egeneration of
human character by a falsehood! Impossible! I say it with deepest
reverence,--as sure as there is a God of truth, _impossible!_ The
Christian Church has _not_ been deceived. Unbelievers in Jesus have
_not_ had the light of truth given them, while those who have loved
and served Him have been permitted to walk in the darkness of
intellectual untruth and in the vain belief of an idol! Jesus is
Divine as well as human. "He was, and is, and liveth for evermore!"

III.

WHAT CAN WE BELIEVE IF WE DO NOT THUS BELIEVE IN JESUS?

If all this evidence is insufficient to prove the Divine nature of
Jesus Christ, it may be well to consider on what religious fact or
truth we can fall back, as being based upon surer evidence, and
affording, therefore, a surer ground of faith and hope.

1. On what part of Christ's "work" on earth can we fall back? We can
no more recognise God the Father as truly revealing Himself in
Jesus as his co-eternal Son; and the whole light and life of such a
revelation in Christ, as hitherto seen and received by the apostles
and the Christian Church, is for ever extinguished and destroyed. We
can no more believe Jesus as our _Prophet_, when we do not accept the
very truths to which He gave most prominence: nor can we trust Him
as our _King_, when we believe Him to have been a mere man only, who
neither possesses nor could wield power adequate to govern the
world: nor can we trust Him as our _Priest_, for in Him is no longer
manifested the love of God in sending His own Son to be a propitiation
for the sins of the world. And who, we may add, will believe in a Holy
Spirit as a Divine Person, whose very work is represented by Jesus to
be that of convincing the world of sin "_because_ it believes not in
Him," as "glorifying Him," and taking of _His_ things to shew them to
the spirits of men?

2. Can we, then, accept of Christ as a perfect example? How is this
possible? For remember, it was the example of one who is assumed to
be a man like ourselves, but yet a man who never, by one act of
contrition or confession, acknowledged the existence of personal sin
or defect of any kind; a man rarely endowed, and yet who never once
expressed gratitude to God for His rich and varied gifts; a man who
prayed indeed to God, yet as one who was His equal, and who in His
last hours uttered such words as these--"All mine are thine, and thine
are mine! Father, _I will_ that they also whom thou hast given me,