05-04-2026, 05:58 AM
Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion - 1908
NINETEENTH OBJECTION. IS JESUS CHRIST ANYTHING MORE THAN A GREAT PHILOSOPHER, A GREAT BENEFACTOR OF MANKIND, A GREAT PROPHET? IS HE REALLY GOD?
Answer. Listen to His own reply.
"Yes, you have said it, I am God. What! so long a time have I been with you; and have you not known me? He that seeth me, seeth the Father also; I and my Father are one!!!"*
One would require a whole book to treat this question as it deserves. We have already touched upon it, in proving the divinity of the Christian religion. However, we must press it further, and develop a point on which our whole faith reposes.
Jesus Christ is the Hero of the Gospel.†
And first, mark the gigantic proportions of that figure, compared to all others, even to the greatest! All other men quite die; they make a noise during their passage, they disturb the world . . . and after them, what remains of it all? Their names, lauded or scorned at first, becoming indifferent after a time, are finally buried in the pages of some books. They no longer live on the earth.
Jesus Christ alone lives still, lives always, lives everywhere. He is present to the world. To-day, as much as 1900 years ago; in Paris, in London, in Rome, in St. Petersburg, in Asia, in America, everywhere, He is adored or hated; in all countries He is defended and attacked, received and rejected, as in the days of His mortal life. He is at the bottom of all those great movements which cause the world to shake; He is the chief question, the centre in which meet all the questions which touch the heart of humanity.
He lives, He speaks, He commands, He teaches, He forbids; He develops His all-powerful existence in Christianity, of which He is the principle, the soul, and the summary. The fate of the one is the fate of the other; for Christianity is the sequel of the life of Jesus Christ in the universe, throughout all the ages.
Then Jesus Christ is a universal, continuous, actual fact, acting these nineteen centuries past, written upon the human generations, upon all countries, upon all peoples of the world, in living characters. It is an exceptional life which penetrates the whole world. All passes away, all dies around him; He alone, HE ALONE lives and endures! "Jesus Christ, yesterday, and to-day, and the same for ever!" (Heb. xiii. 8.)
He is, then, something more than a mere man, and the great Napoleon was right when he said, "I have had experience of men, and I tell you, that this one was more than a man."
2d. And, stranger still, and peculiar to Jesus Christ alone, the existence which has filled the universe since its first apparition on earth, filled with the same omnipotence the ages which preceded it, even up to the birth of the world. This same Jesus, for whom have lived, do live, and ever will live, the Christian generations, it is for Him that the generations of the ancient faithful, the disciples of Moses, the prophets, and the patriarchs have lived! It is in Him they have hoped; it is for Him that they have looked; it is He whom they have so loved! The sun, in his meridian, bathes in his rays all space, that which he has passed in his course, and that which he has yet to travel through; so Jesus Christ, the centre of humanity, enlightens, quickens all things, the past, the present, and the future.
3d. Jesus Christ, and He alone, is the type of perfection, the model after which the moral civilized world is formed, the mould into which humanity casts itself, as it were, to reform its vices. What else is virtue but the imitation of Jesus Christ?
There is nothing in common between Him and any other known type of perfection, whether Jewish, Greek, or Roman. He is Himself, He is alone, He is without a parallel, He is above all.
In human perfection, there is always competition, one man surpasses another, parallels may always exist. Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, is the exception. There is a solution of continuity between His perfection and that of human beings.
What name can be placed beside His? Whom would one venture to compare to Him? The saints, who are the heroes of virtue on earth, are but His pale copies.
None think, none have ever thought to equal Him; for they feel that it is no longer a question of possible rivalry. All is effaced in His light, as the factitious lights of the earth become pale when the sun bursts forth in all its splendor. He has also said this Himself, "I am the light of the world."
And this superhuman perfection is a phenomenon without antecedents, it is preceded by nothing, prepared by nothing. It arrives like the doctrine it teaches, all created. It participates in no theological or philosophical school; it is without a cause, producing or explaining it, unless it is the presence of Perfection itself, which is God. It gives light to all things, and receives light from nothing; it is the concentration of all light.
Another observation not less striking, and peculiar to Jesus alone: with Him, this truly divine perfection, which seems so much elevated above humanity, inaccessible to our weakness, is nevertheless the most practical, the most imitable, the most fruitful, the only one fruitful in imitators and disciples. It proposes itself for imitation to all men, to the child and the aged man, to the ignorant and the learned, the poor and the rich, to the beginner as much as to him who has long persevered. It seems made for each one in particular. It adapts itself to all, and reforms all; it is perfection for all!
Who does not discern here the stamp of Divinity? Can man do any thing of all this?
Finally, the last trait of the perfection of Jesus Christ; superhuman, like all the other traits, and, like all the others, peculiar to Him alone, His perfection is without excess.
Man always carries his good qualities to excess. Feeling himself weak, he prefers, from fear of failing, to exceed even in good. St. Vincent de Paul was humble, but he appears to carry to excess his low opinion of himself; St. Charles was austere, but his austerity appears alarming to us; St. Francis was poor, but his self-imposed privations are almost carried too far, etc.; human weakness pierces through the heroism of their virtues. In Jesus Christ, the good is perfectly true and genuine; nothing is extravagant; the perfection of the divine nature is made manifest, and blends itself with the real and virtuous emotions of human nature. In Him all the man appears. The God and the man are complete.
And on this account, this Model so perfect never causes any to despair; on the contrary, it is sweet, mild, and amiable; it is the reality of a virtue, both perfect and possible, proposed for imitation to mankind by a God-man, as truly man as He is God.
What a singular and marvellous fact? What a prodigy is Jesus Christ! . . . Who would not exclaim: "Behold the finger of God!"
4th. And His doctrine! And that word, which, during eighteen centuries that it has been meditated on, discussed, attacked, dissected by every variety of knowledge, by the most profound geniuses, has excited all kinds of hatred, been applied to communities, nations, individuals, has never been convicted of error! "It ever remains the light of the world;" and each attempt to destroy it does but verify what the Master predicted. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."
Wherever this doctrine is known, it penetrates civilization, moral and intellectual life, progress, enlightenment; where it does not reign, and in proportion as it is less and less known, degradation, lethargy, barbarism, death, mark its absence.
It is this doctrine, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which has founded our modern society; which has become the guide, the directing torch of human reason and philosophy; and whether voluntarily or involuntarily, it is with the very means that Jesus Christ has given them, that unbelieving Christians argue against Him.
"Never man," said the Jews, "spake as did this man!" Open the gospel, in fact. What unheard-of power! What authority! What calmness! What celestial simplicity it manifests! . . . Jesus teaches what He sees, what He knows. He does not argue; He does not seek to prove, to convince; His word is sufficient for Him; He is sure, He affirms. None but God made man, and speaking to men, can use such language.
Furthermore, the word of Jesus Christ proves its own divine origin, for it unceasingly affirms His divinity.
He calls Himself God, the Son of God,* Christ, the Truth, the Life, the Saviour, the Messiah.
"If thou art the Christ," said the Jews to Him, "tell us." "I speak to you," He answered them, "and you do not believe Me. The miracles that I do in the name of My Father bear witness of Me. I and My Father are one." They desired to stone Him, instead of believing these words: "Why would you stone Me?" said Jesus to them.
"Because of Thy blasphemy, and because, being man, Thou makest Thyself God."
The woman of Samaria spoke to Him of Christ, the Redeemer, who should save mankind, and teach them all truth. "I am He," said He to her, "I who speak to thee."
Another time He is teaching the assembled crowd: "As the Father raiseth up the dead, and giveth life, so the Son also giveth life to whom He will . . . that all men may honor the Son, as they honor the Father. He who honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father who hath sent Him." (John v. 21.)
"God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, so that all who believe in Him may not perish, but may have eternal life . . . God sent His Son into the world, that the world might be saved by Him."
"He who believes in Him shall not be condemned, but he who believes not is already judged, because he does not believe in the only begotten Son of God."
He has just healed the man born blind; the latter, driven from the synagogues by the Pharisees, because he declared that his benefactor was at least a prophet, finds Him, and throws himself at His feet. "Do you believe in the Son of God?" Jesus asks him. "Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?" "Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee." And the poor man answers, "I believe, Lord!" and, prostrating himself, he adores Him.
Is this enough, or will you hear more?
"Abraham, your father," said He to the Jews, "rejoiced to see my day, he saw it, and was glad."
The Jews answered, "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?"*
Jesus said to them, "Before Abraham was, I am."
To the sister of Lazarus, who comes to beseech Him to raise her brother to life, He saith: "I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me shall live, even after death. And whosoever lives in Me and believes in Me, shall not die eternally. Do you believe?" "Yes, Lord," answers the faithful Martha; "I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, who art come into the world."
And a short time afterward, when He had come before the already putrid corpse of Lazarus, he adds these divine words, "My Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me, and I know that Thou hearest Me always, but because of the people who stand about have I said it: that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me."
And He cried aloud, "Lazarus, come forth!" And the dead arose, yet bound — face, hands and feet — with the cerements of the grave! . . .
One might cite the whole of the gospels. Read, above all, the ineffable discourse before the Last Supper (St. John, xiv. 6th and following verses), "I am," said He, "the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by Me. If you had known Me, you would, without doubt, have known My Father also. He that seeth Me seeth the Father also."
"Whatsoever you shall ask the Father in My name, that will I do; that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If any one love Me, he will keep my word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him."
Even upon the cross, Jesus Christ affirms that He is God, and speaks as God. The good thief, crucified beside Him, enlightened by faith, exclaims: "Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom." "This day," Jesus answers, "thou shalt be with Me in Paradise."
Finally — for I must limit myself — the unbelieving Thomas sees Him, and touches Him after the resurrection; convinced by this evidence, he falls at His feet, and exclaims, "My Lord and my God!" Far from blaming him for this expression, Jesus approves of it: "Because thou hast seen, Thomas," said He to him, "thou hast believed. Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed!"
Mark what language! what a manner of acting! what omnipotence! How He causes Himself to be called God! How He has the tone and the accent of God! How He claims the right of divinity, faith, adoration, prayer, love, sacrifice!
Now, the inference to be drawn from all this is very simple, either Jesus Christ speaks the truth, or that which is not the truth. There is no medium here.
1st. If He speaks the truth, He is what He calls Himself, He is God. He is the eternal Son of the living God, blessed from all ages, and all His words, His actions, His miracles, His triumphs, are easily explained. Nothing is impossible to a God.
2d. If He does not speak the truth, He is either a madman or an impostor (a blasphemy I hardly dare write, though it be to confound it).
A madman, if He has not the conscious control of His own words and actions — a detestable impostor, if he utters falsehood with a knowledge of what he is doing.
Will you dare to say this? Jesus Christ, the perfection of wisdom, a madman!!! Jesus Christ, the most virtuous, the most holy of men, a liar, a sacrilegious impostor!!!
One must have lost his reason, and his moral sense, to put forth such insanity.
Then he is God.
Jesus Christ stands before human reason, as He stood before Caiaphas on the day of His Passion. "I adjure thee," said the high priest to Him, "in the name of the living God, to tell us if Thou art the Christ, the Son of God?" Jesus answered, "Thou hast said it. I am He."
Either one must believe or disbelieve this affirmation; there is no medium possible.
Either one must admit Jesus Christ in the most unqualified manner, or reject Him entirely. "Whoever is not for Him is against Him," whosoever does not adore Him, cannot, without being foolish and inconsistent, praise, admire, or laud Him as a wise or great Man, or as a Saint.
"But, perhaps," some one will say, "He only called Himself God to advance His doctrines with greater readiness?"
The difficulty remains entire; because no intention, however good, could possibly excuse such a huge and continuous imposture, and one would be obliged no less to conclude that the whole life of Jesus Christ, having been the affirmation of His divinity, was nothing but a tissue of madness and blasphemies.
But apart from this reason, the supposition is absolutely inadmissible. In fact:
Such a fiction, in the first place, would have destroyed His whole work, and annihilated all His doctrines. Jesus Christ has but one end in view, that of destroying idolatry, and re-establishing the universal reign of truth; by truth to restore virtue and holiness on earth; render to God that which belongs to God alone, the heart of man, his faith, his self-devotion, his love. With this thought, could He, unless He were really God, assume the divine title and claim its rights, without ruining fundamentally His whole design?
This pretended means, designed to support His doctrines, would precisely have been their greatest foe.
The impossible part, humanly speaking, of the preaching of Jesus Christ and of His apostles, was chiefly the inducing the nations to admit the divinity of that Jesus, poor, humiliated, a Man of sorrows, who died on a cross. Is it not this which is the most repugnant to reason in the Christian teaching? Is not this precisely the stumbling-block of the unbeliever? And is it such a means that Jesus Christ would have chosen to insure the adoption of His religion? But that would have been the height of folly! How strange a bait is that which terrifies a hundred times more than the hook itself!
The divinity of Jesus Christ once admitted, I conceive that it becomes a powerful means of inducing belief in His doctrines. But how could this hypothesis have been generally admitted? and how, without some evident and irresistible manifestation of divine omnipotence, could Jesus Christ have been regarded as God!
It would not require the period of two thousand years for the wise and learned ones of the world to expose and confound an impostor, and to impose perpetual silence on his followers. But no genius has ever brought forth any accepted proof that Jesus Christ was an Impostor.
Abraham Lincoln once very wisely said: "You can fool some people all the time, and you can fool all the people sometimes, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
Even Josephus, the Jewish Historian, pays the following beautiful tribute to the divinity of Christ: "Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the gentiles. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day." — The Works of Flavius Josephus, page 364.
No, no; I repeat it; in the presence of the superhuman character of Jesus Christ, in the presence of His words, His affirmations, His actions, and of His work, which is Christianity, there is for a reasonable and sincere man but one course to adopt; it is to fall at His feet, and adore the infinite love of a God, who has so loved the world that He has given to it His only Son, and to exclaim with St. Thomas in his regenerated faith, "My Lord and my God! Dominus meus et deus meus!"
NINETEENTH OBJECTION. IS JESUS CHRIST ANYTHING MORE THAN A GREAT PHILOSOPHER, A GREAT BENEFACTOR OF MANKIND, A GREAT PROPHET? IS HE REALLY GOD?
Answer. Listen to His own reply.
"Yes, you have said it, I am God. What! so long a time have I been with you; and have you not known me? He that seeth me, seeth the Father also; I and my Father are one!!!"*
One would require a whole book to treat this question as it deserves. We have already touched upon it, in proving the divinity of the Christian religion. However, we must press it further, and develop a point on which our whole faith reposes.
Jesus Christ is the Hero of the Gospel.†
And first, mark the gigantic proportions of that figure, compared to all others, even to the greatest! All other men quite die; they make a noise during their passage, they disturb the world . . . and after them, what remains of it all? Their names, lauded or scorned at first, becoming indifferent after a time, are finally buried in the pages of some books. They no longer live on the earth.
Jesus Christ alone lives still, lives always, lives everywhere. He is present to the world. To-day, as much as 1900 years ago; in Paris, in London, in Rome, in St. Petersburg, in Asia, in America, everywhere, He is adored or hated; in all countries He is defended and attacked, received and rejected, as in the days of His mortal life. He is at the bottom of all those great movements which cause the world to shake; He is the chief question, the centre in which meet all the questions which touch the heart of humanity.
He lives, He speaks, He commands, He teaches, He forbids; He develops His all-powerful existence in Christianity, of which He is the principle, the soul, and the summary. The fate of the one is the fate of the other; for Christianity is the sequel of the life of Jesus Christ in the universe, throughout all the ages.
Then Jesus Christ is a universal, continuous, actual fact, acting these nineteen centuries past, written upon the human generations, upon all countries, upon all peoples of the world, in living characters. It is an exceptional life which penetrates the whole world. All passes away, all dies around him; He alone, HE ALONE lives and endures! "Jesus Christ, yesterday, and to-day, and the same for ever!" (Heb. xiii. 8.)
He is, then, something more than a mere man, and the great Napoleon was right when he said, "I have had experience of men, and I tell you, that this one was more than a man."
2d. And, stranger still, and peculiar to Jesus Christ alone, the existence which has filled the universe since its first apparition on earth, filled with the same omnipotence the ages which preceded it, even up to the birth of the world. This same Jesus, for whom have lived, do live, and ever will live, the Christian generations, it is for Him that the generations of the ancient faithful, the disciples of Moses, the prophets, and the patriarchs have lived! It is in Him they have hoped; it is for Him that they have looked; it is He whom they have so loved! The sun, in his meridian, bathes in his rays all space, that which he has passed in his course, and that which he has yet to travel through; so Jesus Christ, the centre of humanity, enlightens, quickens all things, the past, the present, and the future.
3d. Jesus Christ, and He alone, is the type of perfection, the model after which the moral civilized world is formed, the mould into which humanity casts itself, as it were, to reform its vices. What else is virtue but the imitation of Jesus Christ?
There is nothing in common between Him and any other known type of perfection, whether Jewish, Greek, or Roman. He is Himself, He is alone, He is without a parallel, He is above all.
In human perfection, there is always competition, one man surpasses another, parallels may always exist. Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, is the exception. There is a solution of continuity between His perfection and that of human beings.
What name can be placed beside His? Whom would one venture to compare to Him? The saints, who are the heroes of virtue on earth, are but His pale copies.
None think, none have ever thought to equal Him; for they feel that it is no longer a question of possible rivalry. All is effaced in His light, as the factitious lights of the earth become pale when the sun bursts forth in all its splendor. He has also said this Himself, "I am the light of the world."
And this superhuman perfection is a phenomenon without antecedents, it is preceded by nothing, prepared by nothing. It arrives like the doctrine it teaches, all created. It participates in no theological or philosophical school; it is without a cause, producing or explaining it, unless it is the presence of Perfection itself, which is God. It gives light to all things, and receives light from nothing; it is the concentration of all light.
Another observation not less striking, and peculiar to Jesus alone: with Him, this truly divine perfection, which seems so much elevated above humanity, inaccessible to our weakness, is nevertheless the most practical, the most imitable, the most fruitful, the only one fruitful in imitators and disciples. It proposes itself for imitation to all men, to the child and the aged man, to the ignorant and the learned, the poor and the rich, to the beginner as much as to him who has long persevered. It seems made for each one in particular. It adapts itself to all, and reforms all; it is perfection for all!
Who does not discern here the stamp of Divinity? Can man do any thing of all this?
Finally, the last trait of the perfection of Jesus Christ; superhuman, like all the other traits, and, like all the others, peculiar to Him alone, His perfection is without excess.
Man always carries his good qualities to excess. Feeling himself weak, he prefers, from fear of failing, to exceed even in good. St. Vincent de Paul was humble, but he appears to carry to excess his low opinion of himself; St. Charles was austere, but his austerity appears alarming to us; St. Francis was poor, but his self-imposed privations are almost carried too far, etc.; human weakness pierces through the heroism of their virtues. In Jesus Christ, the good is perfectly true and genuine; nothing is extravagant; the perfection of the divine nature is made manifest, and blends itself with the real and virtuous emotions of human nature. In Him all the man appears. The God and the man are complete.
And on this account, this Model so perfect never causes any to despair; on the contrary, it is sweet, mild, and amiable; it is the reality of a virtue, both perfect and possible, proposed for imitation to mankind by a God-man, as truly man as He is God.
What a singular and marvellous fact? What a prodigy is Jesus Christ! . . . Who would not exclaim: "Behold the finger of God!"
4th. And His doctrine! And that word, which, during eighteen centuries that it has been meditated on, discussed, attacked, dissected by every variety of knowledge, by the most profound geniuses, has excited all kinds of hatred, been applied to communities, nations, individuals, has never been convicted of error! "It ever remains the light of the world;" and each attempt to destroy it does but verify what the Master predicted. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."
Wherever this doctrine is known, it penetrates civilization, moral and intellectual life, progress, enlightenment; where it does not reign, and in proportion as it is less and less known, degradation, lethargy, barbarism, death, mark its absence.
It is this doctrine, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which has founded our modern society; which has become the guide, the directing torch of human reason and philosophy; and whether voluntarily or involuntarily, it is with the very means that Jesus Christ has given them, that unbelieving Christians argue against Him.
"Never man," said the Jews, "spake as did this man!" Open the gospel, in fact. What unheard-of power! What authority! What calmness! What celestial simplicity it manifests! . . . Jesus teaches what He sees, what He knows. He does not argue; He does not seek to prove, to convince; His word is sufficient for Him; He is sure, He affirms. None but God made man, and speaking to men, can use such language.
Furthermore, the word of Jesus Christ proves its own divine origin, for it unceasingly affirms His divinity.
He calls Himself God, the Son of God,* Christ, the Truth, the Life, the Saviour, the Messiah.
"If thou art the Christ," said the Jews to Him, "tell us." "I speak to you," He answered them, "and you do not believe Me. The miracles that I do in the name of My Father bear witness of Me. I and My Father are one." They desired to stone Him, instead of believing these words: "Why would you stone Me?" said Jesus to them.
"Because of Thy blasphemy, and because, being man, Thou makest Thyself God."
The woman of Samaria spoke to Him of Christ, the Redeemer, who should save mankind, and teach them all truth. "I am He," said He to her, "I who speak to thee."
Another time He is teaching the assembled crowd: "As the Father raiseth up the dead, and giveth life, so the Son also giveth life to whom He will . . . that all men may honor the Son, as they honor the Father. He who honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father who hath sent Him." (John v. 21.)
"God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, so that all who believe in Him may not perish, but may have eternal life . . . God sent His Son into the world, that the world might be saved by Him."
"He who believes in Him shall not be condemned, but he who believes not is already judged, because he does not believe in the only begotten Son of God."
He has just healed the man born blind; the latter, driven from the synagogues by the Pharisees, because he declared that his benefactor was at least a prophet, finds Him, and throws himself at His feet. "Do you believe in the Son of God?" Jesus asks him. "Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?" "Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee." And the poor man answers, "I believe, Lord!" and, prostrating himself, he adores Him.
Is this enough, or will you hear more?
"Abraham, your father," said He to the Jews, "rejoiced to see my day, he saw it, and was glad."
The Jews answered, "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?"*
Jesus said to them, "Before Abraham was, I am."
To the sister of Lazarus, who comes to beseech Him to raise her brother to life, He saith: "I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me shall live, even after death. And whosoever lives in Me and believes in Me, shall not die eternally. Do you believe?" "Yes, Lord," answers the faithful Martha; "I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, who art come into the world."
And a short time afterward, when He had come before the already putrid corpse of Lazarus, he adds these divine words, "My Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me, and I know that Thou hearest Me always, but because of the people who stand about have I said it: that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me."
And He cried aloud, "Lazarus, come forth!" And the dead arose, yet bound — face, hands and feet — with the cerements of the grave! . . .
One might cite the whole of the gospels. Read, above all, the ineffable discourse before the Last Supper (St. John, xiv. 6th and following verses), "I am," said He, "the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by Me. If you had known Me, you would, without doubt, have known My Father also. He that seeth Me seeth the Father also."
"Whatsoever you shall ask the Father in My name, that will I do; that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If any one love Me, he will keep my word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him."
Even upon the cross, Jesus Christ affirms that He is God, and speaks as God. The good thief, crucified beside Him, enlightened by faith, exclaims: "Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom." "This day," Jesus answers, "thou shalt be with Me in Paradise."
Finally — for I must limit myself — the unbelieving Thomas sees Him, and touches Him after the resurrection; convinced by this evidence, he falls at His feet, and exclaims, "My Lord and my God!" Far from blaming him for this expression, Jesus approves of it: "Because thou hast seen, Thomas," said He to him, "thou hast believed. Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed!"
Mark what language! what a manner of acting! what omnipotence! How He causes Himself to be called God! How He has the tone and the accent of God! How He claims the right of divinity, faith, adoration, prayer, love, sacrifice!
Now, the inference to be drawn from all this is very simple, either Jesus Christ speaks the truth, or that which is not the truth. There is no medium here.
1st. If He speaks the truth, He is what He calls Himself, He is God. He is the eternal Son of the living God, blessed from all ages, and all His words, His actions, His miracles, His triumphs, are easily explained. Nothing is impossible to a God.
2d. If He does not speak the truth, He is either a madman or an impostor (a blasphemy I hardly dare write, though it be to confound it).
A madman, if He has not the conscious control of His own words and actions — a detestable impostor, if he utters falsehood with a knowledge of what he is doing.
Will you dare to say this? Jesus Christ, the perfection of wisdom, a madman!!! Jesus Christ, the most virtuous, the most holy of men, a liar, a sacrilegious impostor!!!
One must have lost his reason, and his moral sense, to put forth such insanity.
Then he is God.
Jesus Christ stands before human reason, as He stood before Caiaphas on the day of His Passion. "I adjure thee," said the high priest to Him, "in the name of the living God, to tell us if Thou art the Christ, the Son of God?" Jesus answered, "Thou hast said it. I am He."
Either one must believe or disbelieve this affirmation; there is no medium possible.
Either one must admit Jesus Christ in the most unqualified manner, or reject Him entirely. "Whoever is not for Him is against Him," whosoever does not adore Him, cannot, without being foolish and inconsistent, praise, admire, or laud Him as a wise or great Man, or as a Saint.
"But, perhaps," some one will say, "He only called Himself God to advance His doctrines with greater readiness?"
The difficulty remains entire; because no intention, however good, could possibly excuse such a huge and continuous imposture, and one would be obliged no less to conclude that the whole life of Jesus Christ, having been the affirmation of His divinity, was nothing but a tissue of madness and blasphemies.
But apart from this reason, the supposition is absolutely inadmissible. In fact:
Such a fiction, in the first place, would have destroyed His whole work, and annihilated all His doctrines. Jesus Christ has but one end in view, that of destroying idolatry, and re-establishing the universal reign of truth; by truth to restore virtue and holiness on earth; render to God that which belongs to God alone, the heart of man, his faith, his self-devotion, his love. With this thought, could He, unless He were really God, assume the divine title and claim its rights, without ruining fundamentally His whole design?
This pretended means, designed to support His doctrines, would precisely have been their greatest foe.
The impossible part, humanly speaking, of the preaching of Jesus Christ and of His apostles, was chiefly the inducing the nations to admit the divinity of that Jesus, poor, humiliated, a Man of sorrows, who died on a cross. Is it not this which is the most repugnant to reason in the Christian teaching? Is not this precisely the stumbling-block of the unbeliever? And is it such a means that Jesus Christ would have chosen to insure the adoption of His religion? But that would have been the height of folly! How strange a bait is that which terrifies a hundred times more than the hook itself!
The divinity of Jesus Christ once admitted, I conceive that it becomes a powerful means of inducing belief in His doctrines. But how could this hypothesis have been generally admitted? and how, without some evident and irresistible manifestation of divine omnipotence, could Jesus Christ have been regarded as God!
It would not require the period of two thousand years for the wise and learned ones of the world to expose and confound an impostor, and to impose perpetual silence on his followers. But no genius has ever brought forth any accepted proof that Jesus Christ was an Impostor.
Abraham Lincoln once very wisely said: "You can fool some people all the time, and you can fool all the people sometimes, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
Even Josephus, the Jewish Historian, pays the following beautiful tribute to the divinity of Christ: "Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the gentiles. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day." — The Works of Flavius Josephus, page 364.
No, no; I repeat it; in the presence of the superhuman character of Jesus Christ, in the presence of His words, His affirmations, His actions, and of His work, which is Christianity, there is for a reasonable and sincere man but one course to adopt; it is to fall at His feet, and adore the infinite love of a God, who has so loved the world that He has given to it His only Son, and to exclaim with St. Thomas in his regenerated faith, "My Lord and my God! Dominus meus et deus meus!"
"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Abp. Lefebvre