When Napoleon was at Saint Helena, in the enforced retirement that followed his boisterous campaigns, he faced, with all the powers of his mighty intellect, this problem of the Unaccountable Man. Not a few of his devoted friends had been carried away on the flood-tide of infidelity which at that time was sweeping everything before it. On one occasion, when General Bertrand had been speaking of Jesus as a man of commanding genius, he interrupted him to say, "I know men; and I tell you Jesus Christ was more than a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between him and the founders of empires; but there is the distance of infinity between them. As for me I recognize those great men as beings like myself; they have performed their lofty parts, but there was nothing to prove them divine. They have had foibles which ally them with me. It is not so with Christ. Everything in him astonishes me! His spirit overawes me; his will confounds me; he stands a being by himself. His thoughts and principles are not to be explained by human organization or the nature of things. His birth and the history of his life, the profundity of his doctrine which grapples with the mightiest difficulties and solves them; his gospel, his kingdom, his march across the agts; these are too deep a mystery for me! They plunge me into reveries from which I find no escape. The nearer I approach him, the more I perceive that everything is above me. At his voice all things return to order. The soul conquers its sov

ereignty. What a master is this! With what authority does he teach! Who will presume to lift his voice against an intrepid voyager who recounts the marvels of lands which he alone has had the boldness to visit? Christ is that voyager. I search in vain through history to find his peer. He died an object of contempt and left a Gospel which has been called 'the foolishness of the cross.' What a mysterious symbol! And what a tempest it provoked! On the one side all the furies; on the other gentleness and infinite resignation. And with what result? You speak of Cæsar and Alexander, of their conquests and the enthusiasm which they kindled in the hearts of their soldiers; but can you conceive of a dead man making conquests with an army devoted to his memory? Can you conceive of Cæsar from the depth of his mausoleum watching over the destinies of Rome? Yet such is the history of the Christian invasion and the conquest of the world. Such is the power of the Christian's God! We have founded empiresCæsar and Alexander and Charlemagne and I -we have founded empires upon force; but Christ has founded an empire on love. And at this hour millions would die for him. What a proof of his divinity! Now that I am at Saint Helena, chained upon this rock, where are my friends? My life once shone with a royal brilliance; but disaster overtook me and the gold became dim. Behold the destiny of him whom the world calls Napoleon the Great! What

an abyss between my misery and the eternal reign of Christ!" For a moment the exiled emperor was silent and then, with a broken voice, he added, "My friends, if you do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God, I did wrong to place you in command of my army.

To my mind this reasoning is sound. In conceding that Jesus was "the just man," with all that it involves, we have gone so far that, by the necessities of sound reason, we are bound to go farther and pronounce him what he claimed to be, the veritable Son of God.

This was his claim. He called himself "the Son of Man," a term generally understood as referring to the long-looked-for Messiah. He called himself, also, with equal emphasis, "the Son of God"; and more than that, "the only-begotten Son of God"; that is, so to speak, bone of God's bone and flesh of his flesh, and therefore his very equal. He claimed a singular union with God, saying, "I and my Father are one." How could he be only a good man? If he were no more than that, then his enemies were right in affirming that he was guilty of blasphemy and deserved to die.

The great question is before us: What think ye of this Jesus? He sits in the place of judgment as he sat at Gabbatha before Pilate that day. What shall be done with him? The Scripture

'The words of Napoleon have here been abbreviated, but with no essential change.

says that he was what he claimed to be. History records his triumphs and forces the inquiry, "Were these the doings of a man among men?" The Church on earth unites with the innumerable host of heaven in the song: "Fairer is he than all the fair among the sons of men." But what say you?

The centurion who had charge of the crucifixion was moved to confess, after witnessing the great tragedy, "Verily, this was a righteous man!" The word he used was the familiar Dikaios. But this did not satisfy him. The great problem was struggling in his breast. As he rode away from Calvary the shadows of night were gathering and lights were kindling in the homes of Jerusalem. Looking backward he saw the dark effigy of the cross against the sky. Then came the sober second thought. The truth like a sunburst smote upon him. This Jesus was more than the just man! And in the deep conviction of his soul he gave utterance to the only possible solution of the greatest of all problems: "Verily, this was the Son of God!"

HIS INAUGURAL SERMON

Two manifestoes.-Not a sermon for all.-Not a gospel sermon. Not a foundation sermon.-Not a summary. Not a sermon of salvation.-Two infer

ences.

Two manifestoes.-There have been two occasions in history when great political manifestoes were issued under the direct authority of God.

One of these was when the children of Israel were encamped at Sinai. They had just been delivered from the house of their bondage. It was a mob of fugitive slaves that thronged forth in mad disorder with the footfall of a pursuing army behind them. God's purpose was to organize this mob into a nation; and with this in view he led them to Sinai, where they encamped for a year. He there gave them their Constitution, an elaborate Code of Laws. The nucleus of that Code is the Decalogue, the most notable of all ethical symbols; which has furnished the basic principles of the jurisprudence of civilized nations all along the ages. The camp was then broken up, and for thirty-nine years the people wandered in the wilderness, learning in the school of experience and developing slowly in civil life and character. At the