"There is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11).

      I am to talk to you on the lordship of this Child, of this Jesus. Jesus, who came into this world, not through a triumphal arch, but through a barn door; who came not unto a prepared throne, but into an unprepared manger; whose first pillow was a pillow of straw, and whose last pillow was a pillow of thorns; who was born between oxen, and expired between thieves; who was born in another man's manger, and buried in another man's grave. Jesus, born in Bethlehem, carried into Egypt, [472] rejected at Nazareth, crucified at Jerusalem, and coronated in heaven.

      Note the condition of the world when he, the child of Mary, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, came. The world, reposing under the protecting wings of the most august of all Cæsars; peace, universal peace, with her healthful arms encircling all nations compassing the great empire, which was itself the consummation of all the empires of the ancient world. Polytheism, with her myriads of temples, and her myriads of priests, triumphantly seated in the affections of a superstitious people, and swaying a magic scepter from the Tiber to the ends of the earth. What a strange contrast! Idolatry on the throne, and the founder of a new religion, and a new empire, lying in a manger. After thirty years of obscurity we find him surrounded by what the wise and the wealthy and the proud would call a contemptible group, telling them that one of them, an uncouth and untutored fisherman, too, had discovered a truth which would now modify the whole world. "I am about," says he, "to found a new empire on the acknowledgment of a single truth--a truth, too, which one of you has discovered--and all the powers and malice of worlds, seen and unseen, shall never prevail against it. What a scene--a weak, wavering, ignorant and timid dozen of individuals, without a penny apiece, assured that to them it pleased the Ruler of the universe to give the empire of the world; that to each of them would be given a throne from which would be promulgated laws never to be repealed while grass grows, rivers run and sun and moon endure."

      The carpenter's son of Nazareth, who came out with such a proclamation and sent forth his fiat in the terms of the great commission to the ends of the earth, was either the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, or (excuse the words) was the greatest blasphemer, fanatic or imposter that ever lived among men. He not only made the most astonishing, incomparable claims for himself, but impoverished all nature in his figures of speech to set forth his own claims as to personality and power.

      I will say right here that I believe with all my heart that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I am as willing to confess his deity as his divinity, and in this I am not alone; for Paul said: "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. But made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:6-11). "To him give all the prophets witness." Time and space forbid in this address to demonstrate the full meaning of the apostle's words, or to bring up all the

C. R. SCOVILLE.

Messianic prophecies that are found between the promised seed of the woman and the promise of Malachi: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord come." He was the "seed of the woman," Job's "Day's Man," Jacob's "Shiloh," and Isaiah's "Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief." In him the words of prophets and apostles--the former prophetic, and the latter historic--fit together like our two hands. He is not only the theme of apostles and prophets, but of men and angels, of earth and heaven, of time and eternity.

      While attending the feast of the Jews at Jerusalem, Jesus healed the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath day. Therefore the Jews persecuted him and sought to slay him because he had done these things on the Sabbath day, and he said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;" that is, my Father causes the rain to fall, the sun to shine and vegetation to grow on [473] the Sabbath day; he worketh the works of mercy, works of necessity, works of love. "Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God" (John 5:18).

      Instead of denying the charge, he furnished an argument to substantiate the claim of his lordship, and calls his witnesses to substantiate his argument. We can certainly do nothing better than to present the same argument, and bring up the same witnesses. He said, "Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth." But these countrymen of Jesus were so morally corrupt, so warped by sin, and so prejudiced by their pride, that, although they believed John the Baptist to be a prophet sent from God, they refused to believe him when he testified that Jesus was the Son of God. It would be well indeed for us, while passing, to note that John accepted the law of evidences, "that from the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established." The descending Spirit, like as a dove, and the voice from heaven, the two witnesses, were conclusive proofs to John.

      There are five other like demonstrations in Christ's life which the unbeliever must account for: 1. At his birth, the angels of God, and the wise men from the East. 2. At the transfiguration, the appearance of Moses and Elias, the transfigured Christ, and the voice, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him." 3. At the crucifixion, the darkening skies, and the rent veil of the temple. 4. At Christ's resurrection, two angels and the empty tomb. 5. At the ascension, the two angels, and Christ in the ascending cloud.

      The second witness which Jesus brought into court before the Jews was his works. When John from the depth of the prison sent his disciples to say, "Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?" the Lord Jesus simply answered, "Go tell John the things which you do see and hear. The blind receive their sight, the deaf hear, the lepers are healed, the lame walk, and the poor have the gospel preached unto them." This same argument was used by Simon Peter on the day of Pentecost: "Jesus of Nazareth, the man approved of God among us, by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him, in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know" (Acts 2:22). This appeal of Simon Peter to the miracles and wonders and signs done in their midst was unanswerable.

      Mark you, these miracles were performed over nature, as well as the deadly diseases of men. What a contrast to the so-called religious cures of the Mormons, of the Dowieites, of the Eddyites. Jesus' miracles were performed instantly, not by long-drawn-out, exorbitantly charged for manipulations.

      The third witness which Christ brought into court was the witness of the Father: "And the Father himself, which sent me, hath borne witness of me." The apostolic speakers of Pentecost said: "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount" (2 Pet. 1:16-18). I would rather have one word of the testimony of Simon Peter than to have all of your fine-spun, skeptical theories, or the poetical dreams of your philosophical dreamers, or the dirt-begotten doctrine of some dogmatic truth-dodger.

      The people were no more astonished at his miracles than at his words. Did they say, "What manner of man is this, that even the winds and waves obey him?"? They also said, "Whence hath this man wisdom? Never man spake as this man." Listen to that incomparable Sermon on the Mount. No wonder the sacred record says: "And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine, for he taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes" (Matt. 7:28, 29).

      He taught that the greatest man in any vocation is the one who renders the greatest service through that vocation. And when his disciples discussed which [474] was the greatest, he unostentatiously set a child in their midst. He took the most trifling things from their homes, cities and fields, and made them teach the most incomprehensible truths. A hen gathering her chickens under her wings; the sower going forth to sow; the vine and the branches; the fisherman; the good seed; the sword; the shepherd; the sheepfold and the sheep; the sparrows; the growth of the lilies; the water in the well; the grass in the field; the bread on the table, and the leaven therein--did not escape his notice. In his teachings the very hairs of your heads are numbered. Surely, "never man spake as this man." In his parables, like the lost silver, the lost sheep and the lost son, there is a beauty, a familiarity, a depth, a world of meaning that finds us, touches us, thrills us, and discovers us to ourselves.

      The man who rejects his lordship still has his character to account for. "He began both to do and to teach." The Teacher's life was the life of his teachings. He identified himself with his message. He denounced in withering invective the chiefest of the religious rulers of his day. He called them whited sepulchres; they were full of dead men's bones. Were they zealous? It was only to proselyte men, and make them threefold more a child of hell than themselves. He lashed them from the temple and said plainly to his disciples, "Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall it no wise enter into the kingdom" (Matt. 5:20). And yet, in closing his invective, he wept over a doomed city. His message knew no boundaries, and broke down the middle wall between Roman pride and Jewish prejudice, and is still world-wide in its sway and everlasting in its sweep.

      He gave us a new idea of God. All men of all ages have believed in God. President Zollars says that "the greatest legacy of the Hebrew nation to humanity was their revelation of the fact that there is but one God." Without Christ the knowledge of the omnipotent God would have remained, but his loving Fatherhood and providential care would never have been known. He taught us to address our petitions not to some frowning, terrible despot, but to a Father. He formulated a petition, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; our Father, thy kingdom come; our Father, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven; our Father, forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and our Father, give us this day our daily bread; and our Father, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; our Father, thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. He gave the word "Father" a new meaning, and gave the world a new deity. Man had exalted the majesty of the Almighty, and sung,

They had exalted the difference. Jesus taught them to exalt the identity.

      He lived so completely the things that he said, and said so perfectly the things that he lived, that he was even able to say that "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." He seemed astonished when Philip said, "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." "Have I been so long time with you, and hast thou not known me, Philip? When you see me you see the Father, or one exactly like the Father." Geo. R. Wendling is right, "We can not think of another character like Jesus until we think of God." You could not be the John the Baptist of a grander Christ. The man who rejects his Lordship has his character and his teachings to account for. Let the man who attempts to account for them on human grounds attempt to rival them. In the words of Jean Paul Richter, "Being holiest among the mighty and mightiest among the holy, he lifted with his pierced hands empires off their hinges, has turned the streams of centuries out of their channel, and still governs the ages."

      The Gospels are written to prove that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Walter Scott said, "The New Testament proves its own authenticity by proving that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." We can trace the sun's rays back to the sun. The acorn proves the existence of a universe with its soil, light, moisture, warmth and seasons. There is but one way to account for the marvelous change in the hardy Galilean [475] fisherman, Simon Peter, or the infidel student of Gamaliel, Saul of Tarsus, and that is by the Lordship of Jesus.

      The Lordship of Jesus is not merely a fact of history, it is a fact, blessed be God, of individual experience. If this world is one scene of his conquests, the soul of each true Christian is another. The soul is the microcosm within which, in all its strength, the kingdom of God is set up. The Master, who has fathomed and controlled our deepest life of thought and passion, is welcomed by the Christian soul as something more than a student exploring its mysteries or than a philanthropic experimentalist alleviating its sorrows. He is hailed, he is loved, he is worshiped as one who possesses a knowledge and a strength which human study and human skill fail to compass; it is felt that he is so manifestly the true Saviour of the soul, because he is none other than the being who made it. He has struck the full octave; he is its King eternal, immortal, invisible.

      His life and his words are the makers of a new heaven and a new earth, and any man in him is a new creature. All heaven gave him, and all the earth will yet receive him. The exaltation of Jesus to his rightful throne is the business of humanity, and will be the theme of the angels for all eternity.

      When one even tries to imagine what shall be the scene before the great white throne, the mind is lost in bewilderment and the soul in revery, eternal ecstasy, unspeakable and full of glory. The eye of faith seems to see things unlawful to utter, and one's whole being to burst forth with,

[CCR 472-476]