Belief In The Divinity Of Jesus Christ (1894)

PREFACE MY FRIENDS, I dedicate these lectures to yon. They were not specially composed for you, but I publish them mainly for you, and to you I dedicate them with the ardent desire that you may share my hopes, my convictions, and my faith. As a priest of Jesus Christ, is nothing nearer heart than to reveal Him to those committed my to my charge, and to aid them to become His loving and intelligent disciples, faithful in spite of trial and persecution, even unto death. To be a disciple of Jesus Christ, is to make a free choice of Him and accept Him as a Master, to submit the reason to Him that He may enlighten it, conscience that He may direct and command it, libertyand will that He may sustain and stimulate them by His spirit, to give up our life to Him that He may model it upon his own, to place our des tiny in His hands that He may accomplish it. The disciple accepts as truth all that Jesus said and taught he receives all that He has com manded as the law of absolute perfection, and he endeavours to do all that Jesus did, following His example as the spotless ideal of sanctity. Every human word contrary to His word is in error, every law in contradiction with His law is evil, every life in opposition with His life is corrupt. of Christ that He Open your hearts to the Spirit may become the divine principle of universal activity in you. Call no man on earth master you have in the order of eternal life only one Master, Christ. No other name under heaven is given to men to save them, free them from evil, uplift them to good. Jesus Christ remains for all humanity what He said that He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Whosoever does not know Christ does not know where he himself isgoing, he is not on the road, he struggles in the darkness or lies inert in the shadow of death and he who, having known Him, forsakes Him, strays in blindness and loses eternal life. No human science can show us our supreme destiny how could it clear the way for us No philosophy can instruct us about divine truth, and how shall it give light to the soul which hungers for God No created force can raise us to God, to the Infinite how can it give us that life of which God is the eternal nourishment The disciple of Jesus Christ escapes from the fatality of that weakness against which every living soul struggles and revolts, or under the weight of which it sinks at last in sadness and despair. He is freed from the service of false masters, for he knows their radical incompetence in the domain of destiny. If God exists they are incapable, with all their science and philosophy, of translating for us His impenetrable will. But, have never they say, there is no God. They proved it, nor even weakened the unshakable testimony by which all healthy and steadfast reason demonstrates God. The Divine Master, on the contrary, opens to the believer tTie way in which he must walk and into which our Master first entered He reveals to him the infinite truth of which He is the incarna tion, and pours into his will the Holy Spirit as a source of life springing from the bosom of God. All that was in Christ, who was substantially full of divinity, shines in His disciple his reason has thenceforth the only guide which does not deceive his conscience, the sole counsellor who does not lead astray his liberty, the only force which lifts him to the level of all duty and main tains him at the height of allsacrifice. The disciple of Jesus belongs no more to himself he makes one with Christ, and in this intimate and ineffable communion his own mind is supplanted by the mind of his Master in him...