(2) Because there is a Gospel in His worTi and influence. One of the most striking contrasts betweeiT heathendom' "and^" Christendom is in their respective attitudes towards nature and its forces. That of heathenism untouched by Christianity is one of uncertainty, distrust, timidity, even dread or terror ; that
^ H. P, Liddon, Somt Sermons on the Words of Christ, 13.
i6 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
of Christianity, on the contrary, is one of confidence, fearlessness, cheerfulness, and admiration. The heathen man moves to and fro like a slave ; and the Christian walks the earth with head erect, feeling, if not exactly thinking^ that as the Book of Genesis puts it, he was meant to have dominion over earth and sea, and all things that are therein. We are no longer as strangers on the earth ; we regard and treat it as our home. What is the reason of the contrast ? How has the gulf been bridged over ? A common answer is, the progress of science and the arts of civilisation and culture. Yes ; but the progress of science and the arts is the very thing that needs to be explained. That is the bridge; and the question is. How came the bridge to bo built ? It was Christ who by His attitude towards and full control of nature — so marvellous and yet so natural and easy, so tremendous in authority and yet so full of goodness and kindness — became for all time that most effective agency by which the human race has been put in possession of its birthright of free and fearless movement and activity in the midst of the complex and tremendous forces of the system to which it belongs. His influence, indeed, was not directly intellectual or scientific, but moral and personal.
IT Let a man think of the general fruits that have followed from faith in Christ, of the difference between Christian and non-Christian civilisations, of the social spirit and social advances that have followed wherever Christ has been preached ; let him remember that all that is best in our own national life is due to the Christian missionaries who preached Christ to our ignorant, half-savage ancestors. Thoughts like these crowd in upon him, and he says, " Surely He to whom all this was owing, or from whom it started, cannot have been an ordinary Person ; there must have been at least an exceptional power of God in Him ; all those who believed in Him and found such experiences through Him cannot have been wholly deluded ; they were not all fools or ignorant people. What I witness as the ejffects of Christianity is very much like what I see when the Spring sun begins to shine on the cold ice-bound earth and the Divine beneficent forces of nature are set a-working, so that under warm skies, from the bleak ground, life begins to sprout, and leaf, bud flower, and fruit gradually to appear. It looks very much as if this Christ were a sun in the spiritual heavens, through the shining of which, on the hearts of men, those higher Divine forces which make for true life and manhood have been made
ST. MARK 17
active, so that if I see God in nature, I must see God also there — more manifestly there}
IF And it is there the difference comes in between a visionary and a Christian. A visionary dreams his dreams, and builds his castles in the air, and they are radiant, and wonderful, and golden, and the light of heaven glitters on every minaret. And then, because he cannot realise them now, and cannot draw them in all their heavenly beauty down to earth, the visionary folds his hands, does nothing, and the vision goes. But the true Christian, with hopes as glorious as any visionary's, because they are the hopes of Jesus Christ, carries the glory of them into his common duty, and into the cross-bearing of the dreary day. And though the generations die, and the purposes of God take a thousand years to ripen, he serves and is content. ^
Jesus shall reign where'er the sun Doth his successive journeys run.
(3) Because Ee Himself is the good news, because He is what He is. " Jesus," says Harnack, " belongs to His Gospel, not as a part of it, but as its embodiment. He is its personal realisation and its power. And such He will always be felt to be."
In placing the statement of the person of Christ as the first work of the Gospel histories, we speak in accordance with the spirit of those books and of the whole ensuing system of doctrine. Jesus Christ created the Gospel by His work; He preaches the Gospel by His words ; but He is the Gospel in Himself. The expression is but the condensation of a hundred passages of Scripture which declare Him to he that which, in more timid but less adequate language, we might say that He wrought, or that He taught, or that He gave. " I am the resurrection and the life" (John xi. 25). He "is our peace" (Eph. ii. 14), He "is our life" (Col. iii. 4), He "is the hope of glory" (Col. i. 27), He "of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" (1 Cor. i. 30); and they who are saved " are made partakers of Christ " (Heb. iii. 14), not merely of His gifts, whether they be gifts of grace or glory. Is it not indeed the distinguishing feature of the Christian system that it places the foundation of salvation in