ifficulties and hindrances to easy
belief of the story, the narrative seems that of an eye-witness. No
reasoning can bring faith, however, to one who denies the miraculous. As
a fact, the Resurrection is incapable of naturalistic explanation. To
those who deny the miraculous I can only again point out how Huxley cuts
out the _a priori_ argument from Hume as worthless. As quoted in his
biography, Huxley says: "We are not justified in the _a priori_
assertion that the order of nature, as experience has revealed it to us,
can not change. The assumption is illegitimate because it involves the
whole point in dispute."
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Ascent into Heaven.]
[Sidenote: The Ascension.]
[Sidenote: Nature not Wholly Love.]
[Sidenote: Evil and Good.]
Necessarily miraculous also is the doctrine, "He ascended into heaven."
In this He passed from the visible into the invisible; from the
conditions of human life to those of the life of a spirit; from the work
of redemption to that of intercession. If His resurrection be accepted,
His ascension presents no difficulties to faith. This, with His
incarnation, and the facts of His earthly life are the manifestation of
the tender side of God to the senses even as His wisdom and power are
shown to the senses by the facts and laws of nature. As to the doctrine,
"God is love," nature's word can never be conclusive. In the natural
kingdom joy and sorrow, ease and pain, love and hate, kindness and
cruelty, trust and terror exist side by side, as do life and death. No
man concludes, from nature alone, that God is ruled by love. Because man
can not conclude this, Ormuzd and Ahriman are found substantially in all
religions, as in that of the Parsees, except in the Christian. Here the
warfare is not to be eternal. The victory of good is to come. Divine
help is promised, that it may be secured in every soul. The conquest of
evil by good is within that Christian omnipotence which Paul knew. "I
can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." It requires a
Christ to show that the path to rest is through toil; that the way to
ease is through suffering; that the highway to life passes through
death. Only thus can "mortality be swallowed up of life."
[Sidenote: The Meaning of Jesus.]
[Sidenote: Christ as Revealer.]
In the unity of the Godhead, Christ is God in manifestation, redemption,
intercession, judgment. In the Trinity, in which we must be
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