The Divinity of Christ. It is a remarkable thing that out of the mouth of Thomas came a testimony to the essential Godhead and divinity of that Man of Nazareth that you find nowhere else in Scripture. Thomas looks poor in the early part of the story. It is easy for us to stand beside him there and say: "I am just like Thomas." Not long ago, on a very tired and spent Monday, I-your minister-flung myself down upon the sofa in weariness and spentness of body and mind, and my little three-year-old girl came and stood beside my shoulder and said: “Oh, I am as big as father!" Yes, because father was down; but when father pulled himself to his feet she only came up to his knee. And we are as big as Thomas when he is lying down prostrate and spent and groaning. When Elijah is lying under the juniper-tree you are another Elijah. But when these mighty saints take to their feet I rather think they come above us. And when Thomas does come to his feet he reveals his splendid proportions. My Lord and my God." Not Gabriel before the throne ever did, or ever could, utter a more splendid testimony to the essential, eternal, uncreated Godhead and divinity of our Jesus than Thomas did when the Lord shone out upon him.-MCNEILL 66 The World When Christ Appeared. The "golden age" of Augustus ended before the Son of Man appeared. Streaks of the sunset were still upon the sky, but the great day of literature had passed, and night was coming rapidly over the most impressive coun try and nation which the world ever saw. Only for a moment recall those names so familiar to us all, and as loved as familiar. Julius Cæsar, the writer and warrior, had been slain forty-four years before our era began. Cicero was murdered a few years after the great Cæsar fell. Virgil died nineteen years before Christ came. Horace was in his grave forty years before Christ began to teach mankind. Sallust had been dead thirty-four years before the Child was born in the manger. Christ was only eighteen years old, was still an unknown carpenter, when Livy died. Publius Syrius, Catullus, Terence all these gifted children of philosophy and song had gone to sleep long before the music of Bethlehem came to the ears of the shepherds. Except Tacitus and Pliny, no great name ever passed over the line which divided the pagan and Christian periods. Not a single great orator or artist, poet or statesman, was remaining upon the Roman or Greek world when our Lord appeared.SWING. Christ a Friend. A rule I have had for years is to treat the Lord Jesus Christ as a personal friend. He is not a creed, a mere empty doctrine, but it is He himself we have. The moment we have received Christ we should receive Him as a friend. When I go away from home I bid my wife and children good-bye; I bid my friends and acquaintances good-bye; but I never heard of a poor backslider going down on his knees and saying: "I have been near You for ten years; Your service has become tedious and mo- : notonous; I have come to bid you farewell. Good-bye, Lord Jesus Christ." I never heard of one doing this. I will tell you how they go away: They just run away.— MOODY. Christ in Our Highest Emotions. He fashioned He stood by I claim that Jesus Christ has entered deeply into all the lines of emotion and intellect that now so adorn our century. You Christians meet today to commune with Him. It is well. But He communed with your country and your literature and your arts long before you came upon the scene of action. He began to shine into the human heart and to reshape it long ago. the holy hymns which our fathers sang. when the Catholics created the Gregorian chant, and where the Covenanters sang their psalms in the wilderness. He invaded the realm of poetic thought, and turned divine genius away from the adulation of bloody generals to the study of nature and its Creator, the soul and its destiny. He has communed with all the centuries since His advent, and has permeated them with a purer, loftier spirit. Mother and child have knelt in prayer by His example and request; the mightiest intellects have shaped their philosophy in the light of Christ, and the old and the dying have tried to go away from earth with some of this Savior's words upon their trembling, blanching lips. -SWING. A Super-Human Savior. If I might comprehend Jesus Christ, I could not believe on Him. He would be no greater than myself. |