I cannot see less in the contents of the Jewish idea, the prophetic idea, of the Messias, than these points: divine inspiration or anointing; a sufferer who is to redeem; the fulfiller of all the rapturous visions of psalmist and of prophet in the past.
And so, when Peter stood up amongst that congregation of wondering strangers and scowling Pharisees, and said, 'The Man that died on the Cross, the Rabbi-peasant from half-heathen Galilee, is the Person to whom Law and Prophets have been pointing,'--no wonder that no one believed him except those whose hearts were touched, for it is never possible for the common mind, at any epoch, to believe that a man who stands beside them is very much bigger than themselves. Great men have always to die, and get a halo of distance around them, before their true stature can be seen.
And now two remarks are all I can afford myself upon this point, and one is this: the hearty recognition of His Messiahship is the centre of all discipleship. The earliest and the simplest Christian creed, which yet--like the little brown roll in which the infant beech-leaves lie folded up--contains in itself all the rest, was this: 'Jesus is Christ.' Although it is no part of my business to say how much imperfection and confusion of head comprehension may co-exist with a heart acceptance of Jesus that saves a soul from sin, yet I cannot in faithfulness to my own convictions conceal my belief that he who contents himself with 'Jesus' and does not grasp 'Christ' has cast away the most valuable and characteristic part of the Christianity which he professes. Surely a most simple inference is that a _Christian_ is at least a man who recognises the Christship of Jesus. And I press that upon you, my friends. It is not enough for the sustenance of your own souls and for the cultivation of a vigorous religious life that men should admire, howsoever profoundly and deeply, the humanity of the Lord unless that humanity leads them on to see the office of the Messiah to whom their whole hearts cleave. 'Jesus is the Christ' is the minimum Christian creed.
And then, still further, let me remind you how the recognition of Jesus as Christ is essential to giving its full value to the facts of the manhood. 'Jesus died!' Yes. What then? What is that to me? Is that all that I have to say? If His is simply a human death, like all others, I want to know what makes the story of it a Gospel. I want to know what more interest I have in it than I have in the death of Socrates, or in the death of any man or woman whose name was in the obituary column of yesterday's newspaper. 'Jesus died.' That is a fact. What is wanted to turn the fact into a gospel? That I shall know who it was that died, and why He died. 'I declare unto you the gospel which I preach,' Paul says, 'how that _Christ_ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.' The belief that the death of Jesus was the death of the Christ is needful in order that it shall be the means of my deliverance from the burden of sin. If it be only the death of Jesus, it is beautiful, pathetic, as many another martyr's has been, but if it be the death of Christ, then 'my faith can lay her hand' on that great Sacrifice 'and know her guilt was there.'
So in regard to His perfect example. If we only see His manhood when we are 'looking unto Jesus,' the contemplation of His perfection would be as paralysing as spectacles of supreme excellence usually are. But when we can say, '_Christ_ also suffered for us, leaving us an example,' and so can deepen the thought of His Manhood into that of His Messiahship, and the conception of His work as example into that of His work as sacrifice, we can hope that His divine power will dwell in us to mould our lives to the likeness of His human life of perfect obedience.