But if we deny His unique origin, we can not logically account for His unique life. A life began as was never another life, we might expect to see continue as no other life continued. A naturally skeptical man finds it easier to admit the account of Christ's remarkable birth than to attempt to explain His remarkable life if He deny the remarkable birth. The unicity of His birth we would naturally expect to eventuate in the unicity of His life. His life can not be explained on any principle of heredity. We readily admit the royal element in His blood, altho the fortunes of His family had fallen before His birth; but no law of heredity will account for the physical attractiveness, the mental superiority, and the moral purity of Jesus, the Christ. Neither will environment account for His marvelous career and character. What was there in the peasant conditions of His family life to produce the uniqueness of His manhood? Neither will education account for the Christ. He was never in school, in the technical sense of that term, altho He doubtless studied in the village synagog; and yet He rose above all the limitations, traditions, and bigotries by which He was surrounded. It is doubtful if He ever sat at the feet of the greatest rabbis of the time. It is certain that He never studied at the feet of the philosophers of Greece and Rome, nor of the dreamy Orient. He never traveled, except possibly barely across the confines of Palestine, a country about the size of the State of New Hampshire. How came He to emancipate Himself from the sectarianism and sectionalism of His country and century? How came He to be the contemporary of all the ages? How came He to utter in the Sermon on the Mount truths which socially and religiously the foremost thinkers of to-day can barely understand, and dare not fully apply to the solution of the problems of the hour? No mere human thinker has ever approached the Sermon on the Mount. But in pure spirituality of thought, our Lord surpassed it in His last address to His disciples. This address bears the ineffaceable marks of His supreme divinity and absolute deity. O, ye critics, I ask you as a problem of literature and life to account for Jesus the Christ. I ask no favors for Him. It is you that need the favors, if you oppose the Christ. I demand for Him simple justice. "What think ye of the Christ?"
Dr. Geikie, in his "Life of Christ," calls attention to the fact that the Jews confess great admiration for the character and words of Jesus; that the Mohammedan world gives Him the high title of Messiah; that the myriad-minded Shakespeare paid Him lowly reverence, and that men like Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Newton, and Milton set the name of Christ above every other name. He also reminds us that Jean Paul Richter, whom his countrymen call "Der Einzige," the unique, tells us that "the life of Christ concerns him who, being the holiest among the mighty, the mightiest among the holy, lifted with his pierced hands empires off their hinges, and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages." Spinoza, the great philosopher, son of Portuguese Jews, disciple of Aben-Ezra and Descartes, calls Christ the symbol of divine wisdom. Schelling and Hegel speak of Him as the union of the divine and human. The immortal Goethe, the acknowledged prince of German poets, and one of the most superbly accomplished men of the eighteenth century, says, "I esteem the gospels to be thoroughly genuine, for there shines forth from them the reflected splendor of a sublimity, proceeding from the person of Jesus Christ, of so divine a kind as only the divine could ever have manifested upon earth."
What thinkest thou of the Christ, O Jean Jacques Rousseau, with all the brilliancy of thy intellect, the singularity of thy character, and the enthusiasm of thy writings? Give place to the witness Rousseau; hear his testimony. Rousseau speaks: "How petty are the books of the philosophers, compared with the gospels! Can it be that writings at once so sublime and so simple are the work of men? Can He whose life they tell be Himself no more than a mere man?... Yes, if the death of Socrates be that of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God." What thinkest thou of the Christ, burly, brusk, brave, and heroic Thomas Carlyle, with all thy marvelous reading, thy profound thinking, and thy contempt of cant and love of truth? Carlyle steps forward and speaks: "Jesus of Nazareth, our divinest symbol! Higher has the human thought not yet reached." Let us summon Dr. Channing, the cultured and eloquent preacher and writer, the foremost man among American Unitarians in his day. What thinkest thou, O Channing, of Jesus Christ? He makes reply: "The character of Jesus Christ is wholly inexplicable on human principles."
What thinkest thou, O Herder, illustrious German thinker, broad scholar, and exquisite genius, of Jesus, the Christ? Superb is his reply: "Jesus Christ is in the noblest and most perfect sense the realized ideal of humanity." What thinkest thou of the Christ, O Napoleon, mighty son of Mars, striding through the world like a Colossus, darkening the brightness of noonday with the smoke, and lighting the darkness at midnight with the fires of battle? Hear this man of gigantic intellect, whatever may be said of his moral motives: "I think I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these (the heroes of antiquity) were men, and I am a man, but not one is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than man. Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and myself founded great empires; but upon what did the creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions would die for him." Compared with such witnesses as these, the opponents of Jesus Christ of to-day are pigmies so contemptible in mentality and so questionable in morality as to be ruled out of every court of testimony, where intellectual ability and moral worth have weight.
I summon thee, O execrable Judas. Behold him flinging down the thirty pieces of silver before the chief priests and elders. Hear him speak in his agony of soul: "I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood." I summon thee, O Pontius Pilate, with thy immortality of shame in the creeds of the ages. The Roman Procurator washes his hands. Strange sight! He speaks: "I am innocent of the blood of this just person." He speaks again: "I find no fault in this man." I summon John, the heroic Baptist. Hear His testimony: "Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world." O loving and divine John, the Evangelist, what thinkest thou of the Christ? "He is the Vine, the Way, the Truth, the Light, and the Word, and the Word was God." I summon thee, O matchless Paul. What is thy testimony? "He is the image of the invisible God.... The blest and only Potentate, the King of kings, the Lord of lords." I summon thee, Apostle Peter, once confessor, then denier, but afterward penitent witness and heroic martyr. What is thy testimony? "He is the Christ, the Son of the living God." I summon thee, O once doubting but always brave Thomas. Hear the testimony of this witness as he falls at the Master's feet and exclaims, "My Lord and my God!"
I summon thee, O John Bunyan, immortal tinker; thy glorious Pilgrim, marching through the ages, telling the story of redeeming love, is thy testimony to the character of thy Lord. I summon thee, O Charles Spurgeon, and the testimony of all thy volumes, of thy glorious life and of thy peerless ministry is that "Jesus Christ is the chiefest among ten thousand and the One altogether lovely." I summon thee, O De Wette, great Biblical critic of Germany: "This only I know, that there is salvation in no other name than in the name of Jesus Christ, the crucified." I summon thee, O scholarly, cultured MacIntosh; the attendants are watching thy last moments, they bend over thee to catch thy last whispers: "Jesus, love!—Jesus, love!—The same thing." I might summon ten thousand more, who from the Grassmarket in Edinburgh, and from a thousand racks and stakes went up to glory and to God, and their testimony would be, "None but Jesus, none but Jesus." I summon thee, Toplady, and hear thee sing this great hymn, "Rock of Ages, cleft for me."
I summon thee, O Tennyson, immortal laureate, thou who hast fought thy doubts and found divine help. Let us hear the result of thy conflicts:
Strong Son of God, immortal love,
Whom we, that have not seen Thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we can not prove.
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest life in man and brute;
Thou madest death; and lo! Thy foot
Is on the skull which Thou hast made.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood Thou;
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours to make them Thine.