Page:Jesus and the Gospel.djvu/35

Rh in this wonderful outpouring of divine life that He is seen to be what He is, and takes the place in human souls which establishes the Christian religion.

The Christ, of course, is a Jewish title, and it is easy to say impatient or petulant things about it. There are those who profess devotion to Jesus and tell us that they do not care whether He was (or is) the Christ or not; those who thank God, not without complacency, that to them He is far more and far better than the Christ; those who assure us that Christianity is a misnomer, and that our religion should find a more descriptive name. Such superior persons betray a lack of historical discernment, and it is wiser on the whole to accept the world as God has made it than to reconstruct it on lines of our own. The conception of Jesus as the Christ, if we interpret it by the teaching of Peter in the early chapters of Acts, is not one which it is easy to disparage. It embodies at least two great truths about Jesus as the apostle regarded Him. The first is that Jesus is King. That is the very meaning of the term. The Christ is the Lord's Anointed, and the throne on which He has been set in His exaltation is the throne of God Himself. It is a translation of this part of the meaning of the term into less technical language when Peter says elsewhere: 'Jesus Christ, He is Lord of all' (Acts 1036). Simple as it is, this assertion of the sovereignty of Jesus covers all that is characteristic in historical Christianity. If it disappeared, all that has ever been known to history as Christianity would disappear along with it. It belonged to Christian faith from the beginning that in it all men should stand on a level with one another, but all should at the same time confront Christ and do homage to Him as King. The second truth covered and guarded by the conception of Jesus as the Christ is this: that He is the Person through whom God's Kingdom comes, and