And then, still further, let me remind you how the recognition of
Jesus as Christ is essential to giving its full value to the facts of
the manhood. 'Jesus died!' Yes. What then? What is that to me? Is
that all that I have to say? If His is simply a human death, like all
others, I want to know what makes the story of it a Gospel. I want to
know what more interest I have in it than I have in the death of
Socrates, or in the death of any man or woman whose name was in the
obituary column of yesterday's newspaper. 'Jesus died.' That is a
fact. What is wanted to turn the fact into a gospel? That I shall
know who it was that died, and why He died. 'I declare unto you the
gospel which I preach,' Paul says, 'how that _Christ_ died for our
sins, according to the Scriptures.' The belief that the death of
Jesus was the death of the Christ is needful in order that it shall
be the means of my deliverance from the burden of sin. If it be only
the death of Jesus, it is beautiful, pathetic, as many another
martyr's has been, but if it be the death of Christ, then 'my faith
can lay her hand' on that great Sacrifice 'and know her guilt was
there.'

So in regard to His perfect example. If we only see His manhood when
we are 'looking unto Jesus,' the contemplation of His perfection
would be as paralysing as spectacles of supreme excellence usually
are. But when we can say, '_Christ_ also suffered for us, leaving us
an example,' and so can deepen the thought of His Manhood into that
of His Messiahship, and the conception of His work as example into
that of His work as sacrifice, we can hope that His divine power will
dwell in us to mould our lives to the likeness of His human life of
perfect obedience.

So in regard to His Resurrection and glorious Ascension to the right