RIGHT RELA TION OF REASON TO RELIGION 247 



reserves, and loaded with discriminations : every 

 being might be included in its scope, but each 

 would receive only the one specific share of regard 

 allotted to each. A love universal might, too, in 

 every case be only a condescending love ; or, again, 

 only a pitying love, the love that is commiseration. 

 And when religious thought preceding Jesus had 

 generations earlier passed out of the darkness that 

 hid the love of God altogether, leaving him to appear 

 only as a dreadful Power, and had come to recognise 

 in the Almighty some tokens of love, it was at best 

 only this commiserating love, this grace that con- 

 descended, this benignity that reserved and discrimi- 

 nated, which was its theme. But this early concep- 

 tion of the Divine Love falls far short of the mean- 

 ing of Jesus, just because it falls utterly short of a 

 love that is completely love, and so of a love that 

 is worthy of a Being truly God. Consequently we 

 must seek for Christ's meaning elsewhere than in 

 those phrases of the New Testament that come, 

 perhaps, most readily to our lips. 



These most familiar Christian sayings, like those 

 already alluded to, have indeed a great import and 

 pertinence, and may serve to point us on the way to 

 the whole and luminous truth; but, also like them, 

 in their own form they stop short of it. It is true 

 to say, for instance, that it was laiv that came by 

 Moses, but grace and truth by Christ ; for this pre- 



