faith without Christ. The faith which is without the consciousness of the only valid ground of faith is the faith of sleep. The danger is that some sharp stroke of fortune or some before unheard-of difficulty will suddenly awaken the man, and then he is lost.

This is what we have got to come back to: Christ is the only ground we have of believing in a merciful God who forgives sin; and we would not believe this truth, which almost daily experience seems to belie, if Christ had not brought it home to us in the most convincing manner. And so we believe that God has in his infinite wisdom appointed Christ as the means whereby man is to be saved. We believe that we are to learn to believe in God by believing in Christ. We believe that God's forgiveness embraces those who shall become followers of Christ, his Church. We believe that the Church is the divinely appointed means for bringing to man the benefits of Christ. We believe therefore that God wills that we should receive forgiveness by entering into the fellowship of Christ's Church. These appear to us elements of that device by which God in his love seeks to save man. Farther than that we cannot go. We dare not draw the limits of God's mercy and say that if some man, neglecting the divinely appointed means, the Church and Christ, seeks God, God will refuse him. Enough, that we

know what the way is for us.

It is, however, important to point out that Christ is the means to the end. Christ pointed away from

himself to the Father. There is a certain type of faith which does not get beyond Christ. In so far as it fails to reach God through Christ, it fails of the standard set by Christ. Especially is that form of Christianity which rests in the contemplation of Christ's sufferings a gross deviation from Christian truth. Christ's sufferings bring home to us the depth of human sin, but the brooding contemplation of his sufferings substitutes an æsthetic feeling for faith and is a sensualisation of Christianity. We believe in Christ because in him we find God.

The place here assigned to Christ in the Christian system is irreconcilable with that modification of Christian theory which is widely prevalent to-day, especially among those who turn aside in impatience from what seems to them an idle strife of tongues, the wrangling about doctrine. They seek refuge in the simplicity of that Christianity which sums up the Christian truth in the one word: imitation of Christ. It is a relief to cast off all subtleties and to rest in one easily understood principle. One of the latest exponents of modern Christianity tells us that this, after all, is the great thing. "Jesus, Jesus," says Mr. Gordon, "is our supreme example. There is in him a mighty, imitable, reproducible character. The imitation of Christ is the task of humanity.' We cannot but rejoice that different men may find different points of attraction in Christ. But the deeper consciousness of Christendom refuses in the

1 George A. Gordon, The Christ of To-day, p. 67.

nineteenth century, as it always has refused, to content itself with this apparent simplicity and to recognise therein the essential element of Christianity. A little reflection will serve to show how inadequate this expression is. Imitation is of the outward: you can imitate a man's dress, his house, his voice, etc. In this way imitation comes prominently into play in childhood. The child learns its first lessons by imitating the actions which it observes in older people. But imitation in spiritual things is of very limited application. We may occasionally correct our judgment by reference to the example of Christ. But how little adapted this principle is to become the regulative principle of the Christian life, we will understand when we try to conceive of a character formed by imitation upon some other human character. Conceive of a Cromwell or a Washington as great because they imitated somebody. Attempts

at imitation, as is well known, make a person not great or good, but ridiculous. There is that in the conception of human character which is incompatible with imitation. This is the secret of character which finds its only explanation in man's relation to God. If we honestly seek to make ourselves as Christ was we shall not try to piece together a patchwork of character after his model, but we shall strive to appropriate the fundamental principle of his life.

The idea of the imitation of Christ is furthermore unfortunate, because it places us on a level with him. To say that Christ is an "imitable, reproducible character" may be from one point of view an inno

cent assertion. There are doubtless moments in life when Christ appears as one of us, fighting the same battle of life. But such language is wholly misleading if it would point out what should be the Christian's fundamental attitude. Christ claimed to be unique; his significance to the world is that he is unique, inimitable, not reproducible. If it were otherwise, Christianity would never have been what it has been these eighteen centuries. To place Christ on a level with humanity is altogether to miss the personal and the historic significance of his life. It is robbing Christianity of its religious character, to make it a morality.

Christ stands out from all history as the one human character in whom God made himself known to man, that by him man might be brought, through forgiveness, into fellowship with God.

CHAPTER III.

THE ETERNAL LIFE.

WE have traced the various elements that enter into the consideration of the Christian life as religiously determined. The object of Christianity is to realise the eternal life. Sin is the barrier to the enjoyment of that life. God's act of forgiveness is necessary to do away with the effects of sin; this act is therefore the constitutive principle of the Christian life. Forgiveness is bound up with Christ; through him alone we are brought into fellowship with God.

The subjective manifestation of forgiveness or justification is faith. In its incipient stage that faith is simply the acceptation of God's gift. But it is a growing faith. There is a beginning of the Christian life and a progress. What was at first merely an act of spiritual affirmation becomes enlarged, deepened, enriched. Faith develops into trust, it becomes more and more the dominating principle of life, it matures into the conscious love of God. With this growing faith there goes hand in hand the ethical determination of life to make the perfect Christian. But the religious is fundamental; it is the essential determination of the Christian life.