I should like to ask, Was He really the Son of God—­the great God-Man?  Did He leave heaven and come down to this world for a purpose?  Was it really to seek and to save?  I should like to begin with the manger, and to follow Him up through the thirty-three years He was here upon earth.  I should ask you what you think of His coming into this world and being born in a manger when it might have been a palace; why He left the grandeur and the glory of heaven, and the royal retinue of angels; why He passed by palaces and crowns and dominion and came down here alone.

I should like to ask you what you think of Him as a teacher.  He spake as never man spake.  I should like to take Him up as a preacher.  I should like to bring you to that mountain-side, that we might listen to the words as they fall from His gentle lips.  Talk about the preachers of the present day!  I would rather a thousand times be five minutes at the feet of Christ than listen a lifetime to all the wise men in the world.  He used just to hang truth upon anything.  Yonder is a sower, a fox, a bird, and He just gathers the truth around them, so that you cannot see a fox, a sower, or a bird, without thinking what Jesus said.  Yonder is a lily of the valley; you cannot see it without thinking of His words, “They toil not, neither do they spin.”

He makes the little sparrow chirping in the air preach to us.  How fresh those wonderful sermons are, how they live to-day!  How we love to tell them to our children, how the children love to hear!  “Tell me a story about Jesus,” how often we hear it; how the little ones love His sermons!  No story-book in the world will ever interest them like the stories that He told.  And yet how profound He was; how He puzzled the wise men; how the scribes and the Pharisees would never fathom Him!  Oh, do you not think He was a wonderful preacher?

I should like to ask you what you think of Him as a physician.  A man would soon have a reputation as a doctor if he could cure as Christ did.  No case was ever brought to Him but what He was a match for.  He had but to speak the word, and disease fled before Him.  Here comes a man covered with leprosy.

“Lord, if thou wilt thou canst make me clean,” he cried.

“I will,” says the Great Physician, and in an instant the leprosy is gone.  The world has hospitals for incurable diseases; but there were no incurable diseases with Him.

Now, see Him in the little home at Bethany, binding up the wounded hearts of Martha and Mary, and tell me what you think of Him as a comforter.  He is a husband to the widow and a father to the fatherless.  The weary may find a resting-place upon that breast, and the friendless may reckon Him their friend.  He never varies.  He never fails, He never dies.  His sympathy is ever fresh, His love is ever free.  Oh, widow and orphans, oh, sorrowing and mourning, will you not thank God for Christ the comforter?

But these are not the points I wish to take up.  Let us go to those who knew Christ, and ask what they thought of Him.  If you want to find out what a man is nowadays, you inquire about him from those who know him best.  I do not wish to be partial; we will go to His enemies, and to His friends.  We will ask them, What think ye of Christ?  We will ask His friends and His enemies.  If we only went to those who liked Him, you would say: