THE KING’S BUSINESS
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have prophets in the later part or the earlier part, there is supernatural rev elation. Third: A supernatural nation, the Jews. There is the well-known story of Frederick the Great asking his chaplain for the evidence of Christ ianity in a word. The man said.: “Sire, the Jew!” Here is a little country not larger than Wales, in which a nation is found absolutely unique. A modern German writer (Wellhausen) has said that’he could not understand v^hy Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, never developed into the universal god of the Jews. Of course he cannot understand it, because he looks at it from the nat uralistic point of view; but if we believe that the God of the Jews was Jehovah, the Lord of heaven and earth, we can readily understand why this nation is supernatural. Fourth: Supernatural expectation. There is that in the Old Testament which is always pointing forward to the future, especially to the coming of the Messiah. Some will remem ber that in Canon Liddon’s Bampton Lectures he says there are 333 refer ences to the Messiah in the Old Testament, and Dr. Pierson argued that, based upon mathematical grounds, the concentration of all these 333 references on on individ ual, in face of the probabilities against it, is simply marvellous. Each time you add a reference, you reduce the probability of the allusions centring on one person; and when we get to 333, and all these concentrate on one Man. the Man from the nation of the Jews, from the tribe of Judah, from the family of David, from the place mentioned in Micah (Bethle hem), we see at once the force of this extraordinary expectation. And I do not believe that there is any scholarship worthy of the name, which will deny that in the Old Test
ament there is expectation, always looking forward to some one who is to come. A PERFECT CHARACTER. Fifth: Supernatural Incarnation. Here we come face to face with the New Testament and the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. This by itself is more than sufficient for a whole course of studies, but I only ask you to notice the portrait of Jesus Christ, the combination and balance of quali ties in Him, and the perfection of His character. I wonder whether we are all aware that not a single great master in literature has ever tried to depict a perfect character. From Homer down to the present day, we cannot find one literary genius who has attempted to depict a perfect man or woman. Who is the most perfect character in Shakespeare ? Some people think Hamlet. But he is admittedly not very perfect. Yet here is a picture, drawn by four ordi nary men, who, nevertheless, depict a perfect Character which has been the admiration of the ages! How can we account for that? I entirely agree with the statement that if these men invented Jesus, then we are in the presence of a stupendous miracle, one that is more wonderful than any we find in the Gospels. . Rousseau well said that it takes a Jesus to in vent a Jesus. . To think that these ordinary men.should put into literary form a perfect character, is to intro duce us to the supernatural. Sixth: Supernatural Manifestation. Bv this I mean the existence of the Christian Church. We fail to realize how supernatural the Church is; and bv the Church it is to be understood what the New Testament teaches—i “the blessed company of j all faithful oeople,” those who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, That Church was supernatural in its beginning, and supernatural fin its course, and is su-
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