RIGHT RELATION OF REASON TO RELIGION 245 



aim of any religious method that can justly lay claim 

 to being Christian, to bring about, in all the minds 

 upon which it acts, the possession of this secret of 

 the Founder; the same insight, namely, into the 

 nature of God that he had, the same ever-luminous 

 conviction as to the real relation between God and 

 souls, — from God toward all souls if God is to be 

 truly God and adorable, from souls toward God if 

 the soul is to be genuinely a righteous mind. It 

 seems clear that the transcendent temper of per- 

 sonal devotion which Christ displayed is owing to 

 nothing but his vivid and constant consciousness 

 of this view of God and the spirit ; so that any 

 inquiry into what his secret of life was, any inquiry 

 especially that looks to the imparting of the secret 

 to others, resolves itself into asking what, exactly, 

 the peculiar view was, that he held and was the 

 first to proclaim, concerning the divine and the 

 human nature, and the essential relations between 

 them, and between human beings in consequence. 



In a general sense, all Christian people know well 

 enough, and have always known, what this secret 

 of their Founder is, what the doctrine of God and 

 the soul that constitutes his characteristic insight, 

 his new and unsurpassable message to mankind. 

 The intelligent ordinary Christian, if asked to say 

 how he would sum up in a single phrase the new 

 and central doctrine of his Master, would hardly 



