sawn asunder, tempted, slain by the sword, wandered in sheep skins and goat skins, were destitute, afflicted, tormented. They wandered in deserts and mountains and hid in the dens and caves of the earth; but they never sounded a false note. The moral code of these teachers had fiber. It passed into history a thing of life. On its own face, in its own nature, by right of its serviceableness to men, by reason of the compulsion of its principles and teachings to the conservation of what is just in human relationships, and obligatory in worship, it has become an essential of the absolute religion.

Hebrew history to the time of Christ has in it, therefore, two essentials. The first is the righteousness of God. The second is the human obligation which that imposes. An adequate conception of the divine character links itself with a moral code which embodies the basal necessities of human action. These two features now stand in the religious world like axioms in mathematics. They are self-evident-self-evidencing. They have the direct assent of the moral judgment. world lives and grows under their action because they are life. Both have lived beyond all hazard of losing out from among permanent religious values.

The

CHAPTER XIV.

THE COSMIC CHRIST.

The Incarnation.

THE second chapter of this book contains the following basal contentions: First-the reality of material substance. Second-the ultimate knowable nature of being is spirit. Third-material substance and spirit being are evidenced by their constant and ceaseless co-ordinations. Fourthany theory of intelligence applied to the movements of matter must include the natural order; but it implies also a degree of spontaneity, because it is of the nature of intelligence to become initiative, creative, administrative. This world's life has no adequate explanation under the theory of the unbroken sequence of law. Fifth-the human mind has no capacity to understand that which is not sensuously imaged forth.

The above implications, we think, make room for the Christ of history in the cosmic plan. Incarnation, or the manifestation of some unit of nature, phenomenally, is the most familiar fact of

life. The Wordmade flesh has its analogies to the outer limits of human knowledge. Redemp

tion is philosophic. Spontaneous expressions in moral government are also. The central truths of the Christ character and the Christ message probably do not have exclusive application to this planet. They are evidently active in the control of intelligences everywhere. The Divine immanence can not be out of harmony with itself, and the whole universe, therefore, must have one ethic for its self-cleansing.

The Works of the Christ.

We get the deeper understandings of the cosmos as we detect its unitary tendencies. The glow-worm's fire is a direct apprehensiveness without a brain. Wild geese sense an approaching storm five hundred miles away. The yellowtipped plover, by a direct knowing, makes its unerring way from the tablelands of Mexico to the coasts of Labrador. The best we can do with that marvel of orientation is the plover knows because it knows. The bugs and angle-worms do things which are the same as miracles to us. We are obliged to face the facts and file the mys

teries for future reference. The terms of human knowledge are so often outclassed in the special truth correspondences of these lowly forms of life that we are not in a position to say that anything is impossible. We are not sure of our ground when we say that the Christ knew as the birds know, but His endowments were such that He entered a realm of truth which was to us outstanding, and in a way we do not know. There are certain features which distinguish the Christ ministry from all other teachings. As sure as the world stands, Christ had access to an underland of power and truth which has made His teaching of matchless interest and delight to the human mind. Out of the deeps, by immediacy, Christ brought a divine message to men and set it into language. Out of the same deeps He had power over disease and death. That record is so legible it will not rub out or fade. But it is clear that He did not make this extra-human investment of first import in His ministry. Above His "works" He placed His life messages in the parables. Above them He placed His completed world idea of God as the Father. And above everythinglike a signet in the center of the truth of the

universe, He placed that outflung passion of His heart which brought Him to the sacrifice of the

cross.

Blood Brotherhoods.

Unpleasant sensations are produced by the bellowings of a herd of cattle when they scent the fresh blood of one of their kind. It stirs the human feeling like the sadness of a death wail. The oldest herdsmen often mount their horses and ride out of hearing until it assuages itself. The sight of blood often causes dizziness and fainting. With the soldier in battle_it banishes fear. A savage would soon learn that when his blood flowed out his life went out. He would then connect his blood with his life. Any savage would be equal to that idea. He would know its importance. He would order his life by it. He would deal with it as a first blunt fact of experience. He would say, "The blood is the life"which is not scientifically true; but to any darkened understanding it is practically true: and it is the working idea of a large majority of the people of the world to-day. The Levite code says the life is in the blood, which is a nearer approach to the real fact. This was the reason why blood