Page:SermonsFromTheLatins.djvu/330

Men are ever inclined to adore as gods the sources of great benefits. Thus the Pagans adore the sun, the Egyptians the elephant, and the Israelites in the desert, when hungering for the flesh-pots of Egypt, adored a golden calf. To empower Christ to confer such incalculable blessing on mankind and to expect them, nevertheless, to abstain from idolatry, would argue on the part of God an ignorance as well of human nature as of future events. In that case, too, Christ, whose holiness and disinterestedness are vouched for even by Pilate and Judas — Christ would have proved false to His mission by arrogating to Himself divine worship, and society to-day, plunged as it is in idolatry, is more iniquitous than it was two thousand years ago. Why, in that case we would have to conclude that God's providence has lost its hold on the guidance of human events, and that the marvels Christ and His followers wrought, and the wondrous endurance of His doctrines and institutions, have been effected independent of and in opposition to Almighty God! If Christ was not God, He was king of hypocrites, something even His worst enemies have not dared to assert. The Apostles, who knew Him as brother knows brother, testified to His sanctity with their love and their lives. His enemies even, the Jews, declared no man had ever spoken as He, and admitted He went around doing good. And are we, as they, to believe Him in all things but the assertion of His divinity? Are we to revere Him as everything save as God? " I am the Son of God," He declared; and though the rabble stoned Him as