The connection of the Christian events.
All history has an inner logic and meaning, contained in the person and the love of God. The secret links of events may be in part traced by us.
I. THE LIFE OF JESUS.
1. His simple and homely humanity. "Jesus of Nazareth," a name of scorn to many, of unpretentious lowliness to all.
2. His gracious, divinely attested career. Though poor and despised of men, the favor of God was upon him. And the proof was in the energy which went forth from Jesus. Again we come upon the note of power. "Mighty works" or "powers," "wonders" which called attention to will introducing change, and "signs," or all-significant acts which pointed to an unusual meaning, attested that Jesus was the Organ of Divine power and will.
3. This career was public, led in the light of day. The evidence was not only of the highest quality, but of the most unquestioned universality: "as you all know."
II. THE DESTINY OF JESUS TO DIE. To the superficial observer, or one knowing the facts only from the outside—a Jewish or Roman historian of the time—it might appear that Jesus perished as Judas the Gaulonite had done, the victim of the conflicts of the time. Jewish and Roman interest and passion seemed to unite against him, and he perished, the Victim of hate and misconception. But this was but a small part of the truth. To one instructed in the Divine logic of history, the death of Jesus was no accident; it lay in the laws of the moral order, in the "definite counsel and foreknowledge of God." Yet it was an act of wickedness to put him to death. Possibly we cannot solve in thought the seeming contradiction of the foreknowledge of God and the freedom of man. Enough that we can recognize separately the perfect truth of each.
III. THE UPRAISING OF JESUS. God's hand released him from the grasp of death. Here, again, was the operation of necessary law. It was impossible that he should be mastered by death—he who is the very affirmation of life. The absolute life cannot live beneath its negative. And here, again, the past furnishes its hints to the solution of the truth of the present. Spiritual life is imperishable; he who possesses it has an immediate consciousness of immortality, and can find parables of the victory of life over death everywhere.—J.