The Christ of To-Day: What? Whence? Whither?

He Christian religion is pre-eminently the religion of a

Person. Other religious systems have had their origin in the thought and teaching of persons, but in process of time have become independent of them. Christianity has never become, nor can it become, independent of the Person of Jesus the me 2 Christ. Buddhism is not dependent N upon the personality of Buddha. = Confucianism, while hardly a religion, being rather a system of ethical teachhing, is no longer dependent upon Conlfucius. In each case the system has lbecome independent of the person Theology Li brary

The local churches of Jesus Christ scattered through the cities and villages of the world have not been merely Christ societies, in the sense in which societies have been formed around other of the world’s teachers, to study their teaching, and conform the habits of the life thereto. Neither has the whole Catholic Church of Christ ever been merely a federation of such societies. In some deeper sense, not now to be discussed, all Christ societies and the whole Christian society have been constituted of companies of men and women attached in individual and immediate loyalty to the Person of Christ. The Christian religion is infinitely more than the acceptance of an ethic and an ideal. Men and women through all the centuries, and of all classes have by personal attachment to Christ, been transformed into His likeness, and thus the Christian Church has been created, and the Christian religion established.

The New Testament is preéminently the Book of a Person. The Gospels constitute the story of His presence in human history. The book of the Acts of the Apostles records the beginnings of His spiritual presence among men, revolutionizing ideals, changing character, and starting in the race those streams of living influence which have transformed it in the passing of the centuries. The Epistles contain the great doctrines of the

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Catholic Church, which are all unfoldings of truth concerning the Person and the work of Christ. The Apocalypse is prophetic of the final

unveiling of Jesus Christ. Thus the whole book is centralized in a Per-Bory 24)

Again, the Person of the Book and the Person of Christianity in the centuries are identical. For the sake of comprehensiveness and brevity, that one Person may be described as of virgin birth, of virtuous life, of vicarious dying, of victorious resurrection. I do not at this stage affirm that these things are true, but only that the New Testament declares them to be so; and moreover, that the Christian fact in the world, in its progress and triumph has been due to continuous belief in the truth of the Book. To deny What? Whence? W, eEsen?

the virgin birth of Jesus it is necessary to question the accuracy of the Gospel stories. To deny the virtuous nature of His life, is to falsify the whole scheme of the fourfold narrative. To deny the vicarious nature of His dying is to refuse to believe the. account of Christ’s own view thereof, and moreover to affirm that the apostolic writings are false in interpretation. Finally, to deny the victorious resurrection is to declare the last facts of New Testament history to be unreliable, and thus to affirm the declaration which was the foundation of apostolic preaching to be untrue. Thus to lose the Christ of virgin birth, and virtuous life, and vicarious death, and victorious resurrection, is to lose the New Testament. And the reverse is true. To lose the New Tes-

tament is to lose that Person. The Christ of Christianity and the Christ of the New Testament are one.

This position is challenged to-day. The accuracy of the New Testament is being questioned in all these particulars, save that of the virtuous character of the life of Jesus. So far as I am aware, no one has denied the actual historicity of Jesus. There are those however who deny that He was such a Person as is described in the New Testament writings. It is affirmed that these stories, very beautiful, very pathetic, full of tragedy, matchless in many respects, are nevertheless not accurate accounts of the Man Jesus. It is admitted that twenty centuries ago a Man lived and taught and died in Palestine, a Man whose name perhaps was Jesus; that such a Man

gathered around Himself a group of disciples, who came to love Him until love merged into worship. Concerning Him some of their number wrote certain stories which others elaborated, and thus gradually the historic Person became surrounded with traditions, and thus finally the Gospel stories took their present form.

It is therefore declared to be necessary, if the truth concerning this Man Jesus of history is to be. known, that He should be reconstructed from the experience of to-day. The records are not to be the test of experience; but on the contrary, experience must be the test of the records. If we ask, Whose experience, we are told, that the common Christian consciousness is intended. At once the difficulty, not to say absurdity of the position is

revealed. Who is to define this common consciousness? However honest the attempt to discover it may be, it is almost certain that the convictions

of the one attempting will colour the conclusion arrived at. And yet it is such an attempt I propose now to make, for I believe that if it be possible fairly to state what is the universal experience of the hour of Christ, we shall find that it sets its seal upon the truth of the New Testament writings. The true experience of Christ exists as the result of conviction of the truth of the conception of the Christ set forth in the New Testament.:

I propose to ask three questions: the Christ of to-day, What? The Christ of to-day, Whence? The Christ of to-day, Whither?

First, then, the Christ of to-day, What? Here we must be most careful to define the meaning of our question, and our terms. I ask what are the undisputed facts about Christ in the consciousness of the present hour. I do not ask what are indisputable facts. There is a distinction and a difference between the questions. If I ask what are the indisputable facts, I should at once give an answer to which all would not agree. I should at once name those I have mentioned, the facts of the record; while as we have already said, some of these are denied by those who still claim to believe in Christ, and to be loyal to Him. Are there then facts which are undisputed, not only in the Church, but outside its borders? In view of popular and prevalent unbelief in the

virgin birth, the vicarious death, and - the victorious resurrection of Jesus, is there a residuum of certainty, which is not open to question?

I submit that there are four facts concerning Christ which cannot be disputed by any person of intelligence and honesty. They are facts of the hour, embedded in the consciousness of enlightened people. Let me first state them in order.

Christ is the Revealer of the highest type of human life.

Christ is the Redeemer of all types of human failure.

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