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The worst man, says the poet, knows more than the best man does. God in Christ appeared to men to help them to do, to awaken the life within them.

“Morality to the uttermost,
Supreme in Christ as we all confess,
Why need we prove would avail no jot
To make Him God, if God he were not?
What is the point where Himself lays stress?
Does the precept run, ‘Believe in good,
In justice, truth, now understood
For the first time?’–or, ‘Believe in ME,
Who lived and died, yet essentially
Am Lord of life’? Whoever can take
The same to his heart, and for mere love’s sake
Conceive of the love,–that man obtains
A new truth; no conviction gains
Of an old one only, made intense
By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.”

In this lies the most direct practical argument with regard to what is commonly called the Divinity of Christ. Here is a man whom those that magnify him the least confess to be a good man, the best of men. He says, “I and the Father are one.” Will an earnest heart, knowing this, be likely to draw back, or will it draw nearer to behold the great sight? Will not such a heart feel: “A good man like this would not have said so, were it not so. In all probability the great truth of God lies behind this veil.” The reality of Christ’s nature is not to be proved by argument. He must be beheld. The manifestation of Him must “gravitate inwards” on the soul. It is by looking that one can know. As a mathematical theorem is to be proved only by the demonstration of that theorem itself, not by talking about it; so Christ must prove himself to the human soul through being beheld. The only proof of Christ’s divinity is his humanity. Because his humanity is not comprehended, his divinity is doubted; and while the former is uncomprehended, an assent to the latter is of little avail. For a man to theorize theologically in any form, while he has not so apprehended Christ, or to neglect the gazing on him for the attempt to substantiate to himself any form of belief respecting him, is to bring on himself, in a matter of divine import, such errors as the expounders of nature in old time brought on themselves, when they speculated on what a thing must be, instead of observing what it was; this must be having for its foundation not self-evident truth, but notions whose chief strength lay in their preconception. There are thoughts and feelings that cannot be called up in the mind by any power of will or force of imagination; which, being spiritual, must arise in the soul when in its highest spiritual condition; when the mind, indeed, like a smooth lake, reflects only heavenly images. A steadfast regarding of Him will produce this calm, and His will be the heavenly form reflected from the mental depth.

But to return to the poem. The fact that Christ remains inside, leads the poet to reflect, in the spirit of Him who found all the good in men he could, neglecting no point of contact which presented itself, whether there was anything at this lecture with which he could sympathize; and he finds that the heart of the professor does something to rescue him from the error of his brain. In his brain, even, “if Love’s dead there, it has left a ghost.” For when the natural deduction from his argument would be that our faith

“Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,–
He bids us, when we least expect it,
Take back our faith–if it be not just whole,
Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it,
Which fact pays the damage done rewardingly,
So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!”