fallible interpretation and guidance of the Church,-if, in short, we were Catholics,— the question would be very much simplified; for the church tradition and authority have settled it as to how the different parts of this dissected picture shall be put together, and how the portrait, when it is completed, shall appear. But we dare not think it religious or moral to assume either of these methods as true or right. We trust that, if there be reasons for our supposing these records to be absolutely infallible, we shall be able to find such reasons. But having learned that many of the stories and testimonies, concerning all sorts of things, that come floating down to us from the past, are very fallible, that many of them are not to be accepted or retained, we dare not take it for granted that all these are to be received without scrutiny or question. So we must trace up the records: find on what authority they stand; find, if we can, who composed them; how they have come to us in their present shape; how much we may accept as absolutely true; how much is probable; how much, if any, must be rejected as the growth of fancy, of myth, and of legend.

Standing here toward the latter part of the nineteenth century, and proposing to ask after sources of information concerning Jesus, the first witness is one that faces us all, if we only open our eyes. What is the meaning of this great fact that we call Christendom,- the dom, or domination, of Christ? Many and many a time, as boy and youth, have I stood on the banks of the beautiful river by the side of which I was born, and, looking over its glassy surface of a lovely day, as it spread before me placid and smooth as a lake, traced it up to where it soon lost itself among the hills. And when the air was clear, a hundred miles to the north, I saw a towering mountain, with other lesser peaks clustered around it; and I knew that this river, though I could trace it but a little

way, sprung somewhere about the feet of those grand old hills. The aspect of the mountain changed as the atmospheric medium changed, as the day was clear or cloudy; and sometimes the mists fell and shut it out completely. Nevertheless, I knew that the river traced its way up to, and was fed from, those mountain summits. I did not believe, indeed, that the whole river flowed from them; for I knew that, on this side and on that, came in tributaries from one direction and the other, and that the river was thus, as it flowed past my feet, composed of many different streams. So, standing here as we do to-day, this broad stream of a Christian civilization flowing past,—or shall I say, rather, on whose surface we ourselves are borne along, as we trace it up, we may seem to lose it in a little way. And yet, as we look off up the centuries, we see there the towering summit of a mountainous man,- —a man so high that his shadow falls all along down the ages; a man so masterly that he has given his name to the grandest nations of the world. I believe, indeed, that it is claiming far too much as many do - to say that the total civilization of the time has flowed from the lips and the life of Jesus. For this civilization is the outcome of humanity; and humanity is thousands and thousands of years older than he. It has its spring higher and farther off than Judea or Galilee. And then, since his time, there have flowed in on all sides tributaries of art, of science, of invention, and the mingling currents of many different races and climes. And yet this one grand fact remains: that Jesus, among all the names of the past, has stood master over the best and highest thought of the world; that still this great stream, composite though it be, of human civilization, bears his name, and will bear it for ages yet to come. This is the first witness of Jesus. It witnesses his existence, it witnesses his mastery. It is no small force, standing there eighteen hundred years

ago, that reaches its hand out over the ages, and shapes and modifies and moves them to-day. They are no weak words that thrill human hearts as they have never been thrilled by any other; that is no weak ideal that is still worshipped as divine by uncounted millions of intelligent men and women. Passing this witness, let us now go up the ages and make specific and special inquiry. We shall find it but an arid desert waste through a large part of the Middle Ages. We shall find the peaceful words of this Jesus of Nazareth sharpened into swords or bruising like battle-axes, his beautiful, poetic figures hardened into dogma, his loving words toward man metamorphosed into racks and thumbscrews, his tenderness toward children distorted into the image of a judge that thrusts down the little ones unbaptized to hell. We shall find his all-inclusive humanity contracted into narrowness and bitterness and exclusion, we shall find him who was simplicity itself made the authority for gorgeous rituals, we shall find him who founded no church made the corner-stone of a towering and oppressive hierarchy; and we shall wonder what sort of Jesus it was that could become so misinterpreted in the thought of other ages. And yet, passing over these deserts of speculation, we shall now and then find an oasis where flowers of humanity and love and charity blossom in the midst of the coldness and hardness of human hearts, as under the edge of the mountain glacier, we shall find little Alpine flowers of purity and tenderness and truth. Even in the midst of cruel wars and desolation, we shall find the image of the Crucified softening the hearts of many, and turning them to gentleness and forgiveness and chivalrous care. And yet we shall find nothing that will really add to our knowledge of the man we seek.

We will go on, then, up to the first century of our era;

and I want, in the simplest way in the world, to place before you the witnesses that we have for Jesus, that you may see who they are, what they tell us, and what are the nature and character of their authority. And, first, are there any in the outside pagan nations of the world? If, indeed, the stories that come floating down to us be true, we should expect to find that they would have been heard of in Asia Minor, in Egypt, in Rome, in the distant parts of the great empire that then held the world as one. If, indeed, the earth. quaked when the Jesus died, if the rocks were rent and the graves were opened, if the sun itself was darkened in heaven for hours, we should suppose that the curious naturalists and historians and the seekers after strange and wondrous events in the pagan world would have heard and would have reported some of these things. And yet we find nothing of the kind, strange as it may seem. There was Seneca, living not far from these times; and then the Elder and the Younger Pliny, Tacitus, Plutarch, Galen, Epictetus, Marcus Antoninus,

66

some of the noblest men of the world. They saw nothing in that little movement over in Palestine that attracted their attention, nothing to call out more than a passing word of contempt. Let me give you some few meagre fragments of testimony that we have, that you may see their nature. One historian writes that "under a ringleader named Chrestust.) the Jews raised a tumult." In another place, he refers to the Christians as a class of men devoted to a new and mischievous superstition." And Tacitus speaks of Judea as "the source of this evil,”—meaning Christianity. That is the way they looked at that movement which has given us Christendom. Suetonius speaks of the Christians as a sect hated for their crimes"; and, in his Life of Nero, he gives him special praise for having done the most that he could to wipe them off the face of the earth. In his Life

66

of Claudius, another Roman emperor, he speaks of Christ as "a restless, seditious, Jewish agitator." Pliny the Younger, writing to the emperor about the year 104, when he was governor of Bithynia, says the Christians do not worship the gods nor the emperors, as most of the people then did, nor could they be induced to curse Christ. He says they met mornings for praise and for holy and virtuous vows to Christ, as to a god, and in the evening they ate together a common meal,-probably referring to the Lord's Supper. And, after he had put them to torture, he said all he could find against them was "a perverse and immoderate superstition." Lucian, about the middle of the second century, speaks of Jesus as the crucified Sophist. These little notices, treating Christianity as just another one of the endless sects that sprung up among a superstitious people, - these are what we find among the great pagan writers of the time. And indeed it is nothing strange. Suppose, for example, to-day a new religion should spring up in Poland. Poland is as important as was Palestine. Poland, like Palestine, is crushed under the heel of an oppressive conqueror. Suppose a new religion should spring up there would the authorities, the great and wise men in Russia to-day, pay any attention to it? It would be looked on simply as we regard a curious superstition on the part of a people for whom we have nothing but contempt.

Leave the pagan world now, and let us come to the Jewish, outside of the Christian records, and see if we can find anything there. In the Talmud, a perfect wilderness and jungle of religious and political speculations and comments, we find curious, spiteful, distorted, malignant pictures of Jesus. He is represented as a magician, as a person who went into Egypt and learned sorcery and the black art, and by its influence raised a tumult among the people,