who sends a conscious thrill pulsating through the sleeping soul. The idea of life in connexion with Christ is of such frequent occurrence in the writings of Paul and John that it is hardly necessary to refer to particular passages. It evidently expresses what to them was a heart-felt reality. They had passed out of death into life." They had seen 'the life,' and through that vision had entered into 'fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.'2 Paul felt that his old self had been crucified with Christ,' and it was no longer he that lived, but Christ that lived in him.3 He was anxious that Christ should be formed in his disciples,4 and should dwell in their hearts by faith.5 Such language expresses an abounding sense of a new spirit of life' which had come to them in Christ, filling them with an unexpected love and holy self-devotion, which took possession of them, driving out the old selfishness and pride and worldliness, and converting their belief in God into a consciousness of his living touch upon the soul. Now, this experience is repeated through the ages, and is, in numberless cases, as vivid and coercive to-day as it was eighteen centuries ago.

But, it may be said, we are here falling into the error which has been pointed out, of misinterpreting what is purely a Divine experience, unconditioned by past history, and it is only through a confusion of thought that we ascribe it to the influence of Jesus. Knowing the danger, let us tread warily. First, then, it seems to be as certain a fact as anything in the past can be, that Jesus made a profound personal impression upon his immediate disciples, and that this impression, though largely conveyed through the instrumentality of teaching, was something quite apart from the mere matter of his teaching. If some comfortable and self-satisfied sophist had said the same things, he would not have touched the heart of the world. It is the personal force behind, the native power of commanding men, that drives 2 I John i. 1-3.

1 I John iii. 14.

4 Gal. iv. 19.

5 Eph. iii. 17.

3 Gal. ii. 20.

teaching home; and if words of grace and truth lingered in the ears of the multitude after they had listened to one of Christ's discourses, it was the tone and look that made the words live, and wakened in the hearers the sleeping energy of emotion and conviction. Again, it will hardly be denied that Jesus brought into the world a new ideal of life, that of a holy and loving Son of God, with all the fulness of meaning that these words contain. The ideal is still there, it may be in fragmentary form, and with mists of legend hanging about it, but still unmistakable in its beauty and purity, shining as a heavenly light over this dark and troubled world. Something too of the old personal power lingers in the records; and as we read, a great love towards him leaps up, and the inward life of that master-spirit lays its impress upon the heart.

There is another source of influence which must be traced to him. The life passed from soul to soul, making a community of brethren, bound to one another in holy fellowship, through the pervasive energy of the same spirit; and through all the degradation and corruption of a Church become worldly, the heavenly pattern has never been lost; but the spirit of the crucified still broods over the moral chaos, and the eternal word which spoke in Christ still breathes from human lips and shines in human deeds. And so there is a permanent Christ-life in the world, a life which has come down through a long line of saints, in whom it has been continually renewed from the original source; and into this life we can enter, losing in its pure flood the cares and sorrows and sins of self. Thus Christ remains for us a quickening spirit'; not only a wise teacher and holy example outside us, but an indwelling life, which freely shapes itself to meet the conditions of the time, and may utter new teachings, and perform new deeds, but always retains unaltered. at the centre the sacred ideal of perfect Sonship to God.

And now we come to a profound experience, which is not indeed equally felt by all, but is surely characteristic of

Christendom as a whole. God has been brought in Christ closer to the souls of men, or, to speak perhaps more correctly, his constant nearness to them has come more distinctly into consciousness, and taken strong hold upon their faith. In seeing Christ they have seen the Father; and where discipleship has been true and fervent, they have lived in an exalted sense of Divine communion, wholly different in kind from the belief in God which they had derived from other sources. The perception of this difference naturally loses much of its clearness, or perhaps vanishes altogether, in those who have been imbued with the Christian spirit from their earliest years; but among the first disciples the newly felt relation to God was so vivid that it marked them off from the surrounding world. They were of God; their fellowship was with him; their citizenship was in heaven. And among those of a later time there have been multitudes to whom for a long period Christianity has been something conventional, a thing for which perhaps they would have been willing to fight and die, but the inner meaning of which has been hidden from their eyes; and then suddenly a Divine light has shone into their souls from him, and the heavens have seemed opened once more to human faith and aspiration. This experience is closely connected with what we have laid down. as the ideal of humanity. Father and Son are correlative terms; and just in proportion as any man approaches the ideal of Divine Sonship, he must throw light upon both terms of the relation. Without considering at present whether Jesus has completely realized that ideal or not, we may say that he has at least impressed it upon the world, and stands before the eyes of men as its representative; and hence it is that in seeing into his spirit we look at the same time into the deep things of God.

It is chiefly when the sense of sin and of spiritual desolation is ready to spring into life that this experience reaches its clearest consciousness. At such times men seem to hear in the tender pleadings of Christ the voice of God himself

calling them to a new life of faith and righteousness. This conviction of a Divine call acts powerfully upon their moral life, and rends the veil which hid the depths of their own spiritual being; and thenceforward God, as manifested in Christ, seems ever with them, and his word in their own conscience and heart becomes articulate, and is revered as the admonition of a Divine guide and counsellor along their daily walk. But, above all, a sense is awakened of God's forgiving and saving love, and a blessed light steals into the darkness of self-despair. In Christ the love of heaven has been brought down to earth; the love of God has been shed abroad in the hearts of men, and multitudes have rested in it, and found there the only spring of true and eternal life.

Such, then, are the experiences on which our Christology must rest. It is chiefly from those last described that the ecclesiastical dogma has been gradually developed; but they may perhaps be susceptible of a different interpretation, which will be more consonant with the present state of our knowledge and thought, and it is certain that they may and do arise independently of the dogma. The grand spiritual impression which Christ has made upon his disciples belongs to Christendom: the doctrine which seeks to explain this varies its form according to the school of theology in which it is framed. We must remember that the religious experience is the vital thing, and that the disputatious opinions, under which it has been so often smothered, are not essential. In conducting our investigation we may conveniently inquire into the meaning of the terms which are most commonly in use, and which are repeatedly employed in the earliest records of Christianity.

The oldest Christian confession declared that Jesus was the Christ. The word Christ is of course a figurative expression, denoting one who was, as it were, anointed by God, like a king or a priest, for the fulfilment of a particular function, and is properly applicable therefore only to the

human and historical Jesus, the man approved of God, and chosen for a certain purpose. It was originally connected with a number of ideas which have been dissipated by the facts of history. A Messiah was expected by the Jews; and the Messianic idea in its full development is a piece of Jewish mythology, involving a fight with Antichrist, the submission of the Gentiles, the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, and a glorious reign in Jerusalem. Some of these obsolete notions were inevitably mingled with the earliest confession of Christian faith, and there must have been keen disappointment when the first generation had passed away, and no sign of the Son of Man had appeared in the sky. The Church, indeed, has for the most part only postponed the fulfilment of the primitive expectations, and has accepted as Divine revelation the wild visions that shaped themselves in the despairing dreams of Judaism. But these apocalyptic fancies are only a temporary form of the spiritual longing for the establishment of a kingdom of God and the final triumph of righteousness; and while the latter enters deeply into the heart of Christian faith, the former belong to the imagination, which, borrowing from the modes of thought of any given time, loves to exhibit the spiritual idea in a definite picture. We must strip off the mythology if we wish to reach the permanent truth which lies at the heart of the Messianic idea. The word Christ,' consecrated, as it has been, by so many centuries of usage, may serve to represent to us this truth. Let us endeavour to detect its essential meaning.

First, it reminds us that the appearance of Jesus in the world was providential. He was not merely the product of his time, expressive of a random drift in the affairs of men, the largest bubble, as it were, on the stream of events, which would have flowed on just as certainly and strongly without bubbles. It seems clear from the brief records of his life. that he was conscious of a Divine mission which he was bound to fulfil, that he believed himself to have been sent into the