tory goes to prove that man is possessed of a higher ideal, which he is prone to judge too good for this world. Christ's part in the progress of humanity was to overturn this conception, and to show in His own person that the perfect life is not only suited to this world, and possible in it, but that man is man just in proportion as he brings this better self to full stature. So far as knowledge alone is concerned, even the most acute must be agnostic in a sense. From the very fact that man is a finite intelligence, he cannot grasp the whole plan of God's universal government. Finite theory can never be absolute on every side, if on any. But in the moral life, history has rendered agnosticism impossible. "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin but now they have no cloak for their sin.”1 After elaborate preparation for a unique moral personality, that Personality, as was inevitable, appeared. Our demonstrable knowledge of God must be very specially through the life of Christ. For that life, if man be in any spiritual sense a moral creation, was a necessary revelation. Had Christ not come when He did, the necessity for His coming would still remain; nay, the "fulness of the time" must have been perpetuated until the present moment. His personal differentia, constituted by His combination of absolute ideal and relative individuality, "is the necessary postulate which gives our will and feelings their final end, their highest good; not as if a moral consciousness which is based believeth not shall be damned,' allowing it to be genuine, is preaching the Gospel. It is not so. To say that he that believes the Gospel shall be saved, is not preaching the Gospel that has to be believed; nor is condemnation any part of good news."-The Problem of Life Considered, Samuel Edger, p. 262.

1 John xv. 22.

upon itself and might be sufficient for itself should need the thought of a transcendental supplement to eke out its partial insufficiency; on the contrary, all our willing would lack its highest and all-determining goal, our heart would lack rest and satisfaction, if the perfect ideal should be a mere subjective presentment of the mind without objective reality."1 Man, in short, as an intelligent being, finds God a convenient postulate in metaphysics. But, as a moral being, God is necessary to him. The former idea can never be entirely grasped, the latter is in Christ. Without His personal work, the fact that there is a divine state attainable by humanity, would be as unproved, and would remain as unprovable, as the other.

Christianity is not mysticism—no substance cut off from the thinker, no thought, human or divine, moving in vacuo, characterises it. A person, who showed what man can rise to be, is its centre; its principle is a work which every man, for the simple reason that he is human, can do. It is complete, both on the subjective and objective sides, with a completeness created at its origin by Christ's individual union of ideal and life.2

Nor does Christ's personal contribution to historical development end with this, its general aspect. His too were knowledge of the ideal, and power to apply it in practice. Under these two aspects His individuality may be viewed. One of them represents the universal, the other the particular, side of His life. Through His knowledge, then, Christianity was able to set before men His conception of life as it would be for a perfect

1 Philosophy of Religion, Pfleiderer, vol. iv. pp. 301, 302.

2 Cf. Ewald's four Mächte, in Revelation; its Nature and Record, p. 114, note 1,

being. Personality is the highest category known to us, and the more we can expand its content, the less hopeless does the search for absolute truth become. Only in a spiritual person limited like ourselves, yet uplifted as we are not, can we obtain any glimpse of that infinity for which we yearn. Christ's knowledge of the ideal, His clear conception of divine moral perfection, formed the medium through which His universal nature dominated His particular individuality. Most men, in whom a strong sense of right exists, control the wrong within them more by special means than by the right itself, just as orderly citizens interpose the police between themselves and the ill-affected. But in Christ contact with the ideal was so close as to deterImine the entire life. His knowledge of the perfect nature is best attested by the influence which His conception of it exercised over Him. He does not seek redemption from sin, for He is in possession of the means whereby sin may be overcome. Goodness finds embodiment in Him, because His is the secret of being good. He sees the source of good, and is therefore filled with conviction of the necessity for its revelation. Its incomparable value has impressed Him. He must needs impress it upon others.

Hence His knowledge of the ideal at once passes over into real activity. What He Himself added to historical development, then, was the universal principle implied in the conception that affinity for spiritual good, as it exists in human nature, is not only the sole channel of the highest revelation, but also the one means to the completest service of Deity. brought down perfection from heaven to earth, and this He was able to do because He knew God's nature

He

in the ideal, as well as man's possibilities in the real. A deep intuition of the one germinated with Him into fullest expansion of the other. "Monotheism used to mean: 'God is one; there are no divine men.' And Christ's reply was: 'Yes, there are men in whom you see and hear God.'" Christ's knowledge was thus peculiar to Himself, and, withal, was universal. He was acquainted with man's occasional inspiration, just as we are aware of our own heart-beats. But it was His to travel beyond this occasional contact with universality, by proclaiming, in deed no less than in word, that man is the only medium through which the divine personality, as such, can be revealed. By the declaration of this knowledge He annihilated at a stroke the distance of Deity. For He perceived that God's constant activity is here, even although His personal essence, as infinite, may be elsewhere. Knowledge of God is eternal life-a life which is fashioned after a perfect model, but which, if it is to be at all, must begin now and here. God, as Paul teaches, is above Christ, but only in Christ's personal knowledge has Deity a means of appealing directly to man, showing in a common nature the essential necessity for a common perfection.

If Christ were thus, in Schleiermacher's language, a creative person, He was also capable of exemplifying this creativeness in His life. He had the power to practise what He knew. From creation of the knowledge of God for the human race- -a universal moral revelation,— He passed to the application of that knowledge in His own life-a particular moral individuality. He was aware of his ability to develop, 1 The Lawbreaker, James Hinton, p. 186.

1

as far as was humanly possible, the natural element which differentiates man from the beasts. But He also possessed sufficient living energy to carry out this marvellous work. Divine, in that "divinity involves humanity in its highest potence," He was also human in that “humanity implies divinity to a minimum degree." Nor is this a mere speculative faith, as many would explain it. It is the single conclusion which historical circumstances, accurately interpreted, permit. It would be a mere assumption to declare that man is as God, more foolish indeed than to hold that " Iman is what he eats."2 But Christ, by His power of applying ideal conviction in practical life, has proved that there is an eternal part of humanity, which is amenable to, and can only grow up under, divine law. "Man is not worthy of God," said Pascal, "but he is not incapable of being rendered worthy." 3 Christ's practical application in life of His intense God-consciousness is our best witness of this. nearness to God does not rest upon anthropomorphic sonship, but on a conviction that the Eternal, nay, Eternity itself, is unmeaning in relation to a life of sin. His personal power, which is a great portion of His special contribution to religious development, consists in His practice of what is eternal and linked with the eternal. He knew the ultimate reality of life, and so was able to live in the light which it shed.

His

Personal ability to pass beyond the grosser limits of self belongs to every man. It was Christ's in the same

1 Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Art. on "The Personal Relation of Christ to the Human Race," G. W. Abbott, vol. viii. p. 356.

2 Feuerbach.

3 Pensées. K. Paul, p. 228.