The Supreme Miracle of Christianity.
AMONG all the New Testament miracles the character of Christ is an ever-present and ever-living reality to the hearts of men. It stands out on every page of the gospel history with such distinctness of outline and such power of reality that it is impossible to read the book without beholding the man. And yet we cannot behold the man without feeling that God is here. No man can utter these words and do these mighty works unless God be with him. It is a true man who lives and speaks and acts. But if he is true, he is more than man, for he claims equality with God. Is it too much to say that the unique character of Jesus Christ is God's perpetual demonstration, wrought out before the eyes of all generations, of the truth of Christianity? Yes; here is one miracle which we can all examine at our leisure—which we can in a sense see and hear and handle, of the Word of life. We have not seen him die on the cross; we did not see him and converse with him after he rose from the dead. These and other facts we receive on the testimony of eye-witnesses who recorded them. But can we read the New Testament without seeing and feeling the living reality of the character of Jesus in its matchless perfection, in its human tenderness, in its divine glory? Is not the character there before our eyes as truly and as vividly as if its possessor still lived and walked among us? Can we mistake it? Can we fail to see what it is and what it means? Some one may say, in reply, "We have the character, after all, only on the recorded testimony of those who reported the facts." True; but how could they delineate such a character, if it had no existence in a living man? If they had no living example to draw from, if the real Jesus of the Gospel was not before their eyes, then they created the character. How could such men, in such an age, create out of nothing such a character of absolute originality and perfection? The greatest geniuses who have appeared in history, under the most favorable inspiration of clime and country, have often essayed their utmost endeavor, and accomplished no such result. How could the isolated and comparatively rude fishermen of Galilee do it without a living original? To say that they did, would be to account for one miracle for which there is evidence by taking refuge in another for which there is none. It is far more rational to believe that Christ lived and acted out before the eyes of his disciples the character which they have reported in the New Testament, than to believe that they could draw such a picture of godlike excellence without the living Christ before them. If, therefore, we have before our eyes to-day, in these sacred pages, the very character which the apostles saw and admired and adored, then has God given to us, even as he did to them, the most sublime of all miracles, the most complete and satisfactory of all demonstrations that Christianity is true. The miracle of miracles, the proof of proofs, is the life and character of God's Son. It is the one miracle which both wins the heart and satisfies the intellect. When we see it as we do in the New Testament, we are compelled to feel that "God has spoken by his Son." If a man cannot, or will not, receive this evidence of character; if he has no heart to appreciate and admire it; if there be nothing within him responding in homage to the character of this Christ of the New Testament, then we fail to see what further God could do or ought to do to convince and save such a man. Not to appreciate the character of Christ is to disown the highest exhibition of moral excellence the world has ever seen. What grander miracle could God work before the eyes of men than to give the world this perfect image of his own moral perfections in human form, in the life and character of his own Son?—From "Living Christianity."