Page:Philochristus, Abbott, 1878.djvu/406

398 it seemed not unto us as if we were honoring him by calling him God; but (if I may speak as a child) it seemed rather as though we were striving to honor God by saying that God was one with Jesus. For saying this seemed all one with saying that God was Love.

Therefore if any put this question unto me, "Why believest thou not that Romulus is God, and Liber, and Amphiaraus, and Elias, and Enoch (who all are said to have escaped death), and yet thou believest that Jesus of Nazareth is God?" my answer is this, that I believe Jesus to be God, first, because God is Love, and Jesus is Love; secondly, because God is Might, and Jesus is Might; and lastly, because, if Jesus was not indeed divine, then must he needs have been a poor deluded creature, unfit and unable to do any great work for the children of men. For certainly, albeit he was the most humble and lowly of men, yet did he ever speak of himself, not as one of many redeemers, but as the redeemer of men, the refuge of the wretched, the forgiver of sins, the source of life and truth.

"But," say some, "Jesus was of a surety not Might; for he came not as a conqueror, but as one conquered." Now, methinks, concerning them that say such things, it was well said by Xanthias that "they are like unto the foolish giant Polyphemus, who could not think that Ulysses could be Ulysses indeed, for that he was not a giant like unto himself. In the same way certain persons of gross understanding" (even of such an understanding as I myself had, before that I had been enlightened by the spirit of Christ) "suppose that Jesus could not have been the Messiah, for that he did not come into the world as they themselves would have come, nor do the works which they themselves would have done, had they been Messiahs. For they would have come into the world, forsooth, riding on the clouds, or borne on chariots of fire, or working