comprehended, and being now inevitably so to remain for ever, he thus comes to stand before us as what the philosophers call an absolute. We cannot apply to him the tests which we can apply to other phenomena, we cannot get behind him and above him, cannot command him. But even were Jesus less of an absolute, less fitted to stand as the central figure of a religion, than he is, even were the constitutive and essential ideas of Christianity less pregnant, profound and far-reaching than they are, still the personage of Jesus, and the Christian rules of conduct and recommendations of virtue, being of that indisputable significance and worth that in any fair view which can be taken of them they are, would have a value and a substantiality for religious purposes which no new constructions can possibly have. No new constructions in religion can now hope to found a common way, hold aloft a common truth, unite men in a common life. And yet how true it is, in regard to mankind' conduct and course, that, as the "Imitation" says so admirably, "Without a way there is no going, without a truth no knowing, without a life no living." Sine vid non itur, sine veritate non cognoscitur, sine vitá non vivitur. The way, truth, and life have been found in Christianity, and will not now be found outside of it. Instead of making vain and pedantic endeavours to invent them outside of it, what we have to do is to help, so far as we can, towards their continuing to be found inside of it by honest and sane people, who would be glad to find them there if they can accomplish it without playing tricks with their understanding; to help them to accomplish this, and to remove obstacles out of the way of their doing so.

Far from having anything to gain by being timid and reticent, or else vague and rhetorical in treating of the miraculous element in the Bible, he who would help men will probably now do most good by treating this element with entire unreserve. Let him frankly say, that miracle narrated in the Bible is as legendary as miracle narrated anywhere else, and not more to be taken as having actually happened. If he calls it symbolical, let him be careful to mark that the narrators did not mean it for symbol, but delivered it as having actually happened, and in so delivering it were mistaken. Let him say that we can still use it as poetry, and that in so using it we use it better than those who used it as matter of fact; but let him not leave in any uncertainty the point that it is as poetry that we do use it. Let no difficulties be slurred over or eluded. Undoubtedly a period of transition in religious belief, such as the period in which we are now living, presents many grave difficulties Undoubtedly the reliance on miracles is not lost without some danger;. but the thing to consider is that it must be lost, and that the danger must be met, and, as it can be, counteracted. If men say, as some men are likely enough to say, that they altogether give up Christian

miracles and cannot do otherwise, but that then they give up Christian morals too, the answer is, that they do this at their own risk and peril; that they need not do it, that they are wrong in doing it, and will have to rue their error. But for my part, I prefer at present to say this simply and barely, not to give any rhetorical development to it. Springs of interest for the emotions and feelings this reality possesses in abundance, and hereafter these springs may and will most beneficially be used by the clergy and teachers of religion, who are the best persons to turn them to account. As they have habitually and powerfully used the springs of emotion contained in the Christian legend, so they will with time come to use the springs of emotion contained in the reality. But there has been so much vagueness, and so much rhetoric, and so much license of affirmation, and so much treatment of what cannot be known as if it were well known, and of what is poetry and legend as if it were essential solid fact, and of what is investment and dress of the matter as if it were the heart of the matter, that for the present, and when we are just at the commencement of a new departure, I prefer, I say, to put forward a plain, strict statement of the essential facts and truths consecrated by the Christian legend, and to confine myself to doing this. We make a mistake if we think that even those facts and truths can now produce their full effect upon men when exhibited in such a naked statement, and separately from the poetry and legend with which they are combined, and to which men have been accustomed for centuries. Nevertheless, the important thing at the present moment is not to enlarge upon the effect which the essential facts and truths gain from being still used in that combination, but after indicating this point, and insisting on it, to pass on to show what the essential facts and truths are.

Therefore, when we are asked: What really is Christmas, and what does it celebrate? we answer, the birthday of Jesus. What is the miracle of the Incarnation? A homage to the virtue of pureness, and to the manifestation of this virtue in Jesus. What is Lent, and the miracle of the temptation? A homage to the virtue of self-control and to the manifestation of this virtue in Jesus. What does Easter celebrate? Jesus victorious over death by dying. By dying how? Dying to re-live. To re-live in Paradise, in another world? No, in this. What, then, is the kingdom of God? The ideal society of the future. Then what is immortality? To live in the eternal order, which never dies. What is salvation by Jesus Christ? The attainment of this immortality. Through what means? Through means of the method and the secret and the temper of Jesus.

Experience of the saving results of the method and secret and temper of Jesus, imperfectly even as his method and secret and temper have been extricated and employed hitherto, makes the strength of that

I

wonderful Book in which, with an immense vehicle of legend and miracle, the new dispensation of Jesus and the old dispensation which led up to it are exhibited, and brought to mankind's knowledge; makes the strength of the Bible, and of the religion and churches which the Bible has called into being. We may remark that what makes the attraction of a church is always what is consonant in it to the method and secret and temper of Jesus, and productive, therefore, of the saving results which flow from these. The attraction of the Catholic Church is unity, of the Protestant sects, conscience, of the Church of England, abuses reformed but unity saved. speak of that which, in each of these cases, is the promise apparently held out; I do not say that the promise is made good. That which makes the weakness and danger of a church, again, is just that in it which is not consonant to the line of Jesus. Thus the danger of the Catholic Church is its obscurantism, of the Protestant sects their contentiousness, of the Church of England, its deference to station and property. I said the other day, in the East-end of London, that, ever since the appearance of Christianity, the prince of this world is judged. The Guardian was disquieted and alarmed at my saying this. I will urge nothing in answer, except that this deference to the susceptibilities of station and property, which has been too characteristic of the Church of England in the past-a deference so signally at variance with the line of Jesus-is at the same time just what now makes the Church of England's weakness and main danger.

As time goes on, it will be more and more manifest that salvation does really depend on consonance to the line of Jesus, and that this experience, and nothing miraculous or preternatural, is what establishes the truth and necessity of Christianity. The experience proceeds on a large scale, and therefore slowly. But even now, and imperfectly, moreover, as the line of Jesus has been followed hitherto, it can be seen that those nations are the soundest which have the most seriously concerned themselves with it and have most endeavoured to follow it. Societies are saved by following it, broken up by not following it; and as the experience of this continually proceeds, the proofs of Christianity are continually accumulating and growing stronger. The thing goes on quite independently of our wishes, and whether we will or no. Our French friends seem perfectly and scornfully incredulous as to the cogency of the beatitude which pronounces blessing on the pure in heart; they would not for a moment admit that nations perish through the service of the great goddess Lubricity. On the contrary, many of them maintain this service to be the most natural and reasonable thing in the world. Yet really this service broke up the great Roman Empire in the past, and is capable, it will be found, of breaking up any number of societies.

Or let us consider that other great beatitude and its fortunes, the beatitude recommending the Christian virtue of charity. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Many people do not even understand what it is which this beatitude means to bless; they think it recommends humbleness of spirit. Ferdinand Baur, whose exegesis of texts from the Gospels is more valuable than his criticism of the mode in which the Gospels were composed, has well pointed out that the persons here blest are not those who are humble-spirited, but those who are in the intention and bent of their spirit-in mind, as we say, and not in profession merely-indifferent to riches. Such persons, whether they possess riches or not, really regard riches as something foreign to them, something not their own, and are thus, in the phrase of another text where our received translation is misleading, faithful as regards riches. "If ye have not been faithful in that which is foreign to you, who will give you that which is your own?" The fidelity consists in having conquered the temptation to treat that for which men desire riches, private possession and personal enjoyment, as things vital to us and to be desired. Wherever there is cupidity, there the blessing of the Gospel cannot rest. The actual poor may altogether fail to be objects of the blessing; the actual rich may be objects of it in the highest degree. Nay, the surest of means to restore and perpetuate the reign of the selfish rich, if at any time it have been interrupted, is cupidity, envy, and hatred in the poor. And this again is a witness to the infallibility of the line of Jesus. We must come, both rich and poor, to prefer the common good, the interest of "the body of Christ" to use the Gospel phrase-the body of Christ of which we are members, to private possession and personal enjoyment.

This is Christian charity, and how rare, how very rare it is, we all know. In this practical country of ours, where possessing property and estate is so loved, and losing them so hated, the opposition to it is almost as strong as that to Christian purity in France. The Saturday Review is in general respectful to religion, intelligent and decorous, in matters of literary and scientific criticism reasonable. But let it imagine property and privilege threatened, and instantly what a change! There seems to rise before one's mind's eye a sort of vision of an elderly demoniac, surrounded by a troop of younger demoniacs of whom he is the owner and guide, all of them suddenly foaming at the mouth and crying out horribly. The attachment to property and privilege is so strong, the fear of losing them so agitating. But the line of Jesus perpetually tends to establish itself, as I have said, independently of our wishes, and whether we will or no. And undoubtedly the line of Jesus is: "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" In other words: "How hardly shall those who cling to private possessions and personal enjoyment,

who have not brought themselves to regard property and riches as foreign and indifferent to them, who have not annulled self, and placed their happiness in the common good, make part of the ideal society of the future!"

The legend of Christmas is a homage to the Christian virtue of pureness, and Christmas, with its miracle of the Incarnation, should turn our thoughts to the certainty of this virtue's final victory, against all difficulties. And with the victory of this virtue let us associate the victory of its great fellow-virtue of Christian charity, a victory equally difficult but equally certain. The difficulties are undeniable, but here the signs of the times point far more to the emergence and progress of the virtue than to its depression. Who cannot see that the idea of the common good is acquiring amongst us, at the present day, a force altogether new? that, for instance, in cases where, in the framing of laws and in the interpretation of them by tribunals, regard to property and privilege used to be, one may say, paramount, and the idea of the common good hardly considered at all, things are now tending quite the other way; the pretensions of property and privilege are severely scrutinized, the claims of the common good entertained with favour. An acceleration of progress in the spread of ideas of this kind, a decline of vitality in institutions where the opposite ideas were paramount, marks the close of a period. Jesus announced for his own period such a close; a close necessitated by the emergence of the new, the decay of the old. He announced it with the turbid figures familiar through prophecy to his hearers' imagination, figures of stupendous physical miracle, a break-up of nature, God coming to judgment. But he did not announce under these figures, as our Bibles make him announce, the end of the world; he announced "the end of the age," "the close of the period." That close came, as he had foretold; and a like "end of the age" is imminent wherever a certain stage is reached in the conflict between the line of Jesus and the facts of the period through which it takes its passage. Sometimes we may almost be inclined to augur that from some such "end of the age" we ourselves are not far now; that through dissolution-dissolution peaceful if we have virtue enough, violent if we are vicious, but still dissolution-we and our own age have to pass, according to the eternal law which makes dissolution the condition of renovation. The price demanded, by the inexorable conditions on which the kingdom of God is offered, for the mistakes of our past, for the attainment of our future, this price may perhaps be required sooner than we suppose, required even of us ourselves who are living now; "verily I say unto you, it shall be required of this generation.”

MATTHEW ARNOLD.