Not merely, I believe that
there is an only Son of God: but I believe in a certain man, with a
certain character, who is that only Son of God.
And what, you will ask, does that mean?
To know that, I fear, we must go back many many hundred years, to the
times when the old martyrs confessed the Lord Jesus Christ before the
heathen. Those were times in which it was not enough to say the
Apostles' Creed in church. Men, ay, and tender women, and little
children, had to stand by it through terror and shame, and to die in
torments unspeakable, because they chose to say: "I believe in Jesus
Christ, our Lord." Now, what was it which made the heathen hate and
persecute and torture, and murder them for saying that? What was
there in those plain words of the Apostles' Creed which made the
great heathen emperors of Rome, and their officers and judges hunt
the Christians down like wild beasts for 300 years, and declare that
they were not fit to live? I will tell you. When the Christians
were brought before the emperor's judges for being Christians, they
did not merely say: "I believe that Jesus Christ's blood will save
my soul after death." They said that: but they said a great deal
more than that. If that had been all that the Christians said, the
judge would have answered: "What care I for your souls, or for your
notions about what will happen to them when you are dead? Go your
way.
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