He was eminently a man of the people, yet His methods were hardly prompted by the considerations of worldly wisdom. The men whom He chose as the pioneers of this new church were fishermen, little qualified to inaugurate a world movement. free from the counsels of human Indeed, Hig whole life was singularly wisdom, and after 33 years it ended, as it had begun, in failure. He died upon a criminal's gallows, having accomplished nothing.
But with His death extraordinary things begem to happen. Not only was all nature aroused and thrown into convulsions, but He Himself rose from the dead on the third day after His execution. Even His bitterest enemies had to admit it, though they tried to hush it up, and bribed the soldiers to say that while they were asleep, His friends had come and stolen His dead body.
So much for the message. Now for the conclusions to be drawn from it. If we can show that the story related in the Gospels is genuine history, the matter is settled, for in them Christ not only asserted that He was God, but proved His claim beyond all doubt. The question to be decided, then, is, are the Gospels reliable history? Did Christ actually say and do the things that are related of Him?
The hostile critic says no. The Gospels show Him as a mere man. Then, in the course of time, wonderful stories began to grow up about Him and the people began to think He was God. Finally, the aforementioned crafty or credulous men took the original documents and wrote these pious stories into the text—wove a divine atmosphere about Him and made Him God. it must be so, for otherwise the Jews would not have rejected Him, The very essence of their religion was eager expectation of the coming of Christ; thousands of years they had longed and prayed and waited for Him. Is it likely that when finally He did come they would have rejected Him? No; impossible.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.