248 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



sents the important and significant fuct about the 

 doctrine of Jesus, that the highest religious thought 

 of the older world viewed God as a magisterial Sov- 

 ereign only, while Jesus revealed God as full of 

 "grace," and his view gives the "truth" about 

 the Divine nature, rather than the view of Moses. 

 But here the phrase is again insufficient. " Grace " 

 is a word of enormous range, just as "truth" also 

 is ; and what we need to know is whether we are 

 to understand by it an incomplete and partial gra- 

 ciousness, such as the grace of pity and of conde- 

 scension, or a grace absolute and complete, that 

 accords to its object the prospect of equality with the 

 source of it, and intends to confer companiojiship — 

 yes, partnership — in every poiver and gift. 



Now the meaning of Jesus, when he spoke of 

 God as a Father, as a Being of love toward all the 

 living, and urged men to love each other as each 

 loved himself, in the light of complete love to God, — 

 this meaning is manifestly to the effect that God's 

 love is not only universal, extending to all that live, 

 without exception, but that in its scope and intention 

 it is without reserves, and contemplates for every 

 spirit the same possession of God's own eternal 

 image. The standard Christ presents for the aim 

 of him who would love God is God himself ; and 

 the bond by which he suggests the free possibility 

 of pursuing such a standard is just the relation 



