The Fundamentals - 1910: Vol.3

Testimony of Christian Experience 81 to include all the data of life and history and of science and philosophy. UNIQUE CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY II. In the second place, Christian experience sheds light on all the unique claims of Christianity. Professor James, you know, and other scientific observers concede that religious experience is a witness to the supernat­ ural; only he refuses to admit that Christ is the author of it, and does not concede the other unique Christian claims. The attempt is to find a common denominator, so to speak, be­ tween Christianity and other religions and show that all are essentially alike and that the distinctive Christian ideas are over-beliefs. But these men have not thought through the problem of Christian experience, in particular they are shy of facing the actual claim of Christ and His relation to it all. Christ’s place in Christian experience is the supreme mat­ ter. All other Christian claims go with this. T H E DEITY OF CHR IST PROVED Now the spiritually regenerated and morally transformed man proves the deity of Christ, proves His presence in re­ ligious experience for the following reasons: a. First of all because no man has moral resources to transform himself. The Indian myth that the Creator first laid the world egg and then hatched himself out of it will scarcely supply an explanation of the regenerated life. The law of moral gravitation in a man’s life no more reverses itself suddenly than the law of physical gravitation. When apples begin to fall towards the clouds and Niagara Falls becomes a Niagara leap upwards, then we may look for men to be sud­ denly changed from murderers into saints. You cannot jug­ gle the immoral elements of a sinner’s nature into the moral elements of a saint any more than you can combine the acid of an unripe lemon and an unripe apple and unripe grape fruit

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