inspired to speak the truth. It is inconceivable that uninspired men could have invented such a system of religion, clothed it in such beautiful language, and fortified it with the many wonderful incidents that attest its divine origin.

The strongest proof that God acts directly upon the minds of men and inspires them to write of things that are beyond the unaided knowledge of men is found in the prophecies of the ancient seers. We know that many things foretold in the prophecies of the Bible actually occurred hundreds of years after the predictions were written.

There is in man an intuitive perception of the divine. Upon this subject Argyll, in his “Unity of Nations," Chapter XI., page 266, very emphatically

says:

The existence of a Being from whom our own being has been derived involves at least the possibility of some communication, direct or indirect. Yet the impossibility or improbability of any such communication is another of the assumptions continually involved in current theories about the origin of religion. Yet it is quite certain that no such assumption can be reasonably made. The perceptions of the human mind are accessible to the intimations of external truth through many avenues of approach. In its very structure it is made to be responsive to some of these intimations by apprehension. Man has that within him by which the invisible can be seen and the inaudible can be heard and the intangible

can be felt. Not as the result of any reasoning, but by the same power by which it sees and feels the postulates on which all reasoning rests, the human mind may from the very first have felt that it was in contact with a Mind which was the fountain of its own.

CHAPTER IX

THE WORLD HONORS HIM AS GOD

1. Jesus Christ did nothing as a man, and all the honors bestowed upon his name are rendered to him only as God.

The biographers of Jesus Christ portray him as divine, as God, and they repudiate any claim of distinction for him as man.

The entire structure of Christianity rests upon this doctrine of the divinity of Christ; and if he was not born God, if he did not live and work as God, and if he did not die and rise from the dead as God, then the whole fabric falls, and the Christian religion is nothing but a myth and a delusion.

Upon this claim Christianity challenges the world. It admits of no compromise and tolerates no other claim.

According to his biographers-Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John-he did nothing as a man, and they claim nothing for him as a man.

He was not an author. Only once did he ever attempt to write anything, so far as the record shows; and then he simply wrote with his finger in

the dust and sand as a rebuke to the scribes and Pharisees, who brought a woman before him accused of some offense, tempting him, and what he wrote then has not even been preserved. (John viii. 8.)

He was not a painter nor a sculptor, although both of these arts had attained a high degree of excellence in his day.

He was not an inventor. The rudest implements of industry were in use in his time, the number of industries was quite limited, and the hard lot of the laborer was not lightened by the use of machinery as in the present day; but he made no improvements and offered no suggestions looking to an amelioration of the laborer's condition.

He was not a social reformer, although evidences of the necessity of work in this line confronted him on all sides. There were no common schools, and no efforts were made to educate the poor. The women did a large part of the work, even in the fields; and beggars stood on the streets and sat by the wayside wherever he went. No record is made of his ever having done anything for the social or material welfare of the people among whom he lived for thirty-three years.

He was not a statesman. His own people, the

Jews, were in a state of subjection to the Romans, and the rod of government was heavy and galling to them. The rule of the Roman was so complete and despotic that, according to his biographers, Herod could cause all the male infants in a large territory to be killed without responsibility and could cause John the Baptist to be beheaded in prison without a trial and his head to be presented to a bad woman simply to please her, and yet he never attempted to work out any reformation of government.

The only thing he ever did as a citizen was to pay his taxes, and he did this by sending Peter to the sea with a hook and line, with instructions to take a piece of money out of the mouth of the first fish that he caught and give it to the collector of tribute. (Matt. xvii. 24.)

No effort of man to honor him as man has ever succeeded; but, on the contrary, efforts to extend his kingdom and to implant the doctrine of his divinity in the minds and hearts of the people have prospered everywhere.

For nearly two hundred years the crusaders sought to wrest the holy sepulcher from the hands of the Moslems, and countless treasures and much blood were wasted in the vain attempt to prevent the crescent of Mahomet from waving over the