Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/338

322 many of those who saw him would cry "This must be the Christ," without so much as enquiring what manner of man he was. But cogent and popular and delightfully simple though it may be, this is not the kind of proof on which Jesus appears to have relied, or by which Jesus has produced a spiritual change in the hearts of mankind. The very fact that no trust or faith or affection is needed in such a demonstration, unfits it for spiritual purposes. In order to believe in the Resurrection of Jesus, a man needs the testimony of all his powers, emotional as well as intellectual, trust and love as well as reason; and I have endeavoured to shew above that the whole of the training of the human Imagination, and all the mysterious natural provisions which have stimulated the eye of the mind to see what the eye of the body cannot see, have contributed to bring about the faith in the risen Saviour. As we are to love God with our strength and with our mind as well as with our heart and our soul, so are we to believe in Christ with the same collective energy. The proof therefore of Christ's Resurrection and of Christ's divinity is intended to be, in a certain sense, complex, because it is intended to appeal to our every faculty and to be based upon our every experience.

But "this form of Christianity can never commend itself to the masses." Objection in the shape of prophecy is always difficult to meet, and not often worth meeting. However, this prophecy has so specious a sound that it deserves some reply. But first let me ask, Does the present form of Christianity commend itself to the masses? Surely not to the very poor, that is to say, not to the class to whom Christ appears to have specially addressed Himself. And even among the classes which retain the tradition of worshipping Christ, has Christianity been such as would commend itself to Christ? Has not our religion been too often divorced from morality? Has there been