and of the second century of the Christian era. Thus the books are sufficiently ancient to justify the claim that they were written by men familiar with the facts, and associated with Christ and the Apostles.

(2) The style and matter of the books connect them with the period and the country, and the surroundings in which Jesus Christ must have lived. This gives them a historical character, and shows that they were written by men familiar with the facts.

In the first place the language, or dialect, is peculiar. It is Hebraistic Greek, used in Palestine by men of Hebrew culture who had learned Greek. This dialect disappeared with the conquest of Palestine by the Romans. There was no call for it after the first century.

Again, the geographical references show such familiarity with the country as could come only from residence in it. These references are numerous and minute, easy to a resident, but impossible even to a learned man of another country, or another age. Our most cultivated writers go astray when speaking of a distant land. The researches of many ages have verified these references.

The same may be said of the historical references; their exactness has been proved. They are abundant, involving various nations besides the Jewish, namely, the Egyptians, Arabians, Persians, Scythians and Romans. The accuracy of these references proves that the writers were in contact with these nationalities, and obtained their knowledge directly, not by studying them at a distance. This general statement must of course be vague; particulars would be 、more satisfactory and impressive.

Still again, the archæology of the books, their references to habits and customs, domestic, social and public, are too numerous, minute, and accurate, to be explained upon any supposition but that of familiar, personal acquaintance, on the part of the writers. Designations of divisions of

time, of weights and measures, Jewish, Grecian, Roman, are all accurate and in place; and the mingled civilizations of the time and the country made this a very complicated problem. In such particulars the best trained writers fail, when speaking of things with which they are not familiar by lifelong association. The books of the New Testament, and indeed of the Scriptures generally, are specially open to these tests because they are historical and treat abundantly of men and things, of times and persons. In this respect they differ from other sacred books, which indulge chiefly in dreams and visions and speculations.

These considerations prove beyond question, that the writers lived in the time, and the land, of the events which they profess to record. Their works have the character of history.

8. But our chief interest gathers about the question of the historical reality of Jesus Christ. The books give his character and teaching and career; is this genuine history? Did such a being appear upon this earth, and pursue essentially the career which the Gospels ascribe to him? We must answer this question affirmatively, for the following reasons:

(1) The character of Jesus Christ is not a human invention. The reality alone can account for the presentation. It was too elevated to be even comprehended by his disciples who walked with him. The character has stood for ages a mark for criticism, with every motive on the part of men to disparage and vilify it; yet it has never been successfully challenged. The modern attempts to depreciate it are all based upon the assumption that we must allow nothing supernatural in the person and origin of Jesus. This is a baseless assumption, utterly at war with the true spirit of inquiry. The character, as it stands, vindicates itself; and Christians and unbelievers alike have, through all the ages, acknowledged its perfection. We can see the beauty when

placed before us; we could not originate, or carry out, the conception. The absolute purity of motive, the absence of the least semblance of self-exaltation; the calm dignity of his bearing, never marred by a hasty or ill-considered word or look; this dignity and simplicity maintained in all emergencies; his marvelous power, never used for display or for any private end; his deeds always appropriate to his position and claims; his words so fit and profound and weighty; his divine meekness and gentleness, coupled with a majestic weight and firmness of character-all these, we can see, are just as they should have been; and then his death, to human estimation so shameful and forbidding, but majestic and glorious in the outcome-the whole scene sustained and carried through with absolutely perfect consistency and propriety, -what human thought could invent such a character and career?

(2) The utterances of Jesus are just as impossible, as a human invention, as his character and life. No one could devise them, without such wisdom and spiritual insight as characterized him. They impressed men at the time: "All bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words. which proceeded out of his mouth;" "They were astonished at his doctrine; for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes;" "Never man spake like this man." The words of Jesus have been the delight and the surprise and inspiration of all ages. What impostor or enthusiast uttered them? For, if there was no real Jesus, some man produced these sermons and parables, and all the utterances which contain the very substance and essence of spiritual truth. Who invented the sermon on the mount, or the parable of the prodigal son, or the Lord's prayer, or the discourse of Jesus with his disciples at the supper, or his last prayer? The men did not live, and have never lived, that could give us these treasures. They are not an invention.

(3) The marvelous combination of the human and the divine in the presentation of Jesus Christ, is not a human invention. The idea of a demigod is not remote from human thought. It characterizes the ancient mythology, but the result is merely a man with some unusual attributes, some extravagance of action or character, like Hercules or Vulcan; but such a blending of the divine and the human, of the infinite and the finite as we find in the person of Jesus Christ, is beyond man's devising. He seems to hold nature in his hand-"commands the wind and the sea and they obey him;" yet he yields to violence and death like any mortal. He places himself by the side of God in exaltation and wisdom; "All things that the Father hath are mine;" "Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him;" "That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father which hath sent him;" still he prays, "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." He admits his limitations,-“But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father."

The terms Son of man and Son of God, are used in reference to Jesus Christ, with a delicacy and discrimination that could not be expected in a fiction. Jesus calls himself the Son of man, when his divinity is implied, and his humanity affirmed. His disciples never called him the Son of man. Peter says, "We believe and are sure that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus calls himself the Son of God when he wishes to affirm his divine nature to one who has not known him, as to the man born blind: "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" But when he calls himself the Son of man, he does not speak simply as a man, but with claims to all divine prerogatives; "The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins;" "The Son of man is

Lord even of the Sabbath day;" "The Son of man shall come in his glory, and all his holy angels with him;" "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." The usage is very remarkable and profoundly discriminating, true to nature and to the facts, but utterly beyond the reach of fiction or human invention. In the presence of the facts the usage takes care of itself. As an invention it could not appear. Multitudes read the Scriptures without observing it. No such conception as that of the divine and the human in Jesus, ever entered the imagination of men. The Gospels scarcely state it dogmatically. They contain it, wrought into their very substance. It must have been a sublime reality. From these considerations, which might be greatly extended, we are compelled to accept the historical reality of Jesus Christ, his nature, his character, his teachings, his career. As a fiction, the Christ of the Gospels is an impossibility.

John Stuart Mill, never suspected of any bias toward Christianity, in his Essays on Religion (page 245), writes as follows: "It is of no use to say that Christ as exhibited in the Gospels is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the tradition of his followers. The tradition of followers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted all the miracles reputed to have been wrought by Christ; but who among his disciples, or among their proselytes, were capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies are of a totally dif ferent sort. Still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that all the good which was in them was derived, as they always professed, from a higher source."

(4) Still further, when we contemplate the doctrines of