M. Renan considers, passive and unresisting, while credited with

working wonders which He knew to be merely thaumaturgic tricks'? On either supposition, is it possible to uphold Him as ‘the moral ideal of humanity,’ or indeed as the worthy object of any true moral enthusiasm? We cannot decline this question ; it is forced upon us by the subject-matter. A neutral attitude towards the miraculous element in the Gospel history is impos- sible. The claim to work miracles is not the least prominent element of our Lord’s teaching ; nor are the miracles which are said to have been wrought by Him a fanciful or ornamental appendage to His action. The miraculous is inextricably inter- woven with the whole Life of Christ. The ethical beauty, nay the moral integrity of our Lord’s character is dependent, whe- ther we will it or not, upon the reality of His miracles. It may be very desirable to defer as far as possible to the mental pre- possessions of our time ; but it is not practicable to put asunder two things which God has joined together, namely, the beauty of Christ’s character and the bond jide reality of the miracles which He professed to work.
But let us nevertheless follow the lead of this objection by turning to consider what is the real bearing of our Lord’s moral character upon the question of His Divinity. In order to do this, it is necessary to ask a previous question. What position did Jesus Christ, either tacitly or explicitly, claim to occupy in His intercourse with men? What allusions did He make to the subject of His Personality? You will feel, my brethren, that it
« Ecce Homo, p. 43: ‘On the whole, miracles play so important a part in Christ’s scheme, that any theory which would represent them as due entirely to the imagination of His followers or of a later age, destroys the credibility of the documents, not partially, but wholly, and leaves Christ a personage as mythical as Hercules.’
τ Cf. Vie de Jésus, p. 265: ‘Il est donc permis de croire qu’on lui imposa sa réputation de thaumaturge, qu’il n’y résista pas beaucoup, mais quw il ne fit rien non plus pour y aider, et qu’en tout cas, il sentait la vanité de Popinion ἃ cet égard. Ce serait manquer ἃ la bonne méthode historique d’écouter trop ici nos répugnances,’ See M. Renan’s account of the raising of Lazarus, ibid. pp. 361, 362.
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164 First stage of Christ’s teaching, mainly ethical.
is impossible to overrate the solemn importance of such a point as this. We are here touching the very heart of our great subject: we have penetrated to the inmost shrine of Christian truth, when we thus proceed to examine those words of the Gospels which exhibit the consciousness of the Founder of Christianity respecting His rank in the scale of being. With what awe, yet with what loving eagerness, must not a Christian enter on such an examination!
No reader of the Gospels can fail to see that, speaking gene- rally, and without reference to any presumed order of the events and sayings in the Gospel history, there are two distinct stages or levels in the teaching of Jesus Christ our Lord.