Here is one fact. At the central point of the world's history, central both in time and in historical import, equidistant from the end of what men are agreed to call the prehistoric period and our own time, the man Jesus arose, and claimed to be, in a sense altogether apart from other men, the teacher and the Saviour of the world. He claimed a direct mission from God,--nay, more, to be, in a sense hereafter to be ascertained, the Son of God. He assumed that the truth which He had to teach was new, inasmuch as it was one which man could not discover for himself, but at the same time one to which man's conscience would bear testimony, which could not therefore be rejected without sin. As credentials of His mission, He appealed to works which those who accepted Him and those who opposed Him admitted could not be wrought without supernatural aid.[155] To one work, as the crowning work of all, He directed His followers to appeal, as one capable of being attested, and incapable of being explained away, even His own resurrection from the dead. And now observe, the fact of this assumption, quite independent of the evidence by which it was supported, stands absolutely alone in the world's history. Consider the existing religions of the world. Three are associated with the names of individuals as their founders. Of Mahomet we need not speak. His doctrine was avowedly derived from Judaism, he claimed no special relationship to God, nor did he profess to work miracles; as coming after our Lord, we might have expected a far nearer resemblance in pretensions advanced by himself, and to some extent at a later period advanced by his followers. Two other men, however, stand before us with characteristics which attract our warmest interest, and enable us to understand the permanent influence they have exerted over the countless myriads of Asia. I know nothing in history more touching than the account of Siddartha[156] (called Sakya Monni, that is, monk of the royal race of the Sakyas), the founder of Bhuddism, whose tender and noble spirit was driven by the contemplation of human misery into desperate struggles to escape from this prison of the universe even at the cost of personal annihilation; but observe this, he did not even profess to support his strange gospel of despair by assertions or attestations which would necessarily imply the personality of God, and His sovereignty over the universe. If, again, you consult the four books in which Confucius[157] sets forth with singular simplicity and force the great principles of moral truth, you will find that he never presents them as revelations, as a message supernaturally imparted or attested, but as evolutions of man's inner conscience, as the product of a faculty inherent equally in all. Seekers after truth, honest, earnest, and noble seekers, to whom no Christian should refuse a tribute of admiration, the world has produced, but you will find no one man, save Jesus only, among