, and from that moment when it began to flag
it would degrade rapidly, until, in three days, a far fiercer hatred
against Christ would have been moulded. For observe: into what state of
mind would this marvel have been received? Into any good-will towards
Christ, which previously had been defeated by the belief that He was an
impostor in the sense that He pretended to a power of miracles which in
fact He had not? By no means. The sense in which Christ had been an
impostor for them was in assuming a commission, a spiritual embassy with
appropriate functions, promises, prospects, to which He had no title.
How had that notion--not, viz., of miraculous impostorship, but of
spiritual impostorship--been able to maintain itself? Why, what should
have reasonably destroyed the notion? This, viz., the sublimity of His
moral system. But does the reader imagine that this sublimity is of a
nature to be seen intellectually--that is, insulated and _in vacuo_ for
the intellect? No more than by geometry or by a _sorites_ any man
constitutionally imperfect could come to understand the nature of the
sexual appetite; or a man born deaf could make representable to himself
the living truth of music, a man born blind could make representable the
living truth of colours. All men are not equally deaf in heart--far from
it--the differences are infinite, and some men never could comprehend
the beauty of spiritual truth. But no man could comprehend it without
preparation. That preparation was found in his training of Judaism;
which to those whose hearts were hearts of flesh, not stony and charmed
against hearing, had already anticipated the first outlines of Christian
ideas. Sin, purity, holiness unimaginable, these had already been
inoculated into the Jewish mind. And amongst the race inoculated Christ
found enough for a central nucleus to His future Church. But the natural
tendency under the fever-mist of strife and passion, evoked by the
present position in the world operating upon robust, full-blooded life,
unshaken by grief or tenderness of nature, or constitutional sadness, is
to fail altogether of seeing the features which so powerfully mark
Christianity. Those features, instead of coming out into strong relief,
resemble what we see in mountainous regions where the mist covers the
loftiest peaks.

We have heard of a man saying: 'Give me such titles of honour, so many
myriads of pounds, and then I will consider your proposal that I should
tu