We have already remarked that the Christian com- munity cannot be supposed to have formed and im- And Something niovably fixed in their hearts the con- More than His viction that their Lord was divine Teaching without evidence — much evidence — convincing evidence. We have also pointed out that the primary item of this evidence was our Lord's own assertion. But there certainly must have been more evidence than our Lord's bare assertion. Men do not without ado believe everyone who announces himself to be God, upon the bald announcement alone. There mlist have been attendant circumstances which sup- ported the announcement and gave it verisimilitude, — nay, cogency — or it would not have had such power over men. Our Lord's life. His teachings, His char- acter, must have been consonant with it. His deeds as well as His words must have borne Him witness. The credit accorded to His assertion Is the best possible evidence that such was the case. We can understand how His followers could believe Him divine, if in point of fact He not only asserted Himself to be divine but lived as became a God, taught as befitted a divine Instructor, in all His conversation in the world manifested a perfection such as obviously was not human: and if dying, He rose again from the dead. If He did none of these things can their firm and pas- sionate faith in His deity be explained?
Possibly we do not always fully realize the nature of the issue here brought before us. Here is a young
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man scarcely thirty-three years of age, emerged from obscurity only for the brief space of three years, living Including during those years under the scorn of the Something world, which grew steadily in intensity Very Conclusive ^^d finally passed into hatred, and dying at the end the death of a malefactor: but leaving behind Him the germs of a world-wide community, the spring of whose vitality is the firm conviction that He was God manifest in the flesh. If anything human is ob- vious it is obvious that this conviction was not formed and fixed without evidence for it of the most convinc- ing kind. The account His followers themselves gave of the matter is that their faith was grounded not merely in His assertions, nor merely in the impression His personality made upon them in conjunction with His claims, — but specifically in a series of divine deeds, culminating in His rising from the dead, setting its seal upon His claims and the impression made by His personality. This is the account of the great place the Resurrection of Christ takes in the Apostolic propa- ganda. It is the seal set by heaven upon the truth of His deity as proclaimed in His teaching. It is safe to say that apart from evidence so convincing the high claims of Jesus could not have been met with such firm and unquestioning faith by His followers. This very faith becomes thus a proof of the truth of His claims.'-
1 Cf. Stanton, The Jewish and the Christian Messiah, pp. 252, 253: " It appears to me that without the cooperation of the two main causes here indicated, first the impression made by the personality of Jesus, His works and His claims for Himself, before His crucifixion, and then the evidence which convinced His disciples of His resurrection, faith in Him as a supernatural Christ could not have been established so universally from the first."
302 The Designations of Our Lord