First Proof — The Miracles Performed by Our Lord.
There are few pages in the Gospel which do not tell us of one or several miracles performed by Our Lord. He truly appears as the sovereign Master of nature. The infirm and the sick of all kinds were brought to him in large numbers, and Jesus cured them by a simple word, or by the imposition of His hand, or by the contact of His garments, or even by a secret virtue which went out from Him.[ii] He changed water into wine, filled the nets of His apostles with a miraculous draught of fishes, appeased the fury of the wind and the tide, delivered demoniacs from the possession of the devil, raised the dead to life. And yet the evangelists mention only the marvels most striking in themselves or because of the circumstances which accompanied them; they are content to refer only in a general way to the others.[iii]
Miracles are the letters patent of one purporting to be God’s ambassador to men.
Now, first, Our Lord never ceased to perform miracles and to proclaim that He was sent to teach men the way of salvation. Even the miracles performed for the relief of human misery, miracles which abounded in Our Savior’s life, prove that one who could thus dispose of divine, almighty power, who could subject all nature to His will, must be accredited by God. It is evident that the doctrine which He announces in the name of God cannot but be divine, otherwise God would authorize what is false; He would confirm the imposture and the impostor. He would sanction a teaching contrary to truth.
Moreover, second, Jesus performed a large number of His miracles for the special and formal purpose of proving the mission with which He proclaimed Himself charged.
Second Proof — The Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Special Importance of this Miracle
Among all the miracles of Our Savior there is one more important than all the others, that of the Resurrection. Yes, Our Lord’s Resurrection is of itself a summary and peremptory demonstration of the divinity of His mission and of His religion. It is a proof, moreover, which has the advantage of being eminently suited to every intelligence: to understand it nothing more is needed than an upright heart which seeks the truth in good faith. In fact it is incontestable that if Our Savior returned to life by His own power, He is God; and if it was by the power of God, His mission is divine; for it is impossible to suppose that God, whose sanctity, goodness, and wisdom are infinite, would fulfill the prediction of an impostor, and mark his doctrine with the incontestable seal of truth.
Our Lord Himself, in predicting His Resurrection, presented it as the most striking mark of His divine mission. The apostles did the same in their preaching; and when there was question of choosing a disciple to replace the traitor Judas, they required that it should be one who had witnessed the life, the death, and the Resurrection of their Master.[iv] Saint Paul does not hesitate to declare that the faith of the Christian is vain if Christ did not rise from the dead.[v] Finally, the enemies of Jesus, the Jewish Sanhedrin themselves, so fully appreciated the conclusive testimony of His Resurrection that they placed a guard at the sepulcher to render any deception impossible; and, in later times, the opponents of Revelation left nothing undone to destroy faith in this most important miracle.
Third Proof — The Fulfillment of the Prophecies Concerning the Person and Mission of Jesus Christ.
Since the fall of our first parents, God had never ceased to send successively numerous prophets to announce and describe, with more and more detail, the Messiah, who was to replace the Mosaic religion with one more perfect, destined for all peoples and all ages. These divine ambassadors specify the time when the Messias will appear on earth, the family to which He will belong, the city where He will be born. They give, centuries in advance, minute details of His birth, His life, His death, His triumph over death and the world. Let us mention specially the celebrated prophecies of Jacob, Daniel, Haggai, and Malachi, who appeared one after another, specifying more and more clearly the time of the Messiahs’ coming.
During His life and death, Jesus fulfilled each and every prophecy.
Fourth Proof — The Miracles of the Apostles and of the Disciples of Jesus.
The Prediction of these Miracles. — The religion which the disciples of Jesus were to establish was to encounter innumerable obstacles. Providence must needs lend the assistance of miracles to those charged with this ministry. Jesus, who desired that the divine power should shine forth in human weakness, guaranteed in advance this salutary assistance: “Amen, amen, I say to you, he that believeth in Me, the works that I do, he also shall do, and greater than these shall he do.”[vi]
The disciples published this solemn promise of the Master in the Gospel, and thus in a manner pledged themselves to work miracles. It was a sort of challenge to the Jews and pagans to disprove the divine teaching: if they had not given striking proof of their miraculous power, the propagation of the Gospel would have been arrested at the very outset.
The Fulfillment of this Prediction. — To be convinced that the divine oracle was literally fulfilled we have only to look through the Gospels,[vii] the Acts of the Apostles, and ecclesiastical history. We find from these writings that nothing was more frequent than miracles at the beginning of the Church.
Fifth Proof — Fulfillment of the Prophecies made by Jesus Himself.
We have seen that Jesus faithfully fulfilled in His person the Messianic prophecies, thus showing that He is truly the Messias foretold by the prophets. Now we shall find still further proof of His divine mission in the prophecies which He Himself uttered. If prophecy is as great a proof as miracle of the divinity of a mission and of a doctrine, what is it when the event foretold is miraculous? If to prophesy is to perform a miracle, what is it to prophesy miracles? Now the prophecies of Jesus usually foretold miraculous events.
1. The Passion, the Death, the Resurrection of Jesus. — We shall not dwell upon Jesus’ prophecies concerning His Passion, His death, and His Resurrection. For example, when He said to His disciples: ” Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed to the chief priests, and to the scribes and ancients, and they shall condemn Him to death, and deliver Him to the Gentiles: and they shall mock Him, and spit on Him, and scourge Him, and kill Him: and the third day He shall rise again.”[viii] It is unnecessary to say how accurately, even in the smallest details, all these things were fulfilled. Jesus also foretold the treason of Judas, the flight of His disciples at the time of His apprehension, the triple denial of Peter, the descent of the Holy Spirit, etc. He also predicted the miracles performed by His disciples and apostles.
The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Dispersion of the Jewish People. — Jesus declared, at different times and in the most explicit manner, the misfortunes with which Jerusalem was threatened in the near future, the siege of the city, the entire destruction of the Temple. Speaking of the Temple to the disciples He said ”there shall not be left here a stone upon a stone.” They asked Him when this destruction would take place. ”Amen,” He said to them, “this generation shall not pass until all these things be done. … But before all these things they will lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, dragging you before kings and governors for My name’s sake…. When you shall see Jerusalem compassed about with an army, then know that the desolation thereof is at hand. ” And again as He approached the unhappy city He exclaimed: “The days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side, and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee ; and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation….Thy children shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captives into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles, till the times of the nations shall be fulfilled. . . . Amen I say to you, this generation shall not pass away till all things be fulfilled.”[ix]
Sixth Proof — The Miraculous Establishment of the Religion of Jesus, and its Perpetual Duration Through All Ages.
This also is a miracle, but of the moral order. Let us explain the meaning of these words: a miracle of the moral order.
The moral world is governed by laws even as the physical. For example, it is a law of the moral world that a vast multitude of men will not change their convictions, habits, and customs in a short time, particularly when their passions, interests, and inclinations unite in opposing such a change.
God intervenes in the moral order as well as in the physical in two ways: one is ordinary and simply providential, the other extraordinary and truly miraculous. To constitute, strictly speaking, a miracle of the moral order there must be a real derogation of a certain law of the moral order; a simply providential ordering of events is not sufficient, even though it may be more or less marvellous.
A miracle of the moral order may be defined as an effect produced by human liberty, and derogating a law of man’s nature to a degree that requires the immediate and extraordinary intervention of God.
It goes without saying that a miracle of the moral order is usually much more difficult to discern than one of the physical order. Hence, treating with an adversary of bad faith, we should dwell most on miracles of the physical order. It is no less true, however, that, to an unbiased mind, the establishment and propagation of Christianity, as well as its preservation to the present day, are very real and striking miracles.
Seventh Proof — The Testimony of the Martyrs.
To appreciate the force of the argument in favor of the divinity of our faith afforded by the testimony of the martyrs it is important to consider the very large number of these martyrs. — From Nero to Constantine, that is, during two and a half centuries, Christianity was the object of the most terrible persecutions.
Eighth Proof — The Marvelous Fruits of Christianity, or the Wonderful Revolution Which it Effected in the World.
This proof founded upon the benefits which the world reaped from Christianity requires much development. Let us confine ourselves for the moment to a few facts, which amply suffice for our purpose.
1. State of the World before Christ. — Let us observe, first, that it is almost impossible for us who live in the light of the Gospel, in the bosom of a society reformed and purified by so many centuries of the Church, to form an accurate idea of the state of the pagan world before the coming of Christ. The grossness of its customs is almost incredible in the present age.
Everywhere, except among the Jewish people, uncertainty and the grossest errors prevailed in regard to the truths most important to man, and which form the basis of intellectual and moral life. Only one nation adored the true God; in every other part of the world men bowed in adoration before the stars, plants, unclean animals, before gods of wood or stone fashioned by their own hands. The world was one vast temple of idols, and, everything was worshipped as God except God Himself. And let us not imagine that the most polished and learned nations were less degraded than the uncivilized world. Persia adored the sun, Egypt its ox, Apis, Ephesus had its great Diana, Delos its Apollo, and Rome, even in its golden age of literature and art, raised to earthly gods, to the most cruel as well as the most infamous, the famous temple (Pantheon: to all gods) which still stands and witnesses with its cross-crowned summit to the victory of Christ over the idols of the world.
We know that public and private morals were in keeping with such a worship. Man, forgetful of his origin and his sublime destiny, lowered himself to the level of the brute, or, in the delirium of his pride, raised himself to the rank of the gods. Morality having no basis, men lived shameless lives in imitation of the gods themselves. Every passion had its altar. Human dignity, justice, modesty, the most sacred laws were everywhere despised and trodden under foot. Oppression and tyranny ruled in high places, enslaving and degrading the people.
2. The World after the Coming of Christ. — No one can ignore the marvellous change which was wrought in the world after the cross had been planted on the summit of Calvary. Let us be content to sum up in a few words the principal benefits we owe to Him who proclaimed Himself, with justice, ”the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
First. By means of the new religion which was brought to the world not only the Romans and the Greeks, but even the most barbarous nations, received the light of the Gospel; the grossest classes, those whom ancient philosophy judged unfit for instruction, were enlightened by the torch of truth, and the people acquired, concerning a large number of essential truths, a certainty which the most celebrated philosophers never possessed. These capital truths, which are the solid foundation of all morality, of all virtue, of society itself, were spread throughout the world, and became, so to speak, an integral part of modern society, so that it is difficult to imagine how it ever existed without them. This, moreover, is one of the characters by which Christ wished us to recognize the divinity of His mission: “the poor have the gospel preached to them.”[x]
Second. Truth begets virtue. In substituting the worship and adoration of the true God in spirit and in truth for the intellectual darkness and secular errors which prevailed in the old world, Christianity gave birth to the virtues which sanctify and honor humanity. We have seen them developed in every age, every clime, and even in the most depraved surroundings; there is no age, no condition, no class of society which, under the all-powerful breath of grace, has not produced marvels of moral greatness and superhuman sanctity.
Third. The influence of Christianity was not confined to the individual sanctification of its members; it purified, moralized the public conscience itself. The heart of the pagan world was vowed to the worship of brute force, and closed by a hard and pitiless egotism to every good and noble sentiment, yet under the softening influence of Christianity it not only acquired respect for law and justice, but the gentle virtues of mercy and charity. The poor, the weak, the suffering, formerly objects of contempt, were respected and cared for. There arose for the solace of every kind of human misery noble institutions, supported by the most sublime devotion.
Fourth. At the same time, and as it were necessarily, the religion of Christ replaced the pagan legislation, marked by despotism and nameless iniquities, with a new legislation, wholly impregnated with the spirit of its Founder. By its principle of the divine origin of authority it restored the personal nobility of man. Without anarchy it rescued man from the despotic and brutalizing yoke of man, to subject him to Him from whom all power comes. Thus it healed the bleeding and humanly incurable wounds of paganism: slavery, the despotism of the father and husband, the tyranny of the State, which absorbed the individual, the barbarity of international relations.
Ninth Proof — The Doctrinal Teaching of Christ.
Observation. — All the proofs heretofore stated suffice of themselves to establish the divinity of Christianity, for the reason that they are supported by incontestable miracles, and consequently by the irrefutable testimony of God.
It is otherwise with the two proofs which we are about to state. The great virtue of an apostle and the elevation and purity of his teaching, considered by themselves, do not constitute a completely convincing proof of a divine mission. In truth, hypocrisy and fraud may assume the appearance of true sanctity. Any doctrine whatever, to be accepted by mankind, must be supported by divine works; these works were the more necessary here that the teacher not only proclaimed Himself God’s ambassador, but claimed divine honors. Thus Jesus Himself announced this to be necessary when He said: ”If I had not done among them the works that no other man hath done, they would not have sin.”[xi]
At the same time, we cannot pass over in silence arguments which, considered in themselves, are very conclusive. If they do not constitute a complete demonstration, they are none the less a distinctive mark of divine revelation. Moreover, by the very fact that they are supported by the preceding proofs they become in their turn incontestable. Furthermore, being very clear and easily understood they make a deep and legitimate impression on the majority of minds and prepare them to hear favorably and to study attentively more solid, but perhaps less attractive, reasons.
Here is the reason upon which the ninth proof is based:
It is manifestly evident that the doctrine of Christ in dogma, in moral teaching, and in worship, is of superhuman perfection. This is still more apparent when we consider the circumstances under which it was announced to the world. The doctrine therefore comes from God, and consequently Jesus is God’s ambassador.
The doctrine of Our Savior is almost wholly contained in the gospels. A large part of the teaching given His disciples, either during His life or after His Resurrection, was consigned to the other books of the New Testament or books of tradition. We cannot do more than sketch here the principal points of this doctrine; the development of it belongs to that part of theology called Special Dogma and Moral Theology.
A Doctrine of Jesus concerning God. — God is a Being by Himself, without beginning or end, existing from all eternity through the necessity of His nature, and possessing all perfections in an infinite degree; by His almighty power to which nothing is impossible. He has created out of nothing all that exists, and thus He is the principle, the center, and the end of all things; by His immensity He is completely present in every place, yet cannot be contained in space; He is in us and we are in Him; in Him and through Him we live and move and have our being; nothing can escape His omniscience: the past, the present, the future, the beings purely possible, the future determinations of beings endowed with free will, all are present to the divine thought in an eternal and immutable present. By His providence, as full of wisdom as of love, He watches over all beings, causing them to serve His glory and leading them to the end He has assigned them, unless they voluntarily place an obstacle to His designs. Nothing happens in this world without His order or permission. Not a hair falls from our head without the consent of our heavenly Father. His sanctity regards the smallest iniquity with the greatest horror. His justice punishes and rewards each one according to his merit: He does not permit a glass of water given in His name to go unrewarded.
What is particularly remarkable here in the teaching of Jesus is the manner in which He dwells upon the mercy and goodness of God. These divine attributes, of which the pagans had not the slightest knowledge, were not, it is true, unknown to the Jews. To them, however, God was particularly the sovereign Master, the all-powerful Lord, to be adored and feared; but to the disciples of Jesus He is, above all, Goodness by essence, “God is charity”;[xii] He is a tender, compassionate Father, who asks our love, who knows the weakness of His children and has pity on their misery. By His grace, which He has promised never to refuse to their prayers, and by the sacraments which He has instituted in His Church and which are admirably adapted to their needs, He never ceases to strengthen them, and, if they fall, to help them to rise again, and to renew their strength in the path of heaven. God is the Good Shepherd who goes in search of the lost sheep; and when He finds it, tenderly bears it upon His shoulders, sparing it the fatigue of the way. Again, He is the Father of the prodigal son, whom He receives after long years of weary waiting, with unheard-of tenderness, for “there shall be joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance.”[xiii]
The Moral Teaching of Christ.
It is impossible to imagine anything more perfect than the moral law imposed by Christ. Even the most impious are forced to acknowledge this. ‘The moral teaching of Christ is the foundation of human civilization,” and that the Jesus of history is a type of moral perfection,”
The ideal, the model of the perfection which Christ proposes to each one of us is no other than the perfection of God Himself: “Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.” [xiv]
To help us to imitate this perfection the Son of God appeared to us under a human form, thus offering us a divine model in Himself. Hence we have only to reproduce in our souls the virtues which Christ has taught us by example and by precept: “For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also.”[xv] Every Christian, according to the forcible expression of Tertullian, must be another Christ: Christianus alter Christus; he must be able to say with St. Paul: ^’I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
To us who are Christians, brothers of Christ, God is in a special manner a Father full of love, of goodness, and of mercy; hence it is not astonishing that He requires His children to be specially distinguished by the practice of these virtues. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind; this is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments depends the law and the prophets.”[xvi] In declaring to us that He came to enkindle the fire of His love, and that there is nothing that He desires so much as to see hearts more and more inflamed with this divine fire, Jesus refers constantly, and in the most persuasive terms, to the necessity of this compassionate charity for our neighbor, that is, for all men without exception; for before God, as St. Paul tells us, there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female: all are one in Christ Jesus. This, He tells us, is His favorite commandment, the mark by which we shall recognize His disciples, as well as an infallible means of pleasing Him and of acquiring innumerable merits: ”Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.”[xvii]
Jesus knows that many of these lessons are difficult to our fallen nature. Far from concealing this, He declares openly that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and that he who would follow Him must renounce himself and daily carry his cross. But at the same time, to stimulate our courage, He assures us that His yoke is sweet and His burden light to those who bear it generously; that the observance of the commandments here below is the only true and solid good, the only means of procuring peace of soul;[xviii] and He unceasingly holds before us the eternal and infinite rewards which God has prepared for those who love Him. And as the fear of punishment is needful to keep us from the abyss whither our passions constantly lead us, Jesus, who desires to save us at any price, speaks fourteen times in appalling terms of an eternal hell, and He places before us this unanswerable argument: “For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?”[xix] Finally, to these motives, which of themselves so powerfully persuade us to persevere in the path of virtue and happiness, Jesus adds another, purer, and more worthy of great souls: the love of God, which enkindles and ennobles all virtues.
The Teaching of Christ Concerning Worship.
Christ’s doctrine of worship is in perfect harmony with His teaching concerning God and man. God being spirit wills to be adored in spirit and in truth; man being also spirit, as regards his soul, owes God a spiritual homage, that is, the homage of his intelligence and his will: this worship, then, must, above all things, be interior. But as man is also matter, and his body no less than his soul is God’s, creature, he must add to the interior homage of his will the exterior worship of his body. Finally, being a social being and indebted to God for all the advantages he derives from intercourse with his fellow beings, he is bound to honor God not only as an individual, but as a social being; hence he owes God a public worship. This triple homage, freed from all the cruel, superstitious practices of pagan worship, as well as the minute, local details of the worship prescribed to the Jews by Moses for a special end, is the most sublime, the purest, the most worthy of God, as well as the most fitting for man.
Tenth Proof — The Incomparable Holiness of Christ.
We have seen the eminent holiness of the dogmatic and moral teaching of Jesus. His whole life was no less admirable: it was this doctrine put in practice. He never imposed a precept which He had not fulfilled to the letter; He never preached a virtue of which He had not given in Himself the most perfect example. Contrary to the general practice of legislators, and particularly of impostors, He taught first by example and then by precept.[xx] Thus in teaching us our duties toward God, toward man, toward ourselves, He could truly say: “I have given you an example, that as I have done, so do you also.”[xxi]
First. We have only to read the Gospel to be convinced that all virtues were united in Jesus in such a divine degree and in so just a measure as to make Him the type, the ideal of all perfection. From His infancy and during His whole life the sole end of all His words, of all His actions was to glorify God by causing Him to be known, loved, and served, and by saving mankind. He Himself declares that He cares not for His own glory, that He does only what is pleasing to the Father. During His whole life He was meek and gentle, grave and laborious, submissive and patient.
In all men, even the most perfect, natural infirmity reveals itself in something; the ideal perfection found in biographies is a mixture of fiction and history; but in Jesus, and in Him only, we find absolute perfection and pure historic truth. This unfathomable perfection never faltered in the various events of His earthly career, in the intimate familiarity of friendship, in the midst of the multitude when harassed by its rudeness and importunity, in the joyous festivity of the marriage-feast of Cana, in the agony of Gethsemane, in the ignominy of His Passion, in the anguish of Calvary, where He expired in inexpressible suffering, abandoned by His own, insulted by His triumphant enemies, and apparently abandoned by His Father.
Second. His virtue was so pure, so incontestable, that He could defy His bitterest enemies, who watched His actions and examined His words in order to ensnare Him. He could defy them to convince Him of sin: “Which of you shall convince Me of sin?”[xxii] And during His Passion, notwithstanding the witnesses bribed to testify against Him, the pagan judge was forced to proclaim His innocence no less than five times. Moreover, modern impiety itself, after seeking in all His words and in all His life to find matter of condemnation, is obliged to bow before Him and render homage to His virtues. If it refuses to bow the knee before His divinity, it readily acknowledges Him as the wisest of men.
Third. Yet among all the virtues so brilliantly manifested in Jesus there is none which shines with greater luster, which so powerfully won the hearts of His followers, as His enchanting goodness. It would be necessary to quote here the whole Gospel, for there is not a page of it which does not record the most touching proofs of this virtue.
We must confine ourselves here to a general glance at the life of Him who offered Himself as model to all men without exception, and who uttered these equally astonishing and true words: ”I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”;[xxiii] “I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.”[xxiv]
First. The character of Jesus, despite its incomparable perfection, is natural and true; it offers nothing false, nothing affected, nothing constrained. If the divine nature is shown by the absence of the least imperfection, humanity is equally evident in the truth of its natural emotions. As Jesus desired to teach all men. His brethren, the way to heaven, first by example and then by precept. He deigned to experience all the legitimate sentiments of our nature and to pass through all our trials. ”For we have not” ” says Saint Paul, “ a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”[xxv] Like us Jesus labored, prayed, wept, and suffered. Like us He loved His Mother, His disciples, His friends, His country, the unfortunate, the abandoned; like us He experienced sadness, compassion, trouble, fear, weariness; like us, and more keenly than we. He felt physical and moral suffering. From the manger to the cross, in every action, in every sentiment, He could offer Himself as a model to be imitated.”
Second. The perfection of the character and of the life of Jesus was the more striking because of the contrast it offered to all that was about Him. With the exception of His blessed Mother, and a few chosen souls inspired by Him, Jesus met on every hand a vile and carnal people, hypocritical Scribes, proud Pharisees, and pure formalists, disciples full of themselves and of gross faults. What a contrast between the weakness, the vice, the violence by which He was surrounded, and His holiness. His delicacy, His meekness, His patience!
Third. The holiness of Jesus alone is a creative holiness: despite the incomparable superiority of its teachings, none are more easily followed; hence it has begotten in all ages innumerable disciples.
The example of Jesus, no less than His teaching, has unceasingly produced everywhere, during twenty centuries, miracles of obedience, of purity, of humility, of zeal, of devotion, and of holiness. True, the saints also have had their sanctifying influence, but it was only by reproducing in themselves traits of the perfection they contemplated in Jesus.
Fourth. Still another thing which sets forth the marvelousness of the teaching and the example of Jesus is that He is imitated in that which is most repugnant to nature: He is a thorn-crowned Leader, and His disciples must follow Him in His life of humility, obedience, abnegation, and sacrifice. Whether we study Him in the manger, in His hidden, in His public life; whether we contemplate Him in His Passion and His death, we shall find Him giving us everywhere the example of virtues most opposed to our evil inclinations. And this example is followed: “They that are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with the vices and concupiscences.”[xxvi] Christians, in order to advance in perfection, seek only to triumph over themselves in imitation of Him whom St. Paul calls “the image of the invisible God.”[xxvii]
Fifth. If Jesus succeeded by His word, and still more by His example, in reforming the world, it was because He made Himself loved. This very love is a marvel in itself. Great men succeed in winning admiration, in exciting enthusiasm; but who among the rarest geniuses has ever won and retained the love of posterity during long ages?”
It is this love which still impels so many souls to imitate Jesus when they have learned His divine charms and ineffable goodness; and their imitation of Him is perfect in proportion to the purity and fervor of their love. What is a Christian worthy of the name but a man who bears in his soul, in his body, in his whole being, the deep imprint of Jesus, a man who strives to make his thoughts, his desires, his words, and his actions conformable to those of his divine Exemplar? A saint is only a grand Christian imitating Jesus in a more complete, more perfect, more heroic manner.
Conclusion. — The mind absolutely refuses to believe that Jesus, this type of the highest perfection, desired to teach us anything but truth. Reason will never admit that a man could unite the most revolting hypocrisy with the purest and most sublime doctrine, with the most admirable, the most perfect, the holiest fife recorded in the annals of mankind.
An impostor, moreover, never would have employed means tending to defeat his enterprise; far from flattering the passions and caprices of His fellow beings. He did not ignore their faults, He did not seek the protection of the great or powerful of this world, He did not seek worldly possessions. On the contrary, He waged war against vice, He preached the forgiveness of injuries, the practice of humility, abnegation, and self-denial; His chosen associates were among the poor and the disinherited; He carried His disinterestedness so far as to be without even a stone upon which to rest His head. Far from avoiding the suffering and death prepared for Him by His enemies, whose designs He knew and foretold. He went to meet the soldiers charged to seize Him, and delivered Himself into their hands. And in the midst of the most terrible outrages and the most cruel torments, His calmness and gentleness never faltered for a moment. His last act was an act of mercy, and His last word a prayer for His enemies. Is this the death, is this the life of an impostor? Yet Jesus must be an impostor if He was not sent from heaven, for He publicly proclaimed that He was sent by God. To the Samaritan woman, for example, who was expecting the Messias, He solemnly said: This Messias whom you await, “I who speak to you am he.”[xxviii] Would God permit the most sacrilegious imposture to be confirmed by a life so holy that human reason is forced to accept its testimony? It is absolutely impossible. Therefore the mission of Jesus is divine, and divine also is the religion He came to establish.
“Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.”[xxix]
The natural reaction of the Jews to the manifestation of Jesus show them to be astonished: “What is this? A new teaching! With authority he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”[xxx] “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”[xxxi] “Where did this man get all this? What is the wisdom given to him? What mighty works are wrought by his hands!”[xxxii]
These passages from Saint Mark’s Gospel reflect the initial reactions of the people to the miracles of Jesus, that is, before “They forgot what he had done, and the miracles that he had shown them.”[xxxiii] In Jesus dwells the saving power that conquered illness, sin, and even death itself.
“Though he had done so many signs before them, yet they did not believe in him; it was that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”[xxxiv][xxxv]
[i] Adapted from Christian Apologetics, pp. 183-284.
[ii] Matthew 6; Luke 8.
[iii] John 21.
[iv] Acts 1:22.
[v] 1 Corinthians 15.
[vi] John 14:12. See also Mark 16:17- 18.
[vii] Mark 16:20.
[viii] Mark 10; Matthew 17.
[ix] Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 19; 21.
[x] Matthew 6:5.
[xi] John 15:24.
[xii] 1 John 4:8.
[xiii] Luke 15:7.
[xiv] Matthew 5:48.
[xv] John 13:15.
[xvi] Matthew 22:37-41.
[xvii] Ibid. 25:40.
[xviii] Ibid.11:29.
[xix]Ibid. 16:26.
[xx] Acts 1:1.
[xxi] John 13:15.
[xxii] John 8:46.
[xxiii]Ibid. 14:6.
[xxiv] Ibid. 12:46.
[xxv] Hebrews 4:15.
[xxvi] Galatians 5:24.
[xxvii] Colossians 1:15.
[xxviii] John 4:26.
[xxix] Ibid. 4:48.
[xxx] Mark 1:27.
[xxxi] Ibid. 2:7.
[xxxii] Ibid.6:2.
[xxxiii] Psalm 78:11.
[xxxiv] John 12:37-38.