The Superhuman Jesus
“Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” — 7?omans ix., 5.
PAUL was a reckless man in always telling the whole truth. It mattered not who it hit, or what theoloo-ical system it upset. In this one sentence he makes a world of trouble for all Arians and Socinians, and gives a cud for skepticism to chew on for the next thousand years. We must proceed skillfully to twist this passage of Scripture, or we shall have to admit the Deity of Jesus Christ. I roll up my sleeves for the work, and begin by saying, perhaps this is a wrong version. No; all the versions agree — Syriac, Ethiopic, Latin, Arabic. Perhaps this word God means a being of great power, but not the Deity. It is “God over all.” But perhaps this word God refers to the first person of the Trinity — God the Father. No; it is “Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” Whichever way I take it, and when I turn it upside-down, and when I try to read it in every possible shape, I am compelled to leave it as all have been compelled to leave it who have gone before me, an incontrovertible proof of the eternal and magnificent Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.”
About the differences between the evangelical denominations of Christians I have no concern. If I could by the turning-over of my hand decide whether finally all the world shall be Methodists, or Baptists, or Episcopalians, or Congregationalists, or Presbyterians, I would not turn over my hand; but between Unitarianism, which believes the Deity of Christ, and Trinitarianism, which argues his divine nature, there is a difference as wide as eternity. If Christ be not a God, then we are base idolaters. If Christ be God, then those who deny it are blasphemers. To that Christological question we come this morning, and may God help us to do right in a question where mistake is infinite!
I suppose we are all willing to take the Bible as our standard. It requires as much faith to be an infidel as to be a Christian; but it is faith in a different direction. The Christian believes in the statements of Moses, and Isaiah, and David, and Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and Paul. The infidel believes in the statement of the freethinkers. We have faith in one class of men; they have faith in another class of men. But as I suppose the vast majority of the people in the audience this morning are willing to take the Bible as their guide in morals and religion, I shall make this book my starting-point.
You may be aware that the two great generals who have marshaled the largest army of Unitarian troops are Strauss and Renan. The multitudes of the slain under them will never be counted until the day when the archangel sounds the roll-call of the resurrection. These men, and all men who have sympathy with them, begin by attacking the fortress of the miracles. They know that when once they have captured that fortress Christianity must surrender. The great German cxegete says that all the miracles are myths. The great French exegete says that all the miracles are legends. They must somehow or other explain away every thing supernatural in the Bible — every thing supernatural in the life of Christ — though to accomplish that they must go up the greatest absurdity. They prefer the miracles of human nonsense rather than the grand miracles of Jesus Christ. They say, for instance, that the miraculous birth of Christ was a myth, just as it is a fonciful idea that Komulus was born of Ehea Silvia and the god Mars. They say that Christ did not feed five thousand with a few loaves of bread; that is only a myth which got mixed up with the distribution of twenty loaves among a hundred people by Elisha. They say Christ did not turn the water into wine; that was only an improvement on the old Egyptian plague by which water was turned into blood. They say no star pointed down to the manger where Jesus lay; that was only the flash of a passing lantern. They say that Christ’s sweating great drops of blood in Gethsemane was not very astonishing, for he had been exposed to the night, and had been taken suddenly physically ill. They say no tongues of fire sat on the heads of the disciples at the Pentecost; it was only a great thunder-storm,.and the air was full of electricity, and it snapped and flew all around about the heads of the disciples. They say that Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus, and Christ made up their minds it was necessary to get up an excitement in order to forward their religion, and so they resolved to play funeral, and Lazarus consented to be the corpse, and Mary and Martha consented to be mourners, and Christ consented to be chief operator. I, of course, put it in my own words, but state accurately their meaning. They say that the four Gospels are spurious, written by superstitious or lying men, and that they were backed up by people who were to die, and actually did die, for a thing they did not believe. Kow, I take back the limited remark I made a moment ago, and say that it requires a thousandfold more credulity and faith to be an infidel than to be a Christian, and that if Christianity demands that the whale swallow Jonah, then skepticism demands that Jonah swallow the whale.
I propose this morning to show you, so far as the Lord may help me, that Jesus Christ is God. I shall prove it, first, from what inspired men say of him; then, from what he said of himself; then, from his wonderful achievements. “Gret a good fat text to start with,” said Dr. Ludlow, our grand old theological professor. If I never had such a text before, I have one this morning: “Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” Not over Solomon’s throne; not higher than David’s throne; not higher than Caesar’s; not higher than the Henrys’, than the Fredericks’, than the Louis’, than Napoleon’s, than Victoria’s? Oh yes. Gather all those thrones and pile them up, and my text overspans them as easily as a rainbow spans the mountain-top. “Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.”
The Bible says, “All things were made by him.” Stop! Does not that prove too much? He did not make the Mediterranean, did he? not Mount Lebanon? not the Alps? not Mount Washington? not the earth? not the stars? not the universe? Yes, all things were made by him. And, lest we should be so stupid as not to understand it, the apostle concludes by saying, “Without him, was not any thing made that was made.” Why, then, he must have been a God.
The Bible says, “At the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow, of things on earth and things in heaven.” See all heaven coming down on their knees — martyrs’ on their knees, apostles on their knees, confessors on their knees, the archangel on his knees. Before whom? A man? No, a God.
The Bible goes on to say that “every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” Malayan, Bornesian, Mexican, Persian, Italian, German, Spanish, French, English — every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. He must be a God. The Bible says, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.” Men change; the body changes entirely in seven years, the mind changes, the heart changes; but “Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.” He must be a God.
Philosophers say that it is gravitation, the centripetal and centrifugal forces, which keep the worlds from clashing and from demolition; but Paul says that Christ’s arm is the axle on which every thing turns, and that his hand is the socket in which every thing is set; “upholding all things by the word of his power.” He must be a God.
But I go on, in the next place, and see what Christ said of himself Every person ought to know more about himself than any body else does. If I ask you where you were born, and you say, “I was born in Chester, England, or Dublin, or New Orleans,” I would believe you. Why? Because you oight to know; it is a matter that pertains to yourself. If I asked you whether you can lift three or four hundred pounds, and you said yes, I would believe 3’ou. You ought to know. If I ask you how much money you have, a hundred or a hundred thousand dollars, and you tell me, I believe you, because you, being an honest man, will tell me truth. Now, I ask if Christ ought not to know whether or not he is God? I ask his age. He says, in so many words, “Before Abraham was, I am.”
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Abraham had been dead two thousand and twenty-eight years. Was Christ two thousand and twenty-eight years old? He says so. In Revelation he says, “I am Alpha;” Alpha being the first letter of the Greek alphabet, it was as much as to say, “I am the A of the great alphabet of all the centuries,” Ought not he to know?
Could Christ be in a thousand places at the same time? He said so. He intimates that he can be in Madras, in Stockholm, in Pekin, in San Francisco, in Constantinople, at the same time. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” This faculty of everywhereativeness, is it a human or a Divine attribute? Lest we should think that this power of everywhereativeness should give out, Christ intimates that he is going to keep on, and that on the day before the world is-burned up, he will be in all the prayer-meetings in Europe and Africa, North and South America; for he declares, in so many words, “Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the worldP’’ He is a God! He is a God!
He takes divine honors. He calls himself the Lord of men, the Lord of angels, the Lord of devils. Is he not? If he is not, then he is the greatest fraud that was ever enacted. To-morrow morning a man comes into your store in New York, and he says, “I am Mr. Laird, the great ship-builder of Liverpool. I built the Alabama. I have built a great many fine ships.” You treat him with a great deal of consideration; but you find out after a while that be is not Mr. Laird, and that he never built any thing. What is that man? Aw impostor. Now, Christ said that he built the earth — built all things. Did he build the earth, or did he not? If he did, he was a God; if he did not, he was an impostor. A man with a Jewish countenance and German accent conies into your store. He says, “I am Eothschild, the banker, of London. I hold the wealth of nations in my vest-pocket. I loaned that money to Italy and to Austria.” You treat him with a great deal of consideration for a while; but suppose you find out that he is not a banker, that he does not own a single dollar in all the world? What is that man? An impostor. Now, Christ comes, and he says he owns this world, he owns the next, he owns all the glories of land and sea; he professes to be vast in his possessions. Is he in possession of all these things? Does he own them all? If he does not, what is he? An impostor. A man with venerable aspect and gray beard comes into the White House at Washington. He says to the President, “I am King William of Germany. I have come over incognito for the purpose of recreation and amusement. I gained the victory at Sedan. I have castles in Berlin and Dresden.” Suppose after a while the President finds that he has no castles, and that he is not the king; what is he, then? An impostor. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ professed to be king, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God. If he was not, what was he? I appeal to your common sense. He was either God, or he was a villain. Strauss saw that alternative, and he says that Christ was sinful in taking homage that did not belong to him. Eenan saw that alternative, and says that Christ, not through his own fault, but through the fault of others, lost some of the purity of his conscience, and slyly intimates that dishonorable women may have damaged his soul. Any thing but admit that Christ is God.
I have shown you that Christ was God, from what in-
spired men have said of him, and from what he said of himself; now I want to show you that he was God from his wonderful achievements. I suppose that all believe the Bible. If you do not, what do you do in the Brooklyn Tabernacle? Why do you not go over to-day and join the infidel club on Broadway? Why do you not go and kiss the foot of the new statue of Tom Paine they are rearing in Boston? Why do you not take your hat, and, not stealing the hymn-book, go out and find associates among men who do not believe in the Word of God, the only foundation for good government and for common honesty? We in this church are among the deluded souls and the narrow heads who believe the whole Bible, and take it down in one swallow as easily as you take down a ripe strawberry. Supposing that you admit the Bible to be true, let us go out, and see the Saviour’s achievements — surgical, alimentary, marine, mortuary.
Surgical achievements? Did you ever in all the scientific journals of the world see such wonderful operations as he performed? He used no knife. He carried no splints. He employed no compress. He never made a patient squirm under cauterization. He never tied an artery, and yet, behold him. With one word he stuck fast Malchus’s amputated ear. He stirred dust and spittle into a salve, with which he made the man who was born blind, without optic nerve, cornea, or crystalline lens, open his eyes on the glorious sunlight. He beat music on the drum of the deaf ear. He straightened a woman who, through contraction of muscles, had been bent almost double for nigh two decades. He made a man who had not used his limbs for thirty-eight years shoulder his mattress and walk off”. Sir Astlcy Cooper, Abernethy, and Valentine Mott stood pow-THE SUrEIiHmiAN JESUS. 403
erless before a withered arm. This doctor of omnipotent surgery comes up to the man with the lifeless, useless, shriveled arm, and he says to him, “Stretch forth thy hand.” The man stretched it forth just as good as the other. This was a God! This was a God!
Alimentary achievements? A lad comes with five loaves, with which he expected to make a speculation; perhaps having bought them for five pennies and expecting to sell them for ten pennies, and thus double his money. Lo! Christ takes those loaves, and from them performs a miracle with which he satisfies seven thousand famishing people. When the Saviour’s mother went into a neighbor’s house to help get up a wedding party, and by a calculation she saw that they had made a mistake in the amount of beverage that was requisite, she calls Christ for help; and Christ, to relieve the awkward embarrassment, not through slow decay of fermentation, but by one word, makes a hundred and thirty gallons of pure wine.
Marine achievements? Do you not remember how he brought around a whole school of fish into the net of the men who were mourning over their poor luck, and how they had to halloo to the people in the other boat, and then both ships were loaded down to the water’s edge with, game, so that the sailors had to walk cautiously from larboard to starboard lest the boat sink? And then when the squall came down through the mountain gorge to the water, and Gennesaret with long white locks of foam rose up to battle it, and the vessel dropped into the trough, and shipped a sea, and the loosened sails cracked in the tornado, how Christ rose from the back part of the vessel, and came on across the staggering’ ship until he came to the prow; and, wiping the spray from his forehead, hushed the crying tempest on the knee of his omnipotence? Oh, was it a man who wrestled down the storm? Was it a man who with both feet trampled Gennesaret into a smooth floor?
But look at his mortuary achievements. Let all the psychologists and anatomists of the world go to Westminster Abbey, and try to wake Queen Elizabeth, or Henry VIII. All the ingenuity of man never yet brought the dead to life. But look at that dead girl in Capernaum. What a pity that she should die so early, and when the world is so fjxir! She is only twelve years old. Feel of the hands. Feel of the brow. Dead. Dead. The house is full of uproar and wailing. What does Christ do? He comes and takes that little girl by the hand, and no sooner has he touched her hand than her eyes open, and her heart starts, and the white lily of death flushes into the red rose of life, and she rushes into the arms of her rejoicing relatives. Who was it that raised her up? Was it a man, or was it a God?
What is that crying in Bethany? Mary crying, Martha crying, Jesus crying, and the neighbors crying. What is the matter? Lazarus is dead. The sisters think they will never again see him, never have him sit at the table again. Poor things! Since their father died they have depended upon Lazarus for almost every thing. Jesus comes down to the excavation in the rock, in one of the side niches of which Lazarus sleeps in death. Jesus generally spoke in gentle articulations, but now he lets out his voice to full strength, until it rings through all the labyrinths and avenues of the rock, “Lazarus, come forth!” And Lazarus slides down from the side niche into the main avenue of the rock, and stands a living man before the abashed and confounded spectators. Who was it that stood at the mouth of that cave, and uttered that potent word? Was it a man? Tell that to the lunatics in Bloomingdale Asylum. It was Christ, the everywhere-present, the everlasting, the omniscient, the omnipotent God!
But there is one test which will show you whether Christ is God or not. The recital of that verse ought to blanch the cheeks of some with alarm, and kindle the faces of others with eternal sunrise, “We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ.” The world will be stunned by a blow that will make it stagger mid-heaven; the stars will scatter like dried leaves in an equinox; the grave-yards will unroll the bodies, and the clouds will unroll the spirits, and soul and flesh will come together in incorruptible conjunction. Hark to the loud wash of the retreating sea, and the baying of the advancing thunders, and the sweeping of winged cohorts! Smoke, and darkness, and fire, and earthquake, and shouting, shouting, shouting, wailing, wailing, wailing. On the one side, in piled-up galleries of light, are the one hundred and forty and four thousand — yea, the quintillions of the saved; and as they take their seats I feel as if I must drop under the insufferable radiance. On the other side are piled up, in galleries of thunder-cloud, the frowning, glaring, dying populations of the wrath to come. Before me, and between the two galleries, is a throne. It is very high. It stands on two burnished pillars — justice and mercy. It is stupendous with awards and condemnations. Look; but half hide your eyes, lest they be put out in the excess of vision. There is a throne, but no one is seated on it. Who shall occupy it? Will you go up and take it? “No,” you say; “I am only dust and ashes.” Show me some man that is fit to take it.
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in all the ages. Lord Mansfield? No. Solomon? No. Isaiah? No. Paul? No. Their foot would consume at the first touch of the step of that throne. Even Gabriel dare not go up on it. Michael, the archangel, would rather bow down, pulling his right wing over his left, and both over his face, and cry, “Holy!” But here is One ascending that throne. His back is toward us. He goes step above step, height above height, until he comes to the apex. Then, turning around, so that all nations can see him, we behold it is Christ; and all earth and heaven and hell fall on the knee, and cry out, “It is a God! It is a God!”
There is great comfort in my subject. It is God who came down from Jesus Christ to save us. Do you think only a man could have made an atonement for millions of the race? Does your common sense teach you that? I tell you if Christ is not God, the redemption of our race is a dead failure. We want a divine arm to lift our burden. We want a divine endurance to carry our pang. We want a divine expiation to take away our sin; and “Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.”
God also comes down in Christ to comfort you. Sometimes our troubles are so great, human sympathy does not seem to be sufiicient for them. O ye who cried all last night because of loneliness and bereavement, I want to tell you that it is your Maker and your God that comes this day to comfort you. When there are children in the house, and the mother dies, then you know that the father has to be more gentle than ever, and he has to act two parts in that household. And it seems as if the Lord Jesus Christ looked down and saw your helplessness, and he proposed to be both flithcr and mother to your sick soul. He comes in the strength of the one, and in the tenderness of the other, and he says, “As a father pitieth his children, so I pity you,” “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.” Do you not feel the hush of that divine lullaby? Put down your tired head on the heaving bosom of that Divine compassion, and let him put his arms around you, and say, “0 widowed soul! I will be thy husband and thy God. 0 orphaned ones! I will be your protector. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.” And then he will put his hand on your eyelids, and sweep that hand down on the cheek, wiping away all the tears of loneliness and bereavement. Oh, what a loving, tender, sympathetic God has come for us! I do not ask you, this morning, to lay hold of God; you may be too weak for that. I do not ask you even to pray; you may be too bewildered for that. I only ask you just to let go, and fall back into the arms of Everlasting Strength.
You and I will soon hear the click of the latch of the sepulchre. We want an Almighty Christ to go with us. I wonder if the friend of Lazarus will be about. Our friends will take us with strong arms, and lay us down in the dust; but they can not bring us back again. I would be scared with infinite frig-ht if I thouo-ht I should have to
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Stay there forever. But no. Christ will come with a glorious iconoclasm, and split and grind up the granite, and let us come out. O the resurrection! What kind of a resurrection will it be?
A young woman was recently dying, without any hope, and she said to her mother, in the closing hour, “Mother, I am going away from you, and I am so afraid.” When you leave this world, when you bid farewell to those with whom you have been associated, and in the last great day will you be afraid? If we have on that day Christ, the Omnipotent Saviour, on our side, all shall be well. If the resurrection comes upon a spring day, and all the flowers are blooming around our graves, how pleasant it would be to take up the brightest one of all those flowers, and put it in the scarred hand of Him who died for us! to gather up the most redolent of them all, and twist them into a garland for the brow that was stuck with the thorns! On that day, when Jesus is surrounded by all the dominions of the saved, we will see what an awful libel it was when men said that Christ was only a man; and then you will declare, with unparalleled emphasis, “Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen,” Oh, would you not like to join in that “Amen,” ye who believe this Christ is the eternal God? You shall have my permission. Let your “Amen” be the doxology of this whole assemblage! “Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever! Amen.”