? The love He has inspired, the solace He has given, the
good He has engendered, the hope and joy He has kindled--all that is
unequalled in human history. Among the great and good that the human
race has produced, none has even approached Jesus in universality
of appeal and sway. He has become the most fascinating figure in
history. In Him is combined what is best and most enchanting and
most mysterious in Israel--the eternal people whose child He was.
The Jew cannot help glorying in what Jesus thus has meant to the
world; nor can he help hoping that Jesus may yet serve as a bond of
union between Jew and Christian, once His teaching is better known
and the bane of misunderstanding is at last removed from His words
and His ideal."

But could honest delusion produce a character who, in "the love He has
inspired," "the solace He has given," and "the hope and joy He has
kindled" is "unequalled in human history"? Is it not impossible that
under a _delusion_ one could (as Emelow says Jesus did) become "the most
fascinating figure in history"--unapproachable in the "universality of
appeal and sway"? The world has been full of delusions: have any of them
produced a character like Christ? Tolstoy says that the words of Christ
to His friends and pupils have had a hundred thousand times more
influence over the people than all the poems, odes, elegies and elegant
epistles of the authors of that age. Lecky, the historian, says that
"the three short years of the active life of Jesus have done more
to regenerate and soften mankind than all of the disquisitions of
philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists." Could this be said
of a man labouring under a delusion as to his real character?

What Christ _said_ and _did_ and _was_ establishes His claims. In a
conversation with Peter (Matt. 16: 16), He approved that Apostle's
answer which ascribed to Him the title of "Christ" (the Greek equivalent
for Messiah) "the Son of the living God." He not only approved of the
answer bestowing the title but

"Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: for
flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is
in heaven." In John 10, verse 30, He declares, "I and my Father are
one"; in verse 36, same chapter, He denies that it was blasphemy to call
Himself the Son of God. In the presence of death He refused to deny the
claim (Matt. 26: 63-64).

The deity of