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and error, and since it was primarily their hatred e saving truths of the Bible that led to their blindness security in unbelief, God is therefore just, as He repreHimself to be, in dooming them to the place prepared e" father of lies," whose children they are.

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CHAPTER IV.

CHARACTER AND TEACHING OF JESUS.

ENAN'S delusion is astonishing. Never was the spiritual vision of blind and infatuated Jew more

beclouded, in reading the Scriptures, by the impenetrable veil of unbelief, than is that of M. Renan. He seems to misunderstand, misrepresent, and defile almost everything he touches. His conceits, to which we have been referring, about the gradual transformation of Christ's character, and the comparative decadence of His great moral nature during the period of its public development, as based upon His being, first the moralist, then the miracle-worker, and lastly the disappointed and passionate denunciator, caused by His contact with an opposing world, are all mere whimsical fancies for which there is not the least shadow of foundation in the Gospels. He was the Divine Moralist to the end, as everyone who has eyes to see, may see by consulting the Gospel records. And as to miracles, and what Renan's school regards as harsh utterances: the former were performed, and the latter were given utterance to, from the very first of Christ's public career.1 There was no change in Himself in this respect; circumstances drew Him out more fully in his denunciations of sin and wickedness upon some occasions than upon others, it is true; but even in his strongest denunciatory utterances against sin and sinners, so far from its being symptomatic of a decaying moral nature, 1 See Mark i. 23 and following; John ii.; Matt. v. 20; and vii. 5, 6, 15.

as Renan absurdly supposes, the moral heroism of his nature is hereby made to shine but the more lustrously—it is among the surest indications of the existence of a great moral nature, and of its most legitimate and normal development.

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Referring to the circumstances recorded in Mark xi., in reference to our Lord cursing the fruitless fig tree, Renan says: "His displeasure sometimes led Him to commit inexplicable and apparently absurd acts." To which we reply, none of His acts were "absurd." His object in cursing the fig tree in the presence of His disciples was to teach them a lesson of "faith in God." It was also an additional exemplification of His Divine power, showing to His disciples, and through them to those "who should afterwards believe in Him, through their word," that the vegetable as well as the other kingdoms of nature, was entirely subject to His control. He by Whom both vegetable and animal life is sustained, has but to speak the word and life becomes extinct. It was, doubtless, to exhibit His Divine and unlimited power, that the supernatural manifestations of it were thus varied. Does He wish to make manifest the supernatural power by which he reads the hearts of his auditors? "Jesus knowing their thoughts," says to them, "Wherefore think ye evil in Does He wish to manifest the superhearts.' your natural power by which He is able to describe distant objects? He at one time directs His disciples to a distant place, where, He tells them, they will find a colt tied and which its owners will allow them to take; at another, ere it is taken from the sea, He discloses to Peter what he should find in the mouth of a fish; and yet, again, when a guest chamber is required in which to prepare the Passover, He says to Peter and John, "Behold, when ye are entered

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into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house . . . and he shall shew you a large upper room furnished: there make ready."1

In proof of Christ's Divinity, His miraculous power put orth in His own name-"absurd acts," if you please, Renan; but know thou, that "wisdom is justified of her children," whether philosophers understand them or not-His miraculous power, I say, as contradistinguished from that of His apostles by being invariably put forth in His own name, because there was no higher, was exemplified in a multiplicity of ways. At one time He is seen by His disciples walking upon the sea; at another, he commands the wind and the waves to be still, which is immediately followed by a "great calm." Anon, He is converting water into a nutritious and exhilarating beverage; and again, applying His creative power to bread, for the feeding of the famishing multitude. At one time He crowds the nets of the toiling fishermen with abundance of fish; at another, to pay the tribute of Cæsar, a coin is created, or from the mouth of a fish is extracted. At one time He miraculously subdues the wild spirit of the brute, and is found amid the shouting acclamations of a concourse of people, meekly riding on a beast "whereon never man sat;" at another, with authority, He commands the "unclean spirits" in man, and they obey Him. Finally, He is found "healing all manner of sicknesses and diseases among the people," and even restoring to life those who were dead; thus foreshadowing the exercise of His power as the resurrection and the life," and anticipating the time when, at His command, “all that are in their graves shall come forth, they that have done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation."

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1 Luke xxii. 10-13.

Of the increase of His

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"The idea of an incarnation of God," says M. Renan, "was entirely foreign to the Jewish mind." Then they must have read the Old Testament writings which were in their possession, as Renan reads the New, with a veil over their eyes, or they would have known it from references made to it in such passages as these: "Smite the shepherd, the man that is my fellow.1 Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel." Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulders; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Government and peace there shall be no end." How literally all this has been fulfilled in the person of Christ as "the Son of God," and the "Immanuel, God with us,” of the Gospels which Renan terms the " Synoptics," but in which, he says, he can discover no trace of it!" Also, in Him, our Redeemer, whose goings have been from everlasting,' as the "God made flesh, who dwelt among us, and by whom all things were created," of John's Gospel. And lastly, in the "God manifested in the flesh," of the Epistles. "Facts are stubborn things:" all this, and much more to the same effect, under God, came to us from the Jewish mind; and "the idea of an incarnation of God" could not therefore have been "foreign to the Jewish mind." But, "Even in the Gospel of John," Renan further remarks, "the accusation that He made Himself God, is presented as a calumny of the Jews-John v. 18; x. 33." How readest thou, Renan ? It is not presented there as a calumny, but rather as an inference legitimately drawn

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1 Zec. xiii.

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Isaiah vii. 14.

3 Isaiah ix. 6.

4 Matt. i. 23; Mark i. 1; Luke i. 35. 5 Isaiah lxiii. 16; and Mic. v. 2.

6 John i. I 14.

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