264 The Fundamentals an intricate and complicated and vast investigation? If He could not search “the reins and the hearts” (to use His own words to John), how could He give to every one of us accord ing to his works? (Rev. 2:23.) The brain reels when we think of the tremendouSjtransactions of the last day, and the momentous interests then to be decided forever and ever; and reason tells us, that if the Judge who is to preside over these solemnities be a man, He must be a God-man. If Jesus is to be the universal and absolute Judge of our race—a Judge from whose decisions there will be no appeal, He must be “God mani fest in the flesh.” But what can we think of Him, if in setting up this claim He mislead us ? 3. Jesus always claimed absolute and indisputable power in dealing with every question of moral duty and destiny. To quote Mr. Newman, the mere deist, “I find Jesus Himself to set up oracular claims. I find an assumption of pre-eminence and unapproachable moral wisdom to pervade every discourse from end to end of the Gospels. If I may not believe that Jesus assumed an oracular manner, I do not know what moral peculiarity in Him I am permitted to believe.”* There is no possibility of denying the truth of these words. Jesus claimed to be absolute Lord in the whole region of morals. He settled the meaning and force of. old laws, and instituted new ones by His own authority. Take the Sermon on the Mount as an il lustration. With what a self-possessed peremptoriness does He define the existing legislation of God, and enlarge its limits! With what conscious dignity does He decide every question in the whole range of human duty with the simple—“But I say unto you!” . Seven times in one chapter does he use this form ula. (See Matt. 5:20, 22, 28, 32, 34, 39, 44.) And in the application of the sermon He declared Him only to be the wise man and built upon solid rock, who hears His sayings and does them. (Matt. 7:24.) Well might the people be aston- *In “Phases of Faith,” by Francis William Newman, M. A., page 150.
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