The testimony.
The kernel of the gospel is the truth that Jesus was the Christ. He was the Person spoken of by all the prophets as to come. Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, born in the reign of Augustus Caesar, and crucified in that of Tiberius; known to his contemporaries in Judaea and Galilee as a Teacher and a Prophet, known to later ages by the Gospels which record his life and death and resurrection from the dead; is God's Christ. He came into the world, in accordance with the eternal purpose of God, to be the Teacher, the Savior, the Judge, the Lord, the King of the whole earth, the Head of the human race. He fulfilled in his own person all the predictions of the prophets; he accomplished by his work all that God had in store for the redemption of the sons of men. Whatever the Holy Ghost spoke of the Godhead, of the priesthood, of the sacrifice, of the reign, of the glorious kingdom of Messiah, has its fulfillment in the Lord Jesus. The truth, therefore, that Jesus was the Christ is the kernel of the whole gospel. But further, this is either a fact or it is not a fact. There is no cloudland of uncertain existence, no matter of doubtful disputation or of fluctuating opinion. Those who have told us these things are witnesses of what they knew, not disputers about what they thought. What they have delivered to us is their testimony. We must either accept it as true or reject it as false. It has met with both treatments in the world, and, whether believed or disbelieved, has been a potent factor in men's behavior. When believed, it has made the kind of man that Paul was, the kind of men and women that Aquila and Priscilla were. It has made men pure, holy, upright, patient, meek, kind, unselfish, self-denying, laboring for the good of others rather than for their own gain; with affections set on heavenly more than on earthly things; conscientious, true, faithful to their word; to be trusted and relied upon; great benefactors to their race, full of love to mankind. When disbelieved, it has not simply been set aside as a thing unworthy of credit, but it has set in action the most malignant passions in the human breast. Envy and jealousy, hatred and malice, have blazed up in all their fury against the authors and abettors of this testimony. You would think, judging by the fierce rage of the opponents, that there could not be a greater crime against humanity than to teach men to love God, to abstain from all evil, and to live in peace and good will towards one another. Judging by the rage of the opponents, you would think that a greater wrong could not be done to men than to tell them of life and rest and happiness in the eternal reach beyond the grave, as encouragements to patient well doing on this side the grave. Jews and heathens, so unlike one another in everything else, were exactly alike in their reception of this testimony. The Jews blasphemed and cursed and persecuted, and brought for punishment before the Roman tribunals those who gave testimony for Christ; the heathen, tolerant of every form of idolatry, let loose fire and sword and wild beast against the harmless disciples of the Lord Jesus. The accomplished philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, gave Justin Martyr to the executioner and Polycarp to the flames, with as little scruple as Nero tortured his Christian subjects at Rome. The scornful hatred of Tacitus for the pestilential superstition of the Christian was as bitter as the scurrilous wit of Lucian. In our own day many tongues are let loose against the testimony. New philosophers, new exponents of the physical laws by which the world consists, new pretenders to superior wisdom and wider intelligence in the various departments of human knowledge, however differing among themselves in the fundamental principles of their several schemes, agree in the scornful rejection of "the testimony of Jesus Christ." The Church meanwhile pursues her unwavering course. She holds in her hand the lamp of that truth which she did not invent, but which she received from God. That lamp sheds forth its heavenly light, whether men receive it or whether they shut it out from their hearts and walk on in darkness. For that truth the Church is ready now, as she ever was, to endure the scorn and hatred of mankind or to suffer imprisonment and death. Her office is to testify that Jesus is the Christ. By the grace of God she will continue that testimony until the Lord comes, and her witness to the absent is swallowed up in her adoration of the present, in visible power and glory.