both. Once, too, the possibility of going astray is admitted, it is impossible to limit it; if there can be such a thing as wandering, there may be wandering very far. But what it is not easy to. admit is that Christianity itself, in the only form in which it has ever existed and functioned as a religion among men, has been a mistake and misconception from the first. This is the ultimate meaning of these 'historical' and 'philosophical' appeals to the Church, and it certainly needs courage to assent to them when their meaning is perceived. Less courageous men, or perhaps we may be allowed to say men with a larger perception of what is involved, will feel bound to proceed with less precipitation. It is not self-evident that eternal truth, or rather our grasp and apprehension of it, can be in no way historically conditioned. It is not self-evident that no historical person could really sustain the phenomenon of the Christian religion. Dismissing the summary and à priori decisions in which courageous spirits lay down the law beforehand to a world of which we know so little, it is our duty to raise the second of the two questions with which this discussion opened, and to examine it as disinterestedly and as thoroughly as the first. It is the question, Does Jesus, as He is revealed to us in history, justify the Christian religion as we have had it exhibited to us in the New Testament? BOOK II THE HISTORICAL BASIS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH THE question which has just been stated might be approached in various ways. We might begin with an investigation of the sources to which we owe our knowledge of Jesus, build up by degrees such an acquaintance with Him as could be formed in this way, and then consider what relation it bore to the place He holds in New Testament faith. A moment's reflection on what has preceded will show the insufficiency and the impropriety of this method. The primary testimony of the disciples to Jesus was their testimony to His resurrection: except as Risen and Exalted they never preached Jesus at all. It was His Resurrection and Exaltation which made Him Lord and Christ, and gave Him His place in their faith and life; and unless their testimony to this fundamental fact can be accepted, it is not worth while to carry the investigation further. Nothing that Jesus was or did, apart from the Resurrection, can justify or sustain the religious life which we see in the New Testament. Those who reject the apostolic testimony at this point may, indeed, have the highest appreciation for the memory of Jesus; they may reverence the figure preserved for us by the evangelists as the ideal of humanity, the supreme attainment of the race in the field of character; but they can have no relation to Jesus resembling that in which New Testament Christians lived and moved and had their being. The general |