n great golden letters
(letters so artistic, so startling, so wonderful in form, that at
the risk of art itself--almost at the risk of minimizing the picture
at the first glance, subordinating it to interest in the letters and
dividing the mind of the onlooker between the actual scene and the
letters themselves)--I would have written in letters that should
smite the eye and the innermost thinking of the beholder, the words
recorded in the tenth chapter of John's Gospel, given by the Jews in
reply to the demand of Jesus when, speaking with amazement, he asks,
"For what good work do ye stone me?" I would have every gazer at the
picture read these words till they rose up in vastness against him,
smiting his attention as the very stones in the hands of the Jews--
these words:

"For a good work we stone thee not but for blasphemy; and because
that thou BEING A MAN MAKEST THYSELF GOD."

The Jews were not deceived.

They knew what he had done.

They knew that he claimed to be no less than very God himself.

There can be no doubt that he claimed to be God.

There need be, really, no discussion about it.

The New Testament records the claim.

I am not making any issue as to whether the New Testament is true,
or reliable. I am saying thus far, only, that the New Testament (the
Gospels of the New Testament), in language concerning which there
can be no possible mistake or even ground for misinterpretation,
records the fact that Jesus Christ did claim to be Almighty God.

If Jesus Christ were not Almighty God (as he claimed to be) he was
not a good man (as it is said he was).

The proposition ought to be self-evident.

No mere man can claim to be God and be good.

He who, as mere man, claims to be God, robs God of the glory that is
exclusively his.

He who thus claims to be God, and bids men go into eternity trusting
him as God, is a deceiver.

No man who robs God of equality, and who deceives men into believing
that he is God, can be good--he is a wicked and blasphemous
deceiver.

There is only one way in which the character of Jesus Christ can be
saved on this claim of his to be God--if that claim were not true.

It can be saved only by assuming that he was self-deceived; that he
sincerely believed himself to be God, but was blinded and held fast
by his own mistaken concept.

But the man who claims to be Almighty God, and claims it as he did,
can be self-deceived only when he is a mental weakling, unbalance