MORAY PLACE MEN'S INSTITUTE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10572, 20 January 1896, Page 3

MORAY PLACE MEN'S INSTITUTE.

ADDRESS BY THE KEY. B. WADDEIX

Thore was a large attendance at the Moray place Congregational Churoh yesterday afternoon, when the Rev. Rutherford Waddell gave au address in connection with the Moray place Men's Institute on " The Knowledge and Verification of Jesus Christ." The question, he said, whether or not Christ was knowable, and God was knowable, lies behind all othor problems, aud until a man bad mado up his mind ou that question he had not really grappled with the great problem of live. He went on to point cut that the distinctive feature of the Christian religion was the personality of Christ. Not oue of the founders of other religious preached themselves or asked allegiance to themselves. They asked allegiance to iheir truth, but Christ said :" I am the truth ; lam the life. Believe Me, trust Me, »nd obey Me, and you Fhall como to know My truth." Other religious teachers said, "Accept my truth; never mind me" ; but Christ said His truth would have no efficacy apart from Himself. There were two kinds of knowledge we might have about a person—intellectual knowledge and vital knowledge. Christ's biography gave us an intellectual knowledge of Himself, but it assumed that it was possible to know Him in the vital sense of knowing Him as we know our most intimate friends —to know Him oo tbat our life would become sensitive to His thought, to His spirit, to His teaching, so that our hearts would become possessed by a passion for Him, and by a strength imparted to us by His strength. How could we come to have this knowledge of Jesus Christ? The question was: "How can we come to know a j,erson ?" There .were three, channels by which we came to known each other—by communion, by trust,.by obediencs. Now the devastating error of all time hud b.en tbis: To present Christianity as a thiiig of propositions, creeds, and doctrines instead of the love and loj.ilty to a person. The reason Christianity made so much of faith and love and trtißC was tbat that Was tho only way to como to know a perHon — by love, trust, sympathy, and reverence. Now, coming to tbe verification of Christ, How could we prove our knowledge of a person ? Agnostics asserted that man had no (acuities by means of which he could know anything oulsrdo cf what his senses reported. Those who believed in .Christianity met tbat assertion by presenting a body of witnesses who -ssetted the opposite of that; they met it first of all by presenting Christ himself. He asserted that Ho knew God ; tbat He was of tbe spiritual world ; and tbat He had come forth from that spiritual world. Now what could be said with regard to that assertion of Josus Christ?, There were jast ttaiea possibiliti.s— either that Christ was deceived Him«elf, or that He was deceiving others, or that He was not correc.ly reported. He would ask hie heaieis to an.ume that Christ was substantially reported in the New Testament, as there was not timn to go into that question that afternoon, but, if desired, he would deal with it on another occasion. As to whether Christ wss a coßPciops impostor, no critic of any consequence advanced such a proposition as that. Then the only isßumptioQ left was tbat He deceived Himself ; bnt if Christianity was a delusion the progress of 1900 years bad been based'upon-what was in reality not a truth, and instead of resting upon what was true had gone forward upon delusion and f au'-y and lies. Thet seemed to he a reductio ad absurdum. It was impossible so far an be could see to hold that Christ Hinifelf was deceived. There was so niu-ih truth in what Christ had taught that it was incredible that the main body of if, should be delu-ioo. But more than that. There was a large body of men and woman who affirmed that they hid put Christ lo the test— that they had come to verify Christ iv their own experience, that their lives had been changed, and that they had come to know Christ in . the finer seusa which transformed life. Hundreds of men and yeomen to-day would testify that what Chris, wrought hundreds of years ago had been wrought to-day and by a living Christ. The question w.vs: What were we to make of these men and women ? Ho went on to a»k: "Are there faculties for apprehending spiritual things-—for attaining a knowledge of them similar to that which we have accumulated in lho domains ot art and m.ithfiua&tics, of poetry and iuusic ?" That qiiocticn found its answer in the Bible, in Christ, iv the nincioea centuries of Christian progress. If that was not a verification of the facts th_t Christ affirmed anil of Christ Himself, then he (tbe spe^kar) could not think what verification was. '