Before there can be any true ethical life the soul must have found its true relation to God.

We will now consider somewhat more fully this "eternal life" into which the Christian enters through Christ. In that life we have come into a living fellowship with God; a new principle asserts its power over us; an influence has been awakened; we have passed into the spiritual life, in which there is a communication of spiritual forces. We recognise in the eternal life a direct relationship to God, a communion or communication between God and man which is realised in prayer.' This is the peculiarity of the God-centred life, that it looks away from self to God. All is traced to God. God, not ourselves, is the author of the new life, the principle of growth within us: "It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Phil. ii. 13).

Here we stop to notice a striking contrast between character as formed on worldly principles and Christian character. The former is a finality, to the Christian there can be no finality of character. The

1 Ritschl's treatment of the Christian's personal relation to God, and of prayer, is obscure and unsatisfactory. One reads and re-reads passages bearing upon this question without being able to get at the exact meaning. He denies the possibility of an immediate, direct, spiritual relationship, and yet one has a lurking suspicion that in a way peculiarly his own he allows it. The same is true of one of Ritschl's most eminent pupils, Herrmann, in his Verkehr des Christen mit Gott. I thought I understood the meaning of the word “ Verkehr," communion. But after a careful perusal of this volume I was sure I did not understand it, at least in the sense in which the author uses the word.

common estimation identifies strength of character with persistency and unchangeableness. It is the crystal, clear-cut, sharply defined, unyielding. Such have been many who have powerfully influenced their fellow-men, men of great force. Christian character has nothing of the same crystalline immutability, and therefore it is by the undiscerning mistaken for weakness. Because it is God-centred, not self-centred, it is not so imposing; there is an absence of the self-assertion and the show of confidence, which have always won the plaudits of the multitude. But its strength is of a finer quality and more enduring. It is the strength of an Athanasius, who with God on his side is equal to the world. Christian character, so far from being immutable, is ever growing. With every increase of light it takes to itself new strength and new beauty. So far from fearing change, it fears to get beyond change. For change means growth, increase, progress. The thing the Christian dreads most is the possibility of that rigidity coming over him, which the world takes for strength, but which to him is weakness. For he is not sufficient unto himself; his strength is God's, he looks above for all he needs, and he hopes it will come to him more and more.'

In the introductory chapter it was pointed out that a true theory of psychology demands that we trace every influence upon the soul in the active

1 It is interesting to trace in art the difference between the two types of character. Compare a Venus of Milo with a Sistine Madonna, or the illustrations of DuMaurier with the paintings of Fra Angelico.

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feelings. We may not deal with the soul as if it were a something behind those feelings in which it. manifests its activity. We cannot separate the active functions of the soul, its will, feeling, and knowing, from the soul itself, and treat the latter as a passive quantity. We cannot say that the soul is "saved,” forgiven, justified, "brought to God," unless that salvation, forgiveness, justification, or approach to God expresses itself in the soul's activity by certain feelings. Therefore we shall have to trace that state of the Christian which Christ called the "eternal life" by its manifestations in the new feelings awakened in the soul when it is brought to God.

What is the scope of the feelings which are thus brought into activity? The question has very great significance. To put it somewhat differently, What relationships in life are affected by religion? What life is it, or what part of life, that is determined by religion? Schleiermacher maintained that religion. consisted in the feeling of dependence upon God. This view would confine the religious determination of life to our relation to God. It is our feelings towards God that religion regulates. But from the words of Christ we seem to get a hint of a larger conception: "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world " (St. John xvi. 33). By the word "world," which he says he has overcome, Christ means that complexus of forces, partly physical partly personal, with which every being comes more or less in contact, which oppose themselves to the aims of the individ

ual: sickness, death, disappointments, injustice, illwill of fellow-men, etc.

It is impossible to leave "the world," as so understood, out in the consideration of religion. It is impossible to understand the dependence upon God except as carrying with it the independence of the world. Man's religious life must be considered not only as a relation to God, but also as a relation to the world. In these two relationships, in the feelings which belong to them, we shall trace the manifestation of the "eternal life." As far as man enters into an eternal life, he must feel himself in a new position, not only in regard to God, but also in regard to the world. The faith in God's providence combines the feeling of dependence upon God with that which should characterise the Christian's relation to the world. It is the feeling that the God whom we trust will so guard us that the world cannot hurt us. This is the faith in God as Christ understood it.

It is a shortcoming of our modern theology that it fails of a correct appreciation of this faith in God. And yet it was an essential element in Christianity to the first Christians; for nothing is so marked as the emphasis with which this faith, as expressive of the superiority to the world, is stamped upon the epistles of the New Testament. St. Paul speaks of the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free" (Gal. v. 1). He can mean nothing but liberty from the world, understood as the complexus of

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forces which oppose themselves to man's pursuit of his end. St. Paul points to a well-known experiThe "natural man" is dependent upon the powers of nature and the will of his fellow-men; they impress themselves upon him as superior, his will cannot obtain the mastery. He is a slave. And when St. Paul says that Christ has set him free, he but experiences the fulfilment of the promise : Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" (St. John viii. 32). It is the paradox of the Christian life, that without any change of outward relation there is a reversal of feeling,-a process beyond explanation upon a naturalistic hypothesis, yet there is none that experience teaches as so true. The bonds are broken, the feeling of dependence upon the world is changed into one of freedom. What was before a hindrance to our free action becomes an aid to the completer development of our individuality.

The expression of St. Paul just quoted receives its commentary in those glorious words of his in the eighth chapter of Romans: " If God be for us, who can be against us? . . Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? .. In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us