Christ, Christianity and the BibleHaldeman, Isaac Massey
Religion
Christ, Christianity and the Bible
Haldeman, Isaac Massey
Christianity -- 20th century; Jesus Christ -- Divinity
O the man who, in the hour of his own agony, shall remember his
mother, and crown her, make her the queen of his life, and ordain
that others shall love and reverence her, proclaims for himself the
lustre of a manhood without spot.
Once more he spoke from the place of anguish--that moment on the
edge of death. There his soul, rising from the depths of the
overwhelming waves of agony, cries:
"Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit."
He who in the hour and article of death can face God and eternity,
and commit himself to the hand of supreme justice as a confident
child to the arms of a loving father, bears witness that in his soul
there is no ghastly memory of sin, no sharp, remembered pang, no
fear of offended law. Such a confidence and such a committal of
triumphant calm bear witness that the heart is at rest with God, and
is conscious of its own good.
For two thousand years the world, without a dissenting voice, has
borne witness that he is the one man who came into the earth and
walked through it superlatively good.
Among the voices in the common consent of the world that Jesus
Christ was a good man, there are those who with equal insistence
deny that he was Almighty God.
They agree that he had the spirit of God; that he had it in measure
such as no other man before or since. They announce their belief
that he is the mightiest advance on humanity ever known; that all
other religious teachers pale before him as the stars before the
sun. They speak of his spotless life with fervent admiration, and
draw special attention to his discourses as models of exhortation to
righteousness and truth. To them the sermon on the mount is a _chef
d'oeuvre_. Out of that sermon they take the maxim about doing unto
others as you would they should do unto you. They take that maxim
and frame it about and make it the "Golden Rule" of human life. They
exalt Jesus as the perfect example, telling us that if we shall
govern our life by him, make him our constant copy, imitate him, we
shall fill our daily existence with righteousness and truth. In
fact, if we seek a panegyric on the humanity of Christ; if we desire
to see his goodness exalted to the heavens, and his humanity put
beyond compare with the sons of men--we must needs go to the
Socinian, the Arian and the Unitarian--those who deny the deity of
Christ. But this exaltation of the human Christ is simply setting up
a man of straw that with one blow of deific discount he may be
knocked down again. He is set up as man that he may be cast down as
God.
They will not accept him as God.
God Almighty (we are told) cannot be confined or shut up in any one
man. Man as man and, therefore, every individual man in his part, is
the avatar of God. Each man is in some sense the incarnation of God.
God is more or less enthroned in all men. God is to be found in all
men as he is to be found in all nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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