RIGHT RELATION OF REASON TO RELIGION 25 I 



Paul says, is to lead us to the moral freedom which is 

 "in Christ," that is, is Christian, The aim, the only 

 ultimate aim, the ideal of a society of minds, is this 

 moral reliance on the inherent moral freedom of all 

 spirits, guided by the contemplation of its perfect ful- 

 filment in the Supreme Soul, or God, and inspired by 

 his boundless love beheld and therefore felt by all. 



In this conception of God and of the religious 

 relation of souls to God and to each other, Christ 

 had parted company with all the piety that had gone 

 before him, and to such a degree as had never in 

 the older world been paralleled. His theistic step 

 was not simply new, it was absolutely revolutionary. 

 His point of view, of the literal divine-sonship of 

 every lowliest and most sinful and sinning spirit, 

 committed him logically to the assertion of the 

 implicit equality of all spirits with each other, so 

 far as concerns their moral powers and destination, 

 no matter what their actual and contingent state ; 

 and also of their potential equality with God. His 

 doctrine may well be summarised in the consecrated 

 phrase, usually applied only to himself, " The son of 

 man is the son of God." To take in the full scope 

 of his teaching, we must translate the idiom " son of," 

 ^v'hich is the Hebrew way of expressing the generic,^ 

 and then the saying reads, " The spiritual powers 



1 So, in the Psalms : " What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? 

 and the ^<?« (y'wrt;?, that thou v;iitcst him?" Again, in the Book of 



