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UPON WHAT GROUNDS,

of power, transcending all our experience.

But then,' it will be said, 'men are so apt to be deluded; to mistake the fictions of their own imagination for miracles, that we must be cautious.' Yes, we must be cautious, very. But to decide against a reported fact off-hand, only because it is unprecedented, is not caution, but pure rashness. Why are men so prone to delusion, so ready to believe, so apt to mistake fiction for fact? Because they know themselves to be environed with things new and strange, mysteries above and below, around and within, and the wonderfulness of an event is with them no reason for doubting it, even if it be not a positive reason for admitting it. The excesses of superstition are numerous and deplorable. Still in a condition like man's, teeming with awful and evervarying displays of Power, there is not only more of nature, but more of reason, of wisdom, in faith than in skepticism.* The very readiness of mankind to mistake the marvels of their own creation for facts shows that wonders actually abound, that the marvellous is in the course of nature. At the same time, it admonishes us to use care. Be it then borne in mind, that the strangeness of the account of the birth of Christ is a reason why we should demand evidence and weigh it cautiously, but it is not a reason for rejecting it at once.

There is an improbability in this account, resulting from another and more specific cause. It arises from

* The respective evils of superstition and skepticism do not admit of being compared. The latter is so much more injurious than the former, that nature herself has provided against it. Unbelief never has prevailed extensively, nor for any long period. Mankind can better exist with the grossest excesses of faith, than without any faith at all. It is a remark of Hume's, that if a nation can be found without any idea of a God, it must be nearly on a level with the brutes.

AND HOW FAR, IMPROBABLE.

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the common disposition of the world to magnify the circumstances of the birth and childhood of distinguished men, to believe that, upon their first coming on the stage of life, supernatural appearances were visible, unearthly agents busy, that

Alexander would have had it believed that he was the son of Jupiter, and Pythagoras was reported to be the child of Apollo.

Now admitting the reality of all that is related of the public ministry of Jesus, of his powerful teaching, his miracles, death, and rising from the dead, is it not very natural that wonderful stories should be told of his birth and early years? And, aware of the disposition to magnify the birth of great men, can we help thinking that the accounts of the nativity of Christ should be received with some hesitation? These accounts may prove true to the letter; and it may be that the universality of the disposition to exaggerate the origin of extraordinary persons, is owing in part to the fact that their birth is generally attended by striking circumstances; and if so, then the existence of this disposition may afford some presumption of the truth of this account. At the same time, knowing how eager men are to find or create something marvellous in the origin of those by whose greatness they have been moved, we are certainly to examine the relations of the birth of Christ with great care.

Should this consideration so far weigh with us as to lead us to reject the notices of his birth as wholly fabulous, or to regard them as too imperfect to command

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THE CREDIBILITY OF THE GOSPELS,

our assent, still our faith in his public acts and official career could not by any possibility be endangered. It would be strengthened. Not the slightest doubt of the actual existence of Alexander and Pythagoras is produced by those fables concerning their parentage to which I have alluded. On the contrary, we are convinced that they must have lived, and lived no common lives, or such extravagant stories would never have been told. So pronounce the account of the birth of Jesus a fable, only the more direct and inevitable is the inference, not only that he had an existence, but that he must have lived and spoken and wrought with power. If a fable, whence had this story its origin? How came it ever to be thought likely? The character of Jesus, the facts concerning him which were well known and indisputable, must have given it its air of probability. No room is afforded for any inference unfavourable to the truth of the other portions of his history, which record his public acts and ministry. On the contrary, their truth is directly confirmed, and a strong presumption is created that these must be true, or such a story of his birth never would have had an existence.

In this connexion I would remark in passing, that the doctrine of the Supreme Divinity of Jesus Christ, which has taken so large and strong a hold upon men's minds, is an attestation to the indescribable power of his life. If he had been a mere man'-if he had not done such things as man had never done before, and spoken as never man spake, how would it have been possible for men, in the very face of the records, to suppose that he was a superhuman, superangelic being. There must have been a divinity without measure in his life as it was spent on earth, or the opinions of his nature, that have so long and widely prevailed, never would have arisen.

AND THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS, CONFIRMED.

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As the way of viewing the subject now suggested does not affect the divine authority of our Lord's public character, the reality of his miraculous ministry, neither does it diminish the trustworthiness of the Evangelists. That they believed the account given of the birth of Christ is a fact that should weigh with us. We are not lightly to regard the authority of men so singlehearted, and of such good sense withal. But it is showing them no disrespect to consider that they were still men, and men whose minds were exposed to disturbing influences, such as we can scarcely form an idea of. They could not have had, nor do they profess to have had, the same personal knowledge of the circumstances of their Master's birth that they possessed of his public life, his miracles, death and resurrection. His nativity comes first in the order of time in their narratives; but it was the last thing about which they were likely to be interested in obtaining information. It was not until after they had come to believe in him as the Christ, and they had witnessed his works and listened to his living words, that they turned their attention to the circumstances of his birth. Had they had direct knowledge of these before, and given them full credit, they must have been believers in Jesus long before they became his personal followers. But it was not until years after his birth, and some time after they had waited on his public teaching, that they were brought to acknowledge his divine authority. Then, when they owned him as the long-expected and heaven-sent, and he had risen to a height in their estimation far above all other men, and they regarded him with the profoundest awe, as man never was regarded before, then, in looking back, they may have felt some curiosity about his early life and his nativity. However wise and true, they surely were not prepared to

110

STATE OF THE NARRATORS' MINDS.

question and sift the accounts they received of that distant period. It is unreasonable to suppose, that, after what they had seen and heard, with the overflowing reverence and faith produced by personal intercourse with Jesus, they were cautious and critical in obtaining information respecting his early circumstances. They must have been disposed to receive whatever was told them, if it were not obviously, glaringly inconsistent with what they already knew. They had themselves witnessed the greatest miracles. They had seen blind men restored to sight, the sick healed, and the dead raised by the word of Jesus; and with the deep impression of these wonders fresh in their hearts, it would have been unnatural, had they been slow to believe what might be related of the origin of their Master. In this way minds of remarkable soundness and truth may have received a bias. An individual may be disposed to receive certain things upon hearsay, without careful examination, and yet his personal testimony to such events as make up the manhood of Jesus, may be so clear and satisfactory as to allow no room for doubt. Because his mind is biassed with respect to one fact, it does not follow that he is disqualified to testify to other facts, and especially to those facts which occasioned the bias. The bias itself is the most decisive evidence of their reality.

My object is, not to prove the history of the birth of Christ to be false, but to show, supposing it to be fabulous, conceding all that an opponent of Christianity may assert in regard to it, viz: that it is one of those fables so often circulated about the origin of great men, that this supposition affects neither the divine authority of Christ, nor the competency of his biographers. It does not diminish but strengthen our faith in both. The account of the birth of Christ may be