And now, keeping these characteristics in mind, let me ask you to consider them in reference to our Lord's teaching. One of our most popular and graceful writers—the Dean of Westminster—has done good service to the truth by pointing out repeatedly the very conspicuous and utterly peculiar characteristic of the Saviour, that He is wholly devoid of national exclusiveness. This is the more striking since His birth and all the circumstances of His early life would naturally have imbued Him with the prejudices of the most exclusive of all nations: a nation which was intended to be exclusive, which could only fulfil its special mission by exclusiveness. Mr. Hutton puts this with his usual force, but somewhat harshly: "To trust in Him really, to believe that He can help us to reduce the vulgar chaos of our English life to any order resting on an eternal basis, is far easier if we believe that the very same mind is shining on our consciences which entered into the poorest of lots among nearly the most degraded generation of the most narrow-minded race that the world has ever known, and made it the birthplace of a new earth" (Essays, vol. i., p. 283). Christ speaks ever to man as man; His words find an echo in universal consciousness; in Him there is neither Jew nor Gentile, and, note specially this point, neither bond nor free.

At this point, however, we may be met with an objection which has been presented with considerable skill, and appears to have seriously affected the judgment of inquirers. It is asserted that, after all, our Lord was but a Jewish Rabbi, differing indeed in some remarkable characteristics from other teachers of the synagogue, but only to an extent which may be accounted for, partly by His position and education, and the influence of Essenian principles, partly by peculiarity of nature and gifts which our opponents admit to have been of the highest order, marking Him, as they would say, as a man of transcendent genius, one of the few in the world's history in whom men are compelled to recognise a master of the soul. Hebrew writers of great learning, by whom this notion is gladly accepted, in their efforts to establish it have done signal if unwitting service to our cause. They have enabled readers of general culture and unbiassed judgment to ascertain for themselves some important facts which were formerly known thoroughly to those only who had sufficient learning and leisure to enable them to penetrate into the depths of Rabbinical literature, the most intricate and repulsive which human labour ever produced. It is now comparatively easy to ascertain what was the true character of the Jewish Rabbi, and of Rabbinical teaching; what, too, was the special character of the Essenian teaching,[165] at and about the period when our Lord impressed His stamp upon the mind of man. Now I would challenge any controversialist to deny that our Lord's teaching differed from that of all the Rabbis, not merely in degree, but in kind. It differed in principle, in its processes, in its results, in its tone, its spirit, in every essential characteristic. This was felt at once by His hearers: the first and most abiding impression made upon the mass of His countrymen was that He taught not as the scribes. This was the secret of the attraction which drew and retained disciples. "Where shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." This was the cause of the fierce antagonism on the part of the Rabbis. They felt that His system was incompatible with their own. The scribe, as such, was a mechanical instrument; his authority was that of the system under which he worked, he held the minds of his hearers bound down and crippled by fetters by which he was himself bound even more tightly. Properly speaking, he was not even an interpreter of the law, with the principles of which he was little concerned, but simply a referee on points of casuistry or of formal observance which had been settled in past ages. The one merit which he claimed was that of unswerving adherence to the old customs, the old interpretations, the old applications of the law. Of all disqualifications for the office of a scribe, the most fatal would be independence of spirit, originality of thought or feeling. Many sayings of the Rabbis express this principle with the utmost naïveté: e.g., "A scribe will have no portion in the world to come, even should he be faithful to the law of God, and full of good works, if his teaching be not wholly in accordance with tradition." Our Lord's charge against them, that they made the word of God of none effect by their tradition, scarcely puts this point in a stronger light than their declaration "that it is highly perilous for any learned man to read the Bible, since he may be induced to trust to its guidance rather than to his teacher." For the more advanced disciple the rule was, "that for one hour given to the study of the Bible, two should be devoted to the Talmud." When we read of different schools of Rabbis, and learn that they represented different tendencies, we naturally suppose that there must have been some movements of spirit, some struggles of moral and intellectual spontaneity. And it is true that between the school of Shammai and that of Hillel and the Gamaliels there was a wide divergence, the one relaxing and the other enforcing rigorous observances, the one encouraging, the other condemning all genial culture; but when we compare the teaching of the two parties which is fully represented in the Talmud, we see that the liberality of the most advanced is bounded within very narrow limits. Hillel, the best of all, had the spirit of his caste. Eternal life, according to him, was the portion of those who had attained to a perfect knowledge of the unwritten and traditional system to which he devoted his own life.

It is quite possible to cull from the Talmud, especially from one section (the Pirke Aboth, i.e., decisions of the Fathers) a set of maxims which breathe a high and grave morality, which enjoin temperance, chastity, gentleness, love of country, earnestness in the study of God's law, contempt for wealth, celebrity, and power; but the general spirit is cold, formal, casuistical, and the decisions are, on the whole, determined by considerations of interest and expediency. In short, errors of every kind,—errors of interpretation, errors in the foundations of moral truth, errors in the representation of God's attributes, errors originating in the grossest superstitions, and above all in narrow, bitter, exclusive prejudices,—bear an overwhelming proportion to the whole compilation, and belong unquestionably to that Talmudic atmosphere in which we are told that the pure and lofty spirit of our Master attained its natural development. It is true that the second portion of the Talmud, the Gemara, presents those characteristics in an exaggerated form; but the first part, the Mishna, is replete with a casuistry so trifling and repulsive as to make a continuous perusal almost impossible, save to one who has some special motive for the study. It contains not less than 4,008 mishnaioth, that is, decisions or precepts, of which the largest proportion is attributed to Hillel or his followers. Out of this vast collection it would be difficult to fix upon any consecutive series of maxims, say fifty, which would approve themselves to the moral sense.

Widely as our Lord's teaching differs from that of the Greek or the Asiatic, far more does it differ from that of His Hebrew contemporaries: it belongs altogether to a different sphere, the sphere in which the human spirit was emancipated from all narrow, dark, exclusive prejudices, and all its powers developed by that Spirit which rested on Him without measure, which He received as man, and which He bestowed as God.

It may be said that if the evidence supplied by knowledge of the Person of our Lord be of itself complete and adequate for the highest purpose, further inquiries may be dismissed as superfluous. Nor is the remark unfair. It is, I believe, quite true that of the myriads who accept the Christian revelation an immense proportion, including spirits of every class, are moved chiefly, if not exclusively, by the personal influence of Jesus, by the intuition, so to speak, which they thus attain into the manifested truth. The sun shines with its own lustre, and needs no evidence to prove its existence. But our nature is full of inconsistencies. Our strongest convictions, after all, are held with a feeble grasp, and are liable to be wrenched from us by sudden assaults, most especially when they depend upon what in modern parlance are called subjective impressions. It is well, therefore, that even this strongest and deepest of all convictions should have outward and independent support, that it should appeal to palpable and ascertainable facts, never indeed surrendering its true position in the central stronghold of our spirits, but going forth when challenged, and examining at frequent intervals the state of its defences and outposts. Let us, then, very briefly consider some of those evidences which the Christian apologist recognizes as most important for the confirmation of faith.

Here, undoubtedly, we have first to look at the evidence of miracles, which has been discussed by Dr. Stoughton, and, among all miracles, first and foremost—with which all other proofs of miraculous intervention stand or fall—the miracle of the resurrection.[166] I take it in this place, not as it is often taken, as an antecedent evidence to be examined or rejected previous to examination of the character of our Saviour; but as an evidence of which the true force is inseparably bound up with the result of that preliminary inquiry. The mind may indeed submit to logical inferences drawn from undisputed or demonstrated facts, but it will submit reluctantly, and will, sooner or later, shake off its shackles, unless those inferences accord with its sense of moral fitness, of harmony between the outward manifestation of power and the inward demands of conscience. All moral antecedent objection to the resurrection of Christ disappears when it is acknowledged that His character satisfies those conditions. The first apologist of Christianity—St. Peter at Pentecost—puts this in the very foreground of his argument: "God raised Him up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be holden of it." It was impossible, considering the relation of the Son to the Father, and of the Father to the universe. The expectation, in fact, of the resurrection of one "approved by God" as perfect in holiness, such as Christians believe their Master to be, is actually admitted to be so natural that the most subtle opponents of revelation assume that it must have existed in the minds of the first disciples, bringing them into a state which prepared them to receive without questioning the rumours which were gradually moulded into a semblance of historical consistency. This theory at least proves this,—given the two facts of God's power and justice, and of Christ's nature, as acknowledged by the Christian, the resurrection, if proved on other grounds, will find no obstacle to its reception in our moral consciousness.

But the very fact that such a hope exists, one which, if fulfilled, transcends all human longings, carrying with it, as St. Paul shows, the pledge and the only pledge of our personal redintegration, will but make the inquirer careful to prove every link in the chain of evidence. And here we have to remark that, so far from having that assumed expectation, His disciples were utterly in despair after the crucifixion. With their Master's last breath their last hope departed. They treated the first accounts which reached them as idle, they did not believe till they had the evidence of their senses; "then were they glad, when they saw the Lord." It is a remarkable, not to say unique, combination of two conditions for the perfect establishment of an ascertainable fact, that on the one side it should be in perfect congruity with an eternal principle, and on the other that it should be witnessed by persons wholly unprepared for its occurrence, and attested under circumstances which make it impossible to doubt their sincerity. That the attestation was given, that it was confirmed by outward effects otherwise psychologically inexplicable, by an immediate and complete change in the character of the disciples, and by the rapid triumph of the religion so attested, these and kindred points you will find discussed in every treatise on Christian evidences: they are, in fact, not open to reasonable doubt. Weigh more especially the attestation of St. Paul, both as one who knew previously all that could be alleged against the belief, as one whose strong intellect and strong prejudices rendered him inaccessible to mere subjective impressions, and as a man of whose conversion no rational, no intelligible account has ever been given which does not involve the fact of a personal manifestation of Christ, and then you will have all that can be needed for steadfast conviction, evidence complete and adequate for its purpose, proving that Jesus was shown "to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead." (Rom. i.)

With an equal interest the student of evidence will now turn back to the inquiry into the teaching of prophecy. At the outset it sufficed to know the broad fact that the characteristics of the coming Christ were believed by His contemporaries to have been announced in predictions which, whether of divine origin or not, unquestionably moulded their anticipations. He is now able to test their accuracy, to satisfy himself as to their origin, and to study them with a far deeper and more intelligent interest than would be possible without the previous appreciation of our Lord's nature. At first his attention will naturally be caught by separate predictions, by their correspondence with outward occurrences in the Gospel narration; but as he advances in the study his whole spirit will be gradually absorbed in contemplation of their internal coherence, their unbroken continuity, their ever progressing development. Distinct, accurate, and in the strictest sense of the word evidential, those predictions are, taken separately and independently; as such they are recognised by one and all the sacred writers—by none more fully than by the two who stand pre-eminent among the disciples of Jesus—by St Paul, who represents the highest development of the intellectual forces in Christianity, the acute disputant, the subtle reasoner, the spiritualist philosopher, or, as he has been lately called, the metaphysician of Christianity—and by St. John, whose spirit, insphered in the region of love, came into nearest contact with the divine, who represents the very highest of all faculties, that of spiritual intuition. Nay, those predictions are repeatedly and distinctly recognised as conclusive evidences by our Lord Himself. But their full significance is only discerned when we contemplate them as parts of a mighty whole, as a continuous and complete testimony of the Spirit of God. Two lines of light traverse the realm of spiritual manifestation, the one revealing the divine, the other the human characteristics of the future Saviour: the one ever expanding, but from the beginning broad, luminous, equable; the other advancing, so to speak, with varying progress, ever and anon bursting out in sudden flashes, each bringing into vivid light some event in the life, above all each event in the crowning work, of the Saviour. These two lines gradually converge until they meet in the Incarnation. From that point of meeting the Christian goes back; then he learns to combine and to comprehend their intimations. Under Christ's teaching, prophecy becomes to him a guiding light—an evidence so complete that if it stood alone he might dispense with other proofs, and feel it adequate for the support of his faith.

You will, however, remember that besides those predictions which apply directly to our Lord's person, an inexhaustible treasury of predictions refer to events in the providential history of the world, and they, too, are strictly evidential. Even writers to whom the very word revelation is distasteful, acknowledge in the Hebrew prophets true seers; that is, men whose spirit was in unison with the everlasting harmonies of the universe. But it is only when we know Christ as He reveals Himself, as the Lord of history, that the long series of prophetic intimations present themselves in their true light to our minds. The exact explanation of each specific prediction, such as are found in Isaiah and Daniel, taxes and rewards the industry of students, but the real interest consists not in the satisfaction of a rational curiosity, or the bearing upon controversy, but in the help which is thus supplied, enabling us to realize vividly the presence of Christ foreordering all events so as to make them work together for the accomplishment of His will.

If time allowed, I might here dwell on other topics. I might point out how deep thinkers, Pascal perhaps most powerfully, have shown that Christianity, and Christianity alone, fully recognises the two opposite and apparently irreconcilable aspects of our common humanity, its unspeakable misery and degradation out of God, and its capacity for restoration and reunion with the Divine, and, again, that it corresponds to an extent wholly incomprehensible, save on the admission of its divine origin, with those requirements of man's conscience and spirit which every system of philosophy recognises, but which one and all admit that they fail to satisfy. I might dwell upon the fact that between the acceptance of the entire truth thus made known to us, and utter negation of the supernatural and divine, the intermediate positions long defended as tenable have been, both here and on the continent, all but universally abandoned by the representatives of modern thought. I might point out that together with that abandonment, and as a direct result of that abandonment, a dark, drear hopelessness, not merely as to the immediate issue of the storms which convulse the atmosphere we breathe as spiritual, social, and intellectual beings, but as to the future and abiding consequences of those convulsions, appears to be settling down upon men's minds: a hopelessness for which there is no remedy save that which depends upon the triumph of righteousness and truth, a triumph to be achieved only under the banner of Christ. What I have attempted to do, none can feel as I do how imperfectly, has been to set before you in orderly sequence facts within the reach of all; facts of which the truth and power and far-reaching influences will be felt more and more in proportion to the earnestness and sincerity of your own inquiry; facts which once admitted are evidences complete in themselves, and adequate for their purpose in each stage of our spiritual development: evidences sufficient to constrain all who believe in God to believe also in the Son whom He has sent; to know Him as the way, the truth, and the life. In His school that rational conviction, retaining all its clearness, will undergo a process at once of development and transfigurement; and become a living faith.