The rude officers are arrested at the sight of this inexplicable dignity, and an unaccountable awe spreads itself over their consciences. They feel, as if they were about to lay unhallowed hands on the Son of God, or the inhabitant of some other world. They stand at a distance, dwelling on his looks and language, fixed in amazement. They return to their employers without their prey. Why have ye not brought him? say the impatient priests. Never man spake like this man, was all their reply. And who is this wonderful teacher, my friends? The Son of the humble Mary of the village of Nazareth.

If, christians, there should be produced in your minds a true sense of the dignity of him, whose words and appearance arrested these officers in their design, and if you should feel too, that such a character cannot be the unaided invention of the four evangelists, but demands a real original, the purpose of this discourse will be answered, and the truth of the character of Jesus will be substantiated.

We begin with this preliminary if the history of Jesus Christ, as it is recorded in the four evangelists, is substantially true, then his claims to divine authority must be admitted, for God was with him.

Now there are four remarkable circumstances in the description of our Saviour, as it is left us in the gospels, which sufficiently show the reality of the delineation, and, of consequence, as we think, the divinity of the original; and these are the unexpectedness, the originality, the sublimity, and the consistency of the character.

1. The unexpectedness of the character, which Jesus assumed. You will understand the force of this consideration, when you recollect, and bear in mind, what the Jews had long, perhaps always, expected in their Messiah, and what they found in Jesus. They were impatiently looking out for a temporal deliverer; they had figured to themselves

22

a leader of magnanimous spirit and celestial power; they hoped to find erected, on the hill of Zion, a standard of revolt from the oppression of the Romans, under the imagined king, whom they had clothed in robes of royalty, and to whom they had given ensigns of power. Thus the Magi, at the birth of Jesus, came with regal presents, and the populace too were afterwards ready to conduct him, in regal triumph, into the holy city, and crown him king of the Jews. Besides this general impatience to be led on, under the banners of the Christ, to national independence, and ultimately to universal empire, they were continually demanding some sign in the heavens, which they expected. To this notion of the Messiah, which was unquestionably the prevailing one, they were led by a too literal interpretation of some of the passages in their sacred books, as well as by a national sentiment of oppression. Nor was the expectation of some mighty deliverer, about that time to appear, confined to Judea. The rumour was prevalent in the east. It was certainly known to the classical historians of that age, and there are strong reasons for believing, that it had reached the Roman emperour.*

Now, this being the state of the Jewish minds with regard to the Messiah, let us not forget, that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were Jews, who, in addition to the prejudices of their nation, were exposed to contracted views, from the lowness of their origin and condition in life. These men, however, undertake, without any previous advantage that we can imagine, to give us the history and show the character of a Messiah in every respect a contrast to the expectations of their nation, and, as they tell us with much simplicity, long irreconcileable to their own wishes and previous opinion. They have put us indeed in full possession of the state of their

*See Sermon I.

own minds on this subject, and relate without artifice, the great events of the death and resurrection of our Lord, which alone succeeded at last to correct their worldly mistakes.

Now, my hearers, I do not ask, whether their history is true; but I do ask, how it could ever enter the heads of four bigoted Jews, to claim for Jesus, of all persons in the world, the office of the Messiah, if such a person had not existed and made pretensions to the character, and, by wonderful evidence, which they found it impossible to resist, substantiated his 'claim to this singular dignity.

If any one will suppose the gospels to have been written after the destruction of Jerusalem, a supposition to which unbelievers sometimes resort, to avoid the evidence of divinity arising from our Saviour's predictions, our reasoning remains unaffected. For it is still more unaccountable, that these Jewish authors of the gospels should represent him as the Messiah, whom they make to predict the very overthrow, which it was thought he would prevent. Whatever other title or character he might, on account of his prophecies, have deserved, still to declare him the Messiah, that proud and cherished name among Jews, was such an anomaly in the history of a Jew's mind, as must have appeared little short of madness to one of his own nation; and is a phenomenon, which we have a right to have explained by those, who seriously doubt the reality of the character of Jesus.

You perceive then, that to suppose the falsity of the gospel story, or the fictitiousness of the character of Jesus Christ, involves an unaccountable phenomenon in the Jewish historians. Allow the character to have existed as described, and the difficulty vanishes, for the evangelists themselves tell us of all their previous mistakes, wishes and prejudices, and the events which produced their change of character and views.

2. The second mark of reality and truth, and consequently of something supernatural, in the character of Jesus, is its confessed originality.

There had been before, in the Jewish history, a succession of prophets, who might have furnished the evangelists with models for a character, if they had been drawing an unreal, or imaginary portrait. The heathen world too had been favoured with eminent instructers; for the darkness of paganism is lighted up with the rare lustre of Zoroaster, Pythagoras and Socrates. But Jesus does not appear to have borrowed a ray from these lights. He travels across this galaxy of illustrious men, like the full moon in all the brightness of her course, with a lustre totally unborrowed from them, and casting their feeble and collected light into distant obscurity, by the mild, yet overwhelming power of his rays.

Moses spake always like the mere interpreter of the Most High, diffident of his own power, and not without apprehensions from the unfaithfulness and inconstancy of the people. Jesus speaks always with the conscious and unhesitating dignity of one, who had the spirit without measure, who could say without doubt and without presumption, I and my father are one. The preceding prophets, and John too, the immediate precursor of our Lord, had passed off the stage without seeming to have imagined, that the Jewish peculiarity would ever cease, except by Judaism becoming the religion of the world. Jesus, low and humble as he was, gentle and patient as he was, comes as if he knew that he was to consummate the dispensations of the Most High; as if he saw the innumerable prejudices, corruptions and superstitions of his nation sinking away before bim, and the new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, descending from on high. Pointed out, as he had been by all that preceded him, he points to no one. Verily, I say unto

you, there hath not risen a greater prophet than John the Baptist; but he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater then be. He comes, as if he were conscious, that, after the accomplishment of his mission, he was to sit down on the right hand of the majesty of God; angels, and principalities, and powers being made subject to him.

His manner too is as original as his doctrine. Contrary to the example of all the founders of Jewish sects, he comes without austerity, and without any thing of that shade of reserve into which those instructers withdraw, who think themselves oracular. To the great astonishment of the Jews his manners are familiar, yet dignified; to the inexpressible offence of his friends, he associates promiscuously with every class of men; his conversations, while they delight and instruct his honest and humble followers, send away his inquisitors confounded and unable to reply. And with a still more extraordinary assumption of greatness and independence, this poor Jew from the village of Nazareth denounces, without fear, and in the very seat of their authority, the scribes, and priests, and Pharisees, all that was hypocritical, however sacred, and all that was iniquitous, however powerful. Still more striking, and, as it seems, unexampled, was the air of authority, which he assumed in his Sermon on the mount, and in the performance of his miracles. Who art thou? say they. His manner seems to have been grand, impressive, irresistible. "The multitude," says the evangelist, "were astonished, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes."

It is impossible for you to understand this wonderful originality in the character of Jesus of Nazareth, without at the same time calling to mind the character of the nation among whom he appeared.