s much as of St. Paul on Mars' Hill at Athens.

So begins and so ends the Old Testament, revealing throughout The
Lord.

And how does the New Testament begin?

By telling us that a Babe was born at Bethlehem, and called Jesus,
the Saviour.

But who is this blessed Babe? He, too, is The Lord.

'A Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.' And from thence, through the
Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, the Revelation of St. John, he is
the Lord. There is no manner of doubt of it. The Apostles and
Evangelists take no trouble to prove it. They take it for granted.
They call Jesus Christ by the name by which the Jews had for
hundreds of years called the El of Abraham, the Jehovah of Moses.
The Babe who is born at Bethlehem, who grows up as other human
beings grow, into the man Christ Jesus, is none other than the Lord
God who created the universe, who made a covenant with Abraham, who
brought the Israelites out of Egypt, who inspired the Prophets, who
has been from the beginning governing all the earth.

It is very awful. But you must believe that, or put your Bibles
away as a dream--New Testament and Old alike. Not to believe that
fully and utterly, is not to believe the Bible at all. For that is
what the Bible says, and has been sent into the world to say. It
is, from beginning to end, the book of the revelation, or unveiling
of Jesus Christ, very God of very God.

But some may say, 'Why tell us that? Of course we believe it. We
should not be Christians if we did not.'

Be it so. I hope it is so. But I think that it is not so easy to
believe it as we fancy.

We believe it, I think, more firmly than our forefathers did five
hundred years ago, on some points; and therefore we have got rid of
many dark and blasphemous superstitions about witches and devils,
about the evil of the earth and of our own bodies, of marriage, and
of the common duties and bonds of humanity, which tormented them,
because they could not believe fully that Jesus Christ had created,
and still ruled the world and all therein.

But we are all too apt still to think of Jesus Christ merely as some
one who can save our souls when we die, and to forget that he is the
Lord, who is and has been always ruling the world and all mankind.

And from this come two bad consequences. People are apt to speak of
the Lord Jesus--or at least to admire preachers who speak of him--as
if he belonged to them, and not they to him; and, therefore, to
speak of