VI.
A poor young carpenter dies. He goes down in ignominy. Amid the jeers and contempt of the multitude, he goes down into the grave. But from that moment, commotion begins. Forgiveness of sin in the name of Christ is preached; disciples are won; books are written; civilizations are touched; movements are inaugurated; persecutions, bloody and relentless, are waged. The fires of hate are kindled; storms from all round the social, political, and religious sky gather, and howl, and empty their fury upon the new movement. Nothing impedes it; fire cannot hinder it; persecution intensifies it; death does not alarm it. Now, we submit, does not such a movement, starting from such a source, and moving out with such vigor, and becoming intenser and deeper as it is extended, form a remarkable and singular exception to the principle we are considering? Is there any rule among men by which it may be estimated and classified and labeled? Can any human, or logical, or philosophical formula or principle measure the multiform and widely diversified facts in this case? Does it not form an exception to all rules and human methods of measurements? Do we not augment the difficulties of accounting for the work of Christ by minifying him, and calling him a mere man? Is not the easier way to account for Christ’s work, to accord to him all that he claims for himself and all that his disciples claimed for him. He said, “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.” If we accept this as true, we can account for his work. But in this view, we will see that his life was divine and one with the Father of us all. Then we will see that he was the Son of God, the Word made flesh, the incarnation of the divine mind and wisdom and power. It is impossible to account for the life and work of Christ by the principles with which physical force and merely human force and thought are measured. The sun is the center of the system of nature, a system destined to end. Any system, the center of which is gradually losing its force, cannot last. Christ is the center of a spiritual system totally different from the system of nature. By all the force the sun parts with to the worlds about it, by so much less has it. It is gradually losing itself, to find itself no more forever. Christ is pouring his force into the system of which he is the center, but by such a process he is not losing his force, but increasing it. By losing himself he finds himself. The universal law of the system of which he is the center, is the law of communion. The force he gives away comes back to him augmented by the personality of all who partake of it. Instead of becoming poorer by giving, he becomes richer. This great truth St. Paul saw when he said: “All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.”