be of coming to any understanding with the social movement through the prevailing methods of Christianity, there is still ground for hope that the teaching of Jesus may have new adaptations to the need of the new time. The talk of the churches is for the most part in a language as unintelligible as Hebrew to the modern hand-worker; but in the teaching of Jesus he seems to hear the welcome accents of a familiar tongue. A common reverence may beget a mutual understanding. The Christian believer and the social reformer may perhaps meet each other as they both approach the simplicity which is in Christ.1

To this characteristic of the present inquiry must be added a further encouraging consideration. The problem to which we are invited, of determining the relation of the teaching of Jesus to the special needs of the real world, is in its nature not, as may be supposed, a new problem, but a continually recurring one. Each period in civilization has had, in turn, its own peculiar interest and its own spiritual demands, and each, in turn, following its own path back to the teaching of Jesus, has found there what seemed an extraordinary adaptation of that teaching to immediate issues and needs. This is one of the most surprising traits of the

1 Göhre, "Drei Monate Fabrikarbeiter," 1891, s. 190. "Only one quality (of religion) remains — respect and reverence for Jesus Christ. It is, indeed, a new picture of Jesus of Nazareth. He lacks the supernatural light in his eyes, the divinity assigned to him by the theologians is a subject for smiles; . . . but they all stand reverently and quiet before his great personality."

gospel. It seems to each age to have been written for the sake of the special problems which at the moment appear most pressing. As each new transition in human interest occurs, the teaching of Jesus seems to possess new value. In one age the focus of human interest was at that point where the Greek mind met the Hebrew tradition, and developed the beginning of Christian theology; and to that age there spoke the great sayings of Jesus concerning his relation to the Father, as though the determination of the place of Jesus in theology were the essence of the gospel. To another age, absorbed in ecclesiastical development, the teaching of Jesus seemed specially directed to establishing the organization of the Church. This illumination of each view and tendency is felt in turn by each modern student of the gospels as he considers from some fresh point of view the teaching of Jesus. One scholar, on the watch—as was Renan - for the picturesque and Oriental traits of a Galilean peasant, finds in the visionary hopes of such a youth a key to the teaching of Jesus; another scholar, with the habit of mind of a constitutional historian, sees in the teaching of Jesus primarily the work of the framer of a constitution, and defines his mission as "the rise of a monarchy, the purest and most ideal that has ever existed among men";1 still another scholar, profoundly impressed by the note of melancholy and despair which is heard in modern literature, turns again to

1 "Ecce Homo," Ch. X, "Christ's Legislation."

this same teaching of Jesus, and finds its central quality to be "A Gospel for an Age of Doubt." 1 Does this divergence of impression mean that each age and each scholar creates a new Christ, and that what seems to be a historical figure is in reality only the reflection of the inquirer's mind thrown upon the screen of the past? Is it only the pious imaginations of successive students which make of Jesus now the source of a theology and now the founder of a church, now peasant, now king, now the deliverer from doubt? On the contrary, the life of Jesus has, in fact, all these aspects, and indeed many more; and it is not as false interpreters, but as partial witnesses, that men stand in their own place and report that view of the gospel which presents itself to their minds. This extraordinary capacity for new adaptations, this quality of comprehensiveness in the teaching of Jesus, which so many evidences of the past illustrate, prepares us in our turn for its fresh applicability to the question which most concerns the present age. As it has happened a thousand times before, so it is likely to happen again, that the gospel, examined afresh with a new problem in mind, will seem again to have been written in large part to meet the needs of the new age. Words and deeds which other generations have found perplexing or obscure may be illuminated with meaning, as one now sees them in the light of the new social agitation and hope. It will seem, perhaps, as it has

1 Henry Van Dyke, "The Gospel for an Age of Doubt," 1896.

seemed so often before, that no other age could have adequately appreciated the teaching of Jesus; as if his prophetic mind must have looked across the centuries and discerned the distant coming of social conflicts and aspirations which in his own time were insignificant, but which are now universal and profound.

Such is the comprehensiveness of the teaching of Jesus. A great modern preacher has described this power of adaptation in the parable of the fairy tent.1 Set in the king's palace, this magic enclosure was not too large for the smallest room; placed in the court-yard, it was large enough to shelter all the nobles; brought out upon the plain, it grew to cover the whole army of the king; there was "infinite flexibility, infinite expansiveness." Jesus himself, according to the fourth gospel, with still greater suggestiveness, repeatedly describes his mission through the parable of the light. "I am," he says, "the light of the world";2 "I am come a light into the world"; "Yet a little while is the light among you; walk while ye have the light.' Light is by its very nature comprehensive, transmissible, ubiquitous. There is not too much for each man's need, and yet there is enough for all. Each separate chamber seems to have all the sunshine, while the unexhausted light radiates into a million other homes. It is the same with the in

1 Stopford Brooke, "Religion in Modern Life," first sermon.

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fluence of Jesus Christ. Each new age or movement or personal desire seems to itself to receive with a peculiar fulness its special teaching, and it is quite true that a direct ray of communication and illumination enters that chamber of the mind which reaches no other point. It is as if one stood at night watching the moon rise from the sea, and saw the glittering band of light which leads straight to him, as though the moon were shining for one life alone; while in fact he knows that its comprehensive radiation is for him, and for the joy and guidance of a world besides. So the unexhausted gospel of Jesus touches each new problem and new need with its illuminating power, while there yet remain myriads of other ways of radiation toward other souls and other ages, for that Life which is the light of men.