preme importance of Christ
for the world, for the religious life of the Church and of the
individual, it is surely convenient to have some language in which to
express our sense of that importance. The actual personal attitude
towards Christ is the essential thing: but as a means towards that
attitude it is of importance to express what Christ has actually been
to others, and what he ought to be to ourselves. Children {174} and
adults alike require to have the claims of Christ presented to them
before they can verify them by their own experience: and this requires
articulate language of some kind. Religion can only be handed down,
diffused, propagated by an organized society: and a religious society
must have some means of handing on its religious ideas. It is possible
to hold that under other conditions a different set of terms might have
expressed the truth as well as those which have actually been enshrined
in the New Testament, the Liturgies, and the Creeds. But the phrases
which have been actually adopted surely have a strong presumption in
their favour, even if it were merely through the difficulty of changing
them, and the importance of unity, continuity, corporate life. It is
easier to explain, or even if need be, alter in some measure the
meaning of an accepted formula than to introduce a new one. Religious
development has at all times taken place largely in this way. Our Lord
himself entirely transformed the meaning of God's Fatherhood,
Messiahship, the Kingdom of God, the people of God, the true Israel.
At all events we should endeavour to discover the maximum of truth that
any traditional formula can be made to yield before we discard it in
favour of a new one. If we want to worship and to work with Christ's
Church, we must do our best to give the maximum of meaning {175} to the
language in which it expresses its faith and its devotion.

(3) We must insist strongly upon the thoroughly human character of
Christ's own consciousness. Jesus did not--so I believe the critical
study of the Gospels leads us to think--himself claim to be God, or to
be Son of God in any sense but that of Messiahship. He claimed to
speak with authority: he claimed a divine mission: he claimed to be a
Revealer of divine truth. The fourth Gospel has been of infinite
service to spiritual Christianity. It has given the world a due sense
of the spiritual importance of Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the
Life. Perhaps Christ