224 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870- 



sciousness. I cannot better explain what this means than 

 by an illustration drawn from man s natural life. The 

 life of an infant is the same as the life of a grown man. 

 Not the mere animal processes only, but the functions 

 of the mind follow the same law in both ; yet it is only 

 gradually that the child begins to comprehend its life, 

 to grasp the meaning of its own personality, and of the 

 relation in which it stands to other persons ; and so the 

 child s life is in a great but ever decreasing degree a 

 magical life, surrounded by wonders, supported and 

 guided by outward rules and signs, the reasons and mean 

 ing of which it cannot understand. Every one has 

 observed how formal children are, how necessary for them 

 it is always to do the same thing in the same way. This 

 is but one of many marks of an incapacity to separate the 

 sign from the thing signified, of inability to grasp the 

 personal kernel of life directly, of a need of bodily things 

 to typify all personal relations. But step by step the 

 child becomes a man, and at length a time comes when 

 all these signs and forms have lost their magic and their 

 power, when the symbol is known to be only a symbol, 

 and through the now transparent organism of the out 

 ward life the full-grown personality looks face to face 

 into the spiritual world around, and there alone finds its 

 true interests and its worthy aims. Just so it is in the 

 history of the Church. f~~The Christian life is in all ages 

 the same life a life worth living only in so far as it is a 

 life of personal relation to God in Christ) But this life 

 is not in all believers or in all ages equally self-conscious. 

 Although in Christ s incarnation, life, and death, God s 

 self -manifestation was perfect and freed from type, it 

 did not follow that all Christians could look face to face 

 at once on the glory that shone in the Saviour s coun 

 tenance. The incarnate Word was the absolutely full 

 and clear revelation of the Divine will, of the Divine 

 essence. But every word has an outer as well as an 

 inner side, an expression as well as a meaning. The 



