d if He claimed to possess and exercise this power, the
evidence becomes the evidence of One Who must have known and Whom we
cannot disbelieve.

And this claim, which He has thus made, and which was thus accepted by
His disciples, is corroborated by the power, different in form but
similar in kind, which He exerted then on the men of His own day, and
has ever since continued to exert on all succeeding generations. The
first disciples were under His absolute dominion. They preached Christ
and not themselves. They referred everything to Him, and professed to
have no power but from Him. St. Paul with all his genius and marvellous
power of influence, yet professes to be nothing without Christ and to be
everything in Christ. Our Lord left no writing behind Him, but committed
His Revelation to His Apostles, and we only know Him through them. But
they are not like ordinary disciples of a great teacher; philosophers
succeeding a philosopher; prophets succeeding a prophet. To no one of
them does it occur for a moment to teach anything except as from Him.
St. Paul gives advice sometimes which he does not profess to be giving
by our Lord's command, but when he does so, he puts the mark of his own
inferiority on what he says, and claims for it no such authority as
belongs to a word from Christ. A word from Christ was final on all
subjects.

And this power over men has never weakened from that day to this. There
is no other power like it in the world. Science proceeds in far the
majority of cases by trial of some theory as a working hypothesis. Such
too has been the procedure of Christian Faith. Trust Christ; stake your
happiness on Him; stake your hope of satisfying all spiritual
aspirations on Him; stake your power of winning the victory over
temptation on Him--this is the exhortation of Apostle, and martyr, and
saint, and evangelist, and pastor, and teacher. And those who have thus
tried the strength of the Christian hypothesis have not failed. The
Christian Church has been stained with many a blot. Ill deeds have been
wrought in the name of Christ. Evil laws have been passed. Strange
superstitions have prevailed. But no other body can show such saints, no
other body can produce so great a cloud of witnesses. It is certain that
the lives and the deaths, the characters and the aims, of those who have
trusted their all to Christ have made them what He bade them be, the
salt of the earth. And they testify with one voice that they k