"
The worst man, says the poet, _knows_ more than the best man _does_. God
in Christ appeared to men to help them to _do_, to awaken the life
within them.
"Morality to the uttermost,
Supreme in Christ as we all confess,
Why need _we_ prove would avail no jot
To make Him God, if God he were not?
What is the point where Himself lays stress?
Does the precept run, 'Believe in good,
In justice, truth, now understood
For the first time?'--or, 'Believe in ME,
Who lived and died, yet essentially
Am Lord of life'? Whoever can take
The same to his heart, and for mere love's sake
Conceive of the love,--that man obtains
A new truth; no conviction gains
Of an old one only, made intense
By a fresh appeal to his faded sense."
In this lies the most direct practical argument with regard to what is
commonly called the Divinity of Christ. Here is a man whom those that
magnify him the least confess to be a good man, the best of men. He
_says_, "I and the Father are one." Will an earnest heart, knowing this,
be likely to draw back, or will it draw nearer to behold the great
sight? Will not such a heart feel: "A good man like this would not have
said so, were it not so.
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