but here we have an unparalleled amount of force rising up when, to all
human appearances, none subsided at all.
VI.
A poor young carpenter dies. He goes down in ignominy. Amid the jeers
and contempt of the multitude, he goes down into the grave. But from
that moment, commotion begins. Forgiveness of sin in the name of Christ
is preached; disciples are won; books are written; civilizations are
touched; movements are inaugurated; persecutions, bloody and relentless,
are waged. The fires of hate are kindled; storms from all round the
social, political, and religious sky gather, and howl, and empty their
fury upon the new movement. Nothing impedes it; fire cannot hinder it;
persecution intensifies it; death does not alarm it. Now, we submit, does
not such a movement, starting from such a source, and moving out with
such vigor, and becoming intenser and deeper as it is extended, form a
remarkable and singular exception to the principle we are considering?
Is there any rule among men by which it may be estimated and classified
and labeled? Can any human, or logical, or philosophical formula or
principle measure the multiform and widely diversified facts in this
case? Does it not form an exception to all rules and human methods of
measurements? Do we not augment the difficulties of accounting for the
work of Christ by minifying him, and calling him a mere man? Is not the
easier way to account for Christ’s work, to accord to him all that he
claims for himself and all that his disciples claimed for him. He said,
“All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.” If we accept this as
true, we can account for his work. But in this view, we will see that
his life was divine and one with the Father of us all. Then we will see
that he was the Son of God, the Word made flesh, the incarnation of the
divine mind and wisdom and power. It is impossible to account for the
life and work of Christ by the principles with which physical force and
merely human force and thought are measured. The sun is the center of the
system of nature, a system destined to end. Any system, the center of
which is gradually losing its force, cannot last. Christ is the center of
a spiritual system totally different from the system of nature. By all
the force the sun parts with to the worlds about it, by so much less has
it. It is gradually losing itself, to find itself no more forever. Christ
is pouring his force into the system of which he is the center, but by
such a process he is not losing his force, but increasing it. By losing
himself he finds himself. The universal law of the system of which he is
the center, is the law of communion. The force he gives away comes back
to him augmented by the personality of all who partake of it. Instead of
becoming poorer by giving, he becomes richer. This great truth St. Paul
saw when he said: “All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or
Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to
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