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life, health, and disease. When as our Lord looked into the face of pale water, it blushed into rosy wine; when He opened blind eyes, and unstopped deaf ears, and unloosed dumb tongues ; when He rebuked the fever, and the hot blood once more ran with refreshing coolness; when paralysis at His bidding fled away, and the old strength came back again; when the hateful scales of leprosy fell from off the leper, and his flesh returned unto him 'like the flesh of a little child;' when diseases in a hundred forms confessed themselves to be disorders, and obeyed the voice of Him who is the Lord of order; when the waves of the lake heard His voice of rebuke, and bowed their crested heads in homage at His feet; when the bodies of the dead came forth from their tombs, as He called them from their prison houses, in all these phenomena He was but presenting to the people of that time, and through them and that age to us and our age and all succeeding ones, a number of material symbols of what His gospel can do, and how the eternal Father stands related to the sin and discord which man's fall has introduced into this world. I believe in the divine personality of Christ, in His divine mission, in the reality of His miracles; and he who cannot believe in Christ for His own dear sake, had better believe in Him on account of His miracles than not believe in Him at all; but the miracles themselves are not the highest evidences, although, in their own appropriate place, they are splendid illustrations and indirect confirmations of what I am trying to show in this series of chapters. I have thought it right to say thus much, because I would not sail under false colours, and because up to this time I have taken no notice of our Lord's miracles as evidences of His divinity. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.' This is how I am compelled to look at this question, while I leave every other Christian to follow the course which may best recommend itself to him. To all this it may, of course, be answered, that our Lord very frequently appeals to 'His works,' and blames those to whom He addressed Himself for not seeing in them marks of the divine. But it has often occurred to me that this term 'works' is improperly confined to

miracles, although it includes them, and should be extended so as to include the words and the life of our Lord, as well as His miraculous doings. It is quite clear He Himself did not attach the great evidential importance to miracle which has since been attached to it, because in Nazareth, where unbelief against Him was so strong, He could not do many mighty works on that account; could not-that is, would not, although, if the miraculous had been the great evidence needed and applicable in the case, one would say that Nazareth was the very place where it should have been given. Do not misunderstand my point. I am not denying our Lord's miracles and their divine character; on the contrary, I believe both the one and the other; but I think these miracles belong to a lower range of evidence, and should never be unduly pressed. Our Lord, in answering Philip, says, 'Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very works' sake' (John xiv. 11); or, as Canon Westcott paraphrases this verse: 'If my person, my life, my words, do not command faith, then follow the way of reason, and from the divinity of my work deduce the divinity of my nature' (Speaker's Commentary on New Testament, vol. ii. p. 203). This is only saying, in other words, ' If you cannot accept the higher argument you must take the lower one,' evidently meaning that our Lord asked to be believed for His own sake, and not alone or chiefly on account of His miracles. As a final word on this matter, I would most urgently recommend to believers and doubters alike, Dr. George M'Donald's Miracles of our Lord,-a priceless volume which, without being intentionally argumentative, is nevertheless one of the finest arguments in favour of our Lord's miracles which it has ever been my fortune to read.

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So much by way of parenthesis: we may now examine some other texts.

21. (John xii. 26.) 'If any man serve me, let him follow me ; and where I am there shall also my servant be; if any man serve me, him will my (or the) Father honour.' Canon Westcott says

that the 'me' of this verse is in each case emphatic, and that the repetition of the pronouns in the original is remarkable. Is this the kind of language which a human being—a consciously sinful creature would be likely to use in reference to himself, his followers, and the Eternal God, if he were possessed of a tolerable measure of modesty, especially if that were true of him which I am now about to quote? The Rev. R. A. Armstrong, B.A., one of the Unitarian ministers of Nottingham, and formerly the editor of The Modern Review, in a very able book of his, entitled Latter Day Teachers (Kegan Paul & Co.), says, speaking of Jesus Christ, 'I see in him man, and man alone. Nay, I do not believe he was born otherwise than other men,--of the pure wedded love of two human hearts. I doubt his Davidic descent, I dispute his miraculous power.' Mr. Armstrong then goes on to express feelings of reverence and love for Jesus Christ, which one is only too glad to read, although I cannot for myself reconcile those words with much else which I find in the chapter from which they are taken; while, of course, I do not for one moment presume to doubt Mr. Armstrong's absolute sincerity in uttering them. Will he and the modern Unitarian' undertake to expound and defend these unparalleled claims made for Himself, consistently with our Lord's simple humanity? I, for one, am unable to do it.

22. (Matt. xxv. 31-46.) These sixteen verses may be called a 'Parable of the Last Judgment.' I offer no opinion upon some of the phrases which are used in this parable, least of all will I be dragged into a controversy respecting the words in the 46th verse, which the Revised Version translates: And these shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.' No doubt the parable is pictorial, and, therefore, cannot be pressed to a too literal interpretation. But evidently 'the Son of man' and 'the King' are Christ Himself, while it will be noticed that the opposite destinies of the opposite parties are all made to turn upon their relation to Christ: what they did unto one of these brethren, they did to Him; what they did not do unto one of these least, they did not do unto Him. If Jesus were a man, and man alone, and not 'born otherwise than other

men,' as Mr. Armstrong says, what shall we say of the amazing and indecent presumption of a man thus arraigning his fellowcreatures before himself, and dealing with them after the fashion of this parable-telling them, in fact, that 'eternal punishment' or 'eternal life' all turned upon their behaviour to him? 'Ye did it unto me; ye did it not unto me.' Everything is made to turn upon these points. The punishments or rewards of the future depend upon how we treat our brethren, and the treatment of our brethren is, whether for good or evil, our treatment of Christ, to be dealt with accordingly.

23. (Matt. xxvi. 24.) 'The Son of man goeth even as it is written of Him; but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed. Good were it for that man if he had not been born.' Or, in the alternative reading in the Revised Version, 'Good were it for him if that man had not been born.' Has any one man—a mere man-any right to use such words as these of any other man, that other man being his fellow-creature?

24. (Matt. xxvi. 28.) 'For this is my blood of the New Testainent (or the new covenant) which is shed for many, for the remission of sins.' In what way can the blood of a creature, shed for the many or for the few, be effectual in the remission of sins? How about that creature's own sins?

25. (John xiv., whole chapter.) I shall quote from this chapter certain expressions, which, as I understand them, refuse to be fairly interpreted by the doctrine of Christ's simple humanity, but which seem to implicate His personal divinity. 'Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.' 'I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by (or through) me.' 'If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know Him and have seen Him.' 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.' 'If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.' 'If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.' 'For my Father is greater than I.' Of course, there must be some way in which the humanitarian interprets

these words, and similar ones, in consistency with his theory; or he may doubt or deny that such words were ever uttered by our Lord. But if he believes them to have been uttered, one would like to know by what fair canon of exposition the Lord's words can be made to yield any doctrine short of His own personal divinity.

26. (John xv. 14.) 'Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.' No human friendship ever existed upon such a basis as this. No one human friend would ever dream of making his friendship with another depend on his obedience to him. The very essence of human friendship depends upon equality, while the friendship would disappear instantly if one friend claimed such superiority over the other as to insist upon the entire obedience of that other.

27. (John xv. 23, 24.) 'He that hateth me hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.' This is saying, perfectly plainly, that to see and hate Christ is to see and hate. God. But the one result does not follow by natural consequence from the other, if Christ is only a creature, and not divine.

28. (John xv. 26.) But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me.' Christ here asserts that He has the power to dispose of the Spirit of God: 'I will send Him unto you.' Take what theological ground one may as to the personality of the Holy Spirit, this at least is evident, that our Lord here makes a claim which it would be simple blasphemy for one who knew himself to be a creature to make.

29. (John xvi. 8-11.) 'And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment : of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.' (Read the more correct rendering of these words in the Revised Version.) The significance of the advent of the Holy Spirit all turns upon the

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