p. 179What we are to fix our minds on now is the cause of the enmity that led the Jewish authorities to demand the crucifixion of Jesus. In this we shall find the promised evidence of God having spoken. We get at the marrow of the matter by recalling the words of Christ’s accusers on the occasion of their deciding to hand him over to Pilate, and also when standing before that functionary. The high priest had asked him, “Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” and Jesus had said, “I am, and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.” Then the high priest rent him clothes and said, “Ye have heard of his blasphemy. . . . We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God” (Mark xiv. 61-63; John xix. 7).—I do not see what that has to do with the matter.
We shall see presently. Meanwhile, have it p. 180 distinctly in mind that Christ claimed to be the Son of God. The fact does not rest on what he said before his accusers. It was a prominent feature of his early teaching. “I proceeded forth and came from God, neither came I of myself, but He sent me. . . . I am from above. . . . I am not of this world, . . . I do nothing of myself, but, as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. And He that sent me is with me. The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please Him. . . . I speak to the world those things that I have heard of Him.”—No doubt Christ claimed to be the Son of God; but what use do you make of the circumstance?
We have, then, to consider whether the claim is a true one; because, if it is so, we have in Christ the whole answer to the question of whether God has spoken.—No doubt, if——
I submit there is no “if” about it when the whole case is before us. Christ not merely claimed: he proved.—That is what I want to see.
He was careful to distinguish between mere claim and the demonstration which established the claim.—I don’t know that I was aware of that.
He said: “The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me. . . . If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not, but if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works.” You see he appeals to the “works” as evidence of his claims. He even went further and said, “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin.” Now upon this, these two questions arise. What were “the works” on which he relied in proof of his claim that he was the Son of God? and, Were they of a character that p. 181 could be accounted for on any other principle than the truth of that claim? Now, I should like you to answer these questions. You must know enough of the facts of the case to enable you to do so.—I am afraid I do not know so much as you give me credit for.
Any Sunday scholar knows what Christ did.—You refer to the miracles, I suppose?
I refer to the things that Christ did. They are truly described as “miracles”; but then you will do yourself an injustice if you huddle them up in a single term which the refinements of speculative metaphysics have brought into discredit as a questionable matter. The works of Christ will fail to impress your mind as it ought to be impressed if you merely refer to them under a technical term.—You mean we should go into detail.
Well, consider what the works were in themselves as bearing on the momentous question of whether Divine power was manifest in their performance. This mode of considering them is more likely to lead you to endorse heartily the utterance of Nicodemus in his midnight conversation with Jesus, than the modern flippant scholastic mode of referring to them in the lump as “the miracles”—a reference which is generally the corollary of their dismissal.—What did Nicodemus say? I forget.
He said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.”—That is tolerably to the point.
It is where docile reason is bound at last to come.—I wish to be found with docile reason.
Then come and listen to Christ on one of the most interesting occasions of his life, viz., when he p. 182 answered the almost despairing appeal to John the Baptist—when John, from the seclusion of his prison, had sent two disciples to ascertain (in the delay that was taking place) whether Jesus were the Messiah or not: “Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” We are informed that in the same hour he (Jesus) cured many of their infirmities and plagues and of evil spirits, and unto many that were blind he gave sight. Then Jesus, answering, said unto them (John’s disciples), “Go your way and tell John what things ye have SEEN and HEARD, how the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the DEAD are RAISED.” Can you account for these performances on any other principle than the one acknowledged by Nicodemus, viz., that the man performing them must have God in co-operation with him?—They were wonderful performances.
Were they not Divine?—Many men have shewn wonderful curative power in various ages of the world.
Did you ever hear of a man before or since who could cure leprosy with a word, or raise the dead?—I don’t know that I ever did.
Are you prepared to concede the power of God as the explanation?—I only wish to be quite sure they were not feats of superior naturalism.
Did you ever know of superior naturalism raising the dead?—No; only there is always the possibility of there having been only suspended animation in these cases.
What have you to say to walking on the water, then?—That seems stronger, I confess, if the narrative is reliable.
We have already settled that; and what about p. 183 stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee, and feeding five thousand persons with a few loaves of bread.—That, I must say, defies explaining away, if we are to receive it as a fact.
You cannot escape it. You have admitted that the writers wrote from personal knowledge; that they were men of truth and probity, and that they were capable of judging the sight of their eyes. If so, these things were done by Jesus. Are you prepared to go away from that?—I do not see how I can.
The case is placed finally beyond reach of cavil or doubt by Christ’s own resurrection. If the evidence of Divine co-operation rested wholly on what he did during his lifetime, there would always be the possible haunting thought that his extraordinary powers were due to some exceptional human endowment, not necessarily carrying evidence of Divinity. But what can be said in the presence of his own resurrection? Is it within the bounds of conceivable possibility that a dead man should raise himself?—I am, of course, bound to acknowledge that if Jesus really rose from the dead, the case is settled beyond the reach of doubt.
My friend, you speak doubtfully of the absence of doubt. You say “if” Jesus rose. Do you think the state of the evidence admits of a doubt? If there is one proposition of historical fact established more firmly than any other by the rules of evidence, as universally received, it is the one that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead the third day after his crucifixion, and remained on earth in living association with his friends for six weeks afterwards.—Perhaps I am not so well acquainted with the evidence as I ought to be.
I may ask you to look at it next time we meet, p. 184 along with other evidence of the truth of the fact alleged by Paul that “God, at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, and did in the last days (of Judah’s Commonwealth) speak to the contemporary generation by His Son.”