The scribe and the Pharisee are still with us. "Establish the
credibility of the miracles of Jesus, or, better still, let Him work a
miracle to-day, and we will believe," they say. This age is credulous;
it hungers to believe the extraordinary. Yet, while it is running
after folly, it is blind to the most extraordinary fact, the most
stupendous miracle that ever took place, although it goes on right
before its eyes and is open to every kind of proof. It cannot see the
miracle of Jesus in the world to-day, the miracle beside which all the
works He did in His lifetime sink into insignificance.
Here is the sign to-day offered to the skeptic: Once, nearly twenty
centuries ago, a young preacher travelled and taught through the
villages and by the wayside in an obscure oriental country. He
addressed a subject race, insular in their prejudices, lacking in
political genius and in artistic culture. He lived in days calculated
to chill the most fervid religious enthusiasm. He was at first ignored
and then hated by His own people; the religious leaders became His
implacable foes. His work ended in apparent failure, in a death of
shame.
But that was not the end. It is strange that the world remembers
anything about that young preacher; but stranger still is the fact that
to-day He influences more than half the population of the globe,
surpassing all other teachers, more people are under His sway now than
the whole world held when He lived. These millions make Him the object
of their worship and devotion; in His name they gather regularly all
over the world, without regard to language or race.
More than this, this one whom the wise men of His day ignored has been
the inspiration of the works of genius and art, of the deeds of
heroism, of the lofty endeavours of the world since He died. He has
changed the mind. He has changed the appearance of the world; by Him
nations have fallen and risen. The humble, the despised, the rejected
has become the world's hero, the mightiest of all the sons of men, the
saviour of His race.
Once He touched a few who were blind and lame and they were healed;
to-day in His name, in every city, a thousand suffering ones are made
whole. Science does the work; but the opportunity for its development
and the inspiration for its application came from Him.
Nor is this all. He made the world to see; He touched the blind eyes
of the people, as they groped in superstition, and has given them
sight; He has made the ages, once limping and halting, to arise and
march forward with magnificent tread; He found the world a babel of
jarring voices and fretting purposes, and His touch gave peace and
singleness of purpose until men could discern that "through the ages
one unceasing purpose runs." He did for man and mind what was first
done for matter, brought the cosmos out of chaos. This is the miracle
indeed.
It goes right on before our eyes. They take His name to a dead people,
and soon there is life there. Light, and love, and larger life spring
up everywhere in His name. From this modern miracle of the power, the
growing authority, the kingship of the once despised Jesus we cannot
escape; we are perforce participants in its benefits; it conditions all
our lives.
If all the gospel stories could be proved myths and the miracles but
inventions, there would still remain the greater, the insuperable
miracle of the world's picture of the perfect and all glorious
personality of Jesus and the fact of His preëminent power in the world
to-day. This is the sign He gives this age, and to this the open mind
answers: "Thou art the Christ, the saviour of the world."