The other alternative, more reverent indeed, but, as I
believe, just as mistaken, is to suppose that the words were never
uttered at all; that Christ--it is not I who say it--possibly never
existed at all; that His whole story was gradually built up, like certain
fabulous legends of Romish saints, out of the moral consciousness of
various devout persons during the first three centuries; each of whom
added to the portrait, as it grew more and more lovely under the hands of
succeeding generations, some new touch of beauty, some fresh trait, half
invented, half traditional, of purity, love, nobleness, majesty; till men
at last became fascinated with the ideal to which they themselves had
contributed; and fell down and worshipped their own humanity; and
christened that The Son of God.

If I believed that theory, or either of the others, I need not say that I
should not be preaching here. I will go further, and say, that if I
believed either of those theories, or any save that which stands out in
the text, sharp-cut and colossal like some old Egyptian Memnon, and like
that statue, with a smile of sweetness on its lips which tempers the
royal majesty of its looks,--if I did not believe that, I say--I should
be inclined to confess with Homer of old, that man is the most miserable
of all the beasts of the field.

For consider but this one argument. It is no new one; it has lain, I
believe, unspoken and instinctive, yet most potent and inspiring, in many
a mind, in many an age. If there be a God, must He not be the best of
all beings? But if He who suffered on Calvary were not God, but a mere
creature; then--as I hold--there must have been a creature in the
universe better than God Himself. Or if He who suffered on Calvary had
not the character which is attributed to Him,--if Christ's love,
condescension, self-sacrifice, be a mere imagination, built up by the
fancy of man; then has Christendom for 1800 years been fancying for
itself a better God than Him who really exists.

Thousands of the best men and women in the world through all the ages of
Christendom have agreed with this argument, under some shape or other.
Thousands there have been, and I trust there will be thousands hereafter,
who have felt, as they looked upon the Cross of the Son of God, not that
it was derogatory to Christ to believe that He had suffered, but
derogatory to Him to believe that He had not suffered: for only by
suffering, as far as we can conce