the hlood of the 
 Lamb, Therefore are they before the throne of God. 
 They shall hunger no more, neither shall they thirst 
 any more;, neither shall the sun light on them, nor 
 any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of 
 the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto 
 living fountains of waters ; and God shall wipe 
 away all tears from their eyes\" O beatific vision ! 
 O blessed reality ! O wondrous grace, that offers to 
 every penitent sinner perfect remission here, perfect 
 bliss hereafter ! 
 
 1 Bev. vii. f4 — 17. 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 THE POWER OF CHRISTS RESURRECTION. 
 
 (Preached on Easter Day, 1866.) 
 
 PHILIPPIANS III. part of v. 10. 
 The power of His resurrection. 
 
 The law of Christian life is a law of progress. This 
 truth is set before us in Scripture both in figurative 
 and in dogmatic language. Our life is described as a 
 journey in which no loitering, no stojDping, no turning 
 back, is permitted : as a race in w^hich every muscle and 
 sinew must be strained till the goal be won. The life of 
 the regenerate soul is compared to that of the animal 
 and vegetable world, of which we know that develop- 
 ment and expansion and growth are necessary condi- 
 tions. St Peter, after reminding his converts that they 
 had been made partakers of the Divine nature, bids 
 them for this very reason add to their faith virtue, and 
 to virtue knowledge and every Christian grace. In the 
 passage with which the words I have read as my text 
 stand connected, St Paul declares his own willing 
 subjection to, and compliance with, this universal 
 law. Great as was his knowledge of the things of 
 
SERM. II.] THE POWER, &C. 103 
 
 God, strong as was liis faitli in Christ, ardent and 
 constant as his love to Him, he still felt that he had 
 not yet attained the object on which his heart was set, 
 that he had not yet laid hold on spiritual perfection. 
 He could already protest that to him to live was 
 Christ, but he was not satisfied with that. He would 
 add to his faith, knowledge, the knowledge of Christ 
 Jesus his Lord, a knowledge infinitely more worthy 
 of his efforts than any other attainment. ''That I 
 may know Him, and the power of His resurrection." 
 
 We cannot suppose St Paul to be here expressino* 
 a desire again to see Christ's risen body, to have the 
 vision of that Just One repeated which he had beheld 
 on the road to Damascus, and, it may be, on other 
 subsequent occasions. St Paul could have no doubt 
 of the fact that Christ was risen indeed. It was 
 not the resurrection itself, but the power of that 
 resurrection which he longed to know. 
 
 If we are right in supposing the Apostle to be 
 here describing his own spiritual state as one of pro- 
 gress, he cannot refer in these words to the reception 
 of a mere historical event, or an assent to the general 
 truth of which that event was at once the proof and 
 the illustration. He was not longing for certainty of 
 the fact, of which he had now for some years been a 
 witness, and for the assertion of which he had suffered 
 the loss of all things. His want was not intellectual, 
 but spiritual. He wanted not to be more certain, 
 but to know more, to experience more, to feel more. 
 
104 THE POWER OF [SERif. 
 
 And yet if we would understand what St Paul meant 
 by knowing the power of Christ's resurrection, we 
 must begin by ascertaining his view of that resurrec- 
 tion in its objective reality. 
 
 And, first, we notice that before his conversion 
 St Paul was prepared by his religious education to 
 regard a resurrection from the dead as possible. In 
 the time of our Lord and His Apostles, what we 
 should call the religious world among the Jews was 
 divided into two great parties — Pharisees and Sad- 
 ducees. The latter, we are expressly told, denied the 
 doctrine of spiritual existences and the resurrection of 
 the body, Avhile the Pharisees confessed both. St 
 Paul was, as he tells us in this very chapter, a Pha- 
 risee. He therefore not only assented to the truth 
 that God was able to raise the dead, but he had 
 probably defended it, as an assailed position, with all 
 the ardour of his energetic character. In attempting 
 such a defence, he would naturally be led to consult 
 the writings of Moses and the proj^hets. He would 
 probably not detect the latent argument for a resur- 
 rection which our Blessed Lord drew from the title 
 claimed by Jehovah, in Exodus iii., as the God of 
 Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 
 He might not have inferred that as God is not the 
 God of the dead but of the living, the souls of the 
 Patriarchs were in His hands in joy and felicity, 
 awaiting the time when the}" should be restored once 
 more to the fleshly tenements they had left. St Paul 
 
II.] Christ's resurrection. 105 
 
 may not have seen, as some Christians in later times 
 have seen, in Samson carrying off the gates of Gaza a 
 type of the Messiah bursting the gates of the grave. 
 He may not have regarded Jonah as in this respect 
 typical too. He may not have been taught by 
 Gamaliel to interpret the rescue of Isaac from appa- 
 rently imminent death, as we have been taught by 
 the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. He may 
 not have known that Abraham offered his son, ac- 
 counting that God was able to raise him up even 
 from the dead, from whence also he received him in a 
 figure. But I doubt not St Paul, like other men, had 
 an instinctive consciousness that death was not the 
 end of life; he had a longing for an outlet to the 
 grave, and a conviction, call it fancy, call it supersti- 
 tion if you will, that such an outlet exists. And 
 when with the cry of universal humanity on his lips, 
 non omnis moriar, he opened the holy books in which 
 he knew God had revealed to man the secrets of the 
 supernatural world, there he found statement after 
 statement, the very echo of his own heart's utterance ; 
 the voice of God without him confirming the voice 
 of nature within, bidding him not long but look for 
 life beyond the grave. Those words of the Patriarch 
 Job which, written centuries before Paul was born, 
 in these latter days lend comfort and encouragement 
 to bereaved and mourning Christian hearts, words 
 which critical ingenuity has striven hard to rob of 
 their great meaning, but which rise victorious from 
 
106 THE POWER OF [SERM. 
 
 each attack, deathless as the life of which they testify 
 — those words of the afflicted Patriarch were no doubt 
 familiar to the Apostle, ^^ I know that my Redeemer 
 hveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon 
 the earth : and though after my skin worms destroy 
 this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I 
 shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and 
 not another." David too had spoken in the person 
 of One who could say, ^' I have set the Lord always 
 before me : He is at my right hand, I shall not be 
 moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory 
 rejoiceth: my flesh also shall dwell in safety: for 
 Thou wilt not leave my soul to the world unseen, nor 
 wilt Thou sufler Thy Beloved One to see the pit of 
 destruction \" Here surely w^as a prophecy that one 
 at least of the sons of man — the Messiah it mio-lit 
 be — the head and Redeemer of the race, that One 
 should arise stronger than death and the grave, the 
 victor not the victim of corruption. And the glimpse 
 thus given was widened and confirmed by the lan- 
 guage of the following Psalm, when the Psalmist 
 seems no longer to speak in the person of Messiah, 
 but in his own proper character as a trusting happy 
 child of God, one whose heart was stayed on an un- 
 seen Almighty Protector, and whose present trouble 
 was lightened by the sure hope of resurrection beati- 
 tude. ^' As for me," sorrowful sinful exile though I 
 am, '^ I shall behold Thy face in righteousness, and 
 
 ^ Va. xvi. 8— 10. 
 
II.] Christ's resurrection. 107 
 
 when I awake up I shall be satisfied with Thy like- 
 ness'." The vision of Ezekiel recorded in the 37th 
 chapter of his prophecy, whatever other lesson it may 
 be intended to teach, must surely have confirmed the 
 Jew who read it in the hope of a resurrection. We 
 are so accustomed to put what w^e call a spiritual 
 meaning on the words of Scripture, especially of the 
 Old Testament prophecies, that we are in danger of 
 losing sight of their first and obvious significance. 
 But this is certain, the language is descriptive of 
 a resurrection. That is the thought suggested, 
 suggested it may be to a Jew far more vividly 
 than to us; inasmuch as he had learnt to interpret 
 literally the utterances of the holy Prophets. But 
 there is one passage so explicit on this subject, that if 
 it stood alone, it might well have inspired the pious 
 Jew with the hope of a resurrection. In the pro- 
 phecy of Daniel (xii. 2), it is predicted that a time 
 of unexampled trouble shall come in which God's 
 people shall be delivered, even every one that shall 
 be found written in the book. ^' And many of them 
 that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some 
 to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting 
 contempt." Brought up in the school of Gamaliel, 
 taught not only the letter of the Old Testament 
 Scriptures, but the controversial expositions of the 
 Pharisees, St Paul even before his conversion must 
 have been prepared to accept the doctrine of a resur- 
 
 ^ Ps. xvii. 15. 
 
108 THE POWER OF [SERM. 
 
 rection of the body as divinely revealed. With him 
 even at that staere of his life it was not thouofht a 
 thing incredible that God should raise the dead. 
 
 But at length Saul is converted : and the means 
 — the outward objective means of his conversion — 
 is a vision of the once crucified, but risen and 
 ascended Christ. There is no reason to suppose 
 that during our Lord's earthly ministry He had 
 ever been seen by St Paul; indeed, the Apostle's 
 silence on this subject is eloquent and, I think, 
 convincing. But Avhen on his road to Damascus 
 he Avas suddenly stopped, and (I will not say mira- 
 culously) but with a miracle converted, he then saw 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. This he expressly tells us. 
 Of this Ananias as expressly reminded him. That 
 it was no mere optical illusion, no mental ecstacy, 
 is clear from the language employed. St Paul saw 
 Jesus alive, whom he knew to have been cruci- 
 fied, and we may say that if in any resj^ect his 
 evidence of the resurrection fell siiort of that of 
 the other Apostles, it was more than supplemented 
 by the additional proof which he had of the ascen- 
 sion of our Blessed Lord. We have thus advanced 
 one step further. Not only did St Paul believe a 
 resurrection of the dead possible and probable, but 
 he had the testimony of his own senses to the fact, 
 that Jesus of Nazareth, of w^hose crucifixion and 
 death he must have heard as undoubted facts, was 
 alive aorain. He knew the Lord Jesus. He knew 
 
II.] Christ's resurrectiox. 109 
 
 that Jesus died and rose and revived. And yet 
 he was not satisfied. He longed still to know the 
 power of His resurrection. 
 
 If we admit the two facts which the Church 
 commemorates on Good Friday and Easter ; if we 
 believe that the Lord Jesus in our nature paid the 
 penalty of sin, and really and truly died, so that 
 by the force and violence of those torments which 
 He felt His soul was actually separated from His 
 body, and the body left without the least vitality S* 
 if we further believe that the life He laid down 
 on the cross He re-assumed in the grave, and having 
 by His infinite power re -united the same soul which 
 was separated at death to the same body which was 
 buried, that He walked forth from His sepulchre 
 the same Christ that He was before, and that He 
 now is ; if all this we steadfastly believe, (as every. 
 Christian must,) then we cannot but believe in some 
 sense or other the poiver of that resurrection. Our 
 Blessed Lord had claimed what no prophet had ever 
 claimed — the power to lay down his life and to 
 take it again. Others, as Elijah and Elisha, had 
 been the instruments of bringing back the vital 
 spark to the lamp of clay from which it had fled. 
 But beside that couch of stone on which the Sa- 
 viour's body lay, no prophet's form was seen, no 
 prophet's voice heard calling upon God that the soul 
 might return to it again. Elijah had ascended to 
 
 ^ S^e Bp. Pearson, Exposition of the Creed, Art. iv. 
 
110 THE POWER OF [SERM. 
 
 heaven ; but he had not died, he had not risen. 
 Elisha had raised others ; but himself he could not 
 raise. He only who is the Lord of all Creation and 
 the Lord of Life, who in the greatness of His love 
 had taken our nature and died for us on the cross, 
 was able by His own Divine power to resume the 
 life he had resigned. The fate of a kingdom has 
 sometimes been decided on a small battle-field. The 
 quarrel of two hostile nations has been settled 
 by champions in single combat. In the narrow 
 chamber of that rock-hewn sepulchre the greatest 
 fight was fought, the noblest victory won. Life and 
 Death closed in mortal struggle, and Death was 
 vanquished. He who is the Life gave the death- 
 blow to Death, He who is the Resurrection rose to 
 die no more, Death hath no more dominion over 
 Him. 
 
 As St Paul believed the fact of our Lord's re- 
 surrection, he must have recognized the power — 
 the supernatural the Divine power — which was ex- 
 erted and displayed in it. A nd he may have desired 
 to have his belief strengthened and his conviction 
 of the truth deepened. But even this was not all 
 for which he longed and strove. From other pas- 
 sages of his writings it is clear that he regarded the 
 resurrection of our Blessed Lord as exerting a power- 
 ful influence on himself and on the Church of Christ 
 at large. And it was for an increased, an ever- 
 increasing experience of this influence that he longed 
 
II.] Christ's resurrection. Ill 
 
 and prayed. In his Epistle to the Ephesians^ he 
 asks on behalf of his brethren that they may know 
 what is the surpassing greatness of the power of 
 God towards those who believe, according to the 
 working of the strength of that might which he 
 wrought in Christ in raising Him from the dead. 
 When the Apostle tries to express his sense of the 
 Oranipotence of God, language seems inadequate, 
 and he piles up words one upon another, each more 
 forcible than the last — power, energy, strength, 
 might — if so be that he may raise the conception 
 of his readers to that to which he has himself at- 
 tained. And yet he counted not himself to have 
 apprehended. Like some traveller climbing the 
 mountain-side, each step he took he saw more of 
 the heights stretching above him towards heaven. 
 Mist and cloud rolled away, displaying peak after 
 peak which before was hidden, and that which from 
 the valley seemed like a needle's point, now rose 
 as a mighty pyramid of eternal snow, a mountain 
 on the top of mountains. He had felt, he daily 
 felt the power of Christ's resurrection, but he wanted 
 to feel it more. Forgetting the things behind, he 
 pressed forward to those things which were before. 
 The night was far spent, twilight was creeping over 
 the world. Every step he took, every moment as it 
 passed, brought him nearer to the perfect day. 
 
 But we may not be satisfied with this general 
 
 ^ Cliap. i. 19, 20. 
 
112 THE POWER OF [sERM. 
 
 view of the Apostle's meaning. He has himself 
 told us distinctly in what w^ay the power of Christ's 
 resurrection is exerted and manifested. And first 
 of all, it is a justifying power. Many persons in the 
 present day feel a great repugnance to what is com- 
 monly called dogmatic theology. If they cannot 
 eliminate doctrine altogether from Christianity, they 
 try to throw around it a mist of ambiguity w^iich 
 effectually disguises its outline, and it may be wholly 
 conceals it. Disregarding the fact that a great 
 portion of St Paul's Epistles is not only doctrinal 
 but argumentative ; disparaging the labours of some 
 of the wisest and holiest and most learned mem- 
 bers of the Church, who have devoted their lives to 
 the elucidation of the doctrines of our faith ; reducing 
 Christianity from its true position as the first and 
 greatest of all sciences, to the level of moral philoso- 
 phy ; forgetting that without faith we cannot please 
 God, and that faith must have an object, and that 
 the embodiment of that object in words is theology, 
 and that a theology must contain propositions and 
 admit of inferences ; they hold that ^' mystery is 
 the nearest approach to truth : only by indefiniteness 
 can we avoid putting words in the place of things." 
 And yet when St Paul tells us that Christ was 
 delivered for our offences and raised for our justifi- 
 cation — mystery, profound unfathomable mystery 
 though it be, which he records — there is, thank God, 
 nothing indefinite in his statement. Our Blessed 
 
II.] Christ's resurrection. 113 
 
 Lord died, because we have sinned, and death is the 
 penalty of sin. He rose, because His sacrifice on 
 our behalf has been accepted. The penalty once paid 
 and for ever, can never again be exacted; the justice 
 of God once satisfied has no more demands to make. 
 And thus the acquittal of every believing sinner is 
 sealed and stamped with the approval of God the 
 Judge of all by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ from the dead. ''Who shall lay anything 
 to the charge of God's elect? It is God that jus- 
 tifieth. Who is he that condemneth ? It is Christ 
 that died, yea more, that is risen again \" 
 
 And here, before passing on, I would urge espe- 
 cially on the younger members of the Church the 
 great importance of studying for themselves the 
 Word of God with a view to ascertaining its teaching 
 on the great cardinal doctrines of Christianity. I 
 believe that one reason why so many persons dislike 
 creeds and formularies, is because they know not the 
 Scriptures and the power of God therein revealed. 
 I believe that one reason why our practice accords 
 so little with our profession, that our thoughts are 
 worldly, our hearts are harassed with care and per- 
 plexity, our lives are so inconsistent, our Church- 
 manship so lukewarm, is, that we do not search the 
 Scriptures to see whether the things taught by the 
 Church are so. In such study, prayerfully and ear- 
 nestly conducted, we should find light and strength 
 
 ' TJoin. viii. 3.^, .H. 
 
 P. H. 8 
 
114 THK POWER OF [SERM. 
 
 and comfort and peace. In such study we should be 
 doing the will of God, and we should know of the 
 doctrine that it is of Him. 
 
 Thus in the hour of temptation, when sin is hold- 
 ing out its baits, or falsehood is presented in a seduc- 
 tive form, we should ever have at hand an unerring 
 standard by which to test actions or opinions, a shield 
 against temptation and a preservative against error. 
 St Paul, I think, desired to know in this sense the 
 power of Christ's resurrection, to have his faith in 
 its justifying efficacy more firm and unwavering, and 
 to enjoy more of that peace with God which is the 
 fruit of living faith. 
 
 But the resurrection of Christ has also a sanc- 
 tifying power. All those who are united to Christ 
 by a living faith, who by regeneration are engrafted 
 into Christ, and made members of His mystical body, 
 are said to be raised and to have ascended into 
 heaven together with Christ \ Wondrous truth ! that 
 the Eternal God should not only have taken into 
 union with Himself this poor frail nature of ours, 
 but that He should have so exalted and glorified it ! 
 That we, if w^e are His true faithful people — we, even 
 now in this life of sorrow and temptation and sin, 
 we, the youngest, the feeblest, should have been 
 raised up, with and as Christ's dead body, and 
 should now be sitting in Christ in heavenly places. 
 Yet so it is. Such union is assured to every one 
 
 ^ Ephes. ii. 6. 
 
II.] Christ's resurrection. 115 
 
 who has been spiritually raised from the death of 
 sin to the life of righteousness. The knowledge of 
 this truth is a powerful incitement to the cultivation 
 of holiness. For this first resurrection in Christ is 
 a sure pledge of a future resurrection through Him 
 to a life of everlasting happiness. "If ye be risen 
 with Christ,... set your affection on things above, not 
 on things on the earths" Count yourselves dead 
 unto sin, but alive unto God. Resist sin, not only 
 in its grosser forms of lust, or avarice, or malice, or 
 dishonesty, but cleanse yourselves from all filth iness 
 of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of 
 God. Let the world see that you are risen with 
 Christ, that you have higher aims, higher pleasures, 
 higher occupations, higher hopes than they. Let 
 your Christianity be more than " the enthusiasm of 
 humanity :" let it be an intelligent faith working by 
 ardent unselfish love. Let it be not a sentiment, 
 but a principle. Seek, like St Paul, to know and to 
 manifest the power of Christ's resurrection. 
 
 Lastly, the resurrection of Christ is a source of 
 hope to His people. St Paul set before himself, as 
 the end of all his efforts, the prize of his race — this 
 grand consummation — '4f by any means I may 
 attain to the resurrection from the dead." It was a 
 resurrection for which he hoped, but a resurrection 
 from amongst the dead, a rising to the life immortal, 
 to be thenceforward for ever with the Lord. It is 
 
 ^ Colossians iii. r, a. 
 
116 THE POWER OF [SERM. 
 
 written, '^ Blessed and holy is he which hath part in 
 the first resurrection ^" We read, too, of the dead in 
 Christ xi^iTig firsts St John^ speaks of ^Hhe rest of 
 the dead" who slumber on, after the saints have risen 
 to meet Christ at His coming. This language seems 
 to explain the use, by St Paul, in the verse w^hich fol- 
 lows the text, of the unusual but expressive phrase, 
 TYjv e'^avdaracTLv rrfv e/c vcKpwv, a phrase the more 
 remarkable on account of the repetition of the article. 
 He desired them to lay firmer hold on this blessed 
 hope of immortality, to taste more of its comfort in 
 the bereavements of life, more of its supporting 
 power in the prospect of death. How full is our 
 own Burial Office of this blessed hope ! When the 
 minister meets the train of mourners following the 
 lifeless corpse of one they loved, what words of 
 strong consolation are those with which he first 
 greets them ! No human exhortation, however ten- 
 der, no Apostolic assurance though inspired by the 
 Holy Ghost, no record of a Patriarch's faith, but 
 the words of Jesus Himself — w^ords so full of love 
 and compassion, of promise and of might, that they 
 have soothed the anguish of many a stricken heart, 
 and inspired with hope Divine those who were 
 weeping for the dead, and refused to be comforted : 
 '' T am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord : 
 he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet 
 
 i Rev. XX. 6. 2 I Thess. iv. i6. 
 
 ^ Rev. XX. (;. 
 
II.] Christ's hesurrection. 117 
 
 shall he live : and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
 me, shall never die." 
 
 We may often have marvelled at the great faith 
 which the Church expects of her children, puttino- 
 into their mouth, when their sorrow is yet fresh, 
 when life has just lost for them its light, and when 
 a desolation more bitter than anguish has laid waste 
 their hearts, when the thought of hope or comfort 
 seems mockery, and even resignation seems all but 
 impossible — putting then into their mouths, I say, 
 words of hearty thanksgiving to God that it hath 
 pleased Him to take the departed brother or sister 
 to Himself. And yet such expressions are not in- 
 consistent with the rest of that wonderful service. 
 Let us not strive to bring down such a service to our 
 low level of Christian attainment. If there be (as 
 some suppose) reason for altering that Office in 
 another part — if it be desirable to expunge the ex- 
 pression of sure and certain hope of the resurrec- 
 tion to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, 
 with which expression we commit each departed 
 Christian to the ground, it might seem equally de- 
 sirable to omit the thanksgiving of which I have 
 spoken. But God forbid that the Church should be 
 robbed of one word of that service ! If, owing to her 
 relation to the State, certain terms appear sometimes 
 unsuitable, let the State which is responsible for 
 such relation be required to modify it ; but let not 
 the Church be spoiled of her birthright, or her 
 
118 THE POWER OF CHRIST*S RESURRECTION. [SERM. II. 
 
 Risen Head be denied the honour which is His due, 
 and which is done to Him by every faithful use of 
 that Scriptural Office. 
 
 The more we seek in our several stations to adorn 
 the doctrine of God our Saviour, to live as men to 
 whom their religion is a great, a dominant reality, 
 the greater will be our influence in resisting every 
 attempt that may be made to injure the Church, 
 either by depriving her of her temporalities, or by 
 tampering with her formularies. Let us shew that 
 we at least value those formularies, by seeking to 
 rise to their high standard of Christian excellence, 
 by desiring and labouring and praying that we may 
 know ever more and more of Christ and '^ the power 
 of His resurrection." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Note (A). 
 
 The following important passage occurs in the Inaugural 
 Address delivered by the Earl of Harrowby, KG., as Pre- 
 sident of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, at Bir- 
 mingham, on Sept. 25, 1866. It is extracted from the 
 report in the Times newspaper of Sept. 28th. I would pre- 
 mise that I cannot agree with his lordship in the opinion 
 that " the evidences of our common faith" " can be studied 
 equally" in the works of "the Unitarian Nonconformist 
 Lardner" and in the treatises of orthodox Christians, of 
 Protestants or of Romanists. We ought, as English Church- 
 men, to have sufficient confidence in our own creed, to rest 
 satisfied with the best works on Evidences which our own 
 divines can produce. We may study the writings of others 
 to supplement or correct these. But as text-books for 
 educational purposes these alone can with safety be em- 
 ployed. 
 
 " And, with reo^ard to reliction, is there not some common 
 ground for all Christians ? With regard to matters of faith, 
 there are too many points of difference to allow us to enter 
 upon them ; but could not the evidences of our common 
 faith be made matter for most interesting and common 
 instruction ? — a subject which can be studied equally in 
 the works of the Unitarian Nonconformist Lardner ; of the 
 English churchmen Butler, Paley, Jenyns, Whately, and 
 Daniel Wilson ; of the Presbyterian Chalmers, or the Roman 
 Catholic Abbd Frayssinous, without awakening the jealousy of 
 
120 APPENDIX. 
 
 sects or churches? And, as attendance at your lectures is 
 voluntary, I don't see how any one can be offended by the 
 introduction of such topics. It is a great defect of the pre- 
 sent time that no such instruction is to be found in courses 
 of education for any class. It has everything to recommend 
 in itself — it is most attractive as a study, it leads to a refer- 
 ence of ancient and modern history, a discussion of the laws 
 of evidence, and an inquiry into the reasons for conviction 
 upon subjects of the highest interest to the human mind and 
 the human destiny. It cannot well be taught in schools to 
 the very young, for they have not the materials available, 
 and it would be out of season with the habits of thought 
 desirable for their age. But when youth is already engaged 
 in the concerns of life he finds much to try the simple faith 
 which he has imbibed as a habit from his early instructors. 
 He has passions within, bad companions without ; the cur- 
 rent and lighter literature of the day, even occasionally 
 severe science itself, infuses doubts to combat which he is 
 armed with insufficient weapons. He lives in an age in 
 which everything is questioned, and where is he to ask for 
 answers ? Where is he to learn that if there are sometimes 
 difficulties in the way of belief there are still gi-eater difficul- 
 ties in the way of a man who knows what the strength of 
 evidence in favour of religion is, in the way of his coming 
 to unbelief? How completely he must abandon all these 
 reasons for conviction which would guide him in his decision 
 on other questions before he can yield to the minor doubts 
 and difficulties which have suggested or suggest themselves, 
 and abandon for a mere negative position the settled faith 
 which he had early imbibed. He cannot learn it from his 
 companions, his parents, or his employers. Even sermons 
 do not furnish the fitting occasion, because they must be 
 mainly exhortations to conduct rather than logical deduc- 
 tions from evidence. Is it not a great defect in a great 
 country that, unless compelled by absolute necessity, we 
 should undertake so much, and lu^t include tliis most neces- 
 sary of all knowledge ?" 
 
APPENDIX. 121 
 
 I would also commend to the careful consideration of all 
 persons engaged or interested in the work of religious educa- 
 tion the admirable preface to Mr Potts' s valuable edition 
 of Paley's Evidences. 
 
 Note (B). 
 
 I am well aware that a difference of opinion exists among 
 commentators as to the identity of the incident recorded by 
 St John (c. ii. 13 — 17) with that narrated by St Matthew 
 (c. xxi. 12, &c.) and the other two Evangelists. From St John's 
 account we should infer that our Lord drove the traffickers 
 out of the temple shortly before the first Passover in His 
 ministry, and just after the performance of His first miracle. 
 The other Evangelists state that a similar occurrence took 
 place two years later, immediately before our Lord's last 
 Passover. Hence some have inferred that twice during His 
 public ministry, at its commencement and again at its close, 
 our Lord cleansed the Temple; while another and smaller 
 class of expositors consider that St John describes the same 
 incident as the Synoptists. The argument in the text will 
 not be affected by the adoption of either of these views. I 
 am indebted to a friend^ who has paid special attention 
 to the exegesis of the New Testament, for the following 
 statement and determination of this interesting question; 
 and I gladly avail myself of his permission to subjoin it here. 
 
 "There is no doubt that the Synoptical Evangelists, 
 when narrating the purification of the Temple by our Lord, 
 all refer to one and the same event, which took place on 
 the Monday of the Passion- week. For although St Matthew 
 (xxi. 12) appears to ascribe the action to the day of the 
 triumphal entry, while St Mark places it " on the morrow " 
 (rg eiravpLov, xi. 12), this is only in accordance with his 
 usual practice of grouping together incidents or discourses 
 without any very precise notes of time. A signal example 
 
 1 The Eev. J. E. Prescott, M.A., late Fellow of Corpus Christi College, 
 Author of Every -day Scripture Difficulties. Longmans, and Co. 
 
 P. H. 9 
 
122 APPENDIX. 
 
 follows immediately (vv. 19, 20) — the cursing of the fig-tree, 
 and the observation by the disciples of the fulfilment of the 
 curse, which belongs properly to the following day (Mark 
 xi. 20). St Mark, on the contrary, fixes the time of the 
 cleansing very accurately, having in the preceding verse 
 noted the late hour at which Jesus, after His entry into 
 Jerusalem, took His survey of the Temple and of its dese- 
 cration. 
 
 " But when we turn to the account given by St John (ii. 
 13) of the Temple-purification, we have good reason to sup- 
 pose that he is speaking of a similar but totally distinct 
 occurrence. The precise order of events which he gives — 
 the marriage in Cana, the brief residence at Capernaum, 
 the journey to Jerusalem to keep the Paschal Feast, then 
 the cleansing of the Temple, and the subsequent discourses, 
 — seems to fix the incident at the first Passover of our 
 Lord's ministry, two years prior to the Passover mentioned 
 by the Synoptists. This is confirmed by the evident connec- 
 tion between the act and the conversation which follov/s. 
 ' Destroy this temple,' said our Lord, ' and in three days I 
 wdll raise it up.' The Jews replied, 'Forty and six years 
 was this temple in building,' thus also fixing a date which 
 cannot be referred to the last Passover. 
 
 " St John is narrating discourses which arose out of the 
 early Judsean ministry — a ministry which lasted until the 
 close of the year. And the context apart, it is an unparal- 
 leled thing for him to insert here out of its place an incident 
 belonging to the last few days of the Saviour's life. 
 
 " Why, it may be asked, have not any of the Evangelists 
 mentioned the two occasions ? The Synoptists only commence 
 their main history with the Galilean ministry, and never 
 touch upon the subject of the ministry in Judoea until they 
 approach the events of the last Passover. They refer indeed 
 at the time of the Passion to the saying, 'Destroy this 
 temple,' (Matt. xxvi. 61 ; Mark xiv. 58) ; but it is not within 
 their province to relate the occasion on which it was spoken. 
 St John, on the other hand, dwells upon the first Passover ; 
 
APPENDIX. 123 
 
 while in regard to the last his narrative is chiefly confined to 
 the spiritual discourses of Jesus, He, probably, would not 
 mention the second purification, as it had been already de- 
 scribed by the Synoptists, and as it did not bear upon that 
 inner development of the glorification of Christ which it was 
 his especial design to trace. 
 
 " It was very natural that Jesus should perform this act 
 both at the commencement and the close of His ministry. 
 It was symbolical of the object of His labours — to purify the 
 spiritual temple of God, and expel those who should defile 
 it. Looking at the accounts of the two transactions, we see 
 that in the former the rebuke is, as we should expect, far less 
 severe. In the first, the polluted Temple is called 'a house 
 of merchandize;' in the second, 'a den of thieves,' with 
 special reference to the language of the prophets (Isai. Ivi. 
 7; Jer. vii. 11). Each occasion, too, appears to have given 
 rise to a demand from the rulers of the authority of Jesus 
 for doing these things. To the former demand an answer 
 was vouchsafed ; to the latter it was pointedly refused. 
 
 " Hengstenberg (Christologie, ill. 670 sq.) also insists 
 strongly on the necessity of two cleansings in order to carry 
 out the figure of the prophet Malachi with regard to the 
 double purification of the theocracy here represented by the 
 Temple. 
 
 '' And if it be urged that the identity has been supported 
 by some great commentators, such as Strauss, De Wette, 
 Priestly, Liicke and Neander, I would simply summon on our 
 side Origen (in Evang. Joannis, Tom. xi.), Augustine {de Con- 
 sensu Evang. Lib. II. c. 67), Chrysostom [Ho mil. Ixvii. in Matt), 
 Greswell, Ellicott, Alford, Wordsworth, Thomson, Williams, 
 Milman, Bengel, Stier, Olshausen, Lange, Wieseler, Tischen- 
 dorf, Meyer, Tholuck, Kuinol, Ebrard, Luthardt, and Heng- 
 stenberg." 
 
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