eaoe to him or hy him may be viewttd as indaded in thia spades of anointiiig, espedally the risible descent of Uie Spirit on him in his baptism.
4. These statements, with regard to the import of the appellation " the Christ," show ns how we are to understand the statement of tlie apostle John. ** Who- sosTer believes that Jesos is the Christ is bom of God" (1 John V, 1), i. e. is ** a chUd of Ood," " bom again," ** a new creature ;" and the similar declaration of the apostlePaol, "No man can say that Jesus is tlie Lord," i. e. the Christ, the Messiah, *' but by the Holy Ghost" (1 Cor. xii, 8). It is plain that the propodtion, "Jesus is the Christ," when understood in the latitude of meaning which we have shown bdongs to it, contains a complete summary of the trath reep^sting the divine method of salvation. To believe that proposition, right- ly understood, is to believe the Gospd— the saving troth, by the fidth of which a man is, and by the fiuth of which only a man can be, brought into the relation or formed to the character of a chfld of God; and tliough a man may, without divine influence, be brought to aclmowledge that "Jesus is the Lrad," "Messiah the Prince," and even firmly to believe tliat these words embody a truth, yet no man can be brought really to believe and cordially to acknowledge the truth con- tained in these words, as we have attempted to unfold it, without a peculiar divine influence. That Jesus is tlie great comer (o Ipx^fuvoct 6 iX^iuv) is the testi- mony of God, the fkith of which constitutes a Chris- tian, the one thing (r6 tv) to which the Spirit, the wa- ter, and the blood unite in bearing witness (1 John v, 6-9).->Holmes, in Kitto's CycUtpcBdiOy s. v. Jesus Christ, fh>m which this article is taken, with modifications. See Jesus.
CHRIST. ASCENSION OF. See Asceksiok.
CHRIST, CRUCIFIXION OF. See Crucipixioh.
CHRIST, DEATH OF. See Cbucipixioii ; Jb-
8U8.
CHRIST, DIVINITY OF. See Chbistoloot; Imoabnatioii. CHRIST, HUMANITY OF. See Christolooy ;
iHOARIIATIOlf.
CHRIST, IMAGES AND PORTRAITS OF. The Gospels contain no notice whatever of the personal ap- pearance of Christ The passages in the O. T. which refer to his person (Isa. lii, 14; IMi, 2) seem almost like premonitory warnings against any worship of Christ ** after the fiesh." The Apostolical Fathers are as si lent on this subject as the Scriptures are. " Either the Church was too spiritual to desire such descriptions, or its leaders were too fidthfhl to invent them." So completely, indeed, had all tradition of the personal appearance of Christ died out, that, as early as a hun- dred years after his deatli, a long controversy arose as to whether he was in form and features as described by the prophet Isaiah (lii, 14; liii, 2), without comeliness and beauty. Justin Martyr, Tertnllian, and Cyril took the ground that Christ was phydcally uncomely ; Cyril even declares that Christ was the " ugliest of the sons of men." Ambrose, Jerome, and the later ikthers generally, declared him to have been the most beauti- ful of mankind (Didron, Christian leonograpkjf, i, 268). The spurious letter of Lentalus to the Roman senate, describing Christ as a man of nAle appearance, with curled hair parted in front, and falUng, dark and Klossy, over his shoulders, with a smooth, high forehead, a strong, reddish, and irregular beard, dated probably also from the third century, but has been known, in ite present form, only rince the eleventh. Se^LsifTULUs.
When persecution arose, the eariy Christians felt soon the need of some visible sign of their fidth. The earliest adopted was the^ (q. v.). Afterwards the figures under which Christ presented himself in the New Testament, as the vine, the Lamb (of God which teketh away the dns of the world), and, above all, as the Good Shepherd (q. v.) carrying a lamb on his shoulders, were introduced into the paintings and
sculptufsi of the CataoQSttbe of Rome, Naples, and Syracuse. The so-called monogtam of Christ, vis. ^ (for Xp, the two first letters of the name Xpurr6c), with or without the letters A, Q (the Alpha and Ome- ga of the Apocalypse), appears about the time of Cqd- stantine (f 887). See Chbut, Monoobam op; Ai^ pha; Aohus Dei.
Again, the best class of pagan thinkers in the Ro- man empire, even before the official adoption of Cfari>> tianity, had become dissatisfied with the complicatSow of polytheism, and were seeking for a simpler fiutiL Perhaps the mystery of the unity of tlie Godhead, which had been celebrated through nearly all formi of paganism in secret rites, had l>eoome the common property of educated minds. Egyptian mythology, wiUi the SMfi as ite great centre, had also made its im- press on the Roman mind. And thus, towards tlie later periods of the supremacy of paganism in the Ro- man empire, Apotto, as the deity of the sun, had as- sumed the chief place in heathen worship. As indi- cating that Christ was the true "light of the world,*' the " Sun of righteousness" — the most fiivorite figure used in speaking of the Saviour in the early centuries — ^this very figure of Apollo was often introduced as indicating Christ (hphettt was also often thus intro- duced, as indicating that Christ is the true charmer of the evn passions of the human heart— indicated by the beasts that quietly listened to his music, and the true ruler of the powers o^natuie — indicated by the trees and other plants bowing to his music