repeated truths, whilst Babylonian and Chaldean legend-foundation of so much of the Jewish creedwas essentially His as well. So with the dual spirit of Egypt-with its ancient cult, its belief in a life hereafter and judgment to come, as well as with its later exotic hellenistic and more purely monotheistic school He was absolutely saturated. Nor did there escape Him the essentially anthropomorphic outlook of Europe, with its conceptions so amazingly idealized by Greek art. And Christ is all these and none of these as we hear the teaching that is to transform mankind. Contact with all undoubtedly, but with what difference in essentials. And yet, in the days of darkness so soon to smother the world, shall we be surprised if even there is a mistiness as to who this teacher was? "I anathematize those that say that Zoroaster, and Buddha, and Christ, and Manichaeus, and Mithra are one and the same. Thus the early renunciation put in the mouth of the new convert to Christianity, showing how soon doubts had arisen even as to His identity, but with how little justification. Where in any of them teaching such as His? That characteristics belonging to them may have been appropriated to Him is possible. Why confusion with Manichaeus at this time is difficult to understand. But it is otherwise with Mithra the Mediator; the friend of man; the saviour from evil spirits after death; especially when we remember how much the gentile world of those times sought to find resemblances and not differences in the deities of their beliefs. That later Christians saw in Christ this Mithra, or mediator with God, is undoubted; but pre-eminently the teaching of Christ himself was that God was our Father. This was the supreme truth He came to tell mankind. With Zoroaster in his broad, ethical teaching He certainly has much in common; and the sweet touch of Buddha, the harmony that pervades his thought, the mutual kindliness He would inspire in His followers, all find warm response; but Zoroaster does not content Him, and certainly He is no Buddhist.

Far too miserable the view of life as a whole that Buddha takes. This life a weary pilgrimage, a trial, a purification, a preparation, and for what? For heaven? an eternity of bliss hereafter? No, not for this; but to be as if we had never been. The consummation of the whole Nirvana; absorption in the infinite of which we once have been part. Cheerless, cold, hopeless; at best hardly more than a great negation. What more despairing belief? but with the redeeming feature that in this world even it does secure its votaries a happiness of which its very teaching is stern disapproval. But this is a world's experience. Happiness is rarely the prize of those who alone make it their quest; rather it proves reward of those who give it little thought. Many a one at the call of duty has courted joylessness and sorrow, and to his amazement has found that it is such happiness he has made his own. Thus one of the pleasing results of Buddha's teaching, though neither the intended nor the expected one. But Christ, He will have no such pessimism, not even in thought. He has come to show the Father that He may bring fulness of joy into the life of man. He would have life here one long song of rejoicing. Life is not the terrible. infliction of Buddha; it is the good gift of a Heavenly Father, and we praise and serve that Father best when we enjoy His gift to the full and our hearts are full of thankfulness and love.

78. Thus we glance at the thought of Christ in relation to that of the great world teachers of the past, and here we would try and see Him in more particular relation to His own people and His own times. As a man we get a glimpse of Him, and would much love to fill in His portrait with more detail and completeness. We have seen Him as first of the fierce, resolute, heroic race we have been witnessing, and with them He could look death in the face and smile. Never Jew more centemptuous of Titus than Christ contemptuous of Pilate. How one delights to look on that proud, unbending figure. In the prime and vigour of man

hood; of royal line; of a race striking for its virility and physique, we see Him prince amongst princely men. And how false to truth the thousand and one anaemic pictures that do duty for His portrait. He was infinitely tender, but it was the tenderness of the strong, not of the weak, still less of the effeminate. And that He so loved children! Where sweeter scene than some young hero of the war nursing his little one? Strength radiates from His every pore would we see Him as He was. Titus chose eight hundred of the most beautiful of his Jewish captives to adorn his triumph and tell his countrymen the manner of foe they had overcome. Is there slightest doubt that had Christ been then living he had been one of that unhappy band? Had He ever held that wild, turbulent following of His unless their peer and more than peer in every heroic virtue. He was, we know, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. The misery of those He was amongst overwhelmed Him. But His life was not all sombre, and we see Him at the festival, the wedding, and the feast, as well as in the garden of Gethsemane. It is a later age that loves thus to chiefly picture Him, but not so His contemporaries and those He directly taught. The hosannas of the day might be the crucify of the morrow, but there were the hosannas as well. He must have been of glorious countenance and of magnificent carriage. It is impossible to imagine in Christ anything mean or insignificant. Asceticism was cult of the Essene, cult of the Buddhist, cult of many another religion; but never the teaching of Christ. To other sources it must be traced, and the monastic devotees of many a religion find no example in our Lord. And Paul tells us that He was with Peter fifteen days. What days they must have been! How much He must have learnt of his Master; how much he might have told us that we so much want to know! What was He like? How did He talk? How did He dress? What did He eat? Where did He live? What of His education? His tutors? His friends? and the thousand and one things that

we delight to be told of any we would know. The other apostles we can forgive being so uncommunicative. War and its alarms soon engulfed them, or they might take it for granted that every one knew Christ as they knew Him, and, like other bad correspondents, omit such details as unworthy of their subject. But Paul-Paul, who had never seen Christ-surely he must have been in a fever to know to the last dot anything connected with his new found Lord. And surely he might have realized that after-folk would be as hungry for the most trifling particular. But his record of those days is as cold as if Christ had never been even mentioned between them, and more, as if he had never even heard His story, so few his allusions to any of its features.

79. And again, in His life and in His teaching, with which of the four sects that Josephus tells us of was He in sympathy? In politics, in family, of the royal line of David, we see Him with the terrific followers of Judas. He has their same stern resolve, their same directness of purpose, their immortal contempt for danger and suffering; but in doctrine He is not exactly one with them. Rather He is curber of their inpetuosity. It is another school that He is exponent of. In His fearlessness of consequences, in His denunciation of wrong in high places, He is with them; but with it He knows a tenderness that was never theirs. At the same time we find in Him no defiance of authority, though we must not press too far His answer to the question, "Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar?" What ever His views, He was not going to gratify His tempters by having His hand forced, and we delight in the neatness of His reply. Then was He of the Pharisees? Too bitterly He inveighs against them. They are not a bad sort of man, but they were a sham; they posed; they would appear superior to what they really were. And He loathed shams and posturing, and He looked into the heart of man itself. And a Sadducee? and He Himself assurance of the resurrection? Then Essene or

Hellenist? Hellenist certainly not. He will be in no slavery to the law; He is above the law. He will be in no slavery to the synagogue; He is master of the synagogue. But the law He honours and the synagogue He teaches in. And the Essenes? True, with them He has much in common. His very prayer is crystallization of their tenets. Give us this day our daily bread. His teaching is redolent of their views. Take no thought for the morrow; Where thy treasure is thy heart will be also; Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head. And so His talk: Give to him that asketh; He that would take thy cloak, let him have thy coat also. The Essenes, having all things in common, knew neither rich nor poor. Their vows were celibacy, work, and rigid observance of ritual. Three years they were proved before admission to the order, and backsliders were few. They shared with the first Christians their contempt for suffering, and rich men joined them, joying in the sacrifice they were called upon to make. In all this Christ was much at one with these ascetics. Many of their sentiments He voices; but again, He is not of them. He is no slave to ritual; He came to give freedom to a ritual-cursed world. Still less is He communist. The labourers in the vineyard are alike paid their penny a day, and note the words of justification put into the mouth of their master by our Lord: "Shall not I do what I like with mine own?" Again, we must not press these words too far or too literally. Christ, more than any philosopher, was essentially a teacher ad hoc. Himself, maybe, master of all truth, yet He knew frail human nature could only benefit by it as applied to the actual facts of actual examples. He was no communist that another should say to his brother, "Brother, divide the inheritance with me." He was all communist that every man is God's trustee for every gift given him, even to life itself. Christ was no communist when man under aegis of his words would rob his fellow, but all communist when man