s of Jesus are attested by His miracles, the
evidence is crowned by His sublime character. His life is itself among
the most wonderful of miracles. As a child of poverty and a son of
toil, He lived thirty years among men. When He afterwards claimed to be
the Son of God, He had many bitter enemies. They persecuted Him even
unto death, and yet not one of them ever pointed to an act of His
private life as inconsistent with, or unworthy of, His divine claim.
This simple fact speaks volumes as to the purity of His life. The world
has contained but one such. The very life which His claims require is
the life revealed on the sacred page.

Infidels have ordinarily contented themselves with mere negations. They
seem not to realize the fact that in denying some things they are
logically bound to account for others. If we deny the claim of Jesus
that He is the Son of God, then we have to account for His miracles,
His life, the disposal of His entombed body, and the establishment and
development of His kingdom. These are facts. As such they have to be
accounted for. On the hypothesis that Jesus is the Christ, all
difficulty vanishes. On any other, it is more than the world has yet
been able to meet. Skeptics laud the character of Jesus as a model of
purity, such as the world has never elsewhere found, and yet deny the
claim on which was based His mission to men and on which He built His
church. How the establishment of a religion upon a known falsehood can
harmonize with a life of faultless purity, they do not pretend to tell
us, for it is a palpable absurdity. How His disciples could testify on
a point of fact in regard to which they could not be mistaken, and
surrender all worldly position and comfort, and life itself, to
establish a known falsehood in the hearts of men, in which they--the
witnesses--could have no personal interest, they leave in the Egyptian
darkness characteristic of their system. How can he account for
American history and American institutions who denies the existence of
Washington, or claims that he was a disreputable impostor? How, then,
shall he account for the history and institutions of civilization who
denies to Jesus of Nazareth existence as a man of that age and country,
or makes Him a base deceiver and vile impostor?

That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, is the fundamental, pivotal
fact in the Christian religion. It underlies every other feature of the
Christian system. On it turn the value and