Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/147

Letter 12] of, the feelings we entertain towards God. What you really mean is that your love, trust, and awe towards God so far transcend those corresponding feelings when entertained by you for your fellow-creatures, that you ask from Him things which you would never dream of asking from them. Moreover you consider (rightly or wrongly) that a dead or absent man cannot enter into communion with you, but that God is superior to death and to the limitations of space, and that He alone can always hear and always answer; and this you appear to think a non-miraculous Christ cannot do.

Well, here I confess there is a vast difference between us; for I feel sure that Christ can do this. You say, I do not "pray to Paul and Plato:" I do not, though I sometimes think that it would be better to pray to Paul or Plato than to the sun or moon. But I do not find Paul, I do not find Plato, claiming power to forgive sins; or declaring that he came to die for mankind and that his blood was to be shed for the remission of sins; or predicting that he should be slain and that he should rise from the dead; or promising that whatsoever his disciples asked from the Father in his name should be performed; or promising to give his disciples, after his death, a spirit, the Holy Spirit of the Father, which should enable them to resist all adversaries after he had left them; or, in other words, making a manifest preparation to prepare his disciples for his death on the ground that after death he would still be present with them and still their guide and helper. Now even when I set aside the Fourth Gospel, and eliminate all miraculous narrative from the first three Gospels, I find myself in the presence of One who, I am convinced, both said these things, and made them good in deeds. I am penetrated with the conviction that He said them and had a right to say them; and that this is proved by literary and historical evidence, and by the