claimed, with the centurion, "Truly this was the Son
of God!" He lay in the grave, and His body received the tears and
affectionate ministrations of attached friends; but an angel descended
and rolled away the stone; the Roman guard became as dead men; "the
Lord was risen indeed!" and He appeared to His disciples, and so
overcame the unbelief of Thomas by His very presence, bearing the
marks of His human sufferings, that the doubter fell down and
"worshipped Him," saying, "My Lord, and my God!" Jesus remained on
earth for forty days, and we still "behold _the man_." He conversed
familiarly with His apostles, ate and drank with them, and instructed
them in the things pertaining to His kingdom: but He ascended to
heaven before their eyes, while angels announced His second coming;
and soon the descent of the Holy Ghost, with the great ingathering to
the Church which followed, testified to the truth of the apostolic
preaching, that Jesus was the _Son of God_, and that all power was
given to Him in heaven and on earth!

Now, in all this eventful history, there was that very combination
of earth and heaven, of the human and superhuman, which received an
interpretation from the fact only of Christ's divine and human nature,
and which, along with Christ's own words, and the teaching of His
Spirit, made the apostles accept the doctrine with profound conviction
and deep joy; although, without some such overwhelming evidence, the
very thought must have been to them a blasphemous idolatry. They
believed, because they had sufficient grounds, from facts, for their
belief. We cannot, therefore, think that those who rejected the claims
of Jesus, and executed Him as a blasphemer, were right, and that the
apostles, who acknowledged Him as one with God, were wrong, or that
their faith will ever be put to shame!

We have thus considered the Person of Jesus in the light of His own
teaching, as that too was understood at the time, both by enemies
and friends, and also in the light of the faith and teaching of His
apostles.

4. But there is yet another aspect in which we may view this
question--viz., _the faith and views of the Christian Church_.

As to the _faith_ of the Church, using that word as expressing its
_creed_, it is historically certain that since the days of the
apostles till the present time, this doctrine has formed a _sine
qua non_ of the creed of the whole Church, whether called Popish,
Protestant, Greek, Armenian, Nesto