SOCI AL COLUMN.

[The matter included in this column is contributed and paid for.] The Doctrine of the illsuihood of Jesus. .—,— »  , A sermon preached in Westminster Abbey, on Sunday, April 22, 1900, ly the Rev. Chakles Gore, M.A,, Canon-in-Residence.

-1 Thomas answered and a*id unto Him, my Lord and my God,'—St John, xx, 28. It was a strange conffssioo, this, to be addressed by a piou3 Jevf, who knew the meaning of bis faith, to Gap, the man Christ Jesus, with whom as man he had companied, with whom he had eaten and drunken,-whom he had heard speak in human words through human Hps, The Jew believed in a God Who had created men, who worked through them and ruled them, Who was conversant with all their ways, Who spoke to them and had spoken through them. But it was a God Who was more |inimeasurably distant than imagination could bridge, WhOB9 ways were higher than men's ways, and His thonghts than men's thoughts, as high as the heaven is from the earth. He bad, I say, spoken through men, but it is ir .that very consciousness of the prophets that the distance between God and man becomes more significant. It emphasises just where man is highest, lor in proportion to man's goodnsss does lio become conscious of his own sinfulness in the presence of the High and Ho!y God. 'Woe ia me, for lam a mun of unclean lips, and I dwell among a "people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts'—that had been the cry of Isaiah. 'Behold, Lord I cannot speak, for I am a child-—that had been. The Confession of Jeremiah's Weakness There was not one of these holy men of God who would have hesitated for a moment if we had proposed to offVr them the sort of reverence that is due to God, who would have hesitated to rebuke it in the language of St Peter, • Stand up upon thy feet, for I also am a man*' The last of the prophets, he who is called greater than the prophets is conspicuous for this self-effacement in the presence of Gad, though in his case he took off the glory of his pro phetic crown to cast it at the feet of Christ. Truly a strange confession this, to see one who knew the meaning of his belief In the one and only unap proachable God, and hear him speak to One Who was truly Son of Man, truly Jesur of Nazareth,' My Lord and my God.' And yet it was no sudden and rash exclamation ; it waa the deliberate confession of what had become the root principle and conviction of his life. And it was not his, J?homa&'s confes sion alone: it was that which formed the basis of the conviction of aU the ApO3tles. It is St John who is record ing this exclamation of Thomas, and he writes this narrative of the words and deeds of Ohrisfc, this narrative of what he had seen and gazad upon and handled with his hands, for no other purpose than that men might believe that Jesaa is ths Son and Word of God, Who in eternity was with God and waa God. And if Sfc John's Gos pel was written latest of New Testa ment books, the belief is just the same in St Paul's writings, which are the earliest. There, from the beginning, Christ ia that eternal Son of God Who has come into the world, come into this human flesh of oure, having existed before He came into it. He is over all-—God, blessed for ever And, once more, St Paul is in eager controversy with a party which is opposed to him, the party of the Judy siere. We see the clear principles which divide him from bia opponents, but there is no mark of division in this respect when St Paul cries out that Jesas wasnisrked out to be the Hon of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. He is only declaring What the Whole of that First Christian Church Unmistakably Believed, Thry are all joining in that confes sion of Thomas, It is their deliberate voice ', it is the expression of their slowly-grown conviction*— ' My Lord and my God,' How did it come about, then, this conviction in the minds of the Apostles ? That is a question of the most serious and profound interest for all of us | to-day, because the belief of ourselves ie grounded upon this wifcuess of the Apostles. If it hid no good gronnds In them, it can have no good grounds in us. AJI the authority of the Ohareh is grounded upon one witness, the witness of the Apostles; the whole Ohurch is builfe upon the foundation of this witness of theirs. There is no society in the world that has ever more coaspicuoaaly been founded upon the testimony—the testimony of men, though in that testimony there is some-: thing working that is more than human. But still, on the witness of fchfse n.en does the faith of Christen dom rest, and we do well to ask how it was formed, The answer they would give us is that it was formed in the slov? process of their experience—that which we have seen, which we have heard, which we have handled, which we have gazed upon. It was that which they earae to declare to us. They, becoming conversant with Him as man among men, had gradually, in the slow process of their experience, come to believe Him to be more than man—ah to be very God. The docu ments in which the slow process of this conviction is enshrined are docu ments which, for many years, have been the subject of eager and close criticism' And yet in any reasonable sense this criticism of the Gospels cannot touch the ground on which this conviction rests, for it is not the evidence of here or there a disputable saying ; it lies in the whole impression which that personality of Jesus of Nazareth made in their long familiarity upon the minds of these simple hearted and genuine, but not easily credulous, witnessep. They had passed into the companionship of Jesus of Nazareth out of the school of John the Baptist, and from the very begin ning they had felt the influence and the authority of that unique per sonality. But we know that this authority of commanding personality is a fact of which we have to take count in many regions of human experience. You see it in men of very different »oral qualities! in John Nicholson In iudia^u the great Napoleon, *

It is not only Good Men who extrcise a ' Consli aining Authority upon their Fellows. , In Jesus of jfTazareth there waa, something different. It was an author ity of a kind which they felt entering into their inmost consciousness, and laying there upon them the constraint of the authority of God. {He spake asi one having authority, and not as the Scribes.' You cannot read a page of our Lord's teaching without feeling this influence upon your own souls, if you read it with open hearts. ' Ye know that it was said to them of old times—-but I say unto you.' It was said to them of old times by seer and prophrt, speaking from the mouth of God Himself, speaking the word of another- • Thus saith the Lord.' He came not to pall'down what they had built, bub to fulfil and complete it, only in a different way, by an author ity of a different kind, by an authority which inhered in His own person, * Verily, verily I say unto you.' And with that authoritative teaching there mingled another tone, something so strange, if we were not familiar with it in words, that it would strike as with more astonishment than in fact it does. You know how at the end of the Sermon on the Mount our Lord pic tures to Himself how at the last great Day of Judgment, men of all sorts and kinds among those who have pro | fessed to be Hia disciples shall come boasting of their wonderful works, of all that they have done in the name of Jeaua. And he will judge them, He will discern their heart of hearts, He will see through the apparent brilliancy of their performance, He will say : ' I never I kaew you ; in your heart of hearts you were not Mine.' What is this 1 Here He is—in a way which only seem toler able because it is a piece of His teach ing ; He is claiming to be the ultimate and Divine judge of the thoughts of men's hearts. Nor is this only in the case of His disciples. He describta the last great day, when before Him shall be gathered all nations, and he shall separate them as the shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats, and that by knowing that they can tell Him themselves, nay, in a meaning which astonishes them, but in accord ance with the real and inner meaning of fiheir motives and their lives. He will separate that inconceivable mass o? humanity into the two great camps of Those who have Served Him and those who have Served Him Not He was challenged by the Figh Priest on His trial as to whether He was the Christ, the Son of the living God, and at that Supreme moment He gave, with infinite quietness of solem ■ nity, the affirmative answer, • Thou hast paid, and verily thou shalt see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of Heaven in the power of the Most High.' Picture to yourselves what it must have meant to be in the company of a man, human in all the largeness of human sympathies, looking at them with the love of human eyes, touching them with the love of human hands, eating and drinking, walking in the common ways of life, but all the time proclaiming Himself as the one final j and infallible arbiter of the feelinga of all men, because He judged them with the Divine judgment, infallibly aud ! surely at their very hearts, and ask j yourselves, Was it possible that, in a case like this, the feeling of men to wards their leader and th nir teacher should not pass into something deeper and higher than anything which is legitimate from men to man, even into that faith which is only legitimate from man to his one Refuge and Judge and Guide? And, side by side with thia teaching were His works. To a Jew, who knew that there is one lordship in the things of spirit and in the other world, one lordship of one God, it must have seemed altogether of a piece with His saying that a like power should be exhibited in Bis working. And truly All those Miracles of Christ -were not Por. tents: they were but Ohject-lessons to men's eyes, parallel to that teaching which He waa perpetually giving by Hia words to their hearts and con sciences and intelligences. It wae that they might know that the Son of Man b&d power on earth to forgive sins, that He performed that outward miracle which set in a visible light the meaning of the forgiveness of sine, and said to the man with his paralytic j infirmity, ' Take up thy bed and walk.' | &nd all this that He said and that He did was but part of something which can only be described as the- perpetual j assertion of Himself. You know how good men, teaohers about God, are, in proportion as they are good, humble, and their humility shows itself in no respect so much as this, that they are s for ever refusing to attach men simply to themselves, that they are for ever afraid of getting between the souls of men and God, that they are for ever pointing away from themselves and up to God* Who is Paul and who U I Apollos but ministers by whom you believe ? Contrast with that tone of good men, because they are good, the utterances of Jesua : •Ye believe in God, believe also in Me.' That is the saying of St John, but it ia the satae thing, in other words, as that which is recorded in the other evangelists: 1 dome unto Me all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' He looks round upon human nature in its weariness and anxieties. There is no rest for men but in God. That is the commonplace of all religion, and lo! He, the Human Jesus, stands there among Weary, Suffering Humanity, and looking with eyes of an infinite human tenderness upon them, He cries, c Come unto Me, and I will give you rest. And this ia no man who loves flattery; nay, when on© came with the easy words of obvious fhttery, 1 Good Master, what shall I do V He sternly rebukes him. He will not have a man coming with the words of easy high-speaking until He knows what they mean, 'Why eallesfc thou me good 1 There is none good but One, that is God.' But even while he was uttering that rebuke, all the timo He was encouraging in Hia disciples to wards Himself—nay, He was de liberately eliciting—an attitude com pared with which this mere ascription to Him of goodness was truly as noth ing. And to crown all this, there are single sayings which would be hard indeed to believe if they stood alone, but which, in their contexts, do but give the climax and the explanation to all this attitude of our Lord's towards many of Hi* brothrea—einglg utter-

ances, which are most numerous in St John's record, as when He plainly dftclares,' I and My Father are one,' but which are there also in the other and earlier Gospels. c iSo man know eth the Father save the Son ; no man knoweth the Son save the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father save thfi Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him'—an intimate and eternal, mutual, personal knowledge of the Father and the Son as beings of the same order s or when, in the parable of the vineyard, He describes how God first of all sent all His various messengers to provide, and then at the last, by a new and distinct action, said, *I will send My Son.' Truly, then, it is not to be wondered at if in the- minds of the Apostles there [grew up this gradual conviction, not j only that He was the Christ, but ! something, dimly conceived, greater than the Christ. And yet it tfas truly but a vague and undefined conviction. Had it been otherwise it could not have been for the moment dwarfed by the overshadowing of the great trouble, but so it was. The vague conviction was shattered by the great catastrophe. They see Him fail before their eyes, and

The Tragedy of ifiis Failure teas Too Much for Them

They watched it deepen into utter catastrophe, they saw Him die upon the cross. Their hopes were for the time quenched ; but when they had taken in the meaning of the great message of Easter, not only did they come back to the assured conviction that the risen Jesus, truly still human, was the Christ, but also they came back to the conviction that He Who had thus shown himself to them in their human nature, He was truly and for every man ; was also that which was so hard to put into words —He was marked out as ' the son of God in power by the resurrection of the dead.' There are no other words that can express the truth but the confession of Thomas,' My Lord and ray God.'

And here is the basis of the whole Christian Ohu»*cb. For if this be true, then we know our God, we know with whom we have to deal, we are not left to the speculations of the philospher; we are not left to the variations in our own feelings, or to the varying reflec tions of varying experiences. We look to that intelligibly human nature of Jesus of Nazareth, and there in those unmistakable human characteristics, there in those famiiar lineaments, we see what is truly and really the image of God. God, the eternal God who had all along been manifesting Himself in this nature of ours. He Who had bean showing His power and His Godhead in all the great wonders and splendours of physical nature ; He Who had been thundering his trrrors into human conscience, making men feel in spite of themselves His judgments of righteous ness. He had in a more intimate union entered into this human nature which He bad taken. He had shown the unimaginable Godhead ia tho intellig ible lineaments of a human nature, that

Jesus of Nazareth, very man, is very God And here, further, we have something which, onco for all, I do nofc say explains, but makes tolerable, all tho ocherwise intolerable burdens of human pain. Tie has entered into this human life of ours, He has taken into Himself all that told against Divine love, all the unmerited pain and suffering and failure, all that has ever made men cry, ' My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ?' He has taken it all into Himself and made it tho very instrument through and in which He declares and brings nearer to ua the Divine love. Truly, Christ leads ua through no darker road than He has gone through Himself. And here, once more, is what alone makes possible « Catholic faith, a faith that is for all time and for all men, for there is no relation of Gcu t man or of man to God, possible, none even con ceivable, which is closer than that which is given us in Him, Who, very God, is also vary man, and has shown that our human nature can ba truly the expression and vehicle of Godhead. And truly, after these nineteen centuries of progress of developemenfe, instead of feeling that the relation given to os in the person and message of Jesus Christ is an anti quated thing which the world is out growing, we can hardly study the reve lation and then the needs of men about us without feeling that

We are hardy yet at the very beginning of Understanding all the Treasures of Wis dow and Knowledge which lie hid in Christ. Brethern, it is open to every one of us 50 share this apolstolic conviction, and to cry with Thomas, ' My Lord and my God,' It is open io everyone of us. No man Truly can say that Jesus Chiisfc i*B the Lord but by the Holy Ghost, but the assistance of that Divine Spirit is with us all . It is by no mere specula tion or argument that you can reach any deep conviction. But read these Gos pels—read them, and as you read them pray over them -—pray for the guidance and light of the Holy Spirit. And do you say that ive find these Miracles so great a Difficulty ?

Brethren, I aak any man to think whether they can, even in their imagi nation, separate these miraculous works, as we call them, from this belief that I have been speaking to you of. What do you see as you look at this great universe of ours ? Do you see a blank infinity 1 Nay, it is a progress of life from stage to stage, and at every stage of that advance the new form of life which meets our experience has new forms and method of working. When first in the model of the inorganic world the forms of life at all appeared and plants were growing, that was a miracle; it was a thing, that is to say, which the lower form of inorganic nature could not produce, and could not account for. When men first thought and talked, and builded and planted, they were doing that which, from the point of view of all that had been below this human nature of ours, was a miraole, an unknown thing hitherto, news sets of facts, new manifeseations of laws of action, If Christ truly is very man but also new man, man is whom is working the very personality of God Himself, can you ever conceive that the modes of His action would not be, as compared to all that lay below him, new modes of action ? It must be an action truly human, but shot through it must be a strand of that which transcends all human action known before. So truly the works of Hia healing and judging power seem, but

the most natural outcome of the whole of what that Person claims and shows Himself to be. Can you think of the new m»nheod entering into our sin- - stained world, can you think of the 1 moral miracle of a sinless Christ ; entering into this sin-stricken world, and even imagine, knowing what we do of the intimate connections between mind, character, and the material I organism —can, I say, you even conceive that that sinless Christ could j have come into a sinful world by some thing other than what would to our eyes appear a miracle 1 If Christ truly sums up, as the Second Man, the whole j destiny of oar human race, ia anything but more natural than, that in His Resurrection should be expressed in summary what ia the Divine desting for our manhcod as a whole 1 If he is truly the judge of quick and dead, Can anything seem more Natural than that He should be taken up in Glory ? And truly if in your heart you perceive the naturalness, the signifi cance of these, to us, wonderful words and acts, you will not find the evidence deficient or weak, for test and probe that evidence of the New Testament and you find St John's words are true concerning it. It is the things that they saw, that their eyes gazed upon, that their hands handled, that these men declare.

THE ASHBURTON OCARDIAN: SA'DtfRDAY, OCTOBER 13, 190 C

Printed and published by AIWUD ftM (DyRBELL-BaXTBB, of Burnett Itreefe MM*. for the Proprietor^ Robux BiLb t»d Henby Adah Maokay, »t their Prblttag Office, Buraotti Street, Achbartoa, , SATURDAY OGUOBBR J5, 19Q0 |



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