fellow man. But in part only. Men find the world much as they seek it, and so the Jews. And as ever we see them widely divided amongst themselves. Mutual recriminations are to poison existence; bitterness of soul is to be the heritage of all. And in the extremists we are to find change. With the desolation of the race has come new outlook. The vanities of this life have become a faded dream; their visions are of a kingdom yet to be theirs, but a kingdom as their whilom Master had once taught them, not of this world. Their old enthusiasm for the higher life. remains, but it is to seek outlet in other directions. Amongst them we are to find many exquisitely beautiful minds as witness so much of the New Testament itself. Its very preservation is testimony to those who must have loved its thought. And this is a fact lost sight of by many a critic. However we have these writings, there must have been those who delighted in them. And it is in them we find this bald lesson of experience put into exquisite teaching and, given a doctrinal character, treasured by those to whom it thus appealed. This is the secret of Christianity. Its truths went home to some human heart at the time, or they would never have come down to us. That is the great fact of their preservation. They live to-day because they lived then. As to the particular way of their being handed down, again human agency is marked in every line; but they have been handed down. Our canon is selection from innumerable similar writings, but it is the mind and heart of the selectors behind it all that is the illuminating fact. And how little we would incorporate of other writings then current and some of which are still in existence. We have the gospels of "The infancy of Jesus Christ," and of "The birth of Mary," the gospels of James and of Thomas and of Nicodemus. We have Sayings of Jesus," and a letter of the King of Edessa to our Lord, and we have the letter of our Lord in reply. We have the correspondence of Paul with Seneca, and his epistle to the Laodiceans. We have

the epistles of Clement, of Barnabas, of Ignatius, and of Polycarp, as well as the visions, commands and similitudes of Hermas. All these were of authority in their day. We read them and mark how admirably the canon was collected and revised. And in its very selection we see the germ of that ethical ideal which is to be the distinguishing feature of the new religion. Maybe it was born of past experience: maybe living in hate with all men proved terrible to many a Jew; maybe a craving for love became a passion; maybe all this; but here is the fact-we have this ideal established not merely as an effusion or some beautiful philosophical conception, but as an integral part of life itself.

73. And here for one moment we would again emphasize the fact that life is a duality. It is neither philosophy alone nor conduct alone, but the moral momentum of the two. It is not enough to have a magnificent ideal, unless it is also found to some extent in expression in actual life. And the measure of a religion is not the measure of its doctrine alone, nor of its practice alone, but of the two working together. And thus it may well be that we have two nominally the same faiths, but with the widest difference possible in the measure of their value. All tending to establish the simple fact that sweeping generalizations are mostly wrong. The maddest reasons are sometimes given for the wisest of actions, whilst beauty of justification is never wanting for the most contemptible of deeds. If we are called upon to judge at all, every particular case must be judged on its own particular merits, when both theory and practice will equally demand our attention.

And it is in the measure of its moral momentum that Christianity must find its justification. As a philosophy in its central idea--" Man shall not live for himself alone "-it certainly places its ideal high; and in resulting conduct, has it altogether proved wanting?

No doubt this ideal finds its sanction in many doctrinal developments, but the ideal itself is common to them all. And it is with this ideal, with its com

plementary conduct, that we here would alone deal. As regards such ideal, there is little divergence of opinion, however much there may be in the metaphysics of varying beliefs. In fact, in this creedless aspect of Christianity we find almost unanimity of thought. There may be men-men of the highest possible learning, ability, and integrity-who, with Mr. Robertson, may even doubt if Christ ever lived at all; and others who, with mystics like Newman, may find Him more real than even their own existence; and yet who will not differ one jot in their cardinal views of a Christian life. To them honour, courage, virtue, justice, generosity, self-denial, duty, industry, or disinterestedness all connote the same notions and in the same conditions we could equally rely on both. The fact is, however much a man may dissociate himself from Christianity, he is as certainly its consequence, its offspring, and the child of its environment, as the most truculent of its doctrinaires. In our daily life Christianity-i.e. creedless Christianity-is the atmosphere, the very air we breathe; and quite as much as those more orthodox, the creedless Christian helps to make it the power of the world. It is doubtful if creeds have been helpful either in the life of the individual or of the Church. Their origin is usually to be traced to quarrelling, and they have mostly been formulated not to please the founder, but to emphasize hate of other sects. They have been the rallying cries of armies in their fight, not with evil, but with one another. Hence the present note amongst the Churches that Christianity is a spent force. Rather would it seem that in its creedless form never was it such a power in our land. It is getting into the life of the nation. The new generation has far more the spirit of the Founder than any generation that is gone, our own included. Let me give one happy example. The Boy Scout movement, with its pretty little lady offshoot, the "Brownies."

Of no creed, the movement embraces all creeds. And what its central thought? The very central thought

of Christianity itself, that once every day a member shall exercise self-denial, shall do a kindness, to give pleasure to another. And, amazing fact, there are members who live up to this standard. For myself, I should have thought one such act a week was sufficiently exigent. Once a week to do something one does not wish to do for the sake of some one else is—well, we won't discuss that matter. Happily for my peace of mind I belong to the old generation whose maxim is, "Do as I say and not as I do." Perhaps that is why the rising one does not think very much of our opinions.* 74. In these pages I have severely excluded all comment on any matter relating to doctrine, but as there is complete unanimity in regard to this central truth of Christianity, it seems it may simplify our inquiry if we follow it as our guide and still regard ethical standards as more or less co-extensive with religious ideals.

And in itself it is but part of the still more comprehensive teaching of our Lord, who came to show us the "Father."

Until His time the highest conception of God was undoubtedly that of the Jews, who saw in Him a God of Righteousness. Their worship of Him as a Spirit in contrast to the anthropomorphism of the West marked no intrinsic or essential difference in the current ideas of the Deity. So as regards their monotheism, there was such overlapping of thought between all the philosophic minds of that day that distinctions became metaphysical refinements alone. But in the God of their lives, in their God of Righteousness, was found an ideal which even then the world at large was beginning to appreciate.

And how the pagan world in general viewed God cannot be better exemplified than by the talk of a missionary with a learned Chinese gentleman. "I believe in God," he said; "I do not believe in your God.

* Rochefoucault puts this very pleasantly to us old fellows: "Men begin to give good advice when they are too old to set a bad example."

I believe in a god who must be appeased." Here was echo of pagan thought; here, surviving amongst the intellectuals of the East was epitome of one phase of thought of the ancient world of two thousand years ago. The god of their worship was a god to be appeased; a god of terror; a god to be conciliated by sacrifice. They were pitilessly logical. In fact, logic has never been wanting in any religion of the past or present. But it helps in no way. Finite, to us the infinite, is a closed book, clasped and sealed; we have not even a glimmer of what it really may be; "ex nihilo nihil fit": out of nothing, nothing. We have no premise, therefore can draw no conclusions. And starting with nothing, we end with the same invaluable result. Most logical of reasoners, the Brahmins, saw in their triad of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, the creative, preserving, and destroying principles of nature; but it was God as Siva held the imagination of an ancient world. Finding him terrible in many of his manifestations they built upon such premises an underworld of such supreme dread that it cast a black shadow on this existence here. And a world wretched in its unending fighting found in present conditions parallel and justification for terrors yet to come.

And it is amongst such surroundings that we must see our Lord as teacher of the new and supreme truth that God is no God of terror; but that God is our Father; God is love.

But

We certainly shall not appeal to either metaphysics or logic in support of this teaching. Each man's heart must judge for itself; and more, is the best judge and the only judge; and there we leave it. viewing the two conceptions of the Deity, this we certainly do find, that whereas the one has ever dragged man down lower and lower, to the pit of hell itself, the other is ever associated with all that we regard as best and most beautiful in human nature. This is experience. If with it our logic and metaphysics, analogies and reasoning, do not agree-well, so much the worse for our reasoning and logic is all we can