the Word, we shall be safe in a great fortress, we shall feed on the bread of heaven. On the other hand, scholars must continually assure us of their well-defined and inexpansible limitations, knowing well that at many a point on the sacred way they must put off the sandals of grammar and lexicon, and stand before God in the nakedness and humiliation of absolute Necessity. This they know right well, and so long as they work in the spirit of that knowledge they must be held in honor and in reverence. Be the Bible what it may, we owe it to scholarship. Let us not smite the hand which has reaped and garnered our largest harvests. No one knows so well as the scholar himself that he can do little or nothing with the first verse in the Bible. Its main words stand infinitely out of reach of his apparatus. As the heaven is high above the earth, so is the word GOD above all other words. We can approach God only at the lower end of his ways— the whispering of his strength-less than an echo of the thunder of his power. Even when he clothes himself with the universe his figure cannot be descried-even in history there is a tumult rather than

a presence—even in Christ the mystery is not lost. In thinking of God we have been compelled to think of him under the conditions of Personality. The Bible itself so represents him. What personality means who can definitely and finally say? Is it only a symbol to start from? Is it an indefinable term? Are we, notwithstanding all our claims and boasts and ambitions, mere outlines of personality, with just too little of its quality to know anything of its fullest meaning? Personality is a term we must not strain too much. If we use it aright, it will help us a little here and there; but if we overstrain it, possibly it may become the precipice narrowly separating between us and destruction. When we connect it with what we know of life, intelligence, and sympathy, it may be most helpful. But these words themselves require definition. Life is as mysterious a word as God. What is intelligence but a dimly lighted line lying between ignorance and omniscience? And sympathy is love in action. But what is love? What? Thus we are always kept outside-outside of our very selves; half-interpreters of our own words, self-menders, apologizing to ourselves to-day

for having mistaken or misled ourselves yesterday. In this condition of things we are thankful for all the aid of learning, yet we feel that outside of it, above it, beyond it far, are many things which can only be "spiritually discerned.”

IV.

Τ

THE LIVING WORD.

HAT Jesus Christ came into the world is a fact supported by other evidence than that of the New Testament. Here we are not dealing with mythology, but with history. Then let us raise the question

Why did Jesus Christ come into the World?

Some say that Jesus Christ came into the world. that he might reveal the Father; others, that he might show us an Example; others, that he revealed himself as the head of the race; some, that he might prove in his own blameless and hallowed life the possible perfectness and obedience of self-sacrifice. He showed how self-will might be overcome. He was the supreme Virtue. He was the ideal Man. In him all human excellence culminated. All these

answers I reject simply on the ground of insufficiency. To my mind they do not rise higher than the level of personal opinions. They are not revelations; they are not even audacious guesses; the answers are not of the quality of the question. The only sufficing answers that I know of are in the New Testament. Modern inspiration may have discovered them to be wrong, yet I receive them after asking to be guided by God the Holy Ghost. Here they are:

"He was manifested to take away our sins."-1 John iii. 5.

"For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." -1 John iii. 8.

"The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world."—John i. 29.

"Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."-1 Tim. i. 15.

"The Son of man is come to

seek and to save that which was lost."-Luke xix. 10.

We feel at once that these are not mere opinions,

nor hesitant guesses, nor such answers as any mere