absolutely believe; but the narratives which record the Death and the Rising again do not tell me unambiguously and necessarily so much as this, and therefore I have no right to speak of them as if they did. The occurrences between the resurrection morning and that moment when 'a cloud received Him out of their sight' appear to me to take us into the borderland between what we might call the natural and the supernatural; while some of the words used by our Lord during that interval are of such a kind as I find it impossible to reconcile with the humanitarian hypothesis. For what man has any right to say that 'all power is given to him in heaven and on earth'? What man has any right to join his own name with the name of the Father, and the name of the Holy Spirit, and tell his fellow-creatures to 'go out into the world discipling all nations, and baptizing them in, or into' that threefold name, one part of which is his own? What right has any man to claim universal obedience to his commands? What right has any man to promise his fellow-creatures that 'he will be with them always, even unto the end of the world,' or, if you like, 'the consummation of the age'?

I have now finished what I have to say on the 'Indirect Evidences to the Personal Divinity of Christ,' which the four Gospels appear to supply. That I have culled all those evidences is more than I dare to affirm, but such as I have gathered and presented will, I think, honestly bear the interpretations I have put upon them. Nor do I say that the world's judgment is always right—God forbid !-but there is one fact which has often impressed me. Ever since Jesus of Nazareth first appeared on our earth down to the present time, those who have heard of Him, drawn near to Him, entered most entirely into His Spirit, have, as a rule, accepted the doctrine of the divinity of His person as a something not to be questioned. The consciousness of the Christian Church, from the first age down to the present one, yields all but uniform testimony,

Have the immense majority of Christian people during all these centuries been in the wrong, and the few in the right? I know that numbers do not determine the truth or falsehood of a doctrine, the right or wrong of anything. But surely, when one adds to numerical superiority the profound learning and the eminent piety of so many of the majority in this case, one may well be pardoned for believing that the many have rightly interpreted their Lord's personality, and that the mistake, if any, has been made by the minority,-a minority containing, I frankly admit, many learned, many pious souls, but whose learning and piety are quite equalled by similar instances on the other side.

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CHAPTER II.

T is only common fairness to admit that the interpretation of the New Testament book known as the 'Acts of the Apostles,' is, in some respects, an extremely difficult task. What, precisely, is the meaning of the very title of the book? who was its author? what was his design in writing? to what date can the book be fairly attributed? and from what sources was the narrative derived? These, and many other issues that might be raised, leave room for ample differences of opinion amongst those who are equally competent as scholars, and equally loyal to the one Lord Jesus Christ. Setting aside inclination, I have not the needed ability to discuss these questions, nor do I think their discussion is at all necessary in a series of chapters devoted to the subject of Christ's personal divinity. But, following the chronological order laid down by Professor Plumptre in his introduction to the Acts of the Apostles, in Ellicott's New Testament Commentary, vol. ii., I should now like to make a few remarks on some portions of this book that refer to events which transpired before the Apostle Paul wrote his First Epistle to the Thessalonian Church. And in doing so, it must, I think, be admitted that the Acts is so largely historical that the book does not contain many references to Christ necessarily implying, or fairly suggesting, His personal divinity, except to such persons as are already believers in it. If by such a remark I am supposed to make a dangerous concession, I can only say that I am quite willing that anything that can be honestly made as concession shall be made. Are unbelievers in the personal divinity of Christ to be the only persons permitted to select their own point

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of sight, from which to view that wondrous personality? Just as in the world of science, so in a matter of this kind, one has to find a workable hypothesis, and I believe that I have found one, which will cover all the facts of the case, in that of the personal divinity of Christ, as they cannot be covered by the humanitarian hypothesis. Students of the Scriptures, and especially those of the New Testament, are very liable to repeat the old story of the gold and silver shield; but we, who believe in Christ's personal divinity, are not more liable to do this than are our humanitarian friends, and I will not have it said without a disclaimer that we first of all commit ourselves to a position, and then try to make all the evidence bend to it. Many persons who reject Christ's personal divinity are in the habit of thinking and speaking of those who accept it, as if they, the acceptors, were either very ignorant, very prejudiced, or very weak. An easy way of dealing with an opponent, but not by any means a just one! To look down upon the man who differs from you, with a sort of mild contempt or mild pity, is not charitable; nor is it likely to influence your brother to consider what you have to say on your own behalf. I would not knowingly press a single verse, or even word of Scripture, into the service in which I am now engaged, that I did not think fairly belonged to it; and if the believers in the simple humanity of Christ would only exercise the same spirit, we might not indeed come to agree, but we should understand each other all the better, and be better friends.

36. (Acts ii., whole chapter.) I have elsewhere1 stated at length what I conceive to be some of the real difficulties in dealing with the phenomena to which this chapter refers, and I do not intend to go over that ground again in these pages. But, in the first part of St. Peter's sermon, in which he refutes the mockers who supposed their superior wisdom had explained the whole thing, he first of all shows how unreasonable were their objections, and then goes on to recite that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus was God's witness to His Messiahship. Using references and language which would be familiar to his Jewish The Day of Pentecost and its Phenomena.

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audience, and have great weight with them, he utters these words, 'Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear.' I suppose it will be admitted that the pronoun 'He' refers, not to the Holy Ghost, or the Father, but to Jesus, to whom the whole of this portion of the sermon relates. But if Jesus was the author of these phenomena, if He was now fulfilling that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, if, in fact, He was putting into operation the power of the Holy Spirit of God in these impressive forms, He was apparently doing that which was not within the limits of merely human capacity. While He was on the earth the powers of the heavenly world were apparently always at His command, and just before He returned to the heavens He told His ignorant and excited disciples that 'all power in heaven and on earth was given into His hands,' and now, out of those very heavens to which He had gone back, He comes forth, not indeed in bodily form as was His wont during the years of His mortal life, but as a divine spiritual Presence and Power, and shows Himself to be a Being transcending our humanity, but still actively interfering in its interests, and especially the interests of His resuscitated new-born Church; in fact, He is here credited with doing what is entirely consistent with divine interference, but which is not so easily explained if we think of Jesus as a merely human being, with merely human powers. The historian goes on to relate the effect of St. Peter's sermon, and the answer he gave to those who asked him, 'What shall we do?' Peter tells them to 'repent, and be baptized, every one of them, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and that they should receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.' Already our Lord, in Luke xxiv. 47, had directed that 'repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name, beginning at Jerusalem;' and that converts were to be 'baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' Evidently Peter considered that to be baptized in (or into) the name of Jesus Christ' was a fair equivalent for the baptismal formula enjoined