that is preached. Why I felt this reluctance will be evident if I explain the object of the course, and the circumstances which suggested it.

The life of a Jesus who was not the Christ, who is not the King of Men, who came from no Father in heaven, who baptised with no Spirit, who did not rise from the dead, has been written with consummate ability. Though this Jesus claimed titles which were not his, though he practised mean deceptions, he has been recognised as a hero both by his biographer, and by numbers who have read the biography. Men and women, rich and poor, in all parts of what we still called Christendom, have been inclined to accept him as a substitute for the Person whom in their infancy they were taught to revere. If they could fully accept him, casting away all their old impressions, a great incubus, they think, would be taken from their spirits, they would breathe more freely.

In these Lectures I have endeavoured to ascertain what is told us respecting the life of Jesus by one of those Evangelists who proclaim Him to be the Christ, who says that He did come from a Father, that He did baptise with the Holy Spirit, that He did rise from the dead. I have chosen the one who is most directly connected with the later history of the Church, who was not an Apostle, who professedly wrote for the use of a man already instructed in the faith of the Apostles. I have followed the course of this writer's narrative,

not changing it under any pretext. I have adhered to his phraseology, striving to avoid the substitution of any other for his.

Can such a task be necessary in our days? Is not every Sunday-school child acquainted with the letter of the Gospels? Is it not our business to consider whence they were derived, how they may be interpreted and modified to suit the temper of our times, what divine and human elements there may be in them, how far they represent exactly the acts and words of Christ, how far they embody thoughts and beliefs of which the Evangelists became possessed after their Master had departed from them? I do not question the wisdom of discussing any of these questions. I am glad to profit by the learning and sagacity of those who take part in them on either side. But I have not found the other task, which requires no learning, superfluous for myself. I think it is not superfluous for our age.

If the children in Sunday-schools understand and accept the letter of the Gospels, their teachers and those who preach to them out of pulpits, I fear do not. Certain conventional notions mingle themselves with it in all our minds; we read it as if they were inseparable from it. Clergymen receive these notions as sacred heirlooms. They are enforced by public opinion. If an ecclesiastical synod should acquire the power of imposing penalties, spiritual or civil, they will be en

forced by those penalties. They subvert, as it seems to me, the words of the Bible and the principle of the Creeds. They create that wish to be rid of Him who is the centre and subject of the New Testament history which M. Renan's book has developed. At the same time they contain the germs of the new faith. The Jesus of the Frenchman has been formed in orthodox schools and circles.

I purpose in this preface to indicate three or four of these conventional notions. I have done what I could that my reader might be able to test them by the Scriptures themselves. Whatever be his opinions, he will have every motive to expose me. I am about to encounter a set of interpretations which apologists for the Bible take for granted, which opposers of the Bible equally take for granted. I should not dare to dispute them if I were not convinced that God Himself is proving them to be untenable, and is calling upon us to abandon them as the only condition on which we can retain the belief of our forefathers.

I. In these Lectures I have had again and again to consider the question whether the Gospel of St. Luke exhibits to us a Christ who breaks through the order of the universe by strange and irregular acts of power. That He did so is assumed by the writers of our books of evidence. That He could transgress laws is said to be the proof of the truth of His mission. All that reverence for fixed laws which characterises

our time-which is the encouragement to our scientific inquiries, and the fruit of them-rebels against such a proof. 'The tokens,' says the objector, ‘of One 'who comes from the God of order should be, that He 'upholds order, not that He violates it.' That assertion seems to be incontrovertible. Gods made out of men's own thoughts-gods made in the likeness of things in heaven or earth or under the earth may be capricious as those thoughts are capricious, may be variable as the things which we observe are variable. The proper ministers of such gods are enchanters and magicians, who play tricks with nature that they may prove how great and wise they are. The ministers of a God who gives the sea its bounds that it should not pass, who hath established the earth and it abideth, should take the very opposite course to that of these magicians. They should be witnesses for laws, against anomalies. They should shew that there is a living and eternal order which all the changes and vicissitudes of nature obey. They should shew that true power is exercised in obedience to this order, that all power which sets it aside is to be broken in pieces.

It seems to me that exactly the claim which the Evangelists put forth for Jesus is, that He was the revealer and assertor of the Divine order, that He entered into conflict with the anomalies which disturbed that order. He came, they say, preaching the

over men.

Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of the eternal, unchangeable God. The laws of that Kingdom He proclaimed as more fundamental, less capable of any suspension or modification, than the laws that were written on stone and were ratified by thunders and lightnings. This Kingdom of Heaven is a Kingdom But Christ drew His illustrations of it from the facts and the course of nature. That He exhibited as another part of the same living order. What we call miracles are said to be the signs and powers of the heavenly kingdom, the signs of its permanent nature, the powers by which it works out its effects. How do they answer to these titles? They are directed against the confusions of the world, against the plagues and torments which distract human life. Is the novelty of these acts the proof of their greatness? The Evangelists' language would lead us to exactly the contrary opinion. Christ is said to do the works of His Father in Heaven. If He was really the Son of God, if He might really claim to manifest His Father's mind and will to men, this would be just the account of them which we should expect, which we should consider most reasonable. And therefore it must be a secret feeling that He was not this, that the words which seem to import this are not real but fictitious words, that has led to the theory upon which we are at times ready to rest the whole evidence of the Gospels. That such a view of things