living God of the ancient religions. Were the men who have best
comprehended God--Cakya-Mouni, Plato, St. Paul, St. Francis d'Assisi,
and St. Augustine (at some periods of his fluctuating life)--Deists or
Pantheists? Such a question has no meaning. The physical and
metaphysical proofs of the existence of God were quite indifferent to
them. They felt the Divine within themselves. We must place Jesus in
the first rank of this great family of the true sons of God. Jesus
had no visions; God did not speak to him as to one outside of Himself;
God was in him; he felt himself with God, and he drew from his heart
all he said of his Father. He lived in the bosom of God by constant
communication with Him; he saw Him not, but he understood Him, without
need of the thunder and the burning bush of Moses, of the revealing
tempest of Job, of the oracle of the old Greek sages, of the familiar
genius of Socrates, or of the angel Gabriel of Mahomet. The
imagination and the hallucination of a St. Theresa, for example, are
useless here. The intoxication of the Soufi proclaiming himself
identical with God is also quite another thing. Jesus never once gave
utterance to the sacrilegious idea that he was God. He believed
himself to be in direct communion with God; he believed himself to be
the Son of God. The highest consciousness of God which has existed in
the bosom of humanity was that of Jesus.

We understand, on the other hand, how Jesus, starting with such a
disposition of spirit, could never be a speculative philosopher like
Cakya-Mouni. Nothing is further from scholastic theology than the
Gospel.[1] The speculations of the Greek fathers on the Divine essence
proceed from an entirely different spirit. God, conceived simply as
Father, was all the theology of Jesus. And this was not with him a
theoretical principle, a doctrine more or less proved, which he sought
to inculcate in others. He did not argue with his disciples;[2] he
demanded from them no effort of attention. He did not preach his
opinions; he preached himself. Very great and very disinterested minds
often present, associated with much elevation, that character of
perpetual attention to themselves, and extreme personal
susceptibility, which, in general, is peculiar to women.[3] Their
conviction that God is in them, and occupies Himself perpetually with
them, is so strong, that they have no fear of obtruding themselves
upon others; our reserve, and our respect for the opinion