EVIDENCE STRENGTHENED BY TIME. 141

the grave, the grave-clothes, the loneliness, -as the thought that all these had been around our Lord himself, round him who died and is alive for evermore."

These needs become solid arguments, when we are reasoning about Him who knoweth our frame, and who, as a Father, pitieth his children. If from the resurrection of Christ spring a consolation, peace, and hope which even his words could not give, we. have added confirmation of no little force for that crowning miracle of power and mercy on which the Church is built, on which the faith of these Christian ages has rested with a unanimity of consent that can be affirmed of no other truth or fact appertaining to our religion or its history.

One closing thought, which impresses me with great force. The evidence of our Lord's resurrection, so far from being impaired by time, has gained strength with the lapse of ages. I think that even with regard to a common man such proof as we possess would constrain our belief in his resurrection, yet not without a vague reluctance, a rebellion of reason against reason, of strong opposing probabilities against overwhelmingly strong testimony. But suppose that the man whose resurrection was thus attested were not a common, but a unique man; one in whom had been witnessed from infancy to death an unequalled purity and loveliness; one whose words. had seemed to those who heard them as utterances from heaven, and with an authority to which men had instinctively yielded as divine; one who had not his

like in the whole antecedent history of the world, — then, that death should not have had the same power over him as over other men would not seem so very improbable. Suppose, still further, that, as the centuries roll on, this man, said to have risen from the dead, proves to be the author of a new epoch for humanity; that his influence broadens and deepens from age to age; that the very tokens of his ignominy become more glorious than the badges of royalty, and the effigy of his death as a felon-slave is made the most precious ornament of crowns and sceptres; in fine, that not only God in his revealed purpose, but men - his opposers no less than his adherents—give him a name above every name, - then does his culminating career on the way to universal empire add perpetually new attestation to the record of his resurrection from the tomb and his ascension on high.

LECTURE VII.

ALLEGED DEFICIENCIES OF CHRISTIANITY.

NESS AS ΤΟ INDIVIDUAL NEEDS.
SILENCE.

ITS COMPLETEREASONS FOR ITS

ITS SILENCE A PROOF OF ITS DIVINITY.

IN my Lectures thus far I have given you an outline

of the grounds on which the testimony of the evangelists as to the life and character of Jesus is worthy of confidence. I have shown you also that this testimony is greatly confirmed by the contents of the record, especially by the consistency of the marvellous and else incredible portions of the narrative with the facts which no one ventures to call in question. But were these contents defective, did they, while they profess to transmit the life and words of an all-sufficient and divinely appointed teacher in morals and religion, omit many things which might properly be expected of such a teacher, did they present, on the magnificent substructure of a miraculous theophany, only a paltry, fragmentary, and unfinished work, these defects would reflect back doubts upon the testimony, and, if they could not annul its evidential weight, they would at least impair its value; for a religious record which fails to satisfy our needs

is not worth our investigation or defence. Accordingly the omissions, the blanks, the lacunæ in Christianity and its records, have been strongly urged in abatement of its claims. I propose to present them in the opposite light, and to draw added proof of the genuineness and authenticity of the Gospel record from what it does not contain.

As to the range and quantity of its professed revelations, the Gospels certainly contain less than any other sacred books with which we are acquainted. They do less to satisfy the curiosity of those who would extend their knowledge beyond the normal scope of human research. They are silent on many ́subjects on which the Koran and the Mormon scriptures enter into minute detail. They do not approach the brink of the depths sounded in the sacred books of India and Persia. They have not satisfied many Christian sects, which have built outside of them cumbrous systems, bodies of divinity, often fitly so called for their lack of soul. These have, indeed, derived their materials from the Christian Scriptures, but less from Christ's own teachings than from the Pauline epistles, including that to the Hebrews, whether it be Paul's or not. It cannot be denied that the Christianity of Christ, as recorded in the Gospels from his lips and life, is exceedingly simple, — even meagre, if estimated by the number and diversity of its topics. I believe the Christianity of the Pauline epistles to be equally simple. It is merely the application of the plain doctrines and precepts of Christ to the exigencies, questionings, and controversies of

CHRISTIANITY MEETS MAN'S Needs. 145

converts who had a great deal of Judaism or heathenism still clinging to them; and many of the technical terms, which from these epistles have been imported into the religious phraseology of modern Protestant churches, and have given rise to minute dogmatic subtilties without number, were, as used by the writer, in no sense Christian terms; that is, they were not occasioned or demanded by Christianity, but had their sole necessity and use in the refutation of now obsolete opinions, through which Christianity had to cut its way in the apostolic age.

But let us look for one moment at the actual fulness of this meagreness, the real wealth of this poverty. I, as an individual man, conscious of a nature containing more than flesh and blood, and of wants that remain when the bodily wants are satisfied, go to Christ and his Gospel, and what do I find there? Ostensibly all that I personally need. Whether it be really so, will be our inquiry in the next two Lectures, which will be devoted to the test of experiment as applied to Christianity. But on the face it offers me what, if genuine, ought fully to satisfy me. As for belief, it presents to my faith a paternal Providence, a full and righteous retribution, an equally full and complete redemption from the penalty of repented sin, an eternal life, a passage through death to endless happiness on conditions which I cannot misinterpret. As to my conduct, it tells me just what I ought to be and do toward God and man, how I am to discipline my thoughts, how to pray, how to demean myself in the various relations of life; and there is not a single