Thus begins that manifestation in the person of the child Jesus Christ, that mixture of humanity and divinity, of natural life and miraculous life, which is his peculiar and sublime characteristic. In the opinion of the men who, in principle, reject the supernatural, this mixed divine-human nature, and consequently Jesus Christ himself, is at once incomprehensible and inadmissible. What wonder if Christ has in these days to encounter such adversaries? Had He not to do so when invested with the attributes of humanity, among contemporaries, and even in his own family? In his first days of human existence, his mother, Mary, saw Him and understood Him not. And nevertheless "Mary kept all these sayings in her heart." Expression, at once profound and touching; revealing the mysterious complication of the nature of man! Man is not content to resign himself to the limits imposed by the actual laws of the finite world; his aspirations tend elsewhere. And still, when called upon to rise above the present order of nature--that order which he is able to appreciate--he experiences a certain astonishment, a certain hesitation; he does not know if he ought to believe in that supernatural that he was recently invoking, and that he never ceases to invoke; for, like Mary, he preserves the instinct in his heart! {239} It is just at the present day as it was nineteen centuries ago. Jesus has ever to encounter such contradictory moods of human nature: He is confronted at once by the hope of, the thirsting after, the supernatural inherent in the human soul, and by all the objections, all the doubts that the supernatural itself suggests to the human mind. He has to satisfy that hope, to surmount those doubts. The Gospel opens the history of this solemn struggle, that gave rise to Christianity, and is the source of all those agitations which afflict Christians at the present day. I. Jesus Christ And His Apostles. On entering upon the active purposes of his mission, it is the will of Jesus to have, and He has Disciples--Apostles. He knows the power of an association founded upon faith and love. He knows also that faith and love are virtues as rare as they are efficacious. It is not numbers that He seeks. He surrounds himself with a select band of believers, and lives with them in a complete and enduring intimacy. {240} In the midst of these intimate relations, Jesus declares his authority primitive and supreme:--"Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit." [Footnote 88] [Footnote 88: John xv. 16.] But the authority of the Master does not prevent Him from evincing a tenderness full of trust, and from respecting himself the dignity of his disciples:--"Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." [Footnote 89] [Footnote 89: John xv. 15.] {241}