390 RELIGIOUS WORK 



to evade it, declining to return to heavenly glory, except by way 

 of crucifixion to his lower self, thus accepting the glory of resur- 

 rection as the Father's reward sonship communicable also to 

 all who by faith are new-created in him. 



This was sonship of the highest type. The contrasting picture 

 is in the scene at the foot of the mount. A broken-hearted father, 

 surrounded by the impotent disciples, to whom the father had 

 brought his ruined child, possessed with a demon. The condition 

 of the child wretched in the extreme. He was " lunatic," he had 

 a " dumb spirit." The affliction was from birth. He had often 

 fallen helpless into the water and into the fire. Even as the father 

 was bringing him, " the spirit tare him," and he fell at the Saviour's 

 feet " as one dead," " foaming at the mouth." There he lay pros- 

 trate, a monstrosity of sin, a masterpiece of the devil. The acme 

 of the expression of the parent's distress is heard in the appeal, 

 " I beseech thee, look upon my son, for he is mine only-begotten." 

 Observe the antithesis between those two types of " only begotten " 

 sons, the one in the glory of the mount completely transfigured, 

 the other on the borders of pandemonium, wallowing in the dust, 

 demonized. Raphael in his much-criticised painting of the 

 Transfiguration is true to this antithesis. The very task of the 

 Christian Church, in view of the havoc which sin and Satan have 

 wrought, is to take man even at his worst, in all the wretched 

 conditions in which he writhes and suffers, the victim of sin, and 

 to change him, convert him, transfigure him, until in the end he 

 shall be like the Son of Man, in the glory of the mount, the adopted 

 and owned of heaven. With such an aim then Christianity, even 

 Christian missions, is chartered to go anywhere upon this planet, 

 possessing the same right which the Redeemer himself had to come 

 here, and to lay hold of the poor Indian fakir, the wretched, super- 

 stitious Chinese Boxer, the bestial South Sea Island cannibal, and 

 every other type of wretchedness peculiar to " Satan's castaways," 

 and to set itself to the task of changing them into the image of 

 the Lord. It is the right to love where others hate; the right to 

 bless where others curse; the right to offer heaven in this world 

 and the world to come, where others consign only to present and 

 future doom. A charter thus attested has in it limitless power of 

 self-commendation, and may well seek universal welcome for its 

 renewing message. 



Now, granting that Christianity is a religion possessing the 

 qualities I have named, can it justify itself in undertaking any- 

 thing less than the presentation of these values, these poten- 

 tialities, to the whole world? Until recent times no system of 

 religion, oriental or occidental, as practically held, has allowed 

 itself to make universal effort for others. The West has been 



