Page 79 - HSLChristmasAnthology

HSL Christmas Anthology page 79
200 SAINT BERNARD AND OTHER PAPERS
carried up into heaven," and " sat on the right hand
of God."His friends and followers went about from place to

place, and preached his doctrines, but gradually added
many more of their own. They said that he was the
Anointed, the Messiah, the Christ, who was foretold
in the Old Testament, and that did strange things
called miracles ; that at a marriage feast, where wine
was wanted, he changed several barrels of water into
wine of excellent quality ; that he fed five thousand men
with five loaves, walked on the water, opened the eyes,
ears and mouths of men born blind, deaf, and dumb,
and at a touch or a word brought back a maimed limb.
They called him a Saviour sent from God to redeem
the Jews, and them only, from eternal damnation ;
next, said that he was the Saviour of all mankind —
Jews and Gentiles too ; that he was a sacrifice offered
to appease the wrath of God, who had become so angry
with his children that He intended to torment them all
for ever in hell. By and by his followers were called
Christians — that is, men who took Jesus for the Christ
of the Old Testament; and in their preaching they
did not make much account of the noble ideas Jesus
taught about man, God, and religion, or of his own
great manly life; but they thought his death was the
great thing, and that was the means to save men from
eternal torment. Then they went further, and de
clared that Jesus was not the son of Joseph and Mary,
but the Son of God and Mary — miraculously born ;
next, that he was God's only Son, who had never had
any child before, and never would have another ; again,
that he was a God who had lived long before Jesus
was born, but for the then first time took the human
form ; and at last, that he was the only God, the