CHRIST'S CLAIM OF SINLESSNESS IN WITNESS TO THE GREAT DILEMMA. 1. IT does not require any profound theological insight to recognize the true issues which the personal claims of Christ involve. What those issues really are must be obvious from the most casual survey of the case upon which, by common consent, we are asked to pronounce.1 Rightly or wrongly, Christendom is founded on the belief that Jesus Christ not only advanced Divine pretensions, but was actually justified in advancing them. In other words, by far the most influential populations of the civilized world have for eighteen centuries accepted the Deity of Christ as a fact. What is the true explanation of this phenomenon? 2. This is the question upon which we are about to 1 "The debate as to the truth of Christianity has at last narrowed itself into one as to the Personality of its Founder."Strauss, The Old Faith and the New (transl.), p. 53. enter. It is not impossible, of course, that the whole gigantic superstructure of our modern life has been reared upon a delusion. But candour surely requires the admission that such an explanation of Christianity is not, in itself, very probable. 3. But in any case the issues are sufficiently portentous. No one, at any rate in such an auditory as this, will be guilty of regarding them as a matter upon which he can afford to plead indifference. 4. If the claims of Christ-such as they are popularly held to be—were, after all, unjustifiable ; then, either Christ Himself was mistaken, or Christendom has been deluded. In either case, the alternative lays the seeker after truth under the most solemn obligations. (i.) If Christ was mistaken, His mistake arose either consciously or unwittingly. If He was consciously mistaken, He was, without doubt, an impostor of an appalling type. If He was unwittingly in error, He most certainly is utterly unworthy of admiration as a leader of men, and must be set down as a fanatical and deluded blasphemer. (i.) If Christendom itself has been deluded that is, if, beginning with the belief of the Apostles, the verdict of Christendom has credited Christ with pretensions which He never assumed-then, of course, it is clear that Christendom is built upon what is not the less a lie because it was merely an unconscious lie.1 5. Under either of these two suppositions, the duty of all honest men in our day is sufficiently plain, however painful. If the claims of Christ were the claims of either an impostor or a fanatic; or, again, if the witness of the Apostles be, either intentionally or uninten 1 It may be convenient here to indicate the line of argument which is usually taken up by those who seek to escape from "The Great Dilemma" here depicted, by asserting that there is a third alternative; which is, that, though Christ was not Divine, He was wholly admirable, and that His followers deified Him in a pardonable enthusiasm. More than once since these pages were written, the reply has been urged: "We cannot allow that the only alternative to admitting His Divinity is to condemn Christ as an Impostor or Fanatic. Christ was, and is to us, the noblest character in history; but He was not God, nor ever claimed Divinity; and because His Disciples deified Him, that is no reason why we should be called upon to denounce Him for that matchless character which in their eyes made Him Divine." Now, without dwelling upon the gross misstatements of this theory, it need only be noticed here that, assuming it to be true, Christ was not God. (That He "did not claim" to be God is certainly false; and, moreover, if it were true, is nothing to the present point.) Now, His Disciples and all subsequent Christians have believed He was God. In that belief alone Christendom is reared; so that, upon the shallow theory here alluded to, Christianity is built up upon what—call it misconception, enthusiasm, delusion, or anything else-is none the less, in fact, a lie. tionally, a perjury; if the blood of the martyrs was spilt to propagate a delusion-and certainly not an innocent delusion!-then, as we see at once, the honest alternative is, to reject Christianity with horror; to exterminate its teachers; to stop our ears to its blasphemies. 6. The alternative, you say, is too shocking. You would fain be spared the process of investigation, if such an alternative be even conceivable. My hearers, it cannot be. Christianity, whether or not you accept it as the mainspring of your life, Christianity is a fact. Face that fact you must. This much, at least, is due to yourselves. Is it common honesty to pretend to believe in Christianity upon no better grounds than because you are too timid or too indolent to face the possibility that it may be all one gigantic falsehood? 7. No, whatever may be the faults of your age, it is strong at least in its professions of free thought, candour, and devotion to the cause of truth. Let no theological bias then preoccupy our minds in view of Who? and What? was Jesus. Let no childish prejudice warp our vision in view of the simple Facts which will be brought before us. God is the God of truth. He will condemn no soul that He has made for honest-hearted adhesion to the light which He has given them. 8. But, on the other hand, we must surely beware how we dare to tamper with that light. We must beware lest we be betrayed by the vanity of the human mind into a deliberate self-blinding. Let us not start with the preconceived opinion that all things new must needs be right, and all things old must needs be wrong. For this, surely, is a sinister temptation to which men's minds are very prone to-day. The integral facts of life and death are often juggled with, under the specious cover of religious toleration or philosophical candour. We think it magnanimous to hold our judgment in suspense until such time as every difficulty shall have been removed that lies in the path of faith; and, in the mean time, on the pleasing score of novelty and easy living, we practically prejudge Christianity to be untrue ;--for we cannot but perceive that if it be not so, if it be indeed historical, it involves the most momentous personal issues as regards ourselves. 9. Let us then approach a question thus carrying with it the entire standing ground of Christianity in a temper free at once from theological prejudice or controversial animus, and, on the other hand, from |