When we contemplate this scheme as a whole, and glance at the execution and results of it, three things strike us with astonishment.  First, its prodigious originality, if the expression may be used.  What other man has had the courage or elevation of mind to say, “I will build up a state by the mere force of my will, without help from the kings of the world, without taking advantage of any of the secondary causes which unite men together—­unity of interest or speech, or blood-relationship.  I will make laws for my state which shall never be repealed, and I will defy all the powers of destruction that are at work in the world to destroy what I build”?

Secondly, we are astonished at the calm confidence with which the scheme was carried out.  The reason why statesmen can seldom work on this vast scale is that it commonly requires a whole lifetime to gain that ascendency over their fellow-men which such schemes presuppose.  Some of the leading organisers of the world have said, “I will work my way to supreme power, and then I will execute great plans.”  But Christ overleaped the first stage altogether.  He did not work his way to royalty, but simply said to all men, “I am your king.”  He did not struggle forward to a position in which he could found a new state, but simply founded it.

Thirdly, we are astonished at the prodigious success of the scheme.  It is not more certain that Christ presented himself to men as the founder, legislator, and judge of a divine society than it is certain that men have accepted him in these characters, that the divine society has been founded, that it has lasted nearly two thousand years, that it has extended over a large and the most highly-civilised portion of the earth’s surface, and that it continues full of vigour at the present day.

Between the astonishing design and its astonishing success there intervenes an astonishing instrumentality—­that of miracles.  It will be thought by some that in asserting miracles to have been actually wrought by Christ we go beyond what the evidence, perhaps beyond what any possible evidence, is able to sustain.  Waiving, then, for the present, the question whether miracles were actually wrought, we may state a fact which is fully capable of being established by ordinary evidence, and which is actually established by evidence as ample as any historical fact whatever—­the fact, namely, that Christ professed to work miracles.  We may go further, and assert with confidence that Christ was believed by his followers really to work miracles, and that it was mainly on this account that they conceded to Him the pre-eminent dignity and authority which he claimed.  The accounts which we have of these miracles may be exaggerated; it is possible that in some special cases stories have been related which have no foundation whatever; but on the whole, miracles play so important a part in Christ’s scheme, that any theory which