Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-08-04
The Skeptics and Christ.

The study Of Christ's character and
life has always commanded the pro-
foundest thought of men. In the days
of His humanity all who saw and heard
Him wondered at the im~personation of
grace and virtue and wisdom which
they recognized in Him; and through
all the centuries He has been studied
by both friends and foes, until He holds
the chief place in the literature of the
world. How He is esteemed by His
followers w eneed not attempt to show;
but the judgment of His character by
His enemies, while scarcely less exalted,
is still more surprising.
The familiar testimony of Rosseau, one
of the most polished of all the skeptics,
is a remarkable confession of Christ's
divinity: eff the life and death of
Socrates are those of a sage, the life and
death of Jesus are those Of a God" So
exalted was his conception of the char
acter of our Lord that MI. John Stuart
Mill was compelled to say: "Religion
can not be said to have made a bad
choice in pitching upon this man as the
ideal representative and guide of hui
mainly; nor even now would it be
easy even for an unbeliever to find
a better translation of the rule of
virtue from the abstract to the concrete
than to endeavor so to live that Christ
would approve our life" And even
Strauss, in his second ssLeben Jesu,"
1864, comedies s'that in many respects
Jesus stands in the first line of those
who have developed the ideal of human
ity." Of course none of these skeptics
acknowledge the deity of Christ; and,
to break the force Of their concessions,
they make exceptions, and presume to
say there were sides of excellence in
His character that ''were only family in
Dictated, or not even limited at" But.
in spite Of their unbelief, they are not
able to escape the conviction that Christ
and His religion present supernatural
features which, though they can not
understand, they dare not deny. 1t Isl
suggestive question of MI. Mil: ..Who
among the disciples of Jesus or among
their proselytes was capable Of invent
ing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of
imagining the life and character re-
vealed in the Gospels?" And the
negative answer which the question an
ticipates only expresses the Judgment
of the most thoughtful and candid of his
class of doubters.
Yet there is a wide difference between
the views held of Christ by skeptics and
Christians; for while the former Weld
him reverence on the ground of His un-
approachable moral excellence, the lat
ter worship Him as the incarnate God.
Skeptlcs like Renan, with a look of
great liberality, say: .'The Sublime
Person, who daily presides still over the
destiny of the world, we may call di-
vine, not in the sense that Jesus alb
sorbed all the divine, or, to use a scho-
lasric word, was adequate to it, but in
the sense that Jesus is the individual
who has made His species take the
greatest step towards the divine" This,
however, is paying Him no more hon.
age than did the men who in the DAYS
of His flesh admitted that He was a
prophet but denied that He was the
Messiah. The declaration of Peter:
Chou art the Christ, the Son of the
living Cod" expresses the Heaven
taught estimate which all Christians
hold Of Chr1st.-Baphst Weekly.