"The debate as to the truth of Christianity has at last narrowed itself into one as to the Personality of its Founder.”STRAUSS. "The call to decide between these two positions, either that Jesus is what the Church Universal teaches, or else an impostor and the greatest teacher of idolatry the world has ever known, is thus once again presented to the mind of Christendom. For this is the question, and nothing less. It is idle for M. Renan and his supporters to say: 'You misunderstand us; we do not intend to charge Him with anything so grave as imposture : the East has measures of sincerity differing from ours ;'—and the like. Such excuses are of no avail. He who permits others to believe and teach that he has wrought a marvel which he knows he has not wrought, is an impostor.”—Cazenove. "The choice lies between two alternatives. Cease to revere Jesus; or consent to adore Christ.”—CHADWICK, “Strauss laughs at Paulus: Baur at Strauss: Renan at Baur : the hour-glass at all.”—COOK, Boston Lectures. "The witness which Christ offers of Himself either proves everything or it proves nothing."-MANSEL. “The energies of all parties engaged in this conflict are gathered ever more and more around the Person of Christ, as the central point at which the matter must be determined.”— DORNER. I. THE following extract1 from a notice which preceded the delivery of these lectures will sufficiently indicate their general purport:— "The central event of the Christian Passion-tide" is one which no intelligent person, of whatever creed, can affect to disregard. To view the facts—or even the alleged facts-of a Divine Incarnation and a Divine Atonement with indifference, argues, not irreligion-not impiety-but sheer intellectual defects 1 For the sake of clearness, an occasional phrase has been altered in this extract. 2. The lectures were delivered during Lent, 1881. is to 3 "Not to be interested in the life of Jesus Christ be insensible to the nature and claims of the most powerful force that has ever moulded the thought and swayed the destiny of civilized man. To feel this interest . . . a man need not even profess to be a Christian. He may, indeed, be earnestly opposed to Christianity, and his opposition can scarcely be formidable unless he has given his mind to the careful study of that which he opposes. To such men as Celsus, or Lucian, or Porphyry, or the apostate Emperor Julian, or the philosopher of Ferney, Christianity was a matter of the deepest intellectual interest. Men do not write like Celsus, or act like Julian, or epigrammatize with the bitterness of Voltaire, about a doctrine in which they feel little concerned."--Liddon, Some Elements of Religion, pp. 212, sqq. 2. "But between indifference or even positive scepticism on such subjects, and sincere adoration of the unique Personage who lends them all their interest, there is, to-day, a neutral ground of half belief, which affords a precarious footing to many. Not consciously to reject the claims of the Founder of Christianity does not by any means imply the deliberate acceptance of them in all their momentous bearings upon our practical life. Between a formal and unintelligent acquiescence in what we believe' and a living enthusiasm for its truth, there is indeed a vital distinction. "What think ye of Christ?' Whom say ye that I am?'-These are, after all, the great questions that are suggested by the tragedy of Calvary. "To elucidate the Great Dilemma which any answer to these questions must imply; to clear away some of the intervening mists which, from long familiarity or from historical remoteness, envelop the Gospel histories, and obscure or distort the sacred Person of the Christ; to concentrate the whole faculties of the historical student upon the tremendous Fact of HIS DIVINITY; ... this is the first object of the present endeavour." 3. Now it will be seen at once that such an object as this is in itself far too ambitious for satisfactory treatment in a series of six ordinary addresses to a mixed and popular audience. Of this fact, and of his own very meagre treatment of the Great Dilemma with which he had to deal, no one can be more profoundly sensible than the writer himself. Further, the lectures, even as lectures, were not written with any view to publication; and by special request they are here presented to the reader in the rhetorical form, and almost in the identical language of their original delivery. They would certainly have never seen the light but for the direct wish of some whose kind desire it would have been affectation, not humility, to set aside. 4. It is, then, with great diffidence that these lectures are now submitted to a severer and therefore less partial criticism than that which has thus encouraged their publication. But the writer cannot refrain from hoping that the grounds upon which their viva voce delivery was found acceptable may to some extent justify their appearance in a less ephemeral form. 5. The lectures themselves were intended to meet the wants of many whose busy commercial and professional lives entirely prevent anything like a close or critical investigation of the claims of Christianity upon educated—but not "theologically" educated-minds. They were undertaken in the |