character of Jesus has had to work almost by itself alone for
righteousness, but it has worked wonders."[217]

This tribute to the completeness and power of Christ's personality is
calculated to remind one of a memorable chapter in the well-known work
of the late Dr. Horace Bushnell, entitled, "Nature and the
Supernatural." With a wonderful power it portrays Christ as rising above
the plane of merely human characters--as belonging to no age or race or
stage of civilization--as transcendent not in some of the virtues, but
in them all--as never subject to prejudice, or the impulse of passion,
never losing that perfect poise which it has been impossible for the
greatest of men to achieve--as possessed of a mysterious magnetism which
carried conviction to His hearers even when claiming to be one with the
Infinite--as inspiring thousands with a love which has led them to give
their lives for His cause.[218]

I have often thought that one of the most striking evidences of the
divine reality of the Christian faith is found in the reflection of
Christ's personality in the character and life of the apostle Paul.[219]
No one can doubt that Paul was a real historic personage, that from
having been a strict and influential Jew he became a follower of Jesus
and gave himself to His service with a sublime devotion; that he sealed
the sincerity of his belief by a life of marvellous self-denial. He had
no motive for acting a false part at such cost; on the contrary, an
unmistakable genuineness is stamped upon his whole career. How shall we
explain that career? Where else in the world's history have we seen a
gifted and experienced man, full of strong and repellant prejudices, so
stamped and penetrated by the personality of another?

On what theory can we account for such a change in such a life, except
that his own story of his conversion was strictly true, that he had felt
in his inmost soul a power so overwhelming as to sweep away his
prejudices, humble his pride, arm him against the derision of his former
friends, and prepare him for inevitable persecution and for the martyr
death of which he was forewarned? So vivid were his impressions of this
divine personality that it seemed almost to absorb his own. Christ,
though He had ascended, was still with him as a living presence. All his
inspiration, all his strength came from Him. His plans and purposes
centred in his Divine Master, and his only ambition was to be found
well-pleasing