56 EEY. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL^ M.A.^ D.D., ON THE INFLUENCE 



a bird with no atmosphere in which it could fly. It needs, therefore, 

 the revealed religion of Scripture to tell us what this environment 

 is. No wonder, therefore, that other religions should now and then 

 borrow truth from Christianity, for they cannot with all their efforts 

 provide of themselves a fit environment for the religious life. The 

 true environment of the religious life is Christ ; the new-born soul is 

 in Christ, we live in Christ. Xo other religion could possibly pro- 

 vide this environment, and there are other truths distinctive of the 

 Christian faith which no other religion could possibly provide or 

 possess. The mind of man could never have conceived the Divine 

 way of salvation — that the Son of God should become incarnate, 

 take upon Himself our nature, die upon a cross, rise again from the 

 dead, and on condition of faith grant forgiveness and life eternal to 

 every believer in Christ, sustaining the life of the soul by the gift of 

 the Holy Spirit. These truths provide an environment for the 

 religious life which is jDeculiar to the Christian Faith. 



Lecturer's Reply. 



The Lecturer, in acknowledging the vote of thanks, pointed out 

 that the Logos was not the subject of his paper. The two Hebrew, 

 or, more correctly, Aramaic, expressions, which he had mentioned on 

 p. 50, were translations of a Greek word — Logos — which was used 

 in writings earlier than the Targums. St. John, in using the term 

 Logos, therefore, was using a term that was already recognized and 

 in current philosophical employment, and he taught that the tnie 

 Logos was Christ. He, the Lecturer, might have traced the term 

 back to Heraclitus, or even to ancient Egypt, as some German 

 writers had done, but he thought this very doubtful, and, at any 

 rate, it was apart from his subject. 



Nor did he think that we could find either the Logos or the 

 Trinity in Zoroastrianism. He had gone carefully into what 

 Zoroaster taught as to monotheism. Did Zoroaster teach that 

 Ahuramazda was one deity with six attendant spirits, or was the 

 principal amongst seven spirits of equal rank 1 He thought the 

 latter was the case. One did not find a pure monotheism in early 

 Zoroastrianism. All that could be said was that there was a nearer 

 approach to monotheism than anywhere else, except in Judaism and 

 Christianity. The modern Parsi, when he asserted his l)elief in One 



