The only sign of real true
belief was that the man who professed to believe joined that society
which was instituted for the purpose of propagating and keeping alive
the truth of His Messiahship. If any one who professed to believe
stopped short of joining this society, his testimony to miracles would
have been valueless, for the miracles were wrought to convince him of
the truth of a matter in which, if he believed, he was bound to profess
his belief, and, if he did not, he laid himself open to the charge of
not really believing the testimony.
Now, of course, the reader is aware that we have a signal proof of the
validity of this argument in the well-known passage in Josephus which
relates to our Lord. Josephus was the historian, and the only historian,
of the period in which our Lord flourished. The eighteenth book of his
"Antiquities of the Jews" covers the whole period of our Lord's life. If
our Lord had merely attracted attention as a teacher of righteousness,
which it is allowed on all hands that He did, it was likely that He
would have been mentioned in this book along, with others whose teaching
produced far less results.
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